JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Howard Schranz wants to know the origin and exact meaning of the Yiddish word nebekh. “When I was 11,” he writes, “after my father, a”h, died, I heard a lot of nebekh thrown my way. I know it meant something like, ‘It’s pitiful,’ and I quickly tired of being called that. Show some sympathy if…
Joel Rooks was raised in Swampscott, Mass., in a Jewish family that owned a women’s retail clothing store. George Nathan Birnbaum grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family at 259 Rivington St., on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Birnbaum grew up, took the stage name George Burns and became a star of vaudeville, films and television….
The Library of Congress [has launched][1] an online “National Jukebox” of some 10,000 historical recordings. The New York Times profiles guitarist Gary Lucas on the occasion of his new CD, “The Ordeal of Civility.” Argentine artist Marta Minujine has built a 25-meter Tower of Babel out of 30,000 books. A student remembers Yeshiva University economics…
