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Sofia Richie, Lionel Richie’s daughter, marries Jewish music executive after converting to Judaism
(JTA) — Sofia Richie, a model and the daughter of musician Lionel Richie, married Jewish music executive Elliot Grainge on Saturday, less than a month after she said she completed her conversion to Judaism.
Earlier this month, Richie had posted on Instagram that Nathan Lam, a prominent Los Angeles cantor, had been “helping me along this journey of converting to Judaism.”
Pronouncing her conversion complete on April 3, she posted on Instagram, “It has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
Richie, 24, and Grainge, 29, tied the knot at a hotel in Antibes, France, where they were married by Rabbi Thomas Solomon, a British rabbi, according to a report in Vogue magazine. They also held a private ceremony to sign the ketubah, the Jewish wedding contract.
In photos, the couple can be seen standing with their parents under a lush chuppah, with Grainge wearing a white kippah and tallit. “It was very important to Elliot’s family and to me, now that I’ve converted, that it be a traditional Jewish ceremony,” Richie told Vogue.
The couple has been together since 2021. Grainge, who grew up in England and runs an independent rap and pop music label, is the son of Lucian Grainge, the CEO of Universal Music Group, one of the world’s biggest music companies, and a self-proclaimed “nice Jewish boy.”
Elliot Grainge told JewishBoston.com in 2013 that Take That, a British pop group that had several chart-topping hits in the 1990s and 2000s, performed at his bar mitzvah.
Richie, whose adoptive sister Nicole is a celebrity in her own right as a TV personality, grew up attending the Oaks Christian School in Los Angeles. Her father Lionel, 73, became one of the best-selling pop artists of all time through a career starting in the 1970s as a member of The Commodores.
Lam, formerly a celebrity voice coach and a senior cantor at the city’s Stephen Wise Temple — a Reform congregation that is one of Southern California’s largest — has been accused of carrying on a series of inappropriate sexual relationships with congregants and mentees. Since last year he has been a cantor at the Temple of the Arts in Beverly Hills, a Reform congregation that operates in a theater owned by billionaire and prominent Democratic donor Haim Saban.
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The post Sofia Richie, Lionel Richie’s daughter, marries Jewish music executive after converting to Judaism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
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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.