Rob Eshman is a senior columnist for the Forward. Follow him on Instagram @foodaism and Twitter @foodaism or email [email protected].
Rob EshmanSenior Columnist
By Rob Eshman
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Opinion The female magician whose most amazing escape was from her father
There’s a moment in “Death Defying Escape,” a new play by comedian Judy Carter, when I realized I’d been tricked. The three-actor production, now running at Hollywood’s intimate Hudson Theater, tracks Carter’s life: as a child growing up in L.A.’s Fairfax district (“We were the poor Jews,” she quips, “we still had our original noses.”);…
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News In L.A., a new exhibit on the American deli reveals some Jewish truths
In the 1930s, there were 5,000 delicatessens in New York City. By way of comparison, Starbucks, which seems to be on every street corner, has 241 outlets in New York. And those delis were much more than just places to get coffee or a pastrami. “I’ll Have What She’s Having,” a new exhibit at the…
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Opinion People actually prefer live Jews, really
Horn’s focus on all the ways society has failed Jews may be electrifying, but ignores a more complicated truth
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Food It’s artichoke season: here’s your harvest dinner menu
My artichokes took a beating in the December storms, which they liked. By last week the wide dusky green leaves and stalks, swollen fat from all the water, produced bouquets of tight, cone-shaped flower buds. That’s when I called dinner. Last winter at the Forward’s virtual gala, I auctioned off an Artichoke Harvest Dinner for…
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Opinion The long, sad echo of applause for Will Smith
If, as the Talmud tells us, silence is akin to complicity, what about … applause? The guests at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre for the 94th Academy Awards Sunday night weren’t required to wear masks, but with both Purim and the worst of the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, we finally got to see who they really…
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Food Did Jews name this classic Italian cookie?
When the Italian bakery and cafe Il Fornaio opened its first American branch in San Francisco, I was hired as a cookie baker. The night before my first day on the job, I tried my first pot brownie, and then, rookie mistake, my second. I spent the night in a paranoid wakefulness, arrived at work…
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Opinion Why did the Academy leave the Jews out of its museum, anyway?
Amid all the controversy created over the Academy Museum’s initial decision not to include the story of the motion picture industry’s largely Jewish immigrant founders in its permanent exhibit, one question remains unanswered: Why? Why would the museum organizers, with $484 million and more than 300,000 square feet, decide to tell the story of the…
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Food Drink spring: Make your own bittersweet aperitif
Every spring morning I walk into my backyard, take a deep inhale, and wish I could bottle that smell. This year, I did it. The artichokes put an herby bitterness into the air, the verbena adds citrus, the bay notes of grass and menthol. It is a delicious, fleeting smell, so present in the air…
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