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Fizz ed: The Brooklyn Seltzer Museum tells the fascinating history of ‘Jewish champagne’
(New York Jewish Week) — On a recent Sunday in Brooklyn, some 100 people, mostly families, gathered for a Hanukkah party that offered something a bit different than the typical latkes and games of dreidel. Instead, there was a factory tour, instructions on how to manufacture a classic seltzer bottle and freshly-made egg creams.
That’s because this particular holiday party took place at Brooklyn Seltzer Boys, the last remaining seltzer factory in New York City. The bustling seltzer works, which makes the so-called “Jewish champagne” the old-fashioned way, is located in the Cypress Hills neighborhood on the border with Queens and is also home to the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum.
“This is New York history, Brooklyn history, Jewish history,” fourth-generation “seltzer boy” Alex Gomberg, 36, told the New York Jewish Week.
The museum tells the 2,500-year-old history of seltzer, from the first mentions of carbonated water in Ancient Greece through the mass production and sale of seltzer in the modern day. The museum also focuses on seltzer’s significance in New York City and its Jewish community, detailing how seltzer took the city by storm. The narrative hones in specifically on the history of the Gomberg family, who established their seltzer business in 1953 as Gomberg Seltzer Works.
“We wanted to promote that we’re here and that we’re still going — we want to bring people’s attention here,” Gomberg said about incorporating a museum into his family’s seltzer factory. “We want to bring people to come see the old machinery. It’s a working factory, but people can walk in and they can read about the history and see how our current machinery works and how the bottles are fixed and filled.”
Seltzer first came to this country from German and Russian immigrants who had enjoyed the bottled beverage back home. New York City, the largest hub of Jewish immigration, had a large supply of aqueduct-fed water for entrepreneurial seltzer men to pull from. As The New York Times reported in the spring, “many Eastern European Jews who enjoyed seltzer overseas began making, delivering and selling it in the early 1900s, largely on the Lower East Side.”
Seltzer’s popularity took off in part because many of the neighborhood’s tenements were not connected to the city’s clean tap water stream. Jewish immigrants, among others, were faced with the option of drinking polluted water or purchasing seltzer.
By the end of World War II, most Americans moved away from seltzer in favor of sodas from distinctly American brands. But, like rye bread, pastrami and bagels, seltzer’s popularity among Ashkenazi households has endured.
Seltzer expert Barry Joseph, left, and fourth-generation “seltzer man” Alex Gomberg at the entrance to the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum. (Courtesy of the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum)
At the seltzer museum — which is typically open by reservation to the public on Fridays, and one Saturday each month — visitors learn how seltzer is made the old-fashioned way. Brooklyn Seltzer Boys takes New York City tap water that has been triple filtered through layers of sand, charcoal and paper, and then, using a century-old carbonator, the 43-degree water is fizzed up with carbon dioxide. The bubbly delight is then pumped into glass bottles — most of which were hand-blown in Austria and Czechoslovakia in the 1800s — and then crated for delivery. The result is a beverage with bite that makes Brooklyn Seltzer punchier than its mass market competitors like La Croix and Polar.
In addition to videos, displays, and 3-D models that provide an inside look at the 100-year-old machines used by the seltzer works, the museum has a “siphon station” where visitors are encouraged to “feel the spritz” — the museum’s phrase — by holding an old-school siphon and spritzing the seltzer directly into their mouths.
It’s precisely this type of experience that attracted self-proclaimed “Seltzer King” Jon Posen, who runs Instagram and TikTok accounts in which he reviews different seltzer brands, to the Hanukkah event at the seltzer works. “Alex Gomberg has been in the [New York] Times every few years saying good seltzer should hurt, which is my personal philosophy as well,” Posen told the New York Jewish Week. As someone who grew up with seltzer delivery, he added, he was most excited about using a seltzer siphon once again.
As it happens, delivery was once the foundation of the Gomberg family’s seltzer business. Alex Gomberg’s great-grandfather, Moe Gomberg, was originally in the seltzer delivery business but transitioned to filling bottles for seltzer men.
Around a decade ago, Alex Gomberg had the idea to restart the seltzer-delivery service, and in 2020, when faced with declining sales, he kicked off a new marketing campaign. “During the pandemic, people wanted home delivery of anything and everything and we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel — this is what we’ve been doing for many, many years,” he said.
It was an inspired move: Brooklyn Seltzer Boys now boasts some 600 customers (both restaurants and residences) as well as a waiting list of 300. “People are coming back to this old seltzer because it’s cool, it’s retro, it’s the original way that seltzer was bottled and the taste is great,” Gomberg said.
In 2020, the business relocated from their original location in Canarsie, Brooklyn, to a larger space in Cypress Hills. It was then that the idea to establish a museum was born, a project that Gomberg collaborated on with seltzer expert Barry Joseph, the author of “Seltzertopia.”
A baby enjoys here visit to the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum. (Courtesy of the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum)
The museum, said Joseph, employs “very different ways of exploring how we can use the tools of a museum to tell the story of seltzer, and tell that story in a physical place that’s literally mapped on top of an active working seltzer works.”
At the Hanukkah party, visitors were able to drink unlimited seltzer, do a factory-wide scavenger hunt and play seltzer cornhole. Among the revelers were married couple Dasha and David, who declined to give their last names and who had brought their two young sons with them. “The whole experience here brings nostalgia,” Dasha said.
While Dasha’s comment may be true for many, Gomberg’s thoughts are on the present as well as the future. In fact, if the father of two sons and a daughter gets his way, the Brooklyn Seltzer Boys may eventually need a name change: He hopes the family business will extend to a fifth generation, possibly bringing his daughter on board, too.
“Seltzer is a part of us, it’s what we do,” Gomberg said. “I say I got seltzer in my blood and my veins. It’s who we are as Gombergs. We’re gonna keep going as long as we can.”
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The post Fizz ed: The Brooklyn Seltzer Museum tells the fascinating history of ‘Jewish champagne’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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