Author: Jesse Orine

((JR)) — In the second season of “The Nanny,” the sitcom she wrote and starred in, Fran Drescher’s character, Fran Fine, refuses to enter a hotel where the busboys are striking. “I’m sorry, but the Fines don’t cross picket lines,” she tells her companion, the father of the family she works for. “It’s against our religion.” […]

((JR)) — When Michael Neuman found out his run on this season of the NBC obstacle course competition show “American Ninja Warrior” would not air, the competitor inside of him was crushed. Part of the filming schedule had conflicted with his Shabbat observance. But Neuman was even more disappointed that he would not get to […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Some 50,000 gay men and women were imprisoned by Nazis during the Holocaust. Of them, approximately 10,000 to 15,000 were held in concentration camps, and nearly all of those who were sent to the camps died there. And yet, many stories of LGBTQ+ people who died in Nazi prisons are […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of a new series, Sign Post, which explores street signs and other locations around the city that are named in honor of Jewish New Yorkers. (New York Jewish Week) — For more than 50 years, Jewish dancer and choreographer Anna Sokolow would sit at the window of her apartment […]

((JR)) — In January, 25 alumni of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Kutz Camp gathered on their former campus. Although the historic summer camp known for fostering Reform leadership and leaving a mark on modern Jewish music had shuttered in 2019, the alumni were back for a preview screening of “Theater Camp,” a comedy film […]

((JR)) — Broadway gave out its Tony Awards last month, and as I kept whispering to my wife, it was “a big night for the Jews.” “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s Holocaust drama, won best play. “Parade,” about the lynching of a Jewish man in the American South, won best musical revival. Miriam Silverman (“The Sign in […]

((JR)) — The announcement this week that Katerina McCrimmon would star as Fanny Brice in the national tour of “Funny Girl,” the Broadway musical about a trailblazing Jewish comedian, has ignited criticism from some Jewish actors who say the role should be played only by someone who identifies as Jewish. The casting, announced on Tuesday, […]