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Spielberg’s ‘Fabelmans’ earns 7 Oscar nods, WWII epic with anti-Nazi past gets 9
(JTA) – “The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama about his Jewish upbringing, had an expected strong haul of Oscar nominations, picking up seven nods Tuesday morning.
A remake of a movie once targeted by the Nazis, a blockbuster embroiled in a lawsuit with an Israeli family and a documentary by the program director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival also got recognized in a list jam-packed with Jewish characters, stories and artists.
Spielberg’s movie overcame an anemic box office showing to score nominations in the major categories of best picture, director and screenplay, for Spielberg and celebrated Jewish playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner. The directing nomination brings Spielberg’s total nominations in the category to nine, tying him with Martin Scorsese for the second-most directing nominations in Oscar history.
The film also scored acting nods for Judd Hirsch, who is Jewish, and Michelle Williams, who recently said she is planning to raise her two children with Judaism.
“The Fabelmans” was the best picture nominee with the strongest Jewish themes, but it wasn’t the only one. The psychological drama “Tár,” starring Cate Blanchett as a problematic conductor, picked up six nominations, including for picture, actress and director; the film weaves Jewish mysticism into its storytelling.
“All Quiet On The Western Front,” Netflix’s new German-language adaptation of the classic 1929 novel about the horrors experienced by German soldiers during World War I, was also nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture, international feature and adapted screenplay. The film’s source material was once banned and burned by the ascending Nazi Party, which believed its anti-war stance made the German military look weak and constituted a threat to their plans for world domination.
When the book’s initial 1930 film adaptation, directed by Jewish filmmaker Lewis Milestone, was released in Germany, Nazis led by Joseph Goebbels set off stink bombs, released mice into the theaters and called the movie a “Judenfilm” (or “Jewish film”). Germany and Austria banned the film from being shown in their countries, and the public censorship campaign led the novel’s author, Erich Maria Remarque, to renounce his German citizenship (Nazis were erroneously labeling him as a Jew).
In response, Jewish studio head Carl Laemmle Sr., agreed to heavily edit the movie and remove material deemed objectionable to the Nazis in order to improve its commercial prospects in Germany. One possible silver lining for the remake’s producers: The 1930 film went on to win best picture that year.
Tom Cruise at a “Top Gun: Maverick” premier at Leicester Square in London, May 19, 2022. (Neil Mockford/FilmMagic via Getty Images)
Back to this year’s Oscars: “Top Gun: Maverick,” the action blockbuster sequel, picked up four nominations, including for best picture. The film’s distributor, Paramount, is currently embroiled in a copyright lawsuit with the family of Israeli journalist Ehud Yonay, whose magazine article about a Navy fighter pilot school was the basis for the original “Top Gun” in 1986. In November, a judge dismissed Paramount’s attempts to throw out the suit and ruled the Yonay family could proceed with their claims.
The writer, director and actress Sarah Polley also scored a nomination for best adapted screenplay for her drama “Women Talking,” about a group of abused women in an isolated Mennonite community, which was also nominated for best picture. Polley has a Jewish biological father, whose secret parentage she explored in her 2013 documentary “Stories We Tell.”
The Jewish film producer Gail Berman also scored her first Oscar nomination for producing best picture nominee “Elvis,” while Jewish producing partners Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel scored their own best picture nomination for “The Whale.” The movie, which Aronofsky directed, stars Brendan Fraser (also nominated) as a morbidly obese English professor.
In the performing categories, one actor was nominated for playing a real-life Jewish convert: Ana de Armas received a best actress nomination for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in Netflix’s “Blonde.” Monroe converted to Judaism in the 1950s and remained devoted to the religion even after divorcing her husband, Jewish playwright Arthur Miller.
Also, veteran actress Jamie Lee Curtis — whose father, Golden Age Hollywood actor Tony Curtis, was Jewish — picked up her first-ever Oscar nomination for her supporting role as a sinister tax officer in the multiverse sci-fi comedy “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”
Curtis is nominated in the category alongside her co-star Stephanie Hsu, who is also known to fans of the very Jewish TV series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” as Mei Lin, a Chinese restaurant owner who gets together with co-lead Joel Maisel. Early buzz on the upcoming fifth season of “Maisel” says that Hsu’s character will convert to Judaism.
Another “Everything Everywhere” co-star, Jewish actress Jenny Slate, helped a different film score an Oscar nomination in the best animated feature category: the stop-motion mockumentary “Marcel The Shell With Shoes On.” Slate co-wrote the feature with her ex-husband Dean Fleischer-Camp, who directs; Slate also voices the lead role of Marcel. However, she is not one of the nominated producers on the film.
