A new exhibit at Manhattan’s Jewish Museum, “Veiled Meanings,” opens on a striking note, showcasing three different veiled women’s garments that many Americans would not, on first look, associate with Jews, including the Afghani chadur. The exhibit, a brief chronicle of garments common in Jewish communities of the past, has the potential to be a…
Leave it to the 21st-century scions of a venerated 103-year-old smoked fish emporium to figure out how to serve a restaurant brunch on Saturday mornings to Sabbath-observant Jews — and anyone who can’t stand late-morning lines. Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper, the 4th-generation owners of Russ & Daughters, have done just that. At…
(JTA) — Swastikas were scrawled on a poster in a Manhattan subway station advertising an exhibit at New York’s Jewish Museum. The poster, hanging in the Dyckman Street station on the A train line, was found to be defaced with four swastikas, drawn in black marker, on Monday night and “Jewish Museum” crossed out. In addition,…
Judaica, like all religious art, represents an aesthetic dilemma: Are these religious objects primarily objects of worship, or do they have an aesthetic value abstracted from any potential uses? Even if the answer is “both,” context is critical. Most Judaica exhibits that I have seen (exhibits at the Jewish Museum in Prague, or the Museo…
WASHINGTON — Painting a grim picture of Jewish vulnerability in the United States, a top U.S. security official said that the vast majority of funds earmarked to secure non-profits goes to Jewish institutions because their need is most acute. Alejandro Mayorkas, the deputy homeland security secretary, speaking Wednesday to the Orthodox Union’s annual leadership mission…
The Jewish Museum’s invitation for its 30th Annual February 24 Purim Ball — with the directive “Wear Your Mask; Leave Your Black Tie at Home” — honored fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi and featured actress/ singer/ comedienne/ Sandra Bernhard in an edgy spoof of the annual Megillah Purim Spiel. Always innovative in its décor — this…
The distance between New York’s Lower East Side and Upper East Side is only a few miles, but the neighborhoods could hardly be more different. My grandfather Ben Schoenfein was born on the Lower East Side in 1899, 15 years before opened its doors at 179 E. Houston Street. The original appetizing shop still stands,…
Jens Hoffmann, Daniel S. Palmer and Kelly Taxter, the curators of the Jewish Museum, have a difficult job. They can’t help but recognize the limitations of revisiting the same narrow band of Jewish tropes with each and every show they present. There are only so many fresh ways to revisit the Holocaust, the Jewish immigrant…
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