Category: Culture

(New York Jewish Week) — In the Yiddish classes Mikhl Yashinsky teaches for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Workers Circle, he begins by asking students to explain why they decided to learn the language. Often, a student will describe attending a performance of “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish,” the smash hit […]

(JTA) — Every year brings the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of well-known Jewish icons in every field and to mourn those we have lost. Here are 18 Jews who died in 2022 and who leave outsized legacies on politics, the arts, sports and everything in between. Madeleine Albright Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine […]

(Houston Jewish Herald-Voice via JTA) — One month after lifting the World Series trophy at Minute Maid Park, Alex Bregman was at Houston’s Congregation Beth Yeshurun lifting a candle to lead the Hanukkah blessing. On the fourth night of the holiday, the Astros star third baseman sat down with hundreds of congregants and talked about […]

This week was bittersweet for football fans, but especially for Pittsburgh Steeler fans. Legendary Steeler running-back Franco Harris passed away on Tuesday, and Friday marks the 50th anniversary of Franco’s Immaculate Reception, the play that the NFL designated the greatest in its 80-year history. I was lucky enough to be at Three Rivers Stadium in […]

(New York Jewish Week) — The Geiks weren’t your typical Bronx working-class Jewish family.  The father ran a mob-protected trucking company in Manhattan’s Garment District. Another brother, an NYPD detective, chauffeured organized crime couriers around the city with illicit cash. A kid sister visited a Las Vegas casino where the tween was set up with […]

(New York Jewish Week) — As New York gears up for a new landscape of legal marijuana, one rabbi will bring his experience retailing weed to help others “squeeze more out of life.”  Rabbi James Kahn is part of a company, “Keep It A 100,” that is one of the first to be licensed to […]

(JTA) – Panettone, the fluffy, fruit-speckled archetypal Christmas cake, is this holiday season’s “it” dessert — and the creator of perhaps the most coveted version in the United States is an Israeli-American Jew. The New York Times this week credited baker Roy Shvartzapel with spearheading “the American panettone revolution” through his business From Roy. Shvartzapel has […]

(New York Jewish Week) — The classic and very Jewish 1988 film “Crossing Delancey” is one of those movies that feels both extremely of its time and also completely timeless.  Director Joan Micklin Silver’s film has all the classic rom-com trappings: A woman who’s torn between two men (and to that end, two worlds); complaints about […]

(New York Jewish Week) — For photographer and Instagram blogger Mordechai Rubinstein, seeing his face plastered all over the subway this holiday season has been an unexpected delight. Rubinstein is decidedly not a dermatologist (a la subway-famous Dr. Zizmor), nor is he hawking subscription meds or beauty products. Rather, Rubinstein is featured in Nordstrom’s prominent […]

(JTA) — From the very beginning of the year, 2022 was anything but easy for American Jews.  The year began with a harrowing crisis at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, during which an armed assailant took a rabbi and three of his congregants hostage during Shabbat services. From there, Jewish communities across the United States […]