Elaine Benes was onto something when she declared “You can’t beat a babka” in a 1994 episode of “Seinfeld” (clip below). Next to brisket and latkes, babka may be the ultimate Jewish comfort food. (For those unfamiliar, babka is yeasty, risen dough that twists around a sweet filling to create striations, or, in laymen’s terms,…
Larry David is a feminist. There I said it. I know, I know, that jerk? Allow me to explain. Yes he is arrogant and frequently offensive, but somewhere amid the solipsism and general buffoonery there is a man who treats women’s bodies and issues with a level of maturity, respect and a rather refreshing matter-of-factness…
Jo Ellen Green Kaiser ponders the death of JDub and the future of new Jewish media, if there is one. How William L. Shirer, author of “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” was a better journalist than historian. Jerusalem celebrates a Woodstock revival. Jerry Seinfeld has joined Twitter. Today is the 17th anniversary of…
Jessica Miglio/HBO Larry David is a clown. Or the last schlemiel who found a way to make Jews the uncomfortable outsiders again. Or a man whose “imbricated” sense of humor “challenges essentialist categories of comic performance,” as well as the tenets of Judaism and Christianity. (By the way, I agree with that take.) And the…
A new website on music and the Holocaust has been launched in Berlin. Simon Dinnerstein discusses his monumental 1970s artwork, “The Fulbright Triptych.” Russian novelist Ludmila Ulitskaya’s “Daniel Stein, Interpreter,” a book that takes its inspiration from the real life Polish Jewish Partisan Oswald Rufeisen, is now available in English. Dutch Jewish novelist and Holocaust…
Jerry Seinfeld plans to release nearly all of his recorded standup on his website, Jerryseinfeld.com, tomorrow. The latest LABA Journal is out, featuring Elissa Strauss on why she won’t marry King David, Basmat Hazan on why we definitely need to pay attention to what David is wearing, and Stephen Hazan Arnoff on Justin Bieber, the…
Garry Kasparov tells us what it’s like to play chess in the shadow of Bobby Fischer. In a 1923 article in The Nation, “Romanian-Jewish-American-Yiddish novelist, journalist, dandy, screwball folklorist of the Gypsies” Konrad Bercovici described “The Greatest Jewish City in the World.” An Israeli forger almost managed to sell a fake Kandinsky for three million…
Joan Rivers and her daughter, Melissa, talk about their upcoming reality TV show. Would you have watched “The Seinfeld Chronicles”? Bob Dylan has signed on with Simon & Schuster to write no less than six new books. Meet Ka’et, a dance troupe of Orthodox Jewish men in Israel. Which raises the question: Why aren’t there…
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