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Israeli sandwich shop Sherry Herring goes belly up on the UWS
(New York Jewish Week) – The Upper West Side outpost of the popular Israeli sandwich shop Sherry Herring closed last week, after less than two years in business.
Sherry Herring announced its closure in an Instagram post on May 31. “We have some important news to share,” the post said. “Regrettably, we are closing the doors of Sherry Herring, our beloved restaurant at 245 West 72nd St. We appreciate your support and the memories we’ve created together.”
“The only thing I can say is that I’m very sad that we are closing,” Israel-based founder Sherry Ansky told the New York Jewish Week when asked the reason for the restaurant’s closure. “Maybe if I was there it would have been different, but I had to stay in Israel and couldn’t be there.”
Ansky started Sherry Herring in a Tel Aviv farmer’s market in 2011, where it quickly became a destination. Its signature herring sandwich consists of “a fresh baguette, slathered with sour cream and French butter, seasoned with hot pepper, seeds and juice from a tomato, onions and scallions, and finished off with brined herring.”
Ansky got the idea to open a New York City outpost during the pandemic, sending her son-in-law and business partner, Eyal Amir, to scout a location for the first of what they hoped would be several Sherry Herring shops. They chose the Upper West Side, Amir told the New York Jewish Week, “because it is a Jewish neighborhood where our penetration to the market will be easiest.”
Sherry Herring opened on West 72nd Street in October 2021 with “no sherry and no herring,” the New York Jewish Week reported at the time. Ansky was stuck in Israel waiting for travel documents to be approved, and the herring that would be the star of the menu was still aging in brine in the Netherlands. (It eventually arrived mid-December.) The New York menu also included salmon, mackerel and tuna sandwiches.
The first time Ansky saw the line for her shop, ““I fainted and ran away,” she said. “I told the people to go away! I can’t do it.”
The eatery was beloved both by locals and globe-trotting foodies. “Somebody Feed Phil” star and “Everybody Loves Raymond” creator Phil Rosenthal described the herring sandwich at the Tel Aviv shop as “a perfect example of something seemingly simple yet a very sophisticated work of art.”
Changes had been made to the menu and the New York restaurant in the months leading up to its closure. In February, they announced an “elevated” evening menu called “Sherry Herring After Dark,” which featured various tapas style dishes and Israeli wine and beer. The restaurant also posted on Instagram that it was hiring on March 5. Later that month, Sherry Herring lost its kosher certification — and indicated to the website Yeah That’s Kosher that “they will likely close their UWS location by September.”
Instead, the closure happened several months earlier. “The owners decided that it’d be best for everybody to close,” the New York restaurant’s general manager, Alex Ben Chimol, said when reached by phone by the New York Jewish Week. “Maybe we’ll reopen another time in a different location.”
Sherry Herring’s May 31 Instagram post hinted at that possibility, stating: “Although we won’t be at this location anymore, we’re excited for new culinary adventures. Stay connected for updates on our future plans.” The text on the image reads: “See you soon New York.”
“They made me fall in love with herring and they tried their best in recreating an old Jewish niche,” Uncle Edik’s Pickles proprietor Edward Ilyasov told the New York Jewish Week. “We loved their creativity and they carried our pickles from the very beginning. They will be missed!”
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The post Israeli sandwich shop Sherry Herring goes belly up on the UWS appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Qatari PM Meets Iran’s Larijani in Tehran, Discusses Easing Regional Tensions
Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani speaks after a meeting with the Lebanese president at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon February 4, 2025. REUTERS/Emilie Madi
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met with top Iranian security official Ali Larijani in Tehran and reviewed efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Saturday in a statement.
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Tesla Receives Approval to Test Autonomous Driving in Israel
March 12, 2025, Seattle, Washington, USA: A row of brand-new Tesla Cybertrucks stands in a Tesla Motors Logistics Drop Zone in Seattle, Washington, USA, on Wed., March 12, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
i24 News – The Ministry of Transport announced on Sunday that it has granted Tesla official approval to conduct trials of its autonomous driving system on Israel’s roads. The move comes as part of an effort to examine how the car manufacturer’s advanced technology can be integrated into the local driving environment, with full support from the ministry.
