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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A Sukkot Kerfuffle Over Antennas
Two adjacent Jewish organizations in San Francisco — the Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy, an Orthodox Jewish day school, and the Bureau of Jewish Education — are involved in a neighborly scuffle over roof space. The two groups are feuding over a public hearing about the placement of AT&T antennas on the BJE’s roof. Two existing…
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Protest Sukkah Rises at the Chicago Hyatt
They may be occupying Wall Street with a sukkah in New York, but in Chicago the protest sukkah is at the Hyatt Regency. That is where the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual meeting is being held this week, and Jewish activists figured the hotel was the best place to make their point about the need for…
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Bruce Jay Friedman’s Celebrity-Filled Memoir
Lucky Bruce: A Literary Memoir Bruce Jay Friedman Biblioasis, 275 pages $29.95 Bruce Jay Friedman was sent to a charity sleep-away camp in Peekskill, N.Y. each summer. It was sponsored by the Central Jewish Institute and staffed by Israelis counselors. Like most Jews born and bred in the Bronx, Friedman didn’t take well to the…
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Feds Nab Leader of Immigration Fraud Ring
The long arm of the law caught up with a lawyer who goes by the moniker “Rabbi Avraham David” in Canada yesterday. The attorney, whose real name is Earl Seth David, was arrested in Toronto and will be extradited to the U.S. to face charges for his actions as the alleged ringleader of a massive…
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Anthony Weiner Kvetches About His In-Laws
We are all prone to complaining about our in-laws. We might gripe about them while shmoozing with someone in person, on the phone or by e-mail. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner, it seems, talks about his in-laws even while sexting. In her forthcoming tell-all book, “I Friended You,” about her online relationship with Weiner, 35-year-old former…
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The Jews of Def Jam
Image Courtesy of the Adler Archive This week “Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label” arrives in book stores. The 300 page hardcover tome is 12” X 12,” the same size as an old school LP and has a cover price of $60. It may be chock full of…
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Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny Dies
Franklin Kameny, the pioneering gay rights leader whose Jewish identity inspired some of his historic activism, has died at age 86, the Washington Post reports. As the Forward wrote last year in an 85th-birthday profile, Kameny “became a vocal activist at a time when other downtrodden and discriminated-against gay people scarcely dared to show their…
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Victory for Poetry
Crossposted from Haaretz “And I take the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature, when it is given to a poet, to be primarily an assertion of the supra-national value of poetry. To make that affirmation, it is necessary from time to time to designate a poet: and I stand before you, not on my…
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Making a Case for the ‘Sabbath Elevator’
Secular-religious tensions in Israel have reached new heights — literally. After three years of controversy among residents, homeowners at 14 Jabotinsky Street in Jerusalem’s Talbieh neighborhood have voted to use the building’s elevator every Sabbath as a “Shabbat elevator.” In a nod to the religious prohibition against pressing buttons on the Sabbath, the elevator will…
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Bono Says to Think About Africa This Sukkot
Bono would like Sukkot observers enjoying their bountiful meals in the sukkah to take a moment from their celebration to think about famine in Africa. ONE, the grassroots advocacy organization that the U2 musician founded to fight poverty and preventable disease in Africa, has put out a special Sukkot 2011 guide to educate people on…
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City Pulls Yiddish Signs Ordering Women Aside
Municipal workers in Brooklyn have taken down signs directed at Hasidic women — not because they’re religious in content, but because of where they’re posted. The signs, written in Yiddish, direct Hasidic women in the Williamsburg neighborhood to keep a distance from their male counterparts, telling them, “Precious Jewish daughter, please move aside when a…
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