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Gertrude’s, a new Jew-ish bistro, gains a following in Brooklyn
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City has gained another classic corner Jewish restaurant, this time at the intersection of St. Marks and Carlton Avenues in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Gertrude’s, on a quiet, tree-laden block, opened earlier this summer. It’s the latest offering from restaurateurs Nate Adler, 33, and Rachel Jackson, 34, the couple behind Gertie, the popular Jewish diner in South Williamsburg that opened in 2019.
“At its base, it’s a neighborhood bistro,” Adler told the New York Jewish Week about a sensibility he calls “Jew-ish.” “It brings together my traditional Jewish upbringing with a more modern sensibility.”
The couple’s original spot, Gertie, is a daytime, Jewish-inflected eatery. Specializing in classic deli sandwiches with a modern twist, like a turkey pastrami club with a “jalapeno schmear” and chicken schnitzel sandwich with “dilly cukes pickled cabbage,” the restaurant closes at 4 p.m. each day. Adler considers Gertie “an amazing homage to Russ & Daughters with full service.”
Gertrude’s, which opened in late June, is a more sophisticated, nighttime destination, with cocktails and menu items like a warm challah roll with duck butter — an appetizer — and Nicoise salad with smoked fish.
Both restaurants have the same namesake: Adler’s Jewish maternal grandmother, Gertrude Aronow. The dedication is in honor of the spirit she imbued into every room she entered. Grandma Gertrude, said Alder, was “a really colorful and eccentric human being who was the life of the party.”
In order to bring Gertrude’s to life, Alder and Jackson brought in a third partner: Eli Sussman, a chef who has Jewish cred under his belt, thanks to his work at Brooklyn’s Mile End Delicatessen, which specializes in Montreal-style Jewish deli eats, and Samesa, a Middle Eastern counter joint in Midtown.
Ahead of Gertrude’s opening, the trio spent months going back and forth about how to execute their Jewish bistro concept. “We spent a ton of time trying to be very cognizant of not going too far in one direction — not being too conceptual, not being only appealing to this sort of broad-reaching neighborhood,” Adler said. “We wanted to keep it really simple.”
Ashkenazi-inspired items on Gertrude’s menu include latkes topped with celery creme fraiche and trout roe. (Liz Clayman)
Adler also said that rather than opting for a more Sephardic or Israeli feel — with familiar items like pita and hummus — they wanted to “push the Ashkenazi tradition” at the restaurant. As such, Gertrude’s menu has inventive items like a burger available to order “Reuben-style” (a beef patty topped with melted swiss, Russian dressing and sauerkraut in between a challah roll), and a black & white seven-layer cake, a mashup of two popular Jewish desserts: black and white cookies and seven-layer cake.
The Jewish theme extends to the drinks menu, designed by Jackson, who previously served as the wine and beverage director at Williamsburg’s modern classic Marlow & Sons. A particular standout is the Seder Plate Martini (its ingredients include parsley and saltwater), as well as the Dirty Gertie, a martini made with pickle brine.
Adler and Jackson, who married in August 2021, come by their devotion to New York City throwbacks honestly: Both were born and raised on the Upper West Side. Although the pair grew up 10 blocks from each other, they didn’t meet until they worked at the Danny Meyer restaurant, Blue Smoke, during Adler’s stint there from 2011 to 2014 (Jackson’s was from 2013 to 2015). They later began dating when they reunited at Huertas, a tapas restaurant co-owned by Adler in the East Village that closed its doors for good on Aug. 12.
Adler told the New York Jewish Week that he was raised “traditionally” Jewish: His family celebrated Shabbat every week and he grew up attending B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side, where he had his bar mitzvah. Both of Adler’s parents are first-generation Americans, his paternal grandparents Holocaust refugees from Germany.
Adler’s decision to enter the restaurant world stems from two long-held interests: His consistent desire to push himself to do something creative as well as his passion for food from a young age. “When I was in college I read Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Kitchen Confidential,’ and read the line about nine-out-of-10 restaurants failing in the first year,” Adler recalled. “I wanted to be the one-out-of-10.”
There’s a family connection to the restaurant business, too: Alder said his great-grandfather owned a coffee import/export business in Cologne, Germany, and there was a cafe attached called Kaffe Adler.
Five years after opening Huerta’s in 2014, Alder and two partners launched Gertie at 357 Grand St.; Jackson came on as a partner and director of operations during the pandemic. “Gertie wasn’t specifically Jewish when we opened it, it was more like New York City food,” Adler said, noting that the “daytime cafe” concept evolved during the pandemic. “Only recently has it become more focused and concentrated on the Jewish diner idea.”
The shift, said Alder, was a “salient” one, calling the decision to home in on the Jewish theme a “very successful pivot.”
