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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Jews on Ice
I tuned in intermittently to the “cultural dance” segment of Olympic ice-dancing last night. In a night filled with several highly questionable routines including a Russian pair’s notorious (and racist) aboriginal costumes, I was jolted out of my apathy by seeing Israeli ice-dancing pair Roman Zaretsky and his sister Alexandra, called “Sasha” enter the rink…
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Snowboarder Torah Bright’s Yiddishe Neshama?
I just called my bookie, and I’ve never been so proud to be a Jew! She gave me good odds on the new sport in town: Predicting the percentage of sermons this Shabbat that will focus on Olympic snowboarding star Torah Bright. (I’m betting on 97% or more.) Honestly, have you seen any sight more…
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Eli Wallach: Great Jewish Actor, Now and Forever
On February 22, this year’s annual benefit for Theater For The New City’s Emerging Playwrights Program at the National Arts Club honors acting couple Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson, which seems only natural. In 2005, Wallach released his delightful autobiography “The Good, the Bad and Me: In My Anecdotage,” but at 94, Brooklyn-born Wallach is…
The Latest
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Taking Lessons from Leonard Bernstein
Revealing the secret behind a magic trick is usually not a good thing, but when it comes to real artistry, uncovering the nitty-gritty details of creation can often deepen our appreciation of an artist’s genius. In the case of Leonard Bernstein, a few recent and forthcoming releases help pull back the curtain on the composer…
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Wrestling with Wagner in L.A.
In a second season episode of Larry David’s HBO comedy series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry is caught whistling a Wagner tune outside of a film premier and is accused of being a self-hating Jew. On the show it’s all for laughs; “I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish!” Larry…
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Books A Graphic Account of the Israeli Countryside
The past year has seen a bumper crop of Jewish-themed graphic novels, with subjects ranging from the recent history of the Middle East (Joe Sacco’s “Footnotes in Gaza”) to the ancient mythology of the Middle East (R. Crumb’s “Genesis”) to the poets of the Beat Generation (Harvey Pekar and Ed Piskor’s “The Beats”). Still, the…
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Digitizing Europe’s Judaica
Researchers interested in poking through the library of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris or the Hungarian Jewish Archives in Budapest may no longer have to leave their laptops to do it. The rich cultural heritage of European Jewry was recently recognized by the European Commission with a grant to Judaica Europeana, an organization that…
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Books Cyril Kornbluth’s Postwar Dystopias
Readers of the intelligently edited anthologies “Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy & Science Fiction” and “More Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction,” both from Jewish Lights Publishing, are aware that the postwar development of the sci-fi genre was to a large extent a Yiddishe invention. Alongside…
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‘Srugim’: Now on a Small Screen Near You
Forget Jersey Shore. The hottest TV show of recent weeks – among a certain set, anyway – is “Srugim,” the Israeli program about a group of young, modern-Orthodox Jerusalemite singles. The religious version of Friends, if you will, or maybe even Sex and the City. Minus most the sex, of course. Thanks to The Jewish…
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Books Jewish Impostors, Past and Present
Although Shabbetai Zevi naturally gets most of the attention, Jewish history has been marked by a series of impostors. On February 16, Bloomsbury USA publishes a collection by the late New Yorker reporter St. Clair McKelway, “Reporting at Wit’s End,” which includes the complete 1968 book “The Big Little Man from Brooklyn” about the Jewish…
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Books An Arabic Bestseller About Beirut’s Jews
A new book, documenting Lebanon’s largely vanished Jewish community is a bestseller — in Arabic. In fact, “Wad Abu Jamil,” a book by BBC journalist Nada Abdelsamad named after the formerly Jewish neighborhood in Beirut, is available only in Arabic, though translations into English and French are forthcoming. According to Alexandra Sandels of the LA…
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