Uncategorized
Meet the real-life sister act behind the two new ’90s Jewish American Girl dolls
(JTA) — As children in upstate New York, twin sisters Julia DeVillers and Jennifer Roy went to Hebrew school three days a week, spent their summers at a JCC summer camp and got to know local Holocaust survivors through their father, who survived the Nazis as a child in Poland. They also celebrated Christmas with their mother’s family.
Aware of their dual religious and cultural backgrounds from a young age, DeVillers and Roy personally sent their public elementary school principal a letter asking to place a menorah next to the school Christmas tree. The girls gathered a couple of the other Jewish students together to present the letter to the principal, to resounding success: A real menorah was added to the school’s holiday display.
It was something straight out of an American Girl story. And as of this week, in a sense, it is one.
On Wednesday, American Girl released its first twin dolls, Isabel and Nicki Hoffman, who are also the first characters from an interfaith family. Their stories take place in the late 1990s and were written by DeVillers and Roy, inspired by the sisters’ own childhood experiences. The twin dolls’ parents are, respectively, Jewish and Christian, and their mother, Robin, is named after the authors’ own mother.
“It’s incredibly special to us that the twins bring this Jewish and interfaith representation that so many kids will relate to,” DeVillers told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Roy added, “People are not necessarily one thing or another these days. And while we are Jewish, we did grow up with both holidays and both cultures in our family. And that’s how we wanted our characters to be and to feel.”
Isabel and Nicki’s stories are loosely based on the childhood experiences of authors and real-life twins Julia DeVillers and Jennifer Roy. (Courtesy of American Girl)
The dolls are a milestone in how the lived experience of many American Jews is reflected in popular culture. Recent surveys of Jewish Americans consistently note high rates of interfaith marriage, and show that a significant portion of those couples raise their children either fully or partly Jewish.
Isabel and Nicki are the second and third historical Jewish American Girl dolls, joining Rebecca Rubin. Rebecca’s story reflected an earlier generation’s perception of normative American Jewish identity: Her family immigrated from Russia and lives in New York’s Lower East Side in 1914, while navigating issues of assimilation and religion.
Stories of joint Hanukkah-Christmas celebrations are not exactly new. A TV episode Isabel and Nicki’s character’s might have watched as teenagers, “The Best Chrismukkah Ever” from the drama “The O.C.,” aired nearly two decades ago. But the dolls and their stories are “super innovative and relevant for 21st-century Jewish interfaith families,” said Keren McGinity, the interfaith specialist for the Conservative movement of Judaism and a professor of American studies at Brandeis University.
“Anytime there’s cultural representation that depicts real life, it’s a good thing,” McGinity said, though she added that some depictions of interfaith families are more robust than others.
“On the one hand, it’s terrific that they’re reflecting contemporary American Jewish life by depicting an interfaith family through these characters and reinforcing the fact that it only takes one Jewish parent to raise Jewish children,” she added. “And it remains to be seen how they are Jewish beyond celebrating the December holidays, and how they’re interfaith beyond celebrating the December holidays, plural.”
The new twin dolls are the latest in American Girl’s iconic series of dolls, which hail from different eras of American history and come with novels about their lives. American Girl has historically aimed to present a diverse set of dolls. Other recent offerings include Evette Peeters, a biracial girl who cares for the environment, and Kavi Sharma, an Indian-American girl who loves Broadway musicals.
The new historical characters, Isabel and Nicki, retail for $115 each. Their stories are written by DeVillers and Roy, respectively, and begin on Dec. 11, 1999, when they receive their journals as a gift for the last night of Hanukkah.
They have their own distinct personalities, which the authors say somewhat resemble what they were like as kids: Isabel has a preppy style and loves dancing, and is advertised wearing a pink cable-knit sleeveless sweater over a pinstripe shirt, with a plaid skirt, platform shoes and a beret. Nicki likes skateboarding and writing song lyrics, and appears on the American Girl website wearing a backwards baseball cap, choker necklace, blue T-shirt dress and sneakers, with a flannel shirt tied around her waist.
Isabel’s book begins with a nod to a late-1990s fad: “Hi, New Journal! You’re my present for the last night of Hanukkah!! I was going to save you for after Christmas and New Year’s, but we also got NEW GEL PENS!”
