The brouhaha got us thinking about Charlie Chaplin, who had the audacity to play with Hitler’s image while the führer was still alive. Chaplin—who’s stumped people in games of Jew or not a Jew? for decades—wrote, produced, directed, and starred in The Great Dictator in 1940. (He’s not a Jew, but in the film he plays both the Jewish barber and Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator who tries to kill the Jews of Tomainia.)

Thus we had the world’s most beloved comedian mocking the world’s most reviled tyrant. He created such a global sensation that the film was immediately banned in occupied countries. Chaplin wasn’t the only artist to speak out against Nazism, but his worldwide fame made him the most visible…which all but paved the way for us to buy this bowl that looks like Chaplin.

He’s Rick Moranis, and he’s back—sort of. After releasing his first music album, The Agoraphobic Cowboy, in 2005, Moranis returns with My Mother’s Brisket & Other Love Songs. According to his website, My Mother’s Brisket, which is out today, promises to be “an eclectic blend of klezmer, rumba, folk and jazz covering themes of family, food, religious traditions, more food, love, and dessert.”

If his first Grammy-nominated album is any indication, My Mother’s Brisket should be a wonderfully freilich outing from a real menschy-seeming guy. Moranis, who lost his wife to liver cancer in 1991, retired from acting a few years later to concentrate on raising his family. And other than The Agoraphobic Cowboy 8 years ago, he’s been completely off the radar.

He may not be returning to the Little Shop of Horrors anytime soon, but with a little mazel, we may get to see him on stage.

This was in an era when being a baal teshuva was unheard of. Years later, in the introduction to Nine Gates, Jiří’s collection of Hasidic tales, his brother František reflected: “Jiří resembled Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis, in which a family finds its way of life completely upset when the son is suddenly changed into an enormous cockroach.”

The allusion was not to a distant literary figure but to a real person in the young man’s life. Though his parents tried to talk Jiří out of his new religiosity, the famous surrealist author took an interest in just that. Jiří, who was anything but a “normal” Hasid, started studying Jewish mysticism with Kafka, and circulating among Prague’s avant-garde artists. He even published several books, including a volume of poetry called The Eroticism of Kabbalah. Probably not who you’d have expected to find in Kafka’s inner circle.

What did Mickey Katz give the world? For starters, his son, Joel Grey – the Oscar-winning emcee of Cabaret. For another, his granddaughter, Jennifer Grey – the memorable Baby of Dirty Dancing. And, oh yeah, Katz also made some records.

They make for great listening, but even just to see them is to remember them forever. The cover of Mish Mosh features Mickey sitting with his trademark clarinet on a kosher deli counter, and The Borscht Jester shows him dressed as a clown on the king’s throne, holding a salami.

His shtick was Borscht Belt, Yiddish-spiced parodies, like a Weird Al Yankovic for an earlier generation. Among his memorable tunes: “Duvid Crockett, King of Delancey Street.” Another: “How Much is That Pickle in the Window?” – because “a pickele is good with hot doggies, or salami that’s hard like a brick.”

Katz died in 1985, but tomorrow would have been his 104th birthday. A freilekhn geburtstog, Mickey!

Though his name may not be familiar to you, you’ve probably seen Basemen’s artwork, on TV in the Emmy-nominated series Teacher’s Pet, on the covers of the New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker, or on the board game “Cranium.”

As visitors wander through recreations of Baseman’s childhood home,  they can imagine how elements of those rooms have surfaced in his work. The study, which is filled with family keepsakes, guides visitors through the family’s escape from the Nazis. In the hallway, which represents journeys from one place to another, you can look at snapshots of Baseman traveling the world with Toby, his lovable cartoon sidekick. There’s even a wild backyard, and a den where you can hang out and play games.

If you think this sounds cool, note that the name is slightly misleading: “The Door Is Always Open” closes on August 18th.

On Wednesday, June 5th, the 46th anniversary of the Six-Day War, an Israeli activist group called “All That’s Left” distributed flyers stating that the “erasure of the Green Line is wrong and dangerous because it hides the reality of occupation,” and decided to take matters into their own hands. So they literally redrew the Green Line in front of the Jerusalem municipal government, with paint, on butcher paper.

Though the Green Line is the only border recognized by the international community, Israeli construction and settlement atop and beyond it have rendered the boundary essentially invisible. “All That’s Left,” a name that conveys the group’s frustration that so many Israelis have given up hope for—and work toward—a negotiated solution, seeks to raise awareness of the entrenched political situation, and mobilize toward change. No matter which side of the line you stand on, a stripe of green running through the center of town was a pretty cool site to see.

