World News
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Why Alana Haim wears a Star of David in ‘One Battle After Another’
A few minutes into One Battle After Another, a Black man kisses his white girlfriend goodbye on her way to work and reminds her that she’s a normal, everyday “white working girl.” She looks the part. Her hair up, a prim white collar peeking out from under her navy dress. She passes easily through security…
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How Philip Roth invented a myth called ‘Philip Roth’
Steven J. Zipperstein set to work on his own biography of Philip Roth before anyone knew that Roth’s authorized biography would be pulled from shelves after accusations of sexual misconduct by its author, Blake Bailey. Zipperstein and I first spoke when he was wrapping up his draft. He was pondering Roth’s legacy. He wanted to…
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Israel is at an existential pivot point. It never needed to go this far.
Two years after the Oct. 7 massacre, the Middle East is at an absurd pivot point. If Hamas, badly beaten but unbowed, accepts the disarmament element in President Donald Trump’s new peace plan, the region will move toward reconstruction, Gulf-financed normalization, and peace. If it refuses, Israel will likely re-occupy Gaza, miring the region in…
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Israel’s relationship with the US has never been worse. It’s also never been better
Let’s not sugarcoat it: American support for Israel has taken a nosedive since Oct. 7, 2023. The question two years later is: How can Israel avoid a complete crash? Recent polls show the most dire numbers. Americans’ sympathy for Israelis dropped to 46% by February 2025 — the lowest in 25 years of Gallup tracking.…
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This school is fighting antisemitism all wrong. Why is it working?
ELON, N.C. — A friend approached Rachel Bermont as she was leaving a high school party in New York City over the summer. “I know you’re Jewish,” he began, “but don’t you hate what’s happening with Israel?” Bermont had come to expect these questions, the same way she anticipated stares when she wore a Star…
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Bari Weiss, Free Press founder who started as antisemitism crusader, named editor-in-chief of CBS
(JTA) — Bari Weiss, the journalist who first rose to prominence for her campus campaign alleging antisemitism two decades ago, has been named editor-in-chief of CBS News, a stunning ascent that marks one of the most consequential appointments in American media in recent years. The appointment came as Paramount Skydance, led by David Ellison, announced…
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On Paramount+, Apple TV, HBO and more, Oct. 7 emerges as a cinematic subgenre
(JTA) — Two years after the Hamas attacks on Israel, the tragedy of Oct. 7 has become its own cinematic sub-genre. Filmmakers have rushed to bear witness, survivors have taken up cameras, and streaming platforms are now filled with documentaries and dramatizations that revisit, reimagine, and attempt to process the day’s horrors. From raw documentaries…
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Poll: 40% of American Jews believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
(JTA) — Multiple polls have found that about 60% of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a biting charge that Israel and the United States reject. Now, for the first time, a poll has taken the pulse of U.S. Jews specifically — and found that 39% of them hold the opinion. The new…
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There’s a biblical precedent for the rifts opened by Oct. 7 — it should alarm us all
As we mark the second anniversary of the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, we will mourn the victims of Hamas’s barbarism that day. We will pray and remember. We will petition for the release of the hostages and an end to the war. And even as we use our words to mourn, we must…
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In my small town, ‘that Jewish hut’ has turned Sukkot into a cross-cultural shelter of peace
On the weekend between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, Waterville city workers put up the frame for our community sukkah. They were careful to make sure that tree branches did not obscure the view of the stars and the night sky, and that sufficient room was left for a Wabanaki storytelling festival in the town square…
