Latest news with #Yiddish
Business Insider
19-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
A pharma heir gave her former lawyer $10 million. Now her lawyers say she was 'tricked.'
Claudia Engelhorn, a daughter of a German pharmaceutical tycoon, claims she was duped into handing over $10 million to her former attorney Erik Bolog — and alleges that his former law firm looked the other way while he pocketed the cash. The heir has been litigating for months against Bolog and the law firm, Whiteford, Taylor & Preston. The dispute is over the "gift" Bolog says she gave him as thanks for helping her win a $130 million case in Monégasque and Swiss courts during the pandemic. Bolog's defense hinges on a three-page document signed by Engelhorn that says she insisted on making the gift and did so without consulting anyone. "You advised (begged) me to hire independent counsel," the document, which was included in court filings, says. "As you have learned over the past several years, I am not easily discouraged and once I have decided to do something, I do it." Bolog said in court filings that the gift was legitimate and Engelhorn turned on him after he scolded her for what he said was "a racially hateful statement" that she made at a restaurant. He said she told a Black family "that it was nice that they were allowed to eat in restaurants." One of Engelhorn's lawyers, Tony Williams, says the heir was "tricked" into signing the gift paperwork when Bolog gave it to her one morning while she was vacationing on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. He called the claim about her remark to a Black family "absolutely false." In an email to Bolog that was included in court records, Engelhorn wrote: "You took an alcohol induced statement for your benefit." Bolog has claimed in court documents that her story shifted. Williams also said in a meeting that Engelhorn was on the autism spectrum. "She's not a sophisticated investor," Williams told Business Insider. "She's a woman who has spent her life raising a family, and he should've known that. We did say, with her permission, that she's on the spectrum, and we know that she is, and he knew that." "The whole thing's meshugganah," said Doug Gansler, one of Bolog's lawyers, using a Yiddish word for craziness. "She's a sophisticated businesswoman. She's not someone who doesn't know what she's doing or understand the value of money." The existence of the case, which was filed in Baltimore in September, hasn't previously been reported. Engelhorn's father, Curt Engelhorn, led a German pharmaceutical company that was sold to the healthcare giant Roche in 1997 for a reported $11 billion. Bolog says she's the "life trustee" of an entity called the Mannheim Trust that has paid her $1 million a year and lent her another $30 million. Williams, meanwhile, said Bolog vastly overstated Engelhorn's fortune. He said the Mannheim Trust, which Bolog said held $500 million to benefit Engelhorn and others, had been divided among three of her children. Only the money from the Swiss case remains for Engelhorn, Williams said, and it's now "substantially less" than $130 million. Bolog's former law firm, Whiteford, said it had nothing to do with his dealings. The firm said in a court filing it fired Bolog in May 2023 over issues including how he accounted for expenses. (Gansler denied wrongdoing by his client.) In her lawsuit, Engelhorn said Whiteford bore some responsibility for Bolog's actions. She said billing records showed that other people at the firm were aware of and contributed to the deception. The firm said in court filings that the other Whiteford lawyers who appeared to have helped draft the gift paperwork were under the impression that Engelhorn wanted to give a much smaller gift to a member of her staff. They say Bolog edited the documents to reroute the money to himself and his family, something Whiteford said it didn't learn about for two years. The firm didn't respond to a request for comment. Gansler is a former Maryland attorney general who's now at the white-shoe firm Cadwalader. Another lawyer for Engelhorn, Wes Henderson, is described on his website as "one of the most experienced and knowledgeable car accident attorneys in Crofton," a sleepy Maryland community of about 30,000 people. He also handles legal malpractice cases, the website says. He declined to comment. Bolog has had various business interests over the years. His main pursuits have been contingency-fee injury lawsuits and a real estate firm called Tenacity that financed tenant acquisitions of their apartment buildings. In 2005, he was listed in Securities and Exchange Commission records as part of a bank's ownership group. Gansler said Bolog recently moved to California to do plaintiff-side litigation there. Bolog has had a colorful legal career. In the late 1990s, he helped a Maryland politician get off with a light sentence after she was accused of hiring a contract killer to whack her husband. The trial ended in a hung jury and she later pled no-contest, according to news reports. He was also among a group of lawyers hoping for a payout from a $120 million judgment against Iraq now pending in the US Supreme Court. He has had gambling debts, though Gansler said he now has none and had no debt at the time he received Engelhorn's gift. In 2019, Harrah's Philadelphia Casino claimed in a lawsuit that Bolog owed $34,000 for a cash advance, and in 2022, a Caesars casino in Indiana sued him for $45,000. Gansler said that the Caesars lawsuit was filed by mistake. The debts in both cases were several years old, and both lawsuits have been resolved. Engelhorn has had previous legal issues as well. In 2007, she agreed to let a revivalist preacher named Tommie Zito and his wife live in a $3.2 million six-bedroom Florida mansion for $300 a month. She claimed that he abused her trust and manipulated her into buying the property and letting his family stay there "for a value far below the property's market value." She sued him twice to try to get out of the deal; both times, she lost. Zito didn't respond to calls and text messages. Madeleine O'Neill contributed reporting.