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 Socialite Peaches Geldof Celebrates Yom Kippur, in a Yarmulke
This is the picture a pal tweeted of 21-year-old Peaches Geldof (right) on the eve of Yom Kippur. She was at a dinner with Jewish actor-director boyfriend Eli Roth (left), 38, to mark the day.
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Jazz, Talmud, and the Postmodern Jewish Condition
This Monday, September 27, the Forward is proud to sponsor “Jazz Talmud,” a “conceptual, multi-genre art performance,” by Forward (and Arty Semite) contributor Jake Marmer. Jake writes: I wrote a sequence of “Talmudic” poems that imitate the rhetoric and turn of phrase of the Talmud but are about other things — dreams, crisis, jazz, the…
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A ‘Kvetchy’ Take on Jewish Cartoons
Imagine that the numbers on your watch have been replaced by a daunting list of words, including “obsess,” “worry,” “repress” and “panic.” Would you ever check the time again? I wouldn’t either, but cartoonist Ken Krimstein strikes at the heart of Jewish identity with this cartoon, which appears in his upcoming book, Kvetch as Kvetch…
The Latest
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Home Run-Hitting Sports Psychologist
As the regular baseball season comes to a close, pressure is intensifying on those players still competing for a World Series ring. Players, coaches and agents are all taking their own steps to combat the mental challenges that this pressure causes, including visiting sports psychologists. Reports earlier this summer stated that baseball agent Scott Boras…
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Fiddler in the Rough, Part Two: In the Lion’s Den
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 second in a…
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The Furious Literary Prankster, Romain Gary
The Romain Gary French Cultural Center on Kikar Safra in West Jerusalem is named in honor of the French Jewish author, born Roman Kacew in Vilnius in 1914. His multi-faceted literary exploits have been explored in his own memoirs, in Ralph Schoolcraft’s astute 2002 study “Romain Gary: The Man Who Sold His Shadow” from University…
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Jack Abramoff’s Religious Escape Hatch
Before Jack Abramoff was an American super-lobbyist, half-successful restaurateur, and convicted con man, he was a movie producer, known for bankrolling the 1989 Dolph Lundgren actioner “Red Scorpion” (part of Cold War cinema’s deconstructionist, though still violently anti-Soviet phase). It’s appropriate then, that George Hickenlooper’s Abramoff biopic, “Casino Jack,” which premiered last week at the…
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The Last Bookseller on the Streets of Vilna
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Translated by Ezra Glinter. Before immigrating to Israel, I worked for over 25 years at a Vilna newspaper called Czerwony Sztandar, or The Red Flag, which was not only the sole original Polish-language newspaper in Vilna, but also in the entire Soviet Union. Looking back through…
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This Week in Forward Arts and Culture
“Howl!,” the Allen Ginsberg biopic starring James Franco, comes out this week. Jake Marmer takes a look at Ginsberg’s literary afterlife in print, film and comic form. On Rosh Hashanah we eat fish heads — architect Frank Ghery made fish lamps instead. Gavriel Rosenfeld tells us why. On Yom Kippur we wish each other a…
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Kol Nidre in Memories and Dreams
I’ve been spending the morning pacing around the house singing Kol Nidre while my two-year-old son Jacob toddles about playing with his toys. Just like every year, it seems, the High Holidays arrive to find my life in a startling upheaval of activity, with the world swinging back into movement after the sultry months of…
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Why It’s Always Fun To Talk Judaism With Woody Allen
It’s no secret that Woody Allen has a deep disaffection for organized religion. And it definitely ain’t a secret that Judaism, the filmmaker’s born religion, is the most frequent target of his jokes. (Here’s my personal favorite, from “Zelig”: “I’m 12 years old. I run into a synagogue. I ask the rabbi the meaning of…
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