Category: Culture

(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 […]

((JR)) — When David Corenswet was announced as the next DC Comics Superman last month, Jewish movie and comic fans rejoiced: He will be the first Jewish actor to portray the hero in a blockbuster. But one Jewish community in New Orleans has been particularly excited. “The Corenswet family is well known and loved” in […]

((JR)) — When Shawn Harris saw that Jamie Foxx had written “They killed this dude name Jesus… What do you think they’ll do to you???!” on Instagram on Saturday, she thought, “Let’s see what happens next.” Harris, a Black Jewish artist and educator in Virginia, weighed the possibility that the Oscar-winning actor was echoing the […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Israel’s biggest pop star of the moment, Noa Kirel, is slated to make her U.S. concert debut next year with a performance at Madison Square Garden.  Kirel, 22, will play a concert at the Midtown arena on June 30, 2024, Israeli media reported on Tuesday. She will be the second […]

((JR)) — Fans of the Jewish basketball star Ryan Turell, who is trying to become the first Orthodox Jew to play in the NBA, likely followed his debut season last year in the basketball minor league known as the G League, in which Turell played for the Motor City Cruise in Detroit. Now, a new […]

((JR)) — Adam Weiner, leader of the rock band Low Cut Connie, says he can find inspiration in just about anything. “I could be sitting at a salad bar at a mall, and that gives me everything I need to know,” he said on a video call from a house in New Mexico, where he […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Violinist Isaac Stern made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1943, but it would hardly be his last performance at the famed concert venue: He performed there more than 200 times between then and his death in 2001 at the age of 81. Carnegie Hall was “part of his DNA,” his […]

((JR)) – Even amid the motley crew with whom he is trying to survive at sea, Jonathan Dade’s introduction as a reality TV contestant makes a splash. “As a Black rabbi who’s also conservative, if we can’t discuss race, religion or politics, I can pretty much never talk,” Dade tells viewers on the new Discovery/Max […]

(New York Jewish Week) – The Google Doodle for Friday, Aug. 4 features a cartoon image of a bespectacled woman peering out from one of the lenses of orange cat-eye glasses. The Doodle celebrates the 116th birthday of Altina “Tina” Schinasi, the Sephardic Jewish artist, inventor and New Yorker who devised the distinctive eyeglasses.   A […]