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This Jewish studies professor won $60,000 on “Jeopardy!” — despite missing out on a question about Yom Kippur
(JTA) — The most notable message Melissa Klapper got during her four-night run this week on “Jeopardy!” didn’t come because the Jewish studies scholar was unable to answer a question about Yom Kippur. It also wasn’t an unkind note from a game-show stickler who believed she’d gotten credit for a wrong response.
Instead, it was an email from a past student who recognized herself in the story Klapper told as part of her self-introductory stage banter — a staple of the game show. Klapper, who teaches history at Rowan University in New Jersey, described accusing a student of having plagiarized her paper.
The student then replied, Klapper recalled, that she “didn’t know [it] was plagiarized when she bought it.” The anecdote yielded laughs from host Ken Jennings and the two co-contestants whom Klapper later defeated to notch her third win.
After the episode aired Wednesday night, Klapper heard from the former student, whose name she had previously forgotten.
“She watches ‘Jeopardy!’ and when she was watching that interview, she thought to herself, this is about me,” Klapper told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And she wrote to me to apologize. She’s a teacher now and, I think, is more understanding of why what she did was really not good. And I really appreciated it. It was kind of brave of her to get in touch with me after all these years.”
The experience was a fitting highlight of Klapper’s run on the show, which ended Thursday with a third-place finish and total winnings of $60,100. She said it was her training as an educator — not her education in Modern Orthodox schools or her scholarship on Jewish women, immigrant children and more — that prepared her for success on the show.
“I’m up in front of people all the time,” said Klapper, who is active in the Association for Jewish Studies and whose most recent book, “Ballet Class: An American History,” was published in 2020. “I do not have stage fright.”
Klapper spoke with JTA about her Jewish background, her research interests and how her most religiously observant friends managed to watch her on TV.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
JTA: First, I have to ask: Last night, did you end up with $1,800 on purpose? That’s a very Jewish number.
Klapper: No! That’s so funny. It didn’t even occur to me.
How are you feeling this morning? Any initial reflections on your appearance now that it’s over?
These shows were recorded in January, so I’ve had time to come to peace with what happened. I was disappointed not to win another game — or two. But Alec, the guy who won last night, was just unstoppable on the buzzer. Knowing the answers is not enough to do well in “Jeopardy!” You also have to have good hand-eye coordination, which I do not. I would say I knew the vast majority of answers but I often just could not get the buzzer in time. Once I knew I was going to be on the show, I did sort of sit at home and practice with a ballpoint pen, but it’s not the same.
I will say the fact that I couldn’t be fast enough to answer the Yom Kippur clue was pretty frustrating. [The clue was about a Jon Stewart quip about the Jewish day of atonement.] And I heard about that — I got a lot of fun teasing from some of my Jewish friends who were sending me helpful emails with links to the dictionary.com definition of Yom Kippur.
Can you share a little bit about your relationship with “Jeopardy!”, how you came to be on the show and your general reflection about your experience?
I grew up in a household where we watched “Jeopardy!” when I was kid. We had a “Jeopardy!” board game that I would play with my parents and my sister and I actually tried out for the teen tournament when I was in high school. Those were the days that you had to go in person, so my parents very kindly drove me into D.C. when we heard that there would be a tryout. I didn’t get past the first round — I didn’t know anything about sports, and I still don’t know that much, although I answered a surprising number of sports questions.
In the last few years I started to watch more regularly and it occurred to me, you know, I really think I could do OK on this show. I made it into the contestant pool the first time I took the online test, but I did not get called. The day after my 18 months [in the pool] ended, I started the process again, but I sort of assumed I would never hear from them again — especially because they asked you to write down dates when you can’t come and I had to write that I was not available during the semester — and, oh, also on Jewish holidays. But they called me for winter break.
They record five shows in a day, and all of mine were on one day. There’s about 10 minutes between shows when you change your top and can have a drink and then go right back onstage. It was just — really, it was all a blur. If you’d asked me at the beginning of this week what any of the categories were I would have been very hard-pressed to tell you.
You got some clues that seemed ready-made for a Jewish contestant such as one about Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” and another about Jack Antonoff, the Jewish musician and producer. What is your Jewish background like and were there moments where you felt like that gave you some kind of advantage?
Now I live in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, which has a large observant Jewish community. My husband and I belong to a Modern Orthodox synagogue and we are involved in a partnership minyan, Lechu Neranena.
I went to Jewish day school my whole life, kindergarten through 12th grade, first at Akiba Academy of Dallas and then Bais Yaakov of Baltimore, which was the only girls high school and where I got a very solid education and was encouraged to pursue my intellectual ambitions. I went to Israel right after high school before I started college. So I have a very intensive Jewish educational background, and throughout my education and all the schools that I went to, I found a lot of encouragement for my innate nerdiness.
So I’m not sure I could draw a direct line, but what I will say is that in the Jewish educational environment I grew up in, matched by an extremely Jewish traditional home, there was just a huge, enormous value on reading and books and learning, and I think that makes a difference.
I will say I don’t think I knew about Jack Antonoff because he’s Jewish — I knew him because of Taylor Swift.
Were there Jewish highlights of your experience, either on the show or behind the scenes?
They do not pay for you to go out to L.A. You’re responsible for your own travel, but they do provide lunch. I asked if it would be possible to get me a kosher lunch, and they immediately said yes, which I appreciated. There was no question or back and forth about it. I got a salad with a ton of protein that could take me through the day.
And then this is a little funny, but I have friends from across the spectrum of Jewish practice, or lack thereof. Some of my more traditionally observant friends don’t own TVs and wouldn’t have TVs in their houses — but they have been watching the show on YouTube every day because they have no other way to watch.
Your scholarship in American history and Jewish studies has been wide-ranging, and you’ve written books about American Jewish women’s activism, American Jewish girlhood and, most recently, ballet. How did your work as a scholar and a teacher prepare you for your appearance or dovetail with it?
I’m a teacher. I’m up in front of people all the time. I do not have stage fright. I give a lot of public talks of various kinds, in academic venues or community settings. And so I did not have any problems speaking or talking to Ken [Jennings] during the short interview period — that is not a problem for me. And for some contestants, it really is. They’re not used to just speaking in public at all like that. My professional background prepared me very well.
I have to ask about the big controversy. [Some viewers believed Klapper offered “Gregor” rather than “McGregor” as the response to a clue about the actor Ewan McGregor.] What did you make of that, and what do you think it means for the “Jeopardy!” viewership to have such intensity of passion that they referee a professionally refereed show?
First, it’s not a controversy. It’s clear to everyone that I said McGregor on stage, including to my co-contestants who have spoken about this. There should not have been and there should not be any controversy.
That said, I don’t personally sort of participate in any kind of fandom, so the way that this sort of took off is a little alien to me. But I know not just in the “Jeopardy!” community people are really, I guess, just very invested. It’s hard for me to explain.
Has the response been hard for you?
I’m sure that everyone who appears on “Jeopardy!” gets some nasty emails because unfortunately fandom can be vicious and I’m very easy to find. But I do know that women who are on “Jeopardy!”, especially women who do well, really can be targeted. And I do think that is part of what happened. Some of the — most of the emails I got from strangers were extremely nice and positive and, you know, full of good wishes. And I appreciated that, but I also got some really misogynistic, nasty gendered messages.
It’s disappointing because in my mind the “Jeopardy!” community is one of the last nice spaces that exists. I’ve talked about that with other contestants over the years, who have said it’s a congenial space. And I’ve asked them — and now I’ll ask you — what do you think the Jewish community can learn from the “Jeopardy!” community?
As a historian, it’s sort of not in my nature to comment on the contemporary Jewish community. I do think there are shared values around knowledge and education.
I do think there’s a nice community of contestants. Even though we were all each other’s competitors, everybody was just really friendly and encouraging. It’d be nice if all communities would just be like that.
You teach women’s and gender studies. You mentioned one big gender dynamic related to being a “Jeopardy!” contestant. Were there others, or other connections to your scholarship, that jumped out during your time as a contestant?
Not so much gender, but my current research project is about American Jewish women who traveled abroad between the Civil War and World War II. It’s a research interest — I noticed as I was working on all my other projects that the Jewish girls and women I was writing about traveled a lot, way more than you would expect for the late 1800s and early 1900s — but it’s also because I love to travel myself. And that’s another way to learn. There were definitely questions on “Jeopardy!” that I knew because I’ve been there — like about the sculpture in the harbor in Copenhagen of the Little Mermaid. I thought: I’ve been there and I’ve seen that.
So you like traveling and you just won a little over $60,000. Do you have any specific plans for the winnings?
Well, first, I’ll have to deal with the IRS. I’m involved with a bunch of different charities and so I will certainly be giving some of this money to them. And my husband and I already have our big trip for the year planned in May — to the north of England, to Newcastle and Hadrian’s Wall — and so we are going to upgrade some parts of that experience a little bit.
And then let’s go back to the student who reached out to you. What do make of that?
Whatever they’re teaching, teachers really matter, for better or for worse, and that’s where my real impact is. I teach a lot of students a lot of different things and I really value my relationship with them. And as it says in Proverbs, right, I have learned a lot from my students, just like I hope they learned from me. Seeing how excited some of my students have been this week, I do think that, in a way, being on “Jeopardy!” was sort of part of my teaching practice and that it just shows, again, this value of education and knowledge. Yes, it’s trivia, but still it just makes you a better-rounded person. And it was nice to be able to demonstrate that.
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The post This Jewish studies professor won $60,000 on “Jeopardy!” — despite missing out on a question about Yom Kippur appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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RFK Jr.’s poems to Olivia Nuzzi are peak cringe — so were King Solomon’s
Imagine receiving a love poem that reads: “Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, browsing among the lilies,” going on to say that they are a “mount” that the author wishes to “betake” himself to.
That particular line is from the Song of Songs, the sexiest book in the bible. But it doesn’t sound all that different from the poetry that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. allegedly wrote to journalist Olivia Nuzzi during what she claims was a purely “digital” affair between the two of them.
“Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest,” the former presidential candidate and current Secretary of Health and Human Services texted Nuzzi according to Ryan Lizza, her ex-fiancé; he released the “poetry” in a series of tell-all Substack posts about the affair.
The nature metaphors go on, as he allegedly instructs Nuzzi to “drink” from him: “‘Don’t spill a drop,’” he exhorts Nuzzi. “I am a river. You are my canyon. I mean to flow through you.”
This thinly-veiled description of a blow job is going viral online, where people cannot stop making fun of RFK’s literary stylings. “This is why we need better education in the humanities,” joked one post.
But the quality of love poems — or sexts, or erotica — is often in the eye of the beholder. (Though there are a few timeless classics, like The Book of O.) From inside the relationship, already dizzied by lust or love, the sexual descriptions can read as head-spinningly romantic even if, from the outside, they’re painfully awkward to read.
Perhaps this is also why the Song of Songs is usually interpreted allegorically, as a description of God’s love for the people of Israel, in Judaism. Later, Christians interpreted the book as a paean to the love between Jesus and the church. If it means what it seems to mean — if the breasts the author is lusting after are literally breasts — it’s just too racy. And, perhaps more importantly, too cringe.
The book is traditionally believed to be by King Solomon, one of the most venerated kings of ancient Israel, known for his wisdom. (Not incidentally, he is also known for his hundreds of wives and concubines.) And, of course, it’s included in the Bible, a holy text. And yet it is full of both open discussion of breasts and beauty, as well as metaphors that are about as subtle as RFK Jr.’s.
“His fruit is sweet to my mouth,” goes one line in the Song of Songs. “He brought me to the banquet room and his banner of love was over me.” Interpret that how you will, but eating sweet fruit seems thematically similar to opening one’s mouth to receive the bounty of a harvest.
Erotic texts were, in the era the Song of Songs was likely written, often part of the religious ceremonies of other traditions, particularly in fertility cults in the area. Still, how do you justify a great wise king discussing his lover’s breasts and dreaming of how her “rounded thighs are like jewels” — especially a king that was supposedly a titan of monotheism? Well, Rashi — one of the most famous Jewish textual commentators — interprets the breasts in the line “My beloved to me is a bag of myrhh, lodged between my breasts” as referring to “the two staves of the Ark.” Which seems like a stretch.
Of course, no one is trying to interpret RFK Jr.’s alleged poetry to be about God; he is nowhere near as venerated as King Solomon, and some of the other lines are less metaphorical. Plus, hundreds of years haven’t passed to blur the meaning of his words. But even with the centuries of interpretations, Solomon’s meaning is as clear as a freshwater stream. Or a river.
The post RFK Jr.’s poems to Olivia Nuzzi are peak cringe — so were King Solomon’s appeared first on The Forward.
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Bank of Israel Cuts Rates for First Time Since January 2024 as Inflation Eases After Gaza Truce
The Bank of Israel building is seen in Jerusalem, June 16, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Bank of Israel cut interest rates by a quarter-point on Monday, its first reduction in nearly two years, citing a moderation in inflation following the ceasefire in Gaza while expressing caution over the prospect of future cuts.
The cut in the benchmark rate to 4.25% from 4.5%, widely expected by analysts and financial markets, came after other global central banks had already begun to ease monetary policy and last month’s US-brokered truce between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas took hold.
“The Monetary Committee’s policy is focusing on price stability, support for economic activity, and stability of the markets,” the central bank said in a statement.
“The interest rate path will be determined in accordance with the development of inflation, economic activity, geopolitical uncertainty, and fiscal developments,” it said.
The committee lowered the key rate by a quarter-point in January 2024 at the outset of the Gaza war but has taken a conservative stance since then, opting for caution during the two-year conflict while price pressures rose, largely due to supply constraints.
But Israel‘s inflation rate has eased, and held steady at 2.5% in October to stay within an official 1-3% annual target range.
The central bank acknowledged inflation has moderated in the past two months but that “forecasters project that there will be some increase in inflation at the end of the year, and that it will then decline and stabilize around the midpoint of the target range.”
It added that the labor market remains tight and wage pressures continue to rise while home prices are declining.
At the same time, the Bank of Israel pointed to a sharp rebound in economic activity in the third quarter, gaining an annualized 12.4%, but that “its level remains lower than its long-term trend.”
Since the prior rates decision in late September, the shekel also has appreciated versus the dollar, euro and other trading partners.
“The data from recent months have … created a clear need for a cut,” said Ron Tomer, president of the Manufacturers’ Association.
“The Bank of Israel’s decision to lower the interest rate is a responsible step that helps curb the appreciation and restore competitiveness to the economy,” said Tomer, who called on the bank to cut again before its next meeting in early January.
The Oct. 10 ceasefire in the two-year Gaza war has eased the conflict and, although looking increasingly fragile, has for now reduced geopolitical risk and eased price pressures.
“Today’s interest rate cut joins a series of steps and clear signs — Israel is on the path to tremendous economic growth,” said finance minister Bezalel Smotrich.
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Saudi Arabia to Open More Alcohol Stores as Curbs Ease, Sources Say
An employee pours a draft non-alcoholic beer at the A12 cafe in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Staff
Saudi Arabia plans to open two new alcohol stores, including one serving non-Muslim, foreign staff at state oil giant Aramco, as the kingdom further eases restrictions, according to people briefed on the plans.
The launch of outlets in the eastern province of Dhahran and one for diplomats in the port city of Jeddah would be a further milestone in efforts, led by de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to open up the country.
The kingdom, which is the birthplace of Islam, last year opened an alcohol store serving non-Muslim diplomats in the capital Riyadh – the first such outlet since a ban was brought in 73 years ago.
STORE PLANNED IN ARAMCO COMPOUND, SAYS SOURCE
The new store in Dhahran will be set up in a compound owned by Aramco, one of the three people who talked to Reuters said.
That store would be open for non-Muslims working for Aramco, added the source, who said Saudi authorities had informed them of the plan.
Two of the sources said a third liquor store was also in the works for non-Muslim diplomats in the city of Jeddah, where many foreign countries have consuls.
Both stores were expected to open in 2026, but no timelines had been released, two of the sources said.
The government media office did not immediately reply to questions over the plans for the stores in both locations, which were previously unreported. Aramco declined to comment.
There was no officially announced change made to regulations after the opening of the Riyadh store in a nondescript building in the diplomatic quarter known to some diplomats as the “booze bunker.”
The Riyadh store’s customer base was recently expanded to include non-Muslim Saudi Premium Residency holders, two of the sources said. Premium residencies have been awarded to entrepreneurs, major investors and those with special talents.
Before the Riyadh store, alcohol was largely only available through diplomatic mail, the black market or home brewing.
In other Gulf countries, apart from Kuwait, alcohol is available with some restrictions.
REFORMS COVER EVENTS, WOMEN’S DRIVING
While alcoholic drinks are still off limits for the vast majority of the population, under bin Salman’s reforms both Saudis and foreigners can now take part in once unthinkable activities from dancing at desert raves to going to the cinema.
Other reforms have included allowing women to drive in 2017, easing rules on the segregation of men and women in public spaces, and significantly reducing the power of the religious police.
The kingdom has been easing restrictions to lure tourists and international businesses as part of an ambitious plan to diversify its economy and make itself less dependent on oil.
In May a media report, picked up by some international media after appearing on a wine blog, said Saudi authorities had planned to allow alcohol sales in tourist settings as the country prepares to host the 2034 soccer World Cup.
The report, which was denied at the time by a Saudi official, did not give a source for the information.
That report had sparked a vigorous online debate in the kingdom, whose king also holds the title of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques – Islam’s most revered places in Mecca and Medina.
Social liberalization has proceeded at a breakneck pace but the leadership has taken a more gradual and cautious approach on the question of alcohol.
Saudi Arabia has been aggressively expanding its local tourism portfolio with the giant Red Sea Global development, which includes plans to open 17 new hotels by next May.
These ultra-luxury resorts remain dry.
Asked by Reuters this month if there were any plans to ease restrictions on alcohol to help attract foreign visitors, Saudi Tourism Minister Ahmed Al-Khateeb said: “We do understand that some of the international travelers want to enjoy alcohol when they visit the Saudi destinations but nothing has changed yet.”
Pressed on whether “yet” meant that could soon change, he said: “I will leave it to you on how to elaborate on it.”