NYJW Opinion

Chanukah is a “celebration of light” the way the Fourth of July is a celebration of fireworks, which is to say: “not quite.” Both holidays commemorate exhausting wars of independence, the devastation of the Temple or the colonial countryside, and times of near-defeat in Jerusalem or Valley Forge. This December finds us in times more […]

First, the protégé. Now, the mentor. For several decades, William “Willie” Rapfogel and Sheldon “Shelly” Silver strode the streets of the Jewish Lower East Side with pride, widely admired as native sons by their community. From the Bialystoker Shul, their spiritual home, to the Grand Street Co-ops to the Orchard Street shopping district to the […]