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The ‘iconic’ Jewish foods that make New York New York
(New York Jewish Week) — In 2004, June Hersh and her family sold the Bronx-based lighting business that her father founded almost 50 years earlier. Hersh, along with her mother, sister and their husbands, all worked there. The day of the sale, her sister, Andrea Greene, turned to Hersh and said: “We did well! Now, let’s do good.”
Greene, a breast cancer survivor, became a volunteer for the Israel Cancer Research Fund. Hersh, who was 48 at the time, asked herself what her “good” would be — she loved to cook, and she loved to write.
A couple of years later, she approached David Marwell, then the director of The Museum of Jewish Heritage–A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, offering to write a cookbook to benefit the museum. In it, she would tell the stories and recreate the recipes of museum members who were Holocaust survivors. The book, “Recipes Remembered, A Celebration of Survival” was published in 2011. To date, 25,000 copies of the book have been sold to benefit the museum as well as other Jewish organizations.
Since then, Hersh has written several other books with a philanthropic component, including “The Kosher Carnivore: The Ultimate Meat and Poultry Cookbook,” which benefited Mazon, a Jewish nonprofit working to combat hunger, and “Still Here: Inspiration from Survivors and Liberators of the Holocaust” with proceeds donated to Selfhelp, a social services agency aiding Holocaust survivors and the elderly in the New York metropolitan area.
This month, her fifth book, “Iconic New York Jewish Food,” was published, benefitting Met Council, a New York-based Jewish charity serving more than 315,000 needy people each year. As Met Council CEO David Greenfield writes in the book’s foreword, the organization operates “the largest emergency food system in America, focused on helping individuals and families who maintain kosher diets, as well as other religiously informed dietary practices.”
Hersh said was moved by Met Council’s inclusivity. “I don’t think Jewish organizations ever help only Jewish people,” she told the New York Jewish Week. “They always have a broad reach, and I am proud of that.”
In “Iconic New York Jewish Foods,” Hersh writes about Jewish foods that have, over time, become New York foods: bagels, egg creams, cheesecake, hot dogs and much more. The book combines humor (one chapter is titled: “Doesn’t That Look Appetizing: The Birth of a New York Phenomenon”), history (the evolution of the hot dog bun, for example) and recipes (like “Mash Up Hash Up Latkes,” potato pancakes made with corned beef and pastrami).
Hersh spoke with the New York Jewish Week about her book, what makes a Jewish food iconic, and what’s special about New York City.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
New York Jewish Week: What inspired you to write a book about iconic New York Jewish foods?
June Hersh: In the world of food, I have two passions. One is to tell the history of food. What is its lineage? How did it come to be? Who first ate it? Why is it important? My second passion is preserving the food memory of the Jewish people. I don’t think anything binds us together like food. It is the connective thread in the Jewish story.
What makes a food Jewish?
Most Jewish food is not easy to define. For Ruth Kohn, a Jewish refugee from Germany, arroz con pollo became a Jewish food that she made in her new home in Sosua, Dominican Republic. If you are looking for Jewish food, throw a dart on a map. Wherever it lands, you will find someone making Jewish food. It might not be the Jewish food we identify with, but it is Jewish food. It is informed by something in one’s heritage and culture — where the makers of it left or where they landed.
My grandmother was from the island of Rhodes. Her family came from Spain, and she spoke Ladino. Her food was informed by the Spanish techniques of her family and the Greek influences of the country where they landed after their expulsion from Spain.
Given your Sephardic background, why is the focus of the book on Ashkenazi foods?
Ashkenazi, Eastern European food is what informed the Jewish foodways of New York. The only iconic Sephardic food [in New York] is Turkish taffy which was introduced here by Herman Herer from Austria and Albert Bonomo, from Turkey.
What makes a Jewish food iconic?
A Jewish food becomes iconic when it is prevalent on menus, and not just in Jewish restaurants. Iconic food is something that has become part of everyone’s food culture.
An example would be New York cheesecake, a food you see on mainstream menus. Cheesecake, according to Alan Rosen, a third-generation proprietor of Junior’s, a Brooklyn restaurant known for it, is one of the most ordered desserts in any restaurant anywhere. And cheesecake didn’t exist in the same form in which it exists now until you had Jewish immigrants.
People eat hot dogs on rolls all the time. You didn’t have hot dogs on rolls until you had Jewish immigrants; that was born out of ingenuity, which is part of what I admire and respect and celebrate in Jewish food.
Can you give some examples of how Jewish food is embraced in NYC at large?
One of the best New York City bagel shops, Absolute Bagels, is run by a Thai baker. One of the best examples of old-school brisket comes from David’s Brisket House, owned by non-Jewish Yemenites. The beauty of the Jewish food of New York is how it is embraced by so many cultures who then give their spin and interpretation.
