Tagged FRONT

In 1944, she performed an opera at a concentration camp. 70 years later, I got to meet her.

Annie Cohen, right, met Holocaust survivor Ela Weissberger when the teen appeared in a New Orleans production of "Brundibar" in 2016. The children's opera by Jewish Czech composer Hans Krása was performed by the children of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, including Weissberger. (Courtesy of Cohen)
January 9, 2019 / Annie Cohen, JTA

NEW ORLEANS (JTA) — Ela Weissberger, though tiny and elderly when I met her, was the strongest woman I have ever known. Her energy was indefatigable, her personality vibrant and sunny, her wit sharp and charming. Her magical rapport with children was undeniable. Ela was a Holocaust survivor, sent… Read more »

Golden Globes 2019: All the Jewish moments

Michael Douglas, left, and Alan Arkin have some fun after winning big at the 76th annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., Jan. 6, 2019. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
January 7, 2019 / Marcy Oster, JTA

(JTA) — From Michael Douglas’ Yiddish exclamation to more success for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” to Regina King’s Hebrew-letter tattoo, the 2019 Golden Globes had its fair share of Jewish moments. Rachel Brosnahan is not Jewish, but she does a convincing job playing a very Jewish woman in “Mrs.… Read more »

Meet the 27-year-old female rabbi leading a NY Jewish federation

Rabbi Rachel Rubenstein is trying to engage young families in her role as executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orange County, New York. (Gail Conklin for the Jewish Federation of Greater Orange County)
January 4, 2019 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — Rabbi Rachel Rubenstein knows that in the age of Kickstarter, getting young people to give to a Jewish federation can be a hard sell. “In today’s culture, we can go straight to the GoFundMe, and fund so hyper-specifically what you want to fund,” she told… Read more »

Scott Zorn, former Tucson J camp director, dies at 59
January 4, 2019 / Phyllis Braun, AJP Executive Editor
Scott Zorn

The Tucson Jewish community was stunned by the news that Scott Zorn, 59, died Jan. 1, 2019, in Akron, Ohio, with hundreds of Facebook messages quickly going out to his wife, Julie; children, Haley and Dylan; and in-laws, Tucsonans Kathy and David Unger. Zorn was the director of children,… Read more »

‘Game of Thrones’ creator George R.R. Martin discovers he’s nearly a quarter Jewish on ‘Finding Your Roots’

George R.R. Martin, left, shown with "Finding Your Roots" host Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was shocked by his DNA test. (Courtesy of McGee Media/Ark Media)
January 4, 2019 / Curt Schleier, JTA

(JTA) — PBS’ celebrity genealogy show “Finding Your Roots” has had plenty of Jewish guests — Bernie Sanders, Larry David, Paul Rudd and Scarlett Johansson — and the occasional guest, like Paul Ryan, who learn they have a Jewish ancestor on their family tree. But the season five premiere, which airs… Read more »

In northern Brazil, Sephardic converts are giving dwindling Jewish communities a new lease on life

Many in Brazil have converted to Judaism under the supervision of Gilberto Venturas, an Orthodox rabbi, shown here with his wife, Jacqueline. (Courtesy of Sinagoga sem Froteiras)
January 1, 2019 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

RECIFE, Brazil (JTA) — Preparing to leave this city’s main Jewish community center, Sabrina Scherb peeks beyond its blast-proof gate into a quiet street strewn with branches and shredded mango fruits. The debris, left over from an overnight tropical storm, is not what’s worrying Scherb, a 22-year-old university student… Read more »

Genetic study finds widespread Sephardic ancestry in Latin America

An Orthodox Colombian family shown in 2012. A new study revealed "widespread" Sephardic genetic ancestry across Latin American countries. (Paul Smith/For the Washington Post)
January 1, 2019 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — In a genetic study of 6,589 people from five Latin American countries, about a quarter displayed traces of what may be Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Geneticist Juan-Camilo Chacón-Duque and his colleagues published their findings last week in Nature Communications magazine, in an article titled “Latin Americans show wide-spread… Read more »

Nelly Ben-Or risked all to play the piano. It helped her survive the Holocaust.

