Category: Culture

(New York Jewish Week) – The festive Jewish holiday of Purim begins this year on the evening of Monday, March 6. A marker of Jewish pride and survival, the day celebrates the triumph of Queen Esther, who saved the Jewish people of Shushan in Persia from Haman by advocating for them to her husband, King […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Are we humans all parts of a meticulously crafted machine? Or are we independent beings, chaotically disrupting one another’s trajectories through time and space? Is there a difference between intentional and unintentional impact? Does it matter whether our movements are prompted by internal or external forces? These are just some of […]

This article contains spoilers for “History of the World Part II”. (JTA) — In a scene that will soon stream on Hulu, a group of early Christian bishops gathers to set a promotion strategy for their newish religion — to “make the Bible an international blockbuster,” as one puts it. But the plot is unclear: “Who […]

This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. MIAMI (JTA) —After spending her early childhood in Venezuela, it was not always easy for Gabriella Koenig to feel connected to the Jewish community she grew up […]

(JTA) — On March 15, 1943, the first train bound for Auschwitz departed from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, once home to one of the largest Sephardic Jewish communities in the world.  Eighty years later, the city’s documentary film festival is paying tribute to Jews killed during the Holocaust and to the Jewish community’s […]

(New York Jewish Week) — American Eagle Outfitters now has a mezuzah on the front door of its flagship Times Square location, courtesy of Chabad, the Hasidic outreach movement. The parchment with Jewish holy text in an oblong metallic case, traditionally a marker of a Jewish home or establishment, was affixed on the apparel brand’s […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Stuart Meyers grew up in the heavily Jewish Philadelphia suburb of Voorhees Township, New Jersey. Yet, even though he was Jewish, being queer meant that he often felt like an outsider in Jewish spaces. Fortunately, as an adult, Meyers — a dancer, artist and nightlife events producer — realized that, instead of […]

NEW YORK (JTA) — Sidney Brustein, Jewish Hamlet?  Anne Kauffman thinks so. She made the comparison in a phone interview about the play she’s directing — a buzzy production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” that opened on Monday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan. “One […]

(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — There is a Grammy Award for just about every kind of music — from pop to metal to New Age to Contemporary Christian — but there’s no Jewish category. Two Jewish musician friends hope to change that. Joanie Leeds, a children’s musician and Grammy winner […]

(JTA) — As children in upstate New York, twin sisters Julia DeVillers and Jennifer Roy went to Hebrew school three days a week, spent their summers at a JCC summer camp and got to know local Holocaust survivors through their father, who survived the Nazis as a child in Poland. They also celebrated Christmas with […]