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Bombing Can Weaken Iranian Regime, but Only Popular Uprising Can Overthrow It, Dissidents Say
Members of the police stand guard on a street, with a large billboard featuring Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the background, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani
A senior official from a Paris-based Iranian opposition group said on Thursday that the US-Israeli war on Iran would not topple the clerical leadership, arguing that only a popular uprising backed by internal resistance could do so.
Almost two weeks of bombing have killed around 2,000 people in Iran including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and damaged much of its military and security apparatus.
Iran has responded in kind, throwing global energy markets and transport into chaos and spreading the conflict across the Middle East, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has tightened its grip on power and threatened to crush any unrest.
“The 12-day war in June, and the current war, now in its 12th day, proved that bombings cannot overthrow the regime,” Mohammad Mohaddesin, head of foreign policy at the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told a news conference.
“Even if you have 50,000 armed soldiers on the ground, you need the support of Iranian people. You need a popular uprising. The combination of this 50,000 or 20,000 or any other number with a popular uprising, then you have this power to overthrow the regime.”
Mohaddesin said he did not consider a deployment of US ground troops realistic.
The NCRI, also known by its Farsi name Mujahideen-e-Khalq, was listed as a terrorist organization by the United States until 2012.
It is banned in Iran, and it is unclear how much support it has there. However, along with its bitter rival, the monarchists backing Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of the toppled shah, it is one of the few opposition groups able to rally supporters.
Mohaddesin acknowledged that his group alone could not bring down the system. But he said mass protests, like those that raged in January until they were bloodily quashed, would resume once bombing stopped, and could eventually shift the balance.
“I cannot say how many months or a year, but … this is the track of overthrowing the regime,” he said.
Israeli officials have said that one of their objectives is to weaken the security apparatus so that Iran‘s people can take control of their own destiny.
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Trump Says It Is Not Appropriate for Iran to Be in Soccer World Cup
Soccer Football – World Cup – Asian Qualifiers – Group A – Iran v North Korea – Azadi Stadium, Tehran, Iran – June 10, 2025, Iran players line up before the match. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday the Iranian men’s national soccer team was welcome to participate in the 2026 World Cup but that he believed it was not appropriate that they be there “for their own life and safety.”
“The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Iran‘s sports minister said on Wednesday that it was not possible for his nation’s athletes to participate after the US launched airstrikes alongside Israel against Tehran. The attacks triggered a region-wide conflict that has shown no signs of abating.
The 48-team World Cup will be held in the US, Canada, and Mexico from June 11 to July 19, with Iran scheduled for matches in Los Angeles and Seattle.
An official withdrawal by Iran from the showpiece event, which has not yet happened, would be a first in the modern era and would leave soccer‘s global governing body FIFA with the urgent task of finding a replacement team.
Iran was the only nation missing from a FIFA planning summit for World Cup participants held last week in Atlanta.
FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Late last year it awarded Trump — who has campaigned aggressively for the Nobel Peace Prize — its own inaugural peace prize.
Earlier this week, Australia granted humanitarian visas to five Iranian women soccer players after they sought asylum, fearing persecution on their return home for their refusal to sing the national anthem at an Asia Cup match.
Trump had urged Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to grant asylum to members of the Iranian women’s team, saying the US would if Australia did not.
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The New ‘Tokyo Roses’: How Social Media Influencers Amplify Authoritarian Propaganda
People stand near a destroyed vehicle as smoke rises after a reported strike on Shahran fuel tanks, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
At 04:38 on the morning of March 11, 2026, the alert blasted onto my phone: “Red Alert – Tel Aviv.”
Like millions of Israelis during the current war with Iran, my family and I moved quickly into our mamad — the reinforced safe room built into Israeli homes constructed after 1993 — grateful for the air-defense systems intercepting incoming missiles overhead.
Fifteen minutes later, the sirens stopped. I climbed back into bed.
That has become the rhythm of daily life here. Restaurants reopened. Businesses operate. Children move between Zoom classes and the occasional dash to a shelter when sirens sound.
But if you relied solely on social media — particularly X or TikTok — you might believe Tel Aviv had already been reduced to rubble.
Videos circulate claiming the city is burning and the electric grid destroyed. Posts declare Israel is collapsing under missile fire. Influencers insist the truth is being “censored.”
The problem is that this supposed “evidence” turns out to be fabricated, misrepresented, or recycled footage — often not even from Israel.
In other words: propaganda.
The tactic itself is not new.
During World War II, Allied soldiers in the Pacific heard English-language propaganda broadcasts from personalities collectively known as “Tokyo Rose.” Their purpose was to undermine morale, spread disinformation, and convince American troops their cause was hopeless.
The technology has changed, but the tactic hasn’t.
Today, the propaganda battlefield is on social media, and the new “Tokyo Roses” are often Western influencers with enormous audiences.
Consider the viral claims that Iran’s missile attacks have “devastated” Israel.
