Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
Irene Katz Connelly
By Irene Katz Connelly
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Culture What I’ll miss if New York shuts down: sharing space with strangers
I learned Joe Biden was our president-elect when honks and shouts erupted outside my Manhattan window. That morning, my partner and I made our way downstairs to investigate, joining dozens of people who had paused their Saturday routines to go outside and make noise. An elderly man was playing bagpipes on the corner. Others were…
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Culture How a Jewish filmmaker wound up eating cake with the pope — an interview with Evgeny Afineevsky
Evgeny Afineevsky celebrated his 48th birthday with a very special person: Pope Francis, the most significant figure in the Catholic world. Afineevsky had just finished filming “Francesco,” a documentary on the pontiff’s teachings. Ahead of its premiere at the Rome Film Festival, Afineevsky brought some friends to a private meeting with the pope, who greeted…
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Culture Alec Baldwin departs WNYC in defense of Woody Allen
After hosting his talk show “Here’s the Thing” on WNYC since 2011, actor and comedian Alec Baldwin is decamping to iHeartRadio — because of Woody Allen. The shift is Baldwin’s latest demonstration of loyalty to Allen, his longtime friend, whose directorial career has in recent years been overshadowed by allegations of sexual abuse by his…
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The Schmooze In “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” Jewish girls thrive in the Mormon world
“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” chronicles the lives of a small subset of plastic-surgery prone women in the capital of the Mormon world. It may not seem like a very Jewish show, but there’s only one word to describe our feelings about it: dayenu. It would have been enough to watch one housewife,…
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News Everything you need to know about Joe Biden’s Jewish relatives
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on August 20, 2020. Joe Biden won’t be the first president with Jewish in-laws: both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton beat him to it. But he will be the first president whose Jewish offspring-in-law have Hebrew ink on their biceps. In fact, all three of Biden’s children —…
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The Schmooze Kamala Harris and Douglas Emhoff made history for interfaith families. All Jews should celebrate that
When Kamala Harris becomes Vice President in January, she’ll have the privilege and burden of representing many “firsts.” She’ll be the first female, first Black, and first South Asian person to serve in the position. As if that’s not enough, Douglas Emhoff, Harris’s infamously infatuated husband and a Forward-certified “hot Jewish dad,” is making history…
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The Schmooze If Jared Kushner enlisted Kanye as a third-party spoiler, it didn’t work
In August, just a month after announcing he was “walking” for president, rapper Kanye West met with Trump family scion-in-law Kushner in Colorado. The purpose of the meeting was unknown: Kanye later tweeted that the two had discussed “Powernomics,” a book by Claud Anderson on Black economic empowerment, but provided no more substantive information. Combined…
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Culture What King Solomon, Gwyneth Paltrow and other Jewish luminaries taught us about the 2020 election
If you’re anything like us, you spent last night toggling between cable TV, the infamous New York Times election needle and supposedly “soothing” Netflix picks, all while clutching the pint of ice cream you’d intended to save for the inevitable post-election civil strife. As it became clear that election night was becoming election week, we…
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