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 21 totally on-point pop culture predictions for 2021
In 2019, save a few health and human services professionals, no one anticipated a new year gripped by a global pandemic. We were in the dark about Broadway dimming its lights and film projectors lying fallow. We couldn’t have imagined the Emmys being doled out by Hazmat-suited gofers. We might have expected the continuation of…
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Culture Written during the Holocaust, a song finds a second life as a social justice anthem
A simple melody, straining upward and urging defiant silence, was composed at the Klooga work camp in Estonia in the 1940s. But for decades, scholars wondered who wrote the song, or how it even sounded. Starting a year after World War II ended, the words to “Lomir shvaygn” (“Stay Silent”) appeared in collections of songs…
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The Schmooze WATCH: Gal Gadot tries eggnog; Jimmy Fallon gags at gefilte fish
On the fifth night of Hanukkah, Jimmy Fallon and Gal Gadot, in the spirit of interfaith exchange, foisted two seasonal acquired tastes on one another — we pity their palates. In this installment of the popular internet genre of “let’s watch this person eat some foreign food,” the “Wonder Woman 1984” star was given a…
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Culture Why the mayor of Ramallah does it all
Musa Hadid, the middle-aged, mustachioed and overextended mayor of Ramallah is meeting with staff to discuss a Christmas tree lighting. Among the details to be ironed out: several Santas rappelling down buildings, a flash mob and zeppelins. Well, not really zeppelins. An aide suggests that this word sets up expectations that would be tough to…
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Culture Tinker, tailor, soldier, philosemite – John le Carré’s strange relationship with Jews
John le Carré, the prolific espionage author and former MI5 spy, died Saturday Dec. 12 at the age of 89. His bibliography of nearly 60 years long outlived its major subject — the Cold War — and expanded to explore geopolitical conflicts that have yet to be resolved. In 1983, he turned his attention to…
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Culture Smokey Robinson stumped about how to say ‘Hanukkah’
Some say the Jews control the entertainment industry. If that’s the case, riddle me this: How could Motown legend Smokey Robinson, a six-decade veteran of major record labels, not know how to pronounce Hanukkah — or even have any idea what it is? We can thank Twitter user Jeff Jacobson for an unforgettable record of…
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Culture Louise Glück’s ‘minstrel show’ Nobel speech draws ire
On Dec. 7, newly-minted laureate Louise Glück delivered her Nobel acceptance speech outside of her Massachusetts home. In it, the poet expressed her lifelong interest in a kind of confessional poem, in which the speaker intimately addresses the reader. And in making her point, she lauded a work many found tone-deaf in the current climate,…
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Culture Oh, great, Benjamin Netanyahu performed a duet with an Israeli pop star
Whenever a head of state sings, it’s a risky endeavor. How does one look fun without sacrificing the dignity of the office? Or, on the flip side, austere and on-pitch enough to honor a serious occasion? President Obama is the leader who’s pulled it off most successfully in recent memory: At various points in his…
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