Yes, Hanukkah is “late” this year — in 2024, the holiday begins the evening of Wednesday, Dec. 25, and the last candle on the hanukkiah will be lit on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 1. But for all the impatient party people among us, we have good news: This year’s festivities start long before Hanukkah […]
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To celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas, Max and Sophie, siblings in an interfaith family, bake up a batch of gingerbread dreidels. That’s the plot of a new children’s book out this year, but it could be a real-life occurrence this month, when the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Day. Among the children’s books released […]
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New York City’s Other Israel Film Festival, which spotlights marginalized voices in Israel, opens this week with a slate of movies by Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers. It’s a notable return for the festival, which was indefinitely postponed in 2023 in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. This year, it aims to “highlight […]
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After a historic football season at BYU, Jake Retzlaff’s latest honor places him in the company of Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali: having his face grace an iconic box of food. Retzlaff, the star quarterback at Brigham Young University, has nabbed a sponsorship deal with Manischewitz, the Jewish food company’s first-ever sports deal. The deal […]
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It is, perhaps, no great surprise that the son of a talented cantor would grow up chanting prayers during Shabbat and holiday services. Or that Yair Keydar, 11, might perform Hebrew and Yiddish songs during concerts at various Jewish venues. What could not have been anticipated, however, is that Keydar — known for his stirring […]
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In 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius erupted in southern Italy, burying the nearby Roman city of Pompeii in scalding stone and ash. The catastrophe famously entombed, and preserved, the city’s villas, workshops, and a gladiator barracks known as the Caserma dei Gladiatori. Excavators first unearthed the barracks in the late 1700s. Among the ruins they found […]
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The Jewish people have long taken pride in their moniker, People of the Book. But Jews are also people who dance — and not just at weddings and bar or bat mitzvahs, or on holidays like Simchat Torah. Like many other communities, Jews dance to foster and build community, and to come together for spiritual, […]
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A couple hours before Shabbat one week ago, Sam Salz was in the parking lot of the Texas A&M Chabad, running practice football plays by himself. Salz, the 5-foot-6 Orthodox player who made headlines in 2022 for walking onto the Division I Aggies, was in his third season with the team but had yet to […]
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In 1971, legendary British actress Judi Dench played Portia in a production of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” In her book about the playwright published this spring, Dench is candid and straight to the point about the play, which centers on a Jewish moneylender: “I think it’s a horrible play.” Dench, who would usually joyfully […]
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This article was produced as part of (JR)’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. Jewish men often accessorize with yarmulkes; Texan men sometimes accessorize with guns. If a man is both Jewish and Texan, you might find him in synagogue with […]
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