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Abe Lebewohl Park honors murdered 2nd Ave Deli founder and East Village ‘mensch’
(New York Jewish Week) — “I need two matzah ball soups!” a deli clerk yells into the microphone during the lunch rush at 2nd Ave Deli — which, since 2006, is no longer located on Second Avenue but on East 33rd Street between Lexington and Third Avenue.
While the original deli building is now a bank, the Midtown location boasts the same old-school vibe: The menu is packed with Ashkenazi treats such as knishes, stuffed cabbage and, of course, pastrami; the gregarious waiters are full of personality; the logo’s Hebraic-styled lettering remains unchanged.
But one fundamental part of the restaurant’s DNA didn’t make the move: its founder, Abe Lebewohl. He was robbed and killed on his way to the bank on March 4, 1996, in a crime that transfixed New York City and has yet to be solved.
Back at East 10th Street and Second Avenue, across from where the deli sat for over 50 years, is a triangular, tree-lined plaza named Abe Lebewohl Park. “They called him the mayor of Second Avenue,” Steve Cohen, the longtime manager of the deli, told the New York Jewish Week of his former boss.
The decision to name the park after Lebewohl was a “no-brainer,” as Cohen called it. It was “neighborhood people” who initiated the naming of the plaza, which is located in front of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery and dates to 1799. As it happens, in 1980, Lebewohl had joined forces with Marilyn Appleberg, who was president of the 10th and Stuyvesant Streets Block Association, in an effort to clean up the plaza and make it more welcoming.
“That was his neighborhood,” Cohen said. “He was ubiquitous and all-encompassing. When you were around him he blanketed you.”
That Lebewohl would make his mark in Manhattan wasn’t preordained. Lebewohl was born in Kulykiv, Ukraine, in 1931. When World War II broke out, his father was sent to Siberia and Abe and his mother went to Kazakhstan. The family ultimately reunited and ended up at a refugee camp in Italy, where Abe’s brother Jack was born. In 1950, when Abe was 19, the Lebewohls emigrated to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Eager to help his family, Abe went to work as a soda jerk at a deli in Coney Island.
In 1954, Abe opened 2nd Ave Deli with two partners. A few years later, he bought out his partners, and the deli would remain on that corner for decades to come.
Cohen first met Lebewohl while he was working for an electrician, and Lebewohl was looking for a bookkeeper for the deli. Cohen took that job and has now worked at the 2nd Ave Deli in various roles for 40 years. He said Lebewohl was always urging people to “do better” and “would bother you until you did the right thing.”
“He was a world-class noodge but he did it with such warmth,” Cohen said, adding, using a word referring to the Jewish way of life, “He believed very strongly in Yiddishkeit.”
Cohen said Lebewohl was always helping people. One, he recalled, Lebewohl personally drove a 100-year-old customer to the tailor from the deli because he couldn’t get a cab. Another time, he went out of his way to deliver a Shabbat meal to an elderly woman every week. And there was a time he flew to England to cater a wedding so the family of the groom didn’t have to pack deli food in their suitcases. Cohen added that there were several instances when Lebewohl told customers who came up short on their checks, “You’ll pay me next time.”
Cohen said Lebewohl’s kindness extended to his staff, too “I broke my back and I was in the hospital for six weeks and he visited me every day and brought me food every single day,” he recalled. “I would give out the food — I had doctors coming to my room and I would say, ‘You were here yesterday, give it to another doctor.’”
Lebewohl was known for his faith and optimism in people: “He gave them his best and he expected the same in return,” Cohen said in a speech on “Abe Lebewohl Night” in 1998 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
The deli is now under ownership of Lebewohl’s nephews, Josh and Jeremy Lebewohl. Following the move uptown, they opened a second location on the Upper East Side. It’s been 27 years since his murder and, on 33rd Street, there is still a sign in the deli’s window offering a $150,000 reward for information that will help solve the crime.
In addition to the park, Lebewohl left another lasting mark on Second Avenue: the Yiddish Theatre Walk of Fame, which he installed on the sidewalk in 1984 to honor Yiddish theater actors, playwrights and composers, including Fyvush Finkel and the Barry Sisters.
“One of the great things Abie has taught me was that you could be a success in business and still be a mensch,” Cohen said. “I attended Talmud Torah [school] for 10 years and learned more about being a good Jew and a good human being working for Abie. It certainly was more palatable.”
Lebewohl was known for sitting down with his customers and enjoying half a sandwich with them. “You thought, and rightly so, you were coming to his home to eat,” Cohen said.
That same sort of hospitality is kept alive to this day: When I arrived at the 33rd Street at the midtown location to interview Cohen, he immediately asked if I wanted a sandwich, some matzah ball soup, the works. When I declined, he turned to the deli clerk behind him and said, “Let me get some pieces of sliced pastrami and corned beef.”
Cohen said he consciously carries on Lebewohl’s way of interacting with customers. “I tell people when they start to work here; you can either be entertained by people all day or assaulted by people all day, now which one are you gonna have a better day with?” he said. “Abe always felt he was entertained by people and he wanted to entertain people.”
During our conversation, every time someone walked into the deli, Cohen greeted them like an old friend. “When people leave here and they say to me, ‘It’s exactly like I remember it,’ to me that’s the greatest compliment,” he said. That’s the way I want it. I want people to say it’s like when Abie was here. I want to carry out his legacy.”
