At the beginning of January, Streit’s Matzo announced that they would be closing up shop on the Lower East Side of New York City and moving to New Jersey. The company has been operating out of the same tenement building on Rivington Street since 1925—it’s truly one of the last remaining bastions from the neighborhood’s Jewish, Yiddish-speaking heyday.

Filmmaker Michael Levine, who is making a documentary about Streit’s, opined the closure in Bowery Boogie:

I personally know that this was an agonizing decision for the Streit family, who despite their many challenges, were determined to keep the factory and its workers employed onsite, even as the phone rang daily with offers from developers clamoring to purchase the valuable real estate. I watched as they turned down offer after offer, until the challenges of maintaining a manufacturing business in a drastically changing Lower East Side, as well as the pressures of increased foreign competition, left the company no alternative but to accept.

The loss is, of course, especially painful for the Streit’s workers, many of whom have devoted 30 or more years of their lives to working here, and for whom, like the millions before them who came to the Lower East Side, found opportunity for themselves and their families in that work.

Today, The Guardian posted a poignant video about the factory, featuring interviews with executive vice-president Aron Yagoda (great-grandson of founder Aron Streit), and long-time employee Anthony Zapata. There’s some tension—Yagoda says the business can not continue to operate in its current location; Zapata thinks the move is a “mistake”—but mostly, the feeling is one of sadness and inevitability.

(Image: Workers at Streit’s Matzo factory on New York City’s Lower East Side on May 9, 2012. Credit: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/GettyImages)

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The folks at Buzzfeed have stumbled onto a veritable viral goldmine with a few of their latest videos, in which Americans sample (or attempt to explain) aspects of Jewish culture, with little background knowledge. First there was the Jewish Food Taste Test, then there was Hanukkah Explained By Christians (and the concomitant Christmas Explained By Jews). Now, in “Americans Try Israeli Snacks,” Jews and gentiles sample classic treats from the Holy Land for the very first time.

In just three days the video has amassed over one million views, which I find fascinating and a little surprising. (By comparison, this seminal Marmite Vs. Vegemite taste test, uploaded way back in August 2014, has 1.2 million views.) (An egregious oversight, citizens of the internet.) I mean, this is literally a video of people eating snacks! That’s all! Why is it so compelling?

Perhaps because it speaks to our nostalgia for the comforts of childhood—anyone who grew up eating Bamba will know what I’m talking about. It’s the Jewish madeleine. Just the sight of the bubble font on the packet sends me back to the early 1990s. And for those unfamiliar with Israeli snacks, the video is a benign, cute, soundbite-y take on the ‘other’—much like this one of Americans trying Indian snacks for the first time. It’s a safe, if shallow exploration of non-American culture. Also, Israeli snacks are just really delicious. Milky is pretty much the finest chocolate pudding on the face of the earth.

Still, there are some oversights! Wither shoko b’sakit? Klik malt balls? The egozi bar?

And why was “Chosson Kallah Mazel Tov”—a wedding song—chosen as the soundtrack?

Leave your thoughts, recommendations, critiques in the comments.

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Another of Jill Soloway‘s gems has slipped onto the internet with very little fanfare, so we at Jewcy thought we’d bring both the fans and the fare.

Wifey.TV is “a curated video network for women”—sort of like the love child between Jezebel and Upworthy, minus the snark and sentimentality. Soloway and co-creator Rebecca Odes promise to “explore the interweb far and wide to gather video that tickles us pink, makes us think or moves us—then we put it out there for you!”

And no, you don’t have to be married to appreciate the site:

“Wifey isn’t really for wives, or about them. Wifey’s your bestie, your go-to female, the one who gets you. Our audience is anyone who needs content that gets deep inside of women as actual multi-faceted human people. Subjects, not objects…

We’ve been in those meetings where it’s a struggle to get people to invest in portrayals of women that aren’t satisfying to your average male. The powers that be promote their own imaginary idea of wish fulfillment for women…

The audience is out there, but the structure is hanging onto old mores. It’s time for a new paradigm. The female gaze is ready and waiting.”

With a variety of cleverly-named categories like sheroic and—my personal favorite—lolsob, Wifey.tv curates content from other sites and produces some of its own. There are great videos of Jill Soloway getting all up in someone’s grill, like when she interrogates Jenn Tisdale about whether she had an orgasm while filming a porno with James Deen, or when she asks a group of women at a book party whether certain things (like anti-rape underwear) are feminist or misogynist.

There’s a heartrending video of Maya Angelou in Richard Pryor’s short lived comedy—LOLSOB!!—and an utterly hilarious cartoon about why there are no strong female characters (just watch it. Right now. Trust me.) And the Women of Wall Street is a magnificent, gender-reversal satire of the Wolf of Wall Street trailer.

In “Woody’s Daughters,” Soloway meditates on the experience of watching Manhattan at the age of 14, and her conflict over the presciently creepy final scene:

“Today this scene reads like there is a gun to her head, just off camera… But the truth is, we are all his children. We inherited his rules and took them as emotional gospel. One was that a sad sack Jewish man can re-imagine himself as the object of desire for the impossibly young, impossibly beautiful Mariel Hemingway – as long as he is brilliantly funny. For a post-Holocaust generation, that math was a life raft in the face of humiliations like old, Jewish, short, ugly. His voice gave me something to hold on to, a way to win again.”

LOLSOB!!

But my favorite one of all is the video that makes people in relationships wish they were single, and single people feel like they have more purchase on that secret, quiet thing that we’re all searching for.

When asked by Forbes about why they created Wifey.TV, the duo answered as follows:

Odes: “We want to be the go-to source for women who want something to watch, whether that’s on their phone or their television. We want to produce the kind of media we want to see.”

Soloway: “To topple the patriarchy. Create a worldwide feminist revolution. To silence anonymous misogynist trolls. Emmys, Oscars, house on the beach, renovated farmhouse studio in Amagansett, private jets, quiet minds, thicker eyelashes, a friendship with Fran Lebowitz.”

Indeed. Keep it coming. We’re watching with bated breath.

RELATED: Must-watch: Jill Soloway’s New Amazon Original Pilot, “Transparent”
Jennifer Aniston Interviews Gloria Steinem At Feminist Makers Conference

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Fred Armisen’s totally on point, previously un-aired impersonation of Ira Glass has been rescued from the dustbin of history, and for that we can all give thanks. It was filmed in a Saturday Night Live dress rehearsal in 2011 but left out of the final cut. Armisen nails Glass’ intonation and uptalk, Seth Meyers is the perfect straight man, and there’s a delightfully accented Mexican factory worker.

p.s. Bonus link! You can hear Armisen and Glass co-host an episode of This American Life (called Doppelgängers, natch) here. Don’t try to keep track of who’s who! Just relax into the slightly creepy Twin Peaksy vibe and enjoy.

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Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party might have been the surprise winner of yesterday’s Israeli election, netting exactly half of the 120 Knesset seats and demonstrating a leftward shift in the country’s political narrative. But the real winner is Lapid, who in his former life as a television personality played the role of the Hugh Grant-esque leading man in the 1994 classic Israeli rom-com, Shirat HaSirena:

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