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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UK Soccer Website Gives ‘Jewish Star’ To Those Who Donate Least
The Jewish Chronicle in the UK reports that an Arsenal football (that’s soccer to us Americans) team fan website is kicking up an anti-Semitic controversy. The fan forum, called We Are The Herd, is posting Stars of David next to the names of site members who have paid the least in the ways of membership…
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Basketball, History of People
Douglas Stark’s The SPHAS: The Life and Times of Basketball’s Greatest Jewish Team is now available. His 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: To me, history is telling stories about…
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Friday Film: ‘The Prize’ Takes the Prize in Peru and Jerusalem
Top prize of the Lima Film Festival that ended on August 12, is just the latest award El Premio (The Prize) by Paula Markovitch has collected on its round of the film festivals. Opening with a long tracking shot, the camera follows a small child struggling along a desolate, windswept beach. She’s trying to rollerskate,…
The Latest
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In Song: Ekev
Each week The Arty Semite connects the Torah reading — however tenuously — with a classic work of rock and roll. In this week’s parsha, Ekev, Moses continues his lengthy speech from last week with more basic theology. He asks and answers questions such as why the Jews were chosen, what they have to do…
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Star-Gazing, Optimism and Courage From Italy’s Jewish Partisans
Isacco Levi, who turned 87 in July, a distant relative of Primo Levi who fought as a wartime anti-Nazi partisan, is the sole survivor of a family of thirteen from Saluzzo in northwest Italy; the rest were murdered in Auschwitz. In 2005, a Berlin war claims conference bizarrely denied Levi any compensation for this loss…
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Howard Stern To Get a Comic Book
Fresh from being attacked by comedian Andy Dick as a “shallow, money-grubbing Jew,” with a “big fat hook nose,” Howard Stern has a new way to be his provocative heebie self. The shaggy-haired star has his own comic book that gives him new opportunities to mouth off. The “Howard Stern” title is part of a…
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Video: Ehud Barak, Israeli Minister of Camera Angles?
Some Israelis are suggesting that Ehud Barak’s portfolio be changed from Minister of Defense to Minister of Camera Angles, after he was caught on camera giving stage directions to the commander of the IDF’s Southern Command as he briefed the press on the terrorist attacks earlier today near Eilat. As Major General Tal Russo was…
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Johannes Heesters, Hitler’s Favorite Singer, at 107
It seems evil people can live a really long time. Now 107(!) years old and still singing, Hitler’s favorite singer Johannes Heesters recently discovered his native Netherlands still regards him as a traitor. German chancellor Angela Merkel was recently hosting a formal state dinner for the visiting Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and invited Heesters,…
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Sarah Silverman Gets Her Own NBC Sitcom
The Shmooze is surprised but pleased to learn that author, TV star and famed bedwetter Sarah Silverman will star in a new comedy on NBC. The subject of an “intense bidding war” among several networks, the show will be loosely based on Silverman’s own life — as was her previous show for Comedy Central, “The…
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Perfectly Pitched Music From a Hungarian Fable
On September 21 at a church in Hannover, the Hungarian Jewish conductor and organist Andor Izsák will lead a concert of liturgical music under the auspices of The European Centre for Jewish Music (EZJM) which he founded in 1988 and still directs. A special zest should infuse the event, as a new biography, “Andor the…
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Rabbi Seeks Young Wife (For His Health!)
Older man seeks a new, younger wife. The scenario sounds familiar, but this time it’s not for the usual reasons. Rabbi Craig Ezring of Boca Raton, who serves a number of nursing home and assisted living facilities in South Florida, announced on his blog that he was seeking a new, younger wife. Why? So that…
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