There is an old Jewish music hall joke: "Did you know that the Jews were responsible for the sinking of the Titanic?"

"No they weren't, it was the iceberg."

"Oy, already. Iceberg, Goldberg?

In Brooklyn, three Jewishfoodies are
reviving old-world dishes for a new, environmentally-aware generation.

Liz Alpern, Jackie Lilinshtein and Jeffrey Yoskowitz, founders of the Gefilteria, are offering up traditional Ashkenazi foods with a twist.

Mark Ronson is reminiscing. "My grandmother was so funny. She's not around any more but when we were kids we'd go over to her house and she'd only have two periodicals on the table: French Vogue and the Jewish Chronicle". He smiles. "Those were like her Bibles."

The memory is partly prompted by the fact Ronson is talking to the JC, partly by the fact he is back in London.

Stefan Zweig, in recent years, has not so much reprised an earlier reputation in this country as achieved one hitherto denied him beyond his native Austria.

This cannot be merely a testament either to the pioneering Modernism of this uniquely voiced author or to the increased sophistication of a new generation of Anglophone readers.

Pistols were firing, children were being dragged from their mothers, and men stampeded in panic. But this was not a German concentration camp. It was the sinking of the Titanic, as witnessed by a British Jewish survivor.

One hundred years ago, survivor Joseph Hyman told the New York Herald: "We sat there silent, we were terror-stricken.

A Lebanese-born man who shot at the young Chasidic passengers of a bus on the Brooklyn Bridge in March 1995, killing a 16-year-old boy, later admitted that he deliberately targeted Jews.

Ari Halberstam, a yeshivah student, was killed when Rashid Baz opened fire on the 15 passengers on the bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Two others were seriously wounded.

The Republican presidential hopeful, Rick Santorum, spoke at a Messianic Jews convention in 2010, it emerged this week.

Mr Santorum, who remains the main obstacle to Mitt Romney's chances of the party's nomination, is known for his conservative views on issues such as abortion, homosexuality and birth control, inspired by his devout Catholicism.