Jason Diamond
By Jason Diamond
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Culture Why Garry Shandling Was One of the Greatest Jewish Comedians Ever
Garry Shandling was the master of turning Jewish dissatisfaction into comedy. People love to talk about neurosis like it’s the defining trope all Jewish comedians share, but Shandling wore a look on his face like he was uncomfortable with nearly everything, like nothing was ever right. That’s what made him one of the greatest comedians…
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The Schmooze Tony Kushner Hates Writing
Live in New York long enough, and you become accustomed to seeing our most decorated novelists, journalists, poets and playwrights sit on various stages to discuss their work. Uptown places like 92Y and Symphony Space in Manhattan get the lion’s share, while a smattering of smaller venues like Housing Works in SoHo regularly host bestselling…
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Culture A Son’s Journey Deep Into the Heart of Saul Bellow
● Saul Bellow’s Heart: A Son’s Memoir By Greg Bellow Bloomsbury USA, 240 pages, $25 Trying to imagine the literary landscape of the 20th century without Saul Bellow is a tough task. If Bellow hadn’t published “The Adventures of Augie March” in 1953, you would have to reconsider how the entire American Jewish contribution to…
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Books Jewish Novels of Jewish Hollywood
American Dream Machine By Matthew Specktor Tin House Books, 464 pages, $25.95 Some people will always believe that the Jews run Hollywood. But even if Spielberg, Katzenberg, Weinstein, Bruckheimer, Zucker and the rest of their pals could comfortably form a minyan, the number of Americans who believe that Jews control the film industry has dropped…
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Books Rothschild Heiress and ‘Miss Havisham of Bebop’
The name “Rothschild” means different things to different people. In 1902, Sholem Aleichem wrote the monologue “Ven ikh bin Rothschild” (“If I Were a Rothschild”), which would be famously turned into the song “If I Were a Rich Man” by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock for “Fiddler on the Roof.” To Sholem Aleichem and generations…
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The Schmooze Will the Real Philip Roth Please Stand Up?
For Philip Roth’s upcoming 80th birthday on March 19, New York magazine assembled a “Literary Caucus” to assess the career of a writer that some love, others hate, but everybody who knows anything about literature respects. While Roth himself had no hand in the piece, the 28 men and five women who weighed in on…
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Culture The Jews Who Invented (And Continue To Reinvent) Fashion
‘I studied molecular biology and painting, so taking photos and writing about beauty was probably the last thing I ever figured I would do,” Aimee Blaut, 29, tells me of the road she took to founding the popular blog The Formula, a lifestyle site featuring interviews with fashion tastemakers and industry people about their regimens,…
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Culture Murderers Row Pays Tribute to Jewish Athletes
Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame Edited by Franklin Foer and Marc Tracy Twelve, 304 pages, $26.99 As long as people are reading the Bible, Jews will always be thought of as a stubborn people. You can thank God for that: In Deuteronomy 9:6, God tells Moses that the Israelites are “stiff-necked.” As long…
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