Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
Irene Katz Connelly
By Irene Katz Connelly
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The Schmooze ‘Rebecca’ proves that Armie Hammer is better at playing gentle Jews than grim gentiles
Last night the Schmooze went to Manderley again … and it was a huge bummer. Before it even debuted, the Netflix reboot of Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” was slated to go wrong in a lot of ways. A 1938 Gothic thriller with strong “Jane Eyre” vibes, the novel follows a naive 20-something narrator who marries…
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The Schmooze Why does the ‘Great British Baking Show’ keep messing up Jewish breads?
“The Great British Baking Show” is supposed to calm you down. With its bespectacled judges and decidedly low-stakes narration — “For some bakers, bread is a new challenge” — it’s earned a reputation as a self-soother for the pandemic era. At a time when reality increasingly resembles dystopian prestige TV, “The Great British Baking Show”…
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Culture How Jeffrey Toobin might have commented on the sex scandal he created
For decades, writer and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has dispensed commentary on the political scandals du jour. Today, he is one. On Monday, the New Yorker suspended Toobin after he exposed himself on a staff Zoom call last week. Multiple people on the call said that Toobin, apparently believing that his video was disconnected, “switched…
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Culture This father-daughter duo is podcasting through the pandemic — and they won’t stop until they know ‘everything’
10-year-old Rasa Smith used to feel jealous when she heard kids on the radio. “I’ll never be on a podcast,” she recalled thinking while listening to a program hosted by a fellow pre-teen. But on that front, she’s proven herself very wrong. When the pandemic shut down schools in her hometown of Missoula, Mont., Rasa,…
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Life Where schmoozing meets suffrage: meet the all-online tribe getting young Jews to the polls
On Wednesday night, about 50 young Jewish women gathered to hear a stump speech from Nevada Senator Jacky Rosen, a self-described “young-at-heart Jewish woman” and surrogate for the Biden campaign. Instead of standing in an auditorium or a stadium, the women were sitting at desks or in bed, brought together virtually by Jewish Women for…
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Culture Shtetl-inspired sweatshirts are creating controversy online — but is ‘shtreetwear’ really beyond the pale?
Call it shtreetwear. Call it shtetlcore. The era of extremely Ashkenazi athleisure is here, and it’s forcing Jews to contend with a pressing question: What are “shtetl vibes,” and should you be able to sell them? On Tuesday, the Jewish Twitterverse took note of Shtêttl, a streetwear-cum-lifstyle brand inspired by shtetls — yes, the small,…
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The Schmooze For Doug Emhoff’s birthday, read our best coverage of the ‘Second Mensch’
Today, Doug Emhoff — Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ husband and Forward-certified “Hot Jewish Dad” — marks his 64th turn around the sun. So how is the potential Second Gentleman celebrating? By registering voters in Virginia, of course. Emhoff, who has not been seen sans Biden-Harris paraphernalia since sometime in August, started out the…
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Culture A doorbell cam captured Paul Milgrom’s Nobel win — but his mezuzah was the real star
Around 2 a.m. on the morning of October 12, Stanford economist Robert Wilson ventured outside to break some important news to his neighbor and research partner Paul Milgrom: Together, they had won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their contributions to auction theory. The Swedish Academy seems to revel in the confusion it causes by…
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