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Why American Eagle now has a mezuzah at its Times Square flagship
(New York Jewish Week) — American Eagle Outfitters now has a mezuzah on the front door of its flagship Times Square location, courtesy of Chabad, the Hasidic outreach movement.
The parchment with Jewish holy text in an oblong metallic case, traditionally a marker of a Jewish home or establishment, was affixed on the apparel brand’s door as part of the recently concluded convention of CTeen, Chabad’s youth group. At a concert in Times Square on Saturday night, thousands of teens from more than 30 countries gathered to sing Jewish songs — and witness the mezuzah being hung.
Out of all the retailers in Times Square, how did Chabad choose American Eagle?
That question has proven surprisingly hard to answer, as representatives of neither Chabad nor American Eagle agreed to speak on the record about the relationship between the Hasidic movement and the apparel brand.
But a clue to the reason lies with American Eagle CEO Jay L. Schottenstein, a Jewish philanthropist whose family has donated tens of millions of dollars to a range of Jewish organizations. ArtScroll’s translations of the Talmud, for example, bear the name “Schottenstein,” and the family has given to a range of Jewish institutions in Columbus, Ohio, where the Schottenstein family is based. American Eagle’s revenue for fiscal year 2022 was projected at nearly $3.5 billion, according to Forbes.
Chabad is among the beneficiaries of the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Foundation, which gave more than $200,000 to the movement’s institutions in 2020, the most recent year for which tax documents are available. Since 2014, American Eagle has also given Chabad access to the retail giant’s gigantic advertising screens in Times Square.
Rabbi Aryeh Klattman, a Chabad rabbi from Columbus, told the New York Jewish Week that American Eagle “is now the most inclusive brand in America” due to its hanging of the mezuzah.
“I salute them,” Klattman said. “It meant so much to every teenager who was there. It was an expression of Jewish pride.”
Stefan Schiff, a senior and tennis star at Bexley High School in the Columbus area, was the conference attendee who placed the Jewish ritual object on the store’s doorpost.
“This is a big honor for me,” Schiff said in a statement. “I am proud to be a part of such a tremendous display of Jewish pride together with my Jewish brothers and sisters from around the world.”
Chabad said that the ritual object is “Times Square’s first-ever mezuzah,” a bold claim that is almost certainly inaccurate. The New York Jewish Week did not determine conclusively whether a mezuzah is, at present, affixed to any doors in one of the busiest public spaces of the most Jewish city in the country. But less than a decade ago, a building on 40th Street and Seventh Avenue was home to a synagogue, the Garment Center Congregation. That building’s address currently boasts the Margaritaville Resort Times Square. (The synagogue, incidentally, is suing the building’s developer).
Additionally, which set of blocks, exactly, counts as “Times Square” is up for debate, though an expansive definition proposed last year by New York City itself includes parts of the Garment District, which was once heavily Jewish. Those borders also include at least one synagogue.
Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, the Chabad director of outreach, told the New York Jewish Week that Chabad “sent out a couple of the guys to scout the area” to search for a mezuzah.
But Kotlarsky acknowledged that the claim might be debunked.
“We’re walking around Times Square, and in Duffy Square, and we didn’t see any,” he said. “Nobody ever claimed to have put up the first mezuzah. We are the first to claim it. If somebody came to me and said, “‘I put up the first mezuzah,’ I would say, ‘You’re right.’”
“That’s not what’s important to me,” Kotlarsky added. “What’s important was we were able to do that and the teens were able to connect with it.”
The event also took place at the end of a Shabbat that a small white supremacist group in Iowa had promoted as a “Day of Hate,” prompting police warnings. The day ended with no discernible uptick in antisemitic activity, both in New York and across the country.
“This day was designated by other people as the ‘Day of Hate,’” Klattman said. “The best response to darkness is light and love.”
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The post Why American Eagle now has a mezuzah at its Times Square flagship appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Jewish Chef Eitan Bernath Sets New Guinness World Record for Making Largest Matzah Ball Soup
Eitan Bernath set a new Guinness World Record for making the largest serving of matzah ball soup on Feb. 27, 2026. Photo: Eric Vitale
Jewish chef and cookbook author Eitan Bernath recently set a new Guinness World Record for making the largest serving of matzah ball soup.
