The Leonard Bernstein biopic ‘Maestro’ has been plagued by ‘Jewface’ controversy. Many Jewish fans don’t care.

NEW YORK ((JR)) — Like many other fans heading into Monday night’s New York Film Festival screening of “Maestro,” Alexander Gorlin was aware of the “Jewface” controversy that has plagued the film. But acting is a “cross cultural” exercise, said Gorlin, who is Jewish. His architectural firm has designed several Jewish houses of worship. “If […]

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25 years after opening, Yiddish Book Center overhauls its core exhibit for a wider audience

AMHERST, Massachusetts ((JR)) — Since its opening in 1997, the Yiddish Book Center has wowed visitors with its architecture. A Jewish village resurrected on a college campus in sylvan Amherst, Massachusetts, the building conveys the Center’s mission: to rescue and revive a language spoken for over 1,000 years by Ashkenazi Jews in German-speaking lands, Eastern Europe […]

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25 years after opening, Yiddish Book Center overhauls its core exhibit for a wider audience

AMHERST, Massachusetts ((JR)) — Since its opening in 1997, the Yiddish Book Center has wowed visitors with its architecture. A Jewish village resurrected on a college campus in sylvan Amherst, Massachusetts, the building conveys the Center’s mission: to rescue and revive a language spoken for over 1,000 years by Ashkenazi Jews in German-speaking lands, Eastern Europe […]

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A chance discovery connected US soccer star Matt Turner to his Jewish roots

(JR) — Unexpected events converged not only to forge Matt Turner’s career as a professional soccer player. They enabled him to find Jewish roots he never knew he had. Turner, 29, the starting goalkeeper for the U.S. men’s national team and Nottingham Forest in England’s Premier League, discovered those roots in finding his paternal great-grandmother’s […]

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85 years after Kristallnacht, Germany to begin rebuilding grand synagogue in Hamburg

(JR) — More than 80 years after one of Germany’s most prominent synagogues was destroyed on Kristallnacht, the Jewish community of Hamburg has taken ownership of the building’s site and is set to begin rebuilding it. The site of the Bornplatz Synagogue, a neo-Romanesque building dedicated in 1906 that had a 1,200-seat sanctuary and was […]

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A Jewish cemetery in Belarus was destroyed by Nazis. Now its headstones are being made into a memorial.

(JR) — Earlier this year, the local Jewish community of Brest, Belarus received a call from a young couple who had just purchased a fixer-upper house and needed some help with a difficult situation: Their basement was built from old Jewish gravestones. For nearly two decades, the Jewish community — and in recent years, the […]

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Elon Musk to join Ben Shapiro and other Jewish men for live chat on antisemitism and free speech

((JR)) — Leaning into his latest controversies, Elon Musk is planning to join a bevy of Jewish men for a live chat on Thursday. The conversation will focus on “X, anti-Semitism, and the future of free speech,” according to conservative pundit and social media personality Ben Shapiro, who announced Wednesday that Musk would join him […]

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