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Alan Arkin, Jewish actor with uncommon versatility, dies at 89

(JTA) — Alan Arkin knew he was going to be an actor from the age of five.
“Every film I saw, every play, every piece of music fed an unquenchable need to turn myself into something other than what I was,” he wrote in his 2011 memoir, “An Improvised Life.”
What he was was the son of Ukrainian and German Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, where he was born in 1934. But over the course of a long and unusually peripatetic career, he managed to turn himself into a conflicted Russian submarine officer (“The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” 1966), a struggling Puerto Rican widower (“Popi,” 1969) and a mild-mannered Manhattan dentist recruited into an unlikely espionage scheme by his daughter’s future father-in-law (“The In-Laws,” 1979).
His versatility was honed by his study of the “Stanislavski” method taught by Benjamin Zemach, an American modern-dance pioneer who specialized in Jewish themes, and his stint as an early member of the Second City improvisational comedy troupe in the 1960s.
“It’s improvisation, and some are terrific, and some are terrible,” he told an interviewer about his days with Second City. “The ability to fail was an extraordinary privilege and gift. … You don’t learn anything without failing.”
Arkin, who became the sixth-oldest winner of the best supporting actor Oscar in 2007 for his part in “Little Miss Sunshine,” died Thursday at his home in San Marcos, Calif. He was 89.
Over a nearly seven-decade career, he imbued comic roles with pathos and serious roles with a touch of sardonic humor. He was working until nearly the end of his life, co-starring with Michael Douglas from 2018 to 2019 in Chuck Lorre’s Netflix comedy series “The Kominsky Method.” That role, as agent Norman Newlander, earned him two consecutive Emmy Award nominations.
His other well-known roles included a paranoid salesman in the film adaptation of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992) and a deaf-mute in the Southern Gothic drama “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (1968). He also played Yossarian, the reluctant airman in “Catch-22,” the 1970 film adaptation of the Joseph Heller novel. Although the character was technically Armenian, most critics agreed that he was a “coded” Jew.
Arkin also voiced J.D. Salinger, or at least a character purporting to be the famously reclusive Jewish writer, in the cult Netflix animated series, “BoJack Horseman.”
He made his directorial debut with the darkly comic “Little Murders” (1971), based on the stage play by Jewish writer and cartoonist Jules Feiffer. In 1975, Arkin directed the Broadway production of Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys,” a comedy about elderly enemies based on the Jewish vaudeville team Smith and Dale.
Arkin was the son of David I. Arkin, a painter and writer, and Beatrice Wortis, a teacher. He wrote that he grew up in a Jewish family with “no emphasis on religion.” The family moved to Los Angeles when Alan was 11; his parents were accused of being communists during the Red Scare” of the 1950s and struggled for work. He attended Los Angeles State College and Bennington College.
Arkin won a Tony for best featured actor in 1963 when he appeared on Broadway in “Enter Laughing,” a comedy based on an autobiographical novel by the Jewish comedian, writer and director Carl Reiner.
Arkin made his film debut — and received his first Academy Award nomination — opposite Reiner in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” about a Soviet sub that runs aground off New England. The phrase he teaches his comrades — “Emergency! Everybody to get from street!” — became a catchphrase.
Thirteen years later, “The In-Laws” would spawn another catchphrase, after Arkin and his co-star Peter Falk avoid a hail of bullets by running zig-zag and yelling “Serpentine!”
In 1987, he starred in the television film “Escape from Sobibor,” portraying Leon Felhendler, a Polish-Jewish resistance fighter who organized the 1943 prisoner uprising at the Sobibor extermination camp. The role earned Arkin nominations for an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor.
In “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006) he played the cranky, vulgar grandfather to a little girl who dreams, improbably, of winning a beauty pageant. Arkin’s character spends hours working on her dance routine with her in the independent comedy, which was a surprise hit.
On receiving his Academy Award for the role in 2007, Arkin said: “More than anything, I’m deeply moved by the open-hearted appreciation our small film has received, which in these fragmented times speaks so openly of the possibility of innocence, growth and connection.”
Arkin was also an accomplished folk singer, forming a group, The Tarriers, that had a modest 1956 hit with a version of “The Banana Boat Song,” a traditional Jamaican calypso folk song that Harry Belafonte would make more famous.
Arkin was married three times. He had three sons, all actors: Adam Arkin, Matthew Arkin and Anthony (Tony) Dana Arkin.
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UN Security Council Meets on Iran as Russia, China Push for a Ceasefire

Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The U.N. Security Council met on Sunday to discuss US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites as Russia, China and Pakistan proposed the 15-member body adopt a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Middle East.
It was not immediately clear when it could be put to a vote. The three countries circulated the draft text, said diplomats, and asked members to share their comments by Monday evening. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China to pass.
The US is likely to oppose the draft resolution, seen by Reuters, which also condemns attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and facilities. The text does not name the United States or Israel.
“The bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States marks a perilous turn in a region that is already reeling,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Sunday. “We now risk descending into a rathole of retaliation after retaliation.”
“We must act – immediately and decisively – to halt the fighting and return to serious, sustained negotiations on the Iran nuclear program,” Guterres said.
The world awaited Iran’s response on Sunday after President Donald Trump said the US had “obliterated” Tehran’s key nuclear sites, joining Israel in the biggest Western military action against the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.
U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council that while craters were visible at Iran’s enrichment site buried into a mountain at Fordow, “no one – including the IAEA – is in a position to assess the underground damage.”
Grossi said entrances to tunnels used for the storage of enriched material appear to have been hit at Iran’s sprawling Isfahan nuclear complex, while the fuel enrichment plant at Natanz has been struck again.
“Iran has informed the IAEA there has been no increase in off-site radiation levels at all three sites,” said Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran requested the U.N. Security Council meeting, calling on the 15-member body “to address this blatant and unlawful act of aggression, to condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
Israel‘s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement on Sunday that the U.S. and Israel “do not deserve any condemnation, but rather an expression of appreciation and gratitude for making the world a safer place.”
Danon told reporters before the council meeting that it was still early when it came to assessing the impact of the U.S. strikes. When asked if Israel was pursuing regime change in Iran, Danon said: “That’s for the Iranian people to decide, not for us.”
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Israel Rejects Critical EU Report Ahead of Ministers’ Meeting

FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Israel has rejected a European Union report saying it may be breaching human rights obligations in Gaza and the West Bank as a “moral and methodological failure,” according to a document seen by Reuters on Sunday.
The note, sent to EU officials ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, said the report by the bloc’s diplomatic service failed to consider Israel’s challenges and was based on inaccurate information.
“The Foreign Ministry of the State of Israel rejects the document … and finds it to be a complete moral and methodological failure,” the note said, adding that it should be dismissed entirely.
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Pope Leo Urges International Diplomacy to Prevent ‘Irreparable Abyss’

FILE PHOTO: Pope Leo XIV holds a Jubilee audience on the occasion of the Jubilee of Sport, at St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican June 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi/File Photo
Pope Leo on Sunday said the international community must strive to avoid war that risks opening an “irreparable abyss,” and that diplomacy should take the place of conflict.
US forces struck Iran’s three main nuclear sites overnight, joining an Israeli assault in a major new escalation of conflict in the Middle East as Tehran vowed to defend itself.
“Every member of the international community has a moral responsibility: to stop the tragedy of war before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” Pope Leo said during his weekly prayer with pilgrims.
“No armed victory can compensate for the pain of mothers, the fear of children, the stolen future. Let diplomacy silence the weapons, let nations chart their future with peace efforts, not with violence and bloody conflicts,” he added.
“In this dramatic scenario, which includes Israel and Palestine, the daily suffering of the population, especially in Gaza and other territories, risks being forgotten, where the need for adequate humanitarian support is becoming increasingly urgent,” Pope Leo said.
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