Shalom, Pilgrim
Rafael Alvarez remembers Pope John Paul II’s visit to Baltimore, wise words from Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson and his own pilgrimages.
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Author: Rafael Alvarez
Todd Barkan (right), co-owner of Keystone Korner Baltimore, hangs out with jazz pianist Monty Alexander before a performance. (Photo by Steve Ruark)
Impresario Todd Barkan Brings his Passion for Jazz to Charm City
Keystone Korner Baltimore attracts some of jazz’s leading lights to the hometown of Billie Holiday and Eubie Blake.
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Located at 1216 E. Baltimore St., the former Jewish Educational Alliance’s Michael S. Levy Memorial Building is currently owned by the Helping Up Mission. (Photo by Alan Feiler, Jmore)
Another Grand Dame Bows Out
Helping Up’s headquarters are directly across from the facade of the old Hendler Creamery building.
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Allan Holzman: "My father delivered baked goods to all the shuls in Baltimore. He made a Torah cake for my bar mitzvah."
(Photo courtesy of Macon Street Books)
Speaking in (Knotted) Tongues
Holzman counts a pair of Emmys among his honors, awarded in 1996 for “Survivors of the Holocaust,” a Steven Spielberg documentary.
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The Adventures of Morris Zwagil
“I’ve had a pretty tough life,” says Morris Zwagil, born in February of 1926 at the old Sinai Hospital. “I grew up on Broadway, just below Baltimore Street. I quit school when I was 14 because I couldn’t take being poor any more. I had to make a living.”
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Amos Oz speaks at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Calif., May 5, 2015. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
Kafka in the Land of Oz
At Penn Station, Oz patiently answered my questions while making ardent observations of an Orthodox family nearby.
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Kafka, Bambi & Bo
The Judaica I inherited (the books, not the strong possibility of Jews in my Old Country family tree in Espana) was intact but tattered.
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‘I Did My Little Dance and I Sang My Little Song and That’s It’ — Gil Sandler
Sadly, Gil, you only gave us 95 years. Not nearly enough.
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DC101’s Roche Gets Lit with ‘Jew Rock Marathon’
“I’ve been doing it for 12 years, and there’s still a ton for me to learn,” said DJ Greg Roche. “I hope the same is true for DC101’s non-Jewish listeners.”
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A Well-Done Burger
“People forget things to death in this town,” Burger said on one of our walks with a notebook and camera. “And when those things finally fall over, they say, ‘Gee, whatever happened to that place?’”
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Situated in “Old Cairo,” the historic Ben Ezra Synagogue was the longtime home of the famed “Cairo Genizah,” a storeroom discovered in the 19th century containing Hebrew, Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic secular and sacred manuscripts. (File photo)
Separating the Sacred from the Mundane
Most synagogues have a room or designated closet called genizot, from the Hebrew “to hide” or “put away,” now defined as “storage.”
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