Arts & Culture

AAbuzz With Bugs

By Allison T. Hoffman

Swat, squash, slap, smash, smack: Faced with the high whine of flying invaders, teeming masses of tiny creatures or the sickly sheen of hard brown insect shells, we’ll happily whack them, fumigate them, chemical-bomb them, even flash-freeze them. Never mind that we may share a common protean ancestor with the creepy-crawlies, or thatRead More

Remembering the Hebron Riots, 1929

Seventy-five years ago, a two-week orgy of pogroms took place in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Safed, Hebron and a number of smaller locales in British-ruled Palestine, at the end of which 83 Jews had been killed and hundreds wounded.Pogroms are not spontaneous events, and those of August 1929 were no exception. The affair beganRead More

Sounding Alarms Without Sounding Alarmist

By Jerome A. Chanes

Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism Edited by Ron Rosenbaum Random HouseRead More

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

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

Little-known Resistance in Nazi Germany

“Germans wanted to believe that nobody could do anything against the Nazis,” said Margarethe von Trotta, the eminent Berlin-born filmmaker whose new film based on the events, titled “Rosenstrasse,” is set to open in New York on August 20 with a special screening scheduled for August 16 at the Center for Jewish History. “If all people areRead 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