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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Blogging Fifty First J dates
Recently, while eating at a diner in New York with my bubbe and zayde they began asking random people seated at nearby tables if they knew any nice Jewish girls for me. I was mortified. For Jews marauded by relatives with marriage queries, desperately playing the dating game, Fifty First (J) Dates is a compelling…
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Tree Stalls Construction of Ashkelon Hospital Wing
Remember the controversy of the emergency room at Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital? It was a saga of politics, war and religion that just a few months ago looked as if it could destabilize Israel’s government. In 2008 engineers started preparing the ground for a new $120 million wing. It would have an underground bunker with wards…
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Happy Birthday, Ab. Cahan!
Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Cahan, the longtime editor of the Forverts. It is hard to imagine a more influential figure in the history of American Jewry than Cahan, who helped found the Forverts in 1897 and was the guiding force behind the paper until his death in 1951. Under…
The Latest
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Jews and Bulls: A French Philosopher Defends the Corrida
When Jews try to fight bulls, the results can end in tears, but the simple desire to watch bullfights has a more ambiguous outcome, as proven by the latest book by the French Jewish philosopher Francis Wolff. An author of academic works on Aristotle and Socrates who teaches in Paris, Wolff should not be confused…
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Remembering Czernowitz
The far-flung commemorations of the centenary of the 1908 Yiddish language conference in Czernowitz, including a conference in December, 2009 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, continue to have repercussions today. The recent essay collection from Lexington Books, “Czernowitz at 100: The First Yiddish Language Conference in Historical Perspective” edited by Joshua Fogel and Kalman…
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IDF Soldiers Do a Dance While on Patrol in Hebron
18-year-olds have been known to do some pretty stupid (but entertaining) things. We’ve all been there (and, in most cases, would rather forget ). But a recent Youtube video of six IDF soldiers performing a Macarena-style dance to pop singer Ke$ha’s song “Tik Tok,” while on patrol (not to mention during the Muslim call to…
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LiLo’s New Israeli Girlfriend
Lindsay Lohan – erstwhile girlfriend of Jewish DJ-to-the-stars Samantha Ronson – has been spotted around town with a new sheyne meydl on her arm: former IDF soldier Eilat Anschel. TMZ reports that though the two met a while ago in LA, things have been heating up during the past month. It would seem, LiLo –…
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Where Are All the Jewish Beatniks?
I had skin in the game when Bill Morgan’s “The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete Uncensored History of the Beat Generation” (Simon & Schuster) was published a month ago. With a title like that, it would surely undermine the premise of my own just released Beat book, “Missing a Beat: The Rants and Regrets of…
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The New Spider Man’s a Jew
Spidey’s always had Jewish roots. (Its creator, Stan Lee, né Stanley Lieber,who makes cameos in all the films, is an American-Romanian Jew). But now Spider Man is getting a Jewish present. Andrew Garfield, a 26-year-old Jewish actor who was born in LA and raised in Surrey, England, has just been cast in the role of…
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The Arty Semite Record Review: Can!!Can’s ‘Monsters & Healers’
Near the end of “Giants,” the opening track of Can!!Can’s debut album “Monsters & Healers,” vocalist Patrick Aleph mutters, “This is never gonna end, this is never gonna end.” The sentiment is more musical than thematic. Like the bands that Can!!Can crib their sound from (denizens of a post-Sonic Youth world where the Yeah Yeah…
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Barak Marshall’s Dynamic Dance Mongering
Dance talent is not often inherited through the generations, as we have seen with the regularly slated reconstructions of works by ballet master Michel Fokine, when recreated by his French granddaughter Isabelle. One happy exception to this rule is Los Angeles-born choreographer Barak Marshall, son of the acclaimed Yemenite Israeli dancer, choreographer and musician Margalit…
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