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Meet the real-life sister act behind the two new ’90s Jewish American Girl dolls
(JTA) — As children in upstate New York, twin sisters Julia DeVillers and Jennifer Roy went to Hebrew school three days a week, spent their summers at a JCC summer camp and got to know local Holocaust survivors through their father, who survived the Nazis as a child in Poland. They also celebrated Christmas with their mother’s family.
Aware of their dual religious and cultural backgrounds from a young age, DeVillers and Roy personally sent their public elementary school principal a letter asking to place a menorah next to the school Christmas tree. The girls gathered a couple of the other Jewish students together to present the letter to the principal, to resounding success: A real menorah was added to the school’s holiday display.
It was something straight out of an American Girl story. And as of this week, in a sense, it is one.
On Wednesday, American Girl released its first twin dolls, Isabel and Nicki Hoffman, who are also the first characters from an interfaith family. Their stories take place in the late 1990s and were written by DeVillers and Roy, inspired by the sisters’ own childhood experiences. The twin dolls’ parents are, respectively, Jewish and Christian, and their mother, Robin, is named after the authors’ own mother.
“It’s incredibly special to us that the twins bring this Jewish and interfaith representation that so many kids will relate to,” DeVillers told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Roy added, “People are not necessarily one thing or another these days. And while we are Jewish, we did grow up with both holidays and both cultures in our family. And that’s how we wanted our characters to be and to feel.”
Isabel and Nicki’s stories are loosely based on the childhood experiences of authors and real-life twins Julia DeVillers and Jennifer Roy. (Courtesy of American Girl)
The dolls are a milestone in how the lived experience of many American Jews is reflected in popular culture. Recent surveys of Jewish Americans consistently note high rates of interfaith marriage, and show that a significant portion of those couples raise their children either fully or partly Jewish.
Isabel and Nicki are the second and third historical Jewish American Girl dolls, joining Rebecca Rubin. Rebecca’s story reflected an earlier generation’s perception of normative American Jewish identity: Her family immigrated from Russia and lives in New York’s Lower East Side in 1914, while navigating issues of assimilation and religion.
Stories of joint Hanukkah-Christmas celebrations are not exactly new. A TV episode Isabel and Nicki’s character’s might have watched as teenagers, “The Best Chrismukkah Ever” from the drama “The O.C.,” aired nearly two decades ago. But the dolls and their stories are “super innovative and relevant for 21st-century Jewish interfaith families,” said Keren McGinity, the interfaith specialist for the Conservative movement of Judaism and a professor of American studies at Brandeis University.
“Anytime there’s cultural representation that depicts real life, it’s a good thing,” McGinity said, though she added that some depictions of interfaith families are more robust than others.
“On the one hand, it’s terrific that they’re reflecting contemporary American Jewish life by depicting an interfaith family through these characters and reinforcing the fact that it only takes one Jewish parent to raise Jewish children,” she added. “And it remains to be seen how they are Jewish beyond celebrating the December holidays, and how they’re interfaith beyond celebrating the December holidays, plural.”
The new twin dolls are the latest in American Girl’s iconic series of dolls, which hail from different eras of American history and come with novels about their lives. American Girl has historically aimed to present a diverse set of dolls. Other recent offerings include Evette Peeters, a biracial girl who cares for the environment, and Kavi Sharma, an Indian-American girl who loves Broadway musicals.
The new historical characters, Isabel and Nicki, retail for $115 each. Their stories are written by DeVillers and Roy, respectively, and begin on Dec. 11, 1999, when they receive their journals as a gift for the last night of Hanukkah.
They have their own distinct personalities, which the authors say somewhat resemble what they were like as kids: Isabel has a preppy style and loves dancing, and is advertised wearing a pink cable-knit sleeveless sweater over a pinstripe shirt, with a plaid skirt, platform shoes and a beret. Nicki likes skateboarding and writing song lyrics, and appears on the American Girl website wearing a backwards baseball cap, choker necklace, blue T-shirt dress and sneakers, with a flannel shirt tied around her waist.
