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A Brooklyn Jewish foodie wants to make haroset a year-round treat
(New York Jewish Week) — For many, the highlight of the Passover seder is haroset — the nutty, fruity, sweet and crunchy paste spread on matzah and meant to symbolize the mortar slung by enslaved Israelites.
Such was the case for Michael Rubel. His mother’s haroset — made with “chopped apples, Manischewitz, raisins and lots of cinnamon,” as he describes it — was something he looked forward to all year. It was delicious, rare and one of the few distinctly uncommon Jewish foods he remembered from growing up in Kansas City, Kansas.
In fact, Rubel, 26, wondered why such a treat would be confined to Passover. “I can’t tell you how many Jews have said to me, ‘Yes, I’ve always asked why we only eat this once a year,’” Rubel told the New York Jewish Week. “It feels almost universal.”
So the Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn resident, decided to do something about this sad state of affairs: Last week he launched the food brand Schmutz, which makes a haroset that is meant to be eaten all year round.
Rubel launched his brand online and at a party at East Williamburg’s Tchotchke Gallery on April 1. Within 48 hours, that first drop — which consisted of a traditional Ashkenazi apple and walnut haroset, as well as a fig and pistachio haroset inspired by a 15th-century Italian recipe — sold out. According to Schmutz’s Instagram, they sold 249 pounds of the stuff, or around 500 jars.
Schmutz haroset is not kosher for Passover; as for the brand’s name, which means “dirt or unpleasant substance” in Yiddish, Rubel says it is meant to be ironic — haroset may be delicious but it “is not a pretty food,” he concedes.
Michael Rubel, 26, mingles with guests who came to the “Schmutz” launch event at Tchotchke Gallery on April 1, 2023. (Jeffrey Rubel)
The nine-ounce jars retail for $18, which Rubel acknowledges is expensive. “It’s small-batch crafted and definitely a specialty product,” he said, “but I’m excited to make this product even more accessible going forward.”
Rubel believes that haroset can evolve into something like a jam or a condiment, a shelf-stable food that’s readily available in restaurants, synagogue gift shops and specialty food stores. The opportunities are endless — as the brand’s website says, “schwirl it in oatmeal and schpread it on cheese and schmear it on toast and schlep it to a picnic and schling it on leftovers and schpoon it from a jar.”
Though Rubel works a day job in product development at a software startup, he had previously worked in restaurant kitchens and in product development for a snack company. This, he said, gave him insight into both the production side and the business side of developing a new snack food.
Then again, haroset is more than a delicious snack or topping, according to Rubel: It also epitomizes the Jewish food experience, providing a unique opportunity to highlight the diversity of Jewish cultures. Each unique haroset recipe, he said, serves as a window into different Jewish experiences all around the world.
“One Passover during Covid, I fell down a rabbit hole of global haroset recipes, and fell so deeply in love with this food as a prism into the diaspora. It’s emblematic of a central Jewish tradition; we carry some shared instructions around the world and do different things with it,” he told the New York Jewish Week. “You’ve got a history of French folks making haroset with chestnuts, Italian communities using pine nuts. There’s tropical cherries in Suriname; dates in places like Iraq and India; peanuts, bananas, rose petals, pear and more elsewhere. Even within those communities, you see it done very differently, with different tastes, textures and beyond.”
So far, Rubel has created two flavors of the jarred haroset — fig and pistachio and apple and walnut. He hopes to include more in the future. (Landon Cooper)
Rubel wants Schmutz haroset to be part of the movement exposing Jews and non-Jews to the diversity of Jewish food. Though the first drop consisted of just two varieties, he promises more are around the corner for later this spring. “I love Ashkenazi foods so deeply, and yet, Jewish food is more than that,” Rubel said. “It feels especially important in this moment, when Jews are getting a lot of public attention, to share the depth of global Jewish cuisine, and to show that there’s no one type of Jew.”
Liz Alpern, a co-owner of Gefilteria — a brand, launched in 2012, that took another Passover staple, gefilte fish, mainstream — told the New York Jewish Week via email that she is “excited about Schmutz because it’s offering the wider world the opportunity to enjoy one of the most beloved foods from the Jewish canon.”
“Michael is thoughtful and knowledgeable about the countless global variations on charoset and he’s introduced me to many flavors I hadn’t heard of before,” Alpern added. (Gefilteria helped sponsor and cater Schmutz’s launch party last weekend.)
