((JR)) — When Mel Brooks was filming “The Producers,” he recalled an executive approaching him and saying, “The curly-haired guy—he’s funny looking. Fire him.” Brooks said he would fire the actor, but never intended to actually do it. And when “The Producers” came out, it became a classic in no small part because of that […]
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((JR)) — Is Louis Vuitton really taking sides in the Israel-Hamas war by selling an $820 T-shirt with a graphic logo in the colors of the Palestinian flag? Some people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict believe the answer is yes, after a shirt with the LV logo in magenta, green, black and white hit shelves […]
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(JR) — The University of Turin is suspending a collaboration agreement with Israeli universities and research institutes after a wave of student protests over the Israel-Hamas war. The school’s academic senate voted on Wednesday to ban participation in an initiative financing joint research projects between Italy and Israel while rejecting calls for a broader cessation […]
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(JR) — Internet sleuths scouring photographs to understand the befuddling tumult in Britain’s royal family believe they have solved a different mystery: what happened to artifacts taken from China during the Qing Dynasty. Their conclusion, in turn, is drawing renewed attention to the imperial spoils of one of the wealthiest and most influential Jewish families […]
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(New York Jewish Week) — Jewish New York was once defined by pushcarts and peddlers; immigrants arriving through Ellis Island; densely packed kosher restaurants; lively Yiddish theater and daily newspapers in Yiddish and Ladino. Those days are long gone — but that period is just some of the Jewish history captured in documents and ephemera […]
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((JR)) – More than 1,200 Jewish Hollywood creatives have signed onto a statement rejecting the speech criticizing Israel by “The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer at this month’s Academy Awards. The signatories include “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” writer Amy Sherman-Palladino, horror director Eli Roth and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, as well as several show-business […]
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From an early age, Eric Rosenthal was passionate about human rights and the idea of tikkun olam — repairing the world. He ascribes his interests to his Jewish roots and upbringing in places like Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Niger and Italy, the remote postings where his father’s career as a U.S. government aid official took the […]
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((JR)) — Washington Monthly, a center-left magazine, has published an essay by an Israeli writer and translator that was retracted last week from the progressive literary journal Guernica after that magazine’s editors and co-publisher accused it of being an “apologia for Zionism.” Joanna Chen’s “From the Edges of a Broken World” went up on the […]
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((JR)) — A superhero who saves the day; the return of a beloved multi-generational family of Jewish bears; a budding young nonbinary scientist who’s an heir to Frankenstein and a folk-style Ethiopian tale are among the stars of the new Passover children’s books published in 2024. The titles come from new entrants to the Jewish […]
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KYIV, Ukraine (JR) — Before their country was plunged into war, the synagogue in Kropyvnytskyi, a city in central Ukraine, was lucky to get 20 people to attend Shabbat services. But two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the arrival of more than a dozen Jewish families from the country’s traumatized Eastern regions has invigorated […]
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