Steven Spielberg had already donated money to the Yiddish Book Center when he asked if the center’s founder, Aaron Lansky, might fly out to Los Angeles and drop by his office. The filmmaker doesn’t usually meet with the beneficiaries of his philanthropy, Lansky told me recently, but wanted to explain his support for what is […]
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New York City’s first-ever month-long festival celebrating Sephardic Jewish cultural achievements opens on Thursday. New York’s Festival Sefarad — which is inspired by the Festival Séfarad de Montréal, which celebrated its 45th anniversary last month — will include robust programming with more than 40 events, including Shabbat dinners, book talks, tours, workshops, films and concerts. “New […]
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Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi and Naomi met for a book club on a recent sunny Saturday in Prospect Park. Over Kit Kats, Oreos, strawberries and Goldfish crackers, 19 women, all named Naomi, discussed the 2023 book “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the […]
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In 2018, Azealia Banks vowed to never again visit Israel, which she called “nuts.” But sometime between then and Tuesday, she underwent a change of heart: “I’m a Zionist,” she wrote to her 230,800 followers on X. That tweet — in response to a user who asked her “R u a Zionist or ur pro-Palestine?” […]
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It’s film festival season in New York, and dozens of Jewish and Israeli movies will be showing across the city in June — many premiering in New York or the United States for the first time. With the Israeli Film Center Festival at the Marlene Meyerson JCC, the annual Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, and the granddaddy […]
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His bandmate Johnny Greenwood has become one of the most vocal non-Jewish artists rejecting pressure to boycott Israel over its war in Gaza. But famously reticent Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke had not said anything about the war — until now. On Friday, Yorke posted an extended statement to Instagram lamenting the pressure he had faced […]
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It isn’t hard to find members of Neturei Karta, the anti-Zionist activist Orthodox group, in New York City. They show up, habitually, at both anti- and pro-Israel rallies, either as protesters or counter-protesters. And they reliably wear the same outfits — traditional haredi Orthodox dress combined with pro-Palestinian symbols and signs declaring that authentic Judaism […]
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Electric bikes have become a common sight on New York City’s streets, especially among the city’s estimated 65,000 food app delivery workers — a significant portion of whom are immigrants. And while e-bikes can be a fun and efficient way to get around, New York has also been “flooded with uncertified batteries and e-bikes and […]
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Soon after a Chicago theater canceled a screening of a documentary about campus antisemitism, its operators had second thoughts. Facing a firestorm of criticism charging the theater with antisemitism, the operators of Facets Film Forum said they would work with the filmmaker, an Israeli-American Jewish rapper who goes by Kosha Dillz, to reschedule a screening […]
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Marcel Ophuls, the acclaimed French Jewish documentary filmmaker whose landmark 1969 film “The Sorrow and the Pity” compelled France to confront its national shame over its collaborationist behavior during World War II, has died at the age of 97. Ophuls had spent the last years of his life trying to raise the money to complete […]
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