Cindy (Adrienne C. Moore), left, and Flaca (Jackie Cruz) in "Orange Is the New Black."
(JTA) — “Orange Is the New Black” protagonist Piper Chapman’s may no longer have a Jewish husband, but that doesn’t mean that Judaism isn’t a huge part of the new season of the Netflix hit. In fact, religious identity is one of the biggest themes of Season 3, … Read more »
Michael Douglas speaking at the announcement of the Genesis Generation Challenge winners at the Bloomberg Philanthropies headquarters in New York City, April 28, 2015. (Flickr)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Michael Douglas hadn’t heard of the Genesis Prize when he found out that he’d won it. In fact, the Oscar-winning actor was surprised to discover he was even in the running for an award designed for those who inspire fellow Jews. His father, actor Kirk Douglas,… Read more »
“Son of Saul,” which recreates a harrowing Holocaust experience, garnered nearly universal acclaim at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. (Twitter)
(JTA) — Given the long and storied history of the Holocaust film genre, it’s unusual for a new movie on the subject to be lauded as innovative. But the new film “Son of Saul,” the first by Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes, is being called just that. It also was… Read more »
A still from "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey" showing children smiling through barbed wire as Allied troops approach, April 1945. (Imperial War Museum)
NEW YORK (JTA) — “This was a woman,” the narrator explains, as the camera pans over a figure so emaciated and burnt that it’s barely recognizable as human. It’s one of the more arresting scenes in “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” a highly unusual Holocaust documentary shot and scripted… Read more »
Cast of "Mad Men" (Courtesy of AMC)
(JTA) — AMC’s ad campaign for the second half of the final season of “Mad Men” centered on the phrase “The End of an Era.” The clever double meaning of the phrase was that this was not only the end of an era within the show, as the plot… Read more »
Al Schwimmer, who guided the vast operation to build Israel's air force, with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. (Courtesy of Boaz Dvir)
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The Israeli Air Force is getting its moment in the spotlight, with two documentaries airing on television stations and at film festivals, while a feature movie waits in the, ahem, wings. The focus of the films is not on today’s highly professional IAF or its… Read more »
Natalie Portman and her husband, Benjamin Millipied, attend the premiere of 'Thor: The Dark World' on Oct. 23 in Paris. (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
(JTA) —Hollywood Reporter’s new cover story interview with actress Natalie Portman may be one of the most heavily Jewish-themed articles the magazine has ever published. In it, the Israel-born Portman, who’s preparing for the May 18 debut of her film adaptation of Israeli author Amos Oz’s “A Tale of… Read more »
The book jacket of the new edition of"Heather Has Two Mommies," which features new color illustrations by Laura Cornell. (Courtesy of Candlewick Press)
(JTA) — Leslea Newman’s iconic picture book “Heather Has Two Mommies” had a simple beginning. A woman approached Newman on the street in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she lived at the time, and said her family needed a book to which her daughter could relate. Meaning that she wanted to… Read more »
HAVERFORD, Pa. (JTA) — Visiting the Memorial de Caen museum in Normandy, France, in 1996, Daniel Weiss was captivated by eight photographs showing the public hanging of three partisans in Minsk, Belarus, on Oct. 26, 1941. The two male victims’ identities were known, but the female was anonymous, and… Read more »
BOSTON (JTA) – On a recent morning, a group of seventh-graders in Natick, Massachusetts, was absorbed in a video of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s acceptance speech of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. “Why did he win?” asked their teacher, Tracy Sockalosky. She guided the discussion to the importance of… Read more »
Naomi Firestone-Teeter (Courtesy Jewish Book Council)
(JTA) — On April 1, Naomi Firestone-Teeter became executive director of the Jewish Book Council, which promotes the reading, writing, publishing and distribution of English-language Jewish books. Firestone-Teeter, whose predecessor Carolyn Hessel has been called “the Jewish Oprah” for her success at promoting books, has been working her way… Read more »
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — When attorney E. Randol (Randy) Schoenberg saw himself portrayed on the big screen by hunky Ryan Reynolds in the movie “Woman in Gold,” he immediately spotted a difference. “Obviously, I’m not the sexiest man alive,” Schoenberg acknowledged in an interview at his West Los Angeles… Read more »
Eugene Yelchin Who knew seven years ago that the Tucson Festival of Books would rank as one of the top celebrations of authors and reading in the United States? Kudos to its founders, Bill and Brenda Viner, members of the Tucson Jewish community, and Bruce Beach, Frank Farias and John Humenik.… Read more »
When I write about books, they tend to be travel-related because — well — I’m a travel editor. But the richly depicted Chasidic world of Shulem Deen’s new “All Who Go Do Not Reurn” can seem so foreign — even to the granddaughter of shtetl-raised Yidden — the memoir… Read more »
(JTA) — Ayelet Tsabari acted as a child and teen, appearing in Habima’s youth performances in Israel, a commercial and some student films. Although Tsabari no longer acts, the author of the award-winning “The Best Place on Earth” feels that the experience of fiction writing is not entirely unlike… Read more »
The cover of "Lincoln and the Jews: A History," by Jonathan Sarna and Benjamin Shapell. (Courtesy of Thomas Dunne Books)
(JTA) – A whopping 16,000 books have been written about President Abraham Lincoln. But a new book and an exhibit at the New York Historical Society tell a previously untold story about Lincoln: his relationships with Jews. Benjamin Shapell has been collecting documents relating to Lincoln and the Jews… Read more »
Zander Meisner
Zander Meisner knows the Tony Award-winning musical “Once” inside and out. In fact, given his unusual position as an understudy for four of the eight male roles in the play, it’s possible that Meisner is more intimately familiar with the show than anyone else, period. Now that the current… Read more »
Pinchas Zukerman
Tucsonans will have an opportunity to see and hear a giant of the classical music world on March 31 when the Tucson Symphony Orchestra welcomes world-renowned violinist Pinchas Zukerman. With a musical career spanning more than four decades, the Israeli-born Zukerman continues to delight audiences worldwide, playing nearly 100… Read more »
Twins return to the Egyptian desert in Kimmel's time travel adventure "Scarlet and Sam." (Courtesy of Kar-Ben Publishing)
BOSTON (JTA) — When Deborah Bodin Cohen immersed herself in rabbinical school in the early 1990s, she expected to spend a year in Israel as part of her studies with Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. What she didn’t know was that a decade later, the experience of living… Read more »
Helen Mirren in "Woman in Gold"
BERLIN (JTA) — Two starkly different images: a woman wrapped in shimmering gold, a man whipped and bleeding on a cold cement floor. The first, a 1907 painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, is the centerpiece of “Woman in Gold,” a film starring Helen Mirren that had its world… Read more »
