In high school, Blake J. Harris’s yearbook quote was from “Seinfeld,” and he wrote his college admissions essay about the show’s final episode. “Seinfeld,” he says, is why he became a writer. “It made me fall in love with storytelling,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a recent interview. Little wonder, then, that after […]
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BUDAPEST — After a gala dinner attended by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, most of the guests at the closing conference of his Voice of the People (VOP) initiative in Budapest were in no hurry to call it a night, staying on to dance to Israeli pop music. That so many stayed for the obligatory let-your-hair-down […]
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BUENOS AIRES — Two years after an Argentine judge ordered a Spanish dictionary to drop a definition of “Jewish” as “miserly or usurious,” the institution responsible for the dictionary has yet to comply — frustrating the Jewish groups that brought the case. The definition reflects a long history of associating Jews with greed and moneylending, […]
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When Marvel offered Sacha Baron Cohen the role of Mephisto, the demonic figure he played in the 2025 series “Ironheart,” the creative team behind the show had a concern. The mostly Black team, he recalled, was aware of the long history of associating Jews with the devil and wanted to make sure the Jewish actor […]
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Dovid Hofstedter was visiting Belarus five years ago when he discovered that a historic Jewish school had turned into something else. Hofstedter, a Canadian rabbi, was joining a group of rabbis from around the world at the Radin Yeshiva, nestled in the small town of Radun in western Belarus. The school was founded in 1869 […]
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An assailant with knives attacked a police officer guarding the Israeli Embassy in Serbia overnight before the officer shot him dead, according to Serbian authorities. Interior Minister Ivica Dačić called the incident a “terrorist attack.” The attacker had two knives and shouted “Allahu Akbar” at the officer 15 minutes after midnight Wednesday morning at the […]
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The Netherlands is withdrawing from the Eurovision Song Contest, reversing an announcement that it would join the event and citing “sensitivity” over Israel’s participation. The Dutch organization that oversees public broadcasting, the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep, or NPO, said on Tuesday that it failed to find sufficient support from broadcasters to ensure a Dutch artist could […]
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What could one purchase with boxes of Crisco, bags of coffee and cartons of cigarettes in chaotic postwar Germany? For Moishe Saksenhaus, a young Holocaust survivor from Belarus, the answer was: two Jewish ritual textiles, hundreds of years old. The seller said he’d stolen them himself from a burning Berlin synagogue on Nov. 9, 1938 […]
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Noah Wyle, the Jewish actor who both mends and steals hearts as a doctor on the hit HBO Max medical drama “The Pitt,” has been named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. Tuesday’s announcement described the actor’s “smoldering intensity” and “leading-man looks,” while noting that “he loves to do the dishes.” Wyle, 55, told People he […]
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A Torah scroll fragment believed to have been used as parcel paper by Nazi SS soldiers is expected to be donated to a US Holocaust remembrance organization after a Norwegian auction house listed it for sale last week, sparking an outcry. A spokesperson for Israel’s Foreign Ministry told JR that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had […]
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