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The post Abe Lebewohl Park honors murdered 2nd Ave Deli founder and East Village ‘mensch’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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DePaul University Enabled Violent Attacks and Brain Injury on Jewish Students
DePaul University Law School. Photo: ajay_suresh/Wikimedia Commons.
My name is Brooke Goldstein. I am the founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, and the founder of the #EndJewHatred civil rights movement. I have dedicated my career to upholding the legal rights of the Jewish people, a fight that is all the more pressing after the wave of Jew-hatred unleashed in America and around the world following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023.
In 2021, a few years before October 7, a Jewish student identified a major problem at DePaul University. She went public about “a long history of antisemitism on DePaul’s campus … without DePaul doing anything really substantive to address this situation.”
In a clear call for action, she said that, “DePaul, as an administration and as a university, doesn’t fully understand what is required for Jewish students in particular to feel safe in their campus community.”
The unprecedented wave of hatred launched against Jews and Israelis at DePaul University over the past year is a direct result of the administration’s failure — not just to help its Jewish community feel safe, but to actually keep its Jewish students safe.
Jew-hatred has become systematized in higher education, and we are now seeing the consequences playing out on campuses across the country — including at DePaul University.
Radicalized agitators who openly support foreign terrorist organizations target Jewish students with calls for their genocide.
“From the river to the sea” is a call for genocide.
“Globalize the intifada” is a call for worldwide violent attacks on Jews, like we see in the streets of New York City and Amsterdam, and on campus here at DePaul.
Jews are dehumanized, deprived of the right to openly express their identity, and the civil rights of Jewish students are ignored and violated — their minority status disregarded, and the harm and violence they endure is minimized. All of this is unacceptable.
Max Long emigrated to Israel from Boston in 2015. He served in the Israel Defense Forces, and, when he was released from the reserves, enrolled at DePaul University in March of this year. After seeing the pervasive atmosphere of antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric on campus, he was inspired to use his voice and personal experience to empower and educate his classmates about antisemitism, and about the war against Palestinian terrorism in Gaza.
Michael Kaminsky is a junior who came to DePaul from Buffalo Grove, IL. He, too, has been inspired to use his voice and experience to empower and educate the community about antisemitism, and about Jewish identity. He is a founding member of DePaul’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel, a StandWithUs Emerson fellow, and a proud member of AEPi.
Max and Michael are proud and empowered advocates for Jewish civil rights. They are loud voices for the indigenous rights of the Jewish people in their indigenous homeland — Israel.
On November 6, Jew-haters decided to silence their voices. Two masked men violently attacked Max and Michael with such force that Max suffered a brain injury and Michael suffered a fracture and lacerations.
Max and Michael were doing what they have done many times before — exercising their right to peacefully express themselves and their views, and engage with passersby.
This attack happened in the plain sight of a DePaul public safety officer, who did nothing to intervene. The officer had an opportunity to stop the attack, but did nothing to help Max and Michael.
But it gets worse.
The university was well aware of multiple threats against Max and Michael, just as it was aware of the campus climate of hate targeting Jews. But it did nothing. It failed to protect its students, even when a violent attack was unfolding in front of one of its public safety officers. This cannot be tolerated.
We cannot be silent in the face of intolerance and injustice. This is why The Lawfare Project represents Max and Michael — to demand justice, to ensure that their rights are protected, and to make sure that what they experienced is not experienced by any other Jewish student at DePaul University.
Even now, their attackers remain at large. We demand that the Chicago Police Department use every tool at its disposal to arrest those responsible, and that they be prosecuted for the hate crime they committed, to the full extent of the law. We need to impose meaningful consequences on antisemitic hate crimes to deter future attacks, and to send the clear message that our society rejects this extremist hate and violence.
As for the university, our attorneys are reviewing all options, including legal options, to make sure that the school is accountable not just to Max and Michael for this attack, but to all Jewish students who are under daily threat of similar attacks.
We are here to make sure that DePaul does the right thing, and will take whatever action is necessary to do so.
Jew-hatred has no place at DePaul, or on any college campus. We are demanding action from the school — as all decent people should.
Max and Michael are not alone. Our Jewish students on campus are not alone. We are all here for them, and we will make sure that their rights are protected and upheld.
Brooke Goldstein is the founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project and the founder of the End Jew Hatred movement. She is also an author, award-winning, filmmaker, and regular news television commentator.
The post DePaul University Enabled Violent Attacks and Brain Injury on Jewish Students first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UK Will Arrest Netanyahu With ‘Due Process’ if He Visits, Foreign Secretary Says
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy leaves Downing Street, following the results of the election, in London, Britain, July 5, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Toby Melville
Britain would follow due process if Benjamin Netanyahu visited the UK, foreign minister David Lammy said on Monday, when asked if London would fulfill the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister.
“We are signatories to the Rome Statute, we have always been committed to our obligations under international law and international humanitarian law,” Lammy told reporters at a G7 meeting in Italy.
“Of course, if there were to be such a visit to the UK, there would be a court process and due process would be followed in relation to those issues.”
The post UK Will Arrest Netanyahu With ‘Due Process’ if He Visits, Foreign Secretary Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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How reality TV got real: A review of Emily Nussbaum’s ‘Cue the Sun!’
There’s a trope on sitcoms where characters think they’re being filmed for a reality television show, when in fact what they’re experiencing is real life. (Real life within the fictional […]
The post How reality TV got real: A review of Emily Nussbaum’s ‘Cue the Sun!’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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