Category: Culture

((JR)) — Joan Nathan had just settled in for a conversation about her most recent book, “My Life in Recipes,” when the food writer became distracted. A media personality was coming for lunch the next day, she said, but she realized she was missing two of the ingredients for the matzo balls she planned on […]

((JR)) — The rabbis of the Talmud are famous for their disagreements. But they presented a united front on eclipses, calling the celestial event “a bad omen for the whole world.” The attitude was common across the ancient world, when eclipses could not be predicted and were experienced as frightening, though astronomy was more developed […]

((JR)) – The editor-in-chief of the prestigious literary magazine Guernica whose decision to publish an Israeli writer’s essay about the war in Gaza last month led to the mass resignation of the magazine’s staff has herself resigned from the publication, saying she disagreed with the decision to retract the essay. Jina Moore announced her resignation […]

((JR)) — Alex Edelman’s acclaimed comedy special “Just For Us,” about his experience as a Jew attending a white supremacist meeting in New York City, first premiered at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in the summer of 2018. Months later, the worst antisemitic attack in American history occurred when a white supremacist killed 11 worshippers […]

((JR)) — The creators of new Passover haggadahs focused on Zionism and American patriotism were working on their projects long before Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel and triggered a war in Gaza and a broad reckoning over both Israel and the place of Jews in the United States. Now, the haggadahs arrive at a […]

((JR)) — Nearly every Easter and Passover season since 1973, Americans have tuned in to ABC to watch Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 sand-and-sandals epic “The Ten Commandments.” This year, Netflix picked the season to premiere “Testament: The Story of Moses,” a docudrama retelling the Exodus with expert commentary from religious leaders across a variety of […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Despite its name, neither shmucks nor boys are the hosts of a Jewish dating podcast called “Schmuckboys.” Instead, the podcast is the brainchild of content creator Libby Amber Walker, a 25-year-old Manhattanite, and video producer Marla Friedson, 27, who moved from New York to Los Angeles in late 2022. The […]

((JR)) — Nearly 70 years ago to the day, an up-and-coming young Algerian Jewish pianist by the name of Maurice El Medioni dashed off a letter to the Moroccan Jewish superstar Samy Elmaghribi in Casablanca. “I have not forgotten you,” he wrote on March 31, 1954. “If I haven’t written you earlier it is because […]