Barbra Streisand, Billy Crystal, Jamie Lee Curtis and more headline Claims Conference Hanukkah event for Holocaust survivors

(JR) — The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany hosted its seventh annual International Holocaust Survivors Night event Monday with a slate of Jewish celebrities, communal leaders and heads of state — many of whom drew connections between Holocaust memory, the ongoing war in Israel and subsequent rise of antisemitism around the world. The […]

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Fizz ed: The Brooklyn Seltzer Museum tells the fascinating history of ‘Jewish champagne’

(New York Jewish Week) — On a recent Sunday in Brooklyn, some 100 people, mostly families, gathered for a Hanukkah party that offered something a bit different than the typical latkes and games of dreidel. Instead, there was a factory tour, instructions on how to manufacture a classic seltzer bottle and freshly-made egg creams. That’s […]

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‘Life is Beautiful’ hit US theaters 25 years ago. The film’s Holocaust humor raised issues that linger today.

((JR)) — Ferne Pearlstein re-watched “Life is Beautiful,” Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-winning Holocaust film, around 2015. She was working on her documentary “The Last Laugh,” which focused on the possibilities — and limits — of Holocaust humor. Pearlstein was struck not by how subversive Benigni’s film felt, but how tame it seemed. In the 2000s, she […]

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Javier Milei cites Hanukkah story, gives menorah to Zelensky during inauguration as Argentina’s president

(JR) — Javier Milei invoked the story of the Maccabees in his inaugural address as Argentina’s president on Sunday, extending the right-wing populist’s prominent fascination with Judaism as he celebrated his own improbable victory. “It is not by chance that this assumption takes place in the holiday of Hanukkah, the festival of light, and that […]

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