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10 Jewish things to do on Christmas in New York

(New York Jewish Week) — This year, Dec. 24 and 25 are the seventh and eighth nights of Hanukkah — meaning the tail-end of this eight-day Jewish festival just happens to overlap with a little-known Christian holiday called Christmas. 

Of course, the tried-and-true tradition of “Jewish Christmas” — a.k.a. “Chinese food and a movie” — is a classic for a reason, and here in NYC there’s no shortage of movie theaters (from art houses to cineplexes with stadium seating) and world-class Chinese restaurants. 

However, if you’re looking to do something a little bit different this year, you’re in luck: The confluence of Hanukkah and Christmas means that in this oh-so-very-Jewish city in which we reside, there’s a myriad of Jewish-oriented entertainment options this upcoming Christmas weekend. Keep reading for some of our top picks. 

Dec. 24

Joel Chasnoff: Christmas for the Jews

City Winery, 25 11th Ave.  

After a two-year hiatus, Jewish comedian Joel Chasnoff returns for his long-running Christmas Eve comedy show at City Winery. “Passover candy sales, El Al security guards, his short-lived stint on the Solomon Schechter basketball team and his year as a tank gunner in the Israeli army,” reads the promo copy. “If you’re a fan of Joel’s often absurd, always insightful take on Jewish life, this is the show for you!” Chasnoff will be joined by fellow comedians Talia Reese and Eli Lebowicz. Doors open at 6:00 p.m., show starts at 8:00 p.m. From $30

Comedian Joel Chasnoff (Courtesy)

 

A Very Jewish Christmas 

Gotham Comedy Club, 208 West 23rd St.

Join “some of the best Jewish comedians in the country” for a night of Christmas Eve laughs at Chelsea’s Gotham Comedy Club. Featuring Ariel Elias, Gary Vider, Neko White, Rafi Bastos and Ashley Austin Morris. Two shows: 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. $25

 

MatzoBall

Harbor NYC, 621 West 46th St.

If you want to get your drink and your dance on, there’s no shortage of Jewish-oriented dance parties on Christmas Eve. Most iconic of all is the MatzoBall, the classic Jewish singles party, which this year is at Harbor New York City, “NYC’s newest rooftop lounge and event venue.” 10:00 p.m. From $50. 

 

Hanukkah Lit

Slate, 54 West 21st St.

Hanukkah Ball

Nebula, 135 West 41st St.

+972 Events is hosting not one but two Jewish events in NYC on Christmas Eve: Hanukkah Lit at Slate, a multi-use club in Chelsea that has a games area and an indoor slide, and the Hanukkah Ball at Midtown’s Nebula. Both events start at 10:00 p.m.; tickets start at $28. Get Hanukkah Lit tickets here and Hanukkah Ball tickets here. 

 

“The Night Before Christmas” Hanukkah Party

Tao Downtown, 369 West 16th St. 

“You know it’s time to celebrate when Christmas Eve and Hanukkah overlap on a Saturday night!” reads the promo copy for The Streicker Center’s first-ever “The Night Before Christmas” party, held at Tao Downtown. This Temple Emanu-El-affilated event is for those ages 21 to 39 and will feature all-you-can-eat Asian food and “unlimited premium open bar,” plus tunes by DJ Ann Streichman and a set by rapper Kosha Dillz. From 8:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.; tickets $48.25.

Dec. 25

Yiddish New York

Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, 36 Battery Place and online

Dec. 25 is the first full day of Yiddish New York — an online and in-person event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage described as “the nation’s largest festival of Yiddish music, culture and language.” Featuring concerts, workshops, performances and more, the festival runs through Dec. 29. Sunday’s program includes a puppet-making workshop for kids and a lunchtime concert by Kateryna Ostrovska. From $12.24; for tickets and information, click here

 

Music at the Museum: Celebrate Chanukah at Eldridge

Museum at Eldridge Street, 12 Eldridge St. 

