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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Are You Thrizzled?
If you liked Eli Valley’s Bucky Shvitz, you may soon be asking yourself: “Am I thrizzled?” Among the many innovative cartoonists published by the Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books, Michael Kupperman is surely one of the most original. Kupperman popped up a decade ago as the writer and illustrator of the offbeat “Snake ‘n’ Bacon’s Cartoon Cabaret”…
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A Funky Little Yiddish Princess
It’s hard to beat Yiddish Princess’s own self-description (as per their MySpace page): “Melodramatic Popular Song” “Kick Ass Yiddish Power Ballads” “Influences: Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Mina Bern, Molly Picon, Pat Benatar, Suki & Ding” “Sounds Like: Celine Dion (if she went to Kheder)” Not all of this is strictly true —…
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Who Killed Haim Arlozoroff?
The Cairo-born French Jewish ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan is a man of many talents. A prolific novelist as well as teacher, Nathan recently published “My Patient, Sigmund Freud” with Les Éditions Perrin. Nathan’s new novel, “Who Killed Arlozoroff?” from Les Éditions Grasset reveals other fields of knowledge. It starts with a French journalist with Egyptian Jewish…
The Latest
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Kosher Food on Shabbos at Mets’ Stadium?
If you believe Kosher Sports Inc., keeping kosher matters more to the Mets than to Rabbi Shmuel Heinemann, who has been an orthodox “Kashrus Administrator” for 28 years. According to an article in yesterday’s New York Post, Kosher Sports – which operates three kosher food stands at Citi Field – is suing the Mets. It…
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A New Haven of Creativity in Jerusalem
The halls of the guest house at Mishkenot Sha’ananim, on the hillside outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, are lined with photographs of the famous writers, musicians, scholars, actors and artists who stayed in residence here decades ago. The names include the likes of Pablo Casals, Grace Paley, Elizabeth Taylor and many…
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James Levine: First the Bad News…
The news, announced today, that Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor James Levine is bowing out of his scheduled concerts at this summer’s Tanglewood Music Festival to continue recovering from back surgery, raises the time-honored question, more often asked about baseball than classical music: “What does it mean for the Jews?” Tanglewood, long the stomping grounds of…
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The Arty Semite Record Review: The Wailing Wall’s ‘The Low Hanging Fruit’
Jesse Rifkin is a young singer-songwriter and talented multi-instrumentalist who goes by the somewhat hokey moniker “The Wailing Wall.” For an overtly Jewish act this would be a sure sign of shlockiness, but for Rifkin, an orthodox-reared but now non-religious performer whose second full-length album, “The Low Hanging Fruit,” was released earlier this month, it’s…
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How ‘Oyfn Pripetshik’ Traveled the World
Anyone observing the past century of Russian music may wonder why, in spite of all discouragements, so many Jewish overachievers managed to compose and perform immortal music? This basic question is masterfully addressed in a forthcoming book, out today from Yale University Press, “The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire.”…
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Willy Ronis, France’s Photographer of the Working Poor, Exhibited at the Mint
The great French Jewish photographer Willy Ronis died last year at age 99, and until August 22, his centenary exhibit “Willy Ronis: the Poetics of Engagement” (“Willy Ronis, une poétique de l’engagement”) can be seen, oddly enough, at the Paris Mint, la Monnaie de Paris. Whereas Ronis was a left-wing defender of the downtrodden working…
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‘Stateless’: Dan Wolf and Tommy Shepherd’s Hip-Hop Vaudeville
One of hip-hop’s great strengths, and, frustratingly, part of what makes the art form so much of a generational divider, is the way in which the pursuit of both profundity and vulgarity are so brazenly juxtaposed against one another. The strength of poetic images and complex ideas in great hip-hop lyrics are almost universally embedded…
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Leon Levinstein’s Powerful, Pitiless Street Photography
Some Jewish photographers embrace subject matter which plays better overseas than in the United States. One example is Weegee, born Usher Fellig in Złoczów, whose photos of low class nightlife and crime were infused with a raucous gusto that charmed Europe decades before he received adequate recognition in America. Leon Levinstein, an even more difficult…
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