Several widely shared posts attempted to support this narrative with dramatic footage supposedly showing Iranian strikes on Israeli cities.
Basic fact-checking revealed something else: AI-generated fabrications or recycled clips from earlier events.
Repackaging old footage to fabricate a new narrative is one of the oldest tricks in propaganda. What has changed is the speed. In the social media age, recycled footage and fabricated videos spread globally in minutes, while corrections rarely travel as far as the original lie.
A similar pattern appeared recently when Putin- and Houthi-supporting influencer Jackson Hinkle circulated a video claiming to show massive crowds in Iran mourning the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei. Fact-checkers later identified the footage as coming from the 2020 funeral of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani. By the time the clarification appeared, the misleading version had already spread widely across social media.
Other influencers have gone further by promoting narratives that closely mirror those pushed by authoritarian regimes.
Social media personality Myron Gaines recently argued that Iran “poses no real threat to the United States” and that the war should end because it is “Israel’s problem, not ours.”
But Iran’s regime has spent decades building precisely the opposite reality. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran has treated the United States as a principal enemy. Iranian leaders regularly chant “Death to America,” and Iran and its proxies have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American service members, including attacks in Beirut, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran has built a network of proxy militias across the Middle East — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Shiite militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.
These groups have launched thousands of rockets, drones, and missiles against America and its allies while Iran continues expanding its ballistic-missile arsenal and advancing toward nuclear-weapons capability.
This buildup also fits into the broader ambitions of the China-Russia-Iran axis, which seeks to weaken American global influence.
To describe such a regime as posing “no real threat” requires ignoring one of the most documented security challenges in modern geopolitics.
Unless one believes that the world — and especially the United States — would be freer or safer with China, Russia, and Iran ascendant, the stakes should be obvious.
In other cases, the rhetoric moves from distortion into outright antisemitic conspiracy.
Social media personality Dan Bilzerian has posted messages accusing Western leaders and the Muslim governments cooperating with Israel of “selling out” their people. His posts frequently invoke conspiratorial claims about hidden Jewish forces nefariously controlling Western governments.
These narratives mirror themes long promoted by state-controlled media in Iran and Russia.
Whether intentional or not, the effect is the same: Western audiences are fed narratives that erode trust in democratic institutions while portraying authoritarian regimes as misunderstood and even noble victims.
In some cases, the messaging goes further still.
Recent posts from Candace Owens, widely shared across social media, have encouraged Americans not to serve in the US military and urged those currently serving to quit, while framing the conflict through very dark and conspiratorial accusations about hidden motives to serve supposedly prurient and venal Jewish interests.
Messages designed to discourage military service during wartime have long been tools of psychological warfare. In the 1940s such efforts were broadcast over enemy radio. Today they appear in US based social media feeds.
None of this occurs in a vacuum.
For years the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has treated information warfare as a central element of its strategy. Iranian state media and proxy networks attempt to shape global narratives by portraying the Islamic Republic as a victim while depicting Israel and the United States as degenerate and corrupt aggressors.
These campaigns rely on familiar tactics: recycled footage, conspiracy narratives, and emotionally charged messaging designed to spread rapidly online. What makes the modern environment different is that these narratives no longer need to originate inside Iran to reach Western audiences. Influencers with large followings amplify them instantly.
The propaganda circulating online often revives and relies on something far older than modern geopolitics: classic antisemitic tropes.
Many viral posts go far beyond criticism of US or Israeli policy. They invoke conspiracies about Jewish control of governments, repeat blood-libel accusations, and frame global events as the result of a shrouded Jewish plot.
Versions of these accusations have circulated for centuries. What is striking today is how seamlessly these myths have merged with contemporary geopolitical propaganda.
Authoritarian regimes hostile to Israel have long understood that antisemitic narratives can serve as powerful mobilizing tools. Portraying Israel as the center of a global conspiracy transforms a regional conflict into an ideological crusade.
When influencers with large Western audiences repeat these themes, they normalize ideas that have historically fueled violence against Jews.
The modern “Tokyo Rose” no longer sits behind a microphone in an enemy capital. He or she posts on social media.
The voices spreading propaganda today are influencers with millions of Western followers — many living safely and prosperously inside the democratic societies whose resolve they undermine. Some claim they are offering contrarian commentary. Others are motivated by attention or the financial rewards of viral outrage.
But the effect is the same: narratives promoted by authoritarian regimes are amplified to vast audiences, often stripped of context, facts, or accountability.
Meanwhile here in Tel Aviv, life continues between missile alerts. Millions of Israelis move between normal routines and red-alert interruptions as air defenses intercept incoming missiles. But it bears little resemblance to the apocalyptic fantasies circulating online.
That contrast — between lived reality and digital narrative — reveals something important about modern information warfare.
Propaganda no longer requires governments to broadcast lies. It only requires enough people willing to repeat them — and in the age of social media, there are always volunteers.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.