Less than 48 hours after the Yiddish edition of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” translated by Arun Viswanath, became available for pre-order, the book sold out its first print run of 1,000 copies. (Viswanath is Forverts editor Rukhl Schaechter’s nephew.) For a Yiddish publisher in 2020, that’s a sales number that’s almost magical. A…
Read in Yiddish. When Arun Viswanath, the Yiddish translator of J. K. Rowling’s worldwide bestseller “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was 12 years old, he suddenly had a revelation that made him feel dejected. Although he’s a grandson of the venerable Yiddish linguist Mordkhe Schaechter, the son of the Yiddish poet Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, and…
Daniel Radcliffe, the 29-year-old star of “Harry Potter,” “Viktor Frankenstein,” and multiple Broadway hits, is one of the wealthiest and best-known actors in the world. Radcliffe is Jewish on his mother’s side and considers his heritage a central part of his identity, though he’s not a person who’s usually associated with being Jewish. Samuel Gershon,…
(JTA) — If you read the “Harry Potter” series in Hebrew you may have noticed a curious Jewish fact: Though Sirius Black isn’t Jewish, the character sings a Hanukkah song in one scene. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Hebrew translator Gili Bar Hillel reveals some behind-the-scenes tidbits about her “Harry Potter” translation process. In…
A five-part “Harry Potter” movie spinoff based on a fictional textbook that JK Rowling wrote for charity in 2001 is something nobody asked for. The five-movie series that began with “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them” in 2016 released a trailer for its follow-up, “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald,” out November 16, on…
The woman who wrote a seven-book series featuring unforgettable Jewish side-character Anthony Goldstein has taken to Twitter to call out instances of anti-Semitism across the web. JK Rowling, as handy with a click as she is with the quill, took to the web on Monday to post screenshots of anti-Semitism from the internet, focussing on…
In the early hours of the fourth of July, “Harry Potter” scribe JK Rowling took to Twitter to denounce the Trump administration’s family separation policies and resulting decisions to force toddlers as young as three years old to represent themselves in court. It’s so awful we could laugh. Or drink. But Rowling, who 4,224 pages…
After a particularly boring season on Broadway, there are few surprises among this season’s nominees for the Tony Awards. “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Mean Girls” predictably mopped up nominations, scoring 12 apiece in a season in which new musicals were scarce. Equally predictably, “Escape to Margaritaville,” the Jimmy Buffet musical, won no Tony love; somewhat more…
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