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‘Barbenheimer,’ ‘Maestro’ and ‘The Zone of Interest’ lead large crop of Jewish-inspired Oscar nominations

(JTA) – The year’s biggest movie phenomenon was a one-two punch of blockbusters with Jewish roots — and they both came up big at Tuesday’s Oscar nominations.

“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the Jewish “father of the atomic bomb,” led the year’s nominations with 13, including best picture and director, and is favored by many prognosticators to win the big prize. 

The film’s rendition of J. Robert Oppenheimer covers a fair amount of Jewish ground, including his personal animus toward the Nazis; his recruitment of expelled European Jewish scientists to work on the bomb; his relationship with Albert Einstein, and his late-in-life rivalry with Jewish atomic energy bureaucrat Lewis Strauss. Both Cillian Murphy, who plays Oppenheimer, and Robert Downey Jr., who plays Strauss, were nominated for acting Oscars, as was Emily Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty.

Ruth Handler holds a Barbie that was created for the doll’s 40th anniversary in 1999. (Jeff Christensen/Getty Images)

The movie’s summer release-date companion and partner-in-memes, Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” picked up eight nominations, including best picture. The doll at the center of the musical comedy was created by Jewish inventor Ruth Handler (a minor character in the movie, played by Rhea Perlman). Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, an executive producer on the film who greenlit Gerwig’s playful take on the property, is Israeli and helped organize a controversial Los Angeles screening of footage of the Hamas attacks that was protested by pro-Palestinian groups.

Also nominated from the film are Gerwig’s partner Noah Baumbach, a credited co-writer, and composer Mark Ronson for best original song. Both are Jewish.

Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper in “Maestro.” (Netflix)

Another Jewish-themed contender this year, Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” was the subject of some derision upon its premiere for Cooper’s use of a prosthetic nose to play Jewish composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein. But the biopic, a passion project of Cooper’s, sailed over the objections and picked up seven nominations — including, notably, for best makeup. (It was joined in the latter category by “Golda,” the biopic of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, which starred Helen Mirren.)

“Maestro” was also nominated for best picture, with producer Steven Spielberg among the nominated names, as well as lead actor for Cooper and lead actress for Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife Felicia Montealegre, the actress whose paternal grandfather was Jewish and who in real life converted to Judaism for Bernstein.

A scene from Jonathan Glazer’s film “The Zone of Interest” (Courtesy of A24)

Meanwhile, “The Zone of Interest,” a challenging and formally daring cinematic take on the Holocaust, picked up five nominations, including for best picture and best international feature (submitted by the United Kingdom). The film is loosely based on the real-life Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, and is directed by British Jewish filmmaker Jonathan Glazer, who was nominated for best director and best adapted screenplay (he based it loosely on the novel of the same name by Martin Amis, who died last year).

Nolan’s screenplay for Oppenheimer was also nominated; he adapted it from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Oppenheimer biography “American Prometheus,” co-written by Kai Bird, who grew up watching his American diplomat father try to negotiate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and later married a Jewish woman who was the daughter of Holocaust survivors. After his Oppenheimer work, Bird published a 2010 memoir, “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate,” describing his firsthand experiences watching Israeli-Arab diplomatic efforts.

While several actors were nominated for playing Jewish roles, no actual Jews received acting nominations this year — despite what many critics called a career-best performance by Natalie Portman in the Netflix film “May December.”

Notable Jews scored some nominations deeper down on the list. Diane Warren, the Jewish veteran songwriter, received her 15th nomination for penning “The Fire Inside,” from Hulu’s “Flaming Hot.” Warren has never won an Oscar, but did receive an honorary award in 2022.

And Robbie Robertson, the rock star born to a Native American mother and a Jewish father — and who learned of his Jewish heritage late in life — received a posthumous nomination for best original score for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” about the Osage Nation murders. Robertson, who died last year, was a member of The Band and a regular collaborator with “Flower Moon” director Martin Scorsese.