You probably know Weinberg as Conan O’Brien’s former bandleader, or perhaps as the quiet drummer with the big beat behind Bruce Springsteen in the E Street Band. As Mighty Max approaches his 40th year with The Boss, it’s time to show some love for one of rock’s top-rated drummers.

The Jewish kid from Newark, son of a lawyer and teacher, counts his childhood rabbi as one of the most influential people in his life. He spreads the good word of tzedakah and tikkun olam to Jewish audiences around the country, and he never said no to a little Jew-y shtick-ing with Conan.

Though he didn’t join Springsteen until the Born to Run sessions in ’74, he’s still arguably the best-known member of the The Boss’ tribe – and definitely the most kosher.

Seventy-two years after the ghetto’s liquidation, Menachem Kaiser and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are creating reVilna, a virtual map of the area. Complete with photos, stories, markers of shops and synagogues, and a timeline showing the history of its population and depopulation, the map attempts to recreate that tragic time—and that fascinating culture—in a virtual world.

The map is online now, though its functionality is still limited. reVilna’s Kickstarter fundraising campaign to complete the project ends tomorrow.  If this sounds like something you’d like to see made a reality—or a virtual reality—then go poke around the map and consider lending a few dollars to the cause.

Nicknamed “the Brain,” and known as “the J.P. Morgan of the underworld,” Rothstein also fixed horse races, organized the infamous “Black Sox Scandal,” capitalized on Prohibition, and became a millionaire—all by the age of 30.

But like Gatsby, Rothstein’s lush life didn’t last long: in 1928, he was murdered for refusing to pay a $320,000 poker loss.  The exact circumstances of his death remain something of a mystery, though Rothstein must have known more than he led on.  When, on his deathbed, a detective questioned him about his assailant, Rothstein allegedly replied: “You stick to your trade, I’ll stick to mine.”

Milla, the eldest, chooses a spoiled American Jew instead of the high-achieving Russian Jew her parents had picked for her. Yana, a radical feminist, weds a Muslim exchange student. Finally, Katya, a drug addict who involuntarily quotes Brezhnev (it’s a long story), falls for a no-goodnik with a mouth full of gold teeth who ends up flooding the Molochniks’ house when he attempts to drown himself in the bathtub.

One night, at a performance of Fiddler on the Roof, Stalina expresses an epiphany in comically broken English. Scoffing at Americans who still see Russian Jews like Tevye’s family, she rejects the idea that émigrés came to U.S. for riches. “We come for freedom,” she says. “Not pantyhose. I can get new pantyhose on black market.”

Americans aren’t the only target of this scorn: The Cosmopolitans is an equal-opportunity satire that needles everybody and everything in its course.

First, she was the Serious Singer, the one who could hold her own in a duet with the legendary Judy Garland and later sold 145 million records. Next, she was the Screwball Comedienne and Leading Lady, the one who could trade yucks with Ryan O’Neal and Seth Rogen, or smooches with Robert Redford.

But her most notable role is World’s Most Famous Jewish Woman. (Sorry, Golda!) Think “New York Jew” and it’s Barbra Streisand you see. The nose. The attitude. The accent.

Streisand’s recording career began exactly 50 years ago, in 1963, with 2 self-titled Top 10 albums. A year later, she starred in the Broadway musical Funny Girl, a role she reprised on film in 1968. She hit the Daily Double in 1973 with the movie and song The Way We Were.

This month, Barbra plays Israel for the first time, and will receive an honorary doctorate from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem for her dedication to human rights, Israel, and the Jewish people. Not bad  for a poor girl from Brooklyn who sang in her high school chorus but never even landed a solo.

That’s what happens in The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker‘s compulsively readable debut novel. At the junction of 19th-century NYC’s Little Syria and the Jewish Lower East Side, Chava, a female golem, meets Ahmad, a once-powerful jinni. Chava, who was created by a slightly sinister, failed rabbi to wed a man who died en route to America, now serves no master—not technically, anyway. But poor Chava feels compelled to help everyone whose fears or desires she senses: an impulse that can be a pleasure or a liability. And Ahmad has been trapped inside a metal vessel for centuries, imprisoned after a battle he doesn’t remember.

As Chava’s jealous creator and Ahmad’s captor catch up with them, Wecker’s writing jumps between magic realism andfantasy, existential exploration and adventure.

It’s not quite your grandmother’s immigration story. Or is it?