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This one-of-a-kind bagel shop is made entirely of felt
(New York Jewish Week) — Anyone walking into Feltz Bagels in Montauk, New York, could be forgiven for wanting to taste everything on the menu: There are 15 types of bagels; a variety of schmears, meats and toppings, as well as desserts like rugelach and babka by the slice.
But while everything in the shop is for sale, it won’t taste very good: Everything at Feltz Bagels, from the ticket machine to the challahs to the “We Are Happy to Serve You” cups of coffee, is made entirely out of felt.
Feltz Bagels, a complete recreation of a New York bagel bakery, is the invention of Lucy Sparrow, a 37-year-old, U.K.-based artist who specializes in felt. Since 2014, Sparrow has mounted a variety of installations around the globe that recreate everyday, interactive commercial spaces — markets, pharmacies, corner stores — out of the soft, fuzzy material.
Feltz Bagels — which is currently on view through Sept. 4 at TW Gallery in Montauk — came about as an outgrowth of her first show in the United States in 2017: “8 ‘Till Late,” a recreation of a classic New York bodega that drew crowds to the Standard, High Line hotel. In selecting items for her felt bodega,
“I chose designs that looked the best, to me: a simple label, classic design, not too much writing,” Sparrow told the New York Jewish Week, describing how she came to home in on Jewish foods.
It just so happened that many of these simple designs were used in the packaging for Ashkenazi Jewish staples: Streit’s matzah, gefilte fish, Manischewitz egg noodles.
“When I did that first show, I had loads of feedback from people, like, ‘Thanks so much for making these Jewish foods,’” said Sparrow, who is not Jewish and, at the time, had only been to New York once before. “The response was just amazing.”
Everything is made of felt at Feltz Bagels, created by Lucy Sparrow. (Michael DeTemple)
Recreating a bagel bakery, Sparrow said, seemed to be a no-brainer for her next New York show. “My favorite area of New York has always been the Lower East Side,” said Sparrow, who has since been to New York about 20 times. “The fact that bagels and the Lower East Side are really synonymous with each other; the idea gave birth to itself, in a way.”
“Everybody has this personal story, this personal preference of what [bagels] they eat, what it means to them, what memories it sums up,” she said. “That, depicted in art, seemed like a very strong idea.”
Sparrow drew upon classic New York delis and appetizing spots, including Russ & Daughters, Katz’s Delicatessen and Zabar’s — “these New York institutions that seem to be really imprinted upon New Yorkers,” she said. And while Feltz Bagels may be more colorful than a typical bagel store, Sparrow nailed the iconic “deli look.”
Bagels, Sparrow points out, are both highly universal and extremely personal. “Workers on a construction site go and get a bagel. Office workers also go and get a bagel — there seems to be no [single] demographic,” she said. “It’s a leveler. It’s universal, but it’s also very personal. There are not a lot of foods that have that. People have a lot of opinions about bagels.”
Sparrow, too, has her particulars: A vegetarian, her typical lunchtime bagel order is sun-dried tomato cream cheese, American cheese, mushrooms, peppers and lettuce on a salt bagel. “I absolutely love bagels — the last one I had was yesterday,” she said.
Everything is for sale at Feltz Bagels, whose punny name also pays tribute to British Jewish TV presenter Vanessa Feltz. An anthropomorphized rugelach is $10, while a whole bagel starts at $60 and a bagel with fixings is $250. (And like any proper, present-day Jewish eatery worth its, well, salt, there is Feltz Bagels merch, including stickers and sweatshirts.)
Nearly all the felt food items are adorned with eyes, adding another layer of whimsy to the experience.
“I think it’s lovely watching grown adults come in and they’re like, ‘Ohhh, it’s got a face!’” Sparrow said. “And then they make them, and they take them home. And these pieces of art that I’ve put so much love into live in people’s homes, and just go on living the rest of their lives in houses that I’ll never see the inside of.”
So far, the most popular order has been a classic combo: cream cheese, lox, onion, tomatoes and capers, Sparrow said. The type of bagel, however, tends to vary. A more unusual option is the salt beef, the British term for corned beef — rarely available at the standard bagel shop.
