The Most Haunted Leading Man

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you articles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

In ‘Son of Saul,’ actor Géza Röhrig defies our every expectation of a Holocaust movie hero

By Vox Tablet

The antithesis of nearly every Holocaust movie ever made, the Hungarian film Son of Saul is slim on happy endings. Directed by László Nemes, it tells the story of a member of the Sonderkommando, the Jews who ushered their co-religionists off the trains into the showers and who, after the gassings, cleared those showers out to ready them for the next batch of victims. Saul, portrayed by Géza Röhrig, is shaken out of his numbness and despair by the body of a child who survives the gassing and suddenly, amid the true-life rebellion of the Sonderkommando in October 1944, engages in his own form of resistance.

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Paul Simon: Words and Music

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

By Barbara Pash for Hadassah Magazine

From “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Mrs. Robinson” to “The Sound of Silence,” the songs of Paul Simon have become classics in the American songbook. The Jewish Museum of Maryland is the first stop on a nationwide tour that celebrates the career and creative process of one of the country’s greatest singer/songwriters via 80 artifacts, photographs, recorded songs and videotaped performances.

The exhibit debuted in October in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. The Hall of Fame created it to mark the 50th anniversary of Simon’s career. Twice inducted into the Hall of Fame, he is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and winner of 12 Grammy Awards (three of which were albums of the year), among other honors. Simon was involved in the exhibit, for which he recorded an original narrative.

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Today is Zot Chanukah

From OU Staff Writer

The “simple” explanation for this special name for the last day of Chanuka is the Torah reading from the end of Parshat Naso that emphatically announces ZOT CHANUKAT HA-MIZBEI’ACH (when the Torah is summing up the gifts of all the Tribal Leaders.

There is another, deeper meaning to the name. If you want to really know what Chanukah is all about, the answer is THIS, THE EIGHTH DAY OF CHANUKAH – the fact that there are 8 days of Chanukah – ZOT CHANUKAH, this is what Chanukah means. It means EIGHT. EIGHT is our answer to the Greek challenge. They said nature is perfect. They said it is a mutilation of the body to be circumcised. And they forbid us to fulfill that great mitzva of ours, under pain of death. EIGHT represents the step beyond TEVA, beyond nature. MILA on the 8th day represents our challenge to go beyond how we were created and take charge of the completion of our physical and spiritual form. The Mikdash began to function on its higher spiritual level on the EIGHTH day. The Greeks tried to take that away from us too. Torah was given to us on the day following seven sevens. It is an EIGHTH too. And the Greeks tried to take that from us also. With G-d’s help, we prevailed over the Greeks and the triumph is celebrated with an 8 day holiday. This is Chanukah. ZOT CHANUKAH.

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9 Things You Didn’t Know About Hanukkah

MyJewishLearning.com
Hanukkah, which starts at sundown on Sunday, Dec. 6, is one of the most widely celebrated Jewish holidays in the United States. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing new to learn about this eight-day festival. From the mysterious origins of gelt to an Apocryphal beheading to Marilyn Monroe, we’ve compiled an item for each candle (don’t forget the shammash!) on the Hanukkah menorah.

1. Gelt as we know it is a relatively new tradition — and no one knows who invented it.
While coins – “gelt” is Yiddish for coins, or money – have been part of Hanukkah observance for centuries, chocolate gelt is considerably younger. In her book On the Chocolate Trail, Rabbi Deborah Prinz writes that “opinions differ” concerning the origins of chocolate gelt: Some credit America’s Loft candy company with creating it in the 1920s, while others suggest there were European versions earlier that inspired Israel’s Elite candy company. Prinz notes, as well, that chocolate gelt resembles a European Christmas tradition of exchanging gold-covered chocolate coins “commemorating the miracles of St. Nicholas.”

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Why Chanukah matters

How a ‘minor’ holiday unites us, warns against assimilation and helps us feel American

by Jared Sichel for JewishJournal

 There’s a certain narrative about Chanukah that has become near conventional wisdom among American Jews, and it goes like this:

Chanukah is a fun holiday that is big in America, thanks to its proximity to Christmas. But really, it’s a “minor” holiday that is more impactful culturally and sociologically than religiously, and it can’t really compare to the “big” ones of Yom Kippur and Passover.

