Stephen Silver
By Stephen Silver
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Fast Forward Acclaimed Sundance film ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ explores love and awkwardness on the bar mitzvah circuit
(JTA) — A new Jewish coming-of-age movie begins with the hero, at age 12, getting rejected by an older girl at a bar mitzvah. Then the movie jumps to a decade later, as the main character embarks on a career as a bar mitzvah “party starter.” It’s an unlikely vocation for a character who isn’t…
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News A 76-year-old Jewish philanthropist from Los Angeles is one of the world’s most prolific Olympic pin traders
(JTA) — Sid Marantz loves tradition so much that he spent 20 years as a board member of his family’s Los Angeles synagogue. So it’s a big deal that he isn’t in Tokyo this week for the start of the Olympics, the first Summer Games he’s missed since 1984. Marantz usually attends for three weeks:…
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Fast Forward PBS postpones debut of ‘Til Kingdom Come’ documentary on evangelicals and Israel
(JTA) — PBS has decided to postpone airing the documentary “Til Kingdom Come,” which examines the close relationship between American evangelicals and Israel, in the light of accusations that the film misleadingly spliced together two separate parts of a speech by former President Donald Trump. The film, which was directed by the Russian-Israeli documentary filmmaker…
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Fast Forward ‘Donny’s Bar Mitzvah’ wants to be the raunchiest Jewish movie ever
(JTA) — There’s never been a great, definitive American movie about a bar mitzvah. And after “Donny’s Bar Mitzvah,” a new movie that arrived this week on Amazon Prime and iTunes, there still hasn’t been. The film, directed by Jonathan Kaufman (referred to in the media notes as “Jonny Comebacks”), is an indie comedy set…
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The Schmooze Frank Sinatra’s $10,000 Yarmulke – And The Story Behind It
(JTA) When a huge auction was held at Sotheby’s earlier this month of items belonging to Frank Sinatra and his wife Barbara, the item that made the most headlines was one of the smallest: a hand-knit yarmulke, owned by Frank, which was purchased for nearly $10,000 by an unknown party. But untold, until now, was…
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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