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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Meet the ‘Real Housewives’ of Israel
Bravo’s “Real Housewives” series has spawned spinoffs in cities across the U.S., so perhaps it was only a matter of time before the phenomenon hit Israel. A Hebrew-language version of the show debuted last night on Israel’s Channel 10, where it is called simply “Me’usharot,” or “Rich” (and where it was ostensibly created independently from…
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Israel’s Woodstock in the Desert
Crossposted from Haaretz The fifth annual inDnegev music festival at Mitzpeh Gvulot starts this Thursday and continues throughout the weekend. With the exception of the first inDnegev, tickets for the festival sell out well before the gates open, and this year 3,500 are expected to attend. The festival organizers — friends and Negev residents Matan…
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Giving History a Helping Hand
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree This past Sunday afternoon, the students in my Jewish Geography class got more than they bargained for when they attended a matinee performance of “Parade,” a two act musical at the historic Ford’s Theatre that centered on the sobering events that culminated in the lynching of Leo Frank of…
The Latest
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Madoff’s Daughter-In-Law Dishes on ‘The View’
With a memoir to sell and scores to settle, Bernie Madoff’s daughter-in-law appeared on “The View” this morning to talk about the infamous Ponzi schemer and the damage he wrought on his own family. The author of the newly published “The End of Normal,” Stephanie Madoff Mack cut a sympathetic figure on the ABC daytime…
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Monday Music: Orthodox Hipster Hip-Hop at CMJ
“So you’re the only non-Jewish artist on Shemspeed?” “I would say so,” says TJ Di Hitmaker. TJ’s just finished his set at Littlefield and he’s losing his voice. Right now he sounds Tom Waits-level raspy. “I met up with DeScribe, he was telling me he raps. I told him I’m a dancehall artist, he put…
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Looted Painting Returned to Jewish Heirs
What happened in this German casino will not be staying in this German casino. A gambling establishment in a German spa town will return a Dutch Old Master painting to the heirs of a Jewish art dealer persecuted by the Nazis and forced to flee Germany, Bloomberg reports. “The Masters of the Goldsmith Guild in…
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Fashion Week Comes to Israel
It won’t be quite like Fashion Week in New York, Paris or Milan, but it will be Holon’s biggest fashion week ever. This month, the Mediatheque Cultural Center in Holon, just south of Tel Aviv, will host a fashion-focused event October 24-27 that will include film screenings, an international symposium, master classes taught by international…
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Musical Fast Food From Sweden
Crossposted From Haaretz Wow, so many people. It’s been years since there were so many, streaming into the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds. The parking lot was packed; the line for the bathrooms was endless. The Roxette concert last Saturday night was moved from the pavilion, with a capacity of 5,000, to the adjacent lawn, which can…
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Shalit Shirt Inspires Fashion Trend
Many questioned Hamas’s fashion sense when they saw the civilian outfit that Gilad Shalit was dressed in for his transfer to Israel during last week’s prisoner swap. They thought it was far from flattering to his thin, malnourished frame and gaunt face. It turns out, however, that Gazans actually thought the collared, checkered shirt the…
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Polish Play Teaches Hard Lessons of the Holocaust
In the exemplary Wilma Theater production (and U.S. premiere) of Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s “Our Class,” a scrim-veiled, eerily illuminated representation of a barn does triple duty. It serves, first of all, as the stage version of the barn where, in 1941, as many as 1,600 Jewish residents of the town of Jedwabne were herded and then…
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Out and About: Norman Mailer’s Pad; Cairo Geniza Online
Gareth Unwin, producer of “The King’s Speech,” is hoping to increase cooperation between the British and Israeli film industries. A dispute has arisen over the sale of Norman Mailer’s Brooklyn Heights apartment due to custom renovations performed by the late author. A new project is afoot to digitize the Cairo Geniza. The Jewish Museum in…
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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish קאָנצערט לכּבֿוד דעם ייִדישן שרײַבער און רעדאַקטאָר באָריס סאַנדלערConcert honoring Yiddish writer and editor Boris Sandler
דער בעל־שׂימחה האָט יאָרן לאַנג געדינט ווי דער רעדאַקטאָר פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָרווערטס.
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Fast Forward Trump’s new pick for surgeon general blames the Nazis for pesticides on our food
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Fast Forward Jewish feud over Trump escalates with open letter in The New York Times
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Fast Forward First American pope, Leo XIV, studied under a leader in Jewish-Catholic relations
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