Category: Culture

(JTA) – Indy’s going to sock it to the Third Reich once more. The fifth movie in the Indiana Jones series will plop Harrison Ford’s heroic archaeologist into “a castle swarming with Nazis” in the year 1944, according to new plot details revealed in Empire Magazine this week. Digital de-aging technology will be used to […]

(New York Jewish Week) — “You never know how people are going to respond,” says Jewish comedian Ari Shaffir, referring to his new standup special, “Jew,” which has more than 3 million views (and counting) on YouTube.  The self-released, 90-minute showcase of stories and jokes goes deep into his life story, including his studies at […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Despite being named for a Jewish bill of divorce, ‘The Gett” is a new off-Broadway play that began as a marriage between a Reform synagogue in Brooklyn and a West Village theater company that specializes in “diverse, challenging and provocative” works. At Park Slope’s Congregation Beth Elohim, Associate Rabbi Matt […]

(JTA) — When the New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor was reporting the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual assault story that earned her a Pulitzer prize, the powerful Hollywood producer and his team tried to influence her by using something they had in common: They are both Jewish.  “Weinstein put [Jewishness] on the table and seemed […]

(JTA) — Zoe Dressner and Margeaux Wolberg had just one month free between graduating from college and when they were due in Jerusalem to begin rabbinical school. So, they figured, in addition to packing, finding an apartment and nailing down the logistics of a 6,000-mile move, why not get married? At 23 and 22, respectively, […]

(JTA) — Prominent Jewish comedians have begun to weigh in on fellow comic Dave Chappelle’s “Saturday Night Live” monologue in which he joked about Jews running Hollywood. The verdict from his peers has been mixed after Chappelle delivered a 15-minute set that the head of the Anti-Defamation League said appeared to “normalize” and “popularize” antisemitism. […]

(JTA) — One of two Jewish women tapped for the next season of a popular reality TV show has backed out, citing “a torrent of antisemitism” that she said she had received since the cast was announced. Lizzy Savetsky, 37, had been set to appear in the 14th season of “Real Housewives of New York,” […]

(New York Jewish Week) — As a Hasidic mom raising a family in Houston, Leah Lax had seven children ages 9 and under — including an infant, and a toddler with health issues, born just 11 months apart. When she found herself unexpectedly pregnant again, she realized she needed to have an abortion. That scene […]

(JTA) – On “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, Dave Chappelle really wanted his audience to know there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood. “I’ve been to Hollywood, this is just what I saw,” he said during his widely dissected monologue. “It’s a lot of Jews. Like, a lot.” While suggesting that it might not […]

(New York Jewish Week) – A Catholic university may be the unlikeliest place for what may be the largest depository dedicated to the Jewish history of the Bronx.  But at Fordham University — the private, Jesuit institution in the Bronx — decades worth of archival documents and artifacts from the local Jewish community have found […]