With Jackson on board (and the other two partners, Will Edwards and Flip Biddelman, out) the couple introduced bagels to Gertie’s menu; the popular carbs were hand-rolled and kettle boiled in house. As the long months of shutdown continued, they devised ways to help local Jews celebrate important holidays, selling “Hanukkah at Home” boxes and to-go Passover seders, helping to put the eatery on more solid ground in the midst of the pandemic.
“Passover has been our most successful holiday year-in and year-out, doing these to-go seders, and we sell them out every year,” Adler said.
That same sharp sense of brand definition was on Adler’s mind when creating Gertrude’s. After their offer was accepted at 605 Carlton Ave., Adler reached out to a few different people he knew for the chef role, including Sussman (another Prospect Heights resident, by way of Detroit).
“Eli and I had been friendly, and I remembered that he worked in or lived in the neighborhood and it turns out that he was interested in the gig,” Adler said of their partnership. “It kind of happened very quickly after that.”
Sussman was eager to build on what he’d learned during his tenure at Mile End, where he initially started off as a prep cook.
“I just always really wanted to be involved with a restaurant that sort of had those [Ashkenazi] types of flavors on their menu,” Sussman told the New York Jewish Week. “As someone who’s culturally Jewish, I think it’s exciting that I can put certain things on the menu, like beef tongue, that might not be something that everyone has had a lot of experience with, but really hearkens back to Lower East Side, old-school Jewish appetizing delicatessen-style cuisine.”
Adler hopes his new restaurant will continue to enjoy a certain buzz, and that people will travel from Manhattan to dine at his establishment. But first and foremost, Gertrude’s is a restaurant that seeks to serve its community.
“Our number-one goal and priority was to create a menu that was sort of neighborhood-first,” he said. “We wanted to have this type of place where you could come once a week, get your burger, get your chicken or your schnitzel, and be really satisfied.”
“Or you could come and have a salad and a glass of wine at the bar — there are a lot of different experiences for everybody,” he added. And by “everybody” Adler means everybody: He wants Gertrude’s to be the kind of place customers can feel comfortable perched at the bar for a first date, or sitting down to a long meal with their parents, or braving a restaurant meal with a toddler (this is Prospect Heights, after all).
So far, the Jewish bistro has been met with enthusiasm, with folks lining up to dine at the restaurant right when it opens at 5 p.m., something he called “awesome and also scary, because it means we have to be completely ready to go right at 5 o’clock.”
But overall Adler seemed thrilled with the turnout. “It’s amazing to be busy at 5:30,” he said.
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The post Gertrude’s, a new Jew-ish bistro, gains a following in Brooklyn appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Has Let 900,000 Tons of Food into Gaza, Data Show
The International Criminal Court. Photo: ICC Website.
JNS.org – Israel has let into the Gaza Strip almost 900 kilotons of food in some 40,000 trucks over the past year, according to official data.
The data was released on Friday following the International Criminal Court’s decision the previous day to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant. Israel has roundly rejected the allegations, which it called false and antisemitic.
The food data appears to undermine the ICC’s reasoning for issuing the warrants, which it said was over suspicions that the two Israelis “knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity.”
In addition to food, about 2,600 trucks containing more than 51,000 liters of water were let in, along with almost 30,000 tons of medical equipment. An additional 10,000 aid drops took place in 140 operations.
The water supply translates to 112 liters per person daily in the north of the Gaza Strip, 39 liters in the center, and 24 liters in the south.
More than 5.7 million vaccines, including polio vaccines, were administered, and 32,000 liters of fuel were let in as well as 26 kilotons of cooking gas.
In total, 57,480 trucks carrying 1,129,774 tons of aid have been delivered to the residents of the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists murdered some 1,200 people in Israel and abducted another 251, triggering a regional war and an ongoing war against Hamas.
The post Israel Has Let 900,000 Tons of Food into Gaza, Data Show first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Gov’t Votes to Cut All Ties with ‘Haaretz’
English and Hebrew editions of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – Israeli government ministers on Sunday voted to cut all connection with the left-wing Haaretz daily.
The Cabinet decision came, according to a statement from Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s office, in response to “numerous articles that harmed the legitimacy of the State of Israel in the world and its right to self-defense, particularly in light of the recent statements by the publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, who expressed support for terrorism and called for sanctions against the government.”
Karhi explained, “We cannot allow a reality in which the publisher of an official newspaper in the State of Israel calls for sanctions against it and support the state’s enemies in the midst of a war, while international bodies harm the legitimacy of the State of Israel, its right to self-defense, and actually impose sanctions against it and against its leaders.”
At a Haaretz-organized London conference on Oct. 27, Schocken urged that sanctions be imposed on the Jewish state, accused the government of imposing apartheid rule in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, referred to Palestinian terrorists as “freedom fighters” and claimed that the Israel Defense Forces was carrying out a second nakba, or “catastrophe” (the Arab term for the creation of the modern-day State of Israel in 1948).
