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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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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.