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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Books
The Last Great Yiddish Modernist Poet
The Yiddish poet Yirmiye (Jeremiah) Hesheles died on October 16, 2010. When he celebrated his 100th birthday a group of dedicated Yiddishists, myself included, celebrated the occasion by paying him a visit at the New York State Veterans Home in St. Albans, Queens. A herd of geese, as if out of an Eastern European legend,…
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Out and About: Elizabeth Taylor’s Best Roles; Translating Kabbalistic Poetry
The San Francisco Bay Guardian profiles Rabbi Michael Lerner on the 25th anniversary of Tikkun Magaine. Watch a selection of Elizabeth Taylor’s best roles. How Jewish playwrights adapted Shakespeare for the Yiddish stage. “The Jump Artist,” the debut novel by Austin Ratner, has won the $100,000 Sami Rohr prize. Read the Forward’s review here and…
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The Game of Life
Crossposted from Haaretz Computer games have been known for decades now as the bitterest enemies of efficiency; after all, when the icon for the World of Warcraft or Angry Birds is easily accessible on the screen, it’s tempting to ignore one’s daily work. But must the fun of virtual games stand in opposition to the…
The Latest
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A French TV Host’s Ardor Emanates from Jewish Roots
For decades, a French Jewish host of chat show and variety programs on radio and television has been famous locally for filling a Johnny Carson/Ed Sullivan role, but with the likeability of a Mike Douglas/Merv Griffin. At 68, Michel Drucker, born in Normandy of Romanian and Austrian ancestry, has been looking back at his Jewish…
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Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79
Elizabeth Taylor died this morning of congestive heart failure at age 79. The last of a generation of great screen goddesses, Taylor was most famous for her roles in “Cleopatra” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” — the latter for which she won her second Oscar. Married eight times (twice to co-star Richard Burton), Taylor…
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Dance, Drink and Mayhem at Moscow’s Purim Bacchanale
For all of its charitable mishloach manot-giving and passive-aggressive gragger-shaking, Purim is hardly the tamest Jewish holiday. At its best (worst?) the celebration follows a sort of Bakhtinian carnivalesque disorder, with masks, public denunciations of the villain Haman and booze — lots of booze. With that in mind, one would expect Moscow, surely a world…
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Books Choosing ‘The Chosen,’ on Stage and Screen
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree There aren’t too many novels that can lay claim to a second, much less a third, lease on life as both a film and a play, especially when the subject at hand has to do with religion and faith. But “The Chosen,” Chaim Potok’s novel of Orthodox Jewish life…
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Neo-Nazi Switches Genders, and Political Parties
Horst Strub was an enthusiastic young member of Germany’s neo-Nazi NDP party. Monika Strub, 35, is running for Baden-Württemberg’s state parliament for the nation’s socialist Left party. But they have more in common than their political differences would imply. In fact, they’re the same person, reports German news site TheLocal.de. Until gender-reassignment surgery, “Horst” sported…
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Man in the Mirror
Crossposted from Haaretz “Heaven,” a work by Miroslaw Balka now showing at Hangar 2, Dvir Gallery’s space in the Jaffa Port, stirs more than a trace of irony. Sixty-eight Perspex rods, each wrought in a kind of open spiral, turn slowly, “flowing,” reminiscent of decorative objects sold at spiritual fairs or plant nurseries. In the…
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Umberto Saba: a Writer of Passions and Frustrations
Although the Italian Jewish poet Umberto Saba (born Umberto Poli in Trieste) died in 1957, only in 2009 did an accurate translation of many of his poems appear, “Songbook: The Selected Poems of Umberto Saba” from Yale University Press. A further tribute to Saba appeared from Les Éditions du Seuil in October 2010, in the…
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Man Who Blogs About Hasidic Neighbors Wins in Court
A Montreal blogger who’s raised the hackles of his Orthodox neighbors in Montreal’s Outremont district scored a victory against a Jewish businessman who’d been seeking a restraining order against him. CTV reports that Pierre Lacerte’s blog, Accommodements Outremont, has “created tension on his street” by “chronicling what he perceives as bylaw violations from Outremont’s Hasidic…
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