World News
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Dave Matthews pushes back on claims his criticism of Israel is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dave Matthews, the frontman of the American rock band Dave Matthews Band, pushed back on allegations Friday that his vocal criticism of Israel in recent years had crossed into antisemitism. Reading his remarks from a sheet of paper on stage at the Coastal Credit Union Music Park in Raleigh, North Carolina, Matthews, whose…
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Memes, mashiach and ‘Torah-cyclopedias’ put a Jewish twist on the Knicks’ title hunt
Anyone living in the five boroughs has likely seen the Chabad stickers on street corners proclaiming, alongside a photo of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, that the “Messiah Is Here!” But this week, a different kind of redemption feels imminent in New York — and there’s a new face on the “Messiah” posters. With the hometown Knicks…
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What exactly did Israel gain from striking Beirut and provoking Iran?
On Monday morning, Israelis — my family and me among them — awoke to a day of sirens, confusion and suspended normalcy. Flights had been canceled. Schools had closed. Businesses across parts of the country had shut their doors. Once again, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had led Israel into a widening regional confrontation — and…
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‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
Perhaps you, like me, have had a very specific earworm for the last week. It’s not a song, though there is a sing-song-y element to it. It’s a chant: “My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish. My Christian Dior — Knicks in four!” If you hadn’t heard, the New York Knickerbockers are in the finals for…
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West Point graduated more Jewish cadets this year than ever before, official says
The very first class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1802 consisted of two graduates, one of whom was a Jew named Simon Levy who served briefly in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before passing away at the age of 33. Levy was accepted into the academy based on his skill…
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The visionary Jewish poet who survived the Holocaust but not its aftermath
Paul Celan: A Life By Anna Arno Translated by Soren Gauger Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 416 pages, $35 During a 1969 poetry reading in Israel, Paul Celan’s audience requested “Deathfugue,” his most famous poem. With its hypnotic images of death as “a master from Deutschland,” prisoners drinking the “black milk of dawn” and smoke rising…
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‘The Naked Woman’ asks — what would Jewish Chekhov look like?
Earlier this year, a lauded revival of Anton Chekhov’s overlooked opus Ivanov occasioned the question: What if Chekhov, that great chronicler of overeducated depressives, was a bit more Jewish? That show has a substantial Jewish subplot, with the title character’s wife subjected to antisemitic smears. For Jewish Russians, Chekhov, like his great interpreter Stanislavsky, is…
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Iran says it has finished striking Israel, after Trump says both countries ‘must immediately stop’
(JTA) — Iran says it has completed its attack on Israel after its missile barrage on Sunday night launched the first direct exchange of hostilities since April. Iran’s military command said the barrage, which did not do any major damage in Israel, represented its “painful response” to an Israeli attack on a Hezbollah installation in…
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John Lithgow wins Tony Award for portraying Roald Dahl in ‘Giant,’ about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism
(JTA) — The actor John Lithgow won his third Tony Award on Sunday for his depiction of the writer Roald Dahl as an antisemite. Lithgow stars as Dahl in “Giant,” which opened on Broadway in March. The play, which originated in London in 2024, depicts ultimately unsuccessful efforts to get Dahl to rein in antisemitic…
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Trump urges Iran to make a deal after Iran fires missiles at Israel for first time in 2 months
(JTA) — Iran fired multiple barrages of missiles toward northern Israel on Sunday night local time, in the first direct fire from Iran on Israel since early April. No one was immediately reported injured in the barrages, according to Israeli media, and the Israeli military said it shot down all the missiles aimed at the…
