Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged that he made a “poor choice of words” in using the term “Shylock” to describe unscrupulous lenders. Biden was reacting Wednesday to remarks by Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, in response to the vice president’s use of the term this week. Speaking to the Legal Services Organization, a…
In the weeks since Mia Farrow took to Twitter to voice her disdain for the lifetime achievement award Woody Allen was given at this year’s Golden Globes, everyone and his sister has flooded the Internet with an opinion about Allen, Farrow’s daughter Dylan and what may or may not have transpired between them twenty-two years…
If you habitually discard the sports section, you might have missed news of European soccer’s biggest transfer story since Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United for Real Madrid four years ago. It involves Madrid again, in fact – Tottenham Hotspur’s star winger Gareth Bale is rumoured to be on the verge of moving there for a…
For me, it started with a thrown penny. It clattered to the parking lot asphalt of the swim club I frequented as a child, and in my innocence I bent to pick it up, looking around to see who had lost it. Two teenage girls stared at me, giggling, and refused to take back the…
A major newspaper company has apologized for using Shylock as a clue for the answer “Jew” in a nationally syndicated crossword puzzle after the Anti-Defamation League said it was insensitive. Tribune Media Syndicate, which provides content to 4,000 outlets and reaches 10 million readers, said in its apology that appeared in newspapers on Sunday that…
The Austrian Jewish actor Fritz Kortner (1892-1970) is still a household name among German-speaking theater lovers, due to CD reissues of his readings, paperback reprints of his memoirs, and biographical tributes. Such was not always the case, as we learn from a fascinating essay, “Fritz Kortner on the Postwar Stage: The Jewish Actor as a…
The Independent takes a look at Habonim, the Socialist Zionist youth group that was once home to Mike Leigh, David Baddiel and Sacha Baron Cohen. The Brooklyn Rail revisits the work of Russian Jewish filmmaker Dziga Vertov, on the occasion of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Israeli singer Amir Benayoun (profiled in…
In Poland and Hungary, one of the largest cases of Nazi art theft remains unresolved. Jason Schwartzman loves being “Bored to Death.” Garry Shandling’s pioneering HBO sitcom “The Larry Sanders Show” is getting a revival on DVD. Al Pacino brings Shylock from Central Park to Broadway. Read a history of Israel’s modern dance movement. Egyptian…
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