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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Hardcore Klezmer: Talking With Ramzailech
Crossposted from Midnight East. Photos by Gangi. Thirty seconds into the music bodies are moving on the dance floor, my pulse is synched to the beat, and electric guitar and drums are crashing through my bloodstream. Then the wail of the clarinet takes over my brain and I’m singing along with the band — in…
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Interest-Free Loans Improve Quality of Life
An American immigrant to Israel received today one of the country’s great honors, the Knesset Speaker’s Prize for Quality of Life. In 1990, three decades after immigrating to Israel, Hebrew University academic Eliezer Jaffe set about taking the old shtetl idea of a free loan society and building it on a national scale in Israel….
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Stern Gang Veterans Up in Arms Over Play
Crossposted from Haaretz Veterans of the prestate underground Lehi are demanding changes in Hillel Mittelpunkt’s play “Railway to Damascus,” charging that it paints the organization in a false and offensive light. Specifically, said the Lehi Veterans organization, it accuses the underground of persecuting Jewish women who conducted romances with British soldiers during the British Mandate….
The Latest
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Finally, a ‘Sh-t Christians Say To Jews’ Video
It’s no surprise that a “Sh-t Girls Say” meme has spawned spin-off parodies like “Sh-t Black Girls Say,” “Sh-t Asian Girls Say,” “Sh-t White Girls Say…to Black Girls” and so forth. And now, of course, there is “Sh-t Christians Say to Jews,” courtesy of actress Allison Pearlman. Don’t pretend like you didn’t see this coming….
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Books 2011 Jewish Book Award Winners Announced
The Jewish Book Council announced today the recipients of the 2011 National Jewish Book Awards, which will be distributed March 14 at the Center for Jewish History in New York. The entire list is pretty lengthy, but here are some of the highlights: “Jerusalem: The Biography,” by Simon Sebag Montefiore, picked up the top prize…
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Shack Up in a Tel Aviv ‘Pixel Hotel’
It used to be that if someone asked you if you wanted to shack up on the beach in Tel Aviv, there would have been a good chance they were rudely propositioning you. But now, they could very well be assisting you in making upscale hotel reservations for your trip to the Big Orange. Looking…
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In Israel, Free Preschool From Age 3
It has been six months since moms and dads pushed strollers as they pounded the pavement in last summer’s social protests in cities around Israel. One of their major complaints was that the cost of day care and private early childhood education was prohibitively high. It seems that they got their point across, because on…
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The Lions of Zion, Chapter 25
What would have happened had there been a Jewish team in the Major Leagues? In an original novel serialized on The Arty Semite, Ross Ufberg imagines the trials and triumphs of The Lions of Zion, an all-Jewish team competing in the National League in 1933. Read the first 24 chapters here. At a Wedding, One…
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Slideshow: Comics, Papercuts and Prayer
That’s not just vibrant color peeking out through artist Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik’s papercuts — that’s Flash Gordon, the Green Lantern, Spiderman and Wolverine. Brynjegard-Bialik, whose “Paper Tefillah” exhibition opens January 10 at Temple Israel in Memphis, Tenn., combines the traditional art of papercutting with the power of comics to explore prayer and the human striving for…
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David Remnick On Board for ‘Jewish Jocks’ Book
Sports Illustrated recently released a list of history’s greatest Jewish athletes, and now a group of top thinkers and policymakers is doing the same. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and New Yorker editor David Remnick will be among the big-name contributors to “Jewish Jocks,” an essay collection about Jews in sports. Summers, who’s spent the…
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Small-Town Mayor Rants Against Israel
A small-town Canadian politician and talk-show host is in trouble — again — for on-air, anti-Israel rants. Stephane Gendron, mayor of tiny Huntingdon, Quebec and host of French-language chatfest “Face a Face,” informed his audience last month that Israel is an “apartheid regime” and doesn’t deserve to exist, the CBC reports. Now, after complaints from…
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