Rob Eshman is a senior columnist for the Forward. Follow him on Instagram @foodaism or email [email protected]. For his food writing and recipes go to foodaism.com.
Rob EshmanSenior Columnist
By Rob Eshman
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News Why do we care so much about what Seth Rogen thinks about Israel?
Can you get me Seth Rogen? I spent half of last week trying to use every connection I could to get to him. I, along with every other Jewish journalist, wanted to interview him about his comments on the Marc Maron podcast, which caused a Jewish firestorm. A Jewish firestorm doesn’t involve actual fire. It…
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News Kristalnacht in L.A. and other digital lies
The first time I received an e-mail decrying the outbreaks of pogroms in Los Angeles, I read as far as the all-caps title,”KRISTALLNACHT 2020 – DOES ANYONE CARE?” and no further. The second time, I read down to the part where the writer, Rabbi Yakov Saacks of The Chai Center in Dix Hills, compared the…
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News Beinart to Jews: It’s the democracy, stupid
This week, Jewish American commentator Peter Beinart wrote two essays promoting a one-state, bi-national solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. If you don’t have time to read the 8,000-word essay in Jewish Currents, there is a Reader’s Digest version in the New York Times Op-Ed section, with the provocative headline “I No Longer Believe in a…
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News How Uri Herscher reshaped Jewish L.A.
Every time I visited Dr. Uri Herscher in his office, I stopped to look at an old photo of him standing on top of a landfill beside a freeway. The freeway is still there, but the landfill has since 1996 been the Skirball Cultural Center, a nexus for education, community and culture in Los Angeles….
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News The CEO of Holy Land hummus I know doesn’t match the social media monster
The last time I saw Majdi Wadi, the owner of the Holy Land Brands in Minneapolis, and his daughter Lianne, we had our arms around one another, on stage in a synagogue auditorium. That was four years ago. The second time we spoke was Monday afternoon, as Wadi’s world was collapsing around him. Viciously racist…
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News Black Lives Matter. Unless they’re homeless
By the time I caught up to the 500 or more people marching in Venice on behalf of Black Lives Matter, they were turning east in front of a narrow traffic island near the Venice Public Library, chanting “No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace!” My iPhone camera caught the whole scene, and it…
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News What the old Jewish radical taught me about George Floyd
It was weird, frankly, waking up on Sunday to a still, beautiful morning. The downtown L.A. streets that were inflamed by protests and riot police the night before were clamped shut by waves of uniformed National Guards. Cops and clean up crews made their way through the debris at Beverly Blvd. and Fairfax Ave., where…
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Food Better-than-Ratner’s cheese blintz
If you’re from New York, the name Ratner’s gives you dewy-eyed nostalgia for the great dairy restaurant of yore. But I’m from LA, and Ratner’s just makes me think of my dentist, Dr. Farkas, whose office is on Ratner St. There’s a connection– Alex Ratner came west in 1914 to beat back tuberculosis, and he…
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