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Matzah ball soup dumplings, a mashup of Ashkenazi and Asian cuisines, are on offer at this Brooklyn eatery
(New York Jewish Week) – What do you get when you combine two of New York City’s most iconic foods, matzah ball soup and Chinese dumplings? You get exactly what it sounds like: a mouth-watering franken-nosh that’s at once familiar and innovative.
Matzah ball soup dumplings can be found at Brooklyn’s Lucky Rabbit Noodles, a 300-square-foot spot in Dumbo that’s quite literally underneath the roaring traffic of the Manhattan Bridge on the corner of Plymouth Street and Anchorage Place.
The dish, according to Lucky Rabbit’s owner and chef, Jeremy Dean, is inspired by his love of matzah ball soup. “If I’m at a diner, I’m ordering matzah ball soup,” Dean told the New York Jewish Week, explaining that the classic Ashkenazi comfort dish is one of his favorite New York foods. “I don’t have any Jewish affiliation or anything.”
At Lucky Rabbit — which serves all types of Asian-inspired noodle dishes — the matzah ball soup dumplings are served four to an order for $6. The innovative dish includes four dumplings, made with dumpling wrappers sourced from just over the bridge in Chinatown, that are filled with crumbled housemade matzah balls, ground chicken, onion, carrots and celery before being steamed in their own mini-tin. Upon cooking, chicken broth is ladled over the dumplings and its all topped with dill and fried shallots.
Dean told the New York Jewish Week that he’d tried the matzah ball ramen at Williamsburg’s Jewish-Japanese restaurant Shalom Japan and was inspired to play with that Asian-Ashkenazi flavor combination. “It’s kind of a different take on that,” he said.
Though they are called “soup dumplings,” Lucky Rabbit’s version isn’t made like traditional Chinese soup dumplings (xiao long bao), where the broth is wrapped inside the dumpling paper.
“I try to stay away from authentic things,” Dean said. “I had the authentic soup dumpling, xiao long bao, on the menu for a minute but I wanted to make the flavors a little different anyway.” He added that xiao long bao are very complicated to make — and he’s been the only employee for two of the three years he’s been running the business. (In the last year, a dishwasher and second chef have joined the team.)
Before Lucky Rabbit, Dean, who is Mexican and Salvadoran, ran Vodega, a vegan deli and bodega in the same spot for several months in 2020. He transformed the space into Lucky Rabbit in early 2021, partly because he felt like there wasn’t a lot of great Asian food in the neighborhood, where he’s lived for 13 years.
The dining scene in the formerly industrial, now upscale neighborhood has been shifting in recent years: Food hall Time Out Market opened in May 2019, while a new Israeli restaurant, Nina, opened in Dumbo in November.
At Lucky Rabbit, the matzah ball soup dumplings have been popular, Dean said — just that morning, a couple had placed an order for 300 dumplings that they could keep in their freezer.
On the evening of the New York Jewish Week’s visit earlier this week, Jewish comedian Liz Glazer happened to be in the restaurant to try the dumplings herself. “First, I’m just appreciating the dill and the fried onions,” she said. “I imagine this is going to be like a big texture party.”
“It tastes like matzah ball soup and I love that it has the crispy onion — my mom’s [soup] didn’t have that,” she said after trying a bite. “This is great. It’s a real fusion.”
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The post Matzah ball soup dumplings, a mashup of Ashkenazi and Asian cuisines, are on offer at this Brooklyn eatery appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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