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The Schmooze

Out and About

  • David Mamet is looking for a Hebrew teacher.

  • Leonard Cohen talks about romance, poetry, suicide, music, Sergio Leone and cigarettes in a 1988 BBC interview.

  • On Conan O’Brien, David Cross called a producer of “Alvin and the Chipmunks” “the personification of what people think about when they think negatively about Jews.”

  • Andrea Strongwater paints the lost synagogues of Europe.

  • Ron Capshaw spells out Arthur Miller’s real Communist ties, including his Marxist theater criticism under the pseudonym “Matt Wayne.”

  • Daniella Cheslow profiles Mendy Cahan, one of the erstwhile Israeli Yiddishists. It’s one of the better such pieces, but anyone who wants to write something about Yiddish, especially for a Jewish publication, should probably read this first.

  • Claire Wagner Kosterlitz, Bauhaus artist and eventual receptionist in Irvington, N.J., gets an exhibit at the Jewish Museum of New Jersey.

  • Fashion blogger Mordechai Rubinstein, aka “Mr. Mort,” gets profiled by the Times.

  • Has Mishpacha magazine been banned?

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