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A new pop culture convention will celebrate Jewish excellence and ideas in comic books
(New York Jewish Week) — Jews and comic books — two deeply entwined entities — will be the subject of a new pop culture convention coming to New York this fall.
Billed as the “ultimate comics and pop culture event,” the first-ever Jewish Comics Experience, or “JewCE,” will take place at the Center for Jewish History on November 11-12. Created by Fabrice Sapolsky, a comic book creator and publisher, and Dr. Miriam Eve Mora, the director of academic and public programs at the Center for Jewish History, the event aims to be “an inclusive convention, celebrating an industry largely created by Members of the Tribe, and promoting diverse Jewish narratives in comics and graphic novels,” according to the JewCE website.
“It’s really looking at diverse Jewish representation in comics and graphic novels through Jewish characters, narratives, themes and ideas,” Mora told the New York Jewish Week, describing how the event will celebrate both Jewish comics content and creators.
According to Mora, the conference will be the first time that all the Jewish organizations that are housed at the Center for Jewish History — the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardi Federation, the Leo Baeck Institute, the Yeshiva University Museum and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research — will partner on a single event.
Comics are a uniting factor among these various institutions, said Mora, due to “this abundance of riches, in terms of talent who want to participate.”
“Creators are really excited,” she said. “Scholars are excited to talk about these things. The partners are all chipping in and hosting different things. Every one of the partners is at least going to have some influence and some level of participation. There is definitely collaboration.”
The history of Judaism and comics is long and rich, with Jewish stories arising in both popular comics and more esoteric ones. For example, Marvel briefly had a Jewish Black Panther character, while a new comic features an Asian-Jewish superhero. Meanwhile, some traditional Jewish texts have gotten the graphic novel treatment.
The convention, which is still being planned, will include panel discussions, meet-and-greets, exhibits and vendors. There will also be what the organizers believe is the first-ever awards ceremony held in celebration of Jewish comics and graphic novels, dubbed “The Jewcie Awards.”
Sapolsky was the founder of another Jewish Comic Con that was held in Brooklyn in 2016, with a follow-up event in 2018. The November conference — with appearances expected from from underground cartoonist Trina Robbins, Jewish Mexican-American graphic novelist Yehudi Mercado and others — will also coincide with a new exhibit opening at CJH that will focus on the Jewish comics experience in October. “It will have both a museum element with several micro exhibits focusing on the many worlds of Jewish comics, and then also an immersive experiential learning laboratory of the Jewish comics experience,” Mora said.
JewCE will take place one month after New York Comic Con, one of the biggest pop culture events of the year, where fans come to celebrate their love of comic books, graphic novels and video games — and the movies and TV shows based on them. Last year’s Comic Con faced criticism for its perceived lack of Jewish representation.
Mora said JewCE is not a response to Comic Con’s lack of Jewish representation. Rather, she said the conference will explore how “the comic medium is becoming a place for Jews in a very different way than it has been in the past.”
“Right now there is all this content coming out that shows Jewish characters as primary characters, who are of varying degrees of Orthodoxy and practice, from different Jewish backgrounds and regions,” Mora said.
She added, “It’s really starting to represent the diversity of the Jewish world in a new way.”
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The post A new pop culture convention will celebrate Jewish excellence and ideas in comic books appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Qatari PM Meets Iran’s Larijani in Tehran, Discusses Easing Regional Tensions
Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani speaks after a meeting with the Lebanese president at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon February 4, 2025. REUTERS/Emilie Madi
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met with top Iranian security official Ali Larijani in Tehran and reviewed efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Saturday in a statement.
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Tesla Receives Approval to Test Autonomous Driving in Israel
March 12, 2025, Seattle, Washington, USA: A row of brand-new Tesla Cybertrucks stands in a Tesla Motors Logistics Drop Zone in Seattle, Washington, USA, on Wed., March 12, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
i24 News – The Ministry of Transport announced on Sunday that it has granted Tesla official approval to conduct trials of its autonomous driving system on Israel’s roads. The move comes as part of an effort to examine how the car manufacturer’s advanced technology can be integrated into the local driving environment, with full support from the ministry.
