The New York Times had a number of interesting Jewish-related stories in recent days:
- Jennifer Bleyer reports from the front line of the American Orthodox Jewish dating scene: Manhattan’s Upper West Side – or, more specifically, the Westmont building on 96th and Columbus.
- Jake Mooney reports from the Sephardic Jewish enclave of Gravesend, Brooklyn, where a difference of just a block or two can make for significant fluctuation in real estate values.
- After four years in an Iranian jail, an Iranian-born American Jewish octogenarian who was lured back to Tehran four years ago by former business partners only to be arrested, lashed and imprisoned, is coming home.
- Three of the elder statesmen of comic books have joined forces to help Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, who survived two years at Auschwitz by painting watercolor portraits for Mengele, get her artwork back from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland, which refuses to return it. Babbitt is now 85 and living in California.
- Andrew Martin visits Israel’s Negev Desert and Golan Heights to report on how Israel is trying to cope with a four-year drought that the country’s agriculture minister is calling a “deep water crisis.” Israel’s growing population, rising incomes and falling rainfall have combined to produce the crisis, which has prompted farmers like Roni Kedar to rip the apples off his trees and leave them to rot.
