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 ‘Heil Honey, I’m Home!’ — the secret history of the scandalous Hitler sitcom you never saw
“Of all the shows I’ve done and made, this one gets the most comment. And yet, it’s never really been seen or aired,” said the veteran British TV writer Geoff Atkinson. He was speaking about “Heil Honey, I’m Home!,” a comedy series that aired a single, infamous episode in the United Kingdom on September 30,…
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Culture ‘Borat 2’ is coming for Mike Pence — but what can it say about Trump’s America?
My wiiife. If you read that in the voice of the fictional Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s most celebrated creation, you’re not alone. While we last saw Borat nearly 15 years ago, his elongated reference to his spouse has clung to our brain’s language centers with the tenacity of Gorilla Glue….
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Film & TV In ‘The Other Story,’ a tale of forgiveness as faith and family collide
_Author’s note: ‘The Other Story’ is playing September 28 as part of the Marlene Meyerson JCC’s online “Forgive Me Film-a-thon.” Marking the occasion, we’ve republished our review from July 1, 2019._ When children leave the insular world of Haredi Judaism, many parents sit shiva for them. Some choose to not even speak the child’s name…
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Film & TV In ‘Tehran,’ an agent caught between Iran and Israel can’t find her way home
In an early episode of the spy thriller “Tehran,” a Mossad agent makes a house call. Yael Ashrafi (Liraz Charhi), the handler of hacker and series protagonist Tamar Rabinyan, pays a visit to her Mr. Rabinyan. She wants to know if Tamar might still have family in Iran and if, after ditching a reckless contact…
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Culture Documentarian Ric Burns on why there will never be another Oliver Sacks
In 2015, shortly before he died at the age of 82, Oliver Sacks was eating from a Tupperware container of green Jell-O, when he decided to tell a room full of people something deeply revealing. “Time was – it doesn’t occur now, but it used to occur until a few years ago – when I…
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Culture Why did The Guardian say Ruth Bader Ginsburg ‘abandoned’ her faith?
In the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, obituaries across the country lauded the jurist for her contributions to America’s judiciary system and civic life. But one contained a claim about Ginsburg’s personal life that left some Jews puzzled, and others outraged. The Guardian’s September 18 obituary initially declared that the justice had “abandoned her…
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Culture Mel Gibson still working on that ‘Passion of the Christ’ sequel. But what’s the audience for that?
He’s baaaack. Hot off a revival of past antisemitic remarks, Mel Gibson is reportedly hard at work on a sequel to his 2004 antisemitic opus, “The Passion of the Christ.” Jim Caviezel, who played the role of Jesus in the film, told Breitbart in a recent interview that his character, while having suffered through unspeakable…
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Culture ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and all things Jewish from a very socially-distanced Emmys
Most Emmys nights, the stars are out in force. In 2020, they stayed in, and didn’t so much take home awards as have them delivered to their doorstep. Host Jimmy Kimmel worked the room at an empty Staples Center, bare but for a skeleton camera crew and the occasional socially-distanced celebrity cameo. Yet for the…
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