Head to the Lower East Side’s Museum at Eldridge Street “for an afternoon of infectious Klezmer energy for all ages.” Sing and dance along to the sounds of the Litvakus Collective (Zisl Slepovitch, Joshua Camp, Larry Eagle, Dmitry Ishenko and Jake Shulman-Ment) as well as National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene actor and singer Maya Jacobson. While you’re there, check out the exhibit on menorahs from around the world and — bonus! — should you have a post-concert hankering for a Chinese feast, you’re smack in the middle of Manhattan’s Chinatown. Concert begins at 2:00 p.m.; tickets $27.28, with reduced prices for seniors, students and children. 

 

“A Very Jewdy Christmas”

Stand Up NY, 236 West 78th St.

Jewish comedian Judy Gold is presenting “A Very Jewdy Christmas” — two standup sets on Christmas Day at 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Tickets $36, plus $18 drink minimum.

Comedian Judy Gold (Via Twitter)

 

27th Anniversary David Broza “Not Exactly Xmas Show” 

City Winery, 25 11th Ave.

Israeli superstar David Broza is doing his annual Christmas Day show — which encompasses “Broza’s signature fusion of his Israeli hits, Spanish flamenco, Cuban rhythms, American folk and rock and roll.” Plus, as in previous years, expect performances by “unannounced guests.” Doors at 6:00 p.m., concert begins at 8:00 p.m. From $65.45.


The post 10 Jewish things to do on Christmas in New York appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Comparing European, American, and French Roulette at Canadian online casinos

Roulette is the most popular table game at online and land-based casinos alike. You can easily find a seat at the table, place your bets, and hope that the wheel turns in your favour. But you have surely noticed that the roulette section is quite rich, featuring at least a dozen different tables. Most of them come with a different design and different rules. The most popular roulette variants are American Roulette, European, and French Roulette. In this article, we will try to explain the main differences between each one.

French VS European Roulette

We’ll first compare the French versus the European version of roulette since they are the most similar. The layout of the bets and the wheel is basically the same. Even the table layout is pretty much the same at most online casinos. Depending on the provider some differences can be found, like the layout of the table or the order of the numbers of the wheel. But as far as the odds and gameplay are concerned, European and French Roulette are basically the same. 

Both roulette variants have a single 0 on the board and the same number of slots on the wheel and numbers on the table. There are 36 additional numbers you can bet on, along with the standard Red or Black and Odd or Even bets. This means both games come with a house edge of 2.7%. So, the only difference comes from the introduction of two basic rules in French Roulette. 

  • La Partage
  • En Prison

La Partage

This rule applies to even money bets, and in case the ball lands on the 0 slot. The term comes from the French word which means to divide. All even money bets are divided into half, and the player gets one half, while the other half goes to the house. This rule works greatly in your favour, especially if you’re playing on higher bets. 

En Prison

The En Prison bet is also applied to even money bets and only when the ball lands on 0. Instead of counting as a loss, the bets are held on the table for the following spin, and if you win, you get your bet back. Even though you don’t actually win anything extra, the En Prison rule gives you a chance to get your money back without a loss. 

The introduction of these rules lowers the house edge on French Roulette down to 1.35%. This is why many players prefer the French version, as the odds are better for the player. 

French VS American Roulette

The main and pretty much only crucial difference between American and French roulette is the 00 and the layout of the slots on the wheel. The added 00 on the American version means that the house edge is higher. It climbs up to 5.26%, which is almost double the house edge on European Roulette and a massive difference from the 1.35% on the French version. 

Since there is an added 00 number, the layout of the slots on the wheel is different. On the table, the 00 is next to the 0, so it doesn’t make a big difference to the layout of the table. But the rules in American roulette are quite simple. If your number doesn’t come up, you lose the bet. There are no extra rules like in the French version. 

Conclusion 

If you go by the odds alone, it turns out that the best roulette variant to play at Canadian online casinos is French roulette. But this doesn’t mean you will lose more when you play American or European Roulette. Many players prefer to play the American wheel as it’s faster and more exciting. With the right strategy and some luck on your side, you can easily make a profit on any type of roulette game. 

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Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism

niversity of California, Santa Barbara student body president Tessa Veksler on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Instagram

University of California, Santa Barbara student body president Tessa Veksler on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Instagram

JNS.org – “Never would I have imagined that I’d need to fight for my right to exist on campus,” laments Shabbos Kestenbaum, a student at Harvard University who is suing the school because “antisemitism is out of control.”

