Simcha was the man who sold air from the Holy Land, not to be confused with those unimaginative con artists who sold oil from the Oily Land or water from the Dead Sea.
What Is Your Favorite Jewish Joke—And Why?
Jokes, including the Jewish variety, are a staple of Western civilization. Some Jewish jokes have been around for centuries...
Former Israeli ambassador to the United States, former Knesset member, historian and prolific author Michael Oren discusses his latest novel, To All Who Call in Truth, a story about passion, betrayal, adolescence, and murder, drawing on his own experiences as a teenager growing up in New Jersey in the early 1970s. He also talks about current events in Israel. Michael is in conversation with journalist and bestselling New York Times author A.J. Jacobs.
In 2008, a group of Jewish Democratic political operatives had an idea: If young Jewish voters traveled to Florida, they could convince their hesitant grandparents to vote for Barack Obama, thus ensuring a win in the vital swing state.
Among the pages of a medieval Middle Eastern cookbook lies a 600-year-old recipe with a title equal parts perplexing and alarming: “Meatballs Cursed by Jews.”
Morningside Heights
By Joshua Henkin
Knopf Doubleday; 304 pp.; $26.95
During the early days of the pandemic, I noticed many readers craving dramatic stories in exotic settings to...
At the Museum at Eldridge Street’s Egg Rolls, Egg Creams and Empanadas street festival—a celebration of Ashkenazi Jewish, Chinese and Puerto Rican communities held each summer (pre-pandemic) on New York’s Lower East Side—groups of Chinese Americans and American Jewish women play mahjong side by side, sometimes pausing to teach younger festivalgoers how to play.