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Epstein
Shivah Stars
Each week, we select the most interesting Jewish obituary. This week, it’s that of Robert Hegyes, who died last week at age 60. Now, Hegyes himself was not Jewish: He was half-Italian, half-Hungarian (hence the ambiguous surname). But as an actor he achieved greatest fame playing “Epstein,” Juan Epstein, the half-Puerto Rican half-Jewish (mother’s side!) kid in Welcome Back, Kotter. I guess what I didn’t realize is just how Jewish Welcome Back, Kotter, the 1970s sitcom, was (it’s certainly due for an Arbiter column). Gabe Kotter returns to the old neighborhood, which is Bensonhurst, to teach? There’s a Barbarino (Italian, Travolta); Washington (black); Horshack (Polish, presumably bused in from Greenpoint); and an Epstein? Kotter is played by Gabe Kaplan? And they thought Seinfeld was “too Jewish, too New York”? Wow!
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Kevin Harris
When General Grant Expelled the Jews
The End of the Jewish Left
Political theorist Michael Walzer and others argue about the death of the century-long Jewish-Leftist alliance
Voices Raised for Jerusalem
The Zamir Chorale brings its Jewish choral music to Jazz at Lincoln Center in celebration of Yom Yerushalayim
Old Jews Telling More Jokes
The web series ‘Old Jews Telling Jokes’ goes off-Broadway, with shtick, songs, and a script by writer Daniel Okrent
The Most Perfect Hebrew Bible
The medieval Aleppo Codex was safeguarded for centuries in Syria. The problems started when it arrived in Israel.