Jewish students have suffered an unrelenting explosion of hate on American higher education campuses—so far with little relief. They have endured antisemitic rhetoric, intimidation, cancellation and violence. But those charged with keeping campuses safe—whether administrators who govern student and faculty behavior or federal agencies responsible for ensuring that schools adhere to civil rights protections—are failing in their jobs.

Many Jewish students have complained to their colleges’ administrators about the injustices. But instead of responding with measures to ensure Jewish students’ safety—like stopping pro-Hamas protestors from hijacking campuses or expelling militants who incite Jew-hatred— administrators have largely shown indifference. In some cases, college authorities have made things worse for Jewish students by appeasing the riotous, pro-Hamas mobs who have been primary perpetrators of Jew-hatred on campus.

Snubbed by college administrators, Jewish students and their supporters have appealed for federal protection, filing Title VI complaints with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the body tasked with enforcing protections under the Civil Rights Act. Unfortunately, the OCR, which has the power to levy severe financial punishments against colleges that neglect students’ Title VI rights, has so far rewarded negligent universities with little more than slaps on the wrist.

Until college and university boards of trustees begin hiring administrators committed to Jewish students’ safety—and until the OCR begins seriously punishing antisemitic perpetrators—we can expect no respite. Safe to say, colleges and universities run by arrogant, apathetic administrators will not change until their jobs and schools’ survival are threatened.

College/university administrators don’t take antisemitism seriously. Their reactions to Jewish students raising concerns about Jew-hatred range from indifference to outright hostility. For example, when Mohammed Al-Kurd, who the Anti-Defamation League says has a record of “unvarnished, vicious antisemitism,” came to speak at Harvard, Shabbos Kestenbaum and other Jewish students complained to administrators.

Rather than cancel Al-Kurd’s appearance, which would have been the appropriate action, the administrators ignored the students’ complaints. “Harvard’s silence was deafening,” Kestenbaum wrote in Newsweek. Kestenbaum said he “repeatedly” expressed concerns to administrators about the antisemitism he experienced, but as his lawsuit alleges, “evidence of uncontrolled discrimination and harassment fell on deaf ears.”

Administrators at Columbia University reacted to Jewish students’ complaints about antisemitism even more cynically. In fact, during an alumni event, several administrators exchanged text messages mocking Jewish students, calling them “privileged” and “difficult to listen to.”

When Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania if calling for genocide against Jews violated their schools’ codes of conduct, none could say “yes.” The presidents of Harvard and UPenn have since resigned. Good riddance.

Some college/university administrators have outrageously granted concessions to pro-Hamas students. For instance, Northwestern University agreed to contact potential employers of students who caused campus disruptions to insist they be hired, create a segregated dormitory hall exclusively for Middle Eastern, North African and Muslim students, and form a new investment committee in which anti-Zionists could wield undue influence. Brown University agreed to hold a referendum on divestment from Israel in October.

Similar appeasements were announced at other colleges and universities, including Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota and the University of California Riverside.

So far, OCR has failed to take concrete action against antisemitism on campus. This is evident in recent decisions involving the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Michigan. CUNY was ordered to conduct more investigations into Title VI complaints and report further developments to Washington, provide more employee and campus security officer training, and issue “climate surveys” to students.

The University of Michigan also committed to a “climate survey,” as well as to reviewing its case files for each report of discrimination covered by Title VI during the 2023-2024 school year and reporting to the OCR on its responses to reports of discrimination for the next two school years.

Neither institution was penalized financially, even though the Department of Education has the power to withhold federal funds, which most colleges and universities depend on. There are now 149 pending investigations into campus antisemitism at OCR. If these investigations yield toothless results similar to those of CUNY and Michigan, it is highly unlikely that colleges and universities will improve how they deal with antisemitism.

Putting an end to skyrocketing antisemitism on campus involves three things.

First, donors and governments at every level should withhold funds from colleges that fail to hire administrators who will take antisemitism as seriously as they take pronoun offenses or racism directed at people of color.