In Nicki’s book, her interfaith identity is mentioned two weeks later: “Did I mention my family celebrates Hanukkah AND Christmas? Well, we do.”
The two journals, “Meet Isabel” and “Meet Nicki” are filled with text and sold with the dolls. The stories take place during the same time frame, as the girls celebrate the winter holidays, face their fears, make new friends and worry about Y2K. A longer novel, “Meet Isabel and Nicki” is set for release in August as the first in the Isabel and Nicki historical series. It will take place during the same month as the shorter journals, but will delve further into the time period. Readers will get to spend the last night of Hanukkah with the Hoffmans, lighting the menorah and playing dreidel.
“Meet Isabel and Nicki,” the first novel in the series about the Hoffman twins, will be released in August. (Photo courtesy of American Girl. Design by Jackie Hajdenberg)
McGinity said she would have to wait until the new book comes out to see what the girls’ representation looks like, given that the journals are so short.
“I feel like we don’t have enough intel other than ‘OK, the authors are Jewish, the characters are Jewish, they grew up in an interfaith household,’” she added.
The crowded flagship American Girl store in New York City has already begun promoting Isabel and Nicki by showcasing the twins’ different outfits and bedroom and accessory collections, with dozens of the dolls positioned throughout the store.
“While we’re not able to provide specific sales information, I can say we’ve been happy to see the positive response for the new characters,” a representative for the company said.
Roy and her sister have previously written a series of children’s novels about twins, and Roy also authored “Yellow Star,” a 2006 children’s book about her aunt’s remarkable survival as one of the only children to be liberated from the Lodz Ghetto. Roy said she and her sister are grateful for the chance to tell their family’s story in a new way.
“So we don’t know what cultures, faiths, religions are coming beyond this,” said Roy, referring to future American Girl products. “But what we did know was that if we were writing in the holiday season, we really wanted to include parts of ourselves and that’s what American Girl editors all said: ‘We’d love to have you remember from your childhood.’ And this was our childhood.”
—
The post Meet the real-life sister act behind the two new ’90s Jewish American Girl dolls appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
What it means for Jews when Trump administration officials misquote the Bible
(JTA) — The Bible is back in the news.
In a Pentagon prayer service on April 15, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth quoted what was seemingly meant to be a verse from the ancient Hebrew prophet Ezekiel, but was in fact from the Gospel of Tarantino, as Stephen Colbert quipped.
In response, Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman, released a statement on X noting that the homage to the auteur’s 1994 film “Pulp Fiction” was intentional. Hegseth had “shared a custom prayer … which was obviously inspired by dialogue in ‘Pulp Fiction.’”
Two days later, the New York Times suggested that President Donald Trump was likely participating in “America Reads the Bible,” a marathon reading of scripture to take place in Washington, D.C.’s Museum of the Bible, as a means to repair his relationship with Catholics after he publicly sparred with the pope over the Iran war and deleted a tweet depicting himself as Jesus Christ.
“President Trump has a complicated relationship with the Bible,” the paper noted. “He has often called it his favorite book, has posed with it for photographers outside a church and has sold his own edition for $60. But he has also struggled to name a favorite passage or even pick a favorite Testament between the two.”
At the event on April 21, Trump read a passage from 2 Chronicles, in which God promises to heal the land if its people “humble themselves, pray, and seek My favor.”
As a scholar specializing in the influence of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish ideas on American history, I can attest that the habit of American leaders citing chapter and verse (accurate or not) is as old as the United States itself. In fact, it dates back to the Pilgrims. It has been a powerful and effective means of cultivating covenantal community. Americans who cited scripture have forged a country unique in world history in the religious freedom it has offered to all its citizens, not the least of which to us Jews, the original biblically bound people.
The America ethos of fighting for freedom and liberty, drawn from the story of the Children of Israel millennia ago, to this day shapes how the United States operates both internally and on the world stage.
Reflecting on the harsh and uncertain early days of Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, who signed the Mayflower Compact and would serve as the territory’s governor for roughly three decades, paraphrased the Exodus story and Moses’ final speech in Deuteronomy. Arriving in the New World, he said, his fellow Pilgrims could only see:
a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men — and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects.
