Jezebel: Jews

Fox News Apologizes To Jews After Insinuating They Killed Jesus

Cassie Murdoch — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:45:00 EST

If you thought Fox News was going to take a break from being completely obnoxious for the holidays, you were sadly mistaken. In a move that can only be described as asinine, Fox Latin America put up a poll on Facebook asking their followers who they thought was responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. Here were the three possible answers: Pontius Pilate, the Jewish People, or the High Priests. More »

Ron Paul Not A Bigot, Just A Chronically Uncool Dude Who Hates Spanish Speakers

Erin Gloria Ryan — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:00:00 EST

Now that everyone's talking about those racist newsletters Ron Paul sent around in the 1990's, people are starting to wonder if perhaps the guy who sounds like he has a lot of negative thoughts about black people might be a little bit racist. Not true, says a former longtime staffer of the Presidential candidate; Ron Paul isn't racist, but he does want Israel to stop existing and can't stand it when people speak Spanish. Also there's the one time he wouldn't shake a gay guy's hand, because of the gay germs. See? Not a racist at all. More »

Orthodox Israelis Spit On Whorish 8-Year-Old Girl For Going To School

Erin Gloria Ryan — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:40:00 EST

An American girl attempting to walk to her Jewish school in Israel is subjected to daily taunting and physical intimidation so bad that she says it makes her afraid to go to school. Her tormenters aren't fellow children, but rather adult men upset by the presence of the "immodest" girls attending school in their ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. And now, the town's male residents are clashing with police and media over their the gender integration they say insults their faith. Eight-year-old girls can be such whores. More »

Texas Politician Regrets Urging Against 'Jewing Down'

Erin Gloria Ryan — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:20:00 EDT

Texas Republian State Representative Larry Taylor has apologized for using the phrase "Jew them down" during a legislative hearing. More »

Winona Ryder, Mel Gibson & The "Oven Dodger" Joke

Dodai Stewart — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 13:48:00 EST

Heard the one about Mel Gibson being anti-Semitic? Sure, sure. But the story Winona Ryder just revealed is one we'd never heard before. More »

39 Crazy Christmas Ornaments To Make You Dread The Season

Dodai Stewart — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:58:00 EDT

Summer's basically over, which means Christmas is right around the corner. That is, according to the folks at Bronner's: This catalog arrived in the mail right before the Labor Day weekend. More »

Helen Thomas: When An Icon Disappoints

Irin Carmon — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 10:00:00 EDT

Whatever you think of Helen Thomas's comments about the Jews and Israel, it's clear that her status as a pioneering icon for outspoken women in public life will forever be colored by this controversy. And maybe that's okay. More »

10 Things You May Have Missed On TV This Week

Tracie Egan Morrissey — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:00:00 EDT

In this week's compilation of pop culture crap, Willie Nelson admits to Larry King that he's stoned on TV, Niecy Nash has a distracting booger, and someone invents porn for blind people, much to blind people's chagrin. More »

Don't Be Tardy To The Strangely-Controversial Obama Party

Sadie Stein — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:40:00 EST

It may be "one of the hottest holiday events for the nation's Jewish elite," but the December 16th menorah-fest has been called a half-assed exercise in "studied callousness." Others have just invoked latkes. A lot. More »

No Such Thing As A Free Trip

Sadie Stein — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:40:00 EDT

"A new study found that rates of marriage outside the faith were sharply curbed among young Jews who have taken "birthright" trips to Israel, a development that could hearten Jewish leaders worried about assimilation." [WSJ] More »

The Forest For The Trees

Anna Holmes — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:10:00 EDT

["Ljubelj South", Slovenia; June 5. Image via Getty]

Anne Frank Was A Bossy BFF • Honor Killings Rise In Southern Iraqi City

Maria — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:30:00 EST

• In her book My Name is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank Jacqueline Van Maarsen, Anne Frank's best friend, claims that the noted diarist and Holocaust victim was an extroverted girl who made bossy demands on their friendship. • The Iranian government will set up marriage bureaus to help Iranians find suitable husbands and wives and encourage banks to give out loans for weddings. • To mark World AIDS Day, photographer Kalpesh Lathigra photographs and meets with prostitutes (many of them forced or "tricked" into the profession) of India's hidden sex trade. • More »

