The Schmooze lies at the intersection of high and low culture. Here, the latest developments and trends in Jewish art, books, dance, film, music, media, television and theater are all assimilated into one handy pop culture blog.
The Schmooze
-
Books
Author Blog: The Comedienne
Earlier this week, Leigh Stein wrote about the Jewish ghost of Santa Fe and revealed one of her early aspirations: to “Be Anne Frank.” Her blog posts have been featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series,…
-
Bar Refaeli Pigs Out on Chocolate
As Us Weekly likes to tell us, “they’re just like us!” Celebrities apparently do things that regular folks do, like go to the grocery store, make a coffee run, drive a car or change a diaper. But when it comes to eating, it would seem that gorgeous supermodels definitely don’t do as much of it…
-
Friday Film: Nazis on the Moon
“Nazis on the moon” sounds like a punchline. But it’s actually the premise of the most talked-about feature at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. The plot of Finnish entry “Iron Sky” revolves around “a group of Nazis who escape to the moon at the end of World War II to plan a new assault,”…
The Latest
-
Public Transportation on the Sabbath?
Of all the ways that religion impacts the Israeli public sphere, the lack of public transportation in most of the country on Sabbaths and religious holidays has possibly the largest week-to-week impact on people’s lives. It means that those who don’t have their own vehicles can’t get far from home on these days. The difficulty…
-
Socialite Zelda Kaplan Dies at Fashion Week
Socialite Zelda Kaplan, who based on her style could have been separated at birth from Iris Apfel, died suddenly on February 15 while at a New York Fashion Week show. To be more precise, the 95-year-old collapsed while sitting in the front row at the Joanna Mastroianni runway show and died in hospital shortly thereafter….
-
Books Q&A: Sonia Taitz on Old Country and Oxford
Sonia Taitz is, by her own admission, an overachiever. Yeshiva educated, she earned degrees in both psychology and English from Barnard College (Phi Beta Kappa, of course), a master’s in philosophy from Oxford University and a law degree from Yale University. Taitz is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and that crucially shaped the person she…
-
Cows Spared From Reality TV
It’s the ultimate guilty pleasure here in Israel: “Big Brother.” As always, the contestants are having a ball, but the current season seems to be arriving upon increasingly bizarre situations. Keen to set increasingly off-the-wall “challenges” for contestants, the producers wanted to bring a cow in to the contestants’ house. But it seems that the…
-
Israeli Arab Wins Yoko Ono Lennon Award
Crossposted from Haaretz Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar, a 34-year-old violinist and the director of the Polyphony Conservatory in Nazareth, will be awarded the Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts. The prize has been awarded annually since 2009 by Ono to artists from various fields for their efforts to promote peace through the arts. Ashkar founded…
-
Out and About
The Guardian looks into the influence of Yiddish on British theater. Will Hollywood success affect Michael Chabon’s fiction? The latest issue of the LABA Journal is out, featuring essays by Elissa Strauss, Stephen Hazan Arnoff and Karen Loew. J. Hoberman wonders whether we are beginning to see an Obama-inflected cinema. Israeli author Alex Epstein is…
-
Introducing The Times of Israel
Jewish and Israeli news junkies are rejoicing at the launch yesterday of yet another media outlet — The Times of Israel. The Jerusalem-based online-only publication is helmed by British-born David Horovitz, formerly editor and publisher of The Jerusalem Report and editor-in-chief at the Jerusalem Post. In a blog post from yesterday, he wrote, “The Times…
-
A Rebel Reviewed by Trotsky
A picaresque 20th-century Jewish literary life is being celebrated with a vibrant new biography. The novelist Jean Malaquais, born Vladimir Jan Pavel Israël Pinkus Malacki in Warsaw in 1908, is the subject of “The Rebellious Malaquais” by Geneviève Nakach, out from Les éditions Le Cherche Midi in November. Malaquais’ first novella, “Marianka,” about an anti-Semitic…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
- 2
Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
- 3
Fast Forward Hanukkah shooting leaves at least 15 dead at Australia’s most popular beach
- 4
Fast Forward Father and son suspects in Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack identified as Sajid and Naveed Akram by law enforcement
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward At White House Hanukkah party, Trump says Congress ‘is becoming antisemitic’
-
Letters Australia’s Yiddish community is thriving, not reviving
-
Opinion Jewish identity surges after Bondi, highlighting internal divisions — and the potential for renewed Black-Jewish cooperation
-
Opinion What can really be done to prevent antisemitic attacks like Bondi Beach?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
