Author: Jesse Orine

((JR)) – A South Florida Jewish community center has landed in the middle of the state’s culture wars after canceling a talk by an author whose novel focuses on race in America. The Mandel JCC in West Palm Beach had booked Jewish author Rachel Beanland to headline a $100-a-plate luncheon in January 2024. The plan […]

((JR)) — The makeup artist who styled Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein has apologized for creating the prosthetic nose that some say perpetuates stereotypes about Jews. Kazu Hiro said at a Venice International Film Festival press conference on Saturday that he was not expecting the swift backlash to early images of Cooper in character that […]

(New York Jewish Week) — The 15,000 people who gathered in Madison Square Garden for Israeli pop star Ishay Ribo’s concert on Sunday night were treated to an unofficial kickoff of the High Holiday season, less than two weeks before Rosh Hashanah. Ribo, an Orthodox musician who became the first Israeli to headline the New […]

((JR)) — The reviews are in: “You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah” is the best-reviewed movie of Adam Sandler’s blockbuster-filled career. It’s a hit with streaming audiences, too. The Netflix movie about teen drama and the hallowed Jewish coming of age ceremony co-stars his real-life wife and daughters. That casting decision has […]

((JR)) — Amy Winehouse, the Jewish singer and songwriter whose soulful tunes about her dark personal life became influential pop hits, would have turned 40 this year. Her debut album “Frank” also turns 20 next month. To mark the moment and to raise money for the Amy Winehouse Foundation, Winehouse’s family collected never-before-seen photographs, handwritten […]

((JR)) — In the late 1960s, the Bronx was at war. Rival gangs were fighting over territory in neighborhoods that had been devastated by drugs, poverty and the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway. Benjamin “Yellow Benjy” Melendez was the son of Puerto Rican Jewish immigrants and the leader of a multicultural gang called the […]

(New York Jewish Week) — In the late 1960s, the Bronx was at war. Rival gangs were fighting over territory in neighborhoods that had been devastated by drugs, poverty and the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway. Benjamin “Yellow Benjy” Melendez was the son of Puerto Rican Jewish immigrants and the leader of a multicultural […]