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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Oliver Stone ‘Sorry’ for Anti-Jewish Comments
Maybe he’s not such an expert on natural born killers, after all. For the second time this year, filmmaker Oliver Stone has generated controversy with comments about Adolf Hitler, contending in London’s Sunday Times that the Nazi dictator needed to be viewed “in context.” The July 25 interview also quoted the “Platoon” and “Wall Street”…
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Giving Sephardic Literature Its Due
The first annual New York Sephardic Jewish Book Fair on July 25th at the [Center for Jewish History][2] was a quiet success. What started as a push by the American Sephardi Federation to sell marked-down books by Sephardic authors snowballed into a day-long event featuring 11 speakers, a constant flow of about four dozen patrons,…
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Six Degrees of Tour de France
It turns out that the world’s most famous bicycle race, the Tour de France, has an unlikely origin: It was a direct result of the notorious Dreyfus Affair. The slightly condensed, rather confusing story goes something like this: When pro-Dreyfus Émile Loubet became president of the French Republic in 1899, he was attacked (and beaten…
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Radical Jewish Culture Behind Glass
The Jewish museum (Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme) in Paris greets its visitors with massive tombstones dating back to 11th century. There are also frail parchments, medieval megillot, newspaper clips of the Dreyfus trial, and dim brass ritual objects. Imagine then, the shock and delight inspired by the exhibit that landed there this spring,…
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Chance Connections: How Eating With Strangers Is the New Art
As I walked into Nancy Hwang’s art-slathered loft on another tropical day in New York City, I reminded myself that the visit was strictly “no business.” Through a serendipitous, mysterious phone call, I had somehow landed myself a promise of homemade cake and coffee at an intimate birthday celebration among the close friends of an…
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Clinton Wedding: No Comment, Shut Up, Go Away
With the (reportedly) $2 million wedding of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky just days away, the press is all over this historic affair, spending many hours getting all the deets — or at least trying to. Every day this week, as the country’s best investigative reporters blanket the Hudson Valley, Shmooze will update its readers…
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Gaza Kids Attempt To Break World Record for Bouncing Balls
In a rare piece of lighthearted, apolitical news from the Gaza Strip, AP reported that more than 7,000 Palestinian children there spent five minutes on Thursday simultaneously dribbling basketballs in an attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. The children, among 250,000 in the Gaza Strip who attend United Nations summer camps, were…
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Are You Listening Now?: Charming Hostess’s ‘The Bowls Project’
There’s something special about enjoying a brilliant album alone, but there’s joy in sharing it with others. Since 2001, when Jewlia Eisenberg released “Trilectic,” I have had the former joy, but not the latter. “Trilectic” was a brilliant concept album that set the writings of Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis to eclectic vocal compositions that…
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University of Provence Disinvites Israeli Writer Esther Orner
The septuagenarian Israeli novelist and poetry translator Esther Orner would hardly seem threatening to anyone. Yet Orner, who has translated Yehuda Amichai and Aharon Shabtai into French, has become the center of a frantic dispute in France. The University of Provence, based in Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles, has just canceled a March 2011 colloquium, “Writing Today…
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This Week in Forward Arts and Culture
Jake Marmer listens in on Deep Tones, an international all-bass music project devoted to peace in the Middle East. Perplexed by the guides? Jay Michaelson advises on which Kabbalah books you can trust. Jerome Chanes has some issues with the Jewish Publication Society’s new volume of “The Commentators’ Bible.” Two weeks ago, Philologos decided that…
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Frederica Sagor Maas, Hollywood’s ‘Shocking Miss Pilgrim’
On July 6, the New York-born screenwriter Frederica Sagor Maas celebrated her 110th birthday in La Mesa, California. Maas was born into a family of Russian Jewish immigrants named Zagorsky — anglicized to Sagor at Ellis Island — who placed a solid emphasis on culture, despite their humble social status. In addition to subsidizing the…
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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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