Was the Leopold and Loeb case really the ‘Jewish crime of the century?’
100 years later, the frenzy surrounding the murder of Bobby Franks still raises uncomfortable questions about antisemitism
Leopold and Loeb
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The Schmooze ‘Affluenza’ Teen’s Jewish Predecessors: Leopold and Loeb
(JTA) — In June 2013, Ethan Couch, an inebriated 16-year-old Texan, was speeding and driving illegally on a restricted license when he slammed into a group of people standing on the side of the road. Four died; nine were injured, including two of Couch’s passengers, who were seriously hurt. The case became a topic of…
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Culture Revisiting the Jewish Crime of the Century
Compulsion By Meyer Levin Fig Tree Books, 480 pages, $15.95 Why, in 2015, should we be interested in a novel that was written 60 years ago? Moreover, why are we interested in a crime that was committed 90 years ago? When I was growing up in New York in the 1950s, there was no one…
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The Schmooze Compelled by Drama: Q & A With ‘Compulsion’ Playwright Rinne Groff
“The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank has inspired numerous dramatic works since its publication in English 1952. There was a Broadway play in 1955 by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett which won the Pulitzer Prize; an adaptation of the play for film in 1959; a 1980 television movie also written by Goodrich…
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