And that’s all true. But it’s also too simple.   

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Where Chanukah Is Really Big

Hilary Danailova for The Jewish Week   

A little light is nice — but since everything is on a grander scale in Houston, winter truly is a festival of lights, thousands of them, for Chanukah and beyond. You’ll find them twinkling from the windows of houses; illuminating trees and streetlamps in the city’s many characteristic neighborhoods;

the Ann and Stephen Kaufman Jewish Book & Arts Fair at the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center, where 10,000 Houstonians annually attend two weeks of literary talks, films, performances, and other cultural programs. Only this weekend, alongside three films, you can catch a concert of Mediterranean folk music by the Berlin-Tel Aviv band Baladino; a culinary demonstration for “The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook”; and an evening with New Yorker cartoonist Bruce Eric Kaplan exclusively for 20- and 30-somethings.
   
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Mike Nussbaum, the Oldest Working Jewish Actor, Tells All

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

Laura Hodes for The Jewish Daily Forward   

At 91, Mike Nussbaum has been called the oldest professional actor in theater. He’s currently playing the role of Gregory Solomon in Arthur Miller’s 1968 play “The Price” at the Timeline Theatre in Chicago. After spending about 17 years in the exterminating business, Nussbaum got his acting start with playwright David Mamet, eventually appearing in Broadway productions of “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “American Buffalo.” In Chicago, Nussbaum is a theater legend, and the role of Solomon — a Russian-American furniture dealer — seems almost as though it was written specifically for him.

“In brief, a phenomenon,” Miller wrote of Solomon in his notes for the play. “(He is) a man nearly ninety but still straight-backed and the air of his massiveness still with him. He has perfected a way of leaning on his cane without appearing weak.”

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Deaf star of new ‘Spring Awakening’ explains how her bat mitzvah led to her Oscar

 With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

By Curt Schleier for JTA.org

When the rock musical “Spring Awakening” premiered on Broadway, it was a critical darling and financial success. It won almost every major award possible, including eight Tonys, four Drama Desk Awards and even a Grammy.

So perhaps it’s not so surprising that it’s been revived on Broadway, even if it’s only been six years since it ended its successful run.

Certainly more startling, though, is that the current production of “Spring Awakening” features a cast of deaf actors signing their lines — and songs.

Even one of the show’s most high-profile stars, Marlee Matlin, concedes that people might consider the idea — deaf actors performing a musical — a bit strange.

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Author Interview // Jennifer Weiner

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

Moment Magazine

That’s No Way to Treat a ‘Lady Book’

What makes great literature? Do Jeffrey Eugenides and Stephen King write beach reads or books worthy of the canon—or both? And where do women writers fit in? One of the biggest advocates for breaking down barriers between popular and critically revered books is a writer whose trademark is creating quirky Jewish women who worry about their weight and eventually find true love—and themselves in the process. The author of 12 novels that have sold more than four and a half million copies, Jennifer Weiner has leveraged her fame—and her 100,000-plus Twitter followers—to lead the charge against what she sees as a bias against fiction written by and for women. Even people who don’t read her books know her as a thorn in the side of the publishing world.

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Fred Savage: Child star-turned-director returns to acting in ‘The Grinder’

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With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

by Gerri Miller for JewishJournal

He looks almost as boyish as when he played Kevin Arnold on “The Wonder Years,” but Fred Savage is now 39, a married father of three, and three decades into a TV and movie career that has kept him steadily employed as an actor and director. Working mostly behind the scenes in the last 10 years, directing series such as “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Modern Family” and “2 Broke Girls” while doing animation voiceovers, Savage unexpectedly finds himself back in front of the camera this season in Fox’s comedy “The Grinder.”

Sent the script by executive producer and friend Nick Stoller, Savage was surprised to learn he wasn’t wanted as a director. The job: playing attorney Stewart Sanderson, whose older brother, Dean (Rob Lowe), returns home to Idaho and thinks he can join the family law firm without passing the bar just because he’s played a legal eagle on TV. Dean’s faux expertise proves to be invaluable, much to Stewart’s bewildered exasperation.

