Howard Shapiro
By Howard Shapiro
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News The Last Row-House Shul in Philly
Video: Nate Lavey The “Little Shul,” as its supporters call it, stands in the middle of a dense street of row homes. But in a big way, it stands alone. It is the last operating row-house shul in South Philly. During the early part of the last century, there were 155 synagogues like it in…
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Food Chefs Face Off in Battle To Reinvent Bubbe Fare
What would bubbe do? Infuse her matzo-ball soup with truffles and leeks? Prepare her brisket in red wine, then serve it on a puree of sweet potatoes, topped with pickled pearl onions and accompanied with a dollop of tzimmes? Probably not. But she may have eaten it — after all, a meal’s a meal —…
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Food Roll Your Own Montreal Bagels — In Philly
The humble bagel is a staple of Western Jewish culture, but what most of us know about it amounts to little more than a shmear. After all, bagels are generally something we buy, not bake. This makes the bagel ideal for a hands-on workshop, especially at a restaurant-bakery called Spread Bagelry, one of the few…
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News Struggling To Survive
There were Hebrew school classes and youth activities, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings and a full roster of minyans in Butte, Montana. There were three synagogues — two Orthodox and one Reform. There once were upward of 1,000 Jews. There were…. And that is a problem for synagogues in small towns like Butte and in…
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Culture Conducting Crowds to the Beat of His Grandparents
Michael Tilson Thomas’s grandmom had trunks in her basement. A lot of our grandmothers had stuff stacked away. But our grandmoms were not Bessie Thomashefsky. “When I used to go visit my grandmother at her apartment in Hollywood, she had trunks in her basement and that was a special treat,” said Tilson Thomas, music director…
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News A Star-Studded Gala Launches New American Jewish Museum in Philadelphia
There was an enormous covered tent within clanging distance of the unclangable Liberty Bell. There was gourmet, kosher rack of lamb and beet salad with salmon mousse. There were politicians, and there were big-deal donors. Oh, and did we mention Babs? Barbra Streisand had come to Philadelphia for a November 13 gala, marking the opening…
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Culture Getting Schooled in Tzedakah
For Andrea Engel, giving to charity and volunteering for charity work — two basic facets of tzedakah — came as second nature. As a high school student in Birmingham, Ala., she headed her B’nai B’rith Youth Organization fundraising effort. As a Northwestern University undergraduate in suburban Chicago, she served on the executive board for the…
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Culture A New Curriculum For a New Museum
Linda Steinberg had worked in Philadelphia previously, for a short time, but she didn’t remember the summer heat. When she came back to town a few weeks ago, to a job at the new National Museum of American Jewish History, it was a hot day — upward of 100 degrees. For Steinberg, the contrast with…
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