JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

The News Shticker

By Ben Harris · August 26, 2008

• Beijing it aint, but the folks from Heeb have concocted a Semitic version of the Olympiad. Other videos from the series include Disconnecta Yenta, the Penny Pick-Up and Gefilte Fish Wrestling.
• Madonna compared John McCain to Adolf Hitler and Robert Mugabe, and the ADL isn't pleased.
• Meanwhile, Madonna hubby Guy Ritchie doesn't share his wife's affinity for Kabbalah, saying he prefers to stay "objective."
• Israeli rabbis have a beef with Uruguay's president.
• A shofar recovered from the Thames is found to be reaaaally old, just not as old as was hoped.
• The Dalai Lama gets a tallis.
• A biographer has revealed that Austrian Jewish actress Heddy Lamar was forced into a sexual relationship with Adolf Hitler by her first husband.
• The Miami Herald tells the story of nearly 400 Jewish youth who fled Cuba for America in the 1960s.
• The Chicago Tribune recounts how state courts wrestled with the question of whether or not to enforce the will of a Jew who nixed his descendants' inheritance for marrying outside the fold.
• The Independent (UK) explains how two Picassos once owned by a wealthy German Jewish banker made their way from Nazi Germany into the hands of two New York museums.
• An Egyptian film critic expresses incredulity at his government's decision to ban the release of Adam Sandler's "You Don't Mess With The Zohan."