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Sofia Mechetner, the new face of Dior, is a 14 year old Israeli from Holon

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

By ck for Jewlicious

How did someone with no modelling experience go from caring for her siblings and helping her Mom clean homes and offices to being THE face of Christian Dior? 14-year-old Sofia Mechetner’s meteoric and unprecedented rise to the pinnacle of fashion modelling is a modern day fairy tale featuring ups and downs, twists and turns, culminating in a very happy ending. Bear with me, this is a crazy story as documented in a video (Hebrew) by Channel 2.

Sofia’s Russian born parents divorced and her father left the family 4 years ago. Sofia’s mother was forced to work at all hours as a cleaning woman, earning a paltry 4000 shekels a month (just over $1000). This was barely enough to keep her 3 children fed and housed in a one bedroom apartment in Holon, a suburb just outside Tel-Aviv. Sofia stood 5’8″ and on an almost daily basis, people told her to try her hand at either basketball or modeling.

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When Ben Bernanke Dealt With Questions About Jewish 'Horns'

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

by Ron Kampeas for The Jewish Daily Forward

(JTA) — Ben Bernanke dealt with prejudice as a Jew crowing up in South Carolina — including being asked if he had horns — according to his new memoir.

Several times, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve writes, elementary school classmates asked “quite innocently, I believe” whether he had horns.

“Growing up in Dillon [in South Carolina], the son of the town’s druggist, Bernanke describes himself as “bookish and shy and often on my own.” As a Jew, Bernanke says he was something of an outsider.

But the real prejudice in town, he says, was directed at African-Americans.

Bernanke’s 600-page memoir, “The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath,” also includes plenty of juicy tidbits about “too big to fail” moments during the 2008 crisis.

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Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah 101

MyJewishLearning.com

Coming at the conclusion of Sukkot are the two holidays of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. In Israel and among liberal Jews they are combined into one holiday on the day after the conclusion of Sukkot. Among more traditional Jews outside of Israel, they are observed separately from one another on two consecutive days. Shemini Atzeret means the “Eighth Day of Assembly,” while Simchat Torah means “Rejoicing in Torah.”

 History

Shemini Atzeret is mentioned in the Bible, but its exact function is unclear. In Second Temple times, it appears to have been a day devoted to the ritual cleansing of the altar in the Temple. With the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, this function of the day became obsolete. Although it marks the beginning of the rainy season in Israel and, therefore includes the year’s first prayer for rain, its lack of clear definition may have provided the impetus to celebrate it in conjunction with Simchat Torah, a celebration of the conclusion of one and the beginning of another annual cycle of readings from the Torah. This latter holiday probably originated during the medieval period.

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Sukkot 101

MyJewishLearning.com

Beginning five days after Yom Kippur, Sukkot is named after the booths or huts (sukkot in Hebrew) in which Jews are supposed to dwell during this week-long celebration. According to rabbinic tradition, these flimsy sukkot represent the huts in which the Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after escaping from slavery in Egypt. The festival of Sukkot is one of the three great pilgrimage festivals (chaggim or regalim) of the Jewish year.

History

The origins of Sukkot are found in an ancient autumnal harvest festival. Indeed it is often referred to as hag ha-asif, “The Harvest Festival.” Much of the imagery and ritual of the holiday revolves around rejoicing and thanking God for the completed harvest. The sukkah represent the huts that farmers would live in during the last hectic period of harvest before the coming of the winter rains. As is the case with other festivals whose origins may not have been Jewish, the Bible reinterpreted the festival to imbue it with a specific Jewish meaning. In this manner, Sukkot came to commemorate the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert after the revelation at Mount Sinai, with the huts representing the temporary shelters that the Israelites lived in during those 40 years.

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On Yom Kippur, must we ask forgiveness for communal wrongs?

by Edmon J. Rodman, JTA, JewishJournal.com

On Yom Kippur, as we focus on our personal faults, how do we acknowledge those shortcomings that are more communal?

