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Israel News
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A Jew on Mars?
When Jason Sherwin told his parents he wanted to be an astronaut, they weren’t thrilled. Jews, they reminded him, “don’t have a good track record” in outer space. Notwithstanding the “Jews in Space” bit from Mel Brooks’s “History of the World: Part I,” they’re right. Arguably, the first Jewish astronaut was Elijah. According to the…
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Swinging into Canada’s Baseball Pantheon
On Tuesday, March 7, Adam Stern was a well-regarded prospect for the Boston Red Sox. On the disabled list in the middle of the 2005 season, he had a decent but far-from-certain shot at a permanent berth as a back-up outfielder in 2006. By Thursday, March 9, Stern was Canadian national hero. In between, the…
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Strange Entries in the Annals of Conversion
Last Thursday, at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York (not to be confused with a secret shed behind Bill and Hillary’s Chappaqua home), jailed rapper Shyne (né Jamaal Michael Barrow) assumed the name Moses Michael Leviy after a jailhouse conversion to Judaism. Having recently come to believe that he was descended from Ethiopian…
The Latest
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Oscar Roundup
In a development that is sure to disappoint Jewish editorial writers the world over, the Oscar season’s two most closely watched and hotly debated Israel-themed films — “Munich” and “Paradise Now” — left Hollywood’s Kodak Theater unrecognized last week. But when it came to putting a Jewish spin on Oscar madness, host Jon Stewart did…
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Geraldo Rivera, Member of Knesset?
Though it went unreported when it happened a few years ago, veteran news personality Geraldo Rivera was only a hairsbreadth away from moving to Israel and pursuing a political career there. According to a recent interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, the mustachioed muckraker was all set to go; he even started looking for an apartment….
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What Goes ‘Around,’ Comes ‘Around’
Best-selling mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark may come to regret the title she gave to one of her latest novels. In a recently filed lawsuit, Israeli writer Dalia Gal is claiming that Higgins Clark lifted key plot elements from a screenplay that Gal had written, using them in her 29th novel, “The Second Time Around.”…
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Yeshiva Boys Aim for Trump ‘Apprentice’-ship
In what is likely a reality television first, the current season of NBC’s “The Apprentice” — the program on which contestants vie for a job working for real estate mogul Donald Trump — will be featuring not one but two contestants who have an Orthodox Jewish background. And, sources say, the issue of religious observance…
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King of Comedy, Queen of Sheba
Comedian Jackie Mason’s latest one-man show may be called “Freshly Squeezed,” but his 20-year-old daughter Sheba’s brand of comedy may just be fresher still. Though now in the same field, the two Masons haven’t been all that close. For one, Sheba’s mother, actress Ginger Reiter, had to sue Mason in order to establish his paternity….
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Ethiopian-born Comic Mines History for Laughs
In the standup act he has been touring America with this month, Ethiopian Israeli comedian Yossi Vassa recounts how he came to accumulate six names: When he left Ethiopia at age 10, he was called Andarge; in Sudan — where his family waited nine months for an Israeli airlift, and where Vassa fell deathly ill…
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Trailblazing Yiddish Action Flick Makes Waves
In December 2005, two Orthodox brothers from Monsey, N.Y. — Yakov and Mendel Kirsh — released “A Gesheft” (“The Deal”), the first Yiddish feature film to come out of the ultra-Orthodox world, and one of very few Yiddish movies made since 1950. The movie was carefully constructed to include nothing trayf, or unacceptable — no…
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Lisa Loeb Looks for Love
What’s a nice Jewish girl like Lisa Loeb doing on a reality show like this? Loeb — a singer-songwriter perhaps best known for her chart-topping single, “Stay (I Missed You),” featured in the 1994 movie “Reality Bites”— now stars on E! network’s “#1 Single,” where her goal is to find a man. Some might wonder…
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