In response to the remarks, several Israeli government ministries vowed to cancel business ties with Haaretz, including the Foreign, Education, Culture and Sport, and Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism ministries.
Sunday’s government decision halts all state-paid advertising, state-funded subscriptions and other connections with the newspaper.
Haaretz lost hundreds of subscribers due to Schocken’s remarks, news site Walla reported earlier this month. The financial blow to the paper is “one that has not been seen in many years,” Haaretz stated, according to Walla, adding that during internal meetings there was talk of “a crazy rate of cancellations and a sharp drop in newspaper advertising.”
Meanwhile, Justice Minister Yariv Levin is seeking to advance a bill that would criminalize calls by Israeli citizens for international sanctions against the Jewish state. Under the proposed law, offenders could face up to 20 years in prison for public calls for sanctions against “Israel, its leaders, members of the security forces and Israeli citizens.”
According to Levin, calls for boycotts are “tantamount to encouraging and promoting a move whose actual purpose is the denial of Israel’s right to self-defense. This act is all the more serious when committed during an existential war and while our daughters and sons are being held in inhumane conditions by a murderous terrorist group.”
The post Israeli Gov’t Votes to Cut All Ties with ‘Haaretz’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UAE Locates Body of Missing Chabad Emissary Rabbi Zvi Kogan
Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan. Photo: @Chabad/X.
JNS.org – The body of Chabad emissary Rabbi Zvi Kogan, who went missing in the United Arab Emirates on Nov. 21, has been located by UAE intelligence and security services, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign ministry said in a joint announcement on Sunday morning.
“Israel’s mission in Abu Dhabi has been in contact with the family from the beginning of the incident and continues to support them during this difficult time. His family in Israel has also been informed,” the statement read.
“The murder of Tzvi Kogan, of blessed memory, is a heinous act of antisemitic terrorism. The State of Israel will utilize all available means to bring the perpetrators to justice,” it continued.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said in response to the announcement that, “I mourn with sorrow and outrage the murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan,” adding, “This vile antisemitic attack is a reminder of the inhumanity of the enemies of the Jewish people.”
The murder “will not deter us from continuing to grow flourishing communities in the UAE or anywhere—especially with the help of the dedicated commitment and work of the Chabad emissaries all over the world,” the statement continued.
Herzog thanked UAE authorities for their swift action on the case, and expressed his confidence that they would bring the murderers to justice.
“Our thoughts and condolences are with Rabbi Kogan’s wife and family. May his memory be a blessing,” the statement concluded.
Chabad said in response to the news that, “With great pain we share that Rabbi Zvi Kogan, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Abu Dhabi, UAE, was murdered by terrorists after being abducted on Thursday.”
The PMO said on Saturday evening that the Mossad was investigating the incident and reminded Israelis that the National Security Council (NSC) advisory for the Arab Gulf state was level 3, a moderate travel warning “with a recommendation to avoid any non-essential travel to the country, and for those who are in the country–take extra precautions.”
Kogan stopped communicating with his family on Nov. 20. He reportedly failed to arrive at meetings previously scheduled on that day, and his wife contacted the Chabad security officer, who notified authorities about his disappearance. He reportedly went missing from a location about an hour and a half from Dubai.
He was an emissary for the Abu Dhabi Chabad branch and ran a kosher supermarket in the UAE.
Chabad is one of the largest religious Jewish organizations in the world, with branches in scores of countries.
According to Channel 12, Kogan is believed to have been kidnapped and murdered by an Uzbek cell operating on behalf of Iran. His body was discovered in Al-Ain, an inland oasis city on the eastern border with Oman. The authorities found signs of violence on the body, and there were also indications of a struggle in Kogan’s car.
Kogan was found in his car in Al-Ain, with his phone turned off. Initial investigations revealed that three Uzbeks followed him after he left the supermarket, and they are suspected of being responsible for his murder. The use of Uzbek militants by Iran is a known tactic.
Israeli authorities are aware that the Uzbeks traveled to Turkey, and Israeli security agencies are coordinating with Turkish officials to uncover the truth. A delegation from Israel has been sent to the UAE to oversee the investigation.
An Israeli who lives in Abu Dhabi and is acquainted with Kogan told Ynet that the rabbi “is a nice guy who is very active in the community. His family is ruined, and the Israeli and Jewish community is appalled. Kogan was the assistant of Chabad’s chief rabbi in the Emirates, and formed and managed the kosher supermarket of the community.”
Kogan married two years ago, and his wife is the niece of Gabi Holtzberg, a Chabad emissary who was murdered in Mumbai in 2008.
Relations between Israel and the UAE were normalized in the fall of 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords. Despite criticisms from Abu Dhabi of Jerusalem’s conduct during its ongoing war against Iranian-backed terrorist groups, a senior Emirati official said late last month that normalization was not at risk.
The post UAE Locates Body of Missing Chabad Emissary Rabbi Zvi Kogan first appeared on Algemeiner.com.