Category: Culture

((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 […]

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. ((JR)) — From who is behind the camera to who is in front of it, Hollywood receives a lot of attention for its representation of minority and […]

(New York Jewish Week) — After 38 years on the Upper West Side, the legendary comedy club Stand Up NY has moved downtown — to Times Square.   The venue on Broadway and 78th Street, which has hosted the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Robin Williams, Pete Davidson and Amy Schumer, along with many other […]

((JR)) — When Mel Brooks was filming “The Producers,” he recalled an executive approaching him and saying, “The curly-haired guy—he’s funny looking. Fire him.”  Brooks said he would fire the actor, but never intended to actually do it. And when “The Producers” came out, it became a classic in no small part because of that […]

((JR)) — Is Louis Vuitton really taking sides in the Israel-Hamas war by selling an $820 T-shirt with a graphic logo in the colors of the Palestinian flag? Some people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict believe the answer is yes, after a shirt with the LV logo in magenta, green, black and white hit shelves […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Jewish New York was once defined by pushcarts and peddlers; immigrants arriving through Ellis Island; densely packed kosher restaurants; lively Yiddish theater and daily newspapers in Yiddish and Ladino.  Those days are long gone — but that period is just some of the Jewish history captured in documents and ephemera […]

((JR)) – More than 1,200 Jewish Hollywood creatives have signed onto a statement rejecting the speech criticizing Israel by “The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer at this month’s Academy Awards. The signatories include “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” writer Amy Sherman-Palladino, horror director Eli Roth and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, as well as several show-business […]

((JR)) — Washington Monthly, a center-left magazine, has published an essay by an Israeli writer and translator that was retracted last week from the progressive literary journal Guernica after that magazine’s editors and co-publisher accused it of being an “apologia for Zionism.” Joanna Chen’s “From the Edges of a Broken World” went up on the […]