13 Stories That Rattled the Shtetlsphere in 2013

We’ve got all the Jewish names that lit up 2013, for better or worse — and everything in between.
There’s Titi Aynaw, the trailblazing first black Miss Israel who parlayed her pageant win into a “dream date” with President Barack Obama.
You might not recognize Jake Davidson’s name but the day school kid from Los Angeles showed serious chutzpah by creating a YouTube video asking curvy supermodel Kate Upton to his prom.
James Deen was already a household name (in some households, at least). The nicest Jewish boy in porn made a play for mainstream success.
Mia Farrow’s son, Ronan Farrow, made headlines when he scored an MSNBC talk show gig. Even more intriguing was his mom’s revelation that Woody Allen might not be his real dad.
Fashion bad boy John Galliano tried and failed to make amends for his anti-Semitic past. And the royal baby Prince George — well, we found a Jewish angle on him, too.
What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay there, but Sam Horowitz changed all that. The kid made national headlines with his glitzy bar mitzvah on the Strip.
Mila Kunis showed us just how sexy Jewish can be, while Sarah Silverman stuck with the faith, even though she wore a crucifix.
A dude named Ari Mandel nearly made $100,000 selling a Jewish slice of heaven on eBay.
A Jewish congressman thought a bikini model was his long-lost love child. The truth turned out to be a little less dramatic.
Anthony Weiner’s comeback burned out amid more lurid revelations about sexting — and the profoundly un-Jewish screen name of Carlos Danger.
And Justin Bieber took some heat for suggesting Anne Frank would’ve been a fan. What’s wrong with that?
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Make a Passover Gift Today!
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
- 4
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish פֿילאַנטראָפּ אלי הירשפֿעלד שענקט פֿאָרווערטס די אינטערנעץ־אַדרעסן Yiddish.com און Yiddish.orgPhilanthropist Eli Hirschfeld donates domains Yiddish.com and Yiddish.org to the Forward
די מתּנה וועט דערמעגלעכן מער אָנהענגערס פֿון ייִדיש צו געפֿינען די ייִדישע ווידעאָס, אַרטיקלען און שפּילן פֿונעם פֿאָרווערטס.
-
Fast Forward Antisemitic incidents on college campuses rose over 80 percent last year, says the ADL
-
Fast Forward As the last generation of Holocaust survivors ages, advocates call for their testimonies to be heard
-
Fast Forward Jewish Federations CEO privately opposed a Jewish open letter criticizing Trump’s campus arrests
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.