Alexandra Levine
By Alexandra Levine
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Culture A Nice Jewish Guy Built A Booming Fireworks Business. Then the Tsarnaev Brothers Walked In.
The fireworks industry in America is dominated almost entirely by big-name, old-time Italian families whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers mastered the craft in Italy and brought that knowledge to the United States. There are the Zambellis of New Castle, Pennsylvania; the Rozzis of Cincinnati, and the Cartolanos of Chicago. The Grucci family, based in New York…
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Film & TV Is the World Ready for a Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Talk Show?
Daytime television may soon be getting a little more exciting. This fall, Shmuley Boteach — the TV personality and Orthodox rabbi who isn’t afraid to talk very publicly and very explicitly about sex, intimacy and all things private — is hosting a new talk show, “Divine Intervention.” In this case, Boteach is that divine intervention…
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News Meet The Jewish Politician Calling For Private School Security Legislation
Just in time for back-to-school this fall, a New York politician is trying to pass a bill that would require Mayor Bill de Blasio to fund the same security in private schools that public schools have access to already. City Councilman David Greenfield sponsored the bill, known as Intro 65, to address what he saw…
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Culture When a Rabbi Was the Last Thing I Needed
Six years ago, I lost a friend to a drunk driver. I was a 19-year-old counselor at a sleepaway camp near Augusta, Maine, and I felt invincible. I had never experienced anything “bad” beyond some less-than-stellar marks on my college econ exams. Certainly no trauma. I knew nothing about death (beyond the passing of my…
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Culture Was Julius Rosenwald Our Greatest Philanthropist?
“To me, Julius Rosenwald is the best antidote to Donald Trump,” says Aviva Kempner, who wrote, produced and directed the documentary “Rosenwald,” which opened in New York on August 14. “You see how pompous rich people can be, but Rosenwald is quite the contrary; he is one of the greatest examples for American Jews of…
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Culture Did Josef Mengele Alter This Survivor’s Genes?
The Holocaust altered Eva Kor’s body forever in a way that she still doesn’t fully understand. When she was ten years old, Kor and her twin sister, Miriam — along with 1,500 other sets of twins — were test subjects of Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi physician who used fraternal and identical twins at Auschwitz…
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News Faigy Mayer’s Brave Life and Shocking Death
Faigy Mayer left the Belz community, a Hasidic enclave in Brooklyn’s Boro Park, in 2010. She was 24 years old. Five years later, having finally made the move to Manhattan, she was seemingly self-sufficient. She had an undergraduate degree from Touro College under her belt, and she was pursuing her master’s in accounting and computer…
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Culture Harper Lee’s Jewish Lessons
Harper Lee passed away on February 19, at the age of 89. Alexandra Levine remembers the author’s Jewish lessons. “To Kill a Mockingbird” was published in 1960, and this week, 55 years later, the sequel comes out: “Go Set a Watchman.” The title is a biblical reference to Isaiah 21:6 — “For thus hath the…
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News Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors
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Fast Forward Their Pacific Palisades synagogue is standing, but all three rabbis lost their homes
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News ‘Do you have the Torahs?’ Synagogue races LA wildfire to rescue its past and future
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Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
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News LA fires won’t stop bar mitzvahs this Shabbat, as joy and pain meet
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News HIAS cuts 22 staff even as it braces for Trump immigration crackdown
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Fast Forward A synagogue that survived the Palisades fire has become a ‘refuge’ for many who lost their homes
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News When fire spread to West Hollywood, a rabbi’s mom chose to grab candlesticks
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