Eating Disorders Are The "Addiction Of Choice" For Jewish Teens

Jessica G. — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST

Here are some good statistics about Jews: 77% voted for Barack Obama! And now here are some totally depressing ones: according to an online survey conducted by Jewish Women International, half of Jewish educators and social workers have encountered disordered eating among the teens they work with. According to the Huffington Post's Leslie Goldman, eating disorders are the "'addiction of choice' among Jewish girls." Goldman notes that Jewish Women International was not shocked by the high incidence of eating disorders among Jewish teens because of their "prevalence among upper middle class, high achieving populations." However, as a former Jewish teen, I have another possible explanation. More »

Tattoos Are No Longer Taboo, Unless You're A Jewish Nana

Jessica G. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:30:00 EDT

In the 30s, when Dorothy Parker got a tattoo of a small star on the inside of her upper arm after a drunken night carousing in the Bowery, it was a transgressive, racy act. Now, even the wives of conservative British politicians have dolphins tatted on their ankles, and nice Jewish girls (like Amy Winehouse??) are getting inked in droves, much to the chagrin of their grandmothers. You see, there is an incredibly pervasive rumor among the Jewish community that you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you got the image of Kermit the Frog emblazoned on your torso during a drunken night in Tijuana. More »

23-Year-Old Woman Leaves Religious Sect, Loses Daughter

Jessica G. — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:00:00 EDT

When learning about the most Orthodox sects within any religion, it's very easy to judge their more extreme rituals as freakish. I think I was a little guilty of painting the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints with the freak brush, and I will consciously try not to do that with the Satmar Hasidim from Kiryas Joel, a group of ultra-religious Jews who are the subject of this week's New York Magazine cover story. Here's the gist: a young woman named Sterna "Gitty" Gittel Grunwald, 23, (pictured) used to live in the upstate New York town of Kiryas Joel, which is an exclusively Satmar enclave. Much like the FLDS, the Satmars arrange marriages and don't believe in birth control. After marrying a man named Yoely when she was 17 and having a daughter, Esther Miriam, Gitty realized, "I couldn't live in KJ anymore, that I didn't want to be one of those women who pop out babies every eighteen months and think whatever their husbands tell them to… When Esther Miriam was born, that raised the stakes, because now there were two of us. Two KJ girls." More »

Thai Long-Neck Women Part Of "Human Zoo" • Jewish Prayer Book Makes God Gender-Neutral

Maria — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Thai officals approve a "human zoo" with the famed long-necked women, many of whom are refugees from Myanmar. • Indian sex workers can now get life insurance, but their profession remains illegal. • Snickers, Doritos, and Peanut M&Ms are the most popular vending machine snacks. • A child who formed in her mother's liver turned 5 today! • A new prayer book for Reform Judaism makes God gender-neutral. • Teens aren't giving oral to "preserve" their virginity mostly because they are just having intercourse instead. • Plans for a Sound of Music hotel sparks fierce protest from Austrian fussbudgets. • Same sex couples are common in wild animals because, duh, sex is fun! • Adelaide "Sun-Lin" Young, a female explorer of China in the 1930s, died at 96. • Oh great! Recent female college grads make $2.92 less than their male counterparts. • Social and religious reasons are behind the lack of female directors in the boardrooms of Arab corporations. • However! There are more women in the boardroom in Kuwait and Oman than Italy and Japan. • Peeping Tom cases in public places are getting thrown out due to "unreasonable expectation of privacy" by the peeped. • Carme Chacon, Spain's first female defense minister, gave birth to a boy today. • 3 in 10 men experience domestic violence with an intimate partner, although it goes largely unreported. More »

Why Don't Jewish Women Get Any Pop Cultural Love?

Jessica G. — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:00:00 EST

Radar is declaring, in its typically amusing and tongue-in-cheek fashion, that this year's hottest accessory for shiksas is a Jewish husband. You know what? Tongue-in-cheek or not, I'm over Jewish dudes getting all the love. You never hear about Jewish women being the hottest, well, anything; while Woody Allen is off bagging WASP goddesses Mariel Hemmingway and Diane Keaton in Manhattan, cultural stereotypes of female Jews show us to be fleshy, frumpy, sexless overbearing mothers with big noses and unruly hair. Rachel Shukert, the far from frumpy sex writer, thinks that "Jewish men have really had a large part in disseminating those [negative] stereotypes" of Jewish women. More »

Oprah Writer Asks: "[Are] Jews and Christians Incompatible?"

