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Car talk: Jewish auto writers gather for a Passover seder at Katz’s Deli
(New York Jewish Week) — The idea of eating pastrami with matzah instead of rye bread may strike some as a sacrilege, but for members of the Jewish Auto Writers Society of America (JAWS), who will gather this week for a Passover seder at Katz’s Delicatessen, it’s become a tradition.
“Frankly, bread is a filler,” said Joel Feder, a senior producer for the web sites Motor Authority, The Car Connection and Green Car Reports. “You can eat more pastrami if you don’t waste space on the bread.”
Feder will lead the JAWS seder on Wednesday evening, the first night of Passover. About 30 automotive industry journalists and public relations professionals are expected to attend the gathering, which is held in a back room at the iconic Lower East Side deli. The annual event, which began in 2013, is timed for the press day at the massive New York International Auto Show at Javits Center, which opens to the public this year on Friday. A bus brings JAWS members and their guests to the deli on Houston Street.
The seder is JAWS’s big annual event, though there are efforts underway to gather in Los Angeles at the Genghis Cohen Chinese restaurant in the Fairfax section of the city during the Los Angeles Auto Show in November. The seder is sponsored by Volvo and Nissan and, yes, it has been duly noted that Passover takes place in the Hebrew month of Nisan.
“If a rabbi ever walked in, I think he’d have a heart attack,” joked the seder’s founder, Russel Datz, the national media relations manager for Volvo Car USA.
But not necessarily: Though the gathering is decidedly informal, and the food is not kosher, the JAWS seder features all the accouterments you’d expect at a seder: a seder plate, matzah, wine and a festive meal that, in addition to pastrami, includes brisket, corned beef, tzimmes and matzah ball soup.
What’s more, the group uses a haggadah written by an Orthodox rabbi. “The World’s Shortest Kosher Hagaddah” by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein of the Pico Shul in Los Angeles fulfills all the halachic (Jewish legal) requirements of the Passover seder, and it takes just 10 minutes to get from the blessing on the first cup of wine to the concluding “Next year in Jerusalem!”
The haggadah was found on the internet by Dan Passe, who worked for Nissan for 17 years and left recently to take a job as global head, communications and marketing, for the Nikola Motor Company, an electric truck manufacturer.
Passe has embraced the speedy seder concept for years and readily concedes it is an act of rebellion. “I grew up going to my grandparents in Bayside, Queens, who did a three-hour long seder where you thought you were going to pass out before you got to eat,” he said. “This haggadah, if you want to call it that, is such a great way of making [the holiday] really clear and making it very snackable, if you will.”
Bookstein, who created the 10-minute seder in 2010 for the Jewish rapper known as Kosha Dillz, was delighted that the car guys and women would be, um, speeding through his haggadah. “That’s awesome. I’m originally from Detroit so I have a soft spot for the automobile writers,” he told the New York Jewish Week.
According to its Facebook page, JAWS has 110 members. Datz started the group in 2013 as a way for Jewish industry people to gather as a community during the New York auto show, which is almost always held during the week in which Passover falls.
Feder, who hails from Plymouth, Minnesota, said he is getting grief from his mother for not being home for the holiday this year. (He’ll catch a flight Thursday morning and land in Minneapolis in time to make it to the second seder.) As this year’s seder leader, Feder is filling in for Datz and Passe, who aren’t coming to the New York auto show this year because of family commitments.
Russel Datz, right, leads the annual JAWS seder at Katz’s Deli in Manhattan in 2022. (Kevin Albinder)
In addition to the traditional wine cup left for the prophet Elijah, there will be two unoccupied seats for Datz and Passe, said Evelyn Kanter, president of the International Motor Press Association and a regular at the JAWS seder since its first year. (When Datz was informed of the empty seat gesture, he quipped: ”Is she lighting yahrzeit candles as well?”)
Kanter called the deli gathering “a beloved tradition. It’s a family of people in the automotive business who are all homeless [during the auto show].”
An Upper West Sider, Kanter grew up in Inwood, back when the nearby neighborhood of Washington Heights was known as Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson because of its large German Jewish immigrant population. After stints as an investigative consumer reporter for New York radio and TV stations, Kanter became known as the ecoXplorer, writing about travel and the environment, in addition to cars.
This year, Kanter’s daughter is in Los Angeles and her son in New York is working the night of the first seder. So, in addition to the JAWS seder, she’ll attend a virtual seder on the second night. “I’ll have dinner with my son early next week and we’ll have a delayed Passover,” Kanter said.
According to Passe, half of the seder’s participants at the deli are not Jewish. “They ask to attend because they’ve never been to a seder before,” he said. “We have people who return year after year after year who are not Jewish because they love the ceremony.”
