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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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UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools
(JTA) — The U.K. has adopted sweeping measures to combat antisemitism in English schools, prompting pushback from the country’s largest teachers’ union.
The move came after a new government-commissioned review found that three in five Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism in English schools. The most common incidents were jokes, stereotypes and comments about Jewish people. About half of respondents who witnessed or experienced antisemitism said the incidents were not reported, most often because they did not think they would be taken seriously.
The government on Wednesday accepted 27 recommendations from the report, including dedicated antisemitism training for leaders and staff, improved recording of antisemitic incidents and moves to build a better understanding of Jewish life, identity and contemporary antisemitism.
The government commissioned the report following a spate of high-profile attacks on Jews in Britain, including an attack on a synagogue in Manchester last year that left two men dead.
The report’s author, Sir David Bell, the vice chancellor of the University of Sunderland and former chief inspector of schools in England, recommended addressing antisemitism distinctly from other forms of racism. He argued that antisemitism was a “uniquely complex” problem because of intertwined racial and religious dimensions, since Jewish identity can encompass both an ethnicity and a religion, along with expressions of prejudice that hold all Jews responsible for the actions of Israel.
The government will also encourage English schools to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The definition is supported by many mainstream Jewish organizations and has been adopted by 47 countries, including the U.K., but critics say that it conflates some forms of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.
British Education Secretary Lucy Powell called Bell’s review a “generational moment” and said that “implementation is now my priority.”
However, the National Education Union, the largest union representing teachers, lecturers, teaching assistants and support staff in the United Kingdom and Europe, raised concerns on Wednesday about recommending the IHRA definition for schools. NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said in a statement that the definition “risks deepening the problem rather than tackling it, and actively undermining efforts to confront antisemitism.”
“The IHRA’s contested framing risks blurring the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and the genocide in Gaza, leaving teachers with uncertainty when they need clarity,” said Kebede. He cited a risk that “children who cannot critically explore issues through classroom discussion will instead seek their answers in online and unsafe groups.”
Kebede also encouraged Britain’s Department for Education to strengthen guidance on all forms of racism, not only antisemitism, saying that 65% of teachers report they have not received any antiracism training in the past year.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, an umbrella organization for British Jewish communities, celebrated the antisemitism report and the government’s adoption of its proposed measures. The group specifically praised the report’s “clear recommendations that schools and local authorities follow government guidelines by adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as a tool to deepen understanding of contemporary antisemitism.”
“We remain concerned about undue external influence on schools driven by narrow political agendas, and tendentious materials seeping into schools and increasing disharmony, and we will continue to press for vigilance against this,” said the Board of Deputies.
The post UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools appeared first on The Forward.
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Orthodox Jewish man stabbed in midtown Manhattan
(New York Jewish Week) — An Orthodox Jewish man is in stable condition after being stabbed on Wednesday evening in the Diamond District of midtown Manhattan. Police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime.
Police told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible antisemitic attack, and Manhattan Shomrim — the Jewish community watch group — has asked people to share footage as police search for the suspect. No arrests have been made.
The victim was identified by police as a 26-year-old man, and Orthodox Jewish outlet COLLive identified him as a resident of Crown Heights, the neighborhood that is home to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement’s headquarters.
He was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. Police said they were called at about 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday after the man was stabbed in the back with “an unknown sharp object” on 47th Street near Fifth Avenue. ABC7 reported that the victim told investigators he believed he was stabbed with a needle or syringe.
According to the Chabad website, which published an interview with the victim, he is a recently ordained Hasidic rabbi named Joseph, who commutes to Midtown each day to wrap tefillin with Jewish merchants. The attacker, Joseph told the website, was a woman who seemed to be following him prior to the stabbing.
The attack comes as Jewish New Yorkers have been targeted in more than half of the hate crimes committed in New York City this year, despite making up about 12% of the city’s population.
In July, an assailant stabbed two men on the Upper West Side, including one who was leaving a synagogue, while yelling “Allahu akbar,” and was charged with committing hate crimes.
Louis Keene contributed reporting.
The post Orthodox Jewish man stabbed in midtown Manhattan appeared first on The Forward.
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VIDEO: A Hasid gives us a tour of Morocco in Yiddish
דער ירושלימער יוטוב־שטערן וועלוול קירשנבוים האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ אויף ייִדיש פֿון אַ פּרעכטיקן וויזיט, וואָס ער האָט געמאַכט אין מאַראָקאָ. עס באַגלייט אים זײַן חבֿר אַבֿרהם פּרץ.
אינעם ווידעאָ זעט מען ווי קירשנבוים דאַוונט שחרית מיט די אָרטיקע ייִדן און באַזוכט אַ גוט אָפּגעהיטענעם בית־עולם, וווּ עס ליגן באַערדיקט גרויסע צדיקים ווי למשל הרבֿ חיים בן עתר (1696–1743), באַקאַנט ווי דער „אור החיים“. „מענטשן מיינען, אַז נאָר אין אייראָפּע זענען דאָ קבֿרים פֿון צדיקים!“ זאָגט קירשנבוים.
מיר זעען אַ גרויסע, שיינע שיל מיט אַ פֿײַנער אַרכיטעקטור אין קאַזאַבלאַנקאַ; דעם גרויסן אַראַבישן שוק, וווּ קירשנבוים קויפֿט זיך אײַן מלבושים פּונקט ווי די מאַראָקאַנער גייען אָנגעטאָן. ער באַוווּנדערט אויך די שיינע טיי־גלעזער און טשײַניקן, וואָס מע פֿאַרקויפֿט דאָרט, און באַקענט זיך מיט אַ ייִדישן סוחר וואָס האַנדלט מיט זילבער און גאָלד, פּונקט אַזוי ווי זײַן טאַטע און זיידע האָבן געטאָן פֿאַר דור־דורות.
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