NEW YORK — With consecutive quadruple jumps at the US Figure Skating Championships, Max Aaron launched himself not only to a gold medal and a national championship. The 20-year-old Arizonan also joined the ranks of Jewish athletes who have made it big.
For Aaron, that was even more exciting than executing the perfect salchows last month in Omaha, Neb., which moved him from fourth to first in the standings.
“I grew up looking to all those Jewish athletes for inspiration,” Aaron told JTA. “I always thought the list needed to be longer. We needed to have a stronger representation of Jewish athletes, and I’m so happy that I’m part of them now.”
NEW YORK — Spiderman heroically dispatched countless foes since he arrived on the scene in 1962.
Nearly a half-century later, Brian Michael Bendis managed to kill him.
In 2000, Bendis was hired to write Ultimate Spiderman, a modern-day retelling of the classic Spiderman story. More than 10 years, 160 issues and several blockbuster Hollywood adaptations later, Bendis did the unthinkable, killing off the superhero’s famous alter ego, Peter Parker, and replacing him with a half-black, half-Hi...
NEW YORK — Who knew the man behind the Brooklyn homecomings of Jay-Z and Barbra Streisand had a thing for heimische melodies?
Bruce Ratner, the developer and majority owner of the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn, which opened last September with a Jay-Z show and hosted borough native Streisand a month later, holds a special place in his heart for cantorial music.
“My parents are both from Eastern European descent, so that type of Jewish music is in my blood,” Ratner told JTA.
“I gre...
NEW YORK — You’re at a wedding or Bar Mitzvah, mingling at the bar or catching up with a distant relative, when you hear it — the opening notes of a familiar tune that as if by some invisible force carries you and other guests to the dance floor for the rousing dance circle ritual.
Does “Hava Naglia” work this kind of magic because it was handed down at Sinai and thus encoded in the Jewish DNA?
Or is it a tale from the European shtetl, albeit one with a timeless message and an irrepr...
THESE days, the once-proud sport of boxing has fallen on hard times. With so many weight classes and (corrupt) managers, the fighters may make millions — yet often lose their way.
Simple put, the “sweet science” is no longer a “haimische” (homey) activity.
There was a time when strong young men from quality families entered the ring — not so much for the fame and glory, but to show they could fight to help themselves and their families make it in the world.
Those men had names lik...