More in ‘bat mitzvah’

• A group of pro-peace Israeli scientists and activists called Comet-ME has brought solar panels and wind turbines to a Palestinian village left off the power grid. [AP]
• 62-year-old Brooklyn seltzer delivery man Ronny Beberman, in a full neck and back brace after falling off his truck, is back on his route with the help ...

• Apparently the morbid speculations about Bernie Madoff’s life expectancy before his sentencing were beside the point—word has it the conman is dying of pancreatic cancer in prison, where, strangely, some fellow inmates are “trying to kiss his butt.” [NY Post]
• Giving new meaning to “coming of age,” six women aged 79-100 recently had Bat ...

Like many adolescents before her, Tessa Rothfeld put in a lot of time preparing for her bat mitzvah last November. She studied her Torah portion, and she practiced other parts of the service she’d seen peers perform at Congregation Ohav Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Cincinnati, Ohio. But Tessa also had to learn some liturgy that was less familiar to her: the rites surrounding havdalah, the service that marks the end of Shabbat and the transition back to the work week. Her family had opted to have her bat mitzvah on Saturday evening, meaning that it would encompass the trio of late-day Sabbath services—mincha, maariv, and havdalah—rather than the typical morning Sabbath service of shacharit.

•A game show in Turkey called Penitents Compete pits religious leaders from the world’s major faiths against each other in the battle for the soul of a nonbeliever. The atheists are examined by a panel of theologians to prove their sincerity—presumably based on how well they know their Hitchens. [CNN]
•One atheist who has yet to ...

• Ten students on a Birthright trip to Israel came down with swine flu and then passed it on to 18 IDF soldiers. The organization, which not-so-subtly promotes hooking up within the faith, