In past issues, the Jewish Times staff has done a matzah ball soup tasting, a hamentaschen tasting and even a matzah tasting for Passover. But what we haven’t done in recent years is a sampling of Baltimore’s numerous Jewish-style delis.
For this week’s cover story, we filled our bellies with pastrami, knishes, matzah ball soup, cookies and more to tell you about just a fraction of the food you can enjoy from Pikesville to Jonestown. In mouth-watering detail, Susan C. Ingram, Connor Graham and Victoria Brown take the readers to the historic Attman’s Deli in Jonestown, new kid on the block AJ’s Deli in the Mount Vernon Marketplace, kosher favorite The Knish Shop in Pikesville and oversized sandwich purveyors The Essen Room in Pikesville.
Connor’s introduction to the tastings tells you about even more delis to check out, and gives a little background on the cultural gem we call the Jewish deli. Just don’t read the cover story while you’re hungry.
In other news, it’s been busy in Annapolis as local legislators and the Baltimore Jewish Council have their eyes on legislation concerning hate crimes, cyberbullying, Holocaust education and Pimlico. In response to the JCC bomb threats in 2017, legislation introduced in the House by Del. Sandy Rosenberg and in the Senate by Sen. Bobby Zirkin would make the threat of a hate crime a criminal act.
Zirkin celebrated a victory with the unanimous Senate passage of Grace’s Law 2.0, which updated Maryland’s cyberbullying statute by bringing it into the modern age of social media and removing what Zirkin felt were some barriers to effective policing of cyberbullying acts.
Elsewhere in Maryland, a group of event professionals, some of which compete for business, came together at Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland last week to help package meals that will feed 1,500 people. Started by Heidi Hiller of Innovative Party Planning in Owings Mills and a northern Virginia party planner, the group’s “brr mitzvah” project has the group volunteering in the spirit of the bar and bat mitzvah kids they serve, whose own mitzvah projects inspired the effort.
Happy reading!
For over 100 years my family’s business has served a diverse group of clientele . We are proud of our heritage and are happy to say we have a large Jewish following as well as other religious groups . To say our business is represented by a single race is wrong . Marc Attman