For those not able to make it out to Montauk before next weekend, don’t despair: Feltz Bagels will open in Manhattan in October, with a stop in Miami to follow. Sparrow has a team of three assistants in the United Kingdom working to get the New York show ready; at the moment, she said, they are creating more felt black-and-white cookies, another deli staple. Sparrow hopes to expand her offerings in New York, adding cinnamon babka (in addition to chocolate), dried fruit and maybe even a seder plate.
Sparrow, who lives in the “tiniest village” in England’s Suffolk County, added that the best part of her hard work is having customers “open their hearts” to her. Just the other day, she said, someone came in and shared a story about their grandmother’s bagel recipe.
“It’s the stories I love hearing,” she said. “I’m just overwhelmed that people want to share them with me.”
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The post This one-of-a-kind bagel shop is made entirely of felt appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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McGill cancels talk with former Hamas insider turned Israel advocate, citing fears of violence
McGill University has canceled an on-campus event planned by Jewish students—and temporarily halted bookings for all extracurricular activities—following threats of violence along with a death threat, as outlined in a […]
The post McGill cancels talk with former Hamas insider turned Israel advocate, citing fears of violence appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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US Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Strip Funding From Universities That Boycott Israel
US Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) at a press conference in Bergenfield, New Jersey, US on June 5, 2023. Photo: Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) on Tuesday introduced bipartisan legislation to cut off federal funding from universities that engage in boycotts of Israel.
The legislation, titled “The Protect Economic Freedom Act,” would render universities that participate in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel ineligible for federal funding under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, prohibiting them from receiving federal student aid. The bill would also mandate that colleges and universities submit evidence that they are not participating in commercial boycotts against the Jewish state.
“Enough is enough. Appeasing the antisemitic mobs on college campuses threatens the safety of Jewish students and faculty and it undermines the relationship between the US and one of our strongest allies. If an institution is going to capitulate to the BDS movement, there will be consequences — starting with the Protect Economic Freedom Act,” Foxx, chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement.
Gottheimer added that the legislation is necessary to thwart the surging tide of antisemitism on college campuses. Although the lawmaker noted that students are allowed to engage in free expression regarding the ongoing war in Gaza, he argued that blanket boycotts against Israel endanger the lives of Jewish students and community members.
“The goal of the antisemitic BDS movement is to annihilate the democratic State of Israel, America’s critical ally in the global fight against terror. While students and faculty are free to speak their minds and disagree on policy issues, we cannot allow antisemitism to run rampant and risk the safety and security of Jewish students, staff, faculty, and guests on college campuses,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “The new bipartisan Protect Economic Freedom Act will give the Department of Education a critical new tool to combat the antisemitic BDS movement on college campuses. Now more than ever, we must take the necessary steps to protect our Jewish community.”
The legislation instructs the US Department of Education to keep a record of universities that refuse to confirm their non-participation in anti-Israel boycotts. The list of universities in non-compliance with the legislation would be made publicly available.
In the year following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre acrosssouthern Israel, universities across the country have found themselves embroiled in controversies regarding campus antisemitism. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Israel, hordes of students and faculty orchestrated protests and demonstrations condemning the Jewish state. Student groups at elite universities such as Harvard and Columbia issued statements blaming Israel for the attacks and expressing support for Hamas.
Several high-profile universities have also shown a significant level of tolerance for anti-Jewish sentiment festering on their campuses. Northwestern University, for example, capitulated to demands of anti-Israel activists to remove Sabra Hummus from campus dining halls because of its connections to Israel. At Stanford University, Jewish students have reported being forced to condemn Israel before being allowed to enter campus parties. Students at the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University launched unsuccessful attempts to convince the university to divest endowment funds from companies tied to Israel.
The post US Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Strip Funding From Universities That Boycott Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Harvard Chaplains Omit Antisemitism From Statement on Antisemitic Incident
Demonstrators take part in an “Emergency Rally: Stand With Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza,” amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University’s Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life is being criticized by a rising Jewish civil rights activist for omitting any mention of antisemitism from a statement addressing antisemitic behavior.
The sharp words followed the office’s response to a hateful demonstration on campus in which pro-Hamas students stood outside Harvard Hillel and called for it to banned from campus. Such a demand is not new, as it began earlier this semester at the direction of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization, which coordinates the lion’s share of anti-Zionist activity on college campuses.