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cockney Yiddish: how two languages influenced each other in London's East End
Yiddish is a familiar presence in contemporary English speech. Many people use or at least know the meaning of words like chutzpah (audacity), schlep (drag) or nosh (snack). These words have been absorbed into English from their original speakers, eastern European Jews who migrated to Britain in the late 19th century, through generations of living in close proximity in areas like London's East End. Linguistics scholars have even theorised that elements of a Yiddish accent may have influenced the cockney accent as it evolved in the early 20th century. Phonetic analysis of cockney speakers recorded in the mid-20th century suggests that East Enders who grew up with Jewish neighbours spoke English with speech rhythms typical of Yiddish. A distinctive pronunciation of the 'r' sound is thought to have originated among Jewish immigrants and spread into the wider population. Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK's latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences. But, as we explore in our new podcast, cockney reshaped the Yiddish language too. This can be seen in surviving texts from the popular culture of the Jewish immigrant East End, including newspapers and songsheets, where songs, poems and stories dramatise the thrills and challenges of modern London. The Yiddish music of London's East End brought together the Yiddish language and Jewish culture of eastern Europe with the raucous, irreverent style of the cockney music hall. Theatres and pubs overflowed with audiences eager to see the immigrant experience in Whitechapel represented in all its perplexity and pathos, with a good measure of slapstick comedy. A Yiddish music hall song from around 1900 jokes that East Enders live on 'poteytes un gefrayte fish' – a Yiddish version of the cockney staple fish and chips. The song lists the many novelties that immigrants encountered on arriving in the metropolis: trains running underground, women wearing trousers and people speaking on telephones. Yiddish was also the language of street protest in the Jewish East End. During the 'strike fever' of 1889, when workers throughout east London were demanding better pay and working conditions, the Whitechapel streets resonated with the voices of Jewish sweatshop workers singing: In di gasn, tsu di masn fun badrikte felk rasn, ruft der frayhaytsgayst (In the streets, to the masses / of oppressed peoples, races / the spirit of freedom calls). This song was penned by the socialist poet Morris Winchevsky, an immigrant from Lithuania who spoke Yiddish as a mother tongue but preferred to write in literary Hebrew. In London he switched to writing in the vernacular language of Yiddish in order to make his writing more accessible to immigrant Jewish workers. The song became a rousing anthem in labour protests across the Yiddish-speaking world, from Warsaw to Chicago. Yet from the earliest days of Jewish immigration to London, the Yiddish-language culture of the East End was a focus of anxiety for the Jewish middle and upper class of the West End. They regarded Yiddish as a vulgar dialect, detrimental to the integration of Jewish immigrants in England. While they provided significant philanthropic support for immigrants, they banned the use of Yiddish in the educational and religious institutions that they funded. In 1883, budding novelist Israel Zangwill was disciplined by the Jews' Free School, where he worked as a teacher, for publishing a short story liberally sprinkled with dialogues in cockney-Yiddish. By the 1930s Yiddish had begun to decline. As Jews moved away from the East End, local Yiddish newspapers folded and publications dwindled. The Yiddish writer I.A. Lisky, who wrote fiction for a keen but diminishing readership in the London Yiddish newspaper Di tsayt, movingly described a young woman and her grandmother who each harbour complex hopes and worries but cannot communicate: 'Ken ober sibl nit redn keyn yidish un di bobe farshteyt nor a por verter english. Shvaygt sibl vayter.' (But Sybil spoke no Yiddish, and her grandmother knew only a few words of English. So she remained silent.) Jewish writers of the postwar period were haunted by the sense of a lost connection to the Yiddish language and culture of previous generations. The novelist Alexander Baron, who grew up in Hackney, remembered his grandparents reading Yiddish literature and newspapers, and his parents speaking Yiddish when they did not want their children to understand what they were saying. In his novel The Lowlife (1963) the narrator's vocabulary is peppered with Yiddish words. But these fragments are all that remains of his link to the East End where he was born. When he returns to these streets, he feels that 'my too, too solid flesh in the world of the past is like a ghost of the past in the solid world of the present; it can look on but it cannot touch'. If you walk through the north London neighbourhood of Stamford Hill today, you'll hear Yiddish on the streets and see new Yiddish books on the shelves of the local bookshops. Although they have no connection to the Victorian Jewish East End, the ultra-orthodox Hasidic community who live there speak Yiddish as their first language. And for a younger generation of secular Jews, Yiddish is also acquiring a new appeal. They look to past traditions of Jewish diasporism to forge an identity rooted in language, culture and solidarity with other minorities rather than nationalism. London is one centre of this worldwide revival: the Friends of Yiddish group established in the East End in the late 1930s is now flourishing in its contemporary incarnation as the Yiddish Open Mic Cafe. And Yiddish is once again a language that anyone can learn. The Ot Azoy Yiddish summer school is in its 13th year, and new Yiddish language schools are thriving, including east London-based Babel's Blessing, which teaches diaspora languages including Yiddish and offers free English classes to refugees and asylum seekers. The annual Yiddish sof-vokh hosts an immersive weekend for Yiddish learners. Yiddish culture too is being rejuvenated. Projects we have been involved with include the Yiddish Shpilers theatre troupe, the Great Yiddish Parade marching band, which has brought Winchevsky's socialist anthems back onto London's streets, and the London band Katsha'nes, which has reimagined cockney Yiddish music hall songs for the 21st century. If Yiddish was once reviled as a debased, slangy mishmash, full of borrowings and adaptations, it's precisely for those qualities that it is celebrated today. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Nadia Valman received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for research included in this article. Vivi Lachs received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for research included in this article.
Montreal Gazette
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
Montreal artist and ‘extraordinary mentor' Rita Briansky has died at 99
Montreal artist Rita Briansky, whose work is featured in the permanent collections of institutions including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Vancouver Art Gallery, has died. She would have been 100 in July. Briansky, who died April on 24, had long been recognized for her career as a painter, printmaker and etcher. She is remembered also as an adored teacher who inspired many other artists over decades in classes at the Visual Arts Centre, Saidye Bronfman School of Fine Arts and at Cummings Centre. 'She was an extraordinary mentor, a coach,' Gina Roitman, a Cummings Centre student, said of Briansky. 'She never instructed: She always kind of led you.' In one of dozens of tributes accompanying Briansky's obituary on the Paperman website, another student observed: 'Rita knew how to talk to her students with total respect for them and for their artistic efforts, whether they were rank beginners or skilled painters. She drew the best out of each of us.' Class with Briansky was 'more like a workshop: Everyone worked at their own level,' Cummings student Phyllis Deitcher said. 'Rita was full of stories and full of wisdom and humour. The class became like a family. We all loved her. She was a warm, wonderful, passionate person — and she cared about each of her students,' Deitcher said. 'She felt anyone could become an artist. Her favourite expression was: 'Be yourself: everyone else is taken.'' It was always clear to Briansky that she wanted to be an artist. 'Before I could write, I could draw,' she said in a 2020 interview. 'I was the one as a little kid who took chalk from the blackboard and drew on the sidewalks,' she recalled in the 2018 documentary by Janet Best and Dov Okouneff, The Wonder and Amazement — Rita Briansky on Her Life in Art. Briansky was born in Grajewo, Poland, in 1925 and arrived in Canada in 1929 with her mother and two older sisters to join her father in Ansonville, a northern Ontario pulp and paper town. She remembered small, sweet, strawberries to snack on, wild roses along the roadside and the northern lights in the sky, she told the filmmakers. 'I was very much involved with nature.' The family moved to the northern Quebec mining town of Val d'Or in 1939 and in 1941 to Montreal, where they lived on Parc Ave. and Briansky's mother took in boarders and roomers. The family struggled financially and her parents wanted her to leave Baron Byng High School before graduating to find work. But she wanted to study art. The Yiddish poet Ida Maze championed her, got her babysitting jobs and introduced her to her first art teacher, Alexander Bercovitch. 'I felt so awed by meeting this great artist,' Briansky recalled. 'In many ways he was my best teacher — because he acknowledged me.' In her early 20s, she moved to New York City to study with the Art Students League, taking various jobs in the evenings to support herself. On her return to Montreal in 1949, she met fellow artist Joseph Prezament, a Winnipeg native; they married five months later. The couple had two daughters, Anna and Wendy. 