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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How an Actor Died of the Blacklist
Fifty-five years ago today, union activist and thespian Philip Loeb checked himself into the Taft Hotel in Midtown Manhattan under a false name and took a fatal dose of sleeping pills. Targeted by the insidious blacklist, Loeb could no longer find work in his beloved acting profession and had reached rock bottom. Tonight, a panel…
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The Musical Inheritance of Michael Barenboim
Crossposted from Haaretz His father is the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. His mother is the pianist Elena Bashkirova, and the force behind the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival. His grandfather, Dmitri Bashkirov, is also a pianist, as are his paternal grandparents. “I started studying piano at age four,” says Michael Barenboim. “After two years,…
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Burlesque Dancer Dita Von Teese Is Latest Victim of Anti-Semitism
Burlesque dancer and actress Dita Von Teese says she is the victim of an anti-Semitic tirade at the hands of her former landlord. In a lawsuit filed yesterday in L.A.’s superior court, the 37-year-old Von Teese claims that she told her landlord, Lallubhai Patel, she was moving and attempted to collect a $5,000 security deposit….
The Latest
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Printed Food May Make TV Dinners Obsolete
A few decades down the line, today’s youngsters will be telling their grandkids about an old-fashioned item called a microwave meal. If the research of an Israeli-born MIT doctoral student pans out, we’ll have no need for ready meals as we’ll have machines to freshly-assemble our food. Last year Amit Zoran and his research partner…
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Nice Jewish Girls Gone Gaga
When Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad first hit the road seven years ago, Susannah Perlman and her troop of comediennes shocked audiences, some into laughter and others into walking out of the theater. The burlesque-inspired show came complete with Star of David pasties, bat mitzvah gags, and the age old question: “What’s in the gefilte…
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Saudi Arabia Puts the Breaks on Fatwas
Remember that advice your mother used to give you? That’s right, don’t open your mouth unless you’ve got something nice to say. These days, it looks like Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is taking a maternal role when it comes to some of the country’s more virulent Islamic clerics. In order to curb what are seen…
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A Fish With All the Right Virtues
Crossposted From Under The Fig Tree Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes a document or a song or a photograph or a book that greatly enlarges your frame of reference and ratchets up your appreciation for the cultural patrimony of the Jews. This happened to me the other day when I…
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Israeli Actors Boycott West Bank Cultural Center
With Mideast peace talks right around the corner, the last thing Israel wants is the extension of an economic and cultural boycott — especially one carried out, in part, by its own citizens. In a signed letter sent to four major theater companies last week, over 50 Israeli actors and playwrights protested a decision to…
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From Toronto, a Gateway to the World
Canada is home to less than three percent of the world’s Jewish population, but every other year, Jewish artists from around the world congregate in Toronto for the Ashkenaz Festival, which returns this year from August 31 to September 6 at the city’s Harbourfront Centre. The festival was created in 1995 as a forum for…
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Going Where No Israeli Band Has Gone Before
Crossposted from Haaretz “We want to take our music to a place where no Israeli band has gone before.” This Star Trek-like sentence was uttered with complete confidence by soloist Asaf Sandhaus about Sandhaus, his eponymous band. “We’d like to be as big as Arcade Fire,” he said when asked about his wildest dream. “That’s…
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Challah-Loving Inuit Throat Singer Preserves Tradition
You might want to skip this item if you’re tired of reading about challah-loving Inuit throat singers with Jewish/Filipino adoptive parents and an affinity for Hebrew and Tagalog. If not, it’s kind of fascinating to read the UK Guardian profile of Nina Segalowitz, who grew up in a mixed Jewish-Catholic household in Montreal after getting…
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