“All The Beauty And The Bloodshed,” a portrait of the outsider artist Nan Goldin and her years-long activism campaign against opioid manufacturers the Sackler family, was nominated in the best documentary feature category and is favored to win. The film documents how Goldin was born to Jewish parents but had an emotionally abusive family life and left home in her teens. The Sacklers are also Jewish.
The documentary short category saw the second nomination in a row for Jewish filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt, whose documentary “How Do You Measure A Year” chronicles many years of his daughter Ella’s birthdays. Rosenblatt is the program director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
Veteran Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski was also nominated in the international feature category for his drama “EO,” told from the perspective of a donkey. Skolimowski’s father was a member of the Polish Resistance and his mother hid a Jewish family in their house during World War II.
Jewish composer Justin Hurwitz, who won an Oscar for his work on “La La Land,” was nominated again for the score for “Babylon,” a follow-up production with that film’s director, Damien Chazelle.
And in the original song category, Jewish songwriter Diane Warren extended her nomination streak to 14 for the number “Applause,” from the feminist documentary “Tell It Like A Woman.” Warren has never won a competitive Oscar but did receive an honorary Academy Award last year.
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The post Spielberg’s ‘Fabelmans’ earns 7 Oscar nods, WWII epic with anti-Nazi past gets 9 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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FIFA Takes No Action Against Israeli West Bank Settlement Soccer Clubs but Fines IFA for ‘Discrimination’
Soccer Football – FIFA Club World Cup – Group D – Esperance de Tunis v Chelsea – Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US – June 24, 2025, General view of the FIFA logo before the match. Photo: REUTERS/Lee Smith
FIFA has rejected formal complaints by the Palestinian soccer federation to suspend its Israeli counterpart but has fined the Israel Football Association (IFA) on disciplinary charges related to “discrimination,” “offensive behavior,” and “violations of fair play,” the international governing body of soccer announced on Thursday.
At the 74th FIFA Congress in Bangkok in May 2024, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) presented a proposal to sanction Israel’s soccer teams, including its national team, because of what they claimed were international law violations committed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip. The proposal also called on FIFA to take action against Israeli soccer clubs that the PFA claimed were based in Palestinian territory, particularly settlements in the West Bank.
The PFA further said that FIFA should address what it claimed was IFA’s failure in taking decisive action against alleged discrimination and racism. The Palestinian fedeation has claimed for years that Israel violates FIFA rules by allowing teams from settlements in the West Bank to play in its national league.
FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee ruled on Thursday that it will not take action against Israeli soccer clubs in West Bank settlements because of the “unresolved” legal status of the West Bank under international law.
“FIFA should take no action given that, in the context of the interpretation of the relevant provisions of the FIFA Statutes, the final legal status of the West Bank remains an unresolved and highly complex matter under public international law,” the committee said in a statement. “FIFA should continue to promote dialogue and offer mediation between the Palestine Football Association and the Israel Football Association at an operational level. In this context, FIFA will continue to facilitate structured engagement and monitor developments.”
However, FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee has fined the IFA 150,000 Swiss francs – which is almost $190,000, – for committing “grave and systematic violations of FIFA’s core principles.” The IFA is being sanctioned for “offensive behavior and violations of the principles of fair play” as well as “discrimination and racist abuse.” The fine was issued following FIFA’s investigation into complaints about the IFA’s handling of discrimination and racism in soccer. FIFA said the Israeli association had not taken enough action against repeated racist behavior by supporters of certain Israeli soccer clubs, including Beitar Jerusalem, and offensive and politicized public statements by Israeli soccer officials and clubs.
“The committee finds that IFA’s conduct has created a perception of impunity and selective enforcement, which is incompatible with the principles of fairness and universality that underpin the sport,” the panel announced. “In particular, by failing to condemn or remediate discriminatory practices and exclusionary policies — particularly those affecting Palestinians — the IFA has become institutionally complicit in a system that violates the core values of the game.”
One-third of the fine must be used to implement “a comprehensive plan to ensure action against discrimination and to prevent repeated incidents,” with a focus on certain areas including monitoring and educational campaigns. The IFA must also display a “significant and highly visible banner,” approved by FIFA, that says “Football Unites the World – No to Discrimination” alongside the IFA’s logo at its next three A‑level FIFA competition home matches.
The committee said it “cannot remain indifferent to the broader human context in which football operates,” and that the sport “must remain a platform for peace, dialogue, and mutual respect.”
