Tuesday, May 13th 2025   |

Jews in the News

David Letterman’s sidekick on his ‘dream job,’ Jewish upbringing

By ROBERT GLUCK

(JNS.org) — A Jewish upbringing taught Paul Shaffer, David Letterman’s musical director and sidekick for 32 years, the value of giving back.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Shaffer served as musical director for “The Concert for...

From ‘Star Trek’ to one-man show, William Shatner stays in the limelight

By ROBERT GLUCK

(JNS.org) — On April 24, audiences around the country had the chance to feel what it is like to be William Shatner, the Jewish actor best known for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk on “Star...

A cut above: America’s Top Mohels

By URIEL HEILMAN

NEW YORK (JTA) — Who knew? It turns out that mohels not only have one of the most peculiar professions in the Jewish world, but they’re funny, eccentric and self-promotional in odd ways, too.

 

Circumcision activists...

After Auschwitz trip, Cantor warns against dangers of isolationism

By RON KAMPEAS

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When Rep. Eric Cantor took the stage last week at the Virginia Military Institute to deliver a wide-ranging foreign policy address, Auschwitz was on the House majority leader’s mind — and so, observers suggest,...

Devorah Halberstam’s path from bereaved mother to counterterrorism authority

By UtRIEL HEILMAN

NEW YORK (JTA) – When a 16-year-old Lubavitcher named Ari Halberstam was gunned down on the Brooklyn Bridge on March 1, 1994 by a Lebanese livery cab driver, the killing seemed to be a cut-and-dried case.

The...

Beatles’ Jewish manager remembered 50 years after American debut

By ROBERT GLUCK

(JNS.org) — Amid the celebrations and hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ arrival in America and their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the man Paul McCartney called “the fifth Beatle” is not often mentioned....

At Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda, Anne Heyman’s legacy lives on

By BEN SALES

AGAHOZO-SHALOM YOUTH VILLAGE, Rwanda (JTA) – Anne Heyman’s death during a horse-riding competition in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 31 shocked and devastated many in the Jewish world.

But it was Heyman’s work in Rwanda that so...

Lifting the veil on the science of counting Jews

By URIEL HEILMAN

MIAMI (JTA) — Fueled by KitKats and Cherry Coke, some two dozen people sit hunched over stacks of questionnaires in a windowless conference room in Miami, a phalanx of 1980s-era push-button telephones in front of them.

It’s...

For lone socialist in Congress, pet issue finds the spotlight

By RON KAMPEAS

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and the only self-described socialist in Congress, has long been an outspoken voice in Washington on issues of economic inequality. But with the vanishing middle class figuring...

Is food writer Mark Bittman going kosher?

By URIEL HEILMAN

NEW YORK (JTA) — Mark Bittman is not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, least of all his own.

A longtime food writer for The New York Times who three years ago shifted from...