9/28/14

Lots of New Yorker Jewish Content 9/29/2014

by Alice Gregory

Leon Botstein - Jewish!

by Jeffrey Toobin
Why Europe's highest court ruled that the right to privacy trumps the Internet.

Remembering everything - Jewish!

by Joyce Carol Oates
Martin Amis imagines the Holocaust's middle managers in "The Zone of Interest."

Holocaust - Jewish!

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And finally... Amazon's transgender TV show - Jewish!
...Excitingly, it's also the most Jewish show I've seen on TV. The Pfeffermans make Holocaust jokes, then get offended when other people make Holocaust jokes. Ali orders "tofu schmear" at a deli. "I'm so glad to be rid of that wig," Maura remarks, when a friend helps her style her gray hair. "I felt like I was wearing a sheitel"—an Orthodox head covering. As a member of the tribe, Soloway is free to critique a certain generational strain of urbane self-obsession, one that merges self-love with self-loathing. All the characters are sharply drawn, but in the first four episodes the one who feels the most original is Josh, a hip music producer who struggles with his younger girlfriend, his story flipping from funny to sad and back. Both Duplass and Hoffmann are amazing screen presences, charismatic weirdos who throw their bodies into sex scenes as if they were bendy straws. There's something impressively tough, too, about Soloway's refusal to sentimentalize the wild, abrupt selfishness of Sarah's affair, which comes across as equally manic and liberating.

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