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 Joyous Music and Gloomy Life of Artie Shaw
Nepotism is largely justified in Jewish families, when it is a matter of encouraging real talent. Such is the conclusion to be drawn from Tom Nolan’s “Three Chords for Beauty’s Sake: The Life of Artie Shaw,” a new biography of the clarinetist and bandleader. Born in 1910 as Avraham Ben-Yitzhak Arshawsky on the Lower East…
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Britain’s NHS: Compare Your Boss to Hitler
Shocked health workers in the United Kingdom were asked recently to compare their bosses to Adolf Hitler. According to the Times Online, the survey demanded that staffers rate Hitler’s “coolness” on a scale of 1 to 5, as part of a ridiculously misguided training program for Britain’s National Health Service’s West Midlands Strategic Health Authority….
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Gay Tourist Robbed, Left Naked at Israel Intersection
Criminals apparently got the memo that Tel Aviv’s now hot with gay tourists, as the Forward recently reported. According to JPost.com, a British traveler was lured into a robbery with promises of sex, then left stranded — and naked — at a Tel Aviv intersection by a male perp. Though reports of the crime just…
The Latest
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Recreating le Marais, Paris’s Jewish Quarter
For over 20 years, the French Jewish author Cyrille Fleischman has offered sweetly nostalgic short story collections, consisting of vignettes from Paris’s time-honored Jewish quarter, le Marais. Without quitting his day job as a lawyer, Fleischman has just produced a charming new story collection for les Éditions Fayard, “Destiny’s Repairman” (“Réparateur de destin”). Set, as…
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Books Margaret Atwood Rejects Cultural Boycott of Israel
As we saw with the Batsheva Dance Company in 2009 and the Jerusalem Quartet in March, when it comes to Israel, even the most straightforward arts organizations have the potential to become the subjects of political controversy. The most recent flare-up centered around Canadian author Margaret Atwood, who accepted the Dan David Prize for literature…
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Writer Sues To Stop Sale of Schindler’s List
Marta Rosenberg says she is the rightful heir to anything that once belonged to Oskar Schindler, including the copy of one of Schindler’s lists that is now on sale for $2.2 million by New York historic memorabilia dealer Gary Zimet. Of the seven copies of the list that once existed, this is one of the…
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The Delightful Humanism of Cello Master Gregor Piatigorsky
The widows of great musicians do not always succeed in establishing identities independent from their late husbands, but Jacqueline Piatigorsky (née de Rothschild) is a definite exception. Now 98, Jacqueline Piatigorsky is a gifted sculptor, creating, among other artworks, a moving portrait of her husband, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, who died in 1976. A new biography…
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What To Do With Your Already-Read Forward
Here at The Forward, we get some interesting e-mails and letters. But last week we got our first question about repurposing old issues of the paper. Margaret from Seattle wrote: “I garden and would like to know whether the Forward is printed with soy-based ink. If so, I would be able to safely use the…
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Amir Gutfreund, Jonathan Safran Foer and Bruno Schultz
Amir Gutfreund and Jonathan Safran Foer hadn’t met before Wednesday afternoon, May 5. As Gutfreund pointed out, you wouldn’t necessarily put two firemen onstage and expect them to immediately extinguish flames! Foer for his part, was probably unaware of Gutfreund’s public persona, certainly when speaking English, of a somewhat comic victim of cosmic injustice. So…
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Three Men Arrested in Swastika Branding
This is just disturbing. According to the AP, three men in their 20s were charged with kidnapping and aggravated battery after they abducted a 22-year-old mentally challenged man and branded a swastika into his arm with a heated coat hanger. The article says the men, Jesse Sanford, William Hatch and Paul Beebe — all in…
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Man Arrested in Swastika Branding
This is just disturbing. According to the AP, three men in their 20s were charged with kidnapping and aggravated battery after they kidnapped a 22-year-old mentally challenged man and branded a swastika into his arm with a heated coathanger. The article says the men, Jesse Sanford, William Hatch and Paul Beebe — all in their…
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