HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (JTA) — Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, and Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment mogul, entered the deck of the pool complex at the Diplomat Hotel here on Saturday night and chose a table to sit around and well, schmooze. Never mind the frantic security… Read more »
Posts By Micheal Romero
George H.W. Bush, a president with a complicated Jewish legacy, dies at 94
WASHINGTON (JTA) – George H.W. Bush, the one-term president whose public grappling with Jewish leaders made headlines while his private interventions helped bring tens of thousands of Jews out of danger, has died. Bush, 94, died Friday at his home in Houston, his family said, less than a year after… Read more »
OP-ED: Saying goodbye to Kutz Camp, Reform Judaism’s ‘forever home’
SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — This is a story of gratitude. So much gratitude. In 1983, my local rabbi handed me his guitar and taught me four chords. He said (paraphrasing the first century sage Hillel) “Lisa, with these four chords you can play any Jewish song. All the rest is commentary.… Read more »
He produced the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and John Mayer. Now he’s adding a rabbi’s music to his resume.
Three years ago, Don Was walked into a Jewish service in Los Angeles without high expectations. Was, born Don Fagenson in Detroit, is a producer who has worked with musicians like John Mayer, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt. Since 2012, he has also been the president of Blue Note… Read more »
OP-ED: There is no religious excuse for not vaccinating your kids
NEW YORK (JTA) — Opposition to vaccination on political and religious grounds has been swaying parents across the country to refuse immunizations for their children. Recently this has resulted in two of the largest measles outbreaks in New York’s history, impacting haredi Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. The opposition to vaccines… Read more »
My day job is translating from Jewish to English. Gevalt!
(JTA) — Do you go to shul, temple, synagogue, minyan or just services? Let me ask it another way: That synagogue you won’t set foot in — Do you call it a shul, temple, synagogue, minyan or services? I’m not being judgy. It’s a question about language. Working at a… Read more »
Despite tensions over the Holocaust, Israeli tourism in Poland is booming
WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Shopping was the last thing on Sarah Hirsch’s mind this summer when she boarded a flight from Tel Aviv to this capital city. It started out as a Holocaust pilgrimage. Hirsch, 67, flew to Warsaw in August with her husband, Naftali, and a friend to see… Read more »
New Age guru Marianne Williamson talks about her Jewishness and 2020 presidential run
NEW YORK (JTA) — Had she received a better Jewish education, Marianne Williamson says, she might have become a rabbi. Instead, Williamson has become one of the country’s best-known New Age self-help gurus, reaching millions of people over more than three decades in the public eye. She counts Oprah and… Read more »
New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck draws on the light and shadows of her Jewish upbringing
NEW YORK (JTA) — Liana Finck is in the eating area of a grocery store in Southampton, New York, and I’ve interrupted her beach excursion. Once a week, the Brooklyn-based illustrator rides a train to the east end of Long Island to channel her creative energy. She wakes up… Read more »
Robert Alter completes his monumental translation of the Hebrew Bible
SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — “When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was… Read more »
This college student created a way for nonbinary people to speak Hebrew
(JTA) — Some college students who think about becoming rabbis aren’t sure whether they will want to work in a synagogue or school. Others get hung up on which seminary to attend or denomination to join. Lior Gross had a different dilemma: How to speak Hebrew in the first… Read more »
No one happy after Shabbat diverts El Al flight to Athens
JERUSALEM (JTA) — An El Al plane bound for Israel that was delayed from taking off in New York was diverted to Athens on Friday to allow Sabbath-observant passengers to disembark. That’s what we know for sure. What happened on the plane? That’s another story. The flight, which had… Read more »
Why early elections are off the table for now in Israel
JERUSALEM (JTA) — “It’s Hard to Say Goodbye If You Won’t Leave” was the title of an old episode of “Frasier.” It could also describe the latest chapter in a coalition crisis that threatens to bring down Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. The Israeli prime minister narrowly avoided having to… Read more »
10 years after the Mumbai massacre, a murdered Chabad couple’s son flourishes in Israel
JERUSALEM (JTA) — “Everything is good.” Sandra Samuel is riding on a bus from Afula in northern Israel to the city apartment in Jerusalem that she shares with four other women from India and has agreed to talk to a reporter. She is coming from a weekly visit with… Read more »
Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin mine aging for laughs in Chuck Lorre’s latest, ‘The Kominsky Method’
(JTA) — “The Kominsky Method” is the wisest and saddest new comedy on television. That might be its biggest problem. The protagonist of the eight-episode Netflix series that debuts Friday is Sandy Kominsky (played by Michael Douglas), a Jewish Tony Award-winning actor who landed with a thud in Hollywood.… Read more »
A Jewish lawyer is Steve Bannon’s main ally in uniting Europe’s right
BRUSSELS (JTA) — Europe has pro-Trump populists far more powerful and better known than Mischael Modrikamen, the leader of Belgium’s small People’s Party. There is Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front, who clinched more than a third of the votes – about 10 million of them — in the 2017 presidential elections with… Read more »
OP-ED: Stan Lee gave comic books permission to be more Jewish
(JTA) — When Stan Lee died on Nov. 12 at 95, he left behind a vast legacy. Between 1961 and 1969, his greatest sustained burst of creative activity, he co-created a vast array of iconic characters, including Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Avengers, the Incredible Hulk, Thor,… Read more »
The Reform movement’s rabbinical group appoints its first female leader
NEW YORK (JTA) — The Reform movement’s rabbinical wing has appointed Rabbi Hara Person as its first female chief executive. The Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents 2,100 Reform rabbis around the world, made the announcement on Thursday. Person succeeds Rabbi Steven Fox, who is retiring in June after… Read more »
NY House candidate Antonio Delgado’s wife opens up about the couple’s Jewish involvement
NEW YORK (JTA) — In 2014, Lacey Schwartz Delgado made headlines around the world for a documentary in which she explored a shocking family secret. “Little White Lie” tells Schwartz Delgado’s real-life story of being raised in a white Jewish family in the upstate New York town of Woodstock. Though… Read more »
Yes, anti-Semitism is a problem again. No, it is not 1939.
(JTA) — My father, whose own father changed his unpronounceable last name to Carroll when he came to America, would often tell a story about job hunting in the late 1940s and 50s. It was only after the interview that the men across the desk would ask, “And all… Read more »