Ruth Ellen Gruber
By Ruth Ellen Gruber
-
News The Woman Behind the Polish Jewry Museum
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has many titles: award-winning author, essayist and University Professor at NYU, among them. Most recently, she’s been tapped to lead the core exhibition development team for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is now being built on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, and which recently made headlines with the…
-
The Schmooze Monday Music: Traveling the ‘Czechgrass’ Trail
Courtesy of Druha Trava I’ve just spent two days in a Prague studio helping record the vocal tracks for a new CD by the Czech country/bluegrass/fusion group Druha Trava. Founded 20 years ago, DT has brought out more than a dozen albums, including several in English. The new CD is the first that will primarily…
-
Food Krakow’s ‘Jewish’ Cafes
Krakow’s old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, is famous (or notorious, depending on how you look at it) for its Jewish-themed tourist infrastructure. Its “Jewish” cafes present a nostalgic literary image of prewar Jewish life — some with taste and sensitivity, others in a disturbingly kitschy manner. At least a dozen (and maybe more) cafes, restaurants, hotels…
-
Culture The Dynamic Duo Behind Poland’s Jewish Revival
Wojtek and Malgosia Ornat are pioneers in the promotion of Jewish culture and Jewish-themed tourism in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow, Poland. Today, the Ornats, who in 1992 opened the first Jewish-style café in Krakow, run the popular Klezmer Hois café-hotel-restaurant, a Jewish publishing house called Austeria, and Jewish bookstores in Krakow and…
-
Culture The Nazi Cowboy: A New Exhibit Explores the Life and Work of Billy Jenkins
The photograph is bizarre and disturbing: A broadly grinning middle-aged man, dressed in full cowboy regalia, strides across a stage. In one hand, he brandishes a wide-brimmed cowboy hat; in the other, he holds aloft a big Nazi swastika topped by an eagle spreading its wings. The man in the picture was known as Billy…
-
News Slain Serbian P.M. Served as Symbol Of Multiethnic Era
ROME — When the news came that Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic had been gunned down on Wednesday by an assassin in Belgrade, I pulled out a stack of photographs I had taken of him almost a year ago to the day. It was March 17, 2002, and Djindjic was in the northern Serbian city…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
- 2
Culture They were a kosher bakery success story — 80 years later, people are still trying to make a buck off their babka
- 3
Culture ‘A Complete Unknown’ proves that one thing about Bob Dylan will certainly endure
- 4
Film & TV Why ‘The Brutalist’ resonated so deeply with me
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture In a first-ever Hanukkah doughnut contest, New York bakers battle for best in dough
-
Opinion Christmukkah is old news. This year, try merging Hanukkah with an ancient Persian holiday
-
Fast Forward 2 Bay Area House reps face class-action suit for supporting Israel aid
-
Opinion Netanyahu throws cold water on hostage deal prospects — and reminds us what a curse he is for Israel
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