The trials will focus on Tesla’s Fully Self-Driving (FSD) system, a supervised autonomous driving platform. Under the terms of the approval, a driver must remain present in the vehicle at all times to supervise the system, despite its autonomous capabilities. This ensures safety while allowing the technology to be tested in real-world conditions.
The Ministry of Transport described the approval as a significant step toward advancing vehicle regulation in Israel. Officials said the initiative aims to create a regulatory framework that will allow for the routine, supervised use of autonomous driving systems in the future, safely and efficiently.
Tesla will use the trials to assess how the FSD system interacts with Israel’s road infrastructure, traffic patterns, and local driving behaviors. Data collected during the experiment will help refine the system and inform potential regulatory updates to accommodate autonomous vehicles.
The ministry emphasized that the pilot program is limited in scope and strictly monitored. It noted that all necessary safety protocols are in place and that public safety remains the top priority throughout the testing period.
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Reopening of Gaza’s Rafah Crossing Expected Monday, Officials Say
An aid truck moves on a road after entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Gaza’s main border crossing in Rafah will reopen for Palestinians on Monday, Israel said, with preparations underway at the war-ravaged enclave’s main gateway that has been largely shut for almost two years.
Before the war, the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was the only direct exit point for most Gazans to reach the outside world as well as a key entry point for aid into the territory. It has been largely shut since May 2024 and under Israeli military control on the Gazan side.
COGAT, the Israeli military unit that oversees humanitarian coordination, said the crossing will reopen in both directions for Gaza residents on foot only and its operation will be coordinated with Egypt and the European Union.
“Today, a pilot is underway to test and assess the operation of the crossing. The movement of residents in both directions, entry and exit to and from Gaza, is expected to begin tomorrow,” COGAT said in a statement.
A Palestinian official and a European source close to the EU mission confirmed the details. The Egyptian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
STRICT SECURITY CHECKS
Israel has said the crossing would open under stringent security checks only for Palestinians who wish to leave the war-ravaged enclave and for those who fled the fighting in the first months of the war to return.
Many of those expected to leave are sick and wounded Gazans in need of medical care abroad. The Palestinian health ministry has said that there are 20,000 patients waiting to leave Gaza.
An Israeli defense official said that the crossing can hold between 150-200 people altogether in both directions. There will be more people leaving than returning because patients leave together with escorts, the official added.
“(The Rafah crossing) is the lifeline for us, the patients. We don’t have the resources to be treated in Gaza,” said Moustafa Abdel Hadi, a kidney patient in a central Gaza hospital, awaiting a transplant abroad.
“If the war impacted a healthy person by 1 percent, it has impacted us 200 percent,” he said, sitting as he received dialysis treatment at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. His travel request, he said, has been approved.
Two Egyptian officials said that at least 50 Palestinian patients will be processed on Sunday to cross Rafah into Egypt for treatment. In the first few days around 200 people, patients and their family members, will cross daily into Egypt, the officials said, with 50 people returning to Gaza per day.
Lists of Gazans set to pass through the crossing have been submitted by Egypt and approved by Israel, the official said.
NEXT PHASE OF TRUMP’S GAZA PLAN
Reopening the border crossing was a key requirement of the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Israel-Hamas war.
But the ceasefire, which came into effect in October after two years of fighting, has been repeatedly shaken by rounds of violence.
On Saturday, Israel launched some of its most intense airstrikes since the ceasefire, killing at least 30 people, in what it said was a response to a Hamas violation of the truce on Friday when militants emerged from a tunnel in Rafah.
The next phases of Trump’s plan for Gaza foresee governance being handed to Palestinian technocrats, Hamas laying down its weapons and Israeli troops withdrawing from the territory while an international force keeps the peace and Gaza is rebuilt.
Hamas has so far rejected disarmament and Israel has repeatedly indicated that if the Islamist terrorist group is not disarmed peacefully, it will use force to make it do so.