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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The Good, the Bad and the Delicious
Earlier this week Stacey Ballis wrote about Rosh Hashanah cooking and fasting on Yom Kippur. Her newest book, “Good Enough to Eat,” will be available September 7. Her 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. I’ve long been…
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Katy Perry Channels Queen Esther
She’s got the No. 1 album in the country — and, apparently, she can relate to the Bible’s Queen Esther. Katy Perry, who’s dominated radio waves since May with the inescapable pop single “California Gurls,” went straight to the top spot September 1 with the release of her third album, “Teenage Dream.” In addition to…
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Seventies Radical Replaces Madoff in Theater J Season Opener
“Rehabilitated? It’s just a bullshit word,” Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding (Morgan Freeman) notoriously tells the parole board in “The Shawshank Redemption.” “So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit.” Three decades into her incarceration as an accessory to…
The Latest
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From War Bride to Ladino Legend
In her light, lilting accent, Flory Jagoda is happy to tell the story of her life, with one caveat: although she did live through it, hers is not a tale of the Holocaust. “This one is an accordion story,” she laughed. “We have so many Holocaust stories.” For all intents and purposes, Jagoda’s accordion saved…
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Books When Traveling in America Meant Trouble
Crossposted From Under The Fig Tree For centuries, taking to the road has been the stuff of grand adventure and equally grand literature. From Benjamin of Tudela’s 12th century “Book of Travels” to Jack Kerouac’s 1957 “On the Road,” travel has been bound up with freedom and an enhanced sense of self. But what if…
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Why a Show About Show Business Isn’t Entertaining
After years of writing for the likes of Carol Burnett, Mary Tyler Moore and Bing Crosby, Kenny Solms has finally struck out on his own. The result is “It Must Be Him,” a frothy musical comedy in the well-worn tradition of shows about show business, which opened September 1 at New York’s Peter Jay Sharp…
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Talkin’ Bob Dylan Bootleg Blues
Last week, Columbia Records announced that it will be releasing the ninth volume of Bob Dylan’s long-running Bootleg Series on October 19. Titled “The Witmark Demos, 1962 – 1964,” the new collection will consist of 47 demo recordings Dylan made for his music publisher, the eponymous M. Witmark & Sons. In addition, Columbia will release…
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Photos Show NYC Tap Water Isn’t Kosher
The poor Hasidim just can’t catch a break. Now even their water is not kosher. Yesterday, a blogger on the social news website Reddit uploaded photos of crustaceans found after an examination some New York City tap water under a microscope. The tiny creatures, called copepods, became apparent after an H&E stain was added to…
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Temple Grandin: The Emmys’ Woman of the Hour
“Modern Family” and “Mad Men” may have come out the big winners, but prominently thrown into the mix at this year’s “Primetime Emmy Awards” was one of the country’s best-known defenders of kosher slaughter. Temple Grandin, the inspiration for the year’s top TV movie, earned her own enthusiastic applause during an onstage appearance at the…
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Why Do They Call it Fasting When it Goes SO SLOW?
On Monday, Stacey Ballis wrote about Rosh Hashanah cooking. Her newest book, “Good Enough to Eat,” will be available September 7. Her 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: As…
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‘Oh Lord’: Iran at Work on a Search Engine
People ask for Divine guidance on life decisions and matters of the heart, so why not on more mundane questions like: What is the capital of Azerbaijan? With its new search engine, dubbed “Ya Haq” (that’s “Oh Lord” in Persian), Iran is seeking to take on Google and allow its people a non-Western (read: non-evil)…
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