Tablet Magazine » Atlantic City

Atlantic City to Build Holocaust Museum

Hadara Graubart — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:00:14 +0000

Have you ever found yourself in Atlantic City, a bagful of saltwater taffy in hand, wishing there was someplace more somber to visit than Ripley’s Believe it or Not! museum? If so, then this one’s for you: a group of locals are busy planning a Holocaust museum to be placed right smack on the main boardwalk. The committee’s VP puts their reasoning this way: “Why not?” Indeed! Local politicians have already donated the site, and architects Daniel Libeskind and Richard Meier have agreed to judge a design competition for the building, with guidelines including that the museum should “not be stark” and “blend in with the motif of the boardwalk.”

One visitor who happened upon a Holocaust Remembrance Day event recently held on the future site approved of the plan. “As to whether a memorial fits in with the scene overlooking the Atlantic,” says the Jerusalem Post, he replied “Where did the Holocaust fit in with life?” Mayor Lorenzo T. Langford sees the location more pragmatically: “The boardwalk is the most densely traveled pedestrian thoroughfare in the nation. If you’re going to have a memorial, there’s no better place to have it.” If nothing else, down on their luck gamblers will have a reminder that it could always be worse.

Atlantic City Boardwalk to Get a Holocaust Memorial [JPost]

Sundown: Ye Olde Jewish Shoppes

Hadara Graubart — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:01:05 +0000

• Cleverly named they’re not, but there are at least 18 still-operating Jewish-run business in Atlantic City that are over 50 years old, including Nathan Levin Furs, Mel’s Furniture, and Fischer Shoes. [Jewish Times of South Jersey]
• Israelis and Palestinians have managed to agree on something: supporting the Dead Sea as a candidate for the New 7 Wonders of Nature. [Haaretz]
• Roya Hakakian talks to NPR about growing up Jewish in Iran; the writer recently told Tablet that the recent rioting in her hometown, Tehran, was “not about Jew vs. Muslim, black vs. white, man vs. woman, it’s about a movement of national unity.” [NPR]
• New documentary Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg is “a study of media celebrity and collective forgetfulness in the age of information overload,” says the New York Times. [NYT]
• The Jerusalem Post calls Nextbook Press’s The Jewish Body by Melvin Konner “a veritable grab bag full to brimming with tidbits of Jewish history and culture.” [JPost]

Sundown: Anne Frank, Not So Bitter

Hadara Graubart — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:59:37 +0000

• The Anne Frank Trust UK commissioned a picture projecting what the Holocaust victim would have looked like at 80, for some reason. Her half-sister saw the picture and thinks Frank would have looked more “bitter and disappointed.” [Telegraph]
• The Traveling Jewish Theatre has stopped wandering. It’s now The Jewish Theatre, San Francisco. [S.F. Chronicle]
• A nuanced Jewish take on suicide, prompted by a 102-year-old philanthropist who apparently jumped off a bridge. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
• A new book uses the story of a Jewish track and field star from the early 20th century—when the sport was “the equivalent to NASCAR today”—to address questions of ethnicity. [Columbus Dispatch]
• Another book, about the history of Jewish businesses in Atlantic City, is sure to provoke nostalgia in anyone who’s ever had an Uncle Mayer the Jeweler, Cousin Sam the Egg Man, or Grandpa Alan the Milkman. [Phil. Inquirer]
• New phones that can be operated using one’s teeth will allow Orthodox medical personnel to make calls on the Sabbath, thus retroactively removing a major plot point from The Chosen. (Or was it My Name Is Asher Lev?) [JPost]
• Britain’s chief rabbi thinks the world economy could benefit from a little of that Shabbat spirit: there’s “nothing wrong with a market run economy, but … six days out of seven is quite enough.” [Algemeiner]
• The class of 1959 from the Centro Israelita de Cuba—Havana’s only Jewish high school—held its 50th reunion this weekend. In Miami Beach, of course. [Miami Herald]
• There’s been a recall of I ♥ NY-brand smoked salmon. Feh. [FDA.gov]

Sundown: Feet, Meet Mouths

Hadara Graubart — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:06:49 +0000

• David Williams Sr. cleverly attempts to exonerate his son for allegedly planning an anti-Semitic terror attack on synagogues in the Bronx, by accusing “those Jews in the media” of “blowing this up.” [NY Daily News]
•If your priorities include “closing down the Board of Education, the Housing Authority and the MTA in one day, abolish them all and then restructure them, I’m your candidate,” says Isaac Abraham, who hopes to be the first Chabad member of the New York City Council. [Jewish Week]
•J Street and AIPAC are taking sides on the reelection of Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.)—for and against, respectively—over her occasionally critical stance on Israel. [Politico]
•Using Portnoy’s Complaint as an example, Louis Menand characterizes all ethnic literature as “potentially, a shanda fur die goyim.” [New Yorker]
• But what about elegiac coffee table books? A new one about the history of Jewish businesses in Atlantic City is sure to provoke nostalgia in anyone who’s ever had an Uncle Mayer the Jeweler, Cousin Sam the Egg Man, or Grandpa Alan the Milkman. [Philadelphia Enquirer]
•New Jersyite Paul Cohen is slated to play Bernard Madoff in an upcoming film; the first-time actor was chosen in part because he “had the best lips” (or lack thereof, as the case may be).[Forward]
•Does “no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)” mean anything to you? It’s the 4th commandment, text message-style, plus some foreshadowing of Christianity [McSweeny’s]