In synagogue, reciting line by line the Al Chet prayer, seeking atonement for the areas of our lives where in the past year we have fallen short, events in the news, even those that may have touched our lives, seem far away and better off resolved by the talking heads of the cable news.

Beating our chest for each “chet,” we ask God in page after painful page to forgive us for “rashly judging others,” “scorning parents and teachers,” even engaging in “idle chatter” and “forbidden trysts.” Isn’t that enough?

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This Rosh Hashanah, I Challenge You to Focus on the Positives

Nina Badzin for Kveller

Two essential parts of preparing for Rosh Hashanah, our clean slate for the year, is asking forgiveness from anyone we wronged and making a list (mental or written) of the ways we fell short since the last time we heard the shofar. Ideally that hard work of going to friends, family, and anyone else deserving of our forgiveness happens in the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah. By the time Yom Kippur rolls around 10 days later, we should be ready to confess our mistakes as a community, having already considered our personal paths to a teshuva, repentance, and how we will do better this year.

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Wholehearted Devotion

Rabbi Jacob Staub for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a time for teshuvah—returning to the divinely commanded path, the Torah, that was revealed at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20), from which we have each invariably strayed over the course of the year. According to Jewish traditions, the Torah includes 613 commandments.

Why aren’t Jews overwhelmed by the sheer number of commandments?  Why don’t Jews feel condemned by the need to observe of the commandments, as Paul assumed to be the case in his Epistles?

The approach of Hasidic teachers to this question may be helpful to all people who seek to commune with the divine presence.  They observe that the biblical verse, Cursed be the one who does not observe and do the terms of the Torah (Deuteronomy 27: 26) makes no sense, because nobody is able to observe all 613 commandments.

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Preparing for the High Holidays

for ReformJudaism.org

As summer winds down and the back-to-school season approaches, so, too, do the High Holidays. Jewish tradition provides us with several reminders of the upcoming Days of Awe, as well as a number of ways we can prepare for them.

The days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are known at the Days of Awe, or Yamim Noraim in Hebrew. During this period, individuals examine their behavior over the past year, consider atonement for misdeeds, and seek a closeness with God. Practically, this is done through repentance, reconciliation, and forgiveness. The Shabbat between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur is known as Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath of Return. The name of this Sabbath is derived from the first words of the week’s haftarah, Shuvah Yisrael, “return, O Israel” (Hosea 14:2). The custom in synagogues in Eastern Europe had been for rabbis to give impassioned pleas for repentance during their sermons on this Shabbat.

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Brooklyn Shofar FlashMob - a blast of Terror

With Rosh Hashanah one month away, this should ease you into a High Holiday frame of mind.

The Youtube video reveals the shofar in a piece of performance art organized by Art Kibbutz that has serious intent.  Some take it as a travesty, a blasphemy...what do YOU think? 


 


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Remembering Arnold Scaasi, Jewish Designer to the Stars

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

Known for his tasteful gaudiness—and Barbra Streisand’s memorable 1969 Oscars outfit—the Montreal-born fashion icon believed you never had to tone down to move up

By Rachel Shukert for Tablet

Arnold Scaasi, the legendary fashion designer whose couture creations graced the backs of the greatest Hollywood stars and ladies who lunched (and for all I know, continue to), died last week at the age of 85. Born to a Jewish family in Montreal (his original last name was Isaacs, the spelling of which he ingeniously reversed in order to achieve a certain Continental flair), Scaasi was known above all for his ornate, highly embellished evening gowns and ensembles—perhaps the most famous of his creations was the sheer Peter Pan-collared pantsuit Barbra Streisand wore to the 1969 Oscars, in which she stumbled on her way to the podium (take that, Jennifer Lawrence, you copycat) to collect her Best Actress Oscar for Funny Girl. You remember it—it has all those black sequined balls hanging off of it and was the kind of drop dead chic that would land her on all the worst-dressed lists in this age of nude mermaid fishtail gowns but will be remembered until the last cockroach eats the last blade of grass on a desiccated Planet Earth.

