Features

Two weeks after a group of Lebanese chefs reclaimed a hummus world record from Israel and set a new falafel record, a new front in the international garbanzo wars opened here.

As part of “Celebrate Israel Week,” which included an Israeli-flag raising in Lower Manhattan and the annual Salute to Israel parade along Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Community Relations Council last week sponsored a new world record, soon to be certified by the Guinness Book of Records.

The world’s largest falafel ball.

The stock market’s plunge last week to a 14-month low has left doomsayers predicting a “double-dip recession,” a recession that is followed by a brief period of recovery before the economy enters another recession. Are Jewish organizations — whose endowments have already been battered by the Bernard Madoff fraud and the overall stock market volatility of recent days — taking the necessary steps to protect their assets from such a fate?

The school year is coming to a close and colleges across the country — including mine — are letting out for the summer. Many students will be spending their vacation at summer camps (I will be working at this one), while others will be taking up “real-world” jobs and internships.

Sculptor Lynn Syms, philanthropist Jean Gluck and radiologist Dr. Monique Katz were honored by the National Women's Division of Shaare Zedek Medical Center of Jerusalem this month at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

"To be an honoree is a mitzvah-like maror," Dr. Katz chuckled.

Barbara Gluck Weichselbaum paid tribute to her parents, Jean and Eugen Gluck, who sponsored the Department of General Pediatrics in the new Wilf Children's Hospital at Shaare Zedek.

In the religious world, there has been much discussion over the past few years, and rightly so, of the struggle between what sociologists like to call the “commanding presence” and the “sovereign self.” The “commanding presence” is an outside source of authority- in the larger religious sense, God, or in a lesser religious sense, rabbis. The “sovereign self” is the autonomous individual, who chafes at being told what to do.

“Hello, New York!” Barry Manilow shouted. “It’s good to be home.”

The 600 guests at the 92nd Street Y spring gala on Monday went nuts as they cheered, hollered and wriggled in their seats through a throbbing Las Vegas production of classic Manilow hits.

The singing star said that although he’s originally from Brooklyn, this was the first time he performed at the venerable 92nd Street Y. But he remembers coming here for the Lyrics and Lyricists program.

For many Israelis, Iyar 28 was the best day of the Six-Day War.

That was the date — June 6, 1967 on the secular calendar — when a divided Jerusalem became united, Israeli paratroopers capturing the Temple Mount, defeating Jordanian troops, crying at the Western Wall, ending 19 years of Arab rule that had kept Jews away from some of their holiest sites.

Five years ago last week, The Jewish Week published the first installment of this column. At the time, the kosher wine industry was at the peak of a boom, with a new kosher winery opening almost every month. Yet no American newspaper was then regularly writing about kosher wine, except before Passover and Rosh HaShanah.