The matzah ball soup weighed in at 1,356.9 pounds and was verified by Guinness World Records in Brooklyn, New York, on Feb. 27. The soup contained 847 hand-rolled matzah balls, and it took 10 chefs about 11 hours to prepare the soup, according to the Guinness World Records. All the soup was donated to City Harvest, New York City’s largest food rescue organization, which will serve it to thousands of hungry New Yorkers in food pantries and soup kitchens.
“There’s no food that brings back more memories of being surrounded by family than matzo ball soup,” Bernath, 23, told The Algemeiner in a statement. “So, when I set out to make the world’s largest version of a dish, choosing matzo ball soup was a no-brainer. Every bowl is a bowl of comfort. Being able to create a giant version was both an incredible challenge and a thrill. It meant even more to me that after setting the record, we were able to donate all the soup to New Yorkers in need — sharing the comfort of matzo ball soup even further.”
Bernath — who is also a social media content creator and the principal culinary contributor for “The Drew Barrymore Show” — said the matzah ball soup was comprised of 120 chickens, 300 carrots, and 250 bunches of herbs. The soup also included parsnip, turnip, celery root, onions, parsley, dill, paprika, and salt. Bernath used ChatGPT to scale up his grandmother’s matzo ball soup recipe to a 200-gallon version, and to help him also find the right vessels needed to make such a large portion. To hold more than 160 gallons of hot liquid, he ended up using a water trough, typically used for horses, which was lined with a food-grade liner.
On Instagram, Bernath shared behind-the-scenes photos that show the making of the massive matzah ball soup. In the caption, he explained that creating the record-breaking dish “was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done.”
“As a proud Jew, creating a record-setting giant version of such an important Jewish dish meant the world to me,” he added. “I couldn’t be prouder of my team and I for pulling this off. I will never look at a bowl of matzo ball soup the same again!!”
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The real reason for the US war with Iran may have nothing to do with Israel
The lack of a clear, coherent reason for this war is bad for the Jews.
Overstatement? Consider that Tucker Carlson is now blaming Chabad — yes, Chabad — for the conflict. Yesterday the watchdog organization The Nexus Project released a series of posts on X clarifying how to have a “robust debate about the U.S.-Israel war with Iran” without veering into antisemitism — because certain parties seem to have come to the consensus that, to put it bluntly, the Jews did it.
Americans need a good reason to shed blood thousands of miles away, and the problem is that while President Donald Trump has taken the United States to war, neither he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, nor anyone else in his administration has offered a convincing explanation as to why.
So pundits like Carlson are filling the void with poison. As I wrote last summer during the first U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran, if the war goes badly, fingers will point at Israel and its supporters. It’s clear, now, that the blame game is also going to generate a huge amount of antisemitism.
A default explanation
Why strike now? Is it because of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, the one that Trump previously boasted the U.S. “obliterated” last summer? Is it because the Iranian regime has taken American hostages, killed American service personnel and sponsored terror abroad?
All those things are true, but they’ve been true for decades. So why now?
Sen. Tom Cotton, defending the choice to go to war, said on Fox News that “Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years.”
That stretch of the word “imminent” only underscored the, um, imminent need for a better reason.
The lack of one has left Israel and its American Jewish supporters as the default scapegoat. Rubio told reporters earlier this week that the U.S. attacked Iran because Israel had decided to do so, and the U.S. had to join in because Iran would then hit back at U.S. targets.
He and the president later tried to clarify that the U.S. was going to attack anyway, and Israel’s intentions only influenced the timing.
Few on the left or right, or around the world, are buying it.
“No war for Israel!” former Marine and Green Party Senate candidate Brian McGuinness shouted during a congressional committee hearing March 4, before Capitol police and Sen. Tim Sheehy dragged him out. (McGinnis claimed his arm was broken in the process.)
“It’s hard to say this, but the United States didn’t make the decision here. Benjamin Netanyahu did,” said Carlson, days before he pivoted to blaming Chabad. The left-leaning investigative outlet The Lever titled its piece on America’s Operation Epic Fury, “Operation AIPAC Fury.”
The China syndrome
The Israeli commentator Haviv Rettig Gur stepped into this mess with a thoughtful and convincing explanation: That the attack is part of a great power game, as the U.S. makes a bid to stop Iran from being a Middle East outpost of Chinese power.
“America is in this fight because of China,” Gur wrote in an essay in The Free Press earlier this week.
After decades of effective American-led economic sanctions, Gur explained, Iran has become economically dependent on China through oil exports, which fund roughly a quarter of Tehran’s budget and sustain its military and internal security. China, which receives 90% of Iran’s crude oil, has used it to build a petroleum reserve that hedges against a potential U.S. naval blockade.
