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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Jewish Couture at Moscow Fashion Week
Looks like religious chic is becoming a bona fide trend. Sure, H&M has their own Tallit, but now haute couture is getting its own Jewish flavor. At this week’s Moscow Fashion Week, Russian fashion house St. Bessarion — which, ironically, is named for a Christian saint — dressed models in clothes inspired by Orthodox Judaism….
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The Artist’s Pinch
Crossposted from Haaretz If you’re willing to pose with a hibiscus flower in place of a sexual organ, or have a lobster dance with you as you strike a pornographic pose — and have that photo tagged on Facebook — you have to pay for it. Yoash Foldesh approaches a wide drawer in his house,…
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Books Natalie Portman’s Dad Penned a Pregnancy Novel
Is publishing a book easier if your daughter’s an Oscar winner? Natalie Portman’s dad is about to find out. Avner Hershlag, the Israeli father of the “Black Swan” star, is currently peddling his debut novel to major publishing houses, the Observer reports. Partly inspired by his work as a fertility specialist, the book is described…
The Latest
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National Poetry Month: New Fugue to Sing
French Jewish poet and writer Emmanuel Moses is well known and recognized overseas, as his Nelly Sachs Prize for translation, the Max Jacob Prize for poetry and the Ploquin-Caunan Academie Française prize attest. Fortunately, his work has also been steadily reaching American audiences. A retrospective poetry collection “Last News of Mr. Nobody” came out in…
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Books The Origin of Russian for Lovers
Marina Biltshteyn is the author of the new poetry chapbook “Russian for Lovers.” Her blog 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: It was my first semester in the MFA program…
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Transsexual Israeli Pop Star Agrees To Interview on Qatari Radio
Qataris aren’t known to be huge fans of Israelis, transsexuals or Israeli transsexuals, but that hasn’t stopped a Qatari radio station from reaching out to Dana International, the gender-bending Israeli pop star who will represent her homeland next month at the Eurovision Song Contest. The 39-year-old singer, born Yaron Cohen, has agreed to be interviewed…
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‘Close to the Sun’
Crossposted from Haaretz Last Friday, a day before the opening of his solo show, “NU,” at the Dvir Gallery (Hangar 2, the Jaffa port), Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed looked relatively calm. His works, which arrived last week, had been carefully and slowly unboxed and set up, one behind the other, in the large, darkened space….
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National Poetry Month: Kabbalah and the Eagles
Poets eat defiance for breakfast — rule-breaking, language-bending, Houdini-like wriggling out of cliché’s confines comes with the territory. In the works of poet-performer-professor Adeena Karasick such poetic freedom-seeking is manifest by dancing between complex academic concepts, pop culture, and shtick. She oscillates from poetics to social commentary in a manner that is darkly funny, parodic,…
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Will Universal Pictures Make a Mossad Movie?
Americans love Mossad agents in their books and TV shows, and now they’ll get another helping at the movies. Universal Pictures has announced its acquisition of the rights to the Gabriel Allon series, author Daniel Silva’s bestsellers about a Mossad agent turned art restorer. The studio hopes to turn the books into a franchise on…
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Overlooking Henry Mayhew’s ‘Street-Jews’ in Dickensian London
The vivid scenes of a bustling and brutally poor metropolis at the heart of Empire make Henry Mayhew’s masterpiece “London Labour and the London Poor,” first published in 1851 compelling reading. With or without Jews. The Victorian social researcher originally published his work in three volumes and augmented it to four volumes in 1861 so…
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Nazis Invaded Long Island During WWII
The tony beach town of Amagansett, Long Island, got some unusual summer visitors in 1942. According to declassified British documents released yesterday, a Nazi U-boat carrying German spies landed on an Amagansett beach on a June morning — with Jews as targets. Metro reports “the secret agents came here to leave bombs in suitcases at…
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