Category: Culture

(JTA) — The other day I was in a kosher Chinese restaurant and I noticed an older white guy happily eating alone. He had white shaggy beard and white shaggy hair tucked under a ball cap reading “You had me at coffee.” He looked like a former City College professor who was thoroughly enjoying his […]

(New York Jewish Week) — What better way to recover from an injury than some Jewish penicillin? New York Yankees Jewish outfielder Harrison Bader, who is missing the beginning of the 2023 MLB season due to an oblique muscle injury, starred in a recent episode of “Home Plate: New York,” a program hosted by celebrity […]

(JTA) — The Jewish author of best-selling children’s book series “A Series of Unfortunate Events” has been tapped to write a horror film based on the legend of the Golem of Prague. Daniel Handler, known by his pen name “Lemony Snicket,” will write the movie for independent Jewish production company Leviathan Productions, from veteran film […]

(JTA) — On one wall of the dining hall at the Indiana University Hillel sit 36 framed photographs of Jewish alumni who have made an impact in the sports industry, from athletes to executives. It’s the IU Jewish Sports Wall of Fame. One of those pictures is of Josh Rawitch, who has had a long […]

(New York Jewish Week) — New York City has no shortage of collections preserving the Yiddish culture that flourished here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are Yiddish theater collections at the New York Public Library and the Museum of the City of New York. Columbia University has extensive Yiddish holdings.  And […]

(JTA) — The journalist who was arrested in Russia last month and the Biden administration’s antisemitism envoy are among the 10 Jewish members of Time magazine’s “100 most influential people of 2023.” The magazine’s annual list, released Thursday, includes politicians, business titans, artists and innovators from around the world, from President Joe Biden to a […]

(JTA) — Hillary and Chelsea Clinton have produced a documentary about a Holocaust survivor that will debut on PBS on Tuesday, timed to Yom Hashoah, or Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. “How Saba Kept Singing” tells the story of David Wisnia, a cantor who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for nearly three years, helped in part […]

(JTA via J. The Jewish News of Northern California) — When the Sacramento Kings face the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the NBA playoffs starting this weekend, they will be led by their Lithuanian-American — and soon-to-be-Jewish — center, Domantas Sabonis. The 26-year-old All-Star is in the process of converting to Judaism, […]

(New York Jewish Week) — The martini kit arrives in a bright pink box. Nestled among strings of hot pink confetti are two martini glasses and a shaker, two olives, toothpicks, two single-serving bottles of gin and vermouth, pastrami oil and pastrami spices. What’s that? Pastrami? Martini? Together? Yes, you read it right. The “Maisel […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Mafia movies will have you believe that wise guys aren’t born, they’re made. But that wasn’t the case for Myron Sugerman, a second-generation Jewish gangster who is the subject of the new documentary, “Last Man Standing: The Chronicles of Myron Sugerman.” Sugerman — who made his mark (and his money) by […]