As seen in footage of the demonstration, the students chanted “Zionists aren’t welcome here!” and held signs which accused the organization — the largest campus organization for Jewish students in the world — of embracing “war criminals” and genocide.
Addressing the behavior, Harvard Chaplains issued a statement, which is now being pointed to as a symbol of higher education’s indifference to the unique hatred of antisemitism, as well as its permutation as anti-Zionism.
“We have noticed a trend of expression in which entire groups of students are told they ‘are not welcome here’ because of their religious, cultural, ethnic, or political commitments and identities, or are targeted through acts of vandalism,” the office said, seemingly circumventing the matter at hand. “We find this trend disturbing and anathema to the dialogue and connection across lines of difference that must be a central value and practice of a pluralistic institution of higher learning.”
It continued, “Student groups who are singled out in this way experience such language and acts of vandalism as a painful attack that undermines the acceptance and flourishing of religious diversity here at Harvard. Let us all endeavor to care for one another in these divisive times.”
Recent Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum, who addressed the Republican National Convention in August to discuss the ways which progressive bias in higher education fosters anti-Zionism and anti-Western ideologies, described the statement as a moral failure in a post on X/Twitter on Tuesday.
“Disappointing,” he said. “After Harvard Jews were told by masked students ‘Zionists aren’t welcome here’ outside of the Hillel, the Chaplain Office finally released a statement that did not include the words Jew, Zionism, Israel, or antisemitism. A total abdication of religious responsibility.”
Kestenbaum noted in a later statement that Harvard’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, has so far declined to speak on the issue at all. He charged that when Charleston “isn’t plagiarizing, she and DEI normalize antisemitism,” referring to evidence, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, that Charleston is a serial plagiarist who climbed the hierarchy of the higher education establishment by pilfering other people’s scholarship.
Harvard University president Alan Garber — installed after former president Claudine Gay resigned following revelations that she is also a serial plagiarist — has, experts have said, been inconsistent in managing the campus’ unrest.
During summer, The Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard downgraded “disciplinary sanctions” it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it suspended for illegally occupying Harvard Yard for nearly five weeks, a reversal of policy which defied the university’s previous statements regarding the matter. Unrepentant, the students, members of the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP), celebrated the revocation of the punishments on social media and promised to disrupt the campus again.
Earlier this semester, however, Garber appeared to denounce a pro-Hamas student group which marked the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by praising the brutal invasion as an act of revolutionary justice that should be repeated until the Jewish state is destroyed, despite having earlier announced a new “institutional neutrality” policy which ostensibly prohibits the university from weighing in on contentious political issues. While Garber ultimately has said more than Gay when the same group praised the Oct. 7 massacre last academic year, his administration’s handling of campus antisemitism has been ambiguous, according to observers — and described even by students who benefited from its being so as “caving in.”
The university’s perceived failure to address antisemitism has had legal consequences.
Earlier this month, a lawsuit accusing it of ignoring antisemitism was cleared to proceed to discovery, a phase of the case which may unearth damaging revelations about how college officials discussed and crafted policy responses to anti-Jewish hatred before and after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The case, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, centers on several incidents involving Harvard Kennedy School professor Marshall Ganz during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Ganz allegedly refused to accept a group project submitted by Israeli students for his course, titled “Organizing: People, Power, Change,” because they described Israel as a “liberal Jewish democracy.” He castigated the students over their premise, the Brandeis Center says, accusing them of “white supremacy” and denying them the chance to defend themselves. Later, Ganz allegedly forced the Israeli students to attend “a class exercise on Palestinian solidarity” and the taking of a class photograph in which their classmates and teaching fellows “wore ‘keffiyehs’ as a symbol of Palestinian support.”
During an investigation of the incidents, which Harvard delegated to a third party firm, Ganz admitted that he believed “that the students’ description of Israel as a Jewish democracy … was similar to ‘talking about a white supremacist state.’” The firm went on to determine that Ganz “denigrated” the Israeli students and fostered “a hostile learning environment,” conclusions which Harvard accepted but never acted on.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Harvard Chaplains Omit Antisemitism From Statement on Antisemitic Incident first appeared on Algemeiner.com.