PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture Kafka Confidant Max Brod’s Stolen Archive Is Headed To Israel
In April, a court in Zurich ordered a huge cache of Franz Kafka’s manuscripts transferred from Switzerland to the National Library of Israel. Now, the personal papers of Kafka’s confidant, Max Brod, who safeguarded those powerful texts, are headed there too. In a May 21 ceremony at the Israeli ambassador to Germany’s residence in Berlin,…
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Culture Roman Polanski Made A Film About The Dreyfus Affair. Will Anyone Distribute It?
Since 1978, director and convicted sex offender Roman Polanski has lived as a fugitive in Europe, where he has continued to make movies. But it seems that post #MeToo, securing distribution for Polanski’s films requires a degree of extreme discretion, even on the continent he calls home. On May 18, the first Saturday of the…
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Art National Museum Of American Jewish History CEO Resigns
Ivy L. Barsky, the chief executive of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, has resigned. She will leave the institution in June, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Barsky was named CEO in 2012, two years after the museum opened a new $150 million building. (The museum, founded in 1976, was historically housed in…
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Film & TV ‘Game Of Thrones’ Made Headlines For A Starbucks Cup. Were The Showrunners To Blame?
With “Game of Thrones” arriving at an unsatisfying end, fans have been quick to pin the blame on showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff. If the timing of the hit show’s eighth season felt rushed, the character beats unconvincing or the conclusion a bit confused, it makes sense that the pair, who wrote the final…
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Culture How Four Women Told The World About The Nazis’ Medical Experiments
In January of 1943, four Polish political prisoners in Ravensbrück, a women-only Nazi concentration camp in northern Germany, wrote letters to their families. Inmates were allowed to write one letter per month, missives that the SS strictly censored. The four women escaped suspicion by banally describing life in the camps as pleasant. But in truth,…
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Culture How Hulu’s ‘Catch-22’ Lost The Spirit Of Joseph Heller’s Masterpiece
Everything you need to know about the Hulu adaptation of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” comes down to a scream. In the opening moments of the new six-part miniseries, which debuted on May 17, Captain John Yossarian (Christopher Abbott) pads down a runway, naked as the day he was born, with blood caked on his face. Behind…
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Culture Is ‘Catch-22’ About Joseph Heller’s Jewish Air Force Peer?
In spirit if not content, Joseph Heller’s World War II satire “Catch 22” (1961) is a very Jewish property. When Mike Nichols directed the 1970 film adaptation of the novel, he cast fellow Yid Alan Arkin as the lead character, Captain John Yossarian, a defiant air force officer who tries to end his flying days…
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Culture As Opioid Lawsuits Pile Up, Met Decides To Refuse Money From Sacklers
In a landmark development, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has a decades-long connection to the Sackler family, the primary owners of Purdue Pharma, has decided to refuse future donations from family members connected to the business. The move follows the Met’s previously announced plan to reconsider its donor policy after a Massachusetts court…
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