PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at grisar@forward.com and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture Folksbiene Names Dominick Balletta As New Executive Director
The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, the 104-year-old New York-based company specializing in productions of Yiddish-language drama, announced on October 3 that Dominick Balletta, a veteran of film and theater management, will be the company’s new executive director. Balletta, currently the managing director of the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York, will returning to…
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Culture 5 Months After His Selection, The Director Of The Polish Jewish Museum Waits To Be Reinstated – Here’s Why
When it opened in 2014, POLIN: The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in Warsaw, was a landmark achievement. It took the participation of three separate bodies — the Polish national government, the city of Warsaw and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland — and over 20 years of talks for…
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Culture Jewish Artifact Dealer To Auction Hitler’s Belongings In Germany
A military artifact dealer related to victims of the Holocaust is expected to take home millions by selling at auction his personal collection of items that belonged to Adolf Hitler. Craig Gottlieb, who, according to a press release, is of Jewish descent and lost family members in the Shoah, is auctioning off a military visor…
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Culture How Rod Serling Fought Injustice – And Nazis – On ‘The Twilight Zone’
Rod Serling wanted to fight Nazis; he missed his chance, but later got another. While he had hoped to enlist in the armed forces before his graduation from Binghamton Central High School in 1943, a teacher told him to wait. “He was sent to the Pacific; not where he had hoped,” his daughter Anne Serling…
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Culture ‘Tell Them We Blew The Shofar At Auschwitz,’ He Said. 75 Years Later, She Did.
75 Rosh Hashanahs ago, in 1944, the sound of a shofar rang out at Auschwitz. Very few heard it. It was Rosh Hashanah, and as the Jewish year 5704 turned into 5705, Chaskel Tydor, a Jewish work dispatcher at Auschwitz III-Monowitz, arranged for a minyan of prisoners to be sent to an isolated part of…
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Culture In A Recently Unearthed Letter, Gandhi Says Shana Tova To An Indian Zionist
On September 1, 1939, the day the Nazis marched on Poland, Mahatma Gandhi, then the leader of the Indian Independence movement and a preacher of non-violent resistance, sat down to write a letter. “You have my good wishes for your new year,” the letter read. “How I wish the new year may mean an era…
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Culture Q & A: How Does Impeachment Work?
Editor’s note: On September 24, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Here, constitutional law professor Cass Sunstein discusses what impeachment is and how it works. This interview was originally published on July 1, 2019. In 1998, with President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings underway, Cass R. Sunstein, then a constitutional…
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Culture How A Jewish Comedian Became Ukraine’s President And The Center Of Trump’s Impeachment Inquiry
Editor’s note: On September 24, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump. That announcement followed reports that Trump allegedly pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Zelensky, a Jewish former comedian, has an unorthodox political background:…
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