New York City mayor Eric Adams has announced the appointment of Fabien Levy as deputy mayor for communications. As the city’s first Persian Jewish deputy mayor, Levy will coordinate communications across all of city government, assuring that city agencies will speak with a unified message to New Yorkers. “Since I was a kid, I knew it was my responsibility to give back, to help others, and — like the Jewish tenet “tikkun olam” translates — [...]
The writer Sarah Bernstein has been longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize for her second novel, Study For Obedience. The bold and unsettling novel, published in July, explores themes of prejudice, guilt and criminality from the perspective of the unnamed Jewish narrator. Bernstein, who is Jewish and whose grandparents came from Eastern Europe and who lost family members in the Holocaust, explores the complicated question of where she comes from through the book’s narrator. Born [...]
Brad Mahlof, a kosher chef, showcases his Libyan-Jewish heritage on the PBS show, “The Great American Recipe.” He always thought of cooking as a hobby, but when asked by the producers of the show to be a contestant, he accepted the challenge. “There is basically zero representation of Libyan Jews in the United States, so to have my recipes featured is a great way to show the world how beautiful our culture and food are,” [...]
Robert Bowers, the gunman who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers will be sentenced to death for perpetrating the deadliest antisemitic attach in U.S. history, as jury decided on August 2. Bowers spewed hatred of Jews and espoused white supremacist beliefs online before methodically planning and carrying out the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where members of three congregations had gathered for Shabbat [...]
David Eldar, a 27-year-old Scrabble player from Melbourne, Australia, last month beat players from 26 countries in a competition held in Nottingham, England, to take the title World Scrabble Champion. He won the title from Sri-Lankan-born Harshan Lamabadusurilya 3-0 in the best of five finals. The winning game featured such words as asinicos, obvs and troelies, but the winning word was “carrels,” which gave Eldar 74 points, based on placement and honors, and about $10,000 [...]
James Snyder, executive chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation and the former director of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, has been named director of New York’s Jewish Museum, effective this November. “In addition to its deep and far-ranging collections, dynamic exhibition programming, and professional expertise, what drew me to the museum is the opportunity it offers to anchor Jewish world culture in the context of the times and places where it has flourished globally,” Snyder said.
The Shofar joins the membership in mourning the death of shul member Myra Gans. We extend condolences to her husband, Arnold, and the family.
Richard Barancik, the last surviving member of the Allied unit known as the Monuments Men and Women, which during and after WWII preserved a vast amount of European artwork and cultural treasures that had been looted and hidden by Nazi Germany, died on July 14 in Chicago. He was 98. The Monuments Men and Women were composed of about 350 people — among them museum directors, curators, scholars, historians and artists — whose missions included [...]
Louise Levy, along with hundreds of others ages 95 and older, was part of a study by the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine to understand how their genetic makeup led to their good physical and cognitive health during extremely long lives. She died on July 17 in Greenwich, CT. She was 112. She had been the oldest known living person in New York State, according to LongeviQuest, which maintains [...]
James B. Zagel, who as a federal judge sentenced former Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich to 14 years in prison for corruption and who earlier helped prosecute Richard Speck for the grisly killings of eight Chicago student nurses, died on July 15 at his home in Chicago. He was 82. The case against Rod Blagojevich centered on allegations that he had tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois that had been vacated by [...]
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