The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia by Stephanie Butnick

Author:Stephanie Butnick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Artisan
Published: 2019-09-21T01:40:02+00:00

An absolute pain to grate, drain, and fry, but what you get for your troubles is a scrumptious Hanukkah hash brown.

Lauder, Estée (~1908–2004)

Born in Queens as Josephine Esther Mentzer, she became Estee, then became Estée after she started selling face creams made by her chemist uncle. She married Joseph Lauter in 1930, and they later changed their surname to Lauder. She died at ninety-­five, still the picture of glamour. Her son Ronald is a former US ambassador to Austria and is president of the World Jewish Congress. He runs the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, which supports Jewish life in Europe.

Lauren, Ralph (b. 1939)

When he was born in the Bronx, he was Ralph Lifshitz. When he started Polo in 1968, after stints in the army and at Brooks Brothers, he was Ralph Lauren. Except perhaps for Jacobi Press, of the Ivy League haberdasher J. Press, no Jew was as responsible for the uniform that we associate with Waspy prep-­dom.

lawyer

If you’re not smart enough to be a doctor, this will do.

Lazarus, Emma (1849–1887)

Best known as the author of the poem “The New Colossus” on the base of the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”), Lazarus grew up near Manhattan’s Union Square, part of a wealthy, assimilated Sephardi family. Emma wrote like she was running out of time: by 1882 she’d published dozens of poems and other works and had translated the work of German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. Ralph Waldo Emerson was her mentor (her poems have aged about as well as his), and she traveled widely, hobnobbing in Europe with Robert Browning, William Morris, and Henry James, who said of her, “You appear to have done more in three weeks than any lightfooted woman before; when you ate or slept I have not yet made definite.” An activist who worked with Russian refugees detained in terrible conditions on Ward’s Island in New York Harbor and volunteered with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the country’s first refugee resettlement agency, it is fitting that her tribute to immigrants is immortalized on a universal symbol of freedom and democracy.

l’chaim

L’chaim means “to life” in Hebrew, and it’s the standard Hebrew toast: raise a glass of schnapps or whiskey or slivovitz, say “L’chaim!” then down the hatch it goes. The phrase has moved from interjection to noun, so you can now “do a l’chaim” or “make a l’chaim.” But please note: a l’chaim is properly a shot of hard liquor—don’t try to make one with a glass of wine or a mug of beer.

l’dor vador

Literally, “from generation to generation.” Taken from the Amidah’s Kedushah prayer, it’s shorthand for Jewish continuity and the Jews’ obligation to maintain it.

Lee, Stan

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