High Holidays - Flipbook - Page 7
Roslyn Harbor was home to Benjamin
Stern who along with his three brothers
formed a retail business that would
become Stern’s Department Store. He
and his wife Madeleine made a donation
that helped with the construction of the
synagogue Congregation Tifereth Israel
in Glen Cove.
Considered to be one of the
wealthiest men of his day, Otto Kahn in
1919 purchased 443 acres in Cold Spring
Harbor and built a French-style chateau
called Oheka Castle using the first
letters of his name Otto HErman KAhn. It
has become one of the most popular
sites for B’nei Mitzvot, weddings, parties
and more.
Here’s a big scoop: Ben Cohen and
Jerry Greenfield not only became friends
at Merrick Avenue Junior High School in
the seventh grade but stayed friends,
including when they opened Ben &
Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream Parlor in
1978.
New York Mets owner Steve Cohen
graduated from Great Neck North High
School in 1974. He became a minority
owner of the Mets in 2012 and
purchased controlling interest in 2020
from two other Jewish Long Islanders,
Fred Wilpon of Locust Valley and Saul
Katz from Glen Cove. Speaking of sports,
Port Washington’s own Philip Israel
changed his last name to Iselin and was
part of a group that bought a New York
American Football League team that
became the Jets. Philip became
president of the New York Jets in 1968 a
year before Joe Namath and the Jets
had their one and only Super Bowl title.
In the 1960s, Betty Friedan became a
leading voice for women’s rights as the
co-founder and the first president of the
National Organization for Women. In the
early 1980s she spent summers at her
home in Sag Harbor. She passed away in
2006 and is buried in the Sag Harbor
Jewish Cemetery.
in North Bellmore. Going to the Catskills
with his parents and listening to comedy
albums opened his comedy writing
career, He was an original writer on
Saturday Night Live including writing
sketches for Gilda Radner and John
Belushi and creating the character
Roseanne Roseannadanna. He co-wrote
a Broadway show for his good friend
Billy Crystal.
Speaking of Billy, long before Harry
Met Sally on the Lower East Side at
Katz’s Delicatessen, comedian/actor
Billy Crystal grew up and had his Bar
Mitzvah at Temple Emanu-El in Long
Beach.
The walls of the exhibit include some
fascinating quotations.
Geraldo Rivera’s is one that stood out: