BERLIN — The renowned Indian author Arundhati Roy has announced she will not attend Berlin’s annual international film festival over its jury’s refusal to comment on the war in Gaza. Dozens of past and present participants in the Berlinale, meanwhile, are criticizing the festival for its “silence” on Gaza in an open letter published on […]
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Frederick Wiseman became a globally celebrated documentary filmmaker by capturing the inner workings of a wide range of social institutions, from governments to schools, small towns, and cultural centers. But years before they opened their doors to his cameras, institutions were shutting Wiseman out — because he was Jewish. “I’m very aware of my Jewish […]
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The U.S. ambassador to Belgium is demanding that Belgium end an investigation into mohels who may have been using unsafe practices while circumcising Jewish babies. Bill White made the demand, an unusual intervention into another country’s domestic affairs, in a post on X on Monday directed toward Belgium’s minister of health. “To the (very rude) […]
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The governing body for the Olympics is defending its sale of a limited-edition T-shirt commemorating the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin under Adolf Hitler’s Germany. The $42 shirt, which was condemned by Jewish organizations, has already sold out from the official Olympics online store. A spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee acknowledged the Games’ Nazi […]
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A slew of prominent voices, including the French foreign minister, have called for the resignation of United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese over her latest comments about Israel. Albanese, the U.N.’s Palestinian rights envoy, is a vocal critic of Israel who has drawn sustained rebuke from multiple U.S. administrations over comments seen as veering sharply […]
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The Israeli Union of Social Workers could be booted from a global federation after at least three countries called for a vote on its expulsion on allegations of ethical breaches. The countries — Ireland, Spain and Greece — charged that the Israeli union should have moved to seek exemptions from military service for its members […]
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Update: The Anti-Defamation League has retracted its identification of a social media account it had attributed to the Tumbler Ridge shooter, a day after making it. In a statement to JR, a spokesperson for the ADL said, “A preliminary investigation uncovered an X account appearing to belong to the shooter. After further investigation, that X […]
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Thousands of protesters demonstrated across Australia on Monday against Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who traveled to the country at the invitation of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following the Bondi massacre. Upon arrival, Herzog visited the site of the antisemitic terror attack in Sydney, where 15 people were killed while attending a Hanukkah event in […]
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Marc Shaiman likes to joke that for half a century he’s been “the funny Jewish guy at the piano,” a role as old as vaudeville and as enduring as a well-timed joke. But behind the punchline is a career that traces a distinctly Jewish path through American show business: a bar mitzvah where he improvised […]
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I was late to the havurah movement — the egalitarian, counterculture congregations that blended grassroots spirituality, social activism and skepticism about mainstream synagogues and the Jewish establishment. By the time we joined Farbrengen in Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s, the founders of the movement were sprouting gray hairs and more than a few were […]
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