Uncategorized
Food writer Alison Roman makes a comeback — and a brisket for Passover
(New York Jewish Week) — What first caught my eye about Jewish food writer Alison Roman was not any one recipe. Rather, it was a photo of her that was published in the New York Times in 2019: Roman was in her tiny Brooklyn kitchen, kneeling in front of her overstuffed and undersized refrigerator. She was wearing jeans and t-shirt — and her feet were bare and dirty. I simply loved the messiness, joy and imperfection of it all.
The photo accompanied a selection of Thanksgiving recipes written by the young and rising star, who was first introduced to the Times’ readership just over a year prior as an heir to Pierre Franey and his quick-to-prepare foods. Roman’s Thanksgiving menu included a dry-brined turkey, hand-torn sourdough bread stuffing with celery and leeks, leafy herb salad spiked with lemon zest, lemon juice and flaky sea salt. The recipes were a reflection of the author: approachable and decidedly not fussy.
That anti-perfect attitude is a hallmark of Roman’s style, and it’s certainly a theme of her latest cookbook, “Sweet Enough,” which comes out at the end of this month. It is her third (“Dining In” and “Nothing Fancy” preceded it) and, according to Variety, pre-publication it has already “shot to the top of bestseller lists.”
This new cookbook is devoted to desserts, although there are a handful of savory recipes, too. Many of the recipes, like her Summer Pudding with Summer Fruit, her bowl of Salted Chocolate Pudding, and her raspberries and sour cream, do not have to be baked, nor do they require fancy know-how or special equipment. She even encourages readers to eat these treats straight from the bowl or the pot in which they were cooked.
Roman became an important part of the food conversation in this country in an impressively short amount of time. By the time she was hired full-time at the Times, at 32, she had had a meteoric rise at Bon Appetit magazine, where she moved from freelance recipe tester to senior food editor in four years. By then, she had already published her first cookbook and had a cookie recipe that went viral on Instagram.
Her fall from grace in May 2020 was even faster. In an interview for the online publication The New Consumer, she criticized two prominent women of color, Japanese organizing guru Marie Kondo and Asian-American model, cookbook author and prominent Twitter user Chrissy Teigen, for licensing their names and essentially “selling out.” In the ensuing weeks, the backlash online was swift and fierce, accusing her of everything from inappropriateness to racism. Amid the moment’s perfect storm — the pandemic and the rapid rise of the Movement for Black Lives — her column at the Times was suspended.
Six weeks later, on June 21, she founded a Substack newsletter, simply titled, “A Newsletter.” She now cranks that out weekly to 229,000 subscribers, and her YouTube channel, “Home Videos,” has some 213,000 subscribers. Looking back, Roman describes that post-interview time period as “challenging,” but, as she told the New York Jewish Week, “it led me to writing more and writing more for myself. And I think that’s a good thing.”
These days, Roman, 37, who describes herself as “half Jewish,” is about to embark on her book tour. Ahead of the release of “Sweet Enough,” she spoke to the New York Jewish Week about her favorite Jewish dishes, her food philosophy, and what she loves about Passover, which begins this year at sundown on Weds., April 5.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited.
New York Jewish Week: How did the idea for this book come to you?
Roman: I felt there was a need for a dessert book from the perspective of someone who was not a die-hard lover of baked goods or dessert — somewhere between indifferent and enthusiastic. I felt like there were probably others like me.
I embrace the fact that the desserts were not designed to be perfect and they don’t have to be. People accept the flaws of, say, a roast chicken, but if their cake is crooked it ruins their day.
I’m trying to normalize the fact that not everything will be perfect, and it’s OK.
You are from California. How has being in New York changed the way you cook?
Living in New York, I have an emphasis on accessibility. I don’t always have access to the best produce; when things are out of season it becomes more difficult. It makes my work stronger because you have to be resourceful. And since we don’t necessarily have cars in New York, I have to consider: How far do I have to schlep the groceries? Can I do this [dish] with fewer items?
You’ve said on the Jewish Food Society’s podcast that you made many Jewish friends in New York. You attended your first bar mitzvah here. Are you leaning more into Jewish recipes or foods since you are living in New York?
Not necessarily. I just did a new Passover menu, which will come out on March 30 in Passover Home Movies and in an accompanying newsletter. I think that the older I get the more I lean into hosting and doing Shabbat because it feels important to me.
Any Jewish foods that are favorites of yours?
Matzah ball soup is my favorite food of all time. Otherwise, most popular Jewish deli foods are something I gravitate towards, even before I realized they were “Jewish.” Latkes, and things like that. I like Jewish deli culture. And I liked that these foods, that my father and I love and enjoy, are connected to my father’s heritage, which is my heritage. It made me feel closer to it.