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Bikel’s Gift As An Actor

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

George Robinson, Special To The Jewish Week

Last week YIVO sent out a very special e-mail. It contained a link to Theodore Bikel’s last public performance, at the organization’s 13th Annual Heritage Luncheon on June 18. Bikel was the principle honoree, recipient of YIVO’s lifetime achievement award, and in a video clip (which can be seen on YouTube) he sits very erect in his wheelchair, guitar on his lap, singing “Di zun vet aruntergeyn/The Sun Soon Will Be Setting.” The song is a collaboration between the great Yiddish poet Moishe Leib Halpern and composer Ben Yomen, but the English adaptation is by Bikel himself, who sings at one point, “we’ll fly/Leaving earth far below/To a land where all longing does go.”

The voice is not as booming as it once was, there is just the slightest tremor, but it is unmistakably Bikel’s and, as always, he doesn’t just sing the song, he inhabits it.

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Yolande, The Egyptian Woman Who Spied For Israel

 With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.
 

By Leah Falk for Jewniverse

Gone are the days, it seems, when one could get recruited for espionage at a cocktail party. (Or maybe we’re just going to the wrong parties.) But that’s what happened to Yolande Harmer, an Egyptian Jewish spy for the Haganah, the precursor to the Israeli Defense Forces, whose intelligence became instrumental to the founding of Israel. A new film directed by Dan Wolman and produced by Harmer’s granddaughter Miel de Botton, Yolande: An Unsung Heroine, tells the story of her extraordinary, often dangerous life.


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Billy Rose Was Showman, Patriot — and Zionist Hero

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

On August 3, 1964, Billy Rose suspected that Teddy Kollek, the future mayor of Jerusalem then working in the Israeli prime minister’s office, was harming his shot at immortality. Rose was furious. His plan for a sculpture garden at the Israel Museum, which turned 50 on May 11, was not just another chance for fame.

Rose knew about fame. Over the past 35 years three movie studios had paid for the rights to his name and life story, and three publishers tried to produce his biography. He had starred on his own television show, written a best-selling memoir, produced a syndicated column that ran in 300 newspapers in 38 countries, attached his name to some of the most popular entertainments of the mid-20th century, married first one of the most famous women in America and next one of the most beautiful, and was steady copy for the scores of columnists, newspapers and magazines that wrote about Rose the songwriter, nightclub owner, theatrical producer, impresario of spectaculars, art collector, stock market investor and multimillionaire.

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Tisha B’Av 2015

Everything you need to know about Tisha B'Av 2015.

By MJL Staff

Tisha B’Av observance* (the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av) begins at sunset on Saturday, July 25, 2015, and continues till the evening of July 26th.

What is Tisha B’Av?
Tisha B’Av is the major day of communal mourning.First and foremost Tisha B’Av commemorates the destruction of both the first and second temples in Jerusalem (586 B.C.E, and 70 C.E respectively), but many other travesties have occured on the same date.

How is Tisha B’Av observed?
On Tisha B’av Eicha (the book of Lamentations) is read with a unique nusah, a special melody.

As a sign of mourning it is customary to fast, refrain from bathing, wearing leather shoes, and having sexual relations.

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*Since Tisha B'Av falls on Shabbat, the fast is observed on Sunday.

The Legacy of the Three Boys

Another story appropriate during The Three Weeks

When Jews from all over the world came together for what really mattered.

by Menachem Joel Spiegel for aish.com

The Jewish nation is one big question mark in history. Having been persecuted throughout the generations, in the natural course of events we should have been gone as a people many years ago. Yet, defying all the odds, the Jewish nation lives and thrives.

This has become known as the “Jewish question.”

Historians have come and gone, each grappling with their own unique theory, but coming to no conclusive answer. Mark Twain, in a particularly famous essay titled “Concerning the Jews,” ended off with a question mark.

“What is the secret of his [the Jew’s] immortality?” were his words. No one since has been able to answer.

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For more information about The Three Weeks and Tisha B'Av, check out our Shavuot & Summer Holiday Kit

Kaddish with Oprah

An uplifting story to start the Three Weeks

Need a minyan? Nothing is too complicated for the Oprah show.

by Simcha Jacobovici

The phone rang in my New York hotel room. It was 1995, and I was saying Kaddish for my late father, of blessed memory, Joseph Jacobovici. I live in Toronto, but I'm a filmmaker, so I move around.

