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‘The Sims’ video game adds Jewish foods, a longtime request of Jewish players
(JTA) — Players of the video game “The Sims” can now bake a challah or dish up a bowl of matzo ball soup, after updates made by the game’s creator that are designed to increase Jewish representation.
The new updates add traditional Jewish foods to the expansive menu available to users of “The Sims,” a best-selling life simulation game in which players customize characters and build homes and communities. The game’s developers periodically release expansion packs offering additional items for use in the role-playing.
On Tuesday, the developers released an update focused on one family of characters, the Calientes. But it also added Jewish foods that some users had mounted an extended campaign to secure.
“Get ready to dig in because today’s Sims Delivery Express adds matzah ball soup & challah bread to The Sims 4 recipe book for the whole family to enjoy,” the game announced on Twitter. An accompanying GIF showed a table with four loaves of challah, two covered by a tree-motif cover. The table is surrounded by diners scooping soup and speaking with their hands.
The announcement elicited gratitude from the community of players, known as Simmers, who had been pushing for Jewish additions to the game.
“The Sims team HAVE LISTENED and have finally brought Jewish food to The Sims 4!” tweeted a user who goes by HufflePom on social media. “Thank you to everyone who has liked, retweeted, commented and supported my posts over the last 462 days. We did it!”
Later, HufflePom tweeted a picture of a multicolored challah and thanked a programmer who had been working on the addition “for doing such a beautiful, thoughtful and respectful job.”
After 462 days tweeting for rep for #SimJews. Yesterday we got it! Thank you for your support it means so much to me. A massive thank you to @SimGuruBat & the rest of @TheSims team for doing such a beautiful, thoughtful, & respectful job. I share this Challah with all of you. pic.twitter.com/d9JSsM8Udf
— HufflePom (@HufflePom) May 17, 2023
HufflePom was the leader of a movement to press “The Sims” and its parent company, Electronic Arts, to add more Jewish options to the game.
“Sims” players have long come up with creative workarounds to permit Jewish practice in the game, such as letting their Sims keep kosher by changing their characters’ traits to “vegetarian.” Some players let their Sims celebrate Shabbat by baking bread and setting it on a table and lighting decorative candles. Players who use “custom content” modifications not created or endorsed by the game developers have also long created Jewish content for The Sims, such as kippahs, other versions of menorahs, chuppahs, Torahs, shofars, mezuzahs and dreidels. Some have Sims performing Jewish rituals, such as stomping on a glass at a wedding.
But other than a menorah that permitted players to light individual candles for each night of Hanukkah, there was no Jewish content provided by the game’s creator. HufflePom and others had noted gaps in other additions over time: An expansion set aimed at providing culturally diverse wedding options, for example, did not include a chuppah, or Jewish wedding canopy.
Neither HufflePom nor the programmer responded to requests for comment on Wednesday.
An online petition launched last year by another Sims user noted HufflePom’s advocacy. “For over a year, Simmer HufflePom has been asking for Jewish representation in The Sims 4 by adding Jewish head coverings and food like challa, babka, hamantashen and brisket,” said the petition, which drew nearly 800 signatures. “This has been done for other cultures like Muslims and it’s important for all cultures to feel represented in their beloved life simulation game.”
Some people who signed the petition said they were Jewish and wanted to have more true-to-life options when they played the game.
“I am Jewish and am tired of not being able to have Jewish Sims,” wrote a signer named Michelle Jackson. “Stuck eating just turkey or fish during grand meals.”
But others said their support for the Jewish expansion was less about their own identity than about an abiding belief that their favorite game should offer flexibility for users of all backgrounds.
“Everyone deserves representation. We need more cultural items and gameplay so people from anywhere can play their own lives because that has always been what the Sims is about,” a signer named Madison Graham wrote in November. “We did it with skin tones and pronouns, we can do it for Jewish rep too. No rep is too much or needless.”
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NATO Should Launch Operation to Boost Security in Arctic, Belgian Minister says
Belgian Defence Minister Theo Francken speaks to journalists as he arrives to an informal meeting of European Union defence ministers in Copenhagen, Denmark, August 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Little
NATO should launch an operation in the Arctic to address US security concerns, Belgium’s defense minister told Reuters on Sunday, urging transatlantic unity amid growing European unease about US President Donald Trump’s push to take control of Greenland.
“We have to collaborate, work together and show strength and unity,” Theo Francken said in a phone interview, adding that there is a need for “a NATO operation in the high north.”