The trials will focus on Tesla’s Fully Self-Driving (FSD) system, a supervised autonomous driving platform. Under the terms of the approval, a driver must remain present in the vehicle at all times to supervise the system, despite its autonomous capabilities. This ensures safety while allowing the technology to be tested in real-world conditions.
The Ministry of Transport described the approval as a significant step toward advancing vehicle regulation in Israel. Officials said the initiative aims to create a regulatory framework that will allow for the routine, supervised use of autonomous driving systems in the future, safely and efficiently.
Tesla will use the trials to assess how the FSD system interacts with Israel’s road infrastructure, traffic patterns, and local driving behaviors. Data collected during the experiment will help refine the system and inform potential regulatory updates to accommodate autonomous vehicles.
The ministry emphasized that the pilot program is limited in scope and strictly monitored. It noted that all necessary safety protocols are in place and that public safety remains the top priority throughout the testing period.
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Reopening of Gaza’s Rafah Crossing Expected Monday, Officials Say
An aid truck moves on a road after entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Gaza’s main border crossing in Rafah will reopen for Palestinians on Monday, Israel said, with preparations underway at the war-ravaged enclave’s main gateway that has been largely shut for almost two years.
Before the war, the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was the only direct exit point for most Gazans to reach the outside world as well as a key entry point for aid into the territory. It has been largely shut since May 2024 and under Israeli military control on the Gazan side.
COGAT, the Israeli military unit that oversees humanitarian coordination, said the crossing will reopen in both directions for Gaza residents on foot only and its operation will be coordinated with Egypt and the European Union.
“Today, a pilot is underway to test and assess the operation of the crossing. The movement of residents in both directions, entry and exit to and from Gaza, is expected to begin tomorrow,” COGAT said in a statement.
A Palestinian official and a European source close to the EU mission confirmed the details. The Egyptian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
STRICT SECURITY CHECKS
Israel has said the crossing would open under stringent security checks only for Palestinians who wish to leave the war-ravaged enclave and for those who fled the fighting in the first months of the war to return.
Many of those expected to leave are sick and wounded Gazans in need of medical care abroad. The Palestinian health ministry has said that there are 20,000 patients waiting to leave Gaza.
An Israeli defense official said that the crossing can hold between 150-200 people altogether in both directions. There will be more people leaving than returning because patients leave together with escorts, the official added.
“(The Rafah crossing) is the lifeline for us, the patients. We don’t have the resources to be treated in Gaza,” said Moustafa Abdel Hadi, a kidney patient in a central Gaza hospital, awaiting a transplant abroad.
“If the war impacted a healthy person by 1 percent, it has impacted us 200 percent,” he said, sitting as he received dialysis treatment at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. His travel request, he said, has been approved.
Two Egyptian officials said that at least 50 Palestinian patients will be processed on Sunday to cross Rafah into Egypt for treatment. In the first few days around 200 people, patients and their family members, will cross daily into Egypt, the officials said, with 50 people returning to Gaza per day.
Lists of Gazans set to pass through the crossing have been submitted by Egypt and approved by Israel, the official said.
NEXT PHASE OF TRUMP’S GAZA PLAN
Reopening the border crossing was a key requirement of the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Israel-Hamas war.
But the ceasefire, which came into effect in October after two years of fighting, has been repeatedly shaken by rounds of violence.
On Saturday, Israel launched some of its most intense airstrikes since the ceasefire, killing at least 30 people, in what it said was a response to a Hamas violation of the truce on Friday when militants emerged from a tunnel in Rafah.
The next phases of Trump’s plan for Gaza foresee governance being handed to Palestinian technocrats, Hamas laying down its weapons and Israeli troops withdrawing from the territory while an international force keeps the peace and Gaza is rebuilt.
Hamas has so far rejected disarmament and Israel has repeatedly indicated that if the Islamist terrorist group is not disarmed peacefully, it will use force to make it do so.