Intermountain Jewish News

Culture

Kosher chef Sruly Meyer knows how to handle the fire on ‘100 Cooks’ on the Food Network. (Food Network via JNS)
Culture

Sruly Meyer handles the fire on ‘100 Cooks’

Watching television in his home in Hollywood, Calif. — a fan of “Chopped!” and “Beat Bobby Flay”— Sruly Meyer dreamed of being on the Food Network. With word that a new show called “100 Cooks” was being cast, producers contacted him, saying they were impressed with his Instagram posts. 100 home chefs in America enter an arena, where they are randomly selected to compete against each other to win $100,000.

JNS
‘Son of Saul’ was directed by László Nemes.
Culture

‘Son of Saul’ director: ‘Jews shunned in cinema’

The director of “Son of Saul”, the Holocaust movie that won the Oscar award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016, said that the movie would’ve been ignored in today’s “shameless orgy of anti-Semitism.”

Shana Goldberg
Moe’s Broadway Bagel General Manager Steve Pagnotta with the popular sesame and Italian varieties of bagels. (Steve Mark)
Business

Moe’s Broadway Bagel is a family affair

The workday begins at 5:30 a.m. It is now late morning on a snowy day in Boulder, and Steve Pagnotta still has an energetic bounce in his step. “I’m the late guy,” Pagnotta laughs, “but we are baking around the clock.” Pagnotta is general manager of Moe’s Broadway Bagel

Steve Mark
Tamara Gorni and her husband, Michael Gorni, perform a Jewish wedding ceremony in Kiev, Ukraine, on May 6, 2026. (Courtesy JCC Beit Menachem)
Culture

Five couples wed in wartime ceremony in Kiev

Five Jewish couples got married earlier this month at a synagogue in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, in what a local rabbi said was Ukrainian Jewry’s largest group wedding ceremony in years.

JNS
‘Emmie Arbel. The Colour of Memory’ is a new graphic novel by Barbara Yelin.
Culture

New graphic novel offers insights into lives of Holocaust survivors

The theme of this latest entry into the growing and increasingly respected field of graphic novels about the Holocaust is amply expressed by the pair of nouns in the book’s title: color and memory. It was released in time for Yom HaShoah last month.

Steve Lipman
‘For Whom My Soul Sings,’ acrylic and mixed media on paperboard, by Penny Nisson, inspired by Shir Ha-Shirim — Song of Songs.
Culture

Penny prays with a paintbrush

When Penny Nisson is in synagogue, she prays with the words in the siddur and the melodies of the liturgy. When she is in her art studio, she prays with her paintbrush. Nisson is a spiritual person who loves and lives Judaism. She and her husband Perry incorporate Jewish ritual into their home and they are regulars at East Denver Orthodox Synagogue. Penny Nissan sits in the front at shul, reading, reciting and hearing the words of prayer.

Larry Hankin
Mierle Laderman Ukeles speaks with a sanitation worker in an archival photo. (Courtesy Toby Perl Freilich)
Culture

Documentary about ‘Maintenance Artist,’ Denver native Mierle Laderman Ukeles

In 1976, deep in New York City’s fiscal crisis, the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles read a review of her conceptual work in the Village Voice. In his review, critic David Bourdon made a radical suggestion inspired by Ukeles’ thesis: What if municipal work, like the Sanitation Department, were conceptual art? Could it get funded by grants, instead of by the city?

Jackie Hajdenberg, JTA
Photographer Edward Serotta takes a self-portrait in a hotel room during his efforts to document Romania in the 1980s. (Courtesy Serotta)
Culture

Romania’s secret police trailed this Jewish photographer

He had wild hair and wore jeans. He was American — and Jewish. He had a camera. That was enough to trigger surveillance by the secret police of communist Romania, the Securitate. Now, 41 years after photojournalist Edward Serotta boldly stepped behind the Iron Curtain, we can see just how obsessed the Romanians were with him, thanks to a short documentary by Romanian director Radu Jude and historian Adrian Cioflanca.

JTA
Dov Joseph ‘FiendRiver’ Goldman Aloof is seen in his home in Yad Binyamin, his tournament trophies in the background. (Courtesy Dov Aloof)
Culture

Pokémon (don’t) Go

The National Jewish Advocacy Center filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on March 10, accusing The Pokémon Company International of barring a Jewish Israeli-American player from competing in organized Pokémon tournaments.

JNS
The Great Isaiah Scroll exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Feb. 26, 2026. (Sharon Altshul)
Culture

The Isaiah Scroll in its full glory

By Sharon Altshul For nearly 2,200 years, it lay hidden in a cave above the Dead Sea. Now, for the first time since 1968, the Great Isaiah Scroll has been unrolled …

JNS
Eli Sharabi’s memoir recounts his 491 days as a Hamas hostage in Gaza. (Harper Influence)
Culture

Sharabi’s ‘Hostage’ is book of the year

Eli Sharabi’s memoir Hostage, recounting his experience in Hamas captivity after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, has been named Book of the Year by the National Jewish Book Awards on Feb. 18.

JTA
Images of Israelis from David Shlachter’s book Hinenu. (Courtesy)
Culture

Identifying, finding, photographing . . . the faces of Israel

To understand Israel’s population of 10 million or so, professional photographer David Shlachter opted to capture 100 faces and tell their life stories. Shlachter traces the project, “Hinenu: Israel at 10 Million,” back to a decision he made with his wife in California, where they were raising three young children, after Oct. 7. “I’d lived 44 years in what I would say is the golden age of American Jewry,” he said. He had “never once felt discriminated against,” he said. “Then, almost overnight, I was just made to feel very, very unwelcome, unwanted, not liked, even hated.”

JNS