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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Composer Brings Jazz Age to Washington Ballet
Elizabeth Gaither and Jared Nelson in ‘The Great Gatsby.’ Photo by Steve Vaccariello. F. Scott Fitzgerald — who dubbed the 1920s “the Jazz Age” — would surely approve. This week, jazz clarinetist and composer Billy Novick and his band, the Blue Syncopators, will play Novick’s score for The Washington Ballet’s production of “The Great Gatsby”…
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‘Glamberts’ Will Pay $20 for Magazine Cover
Remember Adam Lambert? You know, the eyeliner-wearing singer who didn’t win American Idol? For many of us, Lambert’s 15 minutes of fame have passed, but not for the “Glamberts,” his die-hard fans. According to Gawker, some of them have been willing to shell out as much as $20 for the current issue of The Advocate….
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The Lions of Zion, Chapter 15
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 14 chapters here. Tsuris’s Clothing Dixie’s ankle…
The Latest
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Hunting Nazis Is Back in Style in Hollywood
Two months after Helen Mirren tracked down a fictional war criminal in “The Debt,” plans are coming together for “Hunting Eichmann,” a thriller based on the Mossad’s real-life capture of Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann. Deadline Hollywood reports that the director will be Brett Ratner, the Hebrew school-educated filmmaker best-known for the “Rush Hour” series and…
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Preserving Indie Moments
Crossposted from Haaretz At the site of the festival there were billboards proclaiming “Indiemoment,” urging the thousands present to photograph what they were doing and what was going on around them at the same exact, predetermined times: 3:53 a.m. and 3:53 p.m. After the In-D-Negev Festival 2011 last week, the photos were sent to a…
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No Smoke Without Freud
As all Freudians realize, an analysis is an analysis, but a good cigar is a smoke. French-Jewish psychoanalyst Philippe Grimbert is known to American readers for his autobiographical novel, “Memory,” published in 2008 by Simon & Schuster — the United Kingdom edition from Portobello Books was titled “Secret”— translated from the 2004 original from Les…
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Rabbi Gordis Kvetches About Kids on Airplanes
Those of us who are used to reading the latest entries from Rabbi Daniel Gordis on his “Dispatches From an Anxious State” blog were surprised over the weekend to see him posting on Facebook about a different type of anxiety. Instead of commenting on Zionism, Israel and politics, as he usually does, Gordis shared with…
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Montel in Israel on Medical Marijuana Quest
“Fact-finding missions” to Israel don’t usually involve cannabis, but medical marijuana is the reason former talk-show host Montel Williams is currently in the Holy Land. “Some of the leading science on where and how those chemicals [in marijuana] work is being done right here in this country,” the Emmy Award winner said during the trip….
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Monday Music: Sounds of the Fathers
At first, I didn’t know how to listen to “The Pirkei Avot Project, Vol. 1.” Taking eight short excerpts from Pirkei Avot, a compendium of rabbinical aphorisms, jazz guitarist Amanda Monaco creates a wise and playful interpretation of some serious material. She uses popular passages, such as Hillel’s saying, “If I am not for me,…
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New Documentary Tracks New Zealand’s Nazi Criminals
A new documentary film is telling the story of the unfruitful efforts to bring Nazi war criminals in New Zealand to justice. According to Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, “New Zealand was the only Anglo-Saxon democracy that faced this problem and chose to ignore it. There was absolutely no political will to…
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Jewish Florist Recalls Pen Pal Ghadafy
A retired Jewish florist from Brooklyn was Muammar Ghadafy’s unlikely pen pal, but never got to write a good-bye letter to the slain dictator. Louis Schlamowitz, 81, had been writing to Ghadafy for 50 years and obtained a trove of letters and autographed photos of the eccentric leader, The New York Post reported. “He was…
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