The New York Jewish Week

11/07/2025

Fans of Sami & Susu, the Mediterranean-inspired Lower East Side wine bar and restaurant that opened during the pandemic, will be happy to know that its Jewish owners have opened a lower priced, more casual spinoff just a few blocks away.

Shifka at 324 Bowery offers elevated Israeli-style street food — like pita stuffed with schnitzel, Yemenite hot sauce, pickles, hot pepper and red cabbage, drizzled with creamy Har Bracha tahini.

“Since Oct. 7, we emphasize more our Israeli and Jewish identity with the food that we do,” co-owner Amir Nathan said.

11/07/2025

Israeli film director Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s latest film, “The Sea,” is about a young Palestinian boy from the West Bank who is denied a permit to visit Tel Aviv with his classmates. Longing to see the Mediterranean, he courts danger as he sets out to make the journey on his own.

The Arabic-language drama was released in Israel in July; in September, it won five Ophir Awards — Israel’s version of the Oscars — including for best picture, which means “The Sea” is also Israel’s submission into the Academy Awards for best international feature film.

And now, “The Sea” made its North American premiere on Thursday at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan.

The Arabic-language film, Israel’s Academy Award submission this year, has ignited criticism on the left and the right. On Thursday, it opens the Other Israel Film Festival in Manhattan.

11/06/2025

a little NYC vernacular lesson for the day ✏️

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10/31/2025

New York City Mayor Eric Adams used his podium in City Hall Thursday to take aim at an anti-Israel art installation that appeared on Governors Island over the weekend.

In a virtual address, Adams also took thinly veiled aim at Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner to replace him after next week’s election, suggesting that the kind of antisemitism that he said had festered even under his leadership would explode under Mamdani’s.

Adams’ address centered on an installation, housed in the House 11 cabin owned by the Trust for Governors Island and occupied by Swale, a floating food forest nonprofit, that featured paintings that included the words “F—k Israel Ln” and “Hamas Lover.”

Adams also used his address to rail against those who “refuse to condemn” the phrase “globalize the intifada,” an apparent reference to Zohran Mamdani.

10/30/2025

Less than a week after rushing to Ground Zero as a police chaplain on 9/11, Rabbi Alvin Kass led Rosh Hashanah services — not only for his Brooklyn congregation but at a makeshift synagogue at LaGuardia Airport for emergency responders who had flooded into New York City after the terrorist attacks.

“It was,” he would later say, “the most meaningful religious service in my career.”

Kass died early Wednesday at 89 as the longest-serving chaplain in the New York Police Department, with a career that included responses to global terrorism, local violence and the intimate needs of police officers — as well as a hostage crisis that he famously resolved with a non-kosher pastrami sandwich.

Kass once disarmed a hostage-taker with pastrami sandwiches from the Carnegie Deli.

10/29/2025

Go figure: A non-Jewish, non-Zionist politician has sparked a national Jewish conversation about the role of the rabbi.

If elected next week, the 34-year-old progressive Zohran Mamdani would be the first mayor of New York City who came up through the trenches of pro-Palestinian activism, and the first to reject the idea that being mayor to a city with 1 million Jews means being a supporter of Israel.

That has put pressure on rabbis throughout the five boroughs and beyond to take a stand.

Amid a heated New York City mayoral race, two influential clergy weigh in on a question vexing synagogues.

10/28/2025

"If you think the choice for mayor is simple, I respectfully suggest that you are not paying attention," writes Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Reform movement.
"I implore our Jewish community and all New Yorkers to carefully consider the many urgent issues our city faces before casting your vote. The stakes couldn’t be higher."

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Reform movement, weighs in.

10/27/2025

A recently acquired self-portrait by Marc Chagall, a letter from George Washington to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island and more are on display in The Jewish Museum's new third and fourth floors.

A recently acquired self-portrait by Marc Chagall, a letter from George Washington to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island and more are on display in the museum's new third and fourth floors.

10/26/2025

“There's such a deep history of Jewish activism in the women's rights movement,” playwright Bess Wohl said of her inspiration for the character of Susan.

The most badass feminist on Broadway is proudly and openly Jewish. Her name is Susan and she is a character in Tony Award nominee Bess Wohl’s play “Liberation,” which is about a consciousness raising group in Ohio, set against the larger backdrop of the 1970s women’s liberation movement. Aft...

10/25/2025

Greenpoint, Brooklyn is known for many things: its extensive waterfront, a tight-knit Polish community and a vibrant arts scene.

One thing it’s not known for: a thriving Jewish community. But that’s rapidly changing.

The Greenpoint Shul — North Brooklyn’s only non-Haredi, brick-and-mortar synagogue — is today home to some 100 member families. That’s twice as many members as just 16 months ago, according to Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, who has led the community since August 2024.

Newly incorporated by the Greenpoint Shul, a mom-and-pop, twice-a-week school aims to serve all of North Brooklyn's Jewish community.

10/24/2025

Around 6:15 a.m. on a recent Thursday, Rabbi Moshe Tauber parked his van in the merge lane of the Henry Hudson Parkway at 72nd Street. He turned on his hazard lights and ran out of the vehicle with a flashlight. His wife, Chaya, sitting in the passenger seat, watched anxiously.

Tauber, 51, turned his head upward, shined his flashlight on the nylon fishing wire strung up 30 feet from the ground between two poles, and ran back to the car. All clear — the boundary was unbroken.

For the past 25 years, this process has been the rabbi’s routine on both Thursday and Friday mornings: leaving his home in Monsey, an Orthodox enclave in Rockland County, hours before sunrise in order to circumnavigate the entire island of Manhattan.

Moshe Tauber circles Manhattan each week to inspect its eruv, the symbolic boundary that allows Jews to carry items on Shabbat. Now, new wireless sensors assist him with the task.