Author: Jesse Orine

(New York Jewish Week) — Picture a group of children having fun at summer camp, learning archery, swimming and playing tug of war, all while the Nazi flag flies next to the American flag. Or a packed crowd at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, where men and women of all ages give the Hitler salute.  These […]

((JR)) — Early in the new drama “Origin,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning Black author Isabel Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) calls her cousin from Berlin to share that, as part of her research into American racism, she intends to learn more about the Nazis’ treatment of Jews.  Her cousin is unimpressed. “Leave Jewish folks alone,” Marion […]

((JR)) — Any Jewish baseball fan knows the names of the two Jews in MLB’s Hall of Fame: Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg. But since Koufax got his Hall call 52 years ago to the day — when he became the youngest player ever elected, at 36 — exactly zero Jewish players have made it […]

(New York Jewish Week) — I’ll be honest: At the outset, a three-hour play about antisemitism did not sound like my idea of a good time. After all, as the editor of a Jewish publication, I spend much of my workdays writing about and thinking about the world’s hatred of Jews. But my trepidation evaporated […]

(New York Jewish Week) —“But what could I do?”  Variations of this question are asked again and again throughout Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s “Our Class.” The play is inspired by the real-life 1941 pogrom in the small Polish village of Jedwabne, in which local residents murdered hundreds of their Jewish neighbors.   And now, at a […]

((JR)) — The story of real Auschwitz survivor Lali Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew who was forced to tattoo numbers on his fellow inmates and implausibly fell in love with a girl he was tattooing, is coming to TV on May 2. “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” a six-part original series based on the bestselling novel of […]

(New York Jewish Week) – When Michael Witkes arrived at his bar mitzvah party, he knew he couldn’t enter to a musical theater song, his preferred genre, because he was already being bullied for being too effeminate and flamboyant. So, he simply told the DJ to just pick any song that matched the vibe of […]

((JR)) — To fete the creator of the TV series that made him famous, Jewish actor and director Rob Reiner turned to Yiddish during the Emmys on Monday night. Reiner was paying tribute to Norman Lear, the Jewish creator of pioneering TV comedies who died last month at 101. Reiner came to prominence for his […]

((JR)) — While the entire music industry went online, John Zorn made sure the albums released by his Tzadik Records label remained stubbornly unavailable on streaming platforms. For fans of the pioneering Jewish musician, the recalcitrance was unsurprising. Long one has been one of the country’s most respected experimental musicians and composers, with much of […]