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Google Doodle celebrates the Jewish designer of cat-eye glasses, Altina Schinasi

(New York Jewish Week) – The Google Doodle for Friday, Aug. 4 features a cartoon image of a bespectacled woman peering out from one of the lenses of orange cat-eye glasses. The Doodle celebrates the 116th birthday of Altina “Tina” Schinasi, the Sephardic Jewish artist, inventor and New Yorker who devised the distinctive eyeglasses.  

A trained sculptor, Schinasi designed the glasses in the late 1930s while working as a window display designer in Manhattan. Many major manufacturers rejected her designs, inspired by the Italian Harlequin mask, because they were too edgy. She pushed forward and partnered with a boutique optical shop called Lugene on Madison Avenue, where one of the first pairs was sold to writer Clare Boothe Luce. Schinasi’s designs took off and she soon established her own eyewear company. 

The “Harlequin”-style glasses, more popularly known as “cat-eye,” became a hallmark of glamor in the late 1930s and were a dominant eyeglass silhouette through the mid-20th century, worn by the likes of Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn. 

By the mid-1940s, Schinasi sold her eyeglasses company and moved out to Los Angeles, where she again focused on painting, sculpture and, later in life, filmmaking. Three of her paintings appeared in an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

Schinasi was born on this day in 1907 at her family’s mansion at 351 Riverside Drive. She was the youngest of three daughters born into a wealthy Sephardic family. Her dad, Turkish-born Morris Schinasi, was an international tobacco businessman who made his fortune by inventing a cigarette-rolling machine and then selling his own brand of cigarettes. 

Her mother, Laurette Schinasi, was born in Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece). The two met when Morris Schinasi was on a business trip to Salonica — Laurette was the granddaughter of his business partner. They married in 1903.

Upon Morris Schinasi’s death in 1928, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Schinasi left $1.3 million (roughly $23 million in today’s dollars) to be allocated to several hospitals and Jewish charities, as well as to erect a hospital in Turkey and a new synagogue building for the Bual Zion Congregation (now the B’nai Zion Congregation), a Conservative synagogue in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The Schinasi Mansion was designed by William Tuthill, the same architect who constructed Carnegie Hall, in the early 1900s. It was declared a New York City Landmark in 1974 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Currently owned by Goldman Sachs executive Mark Schwartz, it still sits on West 107th Street and Riverside Drive and is presently the largest single-family residence along Riverside Drive.

As a child, Tina Schinasi attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx before beginning boarding school at age 12 at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts. A biography of Schinasi in an online Dana Hall encyclopedia states that Schinasi felt that “although she had many friends, she often felt isolated as one of the only Jewish students on campus and tried to hide that part of her identity from her classmates.”

Upon graduating, Schinasi studied painting in Paris and decided to attend art school instead of college. In the late 1920s, she began to study painting with Samuel Halpert, a Russian Jewish immigrant, at the Nicholas Roerich Museum on the Upper West Side. 

Schinasi’s first job was designing windows for stores on Fifth Avenue, where she brushed shoulders with the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí. She and Dalí then went on to study under George Grosz, who had fled Germany in 1932 and Maurice Sterne, a Jewish sculptor and painter from Latvia. 

In the late 1930s, Schinasi had her artistic breakthrough and achieved a lasting legacy through her patented design of the Harlequin eyeframe. Per Wikipedia, “A walk down the street occasioned this design breakthrough; finding herself underwhelmed by the lackluster frames in an optician’s window, Altina set out to create a frame that conveyed whimsy, mystery and romance.”

“‘Surely, there must be some way to design eyeglasses that could be attractive! What looks good on a face? What adds to a face? What could a woman wear on her face that would be romantic?’ she wondered.”

In 1939, she won the Lord & Taylor Annual American Design Award. She has been credited with transforming eyeglasses into a fashion accessory.

In 1960, she produced a documentary film about her former art teacher, the late Grosz, who, though not Jewish, was in exile from Germany and was active in anti-Nazi efforts. Titled “George Grosz’ Interregnum,” the 29-minute film was nominated for an Academy Award and won first place at the Venice Film Festival.

Also during the 1960s, Schinasi acquired the film rights for Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. She commissioned a screenplay and met with King, Rosa Parks and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement while on a trip to Alabama. All expressed excitement about the movie. However, Schinasi could not raise funding for the film and it was never made.

Married four times, Schinasi had two children, Terry Sanders and Denis Sanders, with her first husband Morris Sanders. Both of her sons became film directors. In 2014, her grandson Peter Sanders and her granddaughter Victoria Sanders produced and directed “Altina,” a documentary about her life.

“My grandmother Tina was proud of her Jewishness, deeply affected by the rise of the Nazis and personally furnished 13 affidavits to enable Jewish refugees to enter the United States. But we were never practicing Jews in the religious sense,” Peter Sanders told JTA at the time. The film relied on footage shot on the honeymoon of her first marriage in 1927 and 1928, as well as a two-hour interview filmed by her son in 1991.

Altina Schinasi died in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1999 at age 92.

In a note from Google, the company wrote, “Happy birthday to the woman who was a visionary in more ways than one!” 

Google also thanked Schinasi’s son Terry Sanders for his contributions to the project. In a note, Sanders wrote, “Happy Birthday, Tina! Thank you for your courage, kindness and inspiration. Much love, always,” and signed it on behalf of himself and Schinasi’s seven grandchildren: Victoria, Juliette, Peter, David, Eve, Jessica and Brittany. 


The post Google Doodle celebrates the Jewish designer of cat-eye glasses, Altina Schinasi appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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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.”

The post UN Security Council Meets on Iran as Russia, China Push for a Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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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.

The post Israel Rejects Critical EU Report Ahead of Ministers’ Meeting first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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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.

The post Pope Leo Urges International Diplomacy to Prevent ‘Irreparable Abyss’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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