Every year around this time, a handwritten sign goes viral on social media, and appears taped to the windows of many of New York’s Chinese restaurants: “The Chinese Rest. Assoc. of the United States would like to extend our thanks to The Jewish People. We do not completely understand your dietary customs… But we are proud and grateful that your GOD insist you eat our food on Christmas.”

Although it’s not prescribed in Jewish texts that we do anything to observe Christmas, American Jews have a long history of breaking out the chopsticks in late December while Christians are slicing into honey-glazed ham.

According to Joshua Eli Plaut, an American Jewish historian, the first documented instance of a “Jewish Christmas” dates to a 1935 New York Times article that mentions restaurant owner named Eng Shee Chuck who brought lo mein to the Jewish Children’s Home in Newark, NJ. Now, Chinese food is an evergreen staple in many Jewish homes. It has been said that moo shoo is among the first non-English words learned by American Jewish children. In 1936, The East Side Chamber News reported the opening of 18 new Chinese tea gardens and chop suey restaurants within a few blocks of Ratner’s, at the time the most popular kosher dairy restaurant in Manhattan.

Part of the early appeal of Chinese restaurants was the lack of Christian iconography unlike that found in Italian establishments. “And the steamed pot sticker looks like kreplach,” Eli Plaut said.

While the time-honored custom of wonton soup during yuletide has its origins in New York, it is now a national habit for American Jewry. As Jews spread throughout the country, Chinese restaurateurs followed some of their best patrons out to the suburbs.

“The Chinese restaurant has become a place for us to announce our identity, and a place where identity expresses itself in a Jewish way on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,” Plaut said.

[Excerpted from The Forward, by PJ Grisar]

The Toledo Museum of Art had been searching for an object that embodied the connectivity of the pre-modern era. The cup calls attention to the largely forgotten Medieval Jewish community of eastern Khorasan, modern-day Afghanistan. The artifact is wide, flat and often mistaken for a bowl, but according to the curators, that was the shape of wine goblets at the time.

This month, the Toledo, Ohio, Museum of Art Acquired a 12th Century Afghan Kiddish Cup for $4 million, a record for a ceremonial object of Judaica. (The previous high was $1.6 million for a Rothschild Torah Ark.)

“The finely crafted silver cup is the oldest of the 25 Medieval Judaica relics left in the world,” said Sharon Liberman Mintz, International Senior Specialist in Judaica at Sotheby’s, the auction house that handled the sale.

An attacker rammed a car into people outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation, a synagogue in Manchester, England, then went on a stabbing spree on Thursday, Oct. 2, killing two people and wounding three others in what the police called an act of terrorism on Yom Kippur, the holiest Day of the Jewish calendar.

Police said officers responded in minutes and shot and killed the attacker whom they identified as Jihad al-Shamie, 35, a British citizen of Syrian descent.

The violence in Manchester came amid heightened fears across Europe and the United States for the safety of Jews amid a rise in antisemitism related to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

The attack alarmed the Jewish community I Manchester, a multicultural city with large Jewish and Muslim populations, prompting a surge in police protection at Jewish cultural and religious sites across the country.

So, Woody Allen has written a novel. So what. It’s true, more recently, his personal life has overshadowed his brilliance as a scriptwriter and filmmaker, but let’s remember his brilliance as a scriptwriter and filmmaker. So, now that he has written a novel, maybe we should see what he has to say in that novel. This item is not intended for you to rush out and purchase it. But because it’s Woody, and because he is a brilliant scriptwriter and filmmaker, we should note his debut novel. You don’t have to like it…

What’s With Baum centers on a middle-aged Jewish journalist turned novelist and playwright, consumed with anxiety about everything (sound familiar?).  His turgid philosophical books receive tepid reviews, his prestigious New York publisher has dropped him, his third marriage is on the rocks, and in a moment of irrationality, he tried to kiss a pretty young journalist during an interview, and she is threatening to go public with the story. Meanwhile, he learns a startling secret. Aha, a plot device. And a comic novel takes shape.

