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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Nostalgia and Moderns on CD for Heritage Month
For background sounds to Jewish American Heritage Month, why not investigate some nostalgic treasures of Hebrew education from a half-century ago, available from Smithsonian Folkways, such as 1958’s “Israeli Children’s Songs” sung by New York native Miriam Ben-Ezra; or a charming 1955 lecture, “The Hebrew Language: Commentary and Readings” by Theodor Herzl Gaster, a UK-born…
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Women’s Liberation and Helène Aylon’s ‘Word of God’
Performance and installation artist Helène Aylon scrutinizes the entrenched, sometimes invisible, belief systems that shape society. Since the 1970s, she has used her work as a tool for poetic dissent and constructive revisionism. Aylon’s early work contributed to the women’s movement, opposing the unrealistic imagery pedaled by magazines like Playboy. In the 1980s, her focus…
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The Truth About Leah
Crossposted from Haaretz When Leah Goldberg was 8 years old, her father suffered a mental illness and her mother went to work. Leah started studying at the trade school in Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania, and turned out to be a gifted student. Within just six months she was learning Hebrew. “Today I am starting to…
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Arthur Hartmann Fiddled With Debussy
Star violinists are not usually known for modesty, but even in this company, Arthur Hartmann, born in Philadelphia to Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, stands out for braggadocio. Hartmann, who died in 1956, had talent, as we read in “Claude Debussy As I Knew Him and Other Writings of Arthur Hartmann,” a paperback out in September, 2010 from…
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Magic as a Jewish Family Business
Perhaps it’s time to stop being surprised by the disproportionate number of successful Jews in any random profession. That’s one of the lessons to take from “Masters of Illusion: Jewish Magicians of the Golden Age,” an entertaining exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on view until September 4. The exhibit runs concurrently…
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A Picture Out of Focus
Is Broadway ready for dancing girls in the Warsaw ghetto? Can an American musical high kick through the darkest moments of Jewish history and still avoid giving offense, or worse, falling into kitsch? “The People in the Picture,” a new musical playing at the Roundabout theater until June 19, raises this question, treading where even…
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A-Rod Facilitates Unlikely Abe Foxman-Rick Sanchez Reunion
Advice for Mel Gibson and John Galliano: If you’re an accused anti-Semite trying to rescue your career, Alex Rodriguez, aka A-Rod, is apparently the man to see. The Yankees third baseman, of all people, was behind last week’s oddball reunion between Anti-Defamation League leader Abe Foxman and Rick Sanchez, the CNN anchor fired last year…
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Dan Adler Courts Korean Vote With Bizarre ‘Send a Mensch to Congress’ Video
Which Dan Adler ad is weirder — the one where he lifts a barbell off actress Patty Duke’s chest with help from two black bodybuilders, or the spot in which he reveals he’s Jewish to a Korean constituent who shrieks “What’s a mensch?” Our money’s on the second, which — as intended — has catapulted…
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Two Views of Egypt’s Jewish Past
Crossposted From Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments I am indebted to the blog Point of No Return for links to two articles about (formerly) Jewish Egypt. The first, an article from Al-Ahram online, takes a tour of the Haret El-Yehud, what was once Cairo’s “Jewish Alley,” a site of Jewish habitation for centuries. It…
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Putting Some Punch Into the Protest Song
Crossposted from Haaretz When Mary Ocher participated in a singing competition at 14, Idan Reichel, who was working as a music arranger in the same competition, told her she would never be a singer. At 20, after hearing the same thing from a few other Israeli teachers, Ocher packed her bags and moved with her…
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Israeli Facebook Fans Name Their Daughter ‘Like’
It was a tall order, but an Israeli couple has come up with a baby name even weirder than Mariah Carey’s. Lior and Vardit Adler have named their third child “Like,” as in the Facebook term for something you approve of. “I didn’t want to call my daughter by the name of someone I know,…
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Most Popular
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
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Opinion American Jews were played — now what?
In Case You Missed It
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Culture The Melania Trump Opera House won’t change hearts and minds — not even the president’s
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Fast Forward Columbia suspends, expels and revokes diplomas of students involved in Butler Library takeover
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Fast Forward Youth wing of the Democratic Party passes amendment opposing Israel’s ‘ongoing genocide in Gaza’
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Fast Forward Top leaders resign from Friends of the IDF amid internal reckoning
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