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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Music A Yearlong Celebration Of Kurt Weill Is Off To An Operatic Start
Responding to the current debate over immigration policy inside the nearby Beltway, the University of Maryland has declared a Year of Immigration. Part of the yearlong initiative is the University’s first Kurt Weill Festival, which kicked off October 6 with the German-born composer’s 1937 opera-oratorio “The Road of Promise.” “The reason why we’re studying Kurt…
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Culture A Nazi Commandeered Her House. She Survived The Holocaust By Hiding In It Anyway.
An inquiry into the provenance of a painting by Egon Schiele has produced an extraordinary account of its former owner’s life in Nazi-occupied Vienna. Elsa Koditschek, a Jewish widow who sent her children to safety ahead of the German invasion, spent much of World War II living in hiding in an upstairs apartment of her…
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Culture 8 Questions For Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom has written his first sequel. Following his 2003 bestseller, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” the prolific, Detroit-based author has returned to the story of Eddie the theme park maintenance man and the little girl, Annie, he died saving. The new book, “The Next Person You Meet in Heaven” out Tuesday, October…
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Culture How Columbus Brought America Its First Jew
For all their clout in the American imagination, the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria don’t appear to factor much into the American Jewish tapestry. But Christopher Columbus, a devout Italian Catholic sailing at the behest of the king and queen of Spain, was certain that, when he arrived in Asia, he’d encounter descendants of the…
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Culture 8 Jewish Members Of Parliament Announce Opposition To Holocaust Memorial
A 50-million-pound Holocaust memorial planned for the Victoria Garden Towers, a public park outside the United Kingdom’s Parliament, has drawn new criticism from an unexpected group: Jewish Members of Parliament. The memorial was devised by the Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye and English-Israeli sculptor Ron Arad, who won a contest with their design last October….
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Film & TV Nan Goldin Made Fun Of Herself On ‘The Deuce’
In “What Big Ideas,” Season 2, Episode 4 of HBO’s “The Deuce,” the Hi-Hat Bar got a new patron: Photographer Nan Goldin. Proving once more that it’s not just TV, but HBO, a highbrow platform for educated art-loving types, series co-creator David Simon snuck the activist-artist Goldin into a scene in the seedy Time Square…
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Film & TV ‘Stavisky’ Remains A Slick Study Of Jewish Identity
American audiences may not be familiar with the name “Serge Alexandre Stavisky” or his many aliases, but the French recognize the Russian-born Jewish con man’s decline as helping ease their country’s slide into Fascism. A new restoration of director Alain Resnais’ 1974 film “Stavisky” opens Wednesday at New York’s Film Forum and plays through October…
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Film & TV ‘Moynihan’ Celebrates A Different Kind Of Politician
What would today’s Democratic Party, with its progressive and moderate divisions, make of Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Maybe more to the point: What would he make of the state of our politics today? These are some of the questions raised by “Moynihan,” a new documentary about the long and varied career of the titular senator, diplomat,…
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