Category: Culture

(JTA) — The eight crazy nights of Hanukkah came early for Adam Sandler when the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced Tuesday that the comedian and actor would be honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at a ceremony in March. The prize is presented annually to individuals “who have had an […]

(JTA) — It was early November when Nicholas Wymer-Santiago walked into his local Target in Austin, Texas, and realized it was beginning to feel a lot like Hanukkah. Instead of an endcap with a limited array of Hanukkah basics, as he had seen in past years, there stretched out a whole aisle of holiday products: pillows; […]

(New York Jewish Week) – In the heart of Manhattan, you can page through the Passover story in an Italian haggadah from half a millennium ago, check out the posters for the most popular Yiddish plays of the 1920s and examine dried flower arrangements from the Holy Land made at the end of the 19th […]

(JTA) — Given his place in the international literary canon, it’s hard to believe that there has never been a widely-released documentary made about the Jewish Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow. That’s about to change, as PBS debuts “American Masters: The Adventures of Saul Bellow” on Monday night. The documentary, which was filmed by Israeli […]

For an American Jewish comedian, Tehran Von Ghasri has an interesting story to tell, as his name suggests. The son of an Iranian-Jewish immigrant father and an African-American mother, Tehran’s heritage includes a mix of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Zoroastrian, and any part of that mix is fair game for Von Ghasri’s standup. Yet despite […]

(JTA) — Before becoming one of the most iconic vocal performers of her time, appearing in Broadway shows such as “Rent” and “Wicked” and voicing Queen Elsa in “Frozen,” Idina Menzel got her start singing as a teenager on the wedding and bar and bat mitzvah circuit near where she grew up on Long Island […]

As director of Partnership2Gether of the Jewish Agency for Israel, it’s Pnina Agenyahu’s job to bring together disparate Jewish communities from around the world and celebrate their diversity. It’s a role for which Agenyahu has spent a lifetime preparing — ever since she made aliyah at the age of 3 on the back of her […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Holocaust survivor and painter Frederick Terna, whom the New York Jewish Week honored as one of our “36 to Watch” this year, has died at 99. Terna was born in Vienna in 1923 and grew up in Prague. Starting in 1941, he was imprisoned in four Nazi concentration camps, including […]

(New York Jewish Week) — Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt was a guest on the popular New York radio show The Breakfast Club on Wednesday, discussing the recent rise in antisemitism and the need to repair Black and Jewish relations. “I believe you call people in before you call people out,” Greenblatt said, explaining to hosts Charlamagne […]

(JTA) — Nearly 130 Finnish artists will not be working with Kiasma, the modern art wing of Finland’s national gallery, they announced, in protest of a Finnish-Israeli billionaire who supports the gallery and has connections to both countries’ arms industries. The artists had signed the statement by Monday after the museum refused to remove a […]