Category: Culture

(JTA) — What makes this year’s batch of new haggadahs different from all other years’? For one thing, there are entries written by machines — with not just one but two different versions written by artificial intelligence. The haggadah market is continually booming, as Jewish writers and creatives take inspiration from news, pop culture and […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Rabbi Steven Blane is nothing if not an innovator: Way back in 2010, a full decade before the pandemic made Zoom services a regular part of Jewish life, Blane launched an exclusively virtual synagogue, Sim Shalom. Among the many hats he’s worn throughout his professional life, Blane has also launched […]

(New York Jewish Week) — The idea of eating pastrami with matzah instead of rye bread may strike some as a sacrilege, but for members of the Jewish Auto Writers Society of America (JAWS), who will gather this week for a Passover seder at Katz’s Delicatessen, it’s become a tradition. “Frankly, bread is a filler,” said […]

(JTA) — Seymour Stein, one of the most influential music executives of the 20th century, who frequently throughout his career referred to his Jewish Brooklynite roots, died at 80 on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. The cause was an unspecified form of cancer, according to reports. Stein, born Seymour Steinbigle in 1942 and […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Jeremiah Lockwood, the singer, composer and frontman of The Sway Machinery, is preparing for an upcoming concert by “doing a lot of talking to ghosts.” These “ghosts” are those of the Jewish women singers and cantors of the past century. As it happens, many women — not just men — […]

CHICAGO (JTA) — All writers strive for a good story. How far they will go to find it depends on their ambition, their wherewithal and their sanity. Isaac Babel, a Russian-Jewish writer who came from a relatively stable, privileged background in Odessa in the late 1800s, would go to war among Cossacks who murdered Jews, make […]

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Colt Cabana, real name Scott Colton, is used to walking out to crowds of hundreds of fans as a member of All Elite Wrestling, a popular show that airs on channels such as TBS and TNT. On Sunday, he’ll be wrestling at a synagogue. Temple Beth Am, located in Los Angeles’ […]

(JTA) — A matchmaker who says she has successfully paired 200 Jewish couples is the star of “Jewish Matchmaking,” a Netflix series that is set to start streaming May 3. Netflix announced the series, a spinoff of its wildly successful “Indian Matchmaking” show, nearly a year ago. Now, new details that the streaming giant released […]

(New York Jewish Week) — When Anat Gov’s play “HaChaverot Hachi Tovot” (“Best Friends”) premiered in 1999, it was an anomaly among Israeli works of theater. In fact, Gov wrote it with anomalous intentions: In an interview before it opened, she called the piece a form of “compensation for the fact that there are no […]

(JTA) — “It’s like a Jewish ‘Lord of the Rings,’ but he’s just going to his mom’s house.” That’s how director Ari Aster, known for his acclaimed horror movies “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” described his new film, “Beau Is Afraid,” in a behind-the-scenes video released on Wednesday. Aster, who works with A24, the same studio behind […]