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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Recording Misery for Coping’s Sake
On October 30, the one-man theatrical adaptation of Benny Barbash’s novel “My First Sony” premiered in Seattle with two performances, the first in Hebrew, and the second in English. Performed by Roy Horovitz, the play revolves around Yotam, a precocious 11-year-old who copes with his crumbling family life by recording every painful event on his…
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Jews, Reality and ‘Gossip Girl’
This year, Gossip Girl introduced at least four new Jewish characters: Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Isaac Mizrahi and Rachel Zoe. There is also the unseen character, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose trans fat ban and restaurant calorie count are presumably what keeps the cast of the show lithe enough to fit into their increasingly…
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Jewish Donor Revealed, 80 Years Later
“I am writing this because I need clothing,” intoned Helen Palm on the stage of Canton, Ohio’s Palace Theater on Friday. “And sometimes we run out of food.” If the words sounded familiar to Palm, it’s because she wrote them nearly 80 years ago. And the intended recipient was a rags-to-riches Romanian Jewish immigrant who…
The Latest
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Germany Honors Jews Who Fought in World War I
A historic ceremony at Frankfurt’s Jewish cemetery yesterday honored German Jews who gave their lives for their country in World War I. For the first time, according to news site TheLocal.de, representatives of the German government, as well as the German Bundeswehr and other national militaries, took part in the salute. The memorial was also…
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Books Thrilling Hebrew Tales!: On Jewish Vampires, Golems, Tzaddiks and ‘HebrewPunk’
Lavie Tidhar’s most recent book, “An Occupation of Angels,” is now available. 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, please visit: I’ve got a feeling that, years from now, with many…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘All-of-a-Kind Family’
In celebration of Jewish Book Month, The Arty Semite is partnering with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and the Jewish Book Council to present “30 Days, 30 Texts,” a series of reflections by community leaders on the books that influenced their Jewish journeys. Today, Lisa Silverman writes about “All-of-a-Kind Family” by Sydney…
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English Cleric Compares Supporters of Women Bishops to Nazis
It’s about time the Catholic Church shared the limelight when it comes to controversial behavior by Christian leaders. This incident, which manages to include anti-feminism sentiment and hyperbolic analogies to Nazi Germany, revolves around the oh-so fractious debate over the role of women in the Church of England. According to Britain’s The Daily Telegraph, the…
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Jazz Pearls of Sweet Nostalgia
Gaucho’s “Pearl,” released last month on Porto Franco Records and launched at the Jewish Music Festival of Berkeley, Calif., is the perfect accompaniment to a lazy autumn afternoon. Channeling the sounds of 1930s Paris, the San Francisco-based sextet plays the kind of gentle, sometimes-jubilant, sometimes-melancholy swing that doesn’t make you want to get up and…
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Out and About: Greil Marcus on Bob Dylan; Eli Wallach at Home
Can Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim create a classical music revival? Greil Marcus talks about 40 years of writing about Bob Dylan. An exhibit of Palestinian art opens in Jaffa. Israeli film ambassador Meir Fenigstein doesn’t think Israel will receive an Oscar nomination this year. Neither does The Arty Semite. Christopher Glazek rips into…
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This Week in Forward Arts and Culture
Leigh Kamping-Carder tells the story of the Mexican Suitcase, a collection of photographs from the Spanish Civil War by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour that got lost in Mexico for almost 70 years. Ilan Stavans wonders why we can’t escape from Harry Houdini. Shoshana Olidort reviews Avi Steinberg’s “Running the Books: The Adventures…
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The Shaming of Eliot Spitzer
Is there anything more reprehensible than white-collar crime? Certainly, there are any number of moral offenses that may trump the impulses of rich white men to make themselves even richer. But even the most egregious of these can be rationalized (rightly or wrongly) through psychological profiling and the ascription of some mental disorder or social…
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Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
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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 Columbia staff receive texts asking if they’re Jewish, as government hunts antisemitic harassment on campus
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Fast Forward Trump nominee Ed Martin, who praised a Nazi sympathizer, also compared Biden to Hitler
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Opinion RFK Jr. and Trump are talking about an ‘autism registry’ — this sounds disturbingly familiar
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Fast Forward Heavy police presence blocks anti-Israel protest in Brooklyn from reaching Jewish neighborhood
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Yiddish קאָקני־ייִדיש“: אַ פּאָדקאַסט, אַ לשון און אַ שטײגער לעבן‘Cockney Yiddish’: A podcast, a language and a way of life
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