What is your favorite Passover dish?
I love my brisket. I don’t love brisket always but I think the one I make is fantastic. I like a really simple Passover menu. Braised meat. Crispy salad with lots of herbs and apples. Crispy potato — this year I made cheeseless gratin with olive oil, potatoes, salt and pepper. You are not grating potatoes or frying anything. It is not eggy like a kugel.
Part of why I like Passover is because, much like Thanksgiving, it’s a time of year when you know what you’re supposed to eat. You don’t have to give it a ton of thought.
Have the past three years, following your comments about Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen, changed you as a writer and a food person?
Yes and no. We are all different than we were three years ago. Whether it was time passing or the pandemic or whatever, I think everyone is a bit different. That time was challenging but it led me to writing more and writing more for myself. And I think that’s a good thing.
How would you frame your food philosophy?
“Unfussy” pretty much sums it up. I don’t believe in overthinking too much. The way I cook is very instinctual and very natural. I don’t try to manipulate anything into something it is not. I feel very intuitive. It feels not performative. It feels very genuine to me.
Where did your aesthetic for rustic, carefree, approachable food come from?
I consider myself independent, and most things I do are born from myself and my own intuition. I think, like any person, you will be impacted and influenced by the world around you but ultimately you need to be authentically yourself.
—
The post Food writer Alison Roman makes a comeback — and a brisket for Passover appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
India’s Modi Visits Israel, Expresses Support for Jewish State as US-Iran Tensions Mount
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend a welcome ceremony upon Modi’s arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport in Lod, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a two-day visit that both countries have cast as a chance to deepen relations, as regional concerns mount over the risk of military conflict between the United States and Iran.
In an address to the Israeli parliament, Modi told lawmakers that India stood with Israel “with full conviction” as he shared his nation’s condolences over the October 2023 Hamas attack.
“Like you, we have a consistent and uncompromising policy of zero tolerance for terrorism, with no double standards,” he said.
Both Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also addressed the parliament, spoke of terrorist attacks that their nations had faced, with Netanyahu saying India and Israel both faced the challenge of confronting “radical Islam.”
Some opposition lawmakers briefly walked out of the special session, protesting at the speaker’s decision not to invite the head of the Supreme Court, but returned for Modi‘s remarks.
Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which the speaker belongs to, has had a confrontational relationship with the court.
Modi, a Hindu nationalist, became the first prime minister in India’s history to visit Israel in 2017, during which he and Netanyahu took a barefoot stroll on a beach in the northern port city of Haifa.
Both still in power nearly nine years later, the two leaders, who describe one another as friends, are expected to hold talks on artificial intelligence as well as defense at a time when Israel is seeking to increase its military exports.
An Israeli government official said Modi‘s visit would “pave the way for new partnerships and collaborations across many fields.” Bilateral ties were on the cusp of a significant upgrade, an Israeli foreign ministry official said.
US MILITARY BUILDUP NEAR IRAN
Modi is visiting as the United States deploys a vast naval force near Iran‘s coast ahead of possible strikes on the Islamic Republic, with the two countries at an impasse in talks over Tehran’s nuclear program. The Pentagon has also deployed an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean, bound for Israel‘s coast.
A US attack on Iran could draw Iranian retaliation against Israel as well as US military facilities in Gulf Arab countries, where millions of Indians live and work and send home billions of dollars of remittances each year.
In his speech to lawmakers, Modi vaguely spoke about the challenges facing stability in the region, acknowledging that the landscape had become more challenging in recent years, but made no mention of the US military build-up, or of Iran.
He backed the US plan to end the war in Gaza, telling the parliament that it could lead to peace “for all people of the region, including by addressing the Palestinian issue.”
“The road to peace is not always easy. But India joins you and the world for dialogue, peace, and stability in this region,” Modi said.
Uncategorized
CIA Launches Fresh Social Media Push to Recruit Iranians as Trump Threatens Military Action
The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency is shown at the entrance of the CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, US, Sept. 24, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
The US Central Intelligence Agency has posted on social media new Farsi-language instructions for Iranians wishing to securely contact the spy service.
The CIA recruitment effort comes amid a massive buildup of US military forces in the Middle East that President Donald Trump could order to attack Iran if talks with the US set for Thursday fail to reach a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Trump began laying out the case for a possible US operation in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, saying he would not allow the Islamic Republic, which he called the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism, to have a nuclear weapon. Iran denies seeking a nuclear arsenal.
“They [Iran‘s leaders] want to start all over again, and are, at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions,” he said, accusing Iran of restarting its nuclear program, working to build missiles that “soon” would be capable of reaching the United States, and of being responsible for roadside bombings that have killed US service members and civilians.
