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
Polishing the Golden Rule
The story goes that a certain heathen approached the Jewish sage Shammai and asked to be converted, on the condition that he is taught the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Indignant at receiving such a ludicrous request, Shammai chased the man away. Undeterred, the heathen then approached the sage Hillel with the same…
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Chocolate Labs for the Lord
Each Thursday, The Arty Semite features excerpts and reviews of the best contemporary Jewish poetry. This week, Rodger Kamenetz introduces “Third Temple,” by Richard Chess. This piece originally appeared on January 5, 2001, as part of the Forward’s Psalm 151 series. It is being published here online for the first time. Richard Chess is a…
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YouTube Video Mocks Gilad Shalit Campaign
Here in Israel, there are stickers and signs everywhere backing the campaign for a prisoner exchange agreement with Hamas to bring Gilad Shalit home. As the Forward has reported in the past, not everyone is so enamored with the campaign. Critics say that releasing prisoners with blood on their hands will lead to further civilian…
The Latest
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Books Wizardly Weaver Who Invented ‘Role Models’
The American sociologist Robert K. Merton, who died in 2003 at age 92, was a longtime fixture at Columbia University, where he invented such now-standard terms as “role model” and “self-fulfilling prophecy,” as well as the concept of a “focus group.” A thoughtful new study, out on September 14 from Columbia University Press, “Robert K….
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A Banal Return to Religion
Crossposted from Haaretz Many recent European films have addressed the fear of fundamentalist Islam’s growing strength. What makes “On the Path,” written and directed by Bosnian Jasmila Zbanic, unique is the fact that, as opposed to recently produced French or British films, it discusses this subject and its consequences in a Muslim country. The main…
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A Window for the Ages on the Lower East Side
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was the Lower East Side’s Eldridge Street Synagogue — not the first time, and not the second time either. The synagogue, which was originally erected in 1887, has just announced the completion of a 24-year-long restoration process, with the installment of a 16-foot circular window, commissioned by…
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In Israeli Food News…
Is the campaign to boycott settlement produce about to take its toll on one of the world’s best-known heimishe food firms? According to a report in Israeli daily Maariv yesterday, Beigel-Beigel plans to move its Israeli production plant from Barkan, an industrial zone next to the West Bank settlement of Ariel, to a location within…
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Baxter and Me
In his last post, Gregory Levey wrote about late-night Middle East radio commentary. 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: For some reason I don’t really understand, if you…
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Slideshow: A Jewish Refugee’s San Francisco Scene
The title of a current exhibition of works by the late German Jewish American photographer John Gutmann, “An Emigrant’s Visual Discovery of a New World,” says it all. An immigrant to the United States, Gutmann brought to the striking black and white images he created the eye and sensibility, not only of a foreigner, but…
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Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman Split: Who Will Get the Kiddush Cup?
Us Weekly announced today that pop starlet Christina Aguilera and her husband, tribe member Jordan Bratman, have separated after nearly five years of marriage. “They were very much in love. But over the last six months, it became clear they were more like friends than husband and wife,” an unidentified source close to Aguilera told…
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Art, Altruism and Social Action in ‘The Pieces of Me’
“The Pieces of Me: L.A. GOAL,” a new exhibit at Los Angeles’s Skirball Cultural Center, inverts the challenge of most contemporary art shows. Typically, genre-defying works by important-to-know names hang on a blank wall, demanding interpretation. A brief scholarly paragraph may accompany selected pieces, but the viewer must summon their own aesthetic lexicon to construct…
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