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Move over Thomas Edison, this deli savant is the Garden State’s newest inventor
First, in 1876, Thomas Edison opened up his “invention factory” in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Then, in 1941, Alexander Graham Bell’s Bell Labs moved its headquarters to Murray Hill at the northern end of the state.
In 2021, another wide-eyed tinkerer set up shop in Jersey City, though his inventions would be molded out of rye, wheat and cured beef, not aluminum and tungsten.
The maverick’s name is Jason Stahl, a 48-year-old father with a career in publishing. He operates his food business under the name Hank Schwartz’s Delicatessen and Appetizing, cooking out of a ghost kitchen in Jersey City. And he does things with smoked fish that would make your bubbe blush.
Take his “Smoked Salmon Tartare,” for example. He mixes up capers, lemon, dill,and Dijon mustard so their breezy tartness lightens the Baltic smoke of nova. The pink concoction is a revelation, balancing out the fish’s brininess so that a diner would be tempted to eat an entire half-pound of the stuff in one sitting.
I speak from experience. I first tried Stahl’s cooking at Jersey City’s Riverview Farmer’s Market last fall, where he slings mind-bending, Jew-ish sandwiches, tartare, whitefish salad, olives, and various other noshes on a biweekly basis.
On a sunny day at the Farmer’s Market, a steady stream of customers poured in. One customer, a middle-aged man, asked about Stahl’s brisket sandwiches — Stahl had made shredded brisket and mixed it with horseradish mayonnaise to make a pulled meat sandwich, then layered it with caramelized onion jam.
Stahl was sold out. “Curse you,” the customer exclaimed.
From home cook to deli master
At the market, Stahl spoke softly to the people who came to his booth, greeting customers by their first names and chatting with boys about their favorite sports teams. His gentle cadence and warm smile bely what he says is an anxious disposition that his wife, and his cooking, help to temper.
Stahl says that, until recently, he had been more of a weekend warrior than a professional cook. “I’m not going to pretend I have this amazing culinary background, right?” he said. “I came into this more with a passion, and I’m learning.”
Still, he has hovered close to the restaurant world for a while. He has worked in media for decades, sometimes in food-adjacent roles (most recently as Food Editor at 1-800-Flowers.com). Stahl’s wife, Theresa Gambacourt, manages restaurants and writes cookbooks for a living.
Stahl learned to cook in part from studying cookbooks he got for free as a media professional. In his early days out of college, “I was always experimenting,” he recalled. “I messed up a whole bunch.”
Theresa showed him the tricks she picked up in restaurants, like using infused fats to make a confit. He uses that technique in his zaatar olives, which are submerged in a citrus garlic confit that adds a layer of refreshing depth to the Mediterranean staple.
Over time, his cooking became more and more elaborate. His wife asked the chef at Del Posto, a since-closed Italian fine dining stalwart, if Stahl could stage there; the chef agreed, and Stahl spent every Sunday evening for a year learning the ins-and-outs of the kitchen — including how to cure gravlax and slice meat.
Italy figures heavily in Stahl’s modern deli. His chopped liver, for example, is made with chopped capers and braised with red wine (he makes a mushroom version for those who fear chicken parts).
In around 2019, Theresa gave him Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli for his birthday, and the book planted an idea in his head: “What if we did this?” Stahl asked Theresa about the deli business.
What, she replied, would an amateur cook be able to contribute to such an endeavor?
“I can clean,” he recalls replying. “I’m really good at cleaning.”
Several years later, after the COVID-19 pandemic, he started selling pickles at Riggs Company Provisions, a vendor at the farmer’s market, and Riverview Wines, a nearby wine shop. Today, his pickles encompass classic dill pickles brightened with dried mint, spicy pickles spiked with habanero and Aleppo peppers (the latter a nod to Jewish communities in the Middle East), and sour green tomatoes with dill and celery seeds.
In 2023, the farmer’s market invited him to become a vendor, and he’s been selling there ever since. His repertoire has expanded beyond pickles to include such dishes as chopped liver, homemade sodas, and cured meat and fish sandwiches — all tweaked with the flair of a mad scientist.
Hank Schwartz’s gets its name from fictional characters that Stahl and Gambacourt made up years ago: Hank and Margaret Schwartz, two herrings who escape from a deli and go on adventures around New York City. In this imaginary world, Hank and Margaret hang out with their herring friends, like Charlie Goldberg, a bus driver, and the Crances, a bumbling couple.
A gallivanting, social fish is the perfect mascot for a cook whose relationships and wanderlust drive his cooking.
