The Dime — excerpted from “The Scorekeeper,” a memoir published in 2017 by Joy Media LLC I never thought of us as poor. We gave to the poor. My grandmother defied arthritic legs trudging from neighbor to neighbor to collect clothing and food for displaced Holocaust survivors in Europe and my mother always found a coin or two of tzedakah to drop into tin pushkas for one cause or another.… Read More »The Dime
by Cecelia Margules Approximately 30 years ago I commissioned Ann Froman, a noted sculptor, to fulfill a vision of a butterfly wrapped in barbed wire atop a granite pedestal containing the poem “The Butterfly” by Pavlov Friedman an inmate of Terezin concentration camp, who perished in Auschwitz in 1944. “The Butterfly” graced the courtyard of Shulamith Yeshua for 30 years till the school relocated. This began my search for a… Read More »The Story of the Butterfly
After 15 years of research, BJHI Co-chair Sarina Roffé has completed Branching Out From Sepharad (New York: Sephardic Heritage Project, 2017). Dedicated to her grandparents, Joe and Frieda Missry, Roffé outlines the global journey of selected rabbinic families from Iberia to Syria to the Americas. With the Foreword written by Dr. Walter Zenner A’H, Branching Out From Sepharad outlines the history of Jews in Spain, the 1492 Expulsion, the history… Read More »Branching Out From Sepharad: Traces Community History And Selected Rabbinic Dynasties
By Hilary Danailova January 2018 A dozen years ago, I moved from a Park Slope brownstone to a rent-controlled apartment south of Kings Highway in Brooklyn. It turned out to be next door to the Ocean Avenue building where my grandmother, Shirley, had spent her first married years. “Tell me,” she demanded over the phone, her Brooklyn accent undimmed by 20 years in Florida, “is it one of those units with a sunken… Read More »Brooklyn, the Most Jewish Spot on Earth
Judge Judy and Others Inducted Into the Brooklyn Jewish Hall of Fame Necks craned and cameras clicked as the man next to the stage at the Brooklyn Historical Society Tuesday night took out a glass seltzer bottle. He held it high for all to see, a relic of the not-so-distant past. And then he sprayed its contents into a glass containing milk and chocolate sauce. “How many people here have… Read More »Judge Judy and Others Inducted Into the Brooklyn Jewish Hall of Fame
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Magen David Synagogue Documentary about the landmarked Magen David Synagogue in Bensonhurst Brooklyn, produced by Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative in cooperation with Sephardic Heritage Project. 2019 View BJHI Video Library
BREAKING NEWS! FUHGEDDABOUTIT!! BJHI asked for it, we got it!! An upbeat rap ballad sung by internationally famous Chassidic African-American Nissim Black for and about Brooklyn’s Jewish community, and we’re told it will be released this week. We call it “We’re Brooklyn”. BJHI’s chair Howard Teich dreamt it, reached out to legendary Jewish songwriter Cecelia Margules who wrote it, she reached out to the brilliant videographer and director Daniel Finkelman,… Read More »African-American Nissim Black for and about Brooklyn’s Jewish community
By Arnold Abrams Let me tell you about one of the most memorable moments of my life. It happened in September 1956, when I was 17 and Sports Editor of the Lincoln Log, published monthly by Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn. Although they hardly needed publicity, Brooklyn Dodger officials had approved my request to do a feature about the pre-game atmosphere of the team’s Ebbets Field clubhouse. I went… Read More »The Duke and Me
By TIM BALKNEW YORK DAILY NEWS | MAR 12, 2021 AT 3:50 PM A 7-foot-tall bronze statue honoring late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was unveiled Friday morning in her proud Brooklyn hometown. Borough President Eric Adams and Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte (D-Brooklyn) pulled a sheet off the 650-pound sculpture in the lobby of downtown Brooklyn’s City Point shopping center as cameras clicked. “She kept that Brooklyn pride and stride as she sat on… Read More »Bronze statue of Ruth Bader Ginsburg unveiled in downtown Brooklyn