History &amp; Nostalgia

Joe and Connie Smukler

Joe and Connie Smukler If you’ve been to a major Jewish communal event in Philadelphia over the past 40 years, chances are you’ve spotted Connie and Joe Smukler. Among the deans of the local Jewish establishment, they represent that rare combination of activism and philanthropy that keeps on giving. From Israel to Jewish identity-building to Holocaust educati on, the most...

Community

Ernest M. Kahn

By:

Fredda Sacharow

Ernest M. Kahn After nearly two decades of trying, Ernest Kahn still hasn’t mastered this retirement thing. “When it comes to retirement, you are the biggest incompetent I know,” his friend Rabbi David Teutsch tells him, only half-joking. It’s not for lack of trying, Kahn, 86, says in his office at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, where every Tuesday...

History & Nostalgia

Arts and Culture

An overview for the Exponent's 125th anniversary

By:

Melissa Jacobs

Philadelphia’s cultural canvas bears the distinct imprint of the Jews who have been creators, producers and patrons of the arts. Music, theater, food, literature, paintings, radio, television, newspapers: Philadelphia’s Jews have been leaders in the creation and cultivation of every sphere. The Jewish influence is heard in the orchestrations of Eugene Ormandy and the klezmer trumpeting of Susan Watts. It’s read...

Community

Community Life

By:

Fredda Sacharow

Emblazoned in neon on the side of a bridge spanning the Delaware, just upriver from Center City, is the slogan, “Trenton Makes, the World Takes." Tweaked a bit, the phrase aptly defines the last 125 years in Jewish institutional and organizational life: “Philadelphia Leads, the World Heeds.”

Local

Washington Wrote Here

By:

Bryan Schwartzman

One of the most important documents in American Jewish history hasn't been seen by the public in a decade but will soon be displayed at the National Museum of American Jewish History. The Philadelphia museum is set, for a limited time, to feature the original, handwritten 1790 letter that President George Washington wrote -- or at least signed -- to...