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Sundown: Jewish Elderly Claim Bias in Virginia

Plus, Roxette plays Israel, a synagogue for transgender Jews, and more

by
Stephanie Butnick
October 19, 2011
Marie Fredriksson of Swedish pop music duo Roxette performs in Johannesburg, South Africa on 13 May 2011. (Photo by Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
Marie Fredriksson of Swedish pop music duo Roxette performs in Johannesburg, South Africa on 13 May 2011. (Photo by Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images)

Tablet Magazine will be dark until Monday in observance of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.

• Jewish residents of the Hunter Woods Fellowship House, a Christian home for the elderly in Virginia, have filed a complaint citing discrimination after the home allegedly refused to allow them use of dining facilities for a Rosh Hashanah party and then called the police when the group convened outside. [Washington Jewish Week]

• Swedish pop duo Roxette will play a concert in Tel Aviv this Saturday, following the release of their eighth album. [Tourist in Israel]

• A congregation in Berkeley offers a spiritual home for transgender Jews in the San Francisco Bay area. [Jewish Chronicle]

• The amazing story of a 91-year-old woman who has been making and distributing kosher meals to people living with HIV and AIDS since founding Project Chicken Soup in 1989, after her son Nathaniel died of AIDS. [LA Times]

• Israeli researchers have created a computer algorithm that can identify the portions of the Bible where a new author began writing. [The Week]

• People are really, really obsessed with Times executive editor Jill Abramson’s speech. [Language Log]

• Burlesque performer Dita Von Teese won a lawsuit against her landlord, who allegedly went on an anti-Semitic rant against Von Teese’s managers when she tried to move out. The landlord now has to return her $5,000 security deposit. [TMZ]

• Ruth Gruber is having a 100th birthday party on Sunday, and you’re invited. [National Museum of American Jewish History]

• Josh Schwartz, of O.C. and Gossip Girl fame, plans to adapt British sci-fi series Misfits for our American viewing pleasure. [Vulture]

• Where was Sir Paul McCartney the day before marrying Nancy Shevell? At shul in London, of course! [Jewish Chronicle]

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.