Uncategorized
Jewish drag queen Sasha Velour is on the cover of The New Yorker this week
(New York Jewish Week) — Subscribers of The New Yorker opened their mailboxes this week to a hard-to-miss hot pink cover with an illustration of a drag queen with a mohawk, large blue earrings and extravagant makeup.
They were looking at “The Look of Pride,” a self-portrait by a Brooklyn-based Jewish drag queen and artist named Sasha Velour. Velour, 35, is featured in the June 12 issue in an interview about how she is celebrating Pride month and why drag has been lifesaving for her.
“Drag is an antidote to shame,” she said.
Velour was the 2017 winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and is currently on tour for her new book, “The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag,” which intertwines her own personal history — including her Jewish identity — with the history of drag as both a revolutionary art form and cultural practice.
Velour’s Judaism and Jewish family upbringing is a recurring theme in her book. “For years I studied Jewish history and Hebrew language after school and on the weekends,” she writes. “I was bar mitzvahed at 13 and even taught Sunday school when I was in high school, reenacting Jewish fables with puppets that I made myself,” writes Velour, who was raised in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Chicago suburbs.
Velour, whose out-of-drag last name is Steinberg, also writes about the influence her Jewish ancestors had on her — even those who she never knew. In “The Big Reveal,” Velour writes that her great-grandmother, Goldie Rabinovitch, was working at the at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in on March 25, 1911, but was spared from the deadly fire that day because she was late to work — window shopping, as the family lore goes, or possibly buying a pickle in Cooper Square.
“This is a story about snacks!’” Velour writes. Or, as her grandmother Dina would tell her: “Remember Grandma Goldie’s lesson… window-shopping can save your life!”
That same Jewish grandmother also first put Velour in drag when she was a child. “When I visited her house as a little kid, she would always encourage me to channel my inner diva,” Velour writes. “Beating out a drum rhythm on the arm of the couch, she would coach me to walk dramatically into the room, drop my coat, and reveal the look. ‘Fabulous!’ she’d whisper, knowingly.”
“When I was a kid, I loved dressing up with my grandmothers, putting on makeup, staging shows. I didn’t even know it was ‘drag’ but it just made sense to me,” Velour tells The New Yorker in the interview published Monday. “Later, learning more about drag and understanding the existence of queer and trans people around the world quite literally saved my life.”
In her book, Velour also credits the Talmud with showing her how to hold multiple ideas — and, by extension, identities — in her mind at the same time. “According to Talmudic thought, in order to find the truth, we must be able to hold multiple possible meanings as true at the same time,” she writes in her book. “That’s the kind of book I always liked best — a scrapbook that brought many things together in conversation.”
“Both comics and drag come from strong independent traditions that enable artists and performers to develop a more unique and recognizable style, and to address a wider range of political and personal topics,” she tells The New Yorker. “All you need to make art is your own self.”
—
The post Jewish drag queen Sasha Velour is on the cover of The New Yorker this week appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.
Uncategorized
Iran’s Guards Declare ‘Red Line’ on Security as Tehran Seeks to Quell Unrest
FILE PHOTO: Protesters gather as vehicles burn, amid evolving anti-government unrest, in Tehran, Iran, in this screen grab obtained from a social media video released on January 9, 2026. Social Media/via REUTERS/File Photo
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned on Saturday that safeguarding security was a “red line” and the military vowed to protect public property, as the clerical establishment stepped up efforts to quell the most widespread protests in years.
The statements came after US President Donald Trump issued a new warning to Iran’s leaders on Friday, and after Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday declared: “The United States supports the brave people of Iran.”
Unrest continued overnight. State media said a municipal building was set on fire in Karaj, west of Tehran, and blamed “rioters.” State TV broadcast footage of funerals of members of the security forces it said were killed in protests in the cities of Shiraz, Qom and Hamedan.
Protests have spread across much of Iran over the last two weeks, beginning in response to soaring inflation, but quickly turned political with protesters demanding an end to clerical rule. Authorities accuse the US and Israel of fomenting “the riots.” Rights groups have documented dozens of deaths of protesters.
ARMY SAYS ‘TERRORIST GROUPS’ SEEK TO UNDERMINE SECURITY
Authorities continued to impose an internet blackout.
A witness in western Iran reached by phone said the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) were deployed and opening fire in the area from which they were speaking, declining to be identified for their safety.
In a statement broadcast by state TV, the IRGC – an elite force which has suppressed previous bouts of unrest – accused terrorists of targeting military and law enforcement bases over the past two nights, killing several citizens and security personnel and saying property had been set on fire.
Safeguarding the achievements of the 1979 Islamic revolution and maintaining security was “a red line,” it added, saying the continuation of the situation was unacceptable.
