Author: Jesse Orine

((JR)) – In a 2022 documentary on the making of the 1971 film “Fiddler on the Roof,” Norman Jewison relayed a by-now familiar anecdote: When producers of the Broadway musical approached him for the directing job, he had to sheepishly inform them that he wasn’t actually Jewish. He got the job anyway, leading generations of […]

((JR)) — A lavishly illustrated children’s book about a Chinese Jewish family who celebrate both Rosh Hashanah and Lunar New Year is among the top winners of this year’s Sydney Taylor Book Awards for Jewish children’s books. Meanwhile, the publisher of the imprint behind the popular Sammy Spider Jewish holiday books won an award for her […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Picture a group of children having fun at summer camp, learning archery, swimming and playing tug of war, all while the Nazi flag flies next to the American flag. Or a packed crowd at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, where men and women of all ages give the Hitler salute.  These […]

((JR)) — Early in the new drama “Origin,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning Black author Isabel Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) calls her cousin from Berlin to share that, as part of her research into American racism, she intends to learn more about the Nazis’ treatment of Jews.  Her cousin is unimpressed. “Leave Jewish folks alone,” Marion […]

((JR)) — Any Jewish baseball fan knows the names of the two Jews in MLB’s Hall of Fame: Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg. But since Koufax got his Hall call 52 years ago to the day — when he became the youngest player ever elected, at 36 — exactly zero Jewish players have made it […]

(New York Jewish Week) — I’ll be honest: At the outset, a three-hour play about antisemitism did not sound like my idea of a good time. After all, as the editor of a Jewish publication, I spend much of my workdays writing about and thinking about the world’s hatred of Jews. But my trepidation evaporated […]

(New York Jewish Week) —“But what could I do?”  Variations of this question are asked again and again throughout Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s “Our Class.” The play is inspired by the real-life 1941 pogrom in the small Polish village of Jedwabne, in which local residents murdered hundreds of their Jewish neighbors.   And now, at a […]

((JR)) — The story of real Auschwitz survivor Lali Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew who was forced to tattoo numbers on his fellow inmates and implausibly fell in love with a girl he was tattooing, is coming to TV on May 2. “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” a six-part original series based on the bestselling novel of […]