The brief life of author Jonas Kreppel (his surname means dumpling in Yiddish) is almost as compelling as his 15 “thrilling odes“ titled, Adventures of Max Spitzkopf, the Yiddish Sherlock Holmes. Born in 1874, Galicia, Kreppel’s family was Hasidic. Torah study, however, was not…
Iconic American singer, Bob Dylan, won the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature. Prominent, literary voices expressed outrage at the choice of an “adenoidal singer” chosen to receive the most prestigious prize for his written work. Naysayers claimed, “the ideals of literature had been…
Culture vultures beware! The original Mona Lisa, the most famous portrait in the Louvre, the four hundred year-old work of legendary artist, Leonardo da Vinci, may be, “a cold and lonely lovely work of art” as Nat King Cole crooned years ago, but also a cold and lonely, lovely fake. In…
There are no Jews living in Harbin, a barren area “north of North Korea”. There are, however, many Jewish heritage sites that confirm Jews once flourished in Harbin, a bitterly cold place in Northern China with temperatures dipping below 35º Centigrade. One of these Jews was Abram…
In September 2022 a young Kurdish/Iranian woman, Mahsa Jen Amini, committed a mortal crime. She showed a wisp of her hair peeking from under her hijab, a mandatory head covering for women worn in Iran’s public places. Caught and arrested by the reviled “morality police,” Amini was…
