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New HBO series to spotlight Natalie Portman’s role in bringing a women’s soccer team to Los Angeles
(JTA) — An upcoming HBO documentary series will highlight the role Academy Award-winning Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman played in bringing the Angel City Football Club to Los Angeles.
“Angel City,” which is set to debut on HBO and stream on HBO Max in May, will tell the story of the team’s first season in the National Women’s Soccer League. Portman is an executive producer.
Portman, who was born in Jerusalem, is a founder and lead investor in the almost all-female ownership group behind Angel City, which was announced in July 2020 and played its first season in 2022.
The ownership group includes a number of A-list athletes, entrepreneurs and fellow Hollywood stars such as Serena Williams, Jessica Chastain and many others.
Portman, who was also a founding member of Time’s Up, the nonprofit that helped advance the Me Too movement by supporting victims of sexual harassment, had the idea a few years ago. Though she did not grow up a sports fan, Portman told The Guardian that she saw the venture as a vehicle to raise awareness for the effort for equal pay in sports.
“Watching my son idolize players like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan the same way he did Lionel Messi or Karim Benzema, I realized that amplifying female athletes could rapidly shift culture,” Portman said.
Portman brought the idea to Kara Nortman, a venture capital executive, who looped in entertainment veteran Julie Uhrman. From there, the plan to bring a women’s soccer team to L.A. continued to gain steam — and high-profile investors.
“Our dream is to make women’s soccer as valued as male soccer is throughout the world,” Portman said.
The three-part HBO series will tell the behind-the-scenes story of how the team got its start.
“Pulling back the curtain on the origin story through the 2022 inaugural season of the female-founded and led team, the series reveals the passion and grit needed to build a franchise from scratch and blaze a bold trail in the world of professional sports,” reads a press release from WarnerMedia, HBO’s parent company.
In the trailer for the series, Portman calls her experience with Angel City “one of the most extraordinary adventures of my life.”
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The post New HBO series to spotlight Natalie Portman’s role in bringing a women’s soccer team to Los Angeles appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’
It’s not every day that a kosher dill pickle puppet gets a chance to learn some Yiddish.
Monty Pickle, star of the children’s series The Monty Pickle Show, recently joined Rukhl Schaechter, host of the Forward’s YouTube series Yiddish Word of the Day, for an episode teaching viewers the Yiddish words for various wild animals.
Or as they’re called in Yiddish: vilde khayes.
The Monty Pickle Show, a puppet comedy on YouTube and TikTok, aims to show young viewers what it means to be Jewish in a fun, lively way. The series was created by the Emmy Award-winning producers of Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock.
So far, he’s met a number of Jewish personalities, including rabbis, musicians and chefs, and explored holidays like Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah and Passover.
Sitting alongside Rukhl during the lesson, Monty eagerly tries to guess what each word means, providing for some very funny moments.
The post Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’ appeared first on The Forward.
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IDF Nabs Islamic State Terror Suspect in Syria
Guns seized in the course of the operation. Photo: IDF Spokesperson via i24
i24 News – Israel Defense Forces soldiers conducted an operation on Wednesday in the area of Rafid in southern Syria to apprehend a suspected terrorist affiliated with ISIS, the military spokesperson said on Saturday.
The announcement comes as Washington announced a major operation to eliminated Islamic State terrorists in Syria after three Americans lost their lives in a jihadist attack in Palmyra.
The Israeli soldiers completed the operation in Syria “in cooperation with IDF intelligence,” the statement read, adding that “the suspect was transferred for further processing in Israeli territory.”
Additionally, during the operation, weapons were found and seized.
IDF troops “continue to remain deployed along the Golan Heights border in order to protect the State of Israel and its citizens,” the statement from the spokesperson concluded.
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Report: Trump Admin Envisions Transformation of Gaza into Chic High-Tech Metropolis
US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
i24 News – The US administration of President Trump vision for the future of Gaza has it transformed into a high-end high-tech hub of luxury and innovation, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
A team of officials understood to be led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff developed a draft proposal to convert the war-ravaged Palestinian territory into a glittering metropolis, propelling Gazans from poverty to prosperity.
US officials with familiarity with the plan—pitched to foreign governments and delegations as a PowerPoint presentation— are cited in the report as saying that, understandable open-endedness of a project in its early phase notwithstanding, the blueprint has many lacunae and leaves crucial questions unanswered.
Critics cite the plan’s silence on the thorny question of disarming Hamas, the Islamist terror group that ruled Gaza for the past 15 years, and initiated the cross-border incursion and massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023; the attack launched the devastating war that has left much of the coastal territory in ruins.
The plan’s projected cost is put at $112.1 billion over 10 years, with Washington prepared to commit support to the tune of some $60 billion in grants and guarantees on debt for “all the contemplated workstreams” in that time period.
The question of where two million Gazans would reside during the costly and lengthy rebuilding is also left unaddressed, it is understood.
Similar-sounding plans have been mooted by the Trump administration even before it managed to broker a ceasefire in October that paused the two year-long war.