Isabel’s book begins with a nod to a late-1990s fad: “Hi, New Journal! You’re my present for the last night of Hanukkah!! I was going to save you for after Christmas and New Year’s, but we also got NEW GEL PENS!”
In Nicki’s book, her interfaith identity is mentioned two weeks later: “Did I mention my family celebrates Hanukkah AND Christmas? Well, we do.”
The two journals, “Meet Isabel” and “Meet Nicki” are filled with text and sold with the dolls. The stories take place during the same time frame, as the girls celebrate the winter holidays, face their fears, make new friends and worry about Y2K. A longer novel, “Meet Isabel and Nicki” is set for release in August as the first in the Isabel and Nicki historical series. It will take place during the same month as the shorter journals, but will delve further into the time period. Readers will get to spend the last night of Hanukkah with the Hoffmans, lighting the menorah and playing dreidel.
“Meet Isabel and Nicki,” the first novel in the series about the Hoffman twins, will be released in August. (Photo courtesy of American Girl. Design by Jackie Hajdenberg)
McGinity said she would have to wait until the new book comes out to see what the girls’ representation looks like, given that the journals are so short.
“I feel like we don’t have enough intel other than ‘OK, the authors are Jewish, the characters are Jewish, they grew up in an interfaith household,’” she added.
The crowded flagship American Girl store in New York City has already begun promoting Isabel and Nicki by showcasing the twins’ different outfits and bedroom and accessory collections, with dozens of the dolls positioned throughout the store.
“While we’re not able to provide specific sales information, I can say we’ve been happy to see the positive response for the new characters,” a representative for the company said.
Roy and her sister have previously written a series of children’s novels about twins, and Roy also authored “Yellow Star,” a 2006 children’s book about her aunt’s remarkable survival as one of the only children to be liberated from the Lodz Ghetto. Roy said she and her sister are grateful for the chance to tell their family’s story in a new way.
“So we don’t know what cultures, faiths, religions are coming beyond this,” said Roy, referring to future American Girl products. “But what we did know was that if we were writing in the holiday season, we really wanted to include parts of ourselves and that’s what American Girl editors all said: ‘We’d love to have you remember from your childhood.’ And this was our childhood.”
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The post Meet the real-life sister act behind the two new ’90s Jewish American Girl dolls appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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NYPD chief pledges to protect Jews at Central Synagogue one week after Shabbat attack
(JTA) — New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said she felt a “deeply personal” commitment to protect Jews in a speech at Central Synagogue, where she is a member, in the aftermath of an attack during Shabbat services there.
Tisch addressed the Reform synagogue in Midtown Manhattan during its Friday evening prayers a week after a man disrupted the service by shouting obscenities, punched a congregant in the face and spat on and headbutted a Black security guard while calling him a racial slur. Suspect Larry Montes, who was arrested at the scene, has been charged with hate crimes in federal and state court.
Tisch said there were no serious injuries. She called the attack “a message written in violence,” intended to tell “everyone who shares the victim’s identity that they do not belong, that they are vulnerable, and that they should be afraid.”
She also noted that roughly half of confirmed hate crimes in New York City have for years targeted Jews, who make up about 10% of the population.
“As a proud Jew and a lifelong member of this congregation, you have my word that I stand with you in these uncertain and precarious times,” said Tisch, adding that her commitment at Central Synagogue was “deeply personal.”
Tisch spoke after an interfaith group of seven Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders gave remarks about solidarity between their communities.
“Might our presence here be a testament to the ties, the durable ties that bind each of us together,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
“We are here tonight to affirm that you do not walk through this city alone, but you are held in a covenant between our communities,” added Rev. Adriene Thorne of The Riverside Church. “What affects one of us touches all of us.”
