Esther D. Kustanowitz is a Los Angeles-based writer, editor and consultant. She co-hosts The Bagel Report, a podcast about Jews and popular culture, and speaks about #TVGoneJewy, a term she invented to describe the increase of Jewish content on television. Follow her on Twitter @EstherK.
When Emma Rosenzweig-Bock joined Jacob Jonas The Company in 2017, she never imagined that she’d end 2021 as a featured dancer in a Sia music video. “Pin Drop,” the video that premiered last week, features the Santa Monica, California native and other Jacob Jonas dancers interacting with an environment of sand and haze set to…
You know the headliner must be really important when her warm-up act is Sarah Silverman. “Without further ado, a Jew,” the comedian said as she introduced her sister, Rabbi Susan Silverman. The Oct. 3 celebrity-studded event at the home of actors Bradley Whitford and Amy Landecker was a fundraiser for the rabbi’s organization, Second Nurture,…
I sat down across from Renee Firestone and asked her about her life during the Holocaust. The conversation flowed: what her life was like before the war, and how she endured Auschwitz. The small, spirited 97-year-old survivor was direct and honest, answering personal questions with powerful details—all the more remarkable because the real Renee Firestone…
The new Netflix reality show “My Unorthodox Life,” which depicts the life and family of Julia Haart, a formerly Orthodox woman who left her community and now runs a top modeling agency, is generating discomfort, debate, and some loud objections about the nature of Jewish and Orthodox representation on-screen. But Elon Gold, for one, would…
A lot of people know that Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were Jewish. But according to Roy Schwartz – author of “Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero” – the question of Superman’s Jewishness hasn’t been discussed deeply enough. “Many things that are relevant and interesting have been…
Most people will recognize actor Annie Korzen from her four “Seinfeld” appearances, three as Doris Klumpus and one as an obnoxious airline passenger. But the octogenarian has been acting since 1975, in small roles ranging from “Tootsie” to “Black Monday,” and is now making her mark on an even smaller screen as one of TikTok’s…
A year after the invite-only audio chat app Clubhouse launched for iPhone users, the social audio platform recently gave Android users access to the app as well. This fixes one of the more obvious exclusionary aspects of the app, still in beta, which has been downloaded by approximately 10 million users globally. But many inclusivity…
Technology usually has a slow adoption rate. But during the last year, one tech tool has dominated, enabled, connected and overwhelmed us, depending on the person and the day: Zoom. After a few weeks of confusion, even tech-averse older adults found themselves embracing the platform because they couldn’t physically embrace their loved ones. But as…
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