'I loved being a mother,' Briansky told Best and Okouneff. She worked from home, making etchings that sold well. 'I was the only mother they knew who had a printing press in the living room.' Her work, which used portraiture, still life and landscapes, addressed diverse subjects and themes but was rooted in her own experiences. 'Practically everything I have drawn or painted has been something familiar to me,' she told the filmmakers. In 1983, Prezament died of a brain tumour. He was 60. A few years later, Briansky began to travel alone to destinations including India, Israel and Mexico. 'I was brave,' she recalled. Briansky, who had lost relatives in the Holocaust, felt 'an unyielding urge' in 1995 to return to the country of her birth. She visited memorial sites and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Viewing a field of red poppies, she realized that 'this beautiful landscape was fertilized by human ashes.' On her return, she produced the Kaddish series — her reflection on the trauma of the Holocaust: Its 18 works are on permanent display at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Westmount. In 2006, Briansky contacted the Art for Healing Foundation — the not-for-profit foundation collects and installs art from prominent artists and benefactors in hospitals and other health-care institutions — about donating paintings by her late husband. A number of works by Prezament hang at the Maimonides Geriatric Centre. She began to donate some of her own work: Paintings from her Carousel series, for instance, hang in the Montreal Children's Hospital. 'Rita loved donating her art,' said Earl Pinchuk, co-founder with Gary Blair of the Art for Healing Foundation and its executive director. 'She was a lovely person — and strong-minded. I was in awe of everything she did.' Briansky's work was featured in 2008 in the group exhibition Jewish Painters of Montreal: Witnesses of Their Time, 1930-1948, at the Musée des beaux-arts du Québec and later at the McCord Museum. Group members included Jack Beder, Sam Borenstein, Eric Goldberg, Harry Mayerovitch, Louis Muhlstock and Moe Reinblatt — and she was its last surviving member, as Michael Millman observed. The West End Gallery, started by Millman's mother in 1964, was a fixture on Greene Ave. for 50 years; Briansky was represented in its opening and final exhibitions and several solo shows in between. She would start her weekly classes at Cummings with a brief lecture on art history relevant to what her students were working on. 'By teaching, I am learning. I am proving that getting older doesn't mean you have to stop growing: I am challenging them and they take up the challenge and I feel that, from week to week, they are growing.' Patricia Kehler, supervisor of the Cummings fine arts and crafts department, said Briansky was its most popular teacher. The last class she taught was in March, weeks before her death. When Kehler visited her in hospital, 'she asked about registration for her spring classes. I just felt she was going to live forever.' Briansky, who in addition to her husband was predeceased by her devoted partner, Eddie Klein, and by two of her sisters. She is survived by her daughters, her younger sister and by nieces and nephews. A celebration of her life is planned for a later date. This story was originally published
New York Post
14-05-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Hochul jokes congestion pricing might not work— after NYC traffic made her late for dinner
They're hitting the city limits Out of the mouths: Kathy Hochul — always on the dot punctual, and meeting a friend for dinner — arrived 20 minutes late. 'Traffic was terrible,' she said. Then: 'Maybe this congestion thing isn't working!' For over 40 years the owner of big-time restaurant Primola has served everyone — Ivana, Ivanka, Marla, Donald 'who always came a few minutes late.' East Side owner says, 'If ever I actually write a book, I'd have to leave the country.' Realtor: High cost of everything causing problems, union carpenters, congestion and bridge tolls, 'besides that there's also kids, 12 years old, in Times Square robbing people.' Taxi driver: 'When passengers pay in cash I now don't have to report it.' Driven to drink Wait. More taxi driver misery. Marilu Henner and Tony Danza couldn't find a taxi. They were damp. It was the rained-on West Wide. Ubers were backed up. Cabs no place. Understand, these were the former TV 'Taxi' stars. So, in good Big Apple style, they sloshed over for drinks at dry Manny's Bistro. Big cheers for Jersey boy Lufthansa lounge before a flight to Copenhagen. Newark Airport. TSA staff snarling. Hasidim speaking Yiddish. Passengers said that this week downtown Tenafly had 10 million Israeli-Americans and assorted persons of Jewish persuasion celebrating 21-year-old Edan Alexander's release from hostagehood. High value asset We now speak bargains. You can go from bland to Bond for $26.5 mil. Sean Connery's South of France shack is for sale. Stuck above the Mediterranean in Nice. Art Deco estate called 'Bond Villa' by locals. Riviera glamour, panoramic sea views, indoor infinity pool, dining room equipped with ejector seats for gabby guests in case the pot roast's lousy. Rule of all? Europe is at a critical point. America's shield is rusting. China's prepping to invade Taiwan. Took only one month, three weeks, two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its constitution. Putin's goal? A redo of Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin. The south awaits the current conflict outcome to decide whether or not to act further — whether to trample on it. He wants the order put in place by the USA and its allies. First principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force. E pluribus unum. Somewhere I read that it's all for one — and one for all. Only not in New York or anyplace else.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cristina Mittermeier, Peter McKinnon and 100+ Speakers to Present at Bild Expo 2025 in New York City
