Monday, March 8th 2021 |
By JACK LYONS, Special to the CCJN
How does one cover the 2000 years of religious history between the Jewish people and Gentiles in the Common Era (CE)? Perhaps, a good start would be seeing life through the lenses of the others regarding the impacts that these religions have experienced on this planet we all call Earth.
For starters, it is necessary to approach such sensitive...
By TALIA LIBEN YARMUSH
(JTA via Kveller) – “A Place at the Table” tells the story of two middle-school girls, Elizabeth and Sara — one Jewish and one Muslim — whose friendship begins in a South Asian cooking class taught by Sara’s mother. Elizabeth is a budding chef and Sara is the new kid in school. Both girls have mothers who are studying to become American citizens, and as the...
By GABE FRIEDMAN
(JTA) — Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character is going out on a high note.
Cohen won best actor in a comedy or musical, and his “Borat” sequel upset the Disney+ adaptation of “Hamilton” by winning best film in the category at the Golden Globes on Sunday night.
Like its predecessor, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” poked fun at the blatant anti-Semitism found in parts of Eastern Europe. It features...
(JTA) — The heartwarming story has been hard to miss: A law professor is shopping at his local grocery store when sees an elderly woman struggling to get her favorite jam from a high shelf. Why is it her favorite? “I am a Holocaust survivor,” she says. “During the war, the family that owns the company hid my family in Paris.”
Tens of thousands of people — at least — have shared the...
By GABE FRIEDMAN
(JTA) — NBC pulled an episode of the show “Nurses” that aired on the channel on Feb. 9, responding to pressure from Jewish groups that said it contained an anti-Semitic storyline about Orthodox Jews.
An NBC source told Variety that it had consulted with “leading Jewish organizations” before making the move on Thursday.
In the episode of the medical drama titled “Achilles Heel,” a young Hasidic patient is...
(JTA) — It’s almost Purim, which means I am busy writing jokes that poke fun at the stuff we do and obsess about as Jews without offending too many people. Not always easy, and that’s when I am writing for an audience that I know extremely well.
Now imagine writing Jewish jokes outside the bubble. “Saturday Night Live” found out the hard way after a joke about Israel went viral for...
(JTA) — Sacha Baron Cohen says his days of dressing up as characters such as Borat Sagdiyev, the anti-Semitic Kazakh journalist that made the Jewish actor a star, are behind him. He said he has been sued and nearly arrested over the course of filming his movies and shows, most of which involve a disguised Cohen tricking the people around him into saying or doing absurd things.
“At some point,...
By JULIAN VULOJ
(JTA) — Stan Lee, arguably the most famous American comic book creator, died at age 95 in 2018.
Honoring his Jewish identity, many evoked the phrase “may his memory be a blessing” (coming from the Hebrew “zichrono l’bracha”) when reporting on his passing.
Just what this memory looks like, however, and what it should look like, is a topic that is increasingly up for debate.
To most...
By ASMA ALI ZAIN
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (JTA) — Last year, Israel and the United Arab Emirates signed a treaty establishing diplomatic relations. But for more than a year earlier, diners in the UAE had already been finding their way to Jewish culture — via the home cooking of a South African expatriate.
Elli Kriel, a sociologist by training who moved here in 2013 when her husband was transferred...
By DANI KLEIN
(JTA) — Many industries were harmed in 2020, perhaps none as deeply as the hospitality sector. Nearly one in six U.S. restaurants had closed as of December, according to data from the National Restaurant Association.
Kosher establishments were not immune to the economic consequences of the pandemic: We saw iconic kosher restaurants permanently close this year, including Abigael’s in Manhattan, Casablanca in New Orleans, Wolf & Lamb...
