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 ‘Pieces of a Woman’ sorts through remnants of a Holocaust legacy
“Pieces of a Woman” is a ghost story. Following an agonizing birth scene, where the baby doesn’t make it, remnants of the child’s life — or reminders of her absence — survive. The mother, Martha, wears postpartum diapers to the office and cools her sore breasts at home with frozen peas. Framed sonograms hang on…
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Culture How science fiction warned us about the Capitol siege
Toward the end of “Logan’s Run,” Michael York and Jenny Agutter, escaping from a future society that murders people when they turn 30, enter an ivy-strangled rotunda and are soon amazed. Hearing a noise in the ostensibly empty building, York reaches down and pries off the arm of a chair on the ground. Slowly, he…
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Fast Forward Chuck Schumer calls Capitol attack ‘Trump’s doing’
Before the Senate resumed its certification of the 2020 election, a process delayed hours by a crowd of pro-Trump protestors storming the Capitol, Sen. Chuck Schumer made his first speech as the presumptive majority leader, laying the blame for the siege at Trump’s feet. “This will be a stain on our country not so easily…
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News ‘We knew this day was coming’: Jews react to storming of Capitol building
They compared the scene at the Capitol to the violent regimes their parents fled. They condemned President Trump’s half-hearted response as his supporters stormed congressional offices. They posted jarring photographs of Confederate flags flying in the halls of America’s most important government building, concluding grimly that “the Civil War isn’t over.” Jewish leaders, writers and…
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News Everything you need to know about Jon Ossoff, Georgia’s next senator
This wasn’t Jon Ossoff’s first race. If his name sounded familiar last year, when he challenged Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue before heading into Nov. 5’s closely watched Georgia runoff, there’s a reason. In 2017, Ossoff ran to represent Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District. He then achieved the curious distinction of being one of the first…
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Culture ‘Star Wars’ fanboy. Bar mitzvah boy. Senator? Jews react to Jon Ossoff’s path to victory
At press time, Jon Ossoff, a 33-year-old documentary film producer, is within striking distance of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate and flipping it blue. And while some reflected on the significance of this moment in a deep south plagued by historical antisemitism, a bunch more people were moved to make fun of Ossoff’s…
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Culture Trump’s favorite Yiddish words should come as a surprise to no one
Like most New Yorkers of his generation, Donald Trump has a few Yiddish words in his back pocket. Because he’s Donald Trump, those words are limited and — by most accounts — phallocentric. On Jan. 3, The Washington Post reportedthat Trump deployed a well-known Yiddish vulgarity in a recorded conversation with Georgia Secretary of State…
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Culture As ‘Gatsby’ enters the public domain, how to handle its one Jewish character
“The Great Gatsby” wades into the treacherous pool of the public domain on Jan. 1, 2021. Expect musicals that douse Broadway stages with green light, a Warby Parker ad campaign abusing the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg and the inevitable Ryan Murphy origin story, “Carraway.” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale of the tainted American dream is…
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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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Fast Forward Trump attorney general pick Pam Bondi: 5 things Jews should know
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Opinion As a Jewish biblical scholar in Houston, I’m enraged that Texas is adopting this biblically illiterate new curriculum
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News Israel reached a ceasefire in Lebanon. Why does Gaza seem so hard?
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Culture Barbra Streisand recorded here — and so did Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, John Lennon and, uh, The Village People
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Fast Forward Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick to helm EPA, says he received bomb threat with ‘pro-Palestinian themed message’
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Opinion We can be thankful this year — and Jewish wisdom can help
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