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 Who were the most (and least) Jewish presidents?
Some had strong ties; others were unabashed antisemites
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Culture The best (and worst) Jewish ads of the 2022 Super Bowl
While football diehards gnawed their nails as the Rams managed a last-minute victory over the Bengals, those once-a-year watchers had a quite different, but equally suspenseful, experience of Super Bowl LVI. Tuning in for the commercials, casual sports fans wondered which of the night’s two top products was being advertised in each spot: Electric vehicles…
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Culture Israeli goldfish can drive cars — but they’re not quite ready for the carpool lane
In Israeli author Etgar Keret’s short story collection “Fly Already,” a goldfish exits his bowl, puts on a pair of slippers and tunes into CNN. Of course it’s fanciful, but in real-life Israel, goldfish are already learning to drive – sort of. A team of researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have trained fish…
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Culture Woody Allen’s latest is playing in a New York theater — but is anybody going to see it? Anybody?
On Tuesday I opted to spend a gorgeous afternoon in New York City going to a movie. The movie was “Rifkin’s Festival,” Woody Allen’s latest and a film that presently has a 42% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 50% audience score. Given this tepid reception, I wondered who was going to see Allen’s film, which…
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Culture Soup Nazis? Marjorie Taylor Greene calls out Pelosi’s ‘gazpacho police’ in a gaffe best served cold
It’s becoming clearer by the day that Marjorie Taylor Greene learned nothing from her obligatory visit to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in D.C., made after she likened the Holocaust to mask mandates – but she may have picked up a soup recipe there. In an interview Tuesday night, Greene was heard comparing Nazis and Nancy…
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Culture 2022’s Oscar nominees are full of Jewish connections
This week’s parsha concerns God’s instructions to the Israelites in the wilderness on the design of priestly temple garments, how to properly light the menorah and how to build the golden altar of incense. So perhaps it’s fitting that the Moses-y desert parable “Dune” is now nominated for the Oscar gold in costume design, cinematography…
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Culture When Harpo spoke — to save a relative from World War II Europe
In March of 1941, a 72-year-old German Jewish widow named Helene Schickler was waiting to join her family in the U.S. She was then living in a convent in Naples with other refugees, and the nuns hosting them were running out of food. She was losing weight, strength and hope. A doctor came to examine…
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Culture On Netflix, a notorious Israeli swindler finally gets his comeuppance
Watching Netflix’s “The Tinder Swindler,” about an accomplished Israeli conman and the victims who exposed him, I couldn’t stop thinking of TikTok’s most-maligned and unremarkable f-boy, West Elm Caleb. On paper, the titular swindler, a felon named Shimon Hayut, and W.E.C, a tall, mustachioed New York furniture designer who is bad at online dating, seem…
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Film & TV Bonhoeffer biopic tells of a pastor turned would-be Hitler assassin — but is the story true?
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
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News What Mike Huckabee’s ‘Kids Guide to Israel’ says about his views
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Opinion Netanyahu was right to end the war in Lebanon — now Gaza must follow
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Culture 10 wicked ways to avoid talking about Gaza and Trump this Thanksgiving
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Fast Forward Israeli security cabinet approves ceasefire with Hezbollah, paving way for end of yearlong conflict in Israel’s north
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Culture Who are the most (and least) Jewish Peanuts characters?
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