Montes told NYPD officers after his arrest that he felt disrespected at the Central Synagogue service and described the incident as “a racial thing” and “all religious motivated,” according to a federal criminal complaint. He also said that he identified as Jewish.
His aunt, Myriam Montes, told The New York Post that he was “mentally traumatized because of his desire to belong to that religion [Judaism].” The New York Times reported that Montes had a history of mental health issues documented by the NYPD.
A Facebook page that appears to belong to Montes is littered with posts about Israel and Judaism. They include an image of a map of Israel with the text, “Keep Israel in your heart,” a video of Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi discussing why evangelical Christians support Israel and a video comparing Mayor Zohran Mamdani with Iran’s former supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post NYPD chief pledges to protect Jews at Central Synagogue one week after Shabbat attack appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel slammed for closing probe into killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia jointly condemned Israel for declining to open a criminal probe into the April 2024 killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers in Deir al-Balah.
The three countries, whose citizens were among the dead, called the decision “shameful,” adding that “the victims of this incident and their families deserve justice and accountability, and we will continue to seek answers on their behalf.”
Poland, who also lost a citizen in the strike, also sharply criticized Israel and summoned its ambassador to the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw last week. Australia also summoned Israel’s ambassador.
The seven aid workers were killed by an Israeli airstrike after they had just dropped off food supplies at a warehouse. The army mistook them for Hamas operatives, according to the IDF.
In a statement released last week, the IDF said its prosecutors found that despite serious failures in its assessment that Hamas had seized the aid convoy, commanders’ decisions raised no “reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.”
The World Central Kitchen (WCK) had hired armed guards and had not coordinated the route with the IDF, leading the army to conclude Hamas had seized the supplies and that its operatives were in the vehicles that left the warehouse, according to the army.
José Andrés, the Spanish-American chef who founded World Central Kitchen, said at the time that the convoy had been targeted “systematically, car by car.”
The WCK denounced the IDF’s decision, writing in a statement last week, “There has never been any excuse or justification for the attacks, and there is nothing in this account that does so. The decision is inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive.”
It called for an independent investigation into the strikes on the convoy, “because the IDF cannot credibly investigate its own conduct.”
The WCK incident was one of five cases out of Gaza about which the IDF on Wednesday gave an update regarding its investigations, including the death of Hind Rajab, age 5, on January 29, 2024.
She had been traveling in a vehicle in Gaza with six members of the Hamada family, which included her aunt, uncle and five cousins. In its statement Wednesday, the IDF admitted for the first time that it fired at the vehicle, killing five members of the Hamada family. Hind and her 15-year old cousin Layan Hamada initially survived, but were trapped in a combat zone and killed within hours.
The IDF said it is opening an investigation into the events in the hours that followed the initial shooting of the five members of the Hamada family, including Hind’s death.
Hind’s killing resonated globally, galvanizing students 5,700 miles away who seized Hamilton Hall during the Columbia University protests, renaming it “Hind’s Hall” after her.
The film “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” built around recordings of her phone calls with the Red Crescent begging for help, was nominated for an Academy Award this year.
The IDF had initially said its forces were not within firing range of the vehicle. The army’s announcement Wednesday was a reversal of that position.
“Troops fired at a vehicle that was approaching them,” even though the army had issued a notice to Gaza residents to stay away from the area, the military explained.
“According to the reports published, this vehicle belonged to the Hamada family. As a result of the fire, five of the vehicle’s passengers were killed, and two survived: Hind Rajab and her cousin Layan Hamada,” the IDF stated.
The experience of the two girls caught in an active combat zone was documented by the Red Crescent after Layan called its operators. Once she was killed by gunfire, Hind continued to talk to the dispatchers until she too was killed.
The Israeli army described how it tried to coordinate with the Red Crescent to allow for an ambulance to evacuate the girls.
“Upon the ambulance’s arrival at the scene of the incident, a shell was fired toward it,” resulting in the deaths of the two paramedics travelling in it,” the IDF said. “Several days later, the bodies of the seven members of the Hamada family, including the bodies of Hind and Layan, were recovered from the vehicle. In addition, the bodies of the two paramedics were recovered from the ambulance.”
The statement does not say how Hind and Layan died.
The IDF said it was ordering the investigation because of failures in coordinating the ambulance’s movement, but that it could not release further details while the probe is ongoing.
In a statement to JTA, the Palestinian Red Crescent said it “demands an independent international committee of inquiry into this incident, as well as the protection of medical personnel wherever they may be.” It added, “There is no communication with the Israeli occupation regarding this matter or any other. The Palestinian Red Crescent will cooperate with the investigation once it is international and independent.”
The IDF said last week it was also opening a criminal probe into the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers, including a U.N. employee, in March 2025.
In its statement last week, the IDF on that day said its forces had set an ambush for Hamas vehicles in Tel al-Sultan. “Approximately one hour later, the troops received a report regarding five vehicles moving toward them at high speed,” the military said.
“The vehicles stopped in very close proximity to the troops, and their occupants rapidly disembarked. A decision was then made to open fire toward them. Approximately fifteen minutes later, the troops fired at an additional vehicle that arrived at the scene,” the military explained. Only later, the army said, did its forces understand that they had struck ambulances, a fire truck, and a U.N. vehicle. The army said that six of the emergency workers were also Hamas members.
The earlier IDF review led to the dismissal of a deputy commander after professional failures were found. At first, the military said that the vehicles approached without their emergency signals activated, an account contradicted by cellphone video recovered from one of the dead paramedics. On Wednesday, the military said that there was reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.
The IDF declined to investigate two other incidents involving the deaths of four employees of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, two of whom were killed in the Khan Younis area in February 2024, and another two who were killed in Gaza City in 2023.
In a statement on its website, Doctors Without Borders rebuked the IDF’s decision to close the cases. “This is not justice,” the group said. “Two years of silence, followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer. However, it is the predictable output of a military apparatus investigating itself.”
B’Tselem, the left-wing Israeli human rights organization, went further, telling the JTA that Israel’s military law enforcement system, “is not a genuine mechanism for uncovering the truth and ensuring accountability, but a whitewashing mechanism designed to create the appearance of an investigation.”
Yair Dvir, the spokesperson, added that such investigations focus on low-ranking soldiers while “the policies, orders, and senior military and political officials behind them remain outside the scope of investigation.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel slammed for closing probe into killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers appeared first on The Forward.
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When does criticizing Israel become antisemitism? Ask Mark Ruffalo
American actor Mark Ruffalo on Saturday denied that he is antisemitic, one day after Paramount accused the actor of invoking antisemitic tropes in his campaign against the studio’s $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
The clash lands as Paramount is trying to clear the last major obstacle to closing the Warner Bros. Discovery deal: a lawsuit filed by California and 11 other state attorneys general seeking to block it on antitrust grounds.
“The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest,” Ruffalo said on Saturday. “Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people.”
Now, what started as a celebrity spat has turned into a stand-in for a much bigger fight: When does criticizing Israel’s government turn into hating Jews?
Ruffalo and his defenders say targeting a defense contractor’s technology and a media family’s wealth is ordinary corporate criticism. Paramount and its allies say invoking Israel in a business dispute imports old tropes about Jewish power and money into a fight that has nothing to do with Jews. The same argument has played out over campus protests, in Congress and across the globe since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.
The dispute began Friday, when Ruffalo posted a 2024 clip of former Oracle CEO Safra Catz reportedly discussing “profoundly scary technologies” the company built for the Israeli military after Oct. 7. Along with the clip, Ruffalo wrote that the war in Gaza was “a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
Larry Ellison, who co-founded Oracle and has an estimated net worth of around $200 billion, has personally backstopped $40.4 billion in equity financing for his son David Ellison’s Paramount to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
Ruffalo called the elder Ellison a “classic Oligarch” and warned that the “most destructive and inhuman forces in the world” would soon sit inside an important media company if the merger succeeds. The deal would give the family control of CNN. It already owns CBS News.
Paramount fired back. “We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute,” a company spokesperson told The Wrap, a Hollywood trade publication. “Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe.” The company added that the episode “exposes the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction.”
It’s not the first time Paramount has made that argument. Axios reported in June that company executives believed antisemitism was fueling opposition to the merger more broadly, pointing to the Ellisons’ Jewish identity and Larry Ellison’s friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ruffalo pushed back on social media Saturday refuting the accusation that he is antisemitic and adding: “Everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has been profoundly shaped by the Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have been integral and family throughout every point of my life.”
An advocate and activist
Ruffalo, 58, is best known for playing the Hulk in the Marvel cinematic universe and has been nominated for four Academy Awards, for his performances in The Kids Are All Right, Foxcatcher, Spotlight and Poor Things.
He has also built a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most consistent activists, campaigning for environmental causes and protesting against the Trump administration. This fight is the latest flashpoint in the actor’s history of pro-Palestinian activism.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel, he has frequently called out Israel’s military action in Gaza, notably wearing an Artists4Ceasefire pin to the 2024 Oscars. In September 2024, he was among more than 700 SAG-AFTRA members who signed a letter demanding the actors’ union publicly call for a Gaza ceasefire and protect pro-Palestinian members from what they described as industry blacklisting.
In September 2025, he said he supported efforts to “boycott, divest, sanction, and prosecute” Israel. And just 10 days before the Oracle post, he joined Javier Bardem, Susan Sarandon and other artists in a statement arguing that despite the U.S.-brokered truce in place since October 2025, “there is no ceasefire in Gaza.”
That history is why three prominent voices in the fight against antisemitism sided with Paramount over the weekend.
“Words matter, and so does the willingness to draw a line when legitimate debate gives way to antisemitic tropes,” wrote Jim Berk, CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, praising the studio for “refusing to allow prejudice to masquerade as political or corporate criticism.”
He went on: “Invoking Israel in an issue where it is completely irrelevant is a textbook case of obsession and demonization.”
Creative Community for Peace, a Hollywood group that pushes back on boycotts of Israel, went further, with executive director Ari Ingel accusing Ruffalo of fusing “hostility toward Israel and Zionism with Jewish-associated wealth, media ownership, oligarchic power and ominous warnings about concentrated control into a single narrative.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called Ruffalo’s posts “cynical and sickening.”
Antisemitism vs. anti-Zionism
The fight lands amid the worst stretch of global antisemitism in decades. Researchers at Tel Aviv University found that 20 Jews were murdered in antisemitic attacks worldwide last year, the highest toll in more than 30 years — a count that includes a gunmen who killed more than a dozen people at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December.
As incidents rise, and amidst Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza and its war with Iran, the country’s standing in the world has cratered.
A Pew Research Center survey of 36 countries this spring found a median of 67% hold unfavorable views of Israel, with opinion growing more negative since 2025 in most countries where Pew has trend data. Even in the U.S., Israel’s staunchest ally, Americans no longer clearly side with Israelis over Palestinians for the first time since Gallup began asking in 2001 — a reversal driven largely by independents and voters under 35.
Where the merger stands
Representatives for Paramount and California are expected to meet Monday for preliminary talks, at Paramount’s request, though people briefed on the discussions cautioned there’s no guarantee they will lead anywhere. The Writers Guild has also sued to block the deal.
The stakes of delay are real: if the deal doesn’t close by October, Paramount would owe Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders hundreds of millions of dollars in fees. If there is no resolution, a trial is set for March.
The post When does criticizing Israel become antisemitism? Ask Mark Ruffalo appeared first on The Forward.