The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia has returned an Israeli flag to its façade after two incidents of vandalism. The flag, which hangs on an exterior wall of the museum with the words “The Weitzman stands with Israel,” was vandalized with red spray paint.

The museum had planned to swap the damaged flag with a hostage-focused sign, but drew criticism

on the premise that by removing the Israeli flag, the vandals had secured a victory.

“We certainly did not intend to capitulate to vandals,” said Dan Tadmor, the museum’s president. “As the nation’s Jewish museum, there can never be any misunderstanding as to our identity and positions: We are a proudly Jewish and proudly Zionist institution.”

The incidents came amid a string of vandalism at Jewish museums across the country. Last month, swastikas were painted on the Oregon Jewish Museum and the Center for Holocaust Education. At a Jewish art museum in Manhattan, a man wrote the word “Gaza.” A sculpture outside the Brooklyn Museum was tagged with pro-Palestinian phrases.

Behind an inconspicuous wooden door, the Jewish Theological Seminary in downtown Budapest harbors one of the largest and most valuable Jewish book collections in Europe, according to an article in the Sept. 9 issue of The New York Times. But about 20,000 books and many valuable manuscripts have been missing since German troops marched into the city and seized books.

Now more than 80 years later, the books are slowly returning to the 150-year-old seminary, sometimes individually, sometimes in batches. Booksellers, librarians and museums in Europe and from afar are reviewing provenance and returning books. Soon, about 45,000 old and rare books will move into an archival space equipped with the latest technology, a gift from a private foundation.                     Getty Images

Caught On Shabbat at Yankee Stadium: A Personal Story

Do you remember the illicit embrace caught on camera at last summer’s Coldplay concert in Boston? Andy Byron, the former CEO of the tech company Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the company’s chief human resources officer, were embracing on the concert’s kiss cam; both were married to other people at the time. The incident gave me a shudder and sent me back 24 years to when I, too, was caught on live national television — not cheating on a wife, but violating Shabbat.

I was 30 years old, and I had not yet confessed to my parents that I was no longer shomer Shabbat. And on this Shabbat, as I drove to Yankee Stadium with a woman I’d recently begun to date, I had a feeling of unease. There seemed to be a chance that I might end up on national television. Fox cameras were stationed all about for the third game of a playoff between the Yankees and Mariners, and our seats were in the first row behind the left field wall — perfect for catching a home run.

The score was still 2-0 Yankees when their young second baseman, Alfonso Soriano, led off the bottom of the third. He swung at the fourth pitch. “Soriano hits one to deep left field,” called Joe Buck, the announcer.

The ball was soaring toward me. I stood. I then stepped forward and to my right, and I could see Stan Javier, Seattle’s veteran left fielder, running to where I was. He leapt and raised his left arm. I raised my right. My glove was near the top of the wall, but Javier’s arm rose high above it, his glove some two feet above mine. “A leap and a catch,” called Buck. “Stan Javier took a home run away.”

He had taken it away from me. Then I realized that it was Shabbat, and that millions would now know that I was at the stadium in violation of it.

The proof of this Shabbat that I did not go to synagogue was growing with every slow-motion replay of my reach for the ball. Fox had just shown it a third time, and then a fourth in super slow motion.

“How many people were thinking, OK I’m going home with a souvenir,” Buck mused — “especially that guy?” To make clear whom he meant, Buck circled my face.

My mind went to my parents. They did not watch TV on Shabbat. But I feared that someone who did might mention me to them. The next day, the New York Times ran a large photograph of me and Javier. But my face was hidden, and best I knew, no one had told my parents what I’d done.

My real worry was not that my parents would learn I’d violated Shabbat, but rather than they would think I did not want to keep it. In truth, I loved Shabbat — that weekly respite from daily life and its bombardments. I knew I’d return to it. And I did.

A few months ago, I was speaking with my mother. She was dying, and we were filling in missing pieces, things not said before. My mind returned to Yankee Stadium, and I confessed my sin. My mother listened and smiled. “I’m sorry you had to keep that inside,” she said.

So was I.

[Excerpted from an essay by Joshua Prager in The Forward]