Category: Culture

(New York Jewish Week) – Growing up in Brooklyn, Dylan Mars Greenberg went to Hebrew school and celebrated Shabbat and holidays with her family. But she never celebrated a bar or bat mitzvah — “it wasn’t something my dad really wanted me to do,” she said.  Instead, the 26-year-old filmmaker, musician, actor and writer began […]

((JR)) – The next director of New York’s Jewish Museum will be James Snyder, the former director of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem who is known as a prolific fundraiser for Jewish causes. Snyder, 71, will assume the role in September after serving for the past four years as the executive chairman of the Jerusalem […]

((JR)) — From “Schindler’s List” to “The Red Sea Diving Resort,” the non-Jewish, award-winning actor Ben Kingsley has starred in a number of Holocaust and other Jewish-themed movies. The recurring theme in his career wasn’t an accident, he said in a recent interview. Instead, he said, he picked the roles because his “vigorously antisemitic” grandmother […]

(New York Jewish Week) – If you’ve been on the internet the last few weeks, chances are you heard the summer’s biggest earworm “Planet of the Bass,” or seen the kitschy videos of a male and female performer dressed as 90s Europop stars dancing and lip syncing along to lyrics such as “All of the […]

((JR)) — Since the birth of hip-hop 50 years ago, plenty of Jewish rappers have picked up a microphone and rocked a crowd. They’ve spit rhymes in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, even Aramaic. Collectively, they’ve shattered stereotypes about what Jews look and sound like. But hip-hop is hypercompetitive, so the question must be asked: Who are […]

BOSTON ((JR)) — In 1725, Abraham de Oliveyra was officially registered as a silversmith in London — the first Jew known to be given a license to practice the trade in the city. Jews had been let back into England just 70 years beforehand following an expulsion centuries earlier, and Oliveyra’s registration established him as […]

((JR)) — Amar’e Stoudemire hasn’t donned a Phoenix Suns jersey since 2010, but soon, no Suns player will wear his No. 32 ever again. The Suns announced Wednesday that Stoudemire, along with his teammate Shawn Marion, would be inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor during the 2023-2024 NBA season. According to the team’s press […]

(New York Jewish Week) – When Alex Edelman arrived at a senior living home for a conversation about his solo Broadway show, “Just For Us,” in which the central narrative is what happened when the Jewish comedian infiltrated a white supremacist meeting in Queens, attendees were ready with questions. But first, they had to get […]

(New York Jewish Week) — When comedian Modi Rosenfeld took the stage as co-host of the second annual Chosen Comedy Festival in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening, he stuck to an approach that has brought him success with Orthodox audiences: leaning into specificity.  “People want to hear us talk about antisemitism, they love to hear us […]

((JR)) — As a child growing up in the Chabad Hasidic community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Chana Raskin was immersed in a male soundscape. Her father brought her with him to synagogue on Shabbat and holidays, where men would sing the melodies, passed from generation to generation, known as nigunim. Those sonic memories tap into […]