In the first half of this excerpt from his journal, Bradford was alluding to the Israelites’ escape from Egypt into the rough wilderness in which they would wander for 40 years. And then he referenced the mountaintop on the precipice of the Promised Land, Pisgah, on which Moses stood as his people were about to complete their arduous journey as described in the last of the Five Books of Moses. To Bradford, scripture was a source of strength and solace during communally challenging times.
Ten years later, the Puritan leader John Winthrop would describe in similarly Hebraic lens how if Massachusetts Bay Colony’s residents will do right in the eyes of the Lord, “We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when 10 of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies… For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”
Winthrop was misquoting of Leviticus 26:8: “Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand.” However, the details were less important than the sense of divine mission that was powering the Pilgrims’ and the Puritan’s project.
Later, the American Founders also possessed a powerful attachment to the Bible, even if the details were sometimes hazy.
John Adams, in 1776, after hearing a sermon paralleling the Patriot cause to Israel’s fight against Pharaoh’s tyranny, ruminated: “Is it not a Saying of Moses, ‘who am I, that I should go in and out before this great People’?” It actually was not a saying of Moses. Adams was conflating Moses’ “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh…” speech in Exodus 3:11 with a a request by a much later Jewish ruler, King Solomon that God “give me now wisdom and knowledge to go out and come in before this people” (2 Chronicles 1:10).
A year earlier, the equally-enamored-with-
Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the country’s most biblically literate president ever, often weaved scripture into his seminal addresses, from “four score and seven years ago,” which was likely borrowed from a rabbinic sermon citing a verse in Psalms, to a purposeful paraphrase of Exodus 19:5 when, on Feb. 21, 1861, he referred to Americans writ large as the Lord’s “almost chosen people.”
It hasn’t only been political leaders, of course, who rephrase the Word in an effort to encourage Americans to live up to their highest ideals. Martin Luther King Jr. made reference to that same mountaintop as Bradford in the civil rights leader’s final speech on April 3, 1968 in Memphis. He rousingly reassured his audience that:
We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop… I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
Citing (and mis-citing) scripture, then, is a longstanding and worthy American tradition.
Some Jews might feel excluded by Jesus and New Testament texts being invoked in a nonsectarian context by public leaders, and verses can be abused as opposed to correctly interpreted. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of looking to the Bible to shape the soul of America has served a largely positive purpose. A religious civic space is full of happier, healthier people who give more charity, have more children and forge a strong sense of community.
Regardless of one’s party or views on those in power today, then, quoting the Bible in the American public sphere has long characterized the American experiment. On the whole, it has been largely good for the American collective character and good for the Jews. Occasionally, these quotes might be imperfect, but they reflect a worthy national will: the desire to see through the long march towards liberty and justice for all.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post What it means for Jews when Trump administration officials misquote the Bible appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Recalling Yeva Beider, devoted widow of the writer Chaim Beider
דעם 6טן אַפּריל 2026 האָט אין ברוקלין זיך געפֿעלט יעוואַ לאָזדערניק־ביידער ע״ה אין עלטער פון 103 יאָר. זי איז צום בעסטן באַקאַנט אין דער ייִדיש־וועלט צוליב איר אָפּגעגעבנקייט איר מאַן, דעם פֿאַרשטאָבענעם שרײַבער, פּאָעט און רעדאַקטאָר חיים ביידער ע״ה.
זינט חיים ביידערס טויט אין 2003 האָט יעוואַ זיך אָפּגעגעבן מיטן אָפּהיטן זײַן ליטעראַרישע ירושה ובפֿרט דורכן העלפֿן אַרויסגעבן זײַן לעקסיקאָן פֿון די ייִדישע שרײַבער אין ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, רעדאַקטירט דורך באָריס סאַנדלער און גענאַדי עסטרײַך. דאָס איז אַ וויכטיקער צוגאָב צום לעקסיקאָן פֿון דער מאָדערנער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור, ווי אויך צו דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור־פֿאָרשונג בכלל.