Not to be outdone, two movies based on works by authors who have made antisemitic comments also received some nominations. “The Color Purple,” the new musical based on the Alice Walker novel (which followed Spielberg’s 1985 movie), was nominated for best supporting actress, while “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” Wes Anderson’s Netflix movie based on the Roald Dahl short story, was nominated for live-action short. 

Walker has endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theorists in interviews. Dahl’s family and a museum dedicated to his work have both acknowledged and apologized for his antisemitism in recent years.

The Oscars will air March 10 on ABC. 


The post ‘Barbenheimer,’ ‘Maestro’ and ‘The Zone of Interest’ lead large crop of Jewish-inspired Oscar nominations appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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US Moves Patriot Missile Batteries from South Korea to Middle East

A Patriot missile battery. Photo: IDF.

i24 NewsAmerican Patriot missile defense batteries will be moved from South Korea to the Middle East, according to reports in Asian media on Friday, amid speculation over a potential military action against Iran’s nuclear program and escalating bombardments of Iran-backed jihadists in Yemen.

US President Donald Trump threatened Iran on Sunday with bombing and secondary tariffs if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear program, and the United States has moved additional warplanes into the region.

Washington and Seoul have reportedly recently agreed on the “monthslong” partial deployment of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, in what is understood to be the first known case involving the relocation of United States Forces Korea (USFK) assets to the Middle East.

Iran in recent years has largely dropped the pretense of enriching uranium for a civilian atomic energy program, as it’s reportedly teetering on the nuclear precipice. Israel believes that a nuclear Iran represents a grave existential threat, consistent with the exterminationist antisemitism of the Islamic Republic’s anti-Israel rhetoric.

After the election of Trump, a known Iran hawk, the likelihood of an U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has increased precipitously.

The post US Moves Patriot Missile Batteries from South Korea to Middle East first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Report: Iranian Plot to Assassinate Azerbaijani Rabbi Foiled

The Azerbaijani capital of Baku. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

i24 NewsIran enlisted the services of a Georgian drug trafficker to carry out an assassination of a prominent Azerbaijani rabbi, the Washington Post reported Saturday, citing security officials.

The plot to murder Rabbi Shneor Segal, foiled by the State Security Service of Azerbaijan in early January, also involved a plan to attack a Jewish education center, the officials said.

The plot was set in motion by an officer with Iran’s Quds Force, who met with Georgian criminal Agil Aslanov, handing him a photo of Segal and detailed instructions on how to murder him, the officials cited by WaPo said. Aslanov’s fee for the foiled hit was $200,000.

The State Security Service said the two men “worked to collect information about a member of a religious community, and sent the location of his residence and workplace to a representative of a foreign special service agency via the appropriate mobile phone application.”

Iran is known to be behind multiple plots against Israeli and Jewish targets, many of which have been foiled by Israeli and foreign security services.

However a recent plot saw three citizens of Uzbekistan murder an Israeli rabbi in the United Arab Emirates on Iranian orders. The three were sentenced to death earlier this week for the murder of Zvi Kogan in November.

The post Report: Iranian Plot to Assassinate Azerbaijani Rabbi Foiled first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Netanyahu to Depart for Washington on Sunday Directly from Hungary to Meet with Trump

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Feb. 16, 2025. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS

i24 NewsIsrael’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will depart to Washington DC on Sunday directly from Hungary—where he is presently on an official visit—to meet with US President Donald Trump, i24NEWS learned on Saturday from an Israeli source.

The visit comes following a phone conversation between the leaders on Friday, and a call with State Secretary Marco Rubio a short while ago.

As a result, the planned visit to Washington of Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz will be postponed once again.

Topics of discussion between the two leaders are expected to include the possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Gaza war and the future of the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave, the US bombing campaign against Iran-backed Houthi jihadists in Yemen, and the recent imposition of tariffs on Israeli products.

The post Netanyahu to Depart for Washington on Sunday Directly from Hungary to Meet with Trump first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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