Category: Culture

(JTA) — Steven Spielberg said he was the sixth-happiest person in the world after he won best director at this year’s Golden Globes awards for “The Fabelmans,” his autobiographical film about his Jewish family. “I think … there’s five people happier than I am,” he said in his acceptance speech, which he said he had […]

(New York Jewish Week) — When a fire devastated the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village two years ago, East End Temple, a nearby Reform synagogue, welcomed church-goers to worship in their sanctuary. Since then, a relationship has blossomed between the synagogue and the church, which has remained homeless due to the six-alarm fire that […]

(New York Jewish Week) — A revival of “Parade,” a musical about the 1915 lynching of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank, will arrive on Broadway this spring, following a successful seven-performance run last November.  Ben Platt, the Jewish Tony-award winning actor who originated the title role in the Broadway hit “Dear Evan Hansen,” will star […]

(New York Jewish Week) — In 2017, Deborah Veach went back to Germany, looking for the site of the displaced persons camp where she and her parents had been housed after World War II. They were in suspension, between the lives her parents led in Belarus before they were shattered by the Nazis, and the […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Regular listeners of Conan O’Brien’s podcast generally expect to hear the comedian interview A-listers such as Michelle Obama and “Fleishman Is in Trouble” star Lizzy Caplan. But the former late-night host interviews “regular” people, too, and sandwiched between two recent episodes — featuring “The Office” star Ed Helms and “You” […]

(JTA) — In 1923 in New York, a Yiddish play that featured the first lesbian scene on a Broadway stage was censored for being indecent. In 2023 in Florida, a play about the first play has been canceled for the same reason. For many involved in the new play, including its Pulitzer Prize-winning Jewish playwright and […]

(JTA) – Were Jews the “OG slaves”? Can American slavery be compared to the Holocaust? And who gets the last word on Louis Farrakhan? These questions have spurred very serious debates over time — and now will be getting a raunchier take in the new Netflix comedy “You People” that hits streaming Jan. 27.  Starring […]

(New York Jewish Week) — In the heavily trafficked neighborhood of Nolita, a larger-than-life mural has popped up on the corner of Spring St. and Elizabeth St. Bright orange and pink paint spell out the words “Saved 3,000 Jewish Lives” next to a black and white portrait of Holocaust rescuer Tibor Baranski. The mural, an […]

(New York Jewish Week) — In the Yiddish classes Mikhl Yashinsky teaches for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Workers Circle, he begins by asking students to explain why they decided to learn the language. Often, a student will describe attending a performance of “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,” the smash hit […]

(JTA) — Every year brings the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of well-known Jewish icons in every field and to mourn those we have lost. Here are 18 Jews who died in 2022 and who leave outsized legacies on politics, the arts, sports and everything in between. Madeleine Albright Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine […]