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This Orthodox Jewish model made history at New York Fashion Week
(New York Jewish Week) — When disability activist Lily Brasch was asked if she would walk the runway as a model for New York Fashion Week, she didn’t know if she would be able to do it.
That’s not because she has a rare form of muscular dystrophy, which weakens muscles and limits her ability to walk. Rather, it was unfortunate timing: The show was set for Friday evening, when the weekly Jewish holiday of Shabbat begins.
But Brasch, who is Orthodox and goes by the stage name Lily B., quickly devised a workaround: She took her turn on the catwalk in Midtown at 5:00 p.m. and, instead of schlepping back uptown to her Morningside Heights apartment, quickly headed to a nearby hotel to welcome Shabbat with her sisters.
Brasch, center, and her sisters, who also live in New York, celebrated Shabbat at a nearby hotel after Brasch walked the runway. (Courtesy)
And so on Friday, Feb. 10, Brasch became the first model with muscular dystrophy to walk the runway unassisted at New York Fashion Week, and the second person with the condition ever to appear. (The first was actress and model Jillian Mercado in 2020, who used a wheelchair.)
“It felt really good — it felt freeing,” said Brasch, 22, who modeled a gold sari from the brand Randhawa, which specializes in modern South Asian style. “I definitely never thought I would do something like this.”
“I prioritize representing disability, and pride, and just bringing joy to that community, but I also prioritize remaining truthful to my faith,” Brasch said. “It was great teamwork to get me on the stage and represent disability, and then come right off to go celebrate Shabbat.”
When Brasch was 16, she was diagnosed with centronuclear myopathy, a rare form of non-progressive muscular dystrophy. She was told she would never be able to walk or lift heavy objects unassisted due to her disability. At the time she was disheartened — but she said she used the diagnosis as motivation to “prove barriers are meant to be broken.”
Walking in New York Fashion Week — which runs through Wednesday — is the latest in a series of triumphs for Brasch, who moved to New York last August to attend Columbia University. Last March, Brasch climbed Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale, Arizona — a feat which she calls “My Everest.” She’s also competed in body-building competitions and loves going to the gym.
She also founded the Born to Prove foundation, which promotes disability awareness and breaking barriers.
Though the Chicago native has not always been outward about her Judaism in her activism — in fact, at first she was advised by friends and family not to bring attention to it — Brasch has come to realize how much her religion guides her.
“My Jewish identity has inspired me in that we’re all put on this earth for a reason. Every single one of us has a purpose and that’s what my religion has helped me find,” she said. Her purpose, Brasch added, is to represent strength and beauty for people with disabilities in the next generation.
She also wants to be an inspiration within the Jewish community. “There is a lack of representation in the Jewish community, at least in my Orthodox community, of people with disabilities actually achieving things,” she said. “It’s not really talked about and it’s looked down upon.” Groups like RespectAbility and the Rudin Family Foundation have been working to change that.
She was worried about posting on social media from Fashion Week, knowing her observant friends might question the timing around Shabbat. But Brasch said she was pleasantly surprised when so many congratulated her on representing disability and Judaism and staying true to herself on the runway. “That was one of the best things for me to see because that was my initial goal: to show that there are people with disabilities in the Jewish community and things are changing,” she said.
Brasch is also partnering with Movinglife, an Israeli manufacturer of folding mobility scooters — a deal she inked just before she found out she would walk in Fashion Week. The company partnered with rabbis as well as researchers from the Zomet Institute in Israel to ensure that their scooters could be used on Shabbat even though they are electric, said Brasch, who currently uses the scooters to get around.
With her modeling debut behind her, Brasch said she would walk in Fashion Week again — but she’d rather see other models with disabilities on the runways. “I hope that next time it’s not me — it’s the next girl,” she said.
“The feeling of overcoming something and the feeling of being put out there and being cheered on is something everyone should feel,” Brasch added. “Often, with a disability, I hear ‘poor you.’ It can’t be like that anymore.”
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The post This Orthodox Jewish model made history at New York Fashion Week appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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With a Kennedy Center honor under Trump, David Mamet enters his final, tragic act
There was a time when David Mamet being honored at the Kennedy Center wouldn’t have raised eyebrows.
His contributions to American theater and film transcend an affinity for four letter words (let’s call them “the F— Variations”). His tough-talking, desperate men gave splenetic voice to the indignities of a capitalist system in Glengarry Glen Ross, evolving sexual mores in Sexual Perversity in Chicago and, in a movie like The Verdict, the justice system.
Cut to 2026 and Mamet’s scripts are but an afterthought to his grievance. When he makes headlines now, it’s for his reactionary conservative streak and his role as a partisan in the culture war. Together with a run of flops, numbering a Harvey Weinstein #MeToo comedy and a Broadway show not even Al Pacino could save, his esteem has cratered among the liberal circles that once embraced him, and to which he once belonged but now prefers to eviscerate.
He has made the transition from dramatist to pundit, first at HuffPost, lately at The Free Press. Reading too much into Oleanna, perhaps, he has called teachers pedophiles on Fox News, written screeds on cancel culture and, a prerequisite for the Kennedys at this moment, praised President Donald Trump.
In the honor, there is a strain of tragedy. Mamet has strayed so far from where he started — what he called his “brain-dead liberal” era — that he makes perfect sense for this appointment, under a regime that tried to slap its leader’s name onto a tribute to a slain president meant as a bipartisan shrine to art. (Due to the Center’s closure amid turmoil and legal battles, the ceremonies will take place at the Capital One Arena, which is only too perfectly bleak.)
A younger Mamet would have looked askance at such a figure as our current Commander-in-Chief, a character who is on the make with all sorts of half-baked schemes. The Iran War may be his latest play on a Buffalo nickel.