Having lived in New York for four years now, Rubel said he is realizing just how much Jewish food is available here — and how little is available elsewhere. That’s something he aspires to change. “I’m excited to bring a new Jewish energy not just to the kosher aisle but beyond it,” he said.
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The post A Brooklyn Jewish foodie wants to make haroset a year-round treat appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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A Yiddish favorite is among the top baby names in New York
Each year around this time, the Social Security Administration releases a list of the most popular baby names for the past year. This year, New York state’s list includes the Yiddish name Gitty, as well as five other traditional Ashkenazi names: Chana, Chaya, Rivka, Chaim and Moshe.
According to this interactive list in the Times Union, 43 of every million babies in the U.S. were given the name Gitty in the past six years.
The vast majority of these babies were apparently born in either Yiddish-speaking Hasidic families or in non-Yiddish speaking Haredi families (often referred to as “Yeshivish”) who maintain the tradition of giving their children Biblical and other traditional Jewish names, often after a deceased relative.
Although some people may be surprised to hear a Yiddish name like Gitty making the list, it lines up with the most recent statistics on language use. According to this study, in households with children aged 5 and under, Yiddish ranks as the third most common home language in New York (spoken by roughly 3% of young children), trailing only English and Spanish.
It also makes sense in light of the most recent demographic breakdown of Jewish families in the New York area. According to this 2023 UJA study, Orthodox families represent about 19% of Jewish households (approx. 430,000 individuals, including children) — a group that’s growing rapidly due to higher birth rates and younger average ages, with about two-thirds identifying as Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and the rest as Modern Orthodox.
The name Gitty is a variant of the name Gitl, which means “good” in Yiddish. Why then are these babies called Gitty instead of Gitl? This is part of a trend that began years ago, when Haredi children’s names adopted a “y” at the end, apparently mimicking the old American tradition of ending children’s names with a “y” (think Tommy instead of Thomas). As a result, Rivka became Rivky; Moshe (or Moishe) became Moishy and Gitl became Gitty.
The post A Yiddish favorite is among the top baby names in New York appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump’s humiliation of Netanyahu marks a sea change in the US-Israel relationship
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s carefully cultivated image as a master of geopolitics is on life support after reports that President Donald Trump on Monday cursed and mocked him in a phone call, calling him “f- – – ing crazy” and ordering him to stand down in Lebanon.
In response, Netanyahu’s opponents and even some of his former allies are accusing him of mortgaging Israel’s sovereignty and reducing the country to strategic dependence on Washington. They’re right. Trump is treating Netanyahu less like the leader of a sovereign ally and more like a subordinate expected to obey instructions.
As a result, Israel suddenly looks less like an independent regional power and more like an American client state.
A rupture long in the making
The roots of this humiliation stretch back months, to the beginning of the Iran war itself. In early March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that the United States entered the war because Israel was preparing to strike Iran and the White House feared that Tehran would retaliate against American forces afterward.
Ever since, American officials, including Trump himself, have disseminated the narrative of the war as a preventive intervention designed partly to manage the consequences of expected Israeli escalation. But as the war has dragged on, becoming exactly the kind of open-ended Middle Eastern entanglement Trump once promised to avoid, the public narrative has instead increasingly become that Netanyahu had talked Trump into a war that backfired, making Trump look foolish.
This week came the payback.
On Monday, Netanyahu publicly threatened major strikes on the Shiite neighborhoods of Beirut if Hezbollah attacks continued. Iran responded by suspending ceasefire talks, apparently gambling that Trump wanted an exit ramp badly enough to restrain Israel rather than risk a wider regional explosion. The gamble worked.
In the Monday call, Trump reportedly ordered Israel to cease fire immediately, demanding to know “what the f – – -” Netanyahu was doing, accusing Israel of causing escalation, and declaring — incorrectly — that he had “kept Netanyahu out of jail,” a reference to his efforts to persuade President Isaac Herzog to pardon Netanyahu in his ongoing corruption trial.
Intentional humiliation
American presidents have pressured Israeli leaders before. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion withdrew from the Sinai peninsula in 1957 under heavy pressure from then-President Dwight Eisenhower after the Suez Crisis. Washington pressured Israel to stop military operations during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and again during the 1982 Lebanon War.
Yet previous confrontations unfolded differently. American presidents pressured Israeli leaders privately while preserving the appearance of mutual respect between allies. Even when Washington prevailed, both governments generally tried to avoid publicly humiliating each other.
This time the humiliation was part of the strategy — a change that bodes ill for Israel’s standing as an independent regional power.
