(JTA) — Ben Stiller offered his own High Holiday alternative to Adam Sandler’s “Chanukah Song” as his fellow Jewish comedian accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
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Do you know a local Jewish artist in the Phoenix community? Are they your friend or family member? My grandmother, of blessed memory, shared her passion for sculpture and metalworking with me. My father shares his love for music. My mother, a local artist, inspires me to seek creativity in a…
(JTA) – With seven nominations for his most personal film ever, this could have been Steven Spielberg’s biggest year at the Academy Awards. But the hot-dog fingers had other plans.
(JTA) — Chaim Topol won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of an immigrant to Israel, stepped off the stage in London to fight for his country and had his sketches of Israeli presidents turned into postage stamps.
Nancy Kravetz has been painting since she was a teenager and now, at 85, she sometimes spends eight hours a day in her home studio creating art.
Pardes Jewish Day School has a challenging, but very exciting, decision to make by the end of the school year. After about 18 months of work, “Resistors in Color,” the eighth-grade class’ artistic composition, which showcases many of the brave souls who not only resisted but fought back agai…
(JTA) — The real Mordecai Samel, at the time in his late 70s, really didn’t want an iPhone in 2015.
(JTA) — When a film about a group of Israeli youths who visit former concentration camps in Poland premiered on Sunday at the Berlin Film Festival, its Israeli producer took the microphone after the screening to decry the state of his nation.
On March 13, Brandeis National Committee Phoenix Chapter hosts its annual Book & Author event, bringing authors and patrons from across the country. The day includes author talks, book sales and signings, boutiques and a luncheon. This year celebrates the 75th anniversary of both Brandei…
(JTA) — When people enter the world of “Hogwarts Legacy,” the blockbuster video game that was officially released on Friday, they will find themselves immersed in the fictional universe of “Harry Potter” — and face-to-face with an alleged antisemitic caricature.
(JTA) — On a couple of occasions in Julian Schlossberg’s early life, he found himself in parts of the United States where some people he talked to had never met a Jewish person. The first was a stint in the Army, the second was while selling movies to rural television stations.
(JTA) — An illustrated book about an inspiring Holocaust survivor and two works of fantasy featuring dybbuks and Jewish demons have won this year’s top prizes in Jewish children’s literature.
(JTA) — Werner Reich had his opening line ready when he sat down for B.A. Van Sise to take his portrait.
At Scottsdale’s Harkins Theatres Shea 14 next month, Jewish movie lovers will have the chance to hear directly from first-time filmmaker Marvin Samel, the director and creator of one of the Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival’s (GPJFF) three featured films.
Artist Beth Surdut is a wildlife illustrator, environmental educator, stained glass designer and writer. She began painting on silk in the 1980s, starting with scarves, which have been on display in the Smithsonian, in Washington, D.C., and then moved on to larger paintings. She also creates…
(JTA) – “The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama about his Jewish upbringing, had an expected strong haul of Oscar nominations, picking up seven nods Tuesday morning.
Comic Keith Barany doesn’t tell dirty jokes or pick at people’s insecurities to get a laugh. That’s one reason he’s a popular comedy choice for country clubs, corporate events and Jewish community centers. He tells funny stories from his life, but in a way that gives them a universal appeal.
(JTA) — Turner Classic Movies admits that capturing the “Jewish experience” in a series of films is a daunting task, but the network is attempting to do so anyway.
(New York Jewish Week) — In 2017, Deborah Veach went back to Germany, looking for the site of the displaced persons camp where she and her parents had been housed after World War II. They were in suspension, between the lives her parents led in Belarus before they were shattered by the Nazis…
(JTA) – Were Jews the “OG slaves”? Can American slavery be compared to the Holocaust? And who gets the last word on Louis Farrakhan?
Anyone with a TikTok account might have seen a recent video by Congregation Beth Israel Cantor Seth Ettinger on the final night of Chanukah 2022. Dressed in his by-now-famous, Chanukah-themed blue suit and wearing a large hat shaped like a Chanukah menorah with all nine candles ablaze, Ettin…
IZMIR, Turkey (JTA) — Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Prague has been a popular tourist destination for both Jewish travelers and others interested in Jewish history. The Nazis left many of city’s synagogues and Jewish sites relatively intact, intending to showcase them as the remnants o…
(JTA) — Binya Kóatz remembers the first time she saw a woman wearing tzitzit. While attending Friday night services at a Jewish Renewal synagogue in Berkeley, she noticed the long ritual fringes worn by some observant Jews — historically men — dangling below a friend’s short shorts.
(JTA) — Barbara Walters, the iconic newswoman and celebrity interviewer who made history for women and Jewish anchors on mainstream American news television, died at 93 on Friday.
On Jan. 15, 1948, The Phoenix Jewish News became the official publication of the Jewish Community Council (the precursor to the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix) and the newspaper for the roughly 2,000 members of the Jewish community in the area.
