HAVANA – The heirs of Jewish mob legend Meyer Lansky want compensation for his nationalized hotel, the Riviera, the seaside home to one of the last casinos built in swinging Havana of the 1950s. U.S. and Cuban officials on Tuesday opened talks about honoring legal claims against the respective governments that were dormant for half…
There is a box of candy on Oscar Goodman’s desk. Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews. His face lights up at their mention. They’re from Philadelphia, he says. “I love them. I have at least one a day.” Goodman — former mob lawyer, former Las Vegas mayor, current Sin City spokesman — is happily ensconced behind his desk…
● I Pity the Poor Immigrant: A Novel By Zachary Lazar Little, Brown and Company, 256 pages, $25 In photographs from my high school years, I’m often blinking against the light. My smile and shut eyes look like an evasion of the camera’s flash, of the picture itself. Looking now at that face, I imagine…
In the mid-20th century, a cadre of tough Jews, shedding the bookish bearing of exile, went forth to create a new society in a forbidding desert. Armed to the teeth, they lived outside the law and built their outpost by any means necessary. Against all odds, despite implacable enemies, the desert bloomed. Think you already…
Brett Ratner not only provides material for a good story, he even writes the headlines. “Your headline should be: ‘Yeshiva Prepared Ratner To Be Director,’” he said during a phone interview with The Arty Semite. Happily, yeshiva did a good job. Ratner is most famous for the “Rush Hour” trilogy of films. His latest comedy…
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