It’s enough to make one wonder if we’ve been misreading Mamet all along. Are the men breaking-and entering to steal the Glengarry leads meant to be admired? Are the Hollywood sleazes in Speed-the-Plow aspirational? Is Al Capone the real hero of The Untouchables?
Perhaps the evening, which tends to include career retrospectives, will elucidate. But if the Kennedy Honors could once be said to be for closers, it may now be only for a particular kind of sellout.
The post With a Kennedy Center honor under Trump, David Mamet enters his final, tragic act appeared first on The Forward.
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Why is Britney Spears studying Hebrew?
It’s Britney, Yitz!
Continuing a curious social media trend that has previously seen appreciation for the beards of chess-playing Chabadniks and the Zohar hidden among baby clothes, Britney Spears took to Instagram Sunday to post a Hebrew Book of Psalms and the Lekutei Amaraim, or Tanya, a Hasidic book of sayings.
The caption reads: “I’m extremely bored !!! Learning Hebrew reading right to left !!! Beautiful language !!!” (A previous caption, posted Sunday, was more cryptic, concluding “God speed little man !!! I love u !!!,” perhaps indicating the presence of a havruta or someone in her life who keeps his mitzvot.)
What exactly is happening here? Is Spears, like Marilyn before her and Sydney Sweeney now, about to dip her toe into the mikveh?
The best clue we have isn’t from Spears’ page, but from Israeli model Natalie Dadon, who tagged the “Hit Me Baby One More Time” singer in a selfie with the Tanya. “Finally, it’s possible to tell,” Dadon posted, in a gallery with Hebrew language news coverage of the posts. Dadon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dadon’s social media presence involves Tanya study, which itself is a cornerstone to Lubavitch philosophy (so perhaps is connected to the Chabad chess players whose beards Spears so admired) and adjacent to Kabbalah.
Spears is no stranger to Jewish subjects. Around the time she locked lips with Madonna at the 2003 VMAs, she started, like so many others, to look into Kabbalah, as this handy timeline from Hey Alma notes. She has a Hebrew tattoo of letters that signify healing in kabbalistic texts and was apparently once attached to star in a Holocaust-time-travel-romance film called The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton, which now that I’ve heard of it I will never shut up about.
She has credited Kabbalah with helping her through a difficult time in her life and has been spotted wearing a star of David.
But we should approach Spears’ dalliance with Judaism, now sandwiched on her Insta page between a call-out of her sister Jamie Lynn and a NSFW video of her dancing with a rose Emoji as a fig leaf, with some healthy skepticism.
Her Instagram bio currently reads “Pray Every Day” with a prayer hands emoji next to a Bible emoji with a cross. She’d still appear to be Christian — or, at the very least, waiting for the new iOS update with the Tanya emoji.
The post Why is Britney Spears studying Hebrew? appeared first on The Forward.
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Haley Stevens cheered at Jewish day school after endorsing GOP Senate candidate
(JTA) — Democratic Michigan U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens was given an extended ovation at a fundraising gala for a Detroit-area Jewish day school Sunday, hours after her endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers for Senate.
Stevens, a longtime pro-Israel stalwart, was celebrated at the Yeshiva Beth Yehudah annual dinner as many members of her party across the country spoke out against her decision to break with Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
Video of Stevens’ minute-long standing ovation was shared on social media by representatives of Agudath Israel of America, a major Orthodox advocacy group. Strongly pro-Israel Jews have largely lauded her move to Rogers, which she said came about in part because of her objections to El-Sayed’s past relationship with anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker.
Also on Sunday evening, Stevens struggled to explain the timing of her decision in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. One consistency in her response was her belief that she was helping Democrats beat back antisemitism within their own party.
“I’m trying to help the Democratic Party. I felt the same way about Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo,” Stevens said, referencing the Maine Senate candidate who ultimately stepped down from the nomination. Asked if she believed El-Sayed is antisemitic, she responded, “I think some of the actions have certainly been antisemitic, Anderson, but I’m just sick of who he stands with.”
She named Piker and “the uncle,” referring to Piker’s uncle Cenk Uygur, whose PAC produced an ad supporting El-Sayed that blamed Israel for the price of groceries. After Stevens publicly pressured El-Sayed to condemn the ad’s contents, the candidate appeared to do so on Saturday night, which Stevens celebrated in a statement — hours before endorsing Rogers.
To Cooper, Stevens suggested that many other Democrats felt the way she did.
“I’ve been hearing from a ton of Dems, Anderson, who have said, ‘Thank you. This is how we felt.’ They haven’t liked this campaign. It’s painful,” she said. A growing number of Michigan Jewish Democrats have pledged to vote for Rogers, though more than 1,000 have also signed a letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed.
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah is spread across multiple suburban Detroit campuses and is the largest Jewish day school in the state. Its annual fundraising dinner, “An Evening of Unity,” is known for drawing big national names in politics and the media, usually from both major parties.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was the evening’s keynote speaker, and the gala program also featured personal letters from President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
But it was Stevens, a regular supporter of the school, who turned the most heads. She was also presented with what the emcee called “a specially designed, illuminated book of the five scrolls of our prophets, which remind you all of our heartfelt esteem and appreciation for who you are.”
The yeshiva’s leadership also extended warm wishes to Stevens’ Jewish fiancé, Democratic megadonor Jason Turkish, whom the yeshiva’s emcee described as “our dear friend.” Turkish’s own endorsement of Rogers came days before the congresswoman’s.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Haley Stevens cheered at Jewish day school after endorsing GOP Senate candidate appeared first on The Forward.
