The New York Jewish Week

01/28/2025

Chris Campbell loves Jewish food. Known in some online circles as the “babka king,” he’s also quite fond of other Ashkenazi Jewish staples like rugelach, latkes and knishes.

These foods, of course, are undoubtedly delicious. But what makes Campbell’s passion unique is that he isn’t Jewish — and he hadn’t even heard of most of these foods until earlier this year.

Chris Campbell has attracted legions of fans for his heartwarming videos about him trying — and loving — Jewish dishes.

01/27/2025

CUNY prof Ari Richter (one of our '36 to Watch' in 2024) talks about "dark tourism" to Holocaust sites and his own family's Shoah inheritance.


https://jta.org/2025/01/26/ideas/a-gift-shop-at-auschwitz-new-films-and-a-graphic-memoir-explore-the-contradictions-of-dark-tourism via

Millennial authors and filmmakers add their voices to a growing genre about Holocaust heritage tours.

01/27/2025

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

A project of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island, a billboard in Times Square aims to draw attention to the experiences and stories of New York’s dwindling population of survivors.

A project of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island, the billboard aims to draw attention to the experiences and stories of New York’s dwindling population of survivors.

01/27/2025

The Park Slope eatery, Miriam, was was vandalized early Sunday with red lettering that said “GENOCIDE CUISINE” and “ISRAEL STEALS CULTURE.” By brunch, the place was packed.

The Park Slope eatery was was vandalized early Sunday with red lettering that said “GENOCIDE CUISINE” and “ISRAEL STEALS CULTURE.” By brunch, the place was packed.

01/25/2025

Jewish comedian Gary Gulman answers our 18 questions.
His new one man show, “Grandiloquent,” playing at the West Village’s Lucille Lortel Theatre through Feb. 8, is both deeply personal and extremely Jewish.

01/23/2025

The display is part of the first-ever full-scale replica of Frank’s annex — and includes more than 100 original artifacts related to the Frank family, many of which have never before been shown publicly.

Unlike the original in Amsterdam, “Anne Frank: The Exhibition” contains relics of the teenaged diarist’s life.

01/23/2025

Menachem Rosensaft, the son of Holocaust survivors, challenges the comforting messages of Judaism’s best-known collection of verse in a new book of poetry, “Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai After Auschwitz.”

Menachem Rosensaft, the son of survivors, challenges the comforting messages of Judaism’s best-known collection of verse.

01/22/2025

New York’s twice-yearly Restaurant Week is back for its 2025 winter edition, featuring hundreds of restaurants offering special prix fixe menus from Tuesday, Jan. 21 through Sunday, Feb. 9.

This year, there are no kosher restaurants on the list. Fortunately, however, there are several participating Israeli, Jewish and Jew-ish spots that are offering special menus that range from $30 for a two-course lunch to $60 for a three-course dinner.

Grab a multi-course meal at these Jew-ish establishments for as little as $30 through Sunday, Feb. 9.

01/22/2025

If you've attended a Passover seder in the United States over the past 50 years, there's a decent chance you've eaten a Joyva product. Their Jell Rings, Marshmallow Twists and other sweets have been staples on American Jewish tables for as long as your bubbe can remember.

It all started with Nathan Radutzky, who immigrated from a small town outside of Kyiv to New York City in 1906. The following year, he started selling halvah in a pushcart on the Lower East Side. Over 115 years later, Radutzky's legacy lives on. And now, the company, which still produces its Jewish sweets in the same factory building in Brooklyn, has revamped its brand to appeal to younger generations.

In this special New York Jewish Week event, you'll learn more about Joyva's past, present and future through an online conversation with a few of Nathan's descendants, who still own the company. At least one lucky registrant will also win a gift basket of Joyva treats! https://buff.ly/3DNAF95

01/21/2025

Jewish New Yorkers have been gathering on Saturday evenings at the Marlene Meyerson JCC since the Israel-Hamas War began. But this weekend, the mood was different.

On any given Saturday, attendees gather to join their voices, say prayers, light a candle and smell the sweet potpourri that signals the beginning of a new week, all while keeping in mind those who are still held captive in Gaza. But this weekend’s convening felt different, because the havdalah service also served symbolically as the beginning of what attendees hope will be the conclusion of 15 months of deadly war.

