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
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If Adele Was Jewish and From Long Island
Ever wonder what “Someone Like You” might sound like if it was sung by a Jewish woman from Long Island? Well, now we know. The intro is overly long, but it’s worth the wait:
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L.A. Federation Kicks Off Annual Phone-a-Thon
Eight-year-old Lauren Kaufman closed the first pledge, a donation of $5000, at the Sunday February 12 kickoff for Super Week, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles’ annual fundraiser. It was the first-grader’s first time working the phones, side by side with her dad David, a twenty-year Super Week veteran, representing a crew from the…
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Monday Music: Gypsy Jazz in Jaffa
Photo by Ronen Goldman Finding my way through the cavern-like passages of Jaffa’s old city to the appropriately named Alleyway Theater (“Teatron Hasimta”) was an apt beginning to an evening of music with Israeli gypsy jazz trio Swing de Gitanes. On an intimate red-lit stage surrounded by bare, black walls Oren Sagi (double-bass), Yacov Hoter…
The Latest
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Jews and BDS Working Together To Mock Zionists
Flogging a tired meme to death is something that the internet does better than any other human tool. I haven’t seen the YouTube posting for “S**t Abortionists Say,” but surely it’s out there promoting civil dialogue — laughter being the best medicine, after all. In the interests of cooperating for peace Penn BDS and friends…
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Davis Party Sobered By Whitney Houston’s Death
“There ain’t no party like a Clive Davis party,” said Sean “Diddy” Combs at Clive Davis’s pre-Grammy party this past Saturday night at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. And there certainly has not been one like Saturday’s in all the years since Davis began hosting these events in 1976. This year’s festivities were…
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SNL Crowns Mayim Bialik the Queen of Quirky
It seems Mayim Bialik is everywhere these days. The doctor of neuroscience stars as the character Amy Farrah Fowler on “The Big Bang Theory,” writes a weekly column for Kveller, and is the go-to attachment parenting expert for NBC’s Today show and others. She even has a book on attachment parenting coming out this spring….
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A Big Hand for Surgeon Raoul Tubiana
Jewish childhood experiences can determine a lifetime, as a recent heartfelt memoir, “In Your Hands: a Surgeon Traverses the Century,” published on October 20 by Les éditions France-Empire, demonstrates. Its author, Raoul Tubiana, was born to a Jewish family at Constantine in north-eastern Algeria in 1915, and is a longtime resident of France. Still thriving…
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Need a Valentine? Date My Jewish Friend
Comedic actress Michelle Slonim may like to joke around, but she is taking Valentine’s Day very seriously. So much so that she has planned a Date My Jewish Friend Extravaganza for the entire month of February. Known for the young Jewish singles events she has been organizing about once a month for the past year…
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Books The Diarist
Leigh Stein’s debut novel, “The Fallback Plan,” is now available. Her blog posts are being 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, please visit: Before I’d settled on acting or writing, my greatest aspiration was simply…
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Out and About
Adele swept the Grammy Awards, winning six different categories. According to a new book, Shakespeare had a Jewish grandfather from Bohemia. Jenna Weissman Joselit writes about the meaning of a Jewish home at the Yiddish Book Center. Alex Ross writes about Philip Glass. Enough said. David Meir Grossman writes for Tablet about the feminist rock…
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Nazis, Gay Sex and Esperanto
It seems hardly credible that New York urban planning, entomology, Nazi memorabilia, boxing, Esperanto and the lifeless English city of Milton Keynes could combine — with a myriad of other obscurities, both historical and fictitious — into a coherent 200 page novel. That they do — and to the extent of winning the prestigious Goldberg…
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