Jenni Newman, the Chicago-based editor-in-chief of cars.com, was invited by two Jewish colleagues at her company and attended JAWS seders in 2019 and 2022. She’s planning to go to her third this week. (There were no seders during the pandemic.) Although Newman describes herself as “super active” in the Lutheran Church growing up, she considers it a gift to experience other peoples’ religions and cultures. “I really enjoyed going through the ritual with everyone and having people sitting next to me explain things,” she said. “I was kind of overcome emotionally just being part of it.”
Last year Newman “found” the afikomen, though it wasn’t much of a hunt: At the JAWS seder, the hidden piece of matzah is taped underneath a random seat. The person who finds the afikomen gets their choice of a high-end Nissan or Volvo to drive for a week after the auto show.
But the real prize goes to local JAWS members, Passe noted. “If you are local and you attend, you go home with the biggest doggy bag you can possibly imagine,” he said.
Kanter, the recipient of said doggy bags, concurs. “Leftovers at Katz’s are simply too good to waste,” she said.
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Peter Beinart’s ‘Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza’ wins PEN America award
(JTA) — Progressive Jewish author Peter Beinart has won the 2026 PEN America Literary Award for nonfiction for his latest book, “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.”
Beinart, who has long been an outspoken critic of Israel, is the editor-at-large of the leftist Jewish Currents magazine and a professor at CUNY’s Newmark School of Journalism. His book offers a harsh critique of the American Jewish community’s relationship with Israel and response to the war in Gaza.
“This book is about the stories Jews tell ourselves that blind us to Palestinian suffering,” Beinart wrote in a Substack post announcing the book’s release in September 2024. “It’s about how we came to value a state, Israel, above the lives of all the people who live under its control. And it’s about why I believe that Palestinian liberation means Jewish liberation as well.”
In a statement, the judges of the PEN America award said the book “offers a model for writing a new story when inherited narratives no longer hold.”
The award offered the latest evidence of a shift for PEN America when it comes to Israel, which has polarized the literary and cultural world in recent years.
Founded in 1922, PEN America is a writers’ and free-expression advocacy group that defends the rights of authors and opposes censorship. The group has long opposed cultural boycotts of Israel, including in a December 2023 letter calling on art institutions “not to police speech nor deprive audiences of artists’ work,” earning it increasing ire from progressives. The group’s CEO left amid tensions in 2024, and last year it published a report accusing Israel of committing a genocide in Gaza.
The group named two new leaders in February, who ran into nearly immediate challenges when the group took fire for defending an Israeli comedian, Guy Hochman, who had performances canceled in Canada. The group took the unusual step of rescinding its defense of Hochman.
Now, the award to Beinart offers a signal that the group is supportive of his brand of Israel criticism. Recipients of the PEN/Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, which includes a $10,000 prize, must have published a book in the last calendar year that possesses “notable literary merit and critical perspective that illuminates important contemporary issues,” according to the PEN America website.
Beinart has also faced some of the free-speech challenges that are PEN America’s raison d’etre. Last year, appearances to promote his book in Israel drew calls for cancellation from both voices on the right, who believe his positions cross at times into antisemitism, and from left-wing allies who said he should commit to boycotting Israel. Beinart apologized to his left-wing critics for speaking in Tel Aviv.
Beinart’s award is the latest example of a book sharply critical of the West’s response to the war in Gaza gaining major literary recognition, following a similar nonfiction winner at the National Book Awards in November.
The announcement of Beinart’s selection for the prestigious award comes as the war in Gaza has reverberated across the literary world, sparking protests against some pro-Israel writers and debate among Jewish writers and institutions over the best way to respond.
Earlier this month, dozens of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish authors lit into the Jewish Book Council for having a “bias toward centering Israeli and Zionist voices.”
In recent years, the award has been given to “In The Shadow of Liberty” by Ana Raquel Minian, which documents the history of immigrant detention in the United States, and “The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning,” by Eve Fairbanks.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Trump, in absentia, becomes first non-Israeli to receive Israel’s top civilian honor
(JTA) — Donald Trump officially became the first non-Israeli to receive the Israel’s top civilian prize on Wednesday — but he wasn’t on hand to receive his honor.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Trump would get the Israel Prize after meeting with him at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, in December.
“We decided to break a convention, or create a new one, and that is to award the Israel Prize, which in almost our 80 years we’ve never awarded to a non-Israeli, and we’re going to award it this year to President Trump,” Netanyahu said at the time. He added, “It’s going to be awarded to President Donald J. Trump for his tremendous contributions to Israel and the Jewish people.”
