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The Schmooze

This Week in Forward Arts and Culture

  • In our Summer movie special, John Semley casts a critical but approving eye on the re-imagined exploits of Captain America;

  • Jenny Hendrix has some harsh words for “Sarah’s Key,” a film about France’s 1942 Vel’ d’Hiv roundup;

  • Myra Mniewski relishes the life’s work of the most accomplished translator of Russian literature into German;

  • Elizabeth Stone goes through the ups and downs of a family with an autistic child in “Mabul” at the San Francisco Film Festival,

  • and Olga Gershenson is impressed by “The Law in these Parts,” a prize-winning documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival about Israel’s legal system in the occupied territories.

  • Carol Zemel appreciates the masterful, but not very Jewish, work of Lucian Freud.

  • Philologos unveils the many names of eggplant, most of which mean “the anti-flatulence vegetable.”

  • Gavriel D. Rosenfeld talks to Luca Zevi, architect of the new Museo Nazionale della Shoah in Rome.

  • Benjamin Ivry appreciates the voluminous works of French author Henri Raczymow.

  • In the latest Yid Lit podcast, Allison Gaudet Yarrow talks to Janet Reitman, author of “Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion.”

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