Jessica G. — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:00:00 EST

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The "Love Issue" of Oprah Magazine — 22 days until Valentine's, ladies — has several essays under the heading "Love, the Great Adventure" about lasting romance. In one, O Henry prize winner Sheila Kohler, an Anglican, writes about her mostly-happy interfaith marriage to a Jewish man (the lovebirds are pictured at left). But her union is not without warts, and Kohler bravely exposes them all. She talks about the minor fights they had "over who would do the dishes and how they would be done," but then gets into messier territory, like her complaint that he doesn't say "I love you" enough. Then, as the kids say, Kohler goes there. "Did the six million dead Jews have to come up quite so frequently?" she ponders. Not only that, in an admitted moment of rage, Kohler shouts at her husband "You're just a stingy Jew!" He later comes back with a comment about how all the pork eating must have diminished her brain function, which leads Kohler to wonder, "Had I married a racist? Worse still, had I discovered that in my heart of hearts I was a racist...Were men and women so very different? Were Jews and Christians incompatible?" More »

It's Hard To Be A Jew On Christmas

Jessica — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 13:30:00 EST

Tomorrow's Christmas, or, as I knew it throughout my childhood, that day when I'm bored and nothing is open. I'm 100% Heeb, and my mother was so anti-Christmas that we didn't even do the stereotypical Jew things like eat Chinese food and go to the movies. Doing those things would be a tacit acknowledgment that Christmas existed, and my mom wasn't about to kowtow to the status quo. I've elided all my severe Christmas envy into one mental image: me, at eight, pressing my hooked nose against the window panes of our Christian neighbors' houses as they embraced around the tree, tearing the wrapping paper off their brand new Nintendos in some sweater-clad, ritualized, yuletide orgy. More »

Donna Karan Mixes And Matches Separates, Spirituality

Jennifer — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:00:00 EDT

Donna Karan: Celebrating Rosh Hashanah in the Holy Land! For the first time! We hope she fits in some time for Buddhist meditation. [NY Mag]

DailyCandy Says No To Lexapro, Yes To Lather

Jennifer — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:25:37 EDT

We were beginning to worry about the editors of DailyCandy. There were mentions of bacterial infections. Black Croc spats. Had they abandoned their Cosmopolitan-swilling ways, we wondered? But today's editions of the cloying, consumption-promoting newsletter illustrate that the girls may have their mojo back: There's shampoo laced with antidepressants! Chaufferred shopping trips! Psychics! Oh, and skinny jeans! (Ugh, aren't skinny jeans over? If not, could someone please make that happe already?). Today's Cavity, after the jump. More »

Will Your Semitism (Or Lack Thereof) Impact Your Barneys Shopping?

Jennifer — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:48:22 EDT

So now that Barneys New York is owned by a Dubai-based investment firm, some (er, Lauren Goldstein Crowe of Portfolio's 'Fashion, Inc'. blog) are convinced that luxury-minded Jews are going to take their business to other luxury department stores because no way in hell will they fund something owned by, you know, Arabs. (Oh wait, Jews don't believe in hell!). But is it really an issue? After all, Saks Fifth Avenue was once owned by like a flock of Saudi princes, and Harrods is owned by the al-Fayeds. And both companies are not only doing fine but surely enjoy the continued support of their Jewish brethren. So Jennifer Gerson (the token Jewish Jezebel, and the one responsible for the above graphic, which she thinks is funny and Anna thinks is horrific) decided to investigate this matter all on her own with a most urgent question: Will your Jewishness (or lack thereof) impact your Barneys shopping experience? Her really non-stereotypical poll, after the jump. More »

Barneys New York Goes Middle-Eastern: Will The Jews Follow?

Jennifer — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 10:00:59 EDT

The long-anticipated sale of luxury department store Barneys New York finally went down this weekend, going to a Dubai-based investment firm for $832 million and making for what was probably the smoothest Middle Eastern negotiation in modern history. [WWD, sub req'd]