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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British Newspaper Poll Finds Jewish Parliment Member as Sexiest
And the sexiest lawmaker in the British parliment is… Jewish. Yes, in these times of political upheaval and economic crisis around the world the British media is polling citizens on who the most attractive politicians are, and Luciana Berger wins. Strangely the Mirror uses an unflattering photograph – a more typical one is found here….
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Friday Film: Too Much Shop Talk
The craft of acting, like writing, is a very difficult thing to talk about without sounding like a dallying idiot. Perversely, it’s also one of the hardest topics to stop talking about once you’ve started, since it’s rife with irresolvable quandaries about “intent,” “truth,” and the nature of Little Red Riding Hood’s relationship with her…
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Right-Wing Rabbi Encourages Thomas Friedman to Make Aliyah
One of Israel’s most right-wing politicians has published a bizarre offer to help New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to establish his home near Hebron. Yaakov Katz of the National Union party writes that “when the day comes that Mr. Friedman joins us in our mutual homeland — and if he doesn’t, perhaps his children…
The Latest
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Dancing with the Rabbis
While Orthodox Jews tend to shy away from mixed dancing, Conservative Jews seem increasingly keen to get moving. Sunday April 3, five of Los Angeles’s most prominent Conservative rabbis will shake their stuff in an event hosted by the American Jewish University. “Dancing with the Rabbis,” called after the popular TV show “Dancing with the…
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Books This Storm Is What We Call Progress
Earlier this week, Michael David Lukas shared a list of his top ten favorite Jews of all time and his connection to Nomi Stone. His 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,…
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Books Israel and Germany Collaborate on Online Archive
Crossposted from Haaretz Soon you’ll be able to read the personal archives of Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem online. Hundreds of medieval manuscripts, scores of personal archives and many other materials retained at the National Library in Jerusalem will be digitized, as part of a joint project by the Israeli and German governments. The materials…
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Matisyahu vs. Drake: Battle of the Rhyming Jews
Hasidic reggae musician Matisyahu has challenged rapper Drake’s status as “the best Jew to ever do it,” in a recent video posted on gossip site TMZ. Responding to the question of who of the two rappers is more kosher, Matisyahu responds: “Drake is a pretty good man. He’s got his thing, but it’s different than…
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Concrete Poetry or Shiviti? Four Works by Hank Lazer
Each Thursday, The Arty Semite features excerpts and reviews of the best contemporary Jewish poetry. This week, Jake Marmer introduces four concrete poems by Hank Lazer. If you’ve been to an old-school Sephardic synagogue or a Hasidic shtibl, you’re likely to have seen various specimen of Shiviti, plaques which traditionally adorn the corner of the…
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Jewish Identity Scandal in British Soccer League
Soccer manager Rob Lerner of London’s Holy Mount Zion Team allowed non-Jewish players to play under false names while competing in the Maccabi Southern Football League, reports the Jewish Chronicle. FIFA-qualified referee, Nigel Burns, became suspicious mid-match when he heard the players, officially Danny Potter and Simon Laub, refer to each other by their real…
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Slideshow: Order, Chaos and Psychedelic Snails
It would be fair to call Jon Axelrod’s paintings synesthetic. They are, after all, visual representations of sound. However, these aren’t the idiosyncratic cross-sense connections of an unfettered mind. His is a willful synesthesia. Axelrod uses science and math to reveal relationships between color, shape and sound. He finds kinship, for example, in the frequency…
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Out and About: Garry Kasparov on Bobby Fischer; Where Have All the Holocaust Movies Gone?
Garry Kasparov tells us what it’s like to play chess in the shadow of Bobby Fischer. In a 1923 article in The Nation, “Romanian-Jewish-American-Yiddish novelist, journalist, dandy, screwball folklorist of the Gypsies” Konrad Bercovici described “The Greatest Jewish City in the World.” An Israeli forger almost managed to sell a fake Kandinsky for three million…
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Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
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Fast Forward David Horowitz, ’60s radical turned right-wing firebrand and critic of Islam, dies at 86
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