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Sundown: Hebrew’s Not Just for Jews

A starving school, an appetite for Israel, and the finer points of slaughter

by
Hadara Graubart
October 16, 2009

• New York City’s Hebrew-language charter school is off to a good start. It’s skirted controversy, poached kids from neighboring religious schools, and one black, non-Jewish parent says it offers more diversity than the local public school [Jewish Week]
• Nearby in Brooklyn, an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva is so low on funds it has sold space on its school buses to a religious publishing company for a “gentle and low-key” and “kosher type” ad. [NYDN]
• Israelis are doing increasingly well peddling their cuisine stateside, perhaps because, as an Israeli food magazine editor put it, Americans are looking to eat more healthfully and “we are the only people in the world that eats salad for breakfast.” [JTA]
• A New Zealand professor’s research has shown that shechita, Jewish ritual slaughter, causes animals pain because they are not stunned before having their throats slit. [JC]
The Jewish Star reports on actor Eliezer Meyer, “king of the Jewish bit part,” who appears in New York, I Love You and told Tablet in June about the oddness of seeing costumed actors during set breaks: “You’ll have guys with payes and beards but no yarmulkes walking into kosher restaurants in [ultra-Orthodox] Williamsburg, so, basically, they’re hasidically half-naked.” [TJS]

Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.