דורך אַ שמועס מיט איר זון מאַטוויי, האָב איך זיך דערוווּסט אַז יעוואַ לאָזדערניק איז געבוירן געוואָרן דעם 27סטן נאָוועמבער 1922 אין שטעטל וואָלאָטשיסק, מערבֿ־אוקראַיִנע, בײַם טײַך זברוטש. די צווייטע וועלט־מלחמה האָט זי איבערגעלעבט אין סאָוועטן־רוסלאַנד און אין 1946 האָט זי חתונה געהאַט מיט באָריס שפּיזעלן, וואָס האָט אָנגעפֿירט מיטן פֿינאַנץ־אָפּטייל פון דער גובערניע. יעווא האָט אויך געאַרבעט פֿאַר דער גובערניע־רעגירונג.
מיט שפּיזעלן האָט זי געהאַט צוויי זין, מאַטוויי און איסאַק. ווען דער עלטערער זון, מאַטוויי, איז געבוירן געוואָרן, האָבן זיי אים געמאַכט א ברית און צוליב דעם האָבן ביידע אָנגעוווירן זייערע שטעלעס בײַ דער רעגירונג, ווי אויך זייער דירה. שפּיזעל האָט באַקומען אַרבעט אין אַ כעמיע־פֿאַבריק. אין 1967 איז ער אַוועק אין דער אייביקייט.
אין 1978 האָט יעוואַ חתונה געהאַט מיט חיים ביידערן און צוזאַמען האָבן זיי עולה געווען אין 1996. אין זעלביקן יאָר האָט דער פֿאָרווערטס, צוזאַמען מיט אַנדערע ייִדישע קולטור־אָרגאַניזאַציעס, זיי פֿאַרבעטן אין די פֿאַראייניקטע שטאַטן, וווּ זיי זענען פֿאַרבליבן. ביידער איז נפֿטר געוואָרן אין 2003.
ווען איך האָב באַקומען די טרויעריקע בשׂורה וועגן יעוואַס פּטירה זענען מיר געקומען אויפֿן געדאַנק אַ שלל מיט זכרונות. ווער ס׳האָט זיך פֿאַרנומען מיט ייִדיש אין שטאָט ניו־יאָרק במשך פֿון די שפּעט-90ער יאָרן פֿונעם פֿאָריקן יאָרהונדערט, און פֿרי אינעם ערשטן יאָרצענדלינג פֿון איצטיקן, וועט קיין מאָל ניט פֿאַרגעסן אָט דאָס פּאָרל ייִדישיסטן: ער, דער שטילער, מיט די דיקע ברילן און ווײַסע, צעשויבערטע האָר פֿון אַן אינטעלעקטואַל, און זי — לעבעדיק און באַרעדעוודיק.
זי איז געווען זײַן פֿאַרוואַלטערין, קען מען זאָגן. זי האָט געפֿירט זײַן צײַטפּלאַן, געזען אַז ער זאָל עסן באַצײַטנס, און תּמיד מיטגעבראַכט עסן מיט זיך, כּדי מיטצוטיילן מיט אַנדערע: אַ פּעקל זיסוואַרג, אַ האָניק־לעקעך אַ מתּנה אויף יום־טובֿ, צי וואָס ניט איז. זי האָט געקענט גוט דערציילן אַ וויץ און האָט שיין געפֿירט די שטוב.
איין מאָל בין איך געווען בײַ איר אָפּנעמען אַרכיוואַלע מאַטעריאַלן ביידערס און זי האָט מיר דערלאַנגט אַ פּסחדיקן מיטאָג: איר ספּעציעלן טאָג־טעגלעכן סאַלאַט ֹ— שאַלאַטן מיט פּאָמידאָר און אוגערקע, אַלץ צעשניטן און באַשאָטן מיט אַ ביסל זאַלץ און געלאָזן שטיין אַ נאַכט אין פֿרידזשידעיר. ס׳האָט געהאַט אַזאַ פֿרישן טעם… און דערצו איבערגעוואַרעמטע כרעמזלעך אַליין־געמאַכטע.