Furthermore, China has armed Iran with advanced anti-ship missiles, hardened its cyber infrastructure, conducted joint naval exercises, and given it the wherewithal to control global trade through the Strait of Hormuz.
Gur isn’t alone in asserting that what matters to the U.S. isn’t Israel’s immediate needs, but rather the China-U.S. chessboard.
China, wrote Zineb Riboua, a scholar of Chinese-Middle East politics, “bet a decade of foreign policy on Khamenei’s ability to withstand American pressure, and the bet did not pay off.”
Gur, Riboua and others making this argument might be wrong. And their reasoning still raises questions of “why now?” that are hard to answer. But it’s striking that it sounds so much more coherent than anything that’s been offered by our government.
Why we fight
Right now, about 60% of Americans oppose the war. As it drags on, and casualties and costs mount, those polling numbers will get worse — especially without a clear rationale to explain why the suffering is necessary.
One casualty of every modern Mideast war is the standing of American Jews.
After the first Gulf War in 1991, the ADL recorded 1,879 antisemitic incidents — an 11% spike over the prior year. It was the highest number since tracking began, driven largely by “politically related antisemitism” in the war’s opening months.
After the second, far more unpopular Gulf War broke out in 2003, incidents climbed again — reaching 1,821 in 2004, the highest in nearly a decade. Never mind that 70-77% of American Jews opposed the Iraq War, a higher rate than any other major religious group.
Why? Because the right and left converged on the same target: Israel-supporting neoconservatives who supposedly dragged the U.S. into a war for Zionist interests. Researchers called the conspiracy a “Trojan horse” — age-old tropes about Jewish power and dual loyalty wheeled in as foreign policy critique.
And here we are again.
In the scheme of things, now, there are bigger worries. American service personnel, innocent Iranians and their Arab neighbors are in harm’s way, Israelis are once more locked down in shelters, facing the barrages of madmen.
But these sacrifices make it more, not less urgent for the administration to land on a coherent reason for this war, and a clear set of aims.
Just as the U.S. entered into World War II, the director Frank Capa made a series of propaganda films called “Why We Fight”. By then, the title was rhetorical. In early 1941, 68 % of Americans supported the campaign against Japan and Hitler. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, support was nearly unanimous.
Now, appropriately for our polarized age, we are fighting over why we are fighting. And so much is riding on the answer.
The post The real reason for the US war with Iran may have nothing to do with Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Noam Bettan Releases Song ‘Michelle’ He’ll Perform as Israel’s Rep for 2026 Eurovision Song Contest
Noam Bettan in the music video for “Michelle.” Photo: YouTube screenshot
Noam Bettan revealed on Thursday the song he is set to perform when he represents Israel at the 70th Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria, in May.
“Michelle” is a trilingual song written by Bettan, Nadav Aharoni, Tzlil Klifi, and Yuval Raphael, who represented Israel in last year’s Eurovision and finished in second place. The song features lyrics in Hebrew, English, and French, and premiered during a special broadcast on the Kan public broadcaster.
“‘Michelle’ tells the story of choosing to break free from a toxic emotional cycle. It’s a story about emotional growth and maturity, at the moment when the protagonist realizes they must let go and choose a new path for themselves,” Eurovision stated in its official description of the song.
“Michelle” is largely in Hebrew and French with only one verse in English. “Walking down Florentin/Ocean eyes/Memories/I, I’m losing my mind,” Bettan sings in English. “An angel but it is hell/Trapped in your carousel/Round and round/Under your spell.”
Bettan, who turned 28 on Thursday, was born in Israel and raised in the city of Ra’anana. His parents are French and lived in the French city of Grenoble before immigrating to Israel with their two older sons.
Bettan is fluent in French, Hebrew, and English. He won the Israeli television show and singing competition “HaKokhav HaBa” (“The Rising Star”) in January, which automatically secured him the position of representing Israel at this year’s Eurovision. Bettan will perform “Michelle” during the second half of the first Eurovision semi-final on May 12.
“I’m very proud of the song,” Bettan said in a released statement. “It’s a great privilege to bring such a creation to the Eurovision stage. The song is full of energy and emotion that touches on a wide range of feelings. I feel that ‘Michelle’ will bring us moments of shared joy and pride, and I hope this song can bring a little of that light with it.”
Watch the music video for “Michelle” below.