Jake Romm
By Jake Romm
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Culture Read Stefan Zweig’s Heartbreaking Letter On The Outbreak of World War I
The Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig has been having a bit of a moment – he’s recently been the subject of a critically acclaimed film (“Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe”) and his experience as a refugee during World War Two has proven especially poignant in our time. Born in Vienna in 1881, Zweig, along with fellow writer…
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Film & TV You Must Watch This New Film On The Armenian Genocide, Whether It’s Any Good Or Not
Imagine, for a moment, that after the Holocaust the official German position was one of denial. That the German heads of state have, since 1945, consistently asserted that the events of the Holocaust were nasty, yes, but both the Jews and the Germans bear some responsibility, and in the end, well, such things happen in…
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Culture Behold: The Worst Jewish Album Covers Of All Time
Here’s a hot take for you: one of the most influential aesthetic movements of the past 10 years has been the proliferation of “Christian Kitsch.” Looking through this list of “Awkward Christian Music Album Covers” published on Sad and Useless it’s easy find its aesthetic counterpart in the world of public access television. The two…
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Culture Coming Soon: Thousands Of Unseen Photographs From One Of America’s Greatest Photographers
In the middle of the 20th century, there were two photography exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art that changed the way we see photography, and more fundamentally, the way we look at the world. The first, 1955’s “The Family of Man” curated by Edward Steichen, was, as the title suggests, aimed at using photography…
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Culture The International Street Cannibals Ensemble Tackles Schoenberg’s Tortured Quartet
When faced with immense personal grief, we are given to sobbing, to wailing, to screaming – the old categories of expression seem startlingly, absurdly inadequate, and thus we revert to a pre-linguistic stage so that we might give voice to those things that render language so helplessly impotent. But one could just as easily see this…
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Culture Art Is Completely Useless – Here’s Why That’s A Good Thing
Look to any conservative site for an article decrying the existence of the National Endowment of the Arts and you will inevitably find a mention of Andre Serrano’s “Piss Christ.” It’s easy outrage fodder for obvious reasons — a photograph of a crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine is intentionally provocative, intentionally difficult, and, here is…
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Culture Is That Jared Kushner’s New Skyscraper — Or Is He Just Happy To See Us?
Not one to be outdone by Jared Kushner’s father-in-law when it comes to gaudiness, tastelessness, or phallic obsession, the Kushner family recently unveiled plans for a humongous skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City. It is important to note that Jared, though he played a role in the building’s conception, sold his stake…
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Culture Why Does An Ad For An Amazon Show Make So Many People Mad?
Since the election of Donald Trump, a funny thing has started to happen — otherwise innocuous pieces of pop culture have become political battlegrounds. I mean funny both as curious and as downright hilarious. In the former camp, we have boycott movements growing around things like sneakers (New Balance) and cereal (Kellogg’s) – the newly extreme…
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Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
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Culture They were a kosher bakery success story — 80 years later, people are still trying to make a buck off their babka
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Culture ‘A Complete Unknown’ proves that one thing about Bob Dylan will certainly endure
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Film & TV Why ‘The Brutalist’ resonated so deeply with me
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