This Week in Forward Arts and Culture

By Ezra Glinter August 6, 2010

Laura Hodes goes to see “Dinner for Schmucks,” which maybe should have been called “Dinner for Schlemiels,” or “Dinner for Bat Mitzvah DJs.”

Susan Shapiro offers an excerpt from her new novel, “Overexposed.”

Philologos takes a nibble of Italy’s “pizza ebraica dolce.”

Benjamin Ivry casts his gaze on Sweden’s Ernst Josephson, the “Jewish Edvard Munch.”

Tom Freudenheim appreciates a self-published book that’s not only a good read, but also offers a look at the seamy underside of pilfered Judaica.

Jenna Weissman Joselit dusts off the controversy over John Singer Sargent’s recently restored murals at the Boston Public Library.

Laurence Klavan reviews the now infamous play “Imagining Madoff,” which ran at StageWorks/Hudson in upstate New York.

Over on The Sisterhood, Elissa Strauss interviews Anthony Doerr about his novella “Memory Wall” and Allison Kaplan Sommer talks to Ayelet Waldman about her new novel “Red Hook Road.”

And make sure to mark down the Forward’s upcoming evening of “Jewish Art for the New Millennium: 3 Alicias 3” at the Sixth Street Synagogue on August 24, featuring violinist Alicia Svigals, poet Alicia Ostriker and singer-songwriter Alicia Jo Rabins.

Ezra Glinter is the critic-at-large of the Forward.

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