Arts & Culture

Before You Eat, a Little Forshpayz

It was the Romans, those consummate gourmets, who introduced the idea of opening a meal with a selection of small dishes as a way of stimulating the appetite. The word appetizer is derived from the Latin appete, meaning “to desire, covet, or long for”; an appetizer, then, is something that encourages desire — in this case, for the mealRead More

Holtzman, Ginsberg and Epstein Back at Bat

By Rob Edelman

For two days in the waning baseball season, the lineup in Cooperstown, N.Y., will feature Holtzman on the mound, Ginsberg behind the plate and Epstein at first base.On August 29 and 30, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, in conjunction with Jewish Major Leaguers, Inc., and the American Jewish Historical Society, will offer a program titled,Read More

The Search for Reasons and Meanings

By David Curzon

The rabbis assumed that the text of the Torah was perfect so that any apparent discrepancy or repetition or contradiction had to be there for a reason. and it was up to us to impute a reason and formulate the lesson that it teaches. They also assumed that each sentence in the Torah had an infinite number of lessons to teach us.Read More

A Eulogy for New York

By Leonard Kriegel

Waterfront: A Journey Around ManhattanBy Phillip LopateCrown Publishers, 422 pages, $25.95.——–Writers love New York not for what it is, but for what it is in the writer’s imagination. Not even Paris intrigues us the way New York does, which is one of the reasons that the New York writer has become so distinct an American literary species,Read More

Home is Where the Heart Is: In the South Bronx

By Masha Leon

Lauding the Met Council’s “mix of government, the good people of the building industry and [the] nonprofit community that cares,” John Ruskay, UJA-Federation of New York executive vice president and CEO, set the tone for the August 10 Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty Builders’ luncheon at Tavern on the Green. Met Council CEO William Rapfogel touted his organization’s programs for the city’s 100,000 neediest each year (14 residences throughout New York for the elderly and formerly homeless; a kosher food pantry, which last year distributed 2.8 million pounds of food to more than 10,500 homeless… and more).Read More

When They Came For Martin Niemoller

By Harry Reynolds

Surely, it is a curiously compassionate thing to congratulate a 53-year-old Christian minister for his impressive achievement in 1945 of having finally developed into a defender of Jews at the end of the Holocaust.Last, and most tellingly, Niemoller was in prison on Kristallnacht, that November dayRead More

Good News, Bad News

By Jeffrey Fiskin

An old man with wild white hair, Moses, speaks to the assembled throng on the plains of Moab. Two men in the crowd listen, and comment in the manner of men in crowds. One is Chaim Yonkel, an Israelite who has made the long trek out of exile with Moses; the other is Søren, a philosophic Dane.* * *Moses: Behold I set before you this day, a blessingRead More

An Israeli Designer Embroiders Fashion and Politics

By Jo-Ann Mort

When Americans think of Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, they’re likely to think of the circle with the colorful fountain. But for Israeli women-in-the-know, Dizengoff is the shopping area to the far north, where boutiques of top-end Israeli designers line the street. And there is comme il faut, a trendy boutique, café and “concept store,”Read More

Resistance at Rosenstrasse: Saving Jewish Husbands

By Regina Weinreich

During one week in 1943, a little-known but amazing event occurred at a Berlin detention center, a stopping point for one of the last group of Jews targeted for the fated journey east — the Jewish spouses of Aryans. Up until this point, Jews had been protected by intermarriage to Germans, a sore spot in the efficacy of carrying out the FinalRead More

A Dog’s Life: A Veterinarian Extraordinaire Dishes

By Masha Leon

“I’m part of the lives of the families of the pets I care for,” said veterinarian Amy Attas, as we sipped tea in the art and book-filled apartment atop the “pet friendly” Buckingham Hotel (across from Carnegie Hall), which her husband, Stephen Shapiro, owns. A graduate of Barnard College, with a master’s degree in animal behavior and aRead More