More in ‘Brooklyn’

Game-changer: For the next season of The Millionaire Matchmaker, host Patti Stanger is taking her show, currently Los Angeles-based, to the Big Apple. (Allison Hoffman recaps each episode every Wednesday on The Scroll.) “Yeah, New York is harder,” she tells New York’s Vulture blog. “Yes, you walk and you get sweaty, and you’re in the ...

New York says New York’s best deli is Mile End, the new, Montreal-style Jewish deli in Brooklyn. This is bound to cause a stir, especially given that the New York Daily News already railed against Mile End in a faux-angry editorial for polluting the city with Montreal’s distinctive bagels, which are smaller, flatter, and sweeter ...

• Several universities around the world are marking “Israel Apartheid Week,” advocating for divestments, boycotts, and sanctions. I have read both the Anti-Defamation League and J Street condemn the comparison of Israel to South Africa, and accuse organizers of attempting to de-legitimize Israel’s existence. [Haaretz]
• The Israeli Embassy in Madrid has of late received letters ...

• Columnist Bradley Burston has an enraged must-read:
What the far-left from Britain to Berkeley has been been unable to bring off—a sense among Israel’s allies that Israel has become a heartless, morally heedless aggressor state worthy of sanction and shunning—the far-right in Israel’s own government, and in particular, its Foreign Ministry, seems determined to inculcate ...

Last we reported, the feud between Brooklyn’s Satmar Hasidim and the borough’s bicycle enthusiasts had rounded the bend into full-scale performance art: cycling activists, protesting the Department of Transportation’s removal of a bike lane that ran through the Satmar ’hood, scheduled a nude ride along the route where the lane had been, on Shabbos no ...

Over the weekend, in the course of a feature-y “journal” about a fledgling Conservative synagogue in Queens, the New York Times noticed an interesting trend regarding outer-borough Jewish houses of worship:
Conservative and Reform temples have been closing or merging across Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx for decades now as younger non-Orthodox Jews moved away. There ...

The plan was for a “Freedom Ride”: a nude group bicycling session through the heavily Orthodox section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The cause was for a protest: the cyclists are disputing the recent removal of the Bedford Avenue bike lane due to the Hasids’ complaints of scantily clad hipsters peddling by. The time was to be ...

• The Spanish foreign minister announced his country will press for Palestinian statehood when it takes over the E.U. presidency on January 1st. [JTA]
• A Chabad-sponsored menorah at an entrance to Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park has prompted a heated discussion on the legality of religious displays on city property. [NYT]
• Newsweek’s ace investigative reporter Michael ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, Eddy Portnoy profiles long-gone wrestler Martin “the Blimp” Levy, who weighed in at over 600 pounds yet could display surprising grace—“a freak with class,” his manager said. Ruth Ellen Gruber ponders the juxtaposition of Hanukkah and olive-harvest season at her grove in Umbria, Italy. From our archives, Ben Birnbaum remembers Brooklyn ...

A New York Times article about the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn—specifically, the way in which the feel of the neighborhood has been altered by a recent influx of wealthy Orthodox Jews—has prompted a rather profound debate about Jewish identity on a neighborhood blog. On Saturday, The Ditmas Park Blog mentioned the article—the post was written ...