New York City

New York rabbis press for city to fund parochial school security agents

In a letter, 24 rabbis asked the mayor to back a City Council bill that would provide police school safety agents for parochial schools that request them.

June 16, 2015 12:36 pm

Meet Red Buttons, the 8-Year-Old Vaudeville Star

Legend has it, famed Ukrainian cantor and composer Yossele Rosenblatt discovered the boy who would become the vibrant vaudeville star known as Red Buttons. As the story goes, Rosenblatt recruited then 8-year-old Aaron Chwatt, son of Jewish immigrants—into his famous Cooperman’s Choir after the cantor heard the boy sing at a Lower East Side pickle stand. […]

from Jewniverse

A Jewish Ghetto Brother from the South Bronx

It wasn’t easy growing up in the gang-riddled Bronx of the 60s and 70s, especially for the son of Puerto Rican immigrants—and doubly especially when your family were descendants of Marranos: Jews forced to practice Judaism in secret to avoid persecution. But from that turmoil emerged Benjy Melendez, a legend in the Bronx gang community, […]

from Jewniverse