Culture -

Mordecai Kaplan wanted Jews to choose Judaism. Why they didn’t was the bane of his life.

April 7, 2026April 7, 2026Jesse Orine

Reconstructionist Judaism, wrote the Jewish sociologist Charles Liebman almost 60 years ago, “comes closer than any other movement or school of thought to articulating the meaning of Judaism for American Jews.” By emphasizing belonging over rote observance, personal fulfillment over inherited obligation, and Jewish “civilization” over theology, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s brainchild seemed poised to capture […]

Sponsors back out of London festival that invited Ye to headline despite record of antisemitism

April 6, 2026April 6, 2026Jesse Orine

A major London music festival is facing a wave of canceled sponsorships as well as criticism from Prime Minister Keir Starmer after after announcing that Ye, the rapper with a record of antisemitism, would be its headliner. Ye, who recently apologized for a years-long spree of antisemitic and Nazi rhetoric, is slated to headline all […]

AI is already coming for your jobs. Your Passover song parodies may be next.

March 31, 2026March 31, 2026Jesse Orine

The publisher Hachette recently canceled a horror novel, “Shy Girl,” after it was revealed to have been written with the help of AI. OpenAI shut down its social media app Sora after complaints that users were sharing inflammatory deepfake videos of Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mister Rogers, among others. In January, the […]

Romania’s secret police trailed a Jewish photographer. Decades later, their files have become a film.

March 24, 2026March 24, 2026Jesse Orine

BERLIN — He had wild hair and wore jeans. He was American — and Jewish. He had a camera. That was enough to trigger surveillance by the notorious secret police of communist Romania, the Securitate. Now, 41 years after photojournalist Edward Serotta boldly stepped behind the Iron Curtain, we can see just how obsessed the Romanians […]

Matzah pizza, Miriam and a ‘HUG-gadah’ star in new children’s books for Passover in 2026

March 23, 2026March 23, 2026Jesse Orine

Welcoming the stranger — and opening one’s home to guests at the seder — is a defining theme of Passover, the eight-day spring holiday known as the Festival of Freedom. That idea echoes through several of this year’s new Passover children’s books, many of which also highlight the prophetess Miriam and feature a lively cast […]

In Broadway’s ‘Giant,’ Roald Dahl is a warped messenger for a vital debate about Israel

March 23, 2026March 23, 2026Jesse Orine

Roald Dahl is a terrible messenger for a serious conversation about Jews and Israel. Which is part of what makes “Giant,” the new Broadway play about the beloved children’s author’s 1983 antisemitic outbursts, so unsettling. The play asks urgent, complicated questions about Israel, Jewish solidarity and Diaspora responsibility — but it puts them in the […]

‘Jew-FK Jr.’: Meet the Connecticut dad and children’s book author who won a JFK Jr. lookalike contest

March 20, 2026March 20, 2026Jesse Orine

Since he was 22, Andrew Ginsburg has been inundated with comments that he resembles the late John F. Kennedy Jr. Now 46, he says those comparisons have reached a new high, fueled by the spotlight on JFK Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, in the popular new FX series “Love Story.” The show, which […]

Azealia Banks is done with Israel, again: ‘On second thought, F—K ISRAEL’

March 18, 2026March 18, 2026Jesse Orine

It’s been months since Azealia Banks turned heads when she declared she was a “Zionist” on social media in June and gave a concert in Israel for the two-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks. But in a tirade on X this week, the rapper reversed course, lambasting the toll of the United States and […]

Is Netanyahu dead? Has Tel Aviv been flattened? AI videos are dominating the Iran war.

March 16, 2026March 16, 2026Jesse Orine

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted an unusual video this week: of himself buying coffee at a Jerusalem-area cafe. It was hardly typical fare for wartime, when Netanyahu can more often be seen giving recorded addresses or touring missile damage within Israel. But the prime minister had come with an important mission: to debunk viral […]

A Jewish writers initiative launches its first film: a roommate comedy about a Holocaust survivor and his gay grandson

March 5, 2026March 5, 2026Jesse Orine

Noam Ash didn’t expect his own life to become the inspiration for his first feature film. But that’s what happened when the then-27-year-old was living with his grandparents in 2018. The screenwriter’s conversations with his manager about another script he was working on kept turning to how he had moved in with his Holocaust survivor […]