PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at grisar@forward.com and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
-
Culture The wonderful, whimsical, interfaith family of the Muppets
In August of 1960, a young man, his wife and their eight-week-old daughter drove into Detroit in a secondhand Rolls Royce. In a moment of mischief, the man asked his friend who was tagging along to take the wheel and drive him to the center of the Motor City. There, he cracked the moonroof and…
-
Culture For Black British Jews, a walkout doesn’t solve Twitter’s anti-Semitism problem
Following a 48-hour anti-Semitic tirade from the UK musical artist Wiley, many British Jews are now participating in a two-day online walkout from Twitter under the hashtag #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate. But for some Black British Jews, caught in the middle, the boycott falls short and points to larger challenges. “Wiley has more followers than there are Jews…
-
Culture Remembering Regis Philbin’s ‘Bonkos’ time on ‘Seinfeld’
“I will never forget that silence, nor will I ever get over it,” Regis Philbin wrote in his 2011 memoir “How I Got This Way.” The moment, as Philbin describes it, was gutting. And to think it was all because of a show about nothing. Philbin, a talk show staple who began his on-camera career…
-
Culture As Frog and Toad turn 50, a look at their most mortifying story
I recall with distinct mortification Toad’s striped, singlet bathing suit. Like so many early readers, I was in the cubbyholed realm of an elementary school classroom when I first encountered Arnold Lobel’s “Frog and Toad” books, the first of which was released 50 years ago this August. Their whimsical bucolic watercolors struck me then (or…
-
Culture What’s the best New York Jewish book of all time?
Literary cities are many, but there’s only one New York. Now, philanthropists Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson are acknowledging that fact with a new award for books set in or about the Big Apple, which will come complete with a $50,000 prize. The news of the Gotham Book Prize arrives at a time when the…
-
Culture Ukrainian hostage situation ends after president plugs Joaquin Phoenix film
So, who had “gunman releases 13 hostages after the Ukrainian president agrees to endorse an obscure 2005 documentary narrated by Joaquin Phoenix” on their 2020 bingo card? If you did, congrats. Yesterday morning in Lutsk, a city in Western Ukraine, a 44-year-old man named Maksym Kryvosh fired an automatic weapon before entering a bus and…
-
Culture Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Strasbourg 1518’ is a gutting danse macabre for coronavirus
Jonathan Glazer has been quietly refining a filmic feeling of discomfort, isolation and pervasive paranoia for 25 years. But the director’s gifts are so remarkable that he often receives assignments that run counter to the mood he creates: Commercials for jeans, beer and cars and, more fittingly, music videos. The director of the films “Birth”…
-
The Schmooze Vogue Arabia posts a map of Israel labelled ‘Palestine’
Earlier this week, Vogue Arabia posted a provocative image to its website and Instagram page, showing a map of Israel festooned with flowers surrounding the Dome of the Rock. But instead of being labeled “Israel,” the map was captioned “Palestine.” View this post on Instagram Globally, the Palestine/Israel conflict is a hot-button, often controversial and…
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion I’m a Jew of color. Ta-Nehisi Coates can’t apply US lessons to Israel.
- 2
Culture Columbus may have had Jewish heritage — that doesn’t mean he was Jewish
- 3
Sports 5 Jewish things about the Mets — and why Jewish fans adore them
- 4
Culture New conspiracy theory just dropped — Jews are causing the hurricanes
In Case You Missed It
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism