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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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‘Creates More Enemies’: Iran’s War Spreads to Turkey as Analysts Warn Regional Assault Is Strategic Mistake
Debris of a NATO air defense system that intercepted a missile launched from Iran is seen in Dortyol, in southern Hatay province, Turkey, March 4, 2026, in this screengrab from video. Photo: Ihlas News Agency (IHA) via REUTERS
Turkey became the latest unexpected target in the widening war in the Middle East on Wednesday after it intercepted an Iranian missile, as Iran’s retaliation for joint US-Israeli strikes spreads across the region.
Tehran appears to be betting that hitting countries beyond Israel will ignite regional pressure on Washington to stop its military operation, but Arab and Israeli diplomats say the strategy is backfiring, with the Islamic Republic “creating more enemies.”
Turkey said NATO air defenses destroyed a ballistic missile fired from Iran that was detected over Iraq and Syria and heading toward Turkish airspace. Turkey, a majority Sunni country and a NATO member, shares a roughly 310-mile border with Iran. Two days earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for “an end to the bloodbath,” describing the war, launched by joint US-Israeli strikes on Saturday, as “illegal.”
Since the strikes that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials, the regime in Tehran has expanded its retaliatory missile and drone fire to hit a swath of American allies including Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran’s interim national security chief, Ali Larijani, said on Sunday that Iran was “not seeking to attack” regional states and was acting only in self-defense against American bases. But in the days since, Iranian strikes have hit civilian infrastructure including power facilities and hotels across the Gulf.
New figures released Wednesday by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) show Iran has concentrated far more firepower on Gulf neighbors than on Israel in the war’s opening days. Over the first four days, INSS said Iran launched about 200 missiles and about 100 drones at Israel across 123 attack waves. Over the same period, it targeted the Gulf states with about 500 missiles and about 2,000 drones — 2.5 times more missiles and 20 times more drones than it fired at Israel.
According to Michael Eisenstadt, a military analyst and former US Army officer at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the attacks reflect Iran’s strategy of applying graduated pressure by “catalyzing opposition to the war” in the United States and other countries. Tehran hopes disruptions to oil infrastructure and higher energy prices will create pressure for a ceasefire.
But nearly every expert called Iran’s Gulf assault a blunder, saying the strikes have caused widespread anger in the Arab world. Six GCC states and Jordan condemned Iran’s attacks as “indiscriminate and reckless” and reaffirmed each country’s right to self-defense.
Jeremy Issacharoff, a former Israeli ambassador and arms expert, said the Iranian strategy was counterproductive, turning quasi-allies into adversaries.
“Attacking countries like Qatar that were pretty much positively inclined towards them was a huge mistake,” he told The Algemeiner. “They’ve created more enemies.”
Issacharoff said that Tehran’s leaders frame the conflict through hostility toward Zionism and the existence of a Jewish state in what they see as part of the Islamic world, adding that their driving strategic goal is hegemony. “In the end, they were looking to be much more in control of the region, and of the Arab world as a whole,” he said.
But the region was already moving in the opposite direction of what Iran wants, he said. Years of Iranian-backed missile attacks on Israel by proxy groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon had already pushed several countries to develop what he described as a regional defense mechanism, with Arab states cooperating with Israel and the US under the radar.
“It’s discreet, but it’s happening,” Issacharoff said, adding that the latest attacks could prompt the emerging coalition to expand cooperation even further, beyond the military arena into a broader framework for regional stability.
Former US Central Command (CENTCOM) communications director Joe Buccino took it a step further, telling Fox News that Iran’s move was a “stunning strategic miscalculation” that could “set the Gulf states on [a] path toward normalization with Israel.”
Abbas Dahouk, a retired US Army colonel who served as a senior military adviser for Middle Eastern Affairs at the US State Department, echoed Issacharoff’s view that years of quiet cooperation had already strengthened a regional coalition against Iran, but he tied the acceleration to a specific turning point: Israel’s inclusion in CENTCOM in 2021, which he said was a “transformative” inflection point that forced regional militaries that once avoided overt ties to “quietly mature counter-Iran plans over years of joint exercises and coordination.”
That groundwork is now showing up in the scale of coordination, Dahouk told The Jerusalem Post in comments published Tuesday, with “hundreds of aircraft” able to operate at once, refuel, strike concealed targets, and counter Iran’s drone and missile networks. He added that Iran’s retaliation has left Gulf states little room to stay on the sidelines.
“The region must view the Iranian regime as a common threat alongside the United States and Israel,” he said. “At this moment, they have little alternative.”
Former US General Jack Keane also told Fox that the Islamic Republic’s strategy had “backfired.”
“The Gulf states are responding, they’re adequately defending themselves … they’re frustrated with the Iranians,” Keane said, adding that several GCC states were preparing for combat.
Emirati analyst Mohammad Al Ali wrote in Gulf News that Iran’s only success in this war so far was in “uniting the region and much of the world against them, constructing a vast wall of isolation between [the] regime and the international community.”
“If Iran’s leaders have succeeded in any respect during this war, it is only in uniting the region and much of the world against them, constructing a vast wall of isolation between their regime and the international community,” he wrote.
Beyond the Arab world, Iran’s strikes have triggered outrage in Europe and led France, Greece, and Britan to deploy defensive military assets to the Mediterranean.
“Iran’s strategy is to sow chaos and set the region on fire,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters on Wednesday, lambasting the Iranian regime for indiscriminately attacking its neighbors.
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski expressed similar sentiments when asked about the Iranian ballistic missile headed into Turkish airspace.
Iran is broadening the war to countries that did not attack it … there is a well-known saying it’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake,” he said.
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Frontrunner for Iran’s Next Supreme Leader Emerges, US Sub Sinks Iranian Warship Off Sri Lanka
Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, visits Hezbollah’s office in Tehran, Iran, Oct. 1, 2024. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
The powerful son of Iran’s slain supreme leader emerged on Wednesday as a frontrunner to succeed him as the US stepped up its military campaign against Tehran.
As new explosions rang out in Tehran, plans were in doubt for a funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, killed by Israeli forces on Saturday in the first assassination of a nation’s top ruler by an airstrike.
The body had been expected to lie in state in a vast Tehran mosque from Wednesday evening, but state media reported a farewell ceremony had been postponed.
Two Iranian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s slain supreme leader, was not in Tehran when his father was killed in a strike that destroyed the leader‘s compound.
Iran said the Assembly of Experts that will select the new leader would announce its decision soon, only the second time it will have done so since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979.
Assembly member Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told state TV the candidates had already been identified but did not name them.
Israel said it would hunt down whoever was chosen.
Other candidates for supreme leader include Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic Republic’s founder and a champion of the reformist faction sidelined in recent decades.
But the favorite appears to be Mojtaba Khamenei, who has amassed power as a senior figure in the security forces and the vast business empire they control, the Iranian sources said. Choosing him would send a signal that hardliners were still firmly in charge.
Some Iranians have openly celebrated the death of the supreme leader, whose security forces killed thousands of anti-government demonstrators only weeks ago in the biggest domestic unrest since the era of the revolution.
But Iranians angry with the government said there was unlikely to be much sign of protest while bombs are falling.
“We have nowhere to go to protect ourselves from strikes, how can we protest?” Farah, 45, said by phone from Tehran, adding that the security forces “are everywhere. They will kill us. I hate this regime, but first I have to think about the safety of my two children.”
Meanwhile, in a sign of the US military’s reach, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said a US submarine had sunk an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. At least 80 people were killed, Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister told local television.
The United States and Israel pressed on with their round-the-clock assaults on Iran that began on Saturday. The top US commander said the campaign was “ahead of the game plan” and Hegseth said the US was winning the conflict.
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down,” Hegseth told a briefing. “Our air defenses and that of our allies have plenty of runway. We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.”
A New York Times report said that Iranian intelligence had reached out to the CIA early in the war about a path toward ending the conflict.
The report said that officials in Washington were skeptical of an “off-ramp” for now, while Trump said on Tuesday that Iranians wanted talks but it was “too late.”
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Britain Launches Review Into School-Related Antisemitism
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump (not pictured) hold a bilateral meeting at Trump Turnberry golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Britain‘s government on Wednesday launched an independent review into antisemitism in England’s schools and colleges, responding to data showing classroom-related incidents have doubled since before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
Attacks on Jews have risen globally since Hamas’s assault on Israel, which triggered the Gaza war. Britain reported a 4% annual increase in cases of antisemitism in 2025 – the second-highest total on record – including a sharp spike after a deadly synagogue attack in northern England in October.
The Community Security Trust, which advises Jewish communities on security, recorded 204 school–related antisemitic incidents in 2025, twice pre-2023 levels.
“The figures are stark and clear,” education minister Bridget Phillipson said in a statement.
She added that “too many Jewish teachers who raised concerns felt that nothing was done. That is not acceptable.”
The government said the aim of the review was to assess how well education settings identify, prevent and respond to antisemitic behavior, and where further support was needed.
The review will examine schools’ policies, how incidents are handled when they occur, what preventive measures are in place, and how external factors – including protests outside schools and wider geopolitical tensions – influence behavior within education settings.