Trump wants Tehran, Beirut, Riyadh, Doha, Cairo, and every other Middle Eastern capital to understand that he controls the pace of escalation, and that Netanyahu obeyed when ordered to stand down.
That public spectacle explains the intensity of the Israeli backlash.
“There has never been an Israeli prime minister who accepted such a humiliating demand,” former military chief and current prime ministerial candidate Gadi Eisenkot wrote on social media. Former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, whose coalition poses a major threat to Netanyahu’s control in upcoming elections, effectively slammed Netanyahu as allowing the U.S. to dictate Israeli military policy, with Bennett accusing Netanyahu of running “a government that has lost control of Israeli sovereignty.”
Even the conservative Jerusalem Post sounded the alarm. Israel had “found itself in the humiliating position of having to seek American approval to defend its own citizens,” the paper argued in an editorial. “The United States is now actively restraining Israel from taking decisive military action.”
Netanyahu’s image in tatters
For years, Netanyahu cultivated an image of himself as uniquely capable of managing Israel’s relationship with the U.S. while preserving Israeli strategic independence. His supporters portrayed him as a geopolitical virtuoso who understood American politics better than any rival and who could navigate complex power dynamics while defending Israeli interests.
Now that image lies in ruins.
Over the last decade, Netanyahu systematically alienated nearly every pillar of Israel’s traditional support structure aside from the American right.
He offended European governments through relentless settlement expansion, confrontations with the European Union, and contempt in response to liberal Western criticism. Europe remains Israel’s largest trading partner, yet Israel now faces the growing possibility of sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and even challenges to its associated nation status with the European Union.
Then came the rupture with the American Democrats.
In 2015, Netanyahu traveled to Washington to campaign openly against then-President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran before a joint session of Congress. Strategically, that marked a turning point. Netanyahu transformed support for Israel from a matter of bipartisan American consensus into an increasingly polarized issue.
Afterward, he tied himself even more tightly to the Republican right, and especially Trump. He cultivated the impression that he exercised unusual influence over Trump himself, encouraging supporters to believe that he had effectively turned the White House into an extension of his own political operation.
That illusion has now collapsed spectacularly.
The final and perhaps most reckless step came when reports emerged that Netanyahu sought Trump’s intervention regarding his corruption trial. Even without confirming those reports’ accuracy, the perception that an Israeli prime minister already dependent on Washington for military and diplomatic backing was now personally dependent on an American president for political survival was devastating.
This week confirmed that dependence now defines the U.S.-Israel relationship. Netanyahu, the supposed master statesman, has maneuvered himself — and Israel — into a strategic cul-de-sac. Now the question is: Is there any way out?
The post Trump’s humiliation of Netanyahu marks a sea change in the US-Israel relationship appeared first on The Forward.
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NYU student draws hate crime charges for flying flag with swastikas, Star of David over campus building
(New York Jewish Week) — A New York University student is facing hate crime charges for allegedly raising a flag depicting a Star of David, two swastikas and the letters “NYU” over a university building during commencement last month.
Alexander Stepnowsky, 23, of Fairfield, Connecticut, was arrested Tuesday afternoon on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and charged with one count of hate crime burglary, two counts of aggravated harassment and one count of criminal trespassing in a hate crime, according to the New York City Police Department.
An NYU spokesperson said Stepnowsky would also face discipline from the university.
“The symbols that were represented are antisemitic and hateful to every person of conscience; this appalling act violated our sense of community and solidarity,” said the spokesperson, Wiley Norvell. “In addition to criminal proceedings, we will immediately pursue our disciplinary procedures, which carry the most severe consequences.”
The arrest comes as NYU has faced heightened scrutiny over antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric on its campus in recent years. In 2024, the school revised its hate speech policy to define slurs against “Zionists” as potentially in violation of its harassment code. During this year’s commencement, the school withheld the diploma of student who used his address to accuse Israel of genocide.
The flag depicting the swastikas flew briefly over the roof of New York University’s Steinhardt building, named for the major Jewish philanthropists Michael and Judy Steinhardt, during the school’s commencement on May 13.
Michael Steinhardt is a co-founder of Birthright, the organization that underwrites free trips to Israel for young Jewish adults.
Stepnowsky pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Wednesday and was released without bail, according to CBS News.
The office of Stepnowsky’s lawyer, Vickie Mwitanti, declined to comment.
The post NYU student draws hate crime charges for flying flag with swastikas, Star of David over campus building appeared first on The Forward.