“The [Iranian] regime and its murderous proxies have spread nothing but terrorism and death and hate,” the Republican president said about 90 minutes into his annual address to a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives.
The CIA posted its Farsi-language message on Tuesday on its X, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, and YouTube accounts.
The message is the latest in a series by the CIA aimed at enlisting sources in Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia.
The agency urged Iranians wishing to make contact to “take appropriate action” to protect themselves before doing so and avoid using work computers or their phones.
“Use a new, disposable device, if possible” and “be aware of your surroundings and who may be able to see your screen or activity,” continued the message, adding that those who make contact, provide their locations, names, job titles and “access to information or skills of interest to our agency.”
Those individuals, said the message, should use a trusted Virtual Private Network “not headquartered in Russia, Iran, or China,” or the Tor Network, which encrypts data and hides the user’s IP address.
The CIA declined to comment. Iran’s delegation to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are scheduled to meet Iranian officials led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Geneva on Thursday for a new round of negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Trump has threatened military action if the talks fail to reach an agreement, or if Tehran executes people arrested for participating in nationwide anti-government demonstrations in January.
Rights groups say thousands of people were killed in the government crackdown on the protests, the worst domestic unrest in Iran since the era of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Uncategorized
UK Green Leader Backs Proposed ‘Zionism Is Racism’ Party Platform
A Green Party march in London. Photo: Alan Stanton/Flickr
The top official in the United Kingdom’s Green Party has come out in support of a “Zionism Is Racism” motion to be debated at the party’s March conference which could shift the leftist political organization’s official position to full-scale removal of Israel off the map, to be replaced with “a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Lubna Speitan, a British-Palestinian Green Party member who serves in the Greens for Palestine Steering Group and the Greenwich Palestine Alliance, on Tuesday announced she had submitted Motion A105, creatively titled “Zionism Is Racism,” for debate at the UK Green Party’s Spring Conference on March 28.
The measure has received the support of Green Party Leader Zack Polanski.
“I’ll wait to hear the debate, but absolutely, if the definition of Zionism is what is happening right now by the Israeli government, then yes, absolutely, that’s racist and I’ll vote for it,” he said on Times Radio.
However, Speitan’s proposal goes much further than condemning Zionism — the national movement of the Jewish people to reestablish a state in their ancient homeland — as an allegedly racist ideology, a slander which the Soviet Union’s espionage agencies began promoting in the 1970s, most notably and successfully at the United Nations General Assembly with the passage of Resolution 3379 on Nov. 10, 1975. The infamous measure, which asserted that Zionism was “a form of racism and racial discrimination,” was ultimately overturned in 1991.
The Soviet Union’s effort to link Zionism to racism drew arguments from the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and argued that Judaism’s concept of “the chosen people” promoted racial superiority.
“This deliberate slur interpolated and distorted the real meaning of Judaism which explains the Jewish people are ‘chosen,’ or set apart, for special and burdensome religious and social obligations,” according to the American Jewish Committee.
Speitan’s measure calls for the Green Party to adopt Hamas’s position of eliminating Israel from the map, to replace the Jewish state with a Palestinian state.
The motion offers eight points, the third of which appears to call for either the mass expulsion or genocide of the Israeli people: “Following from Motion E05, which affirmed that Israel is an apartheid State committing genocide, and Motion E07 supporting reparations and accountability, the Green Party supports the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, equal rights for all, and the right of return for Palestinians and their descendants.”
Speitan connects this call for “the right of the return” with announcing an end of a Jewish state. This longstanding Palestinian demand insists that potentially millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees should return to the land of Israel, a step that, according to many pro-Palestinian activists, would result in the abolition of the world’s only Jewish state.
The measure also advocates explicit support for terrorism against Israel, with point four stating that the Green Party would affirm “the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination, including the right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation, domination and subjugation, and acknowledges that the struggle to achieve that liberation by all available means under international law is legitimate.”
This apparent advocacy of violence aligns with statements made last year by Speitan in support of terrorism against the Jewish state.
“The only way forward for the liberation of any people is going to be by force, what was taken by force must be returned by force and this comes with military intervention, and for me I support our right to the armed struggle. We must never deny that,” Speitan said in a September 2025 speech. “I will refuse to condemn the resistance of any repressed or occupied people because we have that right. Only we can claim self-defense, not the occupier.”
Speitan continued, “The moment we rise, we call for resistance, [they say] ‘you terrorist.’”
John Mann, the UK government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, labeled Speitan’s anti-Zionist proposal “support for terrorism and overt racism against Jews. There is no ambiguity. It’s from the extreme margins of politics.”
