Category: Culture

((JR)) — Running a not-so-Zagat-rated deli, dropping into a Chinese restaurant for Christmas Eve dinner and acting out a bat mitzvah that involves a vampire — for contemporary board game fans, those can be all in an evening’s play. That’s because a crop of new games aims to merge Jewish ideas and experiences with the […]

(New York Jewish Week) – Back in 1975, Marcia Bricker Halperin had just graduated from Brooklyn College with the dream of becoming a professional photographer when she stepped into the Flatbush outpost of Dubrow’s, a cafeteria-style restaurant, for a warm cup of coffee.  It was there that inspiration hit. “I was wonderstruck,” Halperin writes in […]

((JR)) — Jason Schwartzman is starring as a cantor who takes on an adult bat mitzvah student played by veteran actress Carol Kane in an upcoming comedy film. Shooting for “Between the Temples,” a self-described “anxious comedy,” has already wrapped, Variety reported on Wednesday, but no release date was given. The film was written and […]

((JR)) – “Oppenheimer,” the hotly-anticipated Christopher Nolan biopic about the Jewish nuclear physicist who developed the atomic bomb, will include another familiar Jewish face when it opens this summer: Albert Einstein. A new trailer for the drama, released this week, includes a brief glimpse of the scientist’s unmistakeable visage, as rendered by the Oscar-nominated Scottish […]

((JR)) — Mae Muller, the United Kingdom’s representative in the Eurovision Song Contest this week, said that she is applying for German citizenship under Germany’s laws that afford passports to descendants of Nazi persecution. In an interview published Sunday in The Times, a British newspaper, the 25-year-old pop star said that a European Union passport […]

((JR)) — “Hi my name is Miriam,” the video begins. “I’m an Orthodox Jew, and I share what my life is like.”  So opens a typical TikTok post from Miriam Ezagui, a 37-year-old Brooklyn-based labor and delivery nurse who has amassed 1.6 million followers on the social media platform. Users who make their way to […]

((JR)) — Some farms allow visitors to pick their own fruit. Some franchises let you make your own pizza.  At a synagogue in New Jersey, you can make your prayer shawl and other woven Judaica items, drawing on an ethos that the most meaningful religious pieces are created by family members and friends. Neve Shalom, […]

(New York Jewish Week) — After stops in London, Tel Aviv and other locales, the world’s oldest nearly complete Hebrew Bible will be on view in New York City beginning on Sunday. Known as the Codex Sassoon, the book — which was written by a single Jewish scribe on 400 pages of parchment about 1,100 […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Though she grew up in Israel, Tamar Bloch’s childhood was a mishmash of cultures. With a Moroccan mother and Brazilian father, Bloch often heard Portuguese and Arabic alongside Hebrew, and felt connected with the music from all three cultures. It wasn’t until she was in her early 20s, however, that […]

(New York Jewish Week) — This summer, New Yorkers will have the opportunity to hear their favorite Yiddish songs under the stars — and sing along at the same time. “New York Sings Yiddish,” a free concert of Yiddish music featuring The Klezmatics and more, will be performed in Central Park on June 14 at […]