Event Celebrating Image, Storytelling and Content Creation Returns to Javits Center June 17–18 Following Strong 2023 Debut NEW YORK, May 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- B&H today announced the return of Bild Expo, an immersive two-day celebration of innovation in photography, video and content creation. Taking place June 17–18, 2025, at the Javits Center in New York City, Bild Expo invites creators of all levels to connect, create and experience the technologies shaping the future of the visual and storytelling arts. Attendees can explore the latest gear from industry leaders including Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Sony, DJI and more — across a show floor that's twice as large as 2023's strongly attended debut. Bild Expo 2025 is free and open to all creatives. Registration is now available at "Bild Expo brings the creative community together in a way that's deeply personal and profoundly inspiring," said Jeff Gerstel, Chief Marketing Officer at B&H. "It's more than an event — it's a spark for new ideas, new collaborations and new possibilities. We're thrilled to open our doors once again to storytellers from around the world." "Bild"—Yiddish for "image"—honors the enduring power of imagery in culture, communication and human connection. Headliner: Cristina Mittermeier Cristina "Mitty" Mittermeier, marine biologist, photographer and co-founder of SeaLegacy, headlines this year's speaker lineup. Mittermeier's storytelling—featured by National Geographic and honored as a Sony Artisan of Imagery—merges urgent environmental advocacy with deeply human narratives, capturing the profound relationship between people and planet. Spotlight on Creators Across Every Discipline Bild Expo 2025 will feature over 100 speakers offering insights across photography, filmmaking and content creation, including: Peter McKinnon, globally renowned filmmaker, photographer and creator, known for his cinematic style, dynamic YouTube presence and collaborations with brands like Canon and Red Bull, empowers millions of followers with tutorials, gear reviews and visual storytelling that break creative boundaries. Drex Lee, whose viral "Epic 1 Shot" films have drawn over 6 billion views, reveals the production secrets behind his signature style. Lynsey Addario, Pulitzer Prize-winning and Emmy-nominated photojournalist, author and Nikon ambassador, has covered conflicts, humanitarian crises and women's issues for The New York Times and National Geographic. Thandiwe Muriu, award-winning Kenyan visual artist, explores the vibrant intersection of identity, culture and color in her acclaimed "Camo" series. Alex "Alexander the Great" Stemplewski, street photographer and social media innovator, discusses creating spontaneous, authentic imagery that resonates globally. Shuang Hu, actress, director and digital storyteller, shares strategies for crafting viral narratives and amplifying diverse voices through her platform THEONESHU. Scott Kelby, best-selling author and founder of KelbyOne, teaches breakthrough lighting, editing and post-processing techniques that redefine photo mastery. Kendall Vertes, artist and content creator of Dance Moms fame, shares her journey from television to building a multifaceted brand that speaks to the next generation of creatives. Gear, Hands-On Learning and Networking Attendees will also experience: Hands-on access to the latest cameras, lighting, audio and post-production tools from 250+ top brands, 50% more versus 2023. Live demos and workshops covering AI-driven editing, cinematic video production, lighting techniques, immersive audio capture, 16mm filmmaking and more. Portfolio and pitch reviews with leading photographers, publishers and agencies. Guided photo walks through NYC led by top industry ambassadors, offering hands-on tips and techniques while capturing the city's energy. After-hours networking events and a sports photography experience. Partner Pavilion showcasing organizations such as the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). About B&H Photo Founded in 1973, B&H Photo began as a small camera shop near New York City Hall and has grown into one of the world's leading creative gear retailers. Serving millions of creators through its Manhattan SuperStore and online platform, B&H offers more than 400,000 products alongside expert service, workshops and community events that fuel the next generation of storytellers. Learn more at B&H Photo. Media Contact: Michael McMullanBerns Communications Groupmmcmullan@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE B&H Photo Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