Nelly Ben-Or sits by one of her two pianos in her London home, Dec. 13, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
January 1, 2019 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

LONDON (JTA) — Like countless world-class pianists, Nelly Ben-Or began playing piano at the age of 5 and never stopped. That discipline helped Ben-Or, 86, became an international concert pianist and the person most widely recognized for adapting the Alexander technique for posture and movement improvement for musicians. But… Read more »

The story behind Frank Sinatra’s $10,000 yarmulke

Sinatra received the yarmulke at a fundraiser for a Jewish school in New Jersey in 1981. (Courtesy of Pauline Schwartz)
January 1, 2019 / Stephen Silver, JTA

(JTA) — When a huge auction was held at Sotheby’s last month of items belonging to Frank Sinatra and his wife Barbara, the item that made the most headlines was one of the smallest: a hand-knit yarmulke, owned by Frank, which was purchased for nearly $10,000 by an unknown… Read more »

‘Clueless’ creator Amy Heckerling on her Jewish roots and how men have it much easier in the film industry

Amy Heckerling at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, April 18, 2016. (Mike Coppola/Gett)
January 1, 2019 / Curt Schleier, JTA

(JTA) — Officially and for the record, despite her Jewish-sounding name, Cher Horowitz is not a member of the tribe. In fact, the Valley Girl heroine of the iconic 1995 film “Clueless” was never intended to be Jewish, says her creator, Amy Heckerling. “I wasn’t thinking in terms of… Read more »

Outside Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue, Spanish olive trees endure northern winters

The olive trees outside of Amsterdam's Portuguese synagogue get wrapped up every year. They are shown here in February 2018. (Hans Kaljee)
January 1, 2019 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Each year at the height of winter, city workers descend on the square opposite Holland’s oldest synagogue and pull gigantic yellow tarps over the canopies of 25 olive trees. The trees, each 250-300 years old, are Amsterdam’s oldest. They were brought here in 2010 from central… Read more »

A millionaire’s plan to rebuild an Alabama Jewish community may be going south

Rabbi Lynne Goldsmith, center, who retired as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Dothan, Ga., in 2017, speaks on a local interfaith panel in 2014. (Bob Howard/The Village Square/Flickr)
January 1, 2019 / Marcy Oster, JTA

(JTA) — Seven years ago, Lisa and Kenny Priddle left New York to help build up the Jewish community of the small Alabama town of Dothan. They were attracted by the idea of shoring up the Jewish community in the South and also by the offer of a $50,000… Read more »

Amos Oz, a ‘saintly intellectual’ who turned Israel’s national reality into art

Amos Oz, shown here in 2015, often blurred the personal and the political in his writing. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
December 28, 2018 / Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA

(JTA) — Amos Oz would often speak in the kind of tossed-off epigrams that come only with a lot of practice. But just when you wanted to smack him for his breezy erudition, he would redeem himself with a flash of spot-on — and hilarious — self-awareness. In 2011,… Read more »

Felicity Jones on playing Ruth Bader Ginsburg before she was the ‘Notorious RBG’

“On the Basis of Sex” recalls that when Ruth Ginsburg entered Harvard Law School in 1956, she was one of nine women in the class, the sixth ever to accept women. (Jonathan Wenk/Focus Features)
December 25, 2018 / Curt Schleier, JTA

(JTA) — The young attorney seems unsure of herself. As a law professor, she is unaccustomed to appearing in court, so she hesitates at first, unable to begin her summation. But once she gets going, there is no stopping her. It is the climactic scene of “On the Basis… Read more »

Israeli program enlists young religious women to solve social problems through tech

Ayelet Ganot, left, and Roni Ashkenazi, participants in the Carmel 6000 national service program, work on an app intended to help autistic children cope with change. (Sam Sokol)
December 25, 2018 / Sam Sokol, JTA

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Sitting side by side in an open office in the tech giant Cisco’s headquarters here, Roni Ashkenazi and Ayelet Ganot sat staring at lines of code on a flat screen monitor checking their work before launching a demo of their latest project — a tablet app they… Read more »

CAI rabbi in residence to focus on heart of Torah
December 21, 2018 / Phyllis Braun, AJP Executive Editor
Rabbi Shai Held, Ph. D.

Rabbi Shai Held, Ph.D. — one of the 50 most influential rabbis in America, according to Newsweek — will be the scholar-in-residence at Congregation Anshei Israel on Jan. 11 and 12. His overall theme for the weekend will be “The Heart of Jewish Spirituality.” A theologian, scholar and educator,… Read more »

Free screening of true crime ‘The Driver is Red’ planned

German journalists Dagmar and Peter Schroeder will hold a discussion after a free screening of Randall Christopher’s ‘The Driver is Red’ animated short film on Jan. 8.
December 21, 2018 /

An exclusive, free screening of the documentary film “The Driver is Red” is set for Tuesday, Jan. 8 at 6:30 p.m. The award-winning, animated short by Randall Christopher depicts the Mossad raid that brought Adolf Eichmann to justice. It was shown at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and almost… Read more »