The military, which operates separately to the IRGC but is also commanded by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced it would “protect and safeguard national interests, the country’s strategic infrastructure, and public property.”
In a country with a history of fragmented opposition to clerical rule, the son of the last shah of Iran who was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution has emerged as a prominent voice abroad spurring on the protests.
PAHLAVI SAYS GOAL IS TO PREPARE TO ‘SEIZE CITY CENTRES’
In his latest appeal on the X social media platform, US-based Reza Pahlavi said: “Our goal is no longer merely to come into the streets; the goal is to prepare to seize city centres and hold them.”
He also called on “workers and employees in key sectors of the economy, especially transportation, and oil, and gas and energy,” to begin a nationwide strike.
Trump said on Thursday he was not inclined to meet Pahlavi, a sign that he was waiting to see how the crisis plays out before backing an opposition leader.
Trump, who bombed Iran last summer and warned Tehran last week the US could come to the protesters’ aid, issued another warning on Friday, saying: “You better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting too.”
“I just hope the protesters in Iran are going to be safe, because that’s a very dangerous place right now,” he added.
Some protesters on the streets have shouted slogans in support of Pahlavi, such as “Long live the shah,” although most chants have called for an end to rule by the clerics or demanded action to fix an economy hammered by years of US and other international sanctions and pummeled by the 12-day war in June, when Israel and the US launched air strikes on Iran.
A doctor in northwestern Iran said that since Friday, large numbers of injured protesters had been brought to hospitals. Some were badly beaten, suffering head injuries and broken legs and arms, as well as deep cuts.
At least 20 people in one hospital had been shot with live ammunition, five of whom later died.
On Friday, Khamenei accused protesters of acting on behalf of Trump, saying rioters were attacking public properties and warning that Tehran would not tolerate people acting as “mercenaries for foreigners.”
The Revolutionary Guards’ public relations office said three members of the Basij security force were killed and five wounded during clashes with what it described as “armed rioters” in Gachsaran, in the southwest.
Another security officer was stabbed to death in Hamedan, in western Iran. The son of a senior officer, Brigadier General Martyr Nourali Shoushtari, was killed in the Ahmadabad area of Mashhad, in the northeast. Two other security personnel were killed over the past two nights in Shushtar, in Khuzestan province.
The protests pose the biggest internal challenge in at least three years to Iran’s clerical rulers, who look more vulnerable than during past bouts of unrest amid a dire economic situation and after last year’s war.
The leaders of France, Britain and Germany issued a joint statement on Friday condemning the killing of protesters and urged the Iranian authorities to refrain from violence.
Authorities have described protests over the economy as legitimate while condemning what they call violent rioters and cracking down with security forces.
Iran’s clerical establishment has weathered repeated past bouts of unrest, including student protests in 1999, over a disputed election in 2009, against economic hardships in 2019, and the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
Iranian rights group HRANA said it had documented 65 deaths including 50 protesters and 15 security personnel as of January 9. The Norway-based human rights group Hengaw said more than 2,500 people had been arrested over the past two weeks.
Uncategorized
Yemen’s Main Separatist Group Denies It Is Disbanding
FILE PHOTO: A soldier stands guard outside the headquarters of the Southern Transitional Council in Aden, Yemen January 8, 2026. REUTERS/Fawaz Salman/File Photo
Yemen’s main separatist group, the Southern Transitional Council, denied on Saturday it was disbanding, contradicting a statement by one of its members that the group had decided to dissolve itself.
The conflicting statements highlight a split in the STC, a group backed by the United Arab Emirates that seized parts of southern and eastern Yemen in December in advances that heightened tensions with another Gulf power, Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE used to work together in a coalition battling Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen’s civil war but the STC advances exposed their rivalry, bringing into focus big differences on a wide range of issues across the Middle East ranging from geopolitics to oil output.
Saudi-backed fighters have largely retaken the areas of southern and eastern Yemen that the STC seized, and an STC delegation has traveled to the Saudi capital Riyadh for talks.
But STC leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi skipped the planned meetings and fled Yemen on Wednesday, and the Saudi-led coalition accused the UAE of helping him escape on a flight that was tracked to a military airport in Abu Dhabi.
In an announcement broadcast on Saudi state media on Friday, one of the group’s members said the STC had decided to disband.
But in a statement issued on Saturday, the STC said it had held an “extraordinary meeting” following the announcement in Riyadh and declared it “null and void,” saying it had been made “under coercion and pressure.”
The group also said its members in Riyadh had been detained and were being “forced to issue statements.”
The STC reiterated calls for mass protests in southern cities on Saturday, warning against any attempts that target the group’s “peaceful activities.”
Authorities in Aden that are aligned with Yemen’s Saudi-backed government on Friday ordered a ban on demonstrations in the southern city, citing security concerns, according to an official directive seen by Reuters.