Kelly Chervin’s book club doesn’t usually discuss what it means to be Jewish. But over a candlelit dinner last week in the basement of Balaboosta, an Israeli restaurant in the West Village, a dozen Lit Club attendees explored themes of Jewish identity, memory, diaspora and history. The conversation was wide-ranging and highly personal, even though […]
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Looking for a fun way to celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer? A howlingly funny film about a Jewish family opens in New York City on Friday. Directed by Daniel Robbins, “Bad Shabbos” takes place entirely over the course of one Friday evening, as a Jewish family gathers for a Shabbat meal at their parents’ […]
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The morning after a shooter killed two Israeli embassy aides at a Jewish event in Washington, D.C., incendiary rapper Ye took to X with an unexpected message: “I am done with antisemitism.” Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has become well known for antisemitic rants and provocations, including a song he debuted earlier this month […]
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A member of the Irish rap group Kneecap has been charged with a terrorism offense for displaying a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London last year, a month after the group displayed a “F— Israel” projection at the U.S. music festival Coachella. London’s Metropolitan Police announced the charge in a press release Wednesday, saying […]
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A debut novel about a Ukrainian Jewish World War II veteran, and family secrets unveiled against the backdrop of the 2014 Russian-Ukrainian war, has won the 2025 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. “Your Presence Is Mandatory” by Sasha Vasilyuk is the second book by an immigrant from the former Soviet Union to win the […]
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In 2021 at a viewing party for “WrestleMania,” the world’s flagship pro wrestling event, Oren Treitman and his fellow Israeli fans cheered for Sami Zayn. In the larger WWE storyline, Zayn had taken on the persona of a conspiracy theorist, filming a documentary to prove the promotion was deliberately repressing him. But the grizzly, redheaded […]
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A group of Christian Zionists in South Korea opened the country’s first Holocaust museum Monday, a project they say was driven by a local rise in antisemitism during the Gaza war. The museum was founded by the Korea Israel Bible Institute (KIBI), a Christian organization established in 1994, in the city of Paju. The Holocaust […]
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Organizers of Eurovision are defending its voting system after several countries’ broadcasters raised questions about Israel’s victory in the international song contest’s audience poll. Israel’s Yuval Raphael took second place in the widely-watched contest last weekend, buoyed by a runaway first-place finish in the audience vote, in which viewers in the competing countries can cast […]
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Since its founding, StandStrong — a Chicago-based non-profit that wants Jews to have the confidence and skills to defend themselves — has hosted self-defense classes at Jewish community centers, synagogues and Jewish summer camps across the country. But earlier this month, they brought their self-defense training, which draws from martial arts like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and […]
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BERDYCHIV, Ukraine — Back in early 2022, Hennadiy Kysliuk felt that he was on the verge of a breakthrough in his mission to create a memorial at the site where Nazis massacred this Ukrainian city’s Jews in six pits on a single day in 1941. Kysliuk, who is a leader of Berdychiv’s Orthodox Jewish community, thought […]
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