Leisure

336,004,951. That number summarizes the main accomplishment of Dolly Parton, the beloved country singer who died last month as an enormously wealthy woman. It is the number of books distributed for free, to children in the US and in four foreign countries, as of this month, by the early-childhood literacy intervention program she founded 31 years ago.

John Galliano withdrew from a planned exhibition of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in response to an escalating controversy over the museum’s decision to honor the fashion designer despite his history of anti-Semitic and racist remarks.

In 1932, Israel Joshua Singer boarded a ship bound for New York, where he had been invited to report on the US for Yiddish-speaking Jews like himself. “Americans are a difficult people to understand,” the famed novelist wrote in one of his first articles from the US. Nearly a century later, his first encounters with America have appeared together in Italian translation.

Jewish musician Mikey Pauker is appealing a federal court ruling that dismissed his discrimination lawsuit after a California retreat center canceled his scheduled Chanukah concert due to his support for Israel.

Retired American-Israeli basketball star Amar’e (Yehoshafat) Stoudemire was inducted on Sunday, Aug. 16, into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, receiving the highest honor for former professional athletes in the sport.

Before the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it would honor fashion designer John Galliano with a major Costume Institute exhibition next spring, the museum convened at least two unusual meetings: a face-to-face with Galliano and a number of prominent rabbis, and a larger meeting with the recently retired Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, museum officials and several prominent Jewish leaders.

It shouldn’t be too hard for a smart, funny, and successful Israeli woman to meet Mr. Right. At least, that’s the theory hilariously put to the test in “Bloody Murray,” the hit Israeli romantic comedy that recently made its US debut on ChaiFlicks.

The popular French Jewish DJ Barbara Butch is striking a defiant tone after pro-Palestinian activists disrupted her concert in Grenoble, France, vowing not to be cowed from performing.

Israeli-American baseball player Zev Moore signed a professional contract this week with the Trenton Thunder of Major League Baseball’s Draft League. According to Moore’s publicist, he became the second Orthodox Jew to play professional baseball, while also becoming the second player raised in Israel to sign a contract allowing him to compete at that level.

Argentine soccer icon Lionel Messi, widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, has built one of soccer’s most decorated careers. Throughout his illustrious career, Messi has cultivated a measured public image, rarely commenting on politics or becoming involved in major public controversies.