By Mordechai Shinefield
As young adult teen fiction has gotten racier, edgier and more popular — Cecily von Ziegesar’s “Gossip Girl” and Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” are examples of sexy Y.A. series getting film and television treatments — author Matthue Roth has staked out his claim, writing charming novels about Jewish rejects and outsiders. His 2006 book “Never Mind The Goldbergs” focused on a young Jewish woman, Hava Aaronson, who listened to punk music and rebelled against her religion.
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By Mordechai Shinefield
One of the largest collaborative research teams ever assembled has concluded a decade-long study that may unlock the secrets behind Crohn’s disease.
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By Mordechai Shinefield
Though the Shoah seems out of place amid the bright colors, tights and capes of comic books, graphic novels have a long history of depicting the Holocaust. Art Spiegelman started writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Maus” in 1972, and the mutant known as Wolverine was given a history in the Nazi extermination camp Sobibor. Last week, in Philadelphia, Marvel Comics announced that Greg Pak, best known for writing such characters as Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk, would be penning a new miniseries in September called “Magneto: Testament.”
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By Mordechai Shinefield
From The Fantastic Four’s Benjamin Jacob Grimm (aka The Thing) to the 1980s Magen Dovid-sporting mutant Kitty Pryde, Jewish superheroes have been all over the comic book medium. But have any of them kept their religion a secret identity as long as Mister E? Also known as Victor Jay, Mister E first made his appearance in the February 1940 issue of Daring Mystery Comics #2.
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By Mordechai Shinefield
This past May, the Teapacks were eliminated in the semifinals of the Eurovision song competition along with bands representing 17 other countries. Their elimination capped a months-long saga in which pop music collided with geopolitics, garnering international headlines for the six-member, ska-inflected, band originally hailing from the now-embattled Israeli town of Sderot.
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