אַז איך האָב דאָס איין מאָל דערציילט דער ייִדיש־ליטעראַטור־פֿאָשערין שבֿע צוקער האָט זי מיר גלײַך איבערגעגעבן אייגענע זכרונות — וועגן יעוואַ ביידערס יויך. זי און דער היסטאָריקער דוד פֿישמאַן זענען ביידע געווען בײַ די ביידערס אין שטוב אין מאָסקווע, האָט יעוואַ זיי דערלאַנגט אַ יויך צום טיש וואָס, זאָגט שבֿע, „איז געווען איינס אויף דער וועלט.“ איין מאָל איז שבֿע געפֿאָרן אין אַן אויטאָ מיטן ייִדישן קולטור־טוער גרשון ווײַנער ז״ל און אַנדערע, ווען עמעצער האָט דערמאָנט דעם נאָמען „יעוואַ ביידער“. אַלע האָבן תּיכּף געלויבט איר יויך און מסכּים געווען אַז ס׳איז טעם גן־עדן.
יעוואַ האָט אויך געהאַט אויסערגעוויינטלעכע זכרונות צו דערציילן פֿון איר לעבן. זי איז למשל אַ מאָל געווען אויף אַ חתונה, וואָס מע האָט געפּראַוועט אויף ביידע זײַטן פֿון טײַך זברוטש: די מחותּנים און גוטע־פֿרײַנד האָבן געוואָרפֿן מיט „מזל־טובֿס“ און פּעקלעך עסנוואַרג איבערן טײַך. אין 2012 האָט דער ניו־יאָרקער רוסיש־שפּראַכיקער פֿאַרלאַג „ליבערטי פּאָבלישינג האַוס“ פֿאַרעפֿנטלעכט אירע זכרונות אונטערן טיטל „אימענאַ נעזאַבוועניע“ (אומפֿאַרגעסלעכע נעמען).
יעוואַ איז געווען אַ ליבער מענטש און ליב געהאַט די ייִדישע קולטור. זי וועט אונדז שטאַרק אויספֿעלן.
The post Recalling Yeva Beider, devoted widow of the writer Chaim Beider appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
2 Jewish men stabbed in London, in attack British PM Keir Starmer calls ‘utterly appalling’
(JTA) — Two Jewish men were stabbed on the street in a heavily Orthodox neighborhood of London on Wednesday, escalating anxieties amid ongoing incidents targeting local Jews that police say reflect Iranian involvement.
A man was arrested at the scene in Golders Green after being apprehended first by members of the Shomrim, a Jewish security force that operates in parts of London. Hatzola, the Jewish-operated nonprofit emergency service whose ambulances were recently burned in an arson, treated the two victims.
“One male was seen running along Golders Green Road armed with a knife and attempting to stab Jewish members of the public. Shomrim responded immediately and detained the suspect. Police attended and deployed a taser,” Shomrim said in a post to social media.
Both men who were stabbed — one in his 70s and the other in his 30s — are hospitalized in stable condition, according to the Metropolitan Police.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the attack, calling it antisemitic and praising the nonprofit services that responded.
“The antisemitic attack in Golders Green is utterly appalling. Attacks on our Jewish community are attacks on Britain,” he said on X. “Thank you to Shomrim, Hatzola and the police for acting swiftly. Those responsible will be brought to justice.”
The incident comes amid a series of attacks on Jewish institutions, and arrests of people who allegedly staged them or otherwise are accused of posing threats to the London Jewish community. No one had previously been injured in the incidents, which have included multiple arson attacks on local synagogues and, on Tuesday, a fire at a memorial in Golders Green for those murdered by the Iranian regime. Police have arrested dozens of people in recent weeks and have said they see evidence that Iran may be paying locals to stoke violence against Jews.
The Metropolitan Police said they were working to identify the nationality and background of the attacker in Golders Green, who they said was 45 and had attempted to stab officers to responded to the scene. They also acknowledged that the current situation is alarming to Jews in London.
“We are aware of the significant distress and concern this incident is likely to cause in the face of a number of incidents in the local area,” Deputy Chief Superintendent Luke Williams, who leads policing in the area, said in a statement. “A suspect is in custody, and investigators are considering all possible motives.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 2 Jewish men stabbed in London, in attack British PM Keir Starmer calls ‘utterly appalling’ appeared first on The Forward.