Dungeons & Dragons Has United A Diverse Group Of Rabbis But Their Commitment To Social Justice Has Faced A Challenge forward.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from forward.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its partners assume any responsibility for them. Please contact us in case of abuse. In case of abuse,
President Biden and Secretary Blinken face a difficult choice (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
On April 19th, the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combatting Antisemitism submitted a letter to President Biden urging him to “expeditiously nominate a qualified Ambassador to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in order to confront the rising level of anti-Semitism worldwide.” A couple of weeks ago, in honor of Yom Hashoah (Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day), I published a piece with The MirYam Institute, (later syndicated by The Algemeiner) in which I made the same argument.
Rabbi Shais Rishon speaks at a rally in New York City, January 2020. (Gili Getz via JTA)
JTA In the first chapter of Rabbi Shais Rishon’s new Torah commentary, the voices of ancient rabbis mingle with contemporary poets and, at one point, with “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson.
It’s all part of Rishon’s attempt at writing a text “that is firmly traditional/Orthodox, but with a modern and non-myopic lens on race and gender,” as he put it in the description of a Kickstarter campaign that recently raised $11,500, more than twice his goal.
The commentary, titled “In Black Fire,” represents an extension of Rishon’s ongoing efforts to speak up against racism in the Orthodox world. The 39-year-old rabbi frequently tweets on the topic to his more than 12,000 followers, and writes and talks about it in Jewish publications. He is the author of a semiautobiographical novel about a Black Orthodox rabbi that sheds light on the constant questioning faced by many
“I am still processing his passing, and I know he will be missed,” he said.
Kotto’s debut as a professional actor was in an all-Black stage performance of Shakespeare’s “Othello” in Harlem in 1960.
Kotto drew plaudits for roles as the first Black Bond villain dictator Dr. Kananga in 1973’s “Live and Let Die,” and an Emmy nomination for playing real-life Ugandan strongman Idi Amin in the TV movie “Raid on Entebbe,” about the IDF operation in 1976 to rescue dozens of Israelis on a plane hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.
He then took on a villainous xenomorph as ship engineer Dennis Parker in Ridley Scott’s claustrophobic sci-fi horror film “Alien” in 1979, and fought alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987’s dystopian thriller “Running Man.”