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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.”
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Yad Vashem says it has identified 5 million Holocaust victims: ‘Behind each name is a life that mattered’
Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, says it has reached a major milestone in its efforts to uncover the identities of all of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, crossing the 5-million name threshold with the help of AI.
That leaves 1 million names still unknown from the tally of 6 million murdered Jews that is synonymous with the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II.
Two years ago, Yad Vashem inaugurated a 26.5 foot-long “Book of Names,” which included the names of 4,800,000 victims of the Shoah, at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Since then, researchers deployed AI technology and machine learning to analyze hundreds of millions of archival documents that were previously too extensive to research manually, according to Yad Vashem. In addition to covering large amounts of material quickly, the algorithms were taught to look out for variations of victims’ names, leading to the new identification of hundreds of thousands of victims.
Yad Vashem estimates an additional 250,000 names could still be recovered using the technology.
“Reaching 5 million names is both a milestone and a reminder of our unfinished obligation,” said Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, in a statement. “Behind each name is a life that mattered — a child who never grew up, a parent who never came home, a voice that was silenced forever. It is our moral duty to ensure that every victim is remembered so that no one will be left behind in the darkness of anonymity.”
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New York Mayoral Race: Jewish Rabbis Who Ignore History Are Still Doomed to Repeat it
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
When more than 1,000 rabbis across the political spectrum and from all denominations came together to write a letter opposing New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for failing to condemn calls for violence against Jews, denying Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, accusing Israel of genocide, and more — it seemed only a matter of time until an opposing action letter penned by agenda-driven radicals would emerge.
Indeed, a group of far-left rabbis calling themselves “Jews for a Shared Future” has come forward with a letter of their own. In the letter, they defend Mamdani, mainly by claiming to know what is in his heart and mind rather than confronting the things that he has said and done.
The letter attempts to gaslight legitimately concerned and frightened New Yorkers of all religions, divining to somehow know that Mamdani’s positions and beliefs “stem not from hate but from his deep moral convictions.”
Abhorrently, and with no evidence provided, the letter goes on to accuse New York Jews expressing concern for their community’s safety as being “built on Muslim vulnerability.”
It is telling that the Jews for a Shared Future letter could muster only around 30 signatures from New York City area rabbis, while the self-described “The Jewish Majority” rabbis who authored the initial letter includes well over 100 NYC rabbis, all clearly concerned for the well-being of their Jewish constituencies.
And well they should be.
While Jews for a Shared Future focuses on unfounded, uncited, and libelous claims that accuse Jews of putting Muslims in harm’s way — and claiming to know what is in Mamdani’s heart — the Jewish Majority letter provides links to uncontested public statements and positions taken by Mamdani that raise well-founded and serious concerns for all New Yorkers, including Jews.
Mamdani’s resistance to condemn language including “Globalize the Intifada” and his continued use of false antisemitic tropes that refer to Israel as an “apartheid” and “genocidal” state are well documented and raise sufficient concern. These blood libels and calls for violence have repeatedly led to harm and attacks against Jews across the country.
Recently, though, video has re-emerged from a 2021 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Zoom meeting, in which Mamdani revealed much greater detail about his political intentions.
In the video, Mamdani proudly refers to bringing “radical legislation” to the fore and of working to bring the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to New York. He speaks in detail of his goal to “overturn” New York’s anti-BDS executive order and about his “fight to stop the study abroad at universities in Israel.”
He even boasted of his involvement with the antisemitic Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group while in college, and of his desire to “dismantle” the US relationship with Israel.
Mamdani has been clear that “it was Palestine that brought me into this movement.” This statement leaves little doubt as to how his expressly stated agendas will be implemented as mayor, and that it is likely to cause harm and discrimination against the overwhelming majority of NYC Jews who support the existence of Israel.
Mamdani’s pledged support for BDS and his promise to overturn anti-BDS laws could very well lead to the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses and to all sorts of discrimination against Zionist Jews, horrifyingly reminiscent of what happened in 1930s Germany. The Jewish Majority letter is right to warn the public of Mamdani’s language and agenda. Never again must mean never again.
Mamdani’s grotesque threat to block Jewish students from studying in Israel also raise serious concerns. Furthermore, in a public school system already rife with antisemitism, Mamdani has only compounded these concerns by hinting that former Congressman and anti-Israel activist, Jamaal Bowman, could be his choice for NYC’s next schools chancellor. Along with his lengthy resume of anti-Israel activity, Bowman has referred to Israel as being founded on “White Supremacy,” leading many Jews to shudder at how curriculum based on such tropes could forge not only misinformation and pedagogical dereliction, but poison a generation of children against Jews and Israel. This, too, has already been a serious problem in the city’s public schools.
Jews for a Shared Future apparently shares none of these concerns about Mamdani, his expressly stated agenda, his antisemitic tropes, or the already fragile state of Jewish people in New York City. “Don’t believe what he says or does,” they tell you. Instead, believe what they purport to know about what is true in his heart.
The sad irony of this is that so many Jews simply refuse to learn from our shared history. The discriminators, harassers, and attackers of Jews who become radicalized under Mamdani will not care one bit about whether you are one of the Jews who supported Mamdani’s antisemitic vision or not. To them, even a Mamdani-supporting rabbi is, after all, just another Jew.
Jeffrey Lax is a professor of law and chair of the business department at CUNY, and a co-founder of S.A.F.E. Campus.
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Trump calls on Orthodox Jewish voters in NJ to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate
President Donald Trump on Sunday urged Orthodox Jewish voters in Lakewood, New Jersey, to vote for the Republican candidate in the state’s gubernatorial race.
“I need ALL of my supporters in the Orthodox community in Lakewood and its surrounding towns to vote in HUGE numbers for Jack Ciattarelli,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social. “Jack needs every single Vote in the community, including all the Yeshiva students who turned out to vote for me last year.”
Ciattarelli received a joint endorsement last week from Orthodox Jewish leaders in Lakewood as well as the neighboring towns of Jackson, Toms River, Howell and Manchester, according to the Lakewood Scoop.
But Ciattarelli also faced backlash from his opponent, Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, last month after his Muslim relations advisor said he wasn’t “taking money from Jews” at a campaign event.
In his post, Trump also touted his fierce backing in Lakewood, a center of haredi Orthodox life in the United States, during the 2024 presidential race. He boasted that Lakewood was “one of our biggest Wins anywhere in the Country with more than 90% of the Vote.” In fact, 87.8% of voters in the town cast their ballots for him.
Democrat Kamala Harris won New Jersey in 2024 with 52% of the votes, Ciattarelli is currently hoping to flip the governor’s mansion red. Sherrill is leading in polls, but some show a very tight race, according to an aggregation published by the New York Times.
Several top Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, visited campaign events in New Jersey over the weekend to rally behind Sherrill, in a sign that the party is concerned about the possible outcome of the election.
“Your Votes in this Election will save New Jersey, a State that is near and dear to my heart,” wrote Trump, before exhorting everyone to the polls in all caps.
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