Take, for example, Stahl’s smoked salmon candy. Though readers in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest might be familiar with the salty-sweet treat, it has not yet taken off in the Northeast. In the Alaskan version, chunks of salmon are brined in brown sugar and salt before being smoked and glazed. Stahl has added dill to his in the past, and the week I tried it, he had rubbed in pastrami spices. The pink chunks were solid and slightly chewy — like firm gumdrops — and redolent of peppercorns, brown sugar and smoke: the type of addictive candy that the children of hipsters might clamor for in a 21st century deli.
‘This is a true story’
Stahl grew up on Staten Island eating sandwiches at both Jewish and Italian delis.
When I asked him how far a dish can veer from Jewish tradition while still being considered “Jewish,” he compared Hank Schwartz’s to the TV show Fargo, which starts with the line “This is a true story.”
Stahl once interviewed the series’ showrunner, Noah Hawley, who told him that in each episode, a single detail is pulled from a true story — for example, a news article about a dramatic car crash.
“In a way, like, I’m doing the same thing,” Stahl said — one Jewish element anchors each dish on his menu; the rest is up for his own interpretation.
During Super Bowl weekend, when the Seattle Seahawks played the New England Patriots, Stahl came up with a sandwich for each team. “The Seattle” consisted of citrus-cured gravlax (a Scandinavian relative of Jewish lox), scallion cream cheese and pickled cucumbers on pumpernickel with a teriyaki glaze, the latter a nod to Seattle’s Japanese community and its role in popularizing teriyaki sauce. “The New England” was Stahl’s take on a lobster roll — swapping in whitefish for treyf.
Stahl now holds a residency two days a week at the Cliff, a cafe in the same Jersey Heights neighborhood he has been plying with smoked fish and meats for the past few years. The pop-up helps him try out running a brick-and-mortar restaurant while he looks for investors and business partners to help him do just that. Surrounded by exposed brick and artwork, he slaps together irreverent sandwich combinations in front of customers. I tried the Schwartzøbrød, a cousin of the everyman Danish brown bread sandwich. Stahl makes his with a butter infused with lime, lemon and orange zest that glides through the heady flavor of cured salmon.
If there’s one element of the Jewish deli that Stahl seeks to maintain, it’s the deli’s status as a community hub. “In these times that we’re living in, people need more comfort. I feel like a Jewish deli is really needed,” he told me, as is “the warmth of a bowl of matzo ball soup. People just find comfort, they find nostalgia.” He recalled with fondness how the week before, the restaurant buzzed with customers enjoying his food and locked in conversation, rarely looking at their phones.
Stahl’s tight-knit community might be the perfect place for Jewish culinary innovation, for the same reasons that Menlo Park and Murray Hill served Edison and the company of Graham Bell. Proximity to New York affords you rare privileges — ethnic diversity and access to the titans of the Jewish-American deli, in Stahl’s case. But so, too, does distance. The sprawling brick buildings and saltbox houses of Jersey City offer cooks a little more room to breathe and try new things.
“Here, it’s less about the luxury” or “pretentiousness,” Stahl said. “It’s more about the care and the presentation of the food, right? They want to just offer the best dishes possible.”
The post Move over Thomas Edison, this deli savant is the Garden State’s newest inventor appeared first on The Forward.
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Czechs Investigate Fire After Reports of Anti-Israel Group Claiming Responsibility
Police officers and firefighters stand in front of a burned production hall at an industrial area in Pardubice, Czech Republic, March 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/David W Cerny
Czech investigators are probing an overnight fire at an industrial complex as potentially being a deliberate attack, officials said on Friday, following media reports that a group protesting against Israeli weapons claimed responsibility.
Firefighters said on X that they had responded to a fire at a storage hall in a complex in Pardubice, 120 km (75 miles) east of Prague. No one was injured in the fire, which spread to another building.
Czech news website Aktualne.cz reported that a protest group said it had set fire to a “key manufacturing hub” for Israeli weapons in Pardubice to end its role in the “genocide in Gaza.”
Czech defence firm LPP Holding in a statement on its website said it had confirmed that a fire broke out at one of its facilities on Friday and it was cooperating with authorities.
The company, with a location in the complex, announced plans in 2023 to cooperate with Israeli company Elbit Systems on drone production.
“At this time, we will not speculate on the causes or circumstances of the incident and will await the official conclusions of the investigation,” LPP said.
Police initially said they were investigating whether the fire was intentional and checking public claims of a “concrete group,” without naming it.
They later said investigators with security services were probing the incident under a section of the criminal code dealing with terrorism.
“Based on what we know so far, it is likely the incident may be related to a terrorist attack,” Interior Minister Lubomir Metnar said.