After years of virulent antisemitic comments, the American rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, told an Orthodox rabbi on Tuesday in New York that he was ready to “make amends” for his actions. “I feel really blessed to be able to sit here with you today and just take accountability,” Ye told Rabbi Yoshiyahu […]
Continue Reading
Season 2 of Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” has sparked plenty of debate — much of it centering on how the show depicts Jewish women. Critics have rightly called out the stereotypes: the no-nonsense, overbearing mother, the controlling wife, the self-absorbed sister-in-law. These portrayals can feel dated and, at times, unfair. When Jewish characters appear so […]
Continue Reading
In an unprecedented rebuke, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid announced Wednesday that his centrist Yesh Atid party is withdrawing from the World Zionist Organization, accusing the 127-year-old quasi-governmental institution of being mired in corruption and political patronage. Saying that corruption was pushing Diaspora Jews away from Israel, he also said he would push to nationalize […]
Continue Reading
Israeli film director Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s latest film, “The Sea,” is about a young Palestinian boy from the West Bank who is denied a permit to visit Tel Aviv with his classmates. Longing to see the Mediterranean, he courts danger as he sets out to make the journey on his own. The Arabic-language drama was […]
Continue Reading
Jamie Field was still a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in New York City when she watched the first season of “Squid Game: The Challenge” and saw a call to action flash across the screen: “Could this be you? Apply now.” It was 2023, and Field, who had long gravitated toward other reality television […]
Continue Reading
Last year, Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall held its 10th anniversary of a Hanukkah concert series that was rebooted 70 years after it was halted by the Nazis, in what some Dutch Jews saw as a repudiation of antisemitism that had swelled during the war in Gaza. This year, the concert has been called off — […]
Continue Reading
More than 80 years after she parachuted into Yugoslavia as part of the only military operation in World War II that attempted to rescue Jews, the Jewish poet and kibbutznik Hannah Senesh is having her moment. The play “Hannah Senesh” is running through Nov. 9 at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene in New York — […]
Continue Reading
Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, says it has reached a major milestone in its efforts to uncover the identities of all of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, crossing the 5-million name threshold with the help of AI. That leaves 1 million names still unknown from the tally of 6 million murdered Jews that is […]
Continue Reading
Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin need no introduction. Since their son, Hersh, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, taken hostage in Gaza and, later, murdered by his captors, the American-Israeli couple have become, for many, the personification of an entire nation’s pain. They didn’t want this. They […]
Continue Reading
JERUSALEM — An early sign of moderation and compromise among the delegates here this week for the 39th World Zionist Congress appeared to shatter late Wednesday amid revelations that supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to install his son Yair in a key leadership role. The drama is roiling the high-stakes gathering that is often […]
Continue Reading