Jewish New Yorkers have been gathering on Saturday evenings at the Marlene Meyerson JCC since the Israel-Hamas War began. But this weekend, the mood was different.

01/20/2025

The chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary remembers when her father, a rabbi, joined the March on Washington, and the sermon he gave on moral clarity.

01/19/2025

Jewish stand-up comedian Gary Gulman is trying a new approach in his new, one-man off-Broadway show, “Grandiloquent." His new show, playing at the West Village’s Lucille Lortel Theatre through Feb. 8, is both deeply personal and extremely Jewish.

"Grandiloquent," playing at the West Village's Lucille Lortel Theatre through Feb. 8, is both deeply personal and extremely Jewish.

01/18/2025

For many Jewish fans who collect baseball cards, the joy of opening a new pack and finding a Jewish player is second to none. That was Seymour Stoll’s experience years ago when he drew a Sandy Koufax card at 14 years old.

Inspired by that sense of pride, Stoll set out to collect the cards of every Jewish player in baseball history — around 200 total. More than 50 years later, his complete collection is going up for auction at Sotheby’s on Jan. 25, with an estimated price of $500,000 to $700,000.

The collection, estimated to sell for more than $500,000, only starts with Sandy Koufax.

01/17/2025

For six years, singer and actor Ari Axelrod has been performing a one-man musical show about Jews and Broadway in front of sold-out audiences around the country.

In “A Place For Us: A Celebration of Jewish Broadway,” Axelrod, 30, sings Broadway standards from famous Jewish composers, including “Cool” from “West Side Story” (Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim) and “Some Enchanted Evening” from “South Pacific” (by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein). He intersperses singing with stories about the songs and the composers, and he also talks about Jewish resilience.

And now, Axelrod, who lives on the Upper West Side, is releasing a studio recording of songs in the show. “A Place for Us” is out today on PS Classics, a label that puts out Broadway soundtracks. Axelrod will celebrate the album’s release with a performance at Midtown’s 54 Below cabaret club on Saturday.

“A Place for Us” shines a musical spotlight on Jewish stories and composers.

01/17/2025

In the early 1920s, a Jewish filmmaker set out to create a movie that would counter the rising antisemitism of the time.

The result was “Breaking Home Ties,” a silent film about Russian Jewish immigrants in the Lower East Side that depicts Jews and Jewish practice in a sensitive light. “Breaking Home Ties” premiered at the Astor Hotel near Times Square in 1922. For its time, it was seen as a rare, well-rounded depiction of Jewish characters, and a glimpse into the lives of struggling immigrants.

Shortly after its premiere, however, “Breaking Home Ties” vanished into obscurity. That is, until it was discovered in a film archive in Berlin in 1984. And now, after an extensive restoration over the span of decades, “Breaking Home Ties” will once again hit the silver screen as part of the New York Jewish Film Festival, which opens tomorrow with a screening of “Midas Man,” a film about the Beatles’ Jewish manager, Brian Epstein.

Newly restored with a modern score, “Breaking Home Ties” screens as part of the New York Jewish Film Festival, which opens Thursday.

01/16/2025

As if Upper West Siders hadn’t gone through enough with the closure of Absolute Bagels, Silver Moon Bakery — a go-to spot for challah for the last 25 years — is at risk of eviction according to court documents in a lawsuit filed by its landlord.

The crisis represents a one-two punch for locals still reeling from the abrupt closure of Absolute Bagels.

01/15/2025

Six men who were arrested in an attempt to dig a tunnel into the Brooklyn headquarters of the Chabad Hasidic movement accepted plea deals on Monday, while four others opted to go to trial.

The guilty pleas were the latest stage in the Chabad tunnel saga, which burst into view one year ago when a fracas broke out at a synagogue in the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.

The judge also scolded the defendants in the courtroom.

01/14/2025

Celebrated Jewish writer Franz Kafka may have written his most famous works, including the novella “The Metamorphosis,” in German, his mother tongue.

But Kafka was proficient in other languages, too, including Hebrew — a fact that some scholars point to when making the case that his Jewishness played a large role in his creative life. And now, visitors to “Franz Kafka,” an exhibit currently on display at the Morgan Library and Museum in Midtown, have the opportunity to view some of Kafka’s original Hebrew writings.

“Franz Kafka,” an exhibition at Midtown’s Morgan Library and Museum, includes “unique literary and biographical material.”