Trump said on Friday that the US needs to own Greenland to prevent Russia or China from occupying it in the future.
European officials have been discussing ways to ease US concerns about security around Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Francken suggested NATO’s Baltic Sentry and Eastern Sentry operations, which combine forces from different countries with drones, sensors and other technology to monitor land and sea, as possible models for an “Arctic Sentry.”
He acknowledged Greenland‘s strategic importance but said “I think that we need to sort this out like friends and allies, like we always do.”
A NATO spokesperson said on Friday that alliance chief Mark Rutte spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the importance of the Arctic for shared security and how NATO is working to enhance its capabilities in the high north.
Denmark and Greenland‘s leaders have said that the Arctic island could not be annexed and international security did not justify such a move.
The US already has a military presence on the island under a 1951 agreement.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Weapons Sites in Lebanon After Army Denied Its Existence
Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure. Photo: Via i23, Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law.
i24 News – The Israel Defense Forces carried out airstrikes on a site in southern Lebanon that the Lebanese Army had previously declared free of Hezbollah activity, Israeli officials said on Sunday, citing fresh intelligence that contradicted Beirut’s assessment.
According to Israeli sources, the targeted location in the Kfar Hatta area contained significant Hezbollah weapons infrastructure, despite earlier inspections by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) that concluded no military installations were present.
Lebanese officials had conveyed those findings to international monitoring mechanisms, and similar claims were reported in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.
Israeli intelligence assessments, however, determined that Hezbollah continued to operate from the site.
During a second wave of strikes carried out Sunday, the IDF attacked and destroyed the location.
Video footage released afterward showed secondary explosions, which Israeli officials said were consistent with stored weapons or munitions at the site.
The IDF stated that the strike was conducted in response to what it described as Hezbollah’s ongoing violations of ceasefire understandings between Israel and Lebanon. Military officials said the targeted structure included underground facilities used for weapons storage.
According to the IDF, the same site had been struck roughly a week earlier after Israel alerted the Lebanese Army to what it described as active terrorist infrastructure in the area. While the LAF conducted an inspection following the warning, Israeli officials said the weapons facilities were not fully dismantled, prompting Sunday’s follow-up strike.
The IDF said it took measures ahead of the attack to reduce the risk to civilians, including issuing advance warnings to residents in the surrounding area.
“Hezbollah’s activity at these sites constitutes a clear violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon and poses a direct threat to the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement.
Israeli officials emphasized that operations against Hezbollah infrastructure would continue as long as such threats persist, underscoring that Israel retains the right to act independently based on its own intelligence assessments.
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Some US Senators Skeptical About Military Options for Iran
Demonstrators and activists rally in support of nationwide protests in Iran, outside the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 10, 2026. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
Some US lawmakers in both major parties on Sunday questioned whether military action against Iran is the best approach for the United States as Iranian authorities face growing turmoil.
US President Donald Trump in recent days has left open the possibility of American intervention in Iran, where the biggest anti-government protests in years have led to the Revolutionary Guards blaming unrest on terrorists and vowing to safeguard the governing system.
But at least two US senators sounded notes of caution during interviews on TV networks’ Sunday morning programs.
“I don’t know that bombing Iran will have the effect that is intended,” Republican Senator Rand Paul said on ABC News’ “This Week” show.
Rather than undermining the regime, a military attack on Iran could rally the people against an outside enemy, Paul and Democratic Senator Mark Warner said.
Warner, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” warned that a military strike against Iran could risk uniting Iranians against the United States “in a way that the regime has not been able to.” History shows the dangers of US intervention, said Warner, who argued that the US-backed 1953 overthrow of Iran’s government set in motion a chain of events that gradually led to the rise of the country’s Islamic regime in the late 1970s.
The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported that US military and diplomatic officials will brief Trump on Tuesday about options for Iran, including cyberattacks and potential military action.
Iran has said it will target US military bases if the United States launches an attack. But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has often touted a muscular approach to foreign policy, said Trump “needs to embolden the protesters and scare the hell out of the [Iranian] regime.”
“If I were you, Mr. President, I would kill the leadership that are killing the people,” Graham said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” show. “You’ve got to end this.”
Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of the Iranian shah who was ousted in 1979, said on Sunday he is prepared to return to Iran to lead a shift to a democratic government.
“I’m already planning on that,” Pahlavi said on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “My job is to lead this transition to make sure that no stone is left unturned, that in full transparency, people have an opportunity to elect their leaders freely and to decide their own future.”