Category: Culture

(New York Jewish Week) — Throughout his nearly 50 years living in Forest Hills, Queens, Gavriel Davidov was the unofficial mayor of the borough’s Bukharian Jewish community. He was widely known a peacekeeper, and the first person someone could turn to for help. The owner of Gavriel Davidov Jewelry, a fine jeweler in Manhattan’s Diamond […]

((JR)) — In his viral video on social media after the Hamas attack on Israel, comedian Daniel-Ryan Spaulding riffs on the imagined reactions of an intolerably “woke” activist. “If there was a Hamas terrorist attack at a queer rave in Brooklyn or Berlin, there’d probably be a purple-haired girl in the center of the massacre watching […]

(New York Jewish Week) — At only 25 years old, New York Rangers star defenseman Adam Fox has already accomplished plenty. The Jewish Long Island native was a star player at Harvard University. In 2021 he became the first Jewish player to win a major NHL award when he was named the league’s best defenseman. […]

((JR)) – At least one Jewish sponsor of one of the oldest and most prestigious literary awards in the United States is pulling out of Wednesday’s ceremony after learning that some of the nominated authors plan to issue a statement urging a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, drawing yet another line in the sand at […]

(New York Jewish Week) — More than 400 comic book lovers flocked to Manhattan’s Center for Jewish History on Sunday for the first-ever Jewish Comics Experience, a pop culture convention that was billed as the “ultimate comics and pop culture event.” Some 35 comics creators participated in the inaugural JewCE, including “Sin City” creator Frank […]

((JR)) — Daniel Lombroso sees “Nina & Irena,” his documentary short film about his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, as a coda to his 2020 documentary “White Noise,” in which he followed leaders in the “alt-right” movement. For the four years during the making of “White Noise,” he was surrounded by neo-Nazis, who were on the […]

((JR)) — The U.S. publisher of Georgette Heyer, who is widely considered the originator of the historical romance genre, has modified part of one of her books that includes Jewish stereotypes. The New York Times reported last week that publisher Sourcebooks worked with an array of sensitivity readers and experts on modifying “The Grand Sophy,“originally […]

(New York Jewish Week) — In the documentary film “Nathan-ism,” Jewish artist Nathan Hilu is hardly ever without a Sharpie or crayon in his hand, drawing something from his memories.  Hilu was a Lower East Side native who, as a U.S. soldier at 19, was assigned to guard Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. […]

((JR)) — For more than two decades, Mitch Albom has been perhaps the best-selling Jewish author alive — even as his books tend to embrace a much broader and more amorphous definition of “faith.” But now, Albom says he’s ready to embrace his “obligation” as a Jewish writer: to publish a novel set during the […]

(New York Jewish Week) – The forthcoming Broadway revival of the iconic musical “Cabaret” has added two Jewish actors to its star-studded cast. Steven Skybell will join the highly anticipated production as Herr Schultz, a Jewish fruit vendor who courts a younger German woman in 1929 and 1930. Bebe Neuwirth will play that character, boardinghouse […]