Category: Culture

((JR)) — An Israeli bodyguard who has been working for superstar Taylor Swift on her global “Eras” tour has returned to Israel to fight in its ongoing war against Hamas. Eran Swissa, an entertainment reporter for the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, conveyed the news on Sunday. “I have a pretty great life in the U.S., […]

((JR)) — The Israel-Hamas war has elicited a chorus of celebrity responses, from Bono’s in-concert callout to Pete Davidson’s somber monologue on “Saturday Night Live.” Now one Grammy-winning songwriter and his wife have offered a Hebrew prayer for healing. Susan Tweedy posted a video to Instagram on Oct. 10 of her husband Jeff Tweedy, frontman […]

((JR)) — “Saturday Night Live” returned to the air for its 49th season with a somber reflection on the Israeli-Hamas war by former cast member Pete Davidson. In the “cold open,” the Staten Island native spoke directly to the camera, reminding audiences that his father, a New York City firefighter, was killed in the Sept. […]

(New York Jewish Week) — A panel on Jewish themes at this year’s New York Comic Con was planned and scheduled well ahead of Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel last Saturday, but its convenor said the traumatic week since made it more important than ever to highlight Jewish joy. “This is a tough moment to be discussing […]

(New York Jewish Week) – As Allison and Rebecca Kestenbaum stood in front of a building in Greenwich Village on Wednesday, they were thinking about another set of sisters: their relatives Celia and Bess Eisenberg, who, as teenagers, worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Bess called in sick on the day that a horrific fire […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Lou Bettinger, a stubborn but discerning businessman, has run a dingy luggage shop on the Lower East Side for 60 years when the new play “Bettinger’s Luggage” begins. “I know everything about luggage,” Lou (Richard MacDonald) says, as he give an interview promoting his family’s store on a fictitious news […]

((JR)) — On a night when Dean Kremer became the first Israeli-American to start an MLB playoff game — while his parents’ country was at war, no less — fellow Jewish player Alex Bregman drew a Star of David on his Houston Astros hat for his own Tuesday night playoff game. Kremer, who holds dual […]

((JR)) — The original lyrics of U2’s hit song “Pride (In the Name of Love)” were about Martin Luther King, Jr. But on Sunday night, the band’s singer Bono changed some of the song’s lyrics to pay tribute to Israeli victims of Hamas’ attacks. In a break in their performance of the song at the […]

((JR)) — When Betty Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique” in 1963, she set fire to a simmering discontent among millions of American women, blowing up the myth that feminine fulfillment began and ended with a husband, children and a home. But 17 years after her death, many retrospectives have summed up Friedan as the leader […]

(New York Jewish Week) – A young woman imagines herself standing inside the office of a fast-talking, bowtie-wearing, pipe-smoking editor of a major publishing house in New York City.  She’s just submitted her diary — a memoir of her life in hiding from Nazis and subsequent detention in a concentration camp — for his review, […]