He went on to invoke former UK Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose time at the helm of the party was marked by a succession of scandals involving antisemitism, to show how extreme the Green Party has become.
“This is well beyond anything that happened during Labour under Jeremy Corbyn,” Mann declared. “This makes Corbyn look like a moderate. The crank element that even Corbyn was worried about has entered the Greens en masse.”
Speaking to Britain’s Daily Mail, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel labeled the motion “one of the most hateful and racist documents I’ve ever read.”
“It calls for the destruction of Israel and seeks to justify terrorism against Israel,” Haskel added, referring to the proposal. “Its intent is to justify the destruction of the Jewish homeland and deny the right of Jews to a national home. The double standards are extraordinary as they demand a national home for Palestinians but not Jews.”
Haskel added, “I completely condemn this horrific document and hope the people of the UK see the Greens for what they are – a racist and hateful political party.”
The group Jewish Greens has urged voting against Speitan’s proposal.
“This is not your run-of-the-mill motion opposing Israel’s actions (something that Jewish Greens would have no problem with), but something much more problematic that is likely to make Jews feel unwelcome in the Green Party,” the group stated. “We urge Green Party members to listen to their Jewish comrades within the party, and consider whether this motion is appropriate for the type of party they want to be in.”
The statement urged for a broader understanding of Zionism, explaining that “calling all forms or interpretations of Zionism ‘racism’ is painting a very diverse group of people with a very broad brush and in effect, it accepts the most extreme right-wing version of Zionism (aka – Kahanism) peddled by the far right as definitive. This is like accepting the EDL’s definition of Englishness. Or like banning all forms of USA nationalism based on the horrendous crimes of the Trump administration.”
Reflecting on the degree with which the party had shifted in recent years, Mann called Speitan’s measure “about as far away as from Green politics of the past as is possible. Greens used to be about stopping fossil fuels and nuclear power and building wind farms. Now hate is bringing members surging into the Green party.”
On Oct. 19, 2025, the Green Party of England and Wales announced that “membership has surged past the Conservative Party, making the Greens the third largest party in the UK. From this position, and with Labour’s clear shift to the right, it’s clear that the Greens are now the Party of choice to counter Reform and their brand of divisive politics.”
The party stated that “membership now stands at over 126,000. This latest milestone marks an 80 percent increase since Zack Polanski was elected Leader of the party last month. The Greens now have more than double the reported members of the Liberal Democrats.”
Polanski said then that British politics “is changing and support for old-style parties built on privilege and power is shrinking. Increasing numbers of people are walking away from the politics of austerity, inequality and division and choosing a new kind of politics that offers a bold, hopeful vision of prosperity, equality and unity. Our membership boom reflects growing public frustration with the political status quo and a hunger for genuine alternatives.”
According to the UK’s Jewish News, Polanski has faced mounting pressure to support the latest anti-Zionist motion from a new group of hardline anti-Israel activists within the party. “Supporting the motion would effectively mean declaring his own mother and other members of his Jewish family — staunch supporters of Israel who have criticized pro-Palestine marches — as racists,” the outlet noted.
A YouGov poll of UK party preferences conducted Feb. 9-10, 2025, placed the Greens as the fifth most popular party in the country coming in at 9 percent support compared to the Liberal Democrats (14 percent), Conservatives (21 percent), Labour (25 percent), and Reform UK (26 percent). A total of 21 percent of Britons polled said they would consider voting for a Green candidate with higher levels of support among those 18-24 (36 percent) and 25-49 (27 percent).
In Britain’s House of Commons, Green politicians currently occupy four seats compared to 404 controlled by Labour, 116 to the Conservatives, 72 to Liberal Democrats, 13 independents, 9 members of the Scottish National Party, and 8 members of Reform UK. Pollsters in the UK have found considerable crossover between the Liberal Democrats and the Greens with 51 percent of the members in each party supporting a merger with the other.
The Jewish Greens explained the practical implications of what adoption of the “Zionism Is Racism” position would entail for the party, noting that any member supporting Zionism could then potentially be expelled, a position which the Democratic Socialists of America (a group with 78,000 members) explicitly adopted last year.
“Most Jewish institutions in the UK have some sort of connection to Zionism. Some closer, some less so. The motion proposers – in a response to a question from Jewish Greens – have made it clear that they will expect the motion to proscribe Zionists,” the Jewish Greens stated. “This gives the party the option to expel almost any Jew involved in organized communal life or who has ever been, including our party leader. Meaning that most Jews in the party – whether they define themselves as Zionists or not – are one grudge away from being dragged through the disciplinary process on spurious charges of ‘Zionism.’”