(JTA) — “Jeopardy!” is getting its first-ever Jewish host as Sony Picture Television announced that actress Mayim Bialik will host some of the game show’s new prime time specials. In the wake of longtime host Alex Trebek’s death last fall, Bialik had served as one of the show’s celebrity guest hosts for two weeks in…
(JTA) — Eric Holtz, the manager for Israel’s national baseball team over the past four years, has stepped down from his post. Team Israel failed to medal in the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics, finishing fifth with a squad of nearly all Americans, including former major league All-Star Ian Kinsler. Some had predicted that Israel, making…
(JTA) — Many people have curbed or curtailed their big Shabbat dinners during the COVID-19 pandemic, but not the cast of the “The Real Housewives of New York City.” On the episode that aired Tuesday, the cast of the Bravo reality TV series about socialites in the city is shown attending a drama-filled event described…
(JTA) — The grave of a daughter of the Breslover movement’s founder, Rabbi Nachman, was razed and desecrated with pig heads. In unrelated incidents this week, a grave at a Jewish cemetery in Greece and a monument for Holocaust victims in Moldova also were vandalized. In Ukraine, the desecration this week of Sarah’s grave in…
Marc Stanley, a top Jewish Democratic fundraiser who survived a horrific bike accident last year, was nominated on Friday as the Biden administration’s ambassador to Argentina — which has the largest Jewish population in Latin America. A Dallas trial lawyer, Stanley was an early supporter of Joe Biden’s bid for president in the 2020 Democratic…
Taglit-Birthright will be canceling all its remaining trips to Israel this summer as of Wednesday, now that all passengers arriving in the country from the United States will be required to quarantine. A spokesperson for Birthright, which provides free, 10-day trips to Israel, said that 42 trips had been canceled because of the new seven-day…
(JTA) — Roberta Kaplan, the feminist lawyer who is prominent in New York’s Jewish community, is quitting “Time’s Up,” the group that has championed victims of sexual harassment, because of her role in advising an accused harasser, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. In her letter Monday, first obtained by The New York Times, Kaplan said…
(JTA) — In their fifth Olympic appearance, Sue Bird and teammate Diana Taurasi made history: They won their fifth gold medal, the only basketball players — men’s or women’s — ever to achieve that feat. Bird and Taurasi helped the U.S. women’s basketball win their seventh consecutive gold medal, defeating Japan 90-75 on Sunday, the…
(JTA) — Ted Cruz has “chutzpah” — on the tip of his tongue. The Republican Texas senator’s frequent use of the Yiddish word for gumption caught the ear of Trevor Noah, host of “The Daily Show,” the nightly comedic take on the news. On Thursday night, Noah’s show aired a compilation of clips of Cruz…
(JTA) — In 2016, Beatie Deutsch placed sixth in the Jerusalem half marathon. Watching Deutsch, an Israeli born in America, you would have never guessed that she had taken up running only four months earlier. The following year she ran the Tel Aviv Marathon while seven months pregnant with her fifth child (really!). Even while…
(JTA) — Linoy Ashram won the gold medal in the rhythmic gymnastics contest at the Tokyo Olympics Saturday, narrowly beating out her Russian competitor to become the first Israeli woman to win an Olympic gold medal. The medal was Israel’s second gold at the Tokyo games and third in any Olympic contest. Ashram’s winning score,…
