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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Survey: One in Three Spaniards Is Anti-Semitic
Look at the bright side… Muslims here are hated even more than Jews! That’s the line Spanish government officials are using to mitigate the damage from a new survey suggesting one-third of Spaniards harbor anti-Semitic sentiments. According to AFP, The “Study on anti-Semitism in Spain” revealed 34.6 percent of Spaniards had an “unfavourable opinion” of…
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Fiddler in the Rough, Part One
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 first in a…
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On Marilyn Monroe, Aunt Greta and an Artist’s Dress of Many Colors
According to the MoMA website, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe screen-print series challenged “the concept of the unique art work by repeating the same mechanically produced image until it appeared to be drained of all meaning.” It’s tempting to cite Warhol’s Marilyns as the inspiration for the 18 screen prints in Miriam Mörsel Nathan’s “Greta” series,…
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How Dustin Hoffman Rescues a Movie About Marriage and Misery
If “Barney’s Version” does one thing really well, it’s recreate the blithe comic tone of the Mordecai Richler novel on which it is based. This faithfulness has everything to do with casting. Director Richard J. Lewis and producer Robert Lantos’s big screen “Barney’s Version” — which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last week and…
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Barbecuing With Hijackers
Gal Beckerman is a staff writer at the Forward. His first book, “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” will be available September 23. His blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author…
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‘L’Chaim’: Broadway Composer Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Wedding Surprise
At the September 5th wedding of Tony Award-winning Broadway composer and lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda and attorney Vanessa Nadal, the groom organized a surprise for his love. It was a wonderful take on the classic song “L’Chaim” from the fantastic 1971 movie “Fiddler on the Roof.” You can see the recent wedding’s version here. It wins…
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Palestinian Boy’s Organs Save Jews, Arabs
As all eyes are on the political differences between Israelis and Palestinians, unnoticed by the international media there has been a remarkable civilian-to-civilian act of kindness that transcended the boundaries of the conflict. A Palestinian 3 1/2-year-old, Abdul Hai Salhut, died after a tragic accident at his East Jerusalem home. The parents donated organs, and…
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A Silversmith’s Judaica Shines in Idaho
Performing even the most mundane ritual can be calming — grinding coffee, scooping it into a filter, pouring water into the coffeemaker, turning the pot on — over time, the actions becomes so familiar that the objects pass through your hands unnoticed. Though they can come to seem as commonplace as a coffee pot, when…
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Israeli and Italian Actors Make a ‘Miracolo’ in Tel Aviv
Crossposted from Haaretz “In theater, they all speak the same language,” Israeli stage director Yoram Lowenstein explains when asked how actors from different countries, speaking different tongues, perform together in a new show currently on stage in Tel Aviv. “Human beings all have the same feelings: they love, they hate, they are jealous, they are…
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Jewish Cop Who Inadvertently Helped Advance Gay Rights Dies
A Jewish cop whose actions in 1969 helped advance rights for gay people in the U.S. — albeit inadvertently — has died at the age of 91. Seymour Pine was the deputy police inspector who led the raid on the Greenwich Village gay bar the Stonewall Inn in 1969. As The New York Times wrote…
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This Week in Forward Arts and Culture
The Arty Semite — along with the rest of the Forward — will be off Thursday and Friday for Rosh Hashanah. Here, then, is this week’s Arts & Culture section, just in time to print out and smuggle into shul between the pages of your machzor. (May we also recommend, as a New Year’s treat,…
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In Case You Missed It
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Culture A voice for his generation, Tom Lehrer found laughter even in the most sensitive aspects of Jewish life and history
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Fast Forward ‘I was first and foremost Jewish,’ said Wesley LePatner, killed in NYC shooting
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Fast Forward Americans’ support for Israel in Gaza plummets to record low, new Gallup poll finds
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Opinion Recognizing Palestinian statehood, Emmanuel Macron once again reveals himself a master of bad timing
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