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‘And Just Like That…’ star Alexa Swinton is having her bat mitzvah in Israel

A version of this story originally appeared on Kveller.
Last year, Alexa Swinton brought us arguably one of the most high profile TV b’nai mitzvah ceremonies of all time — or rather, the “they mitzvah” that wasn’t.
Swinton, who plays Rock Goldenblatt in “And Just Like That…”, gave viewers a relatable portrayal of a teen struggling with their gender identity and their connection to Judaism. In the final episode of the first season of the show, Rock refuses to celebrate their Jewish coming of age, and their mom, Charlotte York Goldenblatt — one of the main “Sex and the City” characters — takes to the bimah instead, both in affirmation of her own faith and as her own way of accepting her child’s choice.
In real life, Swinton, a prolific actress who has starred in shows like “Billions” and “Emergence,” is celebrating the debut of the second season of HBO’s “And Just Like That…”, which premiered last week — and her own bat mitzvah.
Swinton and her family are currently in Israel, where she and her older sister, Ava, who didn’t get to experience the Jewish rite of passage because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will celebrate together in a joint ceremony. It will take place next week at Apollonia National Park in Herzliya, her mother told Kveller.
It’s Swinton’s first visit to Israel, where she has many relatives she has never met before. Swinton is also part of a program that allows her to honor a child who was killed during the Holocaust.
“You get to learn about their history and kind of give them a chance to also have their own bat mitzvah while you have yours. I think it’s really beautiful,” she said.
Just like Rock and her upcoming character in the Netflix movie “Maestro,” Swinton comes from a mixed background. Swinton’s Jewish mother, Inna, immigrated from the Soviet Union as a child. Her father’s family is Scottish and she is distantly related to Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton. After the ceremonies in Israel, the family will travel to Scotland on a heritage trip of sorts.
“I get to celebrate both parts of my culture and who I am as a person,” Swinton said.
While Rock may have flubbed their bat mitzvah readings, Swinton is highly invested in hers.
“My portion is from Pinchas,” an ebullient Swinton tells me over Zoom, sitting side by side with her Jewish mom. “It’s a lot about feminism… and how women have been trying to make history and a name for themselves for so long.”
Swinton is very connected to her Judaism in part because her grandmother could not practice her faith in the Soviet Union. “Being Jewish to me is more about who I am as a person than the religion,” she said. “It’s beyond God.”
She celebrates both Christmas and Hanukkah (“I’m not going to complain about eight nights of gifts,” she joked) and her favorite food is her grandmother’s chicken soup (she knows it’s a basic choice, she said it’s really unbeatable). She loves going to temple where she lives in New Jersey, where she talks to friends of her mother and grandmother and learns about their Jewish childhoods.
Swinton has also played her mother onstage and onscreen, in the off-Broadway play and the upcoming short film “Kooky Spook,” which tells the story of Inna’s young adulthood and first Halloween as a new immigrant in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. They filmed the movie in both Fair Lawn, where Inna’s family landed after immigrating to the United States, and in Riga, Latvia.
Swinton has been up for a lot of Jewish roles — from Hannah in “Fleishman Is In Trouble,” where her younger brother, Maxim, got the role of Solly, to Anne Frank in Disney’s “A Small Light.” That role went to another Jewish actress, Billie Boullet, and losing it left Swinton a little heartbroken.
“Being a young Jewish girl, like an actor, your dream role is going to be Anne Frank,” she said. But she was up for roles in both “Maestro” and “A Small Light” at the same time, and at the end of the day “we were super happy” to get that role, she said.
“Maestro” is a biopic about Jewish music legend Leonard Bernstein, and Swinton will be playing Bernstein’s youngest daughter, Nina in the upcoming Netflix movie. She did know of the Jewish composer beforehand — “we’re a very musical family” — but she’s done a lot more research to prepare for the role, including spending time at the Bernstein family home.
When she and her mother got the “Maestro,” script “we were like, oh my god, this is beautiful, this is about Leonard Bernstein. It’s incredible script about a Jewish family,” she said.
Unfortunately, the timing was not great — Swinton had to film her audition in a hotel closet during a trip with her mother and sister and did not think she would get the role. But she soon earned a direct audition with Bradley Cooper.
“I don’t really know if I met Bradley,” she jested to me about working with Cooper on “Maestro,” “I think I might have just met a modern rendition of Leonard, because he was always on.”
Swinton is also proud of the Jewish representation she’s been able to bring to her projects.
“I think it’s wonderful that I’ve gotten to play so many Jewish people,” she said. “It’s nice just to have something in common with the character you’re playing, and it makes you feel much more connected.”
For now, viewers can watch Swinton playing the moody and lovable Rock in the new season of “And Just Like That,” which airs a new episode every Thursday until Aug. 3.
This season, Rock will be investing a lot more time in their hobbies. “I think they find a lot about themselves,” Swinton said, “and they wear some pretty cool clothes.”
Swinton added that she didn’t know her character would be gender nonconforming at first. “One of the audition scenes was the scene where Rock was like, oh, I don’t really feel like a girl. So I was like, ‘Oh, I’m interested to see where this will go.’”
She was happy to see representation of young people questioning their gender make it into the plot.
“A lot of times, kids that are exploring their identity don’t really have a lot to back off of,” she says. “Like, maybe there’ll be one random TikToker who is 25 years old. It’s great, because finally, there’s someone who’s 13 years old on television, who is trying to figure out who they are as a person.”
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The post ‘And Just Like That…’ star Alexa Swinton is having her bat mitzvah in Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency

The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation

Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack

A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.