“The Jews control Hollywood.” It’s one of those anti-Semitic tropes that, we all know, contains a certain grain of truth. “Control,” no — not with that ominous, conspiratorial connotation. But “helped create”? “Disproportionately populate?” Sure. From the founding of California’s motion picture industry (well documented in books like Neal Gabler’s “An Empire of Their Own:…
As vital as Martin Luther King Day is on America’s calendar, it has a special meaning this year for American Jews. This year, 2016, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the fracturing of the historic black-Jewish civil rights alliance. If you want to talk about American Jewish liberal betrayal, as and…
It’s about 3:15 in the morning and I’m awake at my laptop, poring over yet another online Judaica jewelry shop, looking at page after page of hamsa, tablet, menorah, chai, and mezuza pendants. I want something unique. Modern. Sleek. Something that screams “JEWISH” but also hasn’t been run into the ground over and over and…
If we needed proof that there is no such thing as local news anymore, the case of Rachel Dolezal provided it. The story of a president of an NAACP chapter and African studies professor essentially building a career around a fabricated ethnic identity – telling the world she was of African-American heritage when she is,…
Ben Gonshor The first-ever David and Clare Rosen Memorial Play Contest, an international playwriting competition for projects with Jewish and Yiddish themes, has chosen its winner, Montreal-based Ben Gonshor. His historical drama “When Blood Ran Red” chronicles the friendships between African-American actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson and leading Soviet Jews after World War…
When 77-year-old Rabbi Richard Nolan recalls Ben Ammi ben Israel, the leader of the Hebrew Israelite community in Israel who died last weekend, their shared hometown of Chicago is wrapped up in that recollection. And the image is bleak. “There was degradation, segregation, discrimination, lack of education and opportunity,” Nolan said. “A people who had…
Why am I here? The question arises on many levels. On the surface, clearly, I’m here to review “Left Behind,” based on the second-best-selling series of books of all time (“Harry Potter” is the first). In theory, LB should be the biggest of a run of terrible Christian movies, including “Heaven is for Real” and…
“Dad, I want to have a bar mitzvah! And — I’ll get a Hebrew name. I’m going to go with either Shlomo or Shmuel.” So says young Andre Jr. — much to the dismay of Andre Sr. — in the trailer for ABC’s new family comedy, “Black-ish,” set to debut September 24. This African American…
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