Nahoum & Son’s Bakery, in the labyrinthine New Market in central Calcutta, is the embarkation point for making contact with the city’s Jewish community. David Nahoum, its undisputed leader, said to be about 90 and in ill health, no longer sells plum cakes, greets visitors or gives interviews to reporters. The first two responsibilities have…
A confrontation between the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has been averted, though no one is exactly saying how or why. For weeks, the JDC was threatening to opt out of the current overseas funding structure, in which it gets 25% of funds collected by The Jewish Federations of…
The upcoming expansion of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum to include a kitchen where visitors can try immigrant fare is a welcome reminder of a lost neighborhood. My lost neighborhood. An infamous Ellis Island destination for generations of my Jewish ancestors, the Lower East Side was where my hippie parents chose to raise me…
Jane Ziegelman’s new book “97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement” (Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins) delves into the pantries of the lower East Side in the early 20th century. The book, slated for publication in June, will be released in conjunction with an expansion of the Lower East Side Tenement…
A group of prominent American Jews is circulating an online petition supporting the Obama administration’s “vigorous encouragement” of Israel and the Palestinians to “make the concessions necessary” to advance the peace process. The petition, posted at forthesakeofzion.org, claims to have been inspired by the European Jewish Call for Reason, otherwise known as J Call. A…
Stanford University will introduce a new doctoral concentration in education and Jewish studies, thanks to a $12 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. The grant, which will endow a professorship for the program, is the largest gift in the history of Stanford’s School of Education. The program is expected to launch in January, 2011….
Bravo! To National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s Fun, Haimish and Elegant Gala “I have no enemies in the profession — I’ve outlived them all!” declared stage, film and television actor Fyvush Finkel, who, with director, actor, and playwright Eleanor Reissa, co-hosted the May 2 National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene Gala at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of…
Two weeks after pro-Israel groups in South Africa withdrew threats to picket Richard Goldstone at his grandson’s bar mitzvah, Israeli critics are charging that the former judge “mercilessly” sentenced dozens of blacks to death on behalf of the apartheid era regime during his judicial tenure. The charges, aired in a page-one article in Israel’s largest…
Teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten doesn’t look like a stereotypical union boss. But when the diminutive Jewish lawyer in a black pantsuit and pearl earrings repeatedly banged her fist on a podium to punctuate a defense of her union before a small group of educators in Washington in April, she matched any old-school cigar chomper…
Is it inevitable and altogether obvious that a scholarly conference devoted to Israel studies should be laden with politics? Academia, in its most classical Platonic ideal, confines itself to description and analysis, not to the prescriptive and hypothetical. And yet here, in Toronto, where the annual gathering of the Association for Israel Studies is taking…
The small apartment building at 320 West End Avenue occupies a choice spot on Manhattan’s Upper West Side: a quiet, tree-lined avenue just around the corner from the popular Fairway Market and a block from Riverside Park. The lobby, sparse but elegant, is guarded by a uniformed doorman who welcomes residents as they return home…
נאָך איר מאַנס טויט אין 2003 האָט זי געהאָלפֿן אַרויסגעבן זײַן לעקסיקאָן פֿון די ייִדישע שרײַבער אין ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד.
