When Michael Smuss died last month at 99, an era of Jewish history came to a close. Smuss was the last known resistance fighter during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when Jews rose up against their Nazi persecutors in one of the most dramatic episodes of the Holocaust. Smuss was not the only prominent survivor to […]
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Adolf Hitler had a sexual disorder that made it more likely for him to have a micro-penis, according to the first-ever analysis of his DNA. He also did not have the Jewish ancestors that some have claimed he had. The analysis is being revealed in detail in “Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator,” a new […]
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Dima and Yuliia Lytvnenko spent their entire lives in Odessa. There, the married couple owned a restaurant, Mama Cassala (Ukrainian for “Mama Said”) and a sausage factory. Both were destroyed in 2022 rocket attacks during the ongoing war with Russia. Fearing for their safety, the Jewish family — they have three children, ages 15, 11 […]
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Pope Leo XIV included the 1997 Holocaust movie “Life Is Beautiful” among his four favorite films of all time. “Life Is Beautiful,” a melodrama by Italian filmmaker and comedian Robert Benigni, follows an Italian Jewish father and his son as they are sent to a Nazi concentration camp. There the father uses humor and misdirection […]
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Actor Gal Gadot has won the Genesis Prize, sometimes called the “Jewish Nobel,” for supporting Israel even as backlash against the country’s actions in Gaza rocked Hollywood. Since Oct. 7, 2023, Gadot has been an outspoken advocate for Israelis taken captive by Hamas. Calling herself “a proud Jew and a proud Israeli,” she said in […]
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ROSWELL, New Mexico — If it weren’t for an Ashkenazi Jew named Stanton T. Friedman, the world might have long ago forgotten what’s come to be known simply as the “Roswell incident.” Instead, countless books, documentaries and made-for-TV dramas have explored the 1947 discovery of mysterious materials found on a New Mexico ranch that Friedman […]
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Comedian Gibran Saleem had never met a Jewish person until starting his graduate studies at New York University more than a decade ago. The child of Pakistani immigrants, Saleem was raised in a Muslim household in northern Virginia where, he said, he was mostly surrounded by people with a similar cultural background. “I knew about […]
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After years of virulent antisemitic comments, the American rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, told an Orthodox rabbi on Tuesday in New York that he was ready to “make amends” for his actions. “I feel really blessed to be able to sit here with you today and just take accountability,” Ye told Rabbi Yoshiyahu […]
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Season 2 of Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” has sparked plenty of debate — much of it centering on how the show depicts Jewish women. Critics have rightly called out the stereotypes: the no-nonsense, overbearing mother, the controlling wife, the self-absorbed sister-in-law. These portrayals can feel dated and, at times, unfair. When Jewish characters appear so […]
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Israeli film director Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s latest film, “The Sea,” is about a young Palestinian boy from the West Bank who is denied a permit to visit Tel Aviv with his classmates. Longing to see the Mediterranean, he courts danger as he sets out to make the journey on his own. The Arabic-language drama was […]
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