This past Saturday night, during Selichot services, I led members of our congregation in our first recitation of “Ashamnu,” the confessional acrostic that we accompany by striking our hearts. There will be many recitations of the confessional to follow in the coming weeks. Yet it is the first — said late at night, and not, […]
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Jewish author Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” is part comic-book origin story, part immigrant saga and part love letter to New York City at its most scrappy and dazzling. Published in 2000, the novel follows the trajectory of Joe Kavalier, a Houdini-obsessed escape artist who flees Nazi-occupied Prague, […]
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Two 17th-century paintings have been taken off the auction block after a Holocaust art restitution organization determined that they had been looted from a German Jew’s collection in France during World War II. The two paintings, believed to be by Dutch artist Ambrosius Bosschaert, were set to be sold at an auction house in Newark, […]
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An Israeli conductor called for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza during concert at Royal Albert Hall in London Thursday, warning the audience that “every moment that passes puts the safety of millions at risk.” “In my heart, there is great pain now, every day, for months. I come from Israel and live there. […]
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When critically acclaimed stand-up comedian Gianmarco Soresi introduces himself to a new audience, he explains that his father is Italian, his mother is Jewish, and that he identifies as a “cultural Jew.” That, he says, “means I have all the gastrointestinal problems and stress and anxiety of regular Judaism — without the sweet comfort of […]
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A documentary about a dramatic rescue in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, won an audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, one month after it was reinstated to the lineup after a brief cancelation. “The audience voted and I appreciate that. And we look forward to the rest of this journey,” director […]
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The public broadcasters of both Ireland and the Netherlands announced this week that they will not participate in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel is allowed to participate. They join several other countries in pressing the competition’s organizer, the European Broadcasting Union, into excluding Israel as an act of protest against Israel’s participation because […]
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In the fall of 1910, Edward Morgan, the Postmaster General of New York, made an impassioned plea to the city’s Jewish community: Send your High Holiday postcards early. It was the height of the postcard craze in the United States, and members of the city’s Jewish community were eager to send well wishes to their […]
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Sam Sussman’s debut novel, “Boy from the North Country,” revolves around a mystery: Was Bob Dylan, the singer and Nobel laureate, the narrator’s father? Sussman could have written this tale as a memoir, an expansion perhaps of the 2021 essay he wrote for Harper’s Magazine: “The Silent Type: On (Possibly) Being Bob Dylan’s Son.” His […]
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By the time the playwright Liba Vaynberg and I manage to steal a few minutes on Zoom, it’s already midday on a Friday, which means I’m running late from an appointment at a wig maker and frantically marinating a chicken for Shabbat dinner. I wouldn’t normally describe the circumstances of an interview in an article, […]
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