Israel’s education minister, who oversees the prize, extended the invitation officially in early February. But even though Trump indicated at one point that he could attend the award ceremony, held annually on Independence Day, he was absent on Wednesday when it took place.
Trump has delighted in his support from Israelis, many of whom have viewed him as unusually willing to go to bat for Israeli interests. A video played at the ceremony in Jerusalem showed him meeting with Netanyahu, speaking to the Israeli parliament last year and announcing the historic normalization deals with Arab countries negotiated during his first administration.
But conditions changed sharply since Netanyahu announced the prize. In February, Trump joined Netanyahu in launching a war on Iran that has been unpopular in the United States. Reports that Netanyahu persuaded him to enter the war, which Trump has ceased despite not achieving the varied goals he offered, have deepened anti-Israel sentiment among Americans, including Trump’s base.
Trump reportedly planned at one point to accept the prize with a videotaped address, but he did not offer one during the ceremony.
The award for Trump came amid Independence Day festivities that featured an unusual honor for a different non-Israeli head of state. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who has been a vocal defender of Israel, became the first foreign leader to light a torch as part of the celebrations.
The only other non-Israeli citizen to be honored with an Israel Prize did not receive the standard one, but instead got a designation for non-citizens. In 1992, Zubin Mehta, the non-Jewish longtime music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, won a special prize for his contributions to the state. This year, Mehta announced that he was canceling his upcoming appearances in Israel, citing “of my objection to Mr. Netanyahu’s way of treating the whole Palestinian issue.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas, celebrated conductor and Yiddish Theater royalty, dies at 81
Michael Tilson Thomas, composer, conductor and longtime music director of the San Francisco Symphony, died Wednesday April 22. The cause was brain cancer. He was 81.
Thomas, the recipient of 12 Grammy Awards, a Peabody and Kennedy Center Honor, was born Dec. 24, 1944, the son of Ted Thomas, a stage manager and producer for Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre and Roberta Thomas (née Meritzer), a middle school history teacher and a founding staff writer for Newsweek. On his father’s side, his grandparents were the legendary Yiddish Theater actors Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky.
“They were like Taylor and Burton, basically, of Yiddish theater,” Tilson recalled in a 2025 interview on CBS Sunday Morning. Their sex appeal, he told Lesley Stahl, sometimes got the pair in trouble.
Thomas was a musical prodigy, working with Igor Stravinsky and Jascha Heifitz as a young pianist. In his telling, no one wanted him to pursue the arts as a career.
“Nobody, absolutely nobody, wanted me to go into show business or into anything remotely connected with performing arts,” Thomas said. “They didn’t want me to be exposed to such vagaries of the uncertainty of being a show biz person.”
But Thomas made his mark in the world of classical music as a conductor, pianist and composer. In 1969, before he graduated from the University of Southern California where he studied piano, composition and conducting, he won the Koussevitzky Prize for outstanding student conducting at Tanglewood. Soon after, he became a pianist and assistant conductor for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Much like Leonard Bernstein, to whom he was often compared, Thomas’ reputation grew when, at 24, he stepped in to replace a more established maestro, taking the baton mid-performance from the Symphony’s music director William Steinberg in a 1969 performance in New York. (Steinberg took ill after conducting Brahms’ Second Symphony.) In 1971, not yet 30, he became music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic.
Thomas’ theater pedigree was in evidence in his conducting philosophy. He told The New York Times in 2014 that he tended “ to think of an orchestra more like a repertory theater company.”
Thomas was known for pushing boundaries within a sometimes stuffy orchestral world. He was openly gay when virtually no one else in classical music was. He strived to make the music accessible for everyone as a co-founder of the New World Symphony in Miami and, in the internet age, through his work with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, whose members auditioned via video. Leading the San Francisco Symphony from 1995 to 2020, he highlighted the work of American composers through the American Mavericks Festival concert series.
Accomplished as an educator and conductor, Thomas was a prolific composer, often on Jewish themes. He wrote the 1990 cantata From the Diary of Anne Frank (he won a 2021 Grammy for a recording of the work) and 1995’s Shówa/Shoáh, which lamented both the tragedy of the Hiroshima bombing and the Holocaust.
In 2005, Thomas paid tribute to his theatrical forebears in Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, which debuted at Carnegie Hall, and later aired on PBS. He was a regular on public access television, hosting the series Keeping Score, which explored the work of composers and geared toward school-age audiences.
Thomas, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2021, gave his final performance on April 26, 2025 at the San Francisco Symphony in honor of his 80th birthday. He was aware the performance would be his last, describing it as a “generous and rich” coda.
“At that point, we all get to say the old show business expression,” Thomas wrote on his website. “‘It’s a wrap.’”
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