The first time I heard that Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala had adopted the “quenelle” as his trademark, my first thought was that the controversial French comedian had a strange affinity for fish. That’s because a quenelle, in my mind, refers not to an anti-Semitic inverted Nazi salute, but to a delicious dish from the south of…
This is the second post in a series by Johnna Kaplan exploring aspects of Jewish life outside of her own experience. I have always been wary of Gefilte fish. It’s fish, but not quite. It lurks in jars in the supermarket, looking deceptively like delicious matzoh balls, only it isn’t. I have seen it defined…
In the late 1800s a saloon owner named Kate Hester purportedly defied Pittsburgh’s new licensing laws by running a secret establishment where locals in the know could drink and enjoy the company of friends and strangers. When the evening’s festivities got too loud — as the story goes — Hester would hush the crowd by…
We asked, you barked back. After ranking the “Top Jewish Dogs of All Time” last week, we thought it was time to go a little closer to home. And so, behold the top Jewish dogs in North America, as sent in by our readers. We were overwhelmed by the amount of submissions and the enthusiasm…
Isaiah Mustafa, commonly known as “Old Spice Man,” the half naked ideal of masculinity used to sell deodorant, has gone Semitic. In a new commercial targeted to Israeli men who are, in his words, “brave, noble and magnificent,” and “eat manly foods like shawarma, matbucha and gefilte fish,” Mustafa takes machismo to a whole new…
In 1938, with 58 home runs for the Tigers, Hank Greenberg’s mother made him a promise. “There’s a rumor that if Hank had hit 60 home runs, which would either tie or beat Babe Ruth’s record, my mother-in-law would do whatever one does with gefilte fish. Cook it, bake it, stuff it,” Marilyn Greenberg, Hank’s…
Occupying a prominent place in the dustbin of Jewish history is the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, the founding document of Reform Judaism — the one that abolished the kosher laws, kippot, tallitot and bar mitzvahs, and renounced Zionism. The reaction against the Pittsburgh Platform was fierce and immediate — the nearly instantaneous founding of Conservative…
Perched on a massive dais at Manhattan’s tony Four Seasons restaurant, Edgar M. Bronfman and wife Jan Aronson talked up their new “Bronfman Haggadah” at a crowded reception this week. “Passover’s the one night of the year when children come to the table without being pissed off,” joked Bronfman, whose writings Aronson illustrated in her…
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