Back on July 4, 1916, four immigrants decided to settle the score over who was the most patriotic by holding a hot dog eating contest at Nathan's Famous stand on NYC's Coney Island, which was founded by Polish Jewish immigrant Nathan Handwerker. Jewish entertainers Eddie Cantor (born Edward Israel Itzkowitz) [...]

64 years after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for spying for the Soviet Union, their children are still fighting to honor their parents' name. In 1953, the Rosenbergs were convicted of selling U.S. plans for a nuclear bomb to the Soviets, a verdict that was, according to their long-orphaned sons [...]

You might not know it, but you have a philtrum and everyone who looks at you can see it. The philtrum—that groove we all have above our upper lips—may not be a commonly-referenced body part, but in Jewish mystical tradition, it's quite significant. And it's said to be the result [...]

While America nervously watched the rise of the Third Reich in the early 1930s, some Nazi-sympathizing Los Angelinos were eagerly anticipating a Nazi future. In those years, the pro-Hitler German American Bund held pro-Nazi rallies and picnics, and ran Hitler Youth-style U.S. summer camps, including Camp Sutter in LA-adjacent La [...]

It might be time to rethink everything you thought you knew about Jews and bacon. As you know, the laws of kashrut dictate that pigs are inherently unkosher: “And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you” [...]

Exhausted from calling your representatives? Looking for new activist role models? Look no further than Hans and Sophie Scholl, the German teenagers who went from being part of Hitler Youth to leading a resistance movement—and paying with their heads. Literally: Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were beheaded in 1943, [...]

Which great Jewish comedian had oversized glasses, a nebbishy smile and a hilarious way of trying to get a date? The late, great Stanley Myron Handelman. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Handelman cracked up audiences on the most popular TV variety shows: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Ed Sullivan [...]

With the 50th anniversary of Israel's Six-Day War upon us, that historical moment is getting a lot of attention. A critically acclaimed new Israeli film takes place against the backdrop of an event that followed: Israel's and Egypt's historic 1977 peace negotiation. Inspired by the wartime diaries of a Ukrainian [...]

Vulvas fashioned out of chewing gum, ceramic vaginas, her own naked body – such were the materials of the first feminist artist to use vaginal imagery in her work—who happened to be a Jewish New Yorker named Hannah. Born in 1940 in New York City, Hannah Wilke (see her work here) [...]

If you think all ultra-Orthodox Jews dress alike, you've got to see the recent video of Elimelekh “Melech” Zilbershlag, whose unlikely internet celebrity is built on decoding the signs of Haredi belonging. Melech's tips: Hasids often have ribbons on their black yarmulkas, but Lithuanians don't. Hasids grow their sidelocks longer [...]