By Barry Joseph
FALL EDUCATION Digital media helps children pursue their own learning. Now is the time for adults to claim our unique role in the the digital age, writes Barry Joseph.
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By Barry Joseph
There’s something about an egg cream that can bring out the debate in some people. “There is egg cream on your face,” wrote one reader, “if you fall for those explanations of the egg cream.” Another simply wrote “Hogwash!” Luckily these were letters not to us but the New York Times, throughout the 1970s, in response to articles making one claim or another about the correct way to mix the drink. No egg cream article comes without a slew of detractors. Luckily our readers were more polite in response to Leah Koenig’s recent article,
“Egg Creams Make a Comeback”, but were no less contentious. When Koenig described the delicious drink re-imagined to include maple, coffee, and even olive oil, some readers cried foul.
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By Barry Joseph
David Fox has a problem with his rabbi. I sit across from David, at his office desk, in the family factory
H. Fox and Company, deep in Brooklyn. David’s family founded the company and for the past century it has manufacturing a wide variety of flavored syrups. Today, however, I am only interested in one, Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, which is widely regarded as the essential ingredient for the classic egg cream, once described by Mel Brooks as “the opposite of circumcision” as it “pleasurably reaffirms your Jewishness.”
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By Barry Joseph
Seltzer delivery is a dying art. Once, hundreds of “seltzer men,” as they liked to be called, drove the city and walked the streets of New York, carting cases of pressured siphons through rain and snow. Now, less than a dozen remain and, like Jedis with their arcane knowledge and mystical allusions to better days since passed, they move amongst us, largely invisible to the untrained eye.Read More
By Barry Joseph
Like Chinese food and pickles, seltzer –– an effervescent spirit that has inspired dreams of cures for such diverse ailments as scurvy and indigestion –– is often associated with Jews. An ad for an at-home seltzer maker touts its product as part of the history of Jewish ingenuity: “Matzo, circa 1440 B.C. — Chicken Soup, circa 1280 A.D.Read More