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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‘Barbra Streisand’ Goes Viral
Afternoon blues? Plug in your earphones and check out this hilarious new clip by the DJ duo Duck Sauce, posted on the New York Times ArtsBeat blog.
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Do Jewish Lawyers Really Do It Better?
On a bench near the Broward County Courthouse in South Florida, a blue and white sign exclaimed “Prefer a Jewish lawyer!” and offered a phone number people could call to reach the Jewish American Bar Association, a Jewish lawyer referral service founded by social worker Lisa Spitzer and based in Boca Raton. The controversial advertisement…
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Hitler Paintings Could Pull in Big Money at Auction
The historical significance of paintings by Adolf Hitler is obvious. And a new cache of watercolors by der führer — discovered by an Austrian lawyer on an estate he recently bought — is expected to fetch nearly a quarter of a million dollars at an auction on September 30. What’s more interesting about the tableaux,…
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A Depression-Era Allegory Comes in From the Cold
Occasionally, the legend surrounding a work of art takes on a life of its own: I can’t hear Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” for instance, without imagining the riot that it caused at its Paris premiere (a scene that’s all the more scandalous given the oppressively tomb-like atmosphere of most classical music concerts, which makes…
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Field Stories Without Names
Yesterday, Martin Fletcher wrote about stories he’s covered for NBC’s London bureau. Martin Fletcher’s newest book, “Walking Israel: A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation,” 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….
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New Poll Examines Attitudes On Intermarried Jews, Non-Orthodox Conversions
Israel’s Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry has tried a new approach to healing the Israel-Diaspora rift left by the recent attempt to pass the so-called Conversion Bill: polling. It commissioned a poll on attitudes towards intermarried Jews and non-Orthodox conversions, and released the results to the Jerusalem Post with a whole lot of spin….
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Neo-Nazi Couple Embraces Jewish Roots
This is not your typical childhood romance. Ola and Pawel, both 33, met when they were 12 years old and were deeply entrenched in Poland’s neo-Nazi scene when they married six years later. Then Ola made a shocking discovery: She and Pawel had Jewish roots. “I didn’t expect to find out that I had a…
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College Football Rivalry Collides With Yom Kippur
Like it or not, college football has narrow associations: over-glorified, over-worked “student”-athletes; a byzantine and highly controversial championship system, otherwise known as the Bowl Championship Series; and boozing. Lots of boozing. So in the event a game happens to fall on, say, Yom Kippur, some students might be caught in a bind. Said event is…
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Jewish Group Lashes Out at Pink Floyd Star’s ‘Anti-Semitic’ Imagery
Crossposted from Haaretz The Anti-Defamation League has lashed out at rock star Roger Waters, claiming imagery used in his latest tour is anti-Semitic. Waters is a vocal critic of Israel’s policies and his 2010-2011 “The Wall Live” Tour takes aim at Israel’s West Bank security fence. During his performances of “Goodbye Blue Sky,” an animated…
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Fiddler in the Rough, Part Three: One Step Forward, Two Mazurkas Back
Daniel F. Levin is a playwright, composer and lyricist living in Brooklyn. His newest play, “Hee-Haw: It’s a Wonderful Li_e,” was called a “delightful surprise” by the New York Times; his musical, “To Paint the Earth,” about resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, won the Richard Rogers Development Award. This is the third in a…
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Woody Allen’s Comfortable Delusions
It doesn’t take long to work out that Woody Allen’s latest film, “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” is about the merits and limits of delusion. The film is structured like a high school term paper, à la: this will be a film about deluded people; here are some deluded people; this has been…
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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish World How my grandparents met: a Yiddish-American romance
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Yiddish אַ טור פֿון דער אויסשטעלונג „מגילת־אסתּר אין דער רעמבראַנדט־תּקופֿה“ — אויף ייִדיש!A tour of “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt” exhibit — in Yiddish!
אין דער אויסשטעלונג געפֿינען זיך 120 מאָלערײַען פֿון דער פּורים־העלדין, געמאָלט פֿון די האָלענדישע קונסטמײַסטערס.
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Fast Forward NYC Mayor Adams pushes controversial antisemitism definition as issue dominates mayoral election
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Opinion If Trump is being compared to Hitler, who was Hitler before he was Hitler?
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