During my eleven months of saying Kaddish, I ended up in various minyans from San Francisco to Halifax. Once I extended a stopover in Detroit and rushed to the basement of an old shul, where I was greeted by nine octogenarians as if I were the Messiah himself. But the phone call in New York was the start of what turned out to be perhaps the most interesting Kaddish experience of them all.

I had just finished a documentary film called "The Selling of Innocents." The film won an Emmy, attracting the attention of Oprah Winfrey, the American icon and celebrated TV host. The producer at the other end of the telephone line asked if I could fly to Chicago and appear with my fellow producers on the Oprah show the day after next.

I was taken aback. This was the Oprah show. The big time. Great publicity for the film, and great promotion for me and my company.
"I'd love to do it," I said, "but I don't think I can."

"Why not?" the producer asked, her voice betraying her surprise. Nobody says "too busy" to the Oprah show.

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The Three Weeks

The three Weeks begins this year on Friday night, July 3, 2015 

(Since it falls on Shabbat, the fast is observed on Sunday, July 5 at dawn)

Overview and laws of the period leading up to Tisha B'Av.

by Rabbi Shraga Simmons for aish.com

The "Three Weeks" between the 17th of Tammuz and the Tisha B'Av have historically been days of misfortune and calamity for the Jewish people. During this time, both the First and Second Temples were destroyed, amongst other terrible tragedies.

These days are referred to as the period "within the straits" (bein hametzarim), in accordance with the verse: "all her oppressors have overtaken her within the straits" (Lamentations 1:3).

On Shabbat during the Three Weeks, the Haftorahs are taken from chapters in Isaiah and Jeremiah dealing with the Temple's destruction and the exile of the Jewish people.

During this time, various aspects of mourning are observed by the entire nation. We minimize joy and celebration. And, since the attribute of Divine judgement (“din”) is acutely felt, we avoid potentially dangerous or risky endeavors.

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The Life and Good Times of Norman Lear

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

The genius behind ‘All in the Family,’ ‘The Jeffersons,’ and other barrier-breaking TV shows talks about his childhood and career

By Vox Tablet

Archie Bunker, George Jefferson, Mary Hartman, Maude Findlay are just a handful of the iconic characters Norman Lear created for television. In his storied career, Lear tackled abortion, cancer, racism, rape, abuse, interracial relationships, single motherhood, alcoholism, and poverty—subjects many shows today won’t even consider as viable fodder for entertainment. Now 92 years old, Lear got his start writing bits for showmen like Danny Thomas and Jerry Lewis before moving into television and film and then embarking on a second career as an activist (he co-founded People for the American Way).

Now Lear has moved into a new medium—print. He has written Even This I Get To Experience, a memoir, and joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss how his father, who was in jail for several years during Lear’s childhood, inspired and deviates from Archie, what compelled him about writing shows about racial and economic disparities, and why Transparent is the best show on television now.

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Mimi Sheraton

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

By Adeena Sussman for Hadassah Magazine

You don’t want to be running late for a first meeting with Mimi Sheraton, but that’s just the predicament I found myself in on a wintry Sunday morning. A New York snowstorm and unexpected subway trouble had conspired against me as I raced down an icy sidewalk to breakfast with the legendary food writer and restaurant critic. In my mind, I imagined the review she would draft of our initial encounter: Distasteful lack of punctuality. Tongue-tied, as if she had just eaten a mouthful of sticky peanut butter. Contrite, like a server apologizing for bad service.

I shouldn’t have worried. i angled my way through a pack of weekend fressers at Russ & Daughters Café on Orchard Street—the sit-down offshoot of the legendary appetizing store on the Lower East Side—to find Sheraton chatting with Danny Bowien, one of New York’s hottest young chefs. Even behind the convenient cover of his hipster glasses, Bowien was clearly as starstruck as I was. Joshua Russ Tepper, a third-generation owner, came over to make sure Sheraton was comfortable, shooting our waiters a silent visual cue: Take care of Mimi.

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