Judaism

Comedian unwraps Holocaust denial with apparel line

Nathan Fielder pledges $150,000 to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center at Sunday’s first brick-and-mortar pop-up of jacket company Summit Ice By Yaakov Schwartz Nathan Fielder wears one of his Summit Ice jackets on Conan O’Brien’s show, October 2015. (YouTube) When comedian Nathan Fielder found out that his favorite jacket company paid postmortem tribute to a

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Jewish History, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Passport Wallenberg used to save Jews in WWII to be auctioned

Bidding at LA auction house to start at $8,000 for fake permit issued by Swedish Embassy in Budapest in September 1944 By Sue Surkes Raoul Wallenberg (Wikimedia Commons) A rare passport signed by Raoul Wallenberg — the man who saved tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary from deportation to the gas chambers —

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International, Jewish History, USA

A haggada for those who want more

Redemption, Then and Now: Pesaḥ Haggada with Essays and Commentary by Rabbi Benjamin Blech;  Menorah Books, Jerusalem, © 2017, ISBN 978-1-940516-73-8, p. 310, $24.95 By Fred Reiss, Ed.D. WINCHESTER, California –  Considering the long arc of Jewish history, the Haggada, a book containing the Passover Seder, the traditional ordered meal recreating God’s redemptive acts through the

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion

Every 83 seconds: Anti-Semitic post uploaded to social media

Over the course of 2016, a World Jewish Congress survey finds, more than 382,000 anti-Semitic posts were uploaded to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, blogs and other social media forums. The research, conducted together with Vigo Social Intelligence, showed that an overwhelming 63 percent of all anti-Semitic content online can be found on Twitter. More than

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International, Jewish History

Fans celebrate lives of Carrie Fisher and mother Debbie Reynolds at joint memorial service

LOS ANGELES — Under clear blue skies, hundreds of fans made the pilgrimage Saturday to Forest Lawn’s Hall of Liberty in the Hollywood Hills to pay tribute to actress Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds. “These were my girls …,” Todd Fisher, who helped organize the public memorial, told those who had gathered to

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Obituaries & memorials, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Baltimore Cardinal William Henry Keeler dead at 86

BALTIMORE — Cardinal William Henry Keeler, the longtime leader of the Archdiocese of Baltimore whose influence in the Catholic Church spanned international borders over nearly six decades, died Thursday. He had turned 86 this month. The retired archbishop of Baltimore, who led the region’s nearly 500,000 Catholics from 1989 until 2007, died while under the

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Obituaries & memorials, USA

Supreme Court justices in the pews and on the bench – and where Neil Gorsuch fits in

By Steven K. Green, Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Religion, Law & Democracy, Willamette University. On Jan. 31, President Donald Trump nominated Judge Neil M. Gorsuch of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court occasioned by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The Senate hearing

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Jewish History, USA

Chuck Barris, creator of ‘The Gong Show’ and ‘The Dating Game,’ dies at 87

Chuck Barris, “The Gong Show” creator and host who claimed — though never too seriously — that he doubled as a CIA assassin during the height of his game show popularity, has died at his home in Palisades, N.Y. He was 87. The popular game show creator, producer and host died Monday of natural causes,

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Obituaries & memorials, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

“Yes, call me a Jew”

Historic Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia vandalized This new wave of anti-Semitism, delivered via bomb threats, cemetery vandalisms, swastika desecrations, and specific acts of violence, reawakens an old and bittersweet mantra in every Jewish soul: we are as vulnerable as we are enduring. I remember: somebody once wrote me a nasty letter after something I circulated

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Jewish History, Jewish Religion