When writing a review for a play you haven’t seen, you have to wait until the end of the show to start writing your piece. But when you attend violinist Itzhak Perlman’s 80th birthday klezmer concert — featuring musicians from acclaimed klezmer bands like The Klezmer Conservatory Band and The Klezmatics — your review can anticipate several […]
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There are some people who only want the warm embrace of their loved ones for Hanukkah. As for the rest of us — well, thank goodness for Hanukkah presents! Whether your family are one-and-done types of Hanukkah gift-givers or you’re the kind of mishpacha to give presents each and every night, we’ve rounded up a […]
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A rare, 14th-century handwritten Hebrew Bible from Spain will hit the auction block at Sotheby’s New York this month. The medieval work, adorned with calligraphic art, is a Tanakh, or Five Books of Moses plus the Book of Prophets and Writings. It is estimated to fetch between $1.5 and $2.5 million when it is up […]
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Sometime in 2011 or 2012, racing in a cab to pick up my kids from school, I passed Philip Roth on the corner of West 79th Street and Central Park West. At the edge of the urban paradise where I ran each morning to keep my sanity — just as I had heard daily swims […]
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From Who-ville to Schmoozeville, and from island getaways to cozy homes, this year’s crop of Hanukkah books for kids of all ages take families on journeys to imaginative settings, some familiar from the pantheon of children’s literature and Jewish ideas. Families from across the diverse Jewish spectrum will enjoy the new titles that celebrate the […]
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Eight hundred and eleven pounds of potatoes, 402 challahs, 68 chefs, 59 people named David and 27 people named Rachel. It all adds up to the world’s largest Shabbat dinner, which was organized by Temple Emanuel’s Streicker Center and held at the Javits Center on Friday night. Some 2,800 Jewish New Yorkers packed the top […]
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Jonathan Freedland didn’t set out to write a guidebook to resistance. He was researching the story of Rudolf Vrba, the young Jewish escapee from Auschwitz who became the subject of his 2022 book, “The Escape Artist.” Freedland stumbled upon something odd: Heinrich Himmler, in an August 1944 speech, casually referred to a “reactionary cabal … […]
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A silver Tiffany & Co. menorah from the year 2000. A bronze, 23-inch tall Statue of Liberty menorah made in 1986 in New Jersey by German-born artist Manfred Anson. A silver Hanukkah lamp, inlaid with carnelian stones, that was made in the early 20th century at the Bezalel school in Jerusalem. These are just a […]
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Actor Gal Gadot has won the Genesis Prize, sometimes called the “Jewish Nobel,” for supporting Israel even as backlash against the country’s actions in Gaza rocked Hollywood. Since Oct. 7, 2023, Gadot has been an outspoken advocate for Israelis taken captive by Hamas. Calling herself “a proud Jew and a proud Israeli,” she said in […]
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Comedian Gibran Saleem had never met a Jewish person until starting his graduate studies at New York University more than a decade ago. The child of Pakistani immigrants, Saleem was raised in a Muslim household in northern Virginia where, he said, he was mostly surrounded by people with a similar cultural background. “I knew about […]
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