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 Students Flock to Lutheran College
There’s a kosher menu at the student union. Jewish Theological Seminary is one of its academic partners. And its Hillel House is growing fast. But Muhlenberg College is “a small Lutheran school erected around a soaring stone chapel with a cross on top,” as The Associated Press described it in a report yesterday. And the…
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On the Kibbutz, No Straight Line to the Past
“Do you think we told a good story?” filmmaker Sharone Lifschitz asks her mother at the end of her video installation “The Line and the Circle.” “Yes, we talked about all sorts of things,” her mother responds. “You will now have to edit it.” The installation, a short film tucked away from the main galleries…
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A View to a School
Crossposed from Haaretz The University of Haifa has in the past two years undergone a dramatic facelift. Its main building, a modernist icon common in the mid-1960s in the work of noted Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, underwent an essential and comprehensive refurbishment after years of neglect. Over the coming year, the university’s central library will…
The Latest
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Book Claims Gandhi Was in Love With a Jewish Bodybuilder
There are many things The Shmooze has yet to learn about Gandhi, but it’s hard to imagine anything more surprising than this: “the love of his life” was a German-Jewish bodybuilder named Hermann. So says a new biography, “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India,” which reports that the anti-colonial leader left his…
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‘Schindler’s List’ Producer Backing Made-in-China Holocaust Movie
It’s a staple of Hollywood and European cinema, and now a Holocaust movie is being shot in China. Xinhua, the country’s official news agency, reports that production will soon begin on “The Melanie Violin,” a drama about a Jewish musician who flees Europe for Shanghai and falls for a local love interest. The film will…
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The Top Hebraic Moments of the Canadian Grammys
“A biracial Jewish former child star from Canadian television who’s a multimillion-dollar selling artist? You couldn’t create a better Canadian in a science lab.” That’s how one wag described rapper Drake, who made his debut as host of the Juno Awards — Canada’s Grammys — in Toronto last night. And from Drake’s red-carpet kiss with…
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Monday Music: Dancing Between the Rockets
“Rockets on the Balcony,” Omer Klein’s fourth album and his Tzadik Records debut, is also his first self-consciously Jewish record. In the liner notes, Klein explains that when John Zorn first approached him about the project, he was reluctant to make “calculated evaluations as to what counts as Jewish music and what doesn’t.” But over…
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Itzhak Perlman in the Cantor’s House
It’s the Itzhak and Yitzchok show! Violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman is teaming up with cantorial superstar Yitzchok Meir Helfgot for a concert tour and recording project titled “The Soul of Jewish Music.” The inaugural concert takes place March 30 at the Saban Theatre in Los Angeles and will benefit Bet Tzedek Holocaust Survivors Justice Network….
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Out and About: Ashkelon’s Adult Archeology Camp; Leonard Nimoy Lives Long and Prospers
Jewcy reviews the work of Bonnie Lucas, “another artist toiling forever as art teacher with a mature body of thirty years work in her fifth floor walk-up.” What better place than Israel for an adult archeology camp? But are Jewish studies on decline in the country’s universities? Talmud study is catching on in South Korea….
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This Week in Forward Arts and Culture
In the first of a two-part series, Lisa Traiger traces the growth of Israeli folk dancing from one dance — “Hora Agadati” in 1924 — to 4,678 in 2005. Jordana Horn surveys the career of the remarkable Moroccan-Israel actress Ronit Elkabetz, who was recently honored by the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival. Philologos is,…
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Gaga May Go Back to Israel!
It sounds more like a wish list than something to plan on, but Lady Gaga and some other major stars could be on their way to Israel this summer. Today’s Yediot Aharonot reports that the “Born This Way” singer is being courted by “operatives in the American and Canadian Jewish communities” about a concert that…
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
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Yiddish World A photo of my bubbe when Jewish stores still had Yiddish signs
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