Category: Culture

(New York Jewish Week) – It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon, and Sophie Turner Zaretsky has laid out a tray of fruit and cookies, eagerly awaiting her friend Caroline Crandell. When Crandell arrives at Zaretsky’s Upper West Side apartment, just a few minutes after their scheduled meeting time of 3 p.m., the two break into smiles and […]

((JR)) — A selfie taken on a flight to Tel Aviv has gone viral this week, serving as a symbol of unity in an increasingly divided Israel. The photo was taken by Noa Kirel, the pop star who came in third in this year’s Eurovision competition over the weekend, and was headed home from the […]

(New York Jewish Week) – Hip-hop music blasted through loudspeakers as about a dozen models strutted up and down a makeshift runway. Some of them wore cream knit loungewear, while others were clad in modest but elegant dresses accessorized with silk scarves. The models, many of them student volunteers from Chelsea’s Fashion Institute of Technology, […]

((JR)) — The Orthodox singer Ishay Ribo, whose music has attracted a diverse audience of religious and secular Israeli fans, will be the first Israeli artist to headline a concert at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. “I’ve been keeping this inside for a long time and more than once I pinched myself to check […]

((JR)) — A high-profile movie project depicting Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War could star “Jane the Virgin” actress Yael Grobglas. Oded Raz — known for directing the Israeli box office hit “Maktub,” which now streams on Netflix — will direct “Jerusalem 67,” Variety reported on Friday. Grobglas — a French-Israeli actress who starred […]

((JR)) – The sportswear giant Adidas has decided to sell off its remaining inventory of sneakers from Kanye West’s Yeezy brand and donate the proceeds to charity. The decision comes roughly seven months after Adidas cut ties with West in the face of mounting pressure due to his stream of antisemitic comments. Adidas’ sales of […]

((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 […]