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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Officials: Israeli Light Rail Survey Is Racist
Dear New Yorkers: We’re expanding the subway. It’ll pass through some bad neighborhoods. And we’re allowing Muslim-Americans to ride without security checks. Is that OK? It sounds outrageous, but an Israeli company asked a very similar question of Jerusalemites after it won a city contract to run the city’s light rail system. Haaretz reported today…
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‘No Chuppah, No Shtuppah’: Students Call College Guide ‘Shallow’
With the new school year just getting under way, the revised edition of “Jewish U: A Contemporary Guide for the Jewish College Student” is drawing flak for its outmoded and inaccurate depiction of Jewish campus life. In the most recent issue of the Jewish student publication New Voices, three separate student reviewers wrote critical takedowns…
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A Playwright Haunted by the ‘Children of the Disappeared’
Emerging playwright Graciela Berger Wegsman found her journalistic background an unexpected and helpful tool in writing her play, “Memory is a Culinary Affair,” which wrapped up its three-performance run at Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s SummerFest on August 21. “It really helped with the research aspect of it,” said Wegsman, who contributed to the New York Daily…
The Latest
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A Rabbi’s War on ‘Boogie-Woogie’
Crossposted from Haaretz Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, head of the rabbinical committee in the territories and a power broker in the halls of government, is this country’s real prime minister, writer Sefi Rachlevsky said in an op-ed in Haaretz’s Hebrew edition last week. Some of Lior’s doctrines, which made…
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Orthodox Record Executive Gunned Down in Liquor Store
Yoseph Robinson, a 34-year-old Jamaican-born hip-hop artist and record executive who converted to Orthodox Judaism, was shot to death yesterday at a kosher liquor store in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. According to eyewitness accounts, Robinson, who was on duty as a store clerk at the time, was fatally shot in the chest and arms…
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This Week in Forward Arts and Culture
Dan Friedman introduces Asaf Hanuka, an Israeli graphic artist who worked on “Waltz With Bashir,” and whose comic “The Realist” will appear online at the Forward each week. In the new installment of the Nigun Project, Jeremiah Lockwood and Cynthia Hopkins (of Gloria Deluxe) perform their version of the Chabad version of the Russian drinking…
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Chabad Offers Free High Holiday Services for Fashion Week
As many can attest, going to synagogue isn’t as easy as putting on a rumpled shirt and tie or throwing on the same dress as the previous week. For better or worse, what you wear to shul is often a fashion statement. And as the High Holidays roll in this September, perhaps no group acknowledges…
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Chicago Festival Conflicts With High Holidays, Again
Oaktoberfest, an annual fall festival in Chicago’s western Oak Park neighborhood, boasts seasonal food from local restaurants, specialty micro-brews and great wines. But local Jews are forbidden from partaking — according to the calendar, at least. For the second year, organizing body Downtown Oak Park has scheduled Oaktoberfest on the High Holidays. And while last…
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Not the Marriage of the Century
As far as celebrity marriages go, perhaps none have been as tumultuous as the 12-year-long saga between Hollywood Golden Age starlet (and Jewish convert) Elizabeth Taylor and Welsh actor Richard Burton. After beginning an illicit affair on the set of “Cleopatra,” Taylor and Burton were married in 1964 and called it quits in 1976, though…
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Dr. Ruth’s New Sex-Free Endeavor
Dr. Ruth Westheimer has a new project — and it has nothing to do with the bedroom. The pint-sized 82-year-old sex expert is in Tel Aviv researching a PBS documentary on Israel’s Circassian Muslim community, the Associated Press reported on August 18. Those who know Westheimer for her tips on intimacy and sexual literacy may…
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American Woman Ordered To Return to Peruvian Jail
Nearly three months after she was released on parole from a Peruvian prison, Lori Berenson, the 40-year-old Jewish New Yorker convicted in the mid-1990s of working with a Marxist revolutionary group, has been ordered back to jail. The New York Times reported today that Berenson, who had served 14 and half years (of a 20-year…
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