Category: Culture

When Rita Zohar stepped into the role of Bessie Stern, a Holocaust survivor whose death sets in motion Scarlett Johansson’s new film “Eleanor the Great,” she wasn’t simply acting. Zohar, 81, is a childhood survivor of the Holocaust. She was also drawing on her lived experience of loss and resilience to bring life to her […]

Around 1,200 Hollywood names, including stars like Liev Schrieber, Mayim Bialik and Jennifer Jason Leigh, have signed onto an open letter opposing a growing celebrity boycott of the Israeli film industry. Led by Creative Community for Peace, a pro-Israel entertainment group, the letter argues that the stated boycott against Israeli film institutions will harm Israeli […]

Television’s most irreverent cartoon has taken aim at the Gaza war, showing one of its Jewish characters flying to Israel to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he is “making life for Jews miserable” by continuing to prosecute the war. The latest episode of “South Park” depicts FCC Chairman Brendan Carr suffering from a brain-eating […]

British pop singer Dua Lipa has reportedly dropped her Jewish agent for signing onto a letter to remove the pro-Palestinian Irish rap group Kneecap from the Glastonbury music festival. The development comes as a growing number of musical acts are seeking to block streaming services from letting their songs play in Israel, in what they […]

After studying the world’s oldest synagogue paintings for nearly a decade, Jill Joshowitz had accepted that she might never be able to stand before them as they remained locked away in Syria amid its civil war. Jewish sites and synagogues suffered lootings and bombardment over the course of the war, which followed the emigration of […]

Israel’s culture minister says he will funding to the country’s version of the Oscars after a drama about a Palestinian boy won the top prize on Tuesday. “The Sea” won the Ophir Award for best film during a ceremony in Tel Aviv where speakers condemned the ongoing war in Gaza and lamented the growing Hollywood […]

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, […]