Editor’s Note: This essay, originally published by the Forward on May 17, 2020, won this year’s Deadline Club award for arts reporting. Philip Roth and Russ Murdock trudged through the woods behind Roth’s Litchfield, Conn., home, looking for Roth’s tombstone. It was summer, 2008 or 2009. The crickets were singing. The estate, a 200-year-old former…
This is the first of three articles on the Iraqi Jewish Archive. Next, read part two, “In Exile, Iraqi Jews Are Desperate To Reclaim Their Artifacts — But So Is Iraq,” and part three, “The Iraqi Jewish Archive Could Reshape Foreign Policy. But Its Future Is Uncertain.” On a leafy parkway in the Jamaica section…
Menachem Bombach is waiting behind the gate outside his school building on a dusty hilltop: long black coat, short beard, thin-rimmed glasses, the look of a refined yeshiva student, hands folded in front of him. He smiles and says, “Welcome, welcome!” It’s hard to believe that this gentleman’s home has become the site of frequent…
For centuries, world travelers dreamed of finding distant Jewish tribes in the faraway corners of their known world — over the mountains, in remote villages, practicing customs preserved in isolation. Today, a quick Google search will do. In Facebook groups and on Skype, on Whatsapp and Instagram, communities from Africa, Asia and the Americas gather…
My grandmother grew up in a big house on a hill in Fort Kent, Maine, a few hundred yards from the Canadian border. The house had a porch and a turret and, in the bathroom, a Jewish ritual bath. My grandmother’s mother was a religious fanatic. Her father, Jake Etscovitz, was the Potato King. Though…
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