Second, the OCR must mete out serious consequences to Title VI violators in the form of funding cuts. This may require legislation that specifically mandates withdrawing funding from offending parties. A bill recently introduced by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.)—the University Accountability Act—may be ideal, as it is designed to financially penalize institutions that don’t crack down on antisemitism.

Third, if OCR won’t act, Jewish students and their supporters should turn to the courts. Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the legal director of the Deborah Project, a public-interest Jewish law firm, argues that the CUNY settlement demonstrates the futility of going to OCR and that going to court is more likely to produce “a clearly delineated and productive result,” such as punitive and compensatory fines. As of late May, at least 14 colleges and universities are facing lawsuits over their handling of antisemitism on campus since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

As long as college administrators are allowed to ignore antisemitism on campus and as long as OCR and other government institutions fall short in punishing Jew-hatred, antisemitism will continue to plague Jewish students.

The post Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Candace Owens Claims US ‘Being Held Hostage by Israel,’ Suggests Zionists Killed JFK

Candace Owens speaks at CPAC on March 2, 2023. Photo: Lev Radin via Reuters Connect

Political commentator Candace Owens claimed on Friday that the US is being held “hostage” by Israel and suggested that AIPAC, the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the US, was behind the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy.
“It seems like our country is being held hostage by Israel,” Owens, a right-wing provocateur, said during the opening segment of her YouTube show, where she interviewed far-left commentator Briahna Joy Gray.
“I’m going to get in so much trouble for that. I don’t care,” Owens lamented.
Gray, who was the guest for this episode, was recently fired from The Hill‘s TV show, Rising, after aggressively cutting off and rolling her eyes at the sister of an Israeli hostage who said that Hamas sexually assaulted women during the terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and that people should believe those women. Gray, who claimed her firing was politically motivated, had repeatedly cast doubt on the sexual violence perpetrated against Israeli women during the Hamas-led onslaught.
However, Owens said that part of the reasons she was addressing the subject was that people were being fired because they were “not happy … when an innocent Palestinian kid dies” or for “critiquing a foreign nation.”
Also on Friday’s show, Owens claimed US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was “wading into some dangerous waters” when, during an interview with host Tucker Carlson, he spoke about how effective the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is at lobbying members of Congress and suggested the group should have to register as a foreign agent that is acting on behalf of Israel.
The reason it was dangerous, Owens said, was because “we know there was once a president that wanted to make AIPAC register, and he ended up shot … so Thomas Massie better be careful.”
Owens was referencing the fact that Kennedy wanted the American Zionist Council, a lobby group, to register as a foreign agent. However, there is no evidence the group had anything to do with Kennedy’s assassination.
Owens and The Daily Wire, which was co-founded by conservative and Jewish political commentator Ben Shapiro, parted ways after Owens flirted with antisemitic conspiracy theories for a number of months, especially following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
“In all communities there are gangs. In the black community we’ve got the Bloods, we’ve got the Crips. Well, imagine if the Bloods and the Crips were doing horrific things, murdering people, controlling people with blackmail, and then every time a person spoke out about it, the Bloods and the Crips would call those people racist,” Owens said while still at The Daily Wire. “What if that is what is happening right now in Hollywood if there is just a very small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism. It’s food for thought, right? … this appears to be something that is quite sinister.”
Additionally, after getting into a spat with an outspoken and controversial rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, she said, “Are you going to kill me? Are you going to kill me, because I refuse to kowtow to you, and I think it’s weird that you and your daughter are promoting and selling sex toys, that’s why I deem you an ‘unholy rabbi?’”
“You gross me out. You disgust me. I am a better person than you, and I do not fear you,” Owens continued.
The list of controversial incidents involving Owens continued to grow longer with time. In one case, she “liked” an X/Twitter post that promoted the antisemitic “blood libel.” The post read, in response to Boteach, “Rabbi, are you drunk on Christian blood again?”
The “blood libel” is a medieval anti-Jewish slur which falsely claims that Jews use the blood of non-Jewish children in their religious rituals.

The post Candace Owens Claims US ‘Being Held Hostage by Israel,’ Suggests Zionists Killed JFK first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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