On March 9, a few hours after Israel’s Shas-controlled Interior Ministry announced that it intended to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, about 30 members of Chicago’s Jewish community relations council gathered for a lunchtime meeting on the sixth floor of the city’s Jewish Federation building, in the Loop. Over vegetable soup and ...

Every Wednesday, Senior Writer Allison Hoffman recaps the previous night’s episode of the glory that is Millionaire Matchmaker. For previous Matchmaker coverage, click here.
Some of us have had a little trouble sleeping lately. Luckily, that wasn’t a problem last night, thanks to a Millionaire Matchmaker episode in which everyone was boring, and no one found ...

Every Wednesday, Senior Writer Allison Hoffman recaps the previous night’s episode of the glory that is Millionaire Matchmaker.
Remember after-school specials? Do they even have them anymore? Who knows! But this week, The Millionaire Matchmaker brought viewers two very important lessons: one, interfaith relationships are tricky! Two: Jews aren’t so much into Jesus!
But before we get ...

In 1939, Joseph Goebbels commissioned his favorite film director, Veit Harlan, to make an entertainment suitable for wartime. The result was Jew Süss, a historical drama about the Jewish banker Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, who was hanged in 1738 on charges of treason against a German duchy. The choice of subject matter was a retort to ...

Every Wednesday, Senior Writer Allison Hoffman recaps the previous night’s episode of the glory that isMillionaire Matchmaker.
Good news! Bravo reran the season premiere of Millionaire Matchmaker last night—presumably in an effort to get us all to watch the twirling Olympic sprites on parent network NBC—which gives us the chance to fill in a little blank ...

Here we go again: yesterday afternoon, federal agents arrested a prominent ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn rabbi, Milton Balkany, after he allegedly tried to extort an unnamed Connecticut hedge fund out of $4 million. Reportedly, Balkany promised the silence of a prison inmate whom federal authorities are questioning as part of an insider-trading investigation. According to a criminal ...

Last night on Bravo’s The Millionaire Matchmaker (which I will be rounding up every week), Patti Stanger gave a woman from Greenville, South Carolina, a dose of home truth from the yenta files: “A good BJ goes a long way.” Bonus tip: “You can actually watch television and do it at the same time.”
Then Patti’s ...

Sunday is Valentine’s Day, when the world is divided into two categories: people who are basking in true love and people who are searching for it. If you’re in the first group, well, mazel tov! But if you’re in the second, then Patti Stanger, better known as the Millionaire Matchmaker, has some advice: if you’re ...

Life isn’t easy for Jeanne Fabre, the character at the center of the new French film The Girl on the Train. She’s a flighty airhead stuck in the Parisian suburbs with no job, a boyfriend who’s caught up in some shady business, and an overbearing mother pretty enough to be played by Catherine Deneuve. One ...

In May 2007, Leib Tropper arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, to preside over a grand conclave of prospective converts to Judaism sponsored by his Eternal Jewish Family organization, which offered “Cadillac conversions” to non-Jews as part of an effort to seize control of the conversion process outside of Israel. Buoyed by a $4.8 million infusion of ...