The Ritchie Boys
Not too long ago I discovered that Werner Angress, the historian from whose “Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921–23” I have been posting excerpts, was a Ritchie boy....
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Uzbek Jews and the Pittsburgh massacre
Uzbekistan has been on mind for a while for a couple of reasons. To start with, I send nearly a thousand dollars each month to my mother-in-law to pay for the Uzbek housekeeper/caregiver we hired a...
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Lev Tahor: the Jewish Taliban
Several days ago my tiny village in the Catskills got mentioned in a NY Times article titled “Jewish ‘Cult’ Tied to Brooklyn and Mexico Is Accused of Kidnapping 2 Children”. It seems that the children...
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Making kosher half-sour dill pickles
In the 50s and 60s, my father had a fruit store in Woodridge, NY that was famous for the kosher half-sour dill pickles made in the back of the store. By the time I was 14 years old, I began making them...
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Episode seven in season two of the ravishingly beautiful Netflix series “Shtisel” is titled “The Lost Children’s Good Will”. I have plans to write a fuller review of this show about Haredis living...
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Martin Monath: A Jewish Resistance Fighter Among Nazi Soldiers
Recently, Pluto Press came out with Nathaniel Flakin’s “Martin Monath: A Jewish Resistance Fighter Among Nazi Soldiers.” It pays tribute to another Jewish Trotskyist who displayed incredible heroism...
View ArticleShtisel
Over the past month, I watched seasons one and two of “Shtisel”, an Israeli soap opera (for the last of a better term) about haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jews living in Jerusalem. It has little to do with...
View ArticleWho Will Write Our History
Over the past couple of months, I have been going through some of the backlogged DVD’s I received from film studios meant to help influence my nominations for the yearly NYFCO awards in early...
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Bill de Blasio, the Hasidim, and COVID-19
This week, Mayor Bill de Blasio was pilloried for being anti-Semitic. On April 28, when hundreds of Hasidic Jews took part in a funeral procession for their rabbi, de Blasio rushed to the scene in...
View ArticleA Walk on the Moon
I confess that I have not watched all the films about the Borscht Belt but I am sure that nothing will ever top the 1999 “A Walk on the Moon” (universally available as VOD) since it captures the...
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