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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CDs to Cool Off the Dog Days of Summer
Nothing distracts more from brutal estival heat than revitalizing musical discoveries with a refreshing dose of Yiddishkeit on CD. Turin-born Italian Jewish composer Leone Sinigaglia was admired by Fritz Kreisler and Arturo Toscanini, but fell into obscurity after dying at age 75 in 1944, just as he was being arrested in hospital by Nazis. A…
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Glenn Beck Pledges Support in Address to Israeli Parliament
He and Fox News have gone their separate ways, but Glenn Beck still has fans in Israel’s parliament. The former TV host addressed the Knesset’s Committee on Immigration and Diaspora Affairs today, telling legislators that American media coverage of the Middle East is biased, and that the Arab-Israeli standoff boils down to an existential clash…
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El Lissitzky’s Everyday Avant-Garde
El Lissitzky, ‘For the Voice (Dlia golosa),’ 1923. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago. “Record” is a tiny work of art, measuring no more than a few inches in either direction. But the photographic print, created by the Russian Jewish artist El Lissitzky in 1926, may be the signature piece in “Avant-Garde Art in…
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Tough Times: ‘Hairspray’ Star Nikki Blonsky Now Works in a Shoe Store
The “Steven Dann” doesn’t exactly have the same ring as the Ed Sullivan or Brooks Atkinson. But it’s where you can now catch once-hot thespian Nikki Blonsky. An “upscale” Long Island shoe store, Steven Dann is where the former “Hairspray” star has been working the floor since last week, according to the NY Daily News….
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When Yiddish Came to North Korea
On September 4, 1965, Lin Jaldati stepped onto a stage in Pyongyang, North Korea and quite possibly became the first person in Communist North Korea to sing in Yiddish. As I will discuss in a July 13 talk at the Yiddish Book Center’s Paper Bridge Summer Arts Festival in Amherst, Mass., Jaldati and her husband,…
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Rabbi Wins Buenos Aires Parliamentary Election in Landslide
In the metropolitan area where Adolf Eichmann once hid, a rabbi is now a member of parliament. Rabbi Sergio Bergman, representing the center-right PRO Party Buenos Aires’s municipal election, won 45% of the vote in a race featuring 10 candidates, according to the JTA. He garnered more than three times the votes of his runner…
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Mourning Kehilath Jeshurun, and Hoping for Rebirth
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree In New York, change is the coin of the realm. Nothing remains intact or in one place for very long. Businesses come and go, neighborhoods rise and fall, synagogues and churches shutter their doors and move away. But not Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun (or “KJ,” as it’s commonly called), a…
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Tunisian Musician Dhafer Youssef Plays to Grateful Fans in Haifa
Crossposted from Haaretz When Dhafer Youssef and the three musicians accompanying him finished playing and were getting ready to leave the stage, the hundreds of people at Haifa’s Rappaport Auditorium Sunday burst out in a standing ovation. It was a collective thank you for the music of the preceding 90 minutes, but more was afoot….
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Monday Music: Yiddish and Metal, Together Forever?
Courtesy of Dibbukim It’s almost too fitting that the band Dibbukim comes from Sweden. I don’t know that much about metal, but in my research I’ve found out that the country is home to such bands as Opeth, Amon Amarth, and Hammerfall. I’ve also watched a few episodes of the Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse, which,…
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Domestic or Imported? Israeli Supermarkets Locked in Diaper Duel
At first it was about what went in one end, and now it’s about what comes out the other. Israel’s cottage cheese revolution has turned into a diaper war. With Israeli consumers up in arms over the high price of food and basic necessities, the country’s Finance and Industry and Trade and Labor ministries are…
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Dreidel-as-Metaphor: Long Island Rabbi Caught in Sex Scandal, NY Post Reports
When is a dreidel not a dreidel? When it’s a stand-in for male genitalia in a tabloid story on a rabbi’s sexual escapades. According to today’s New York Post, Rabbi Avraham Rabinowich — vice president of the Long Island Board of Rabbis, and head of the Bellmore Jewish Center — was “caught with his dreidel…
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