The governing body for the Olympics is defending its sale of a limited-edition T-shirt commemorating the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin under Adolf Hitler’s Germany. The $42 shirt, which was condemned by Jewish organizations, has already sold out from the official Olympics online store. A spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee acknowledged the Games’ Nazi […]
Continue Reading
Marc Shaiman likes to joke that for half a century he’s been “the funny Jewish guy at the piano,” a role as old as vaudeville and as enduring as a well-timed joke. But behind the punchline is a career that traces a distinctly Jewish path through American show business: a bar mitzvah where he improvised […]
Continue Reading
I was late to the havurah movement — the egalitarian, counterculture congregations that blended grassroots spirituality, social activism and skepticism about mainstream synagogues and the Jewish establishment. By the time we joined Farbrengen in Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s, the founders of the movement were sprouting gray hairs and more than a few were […]
Continue Reading
The legendary director Stephen Spielberg has become the ninth Jew to secure “EGOT” status after winning a Grammy for producing a documentary about the music of John Williams. Spielberg was awarded the Grammy for producing “Music by John Williams,” which won best music documentary, before the televised ceremony on Sunday. The win makes him the […]
Continue Reading
Italian rapper Ghali’s slated performance at the opening ceremony for this year’s Winter Olympics in Milan has drawn criticism from Italian leaders over his past activism against Israel. Ghali Amdouni, a prominent Milan-born rapper of Tunisian parents, will be joined by a host of performers including Andrea Bocelli and Mariah Carey during the opening ceremony […]
Continue Reading
I’ve never read a Holocaust chronicle quite like Lore Segal’s autobiographical 1964 novel, “Other People’s Houses.” Mordant, unsentimental and sometimes painfully honest, it’s the story of an Austrian girl sent to England on the Kindertransport, as well as a portrait of the artist as a young refugee. More than one of her legions of admirers […]
Continue Reading
Anna is a misunderstood sixth-grade girl who communicates with the ghosts of her Jewish ancestors. Teased by her classmates and worried-over by her family, she finds comfort and understanding with her Bubbe and her beloved Jewish traditions. “Neshama,” Marcella Pixley’s lyrically written novel-in-verse, won the gold medal for Jewish children’s literature for middle-grade readers from […]
Continue Reading
Actor Lizzy Caplan always thought it was unusual she didn’t know of any relatives who were victims of the Holocaust. In Tuesday’s episode of the PBS celebrity genealogy series “Finding Your Roots,” Caplan learns that one of her ancestors survived four camps — and that his wife and baby were murdered. “It was my friends […]
Continue Reading
It was a “Supreme” Oscar-nominations morning for Timothée Chalamet and the heavily Jewish period sports comedy he stars in. “Marty Supreme” picked up nine Academy Award nominations Thursday, including best picture and best actor for the red-hot Chalamet, the 30-year-old thespian who is seen as likely to nab his first Oscar for the role. The […]
Continue Reading
When Judd Apatow was growing up on Long Island, there was no debate about who ruled the comedy world. “Nobody was funnier than Mel Brooks,” Apatow once wrote. “Mel Brooks was the king.” Decades later, after himself becoming a prolific Jewish filmmaker and comedy impresario, Apatow has turned that childhood certainty into a sweeping tribute. […]
Continue Reading
