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 Discreet Photography of Esther Bubley
Fans of photography are discovering that a “slender, soft-spoken unobtrusive, curly-haired Midwestern Jewish girl,” as journalist Melissa Fay Greene calls Esther Bubley, was one of America’s most sensitive camera artists from the 1940s onward. Greene’s “The Photographs of Esther Bubley” from D. Giles Limited tells how Bubley was born in Wisconsin in 1921 to a…
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Lohan Gets Some Jewish Support
Lindsay Lohan’s recent headlines have had little to do with boozing and drugging, and more to do with affiliating with members of the tribe. We recently reported that Lohan was spotted arm-in-arm with former IDF soldier Eilat Anschel. Yesterday, it was reported that she recruited former O.J. Simpson-defender and not-so-favorite-Jew Robert Shapiro to rescue her…
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‘What The Hell Was That?’: Remembering Tuli Kupferberg
Poet, singer-songwriter, revolutionary, publisher, street vendor, historian, mentor, sage, wise man and wise guy, forward-thinking artist, activist, intellectual, pacifist, anarchist, teacher, dreamer and dear friend Tuli Kupferberg has gone on to wherever one goes. Born Norman (or in Hebrew, Naphtali, hence his nickname), on September 28, 1923, Tuli passed away on Monday at New York…
The Latest
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Gary Graffman, Prodigious Pianist
This summer’s upcoming International Keyboard Institute and Festival (IKIF) at New York’s Mannes College offers many prospective delights, not least being the scheduled July 22 recital by the brilliant young Israeli pianist Einav Yarden. Piano buffs will also be thrilled to know that one of the deans of American music, pianist Gary Graffman, will be…
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Down Memory Lane: Frankfurt’s Judengasse
Frankfurt’s now-destroyed Jew’s Alley, or Judengasse, was the city’s Jewish ghetto from 1462 until 1796, a crowded home to Germany’s largest Jewish community. A new book from Vallentine-Mitchell Publishers “The Frankfurt Judengasse” further explores the ghetto’s lore, presenting research from a 2004 academic conference co-sponsored by Frankfurt’s Goethe University, The Frankfurt Jewish Museum, the Judengasse…
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‘On the Brink of Oblivion’: Paula Jacques’s Egyptian Lore
Paula Jacques, the Cairo-born French novelist of Egyptian Jewish descent, has long been a lively presence on the Paris literary scene. Born Paula Abadi in 1949, she moved to France as a teenager, after rebelling against the “regimentation” of a “Marxist kibbutz” in Israel during a short stay there. Less regimented, although doubtless just as…
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Israeli Couple Arrested for Loud Sex
Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon once said Israel is surrounded by enemies “yet its inhabitants’ ulcers are caused by the neighbors.” In a country of extremely opinionated people, disputes and yelling matches are common-place. Though, they’re usually about wild pets and teenagers drumming, not loud moans coming from the neighbor’s bedroom. But at 5am last Thursday,…
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Pay Now, Pray Later
Anyone who has ever tried to explain to a bewildered Christian friend why you need a ticket to go to shul on the holiest day of the year will appreciate Lisa Miller’s deliberately provocative essay, “The Cost of Being Jewish”. Miller, Newsweek’s religion editor, pointed out in the July 8 article that while there is…
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Mother and Daughter of Fashion
The Strasbourg-born French Jewish novelist Eliette Abécassis has been inspired by themes from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Shoah. Yet Abécassis, daughter of the noted Morocco-born French historian of philosophy Armand Abécassis, seemed to switch subject matter in 2008 when she wrote “Mother and Daughter: a Novel” (Les éditions Albin Michel) about the fashion…
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‘Dear Miss’: The Correspondence of Alice Ferrières, Righteous Among the Nations
In 1964, the first French woman to be honored by the Yad Vashem commission with the title “Righteous among the Nations” was a math teacher at a girls’ school in a remote town in France’s mountainous Auvergne region. Alice Ferrières of Murat was a Protestant whose family was affected by 1685’s revocation of the Edict…
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A Muslim Mayor and a Jewish Deputy Run Teaneck
In a set-up worthy of a Parks and Recreation-style sitcom, a Muslim and an Orthodox Jew are working side by side as mayor and deputy mayor in the suburban New York town of Teaneck, N.J. In his latest Our Towns column, Peter Appelbome of the New York Times reported that July 1 marked the start…
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Opinion Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go
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Fast Forward Mamdani tells Colbert — and a national audience — why NYC Jews shouldn’t fear him as mayor
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Opinion Mamdani’s victory is an opportunity for Jews to relearn the art of disagreement
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion Trump wants to control the Israeli judiciary. Uh, good luck
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Fast Forward Mamdani dodges calls to condemn ‘globalize the intifada’ slogan amid Jewish concerns
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Culture Why Jews bury books like they bury the dead
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Fast Forward ‘Let Bibi go,’ ‘Make the deal in Gaza’: Trump renews Israel demands in social media posts
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