This week was bittersweet for football fans, but especially for Pittsburgh Steeler fans. Legendary Steeler running-back Franco Harris passed away on Tuesday, and Friday marks the 50th anniversary of Franco’s Immaculate Reception, the play that the NFL designated the greatest in its 80-year history. I was lucky enough to be at Three Rivers Stadium in […]
Continue Reading
(New York Jewish Week) — The Geiks weren’t your typical Bronx working-class Jewish family. The father ran a mob-protected trucking company in Manhattan’s Garment District. Another brother, an NYPD detective, chauffeured organized crime couriers around the city with illicit cash. A kid sister visited a Las Vegas casino where the tween was set up with […]
Continue Reading
ISTANBUL (JTA) — “Shtisel,” a TV series about haredi Orthodox Jews that became an international phenomenon after Netflix picked it up in 2018, is getting a Muslim makeover for Turkish audiences, according to Turkish media. A new show titled “Ömer” has begun production and will premiere sometime in 2023 on Turkey’s STAR TV, Turkish media […]
Continue Reading
(New York Jewish Week) — As New York gears up for a new landscape of legal marijuana, one rabbi will bring his experience retailing weed to help others “squeeze more out of life.” Rabbi James Kahn is part of a company, “Keep It A 100,” that is one of the first to be licensed to […]
Continue Reading
(JTA) — Jewish leaders in Italy had strong words for the president of the country’s parliament after he published a post on Instagram honoring the history of the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, a neo-fascist party founded in the wake of World War II. Ignazio la Russa, a senator from Cologno Monzese, a municipality in […]
Continue Reading
(JTA) — Providing a window into Jewish communities across the globe, on the ground — from European metropolises to more isolated outposts — has always been part of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s mission. This year, our reporters ventured into places where Jews and Jewish life are at risk, including Ukraine — where we sent several […]
Continue Reading
RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — Jewish groups in Brazil are calling for a retraction after one prominent Brazilian economist questioned the loyalty of a Brazilian Jewish economist during an interview streamed by a widely viewed news organization. The comments were about Ilan Goldfajn, a Brazilian-Israeli economist who was recently elected president of the Inter-American Development Bank, […]
Continue Reading
(JTA) – Panettone, the fluffy, fruit-speckled archetypal Christmas cake, is this holiday season’s “it” dessert — and the creator of perhaps the most coveted version in the United States is an Israeli-American Jew. The New York Times this week credited baker Roy Shvartzapel with spearheading “the American panettone revolution” through his business From Roy. Shvartzapel has […]
Continue Reading
(New York Jewish Week) — The classic and very Jewish 1988 film “Crossing Delancey” is one of those movies that feels both extremely of its time and also completely timeless. Director Joan Micklin Silver’s film has all the classic rom-com trappings: A woman who’s torn between two men (and to that end, two worlds); complaints about […]
Continue Reading
(New York Jewish Week) — For photographer and Instagram blogger Mordechai Rubinstein, seeing his face plastered all over the subway this holiday season has been an unexpected delight. Rubinstein is decidedly not a dermatologist (a la subway-famous Dr. Zizmor), nor is he hawking subscription meds or beauty products. Rather, Rubinstein is featured in Nordstrom’s prominent […]
Continue Reading