On Jan. 22, MusicaNova Orchestra is teaming up with the ASU Center for Jewish Studies, with support by a grant from the Center for Jewish Philanthropy of Greater Phoenix, to present “Winter Journey and the Inextinguishable Symphony” at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.
(JTA) — From the very beginning of the year, 2022 was anything but easy for American Jews.
(JTA) – Mara Rockliff’s “Chik Chak Shabbat” has become a standard for Jewish children since its 2014 publication. The picture book intended for young readers tells a whimsical story about a group of diverse neighbors who help an observant Jewish woman make her cholent — a stew traditionally …
Most of the women in the Bible fall into a few distinct categories. There are the wise wives and mothers like Sarah, Rebecca and Yocheved, required to make hard decisions to protect their children. Then there are the tragic romantic damsels, the ready-for-soap-opera players: Rachel, Leah and…
Human remains, skeletal and naked, are among the first images of “Auschwitz Virtual Live Tour.” Russians captured the gruesome scenes as they liberated Auschwitz, the largest of six Nazi death camps, in January 1945. Jerzy Wójcik, the tour’s creator and only guide, begins with them precisely…
The city of Tucson has elected five Jewish mayors dating back to Charles Strauss, who was in office from 1883-1884. Two Jewish brothers, Isaac and Jacob Isaacson, founded the Arizona border town of Nogales. And famed lawman Wyatt Earp of Tombstone married Josephine Marcus of the Neiman-Marcu…
The Red Rocks Music Festival has been bringing chamber music to concerts in Sedona and Phoenix for more than two decades. The festival’s mission “is to educate, engage and challenge audiences through a collaboration of leading Arizona artists with world-acclaimed musicians.”
In one of the early scenes of Steven Spielberg’s new film, “The Fabelmans,” the family is driving home on a winter night. Their young son, Sammy, points out he knows which home on the street is theirs, as it is the dark one among all the others adorned with Christmas lights.
(JTA) – Indy’s going to sock it to the Third Reich once more.
In September, Hal and Lindsay Cohen launched an online Etsy shop, Olive+Fawn, “for the creative and beautiful Jewish home.” During the pandemic, the Cohens became involved in crafting, creating a home camp with their four children where Lindsay planned different craft activities that involve…
(JTA) — This year’s slate of Jewish Grammy nominees offers a little something for everyone.
(JTA) — Hosting “Saturday Night Live” for the first time since he faced widespread criticism about jokes ridiculing transgender people, comedian Dave Chappelle opened the show with a lengthy monologue about “the Jews” — namely, the controversy surrounding rapper Kanye West’s recent antisemit…
Salamone Rossi composed modern dances, sonatas and Italian love songs for the entertainment of Francesco IV Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, Italy, in the early 17th century. Rossi’s music was well-known and well-loved. Several of his 313 compositions were so popular they had to be reprinted.
BJ Borris came to Phoenix’s Temple Chai on Oct. 29 prepared to dance.
On the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, the Arizona Jewish Historical Society (AZJHS) will unveil a new, original exhibit, “Stories of Survival: An Immersive Journey through the Holocaust.” The exhibition will be open through Aug. 3, 2023.
(JTA) — The Republican nominee for Congress in Texas’ 7th district is a self-proclaimed history buff, but his take on Anne Frank is not one that most historians would endorse.
(JTA) – Trish Adlesic was visiting her father in Pittsburgh on the day a gunman walked into the city’s Tree of Life synagogue building and murdered 11 people.
When Rabbi Rachel Timoner’s dad Eli told his family of his decision to end his life, Rachel knew what would soon be asked of her: to officiate his funeral, something he had told her he wanted since she became ordained.
(JTA) — Episode three of “The Patient,” the well-received psychological thriller series on Hulu about a serial killer who kidnaps his therapist, involves a flashback to an Orthodox wedding.
On Oct. 1, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) opened its latest exhibition: “In Our Time: Selections from the Singer Collection.” A snapshot of 40 paintings by 27 artists, “In Our Time” is a moving, high-concept and reflective showcase for artists from the African Diaspora. Th…
Movies were always going to be part of David Ethan Shapiro’s future.
The annual art event, Hidden in the Hills Artist Studio Tour (HITH), allows the public to peek into the private studios of artists to learn about their methodology and process and purchase art directly from creators.
Central Avenue in Downtown Phoenix is still relatively calm at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday and Eduard Zavurov, owner of Downtown Barber Shop, takes advantage of the quiet to spotlight a collage of family pictures on the wall as he preps for his first customer.
(JTA) — In 2008, Adam Sandler gave Hollywood one of its most memorable Israeli characters ever: the Zohan, an Israeli Defense Forces operative with superhuman abilities who leaves the anti-terrorism grind to become a hairdresser in New York. “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” was a blockbuster hit.
TORONTO (JTA) — It would be difficult to debate what Steven Spielberg’s “most Jewish” film has been, after a career with highlights such as “Schindler’s List” and “Munich.” But it’s now clear what the famed director’s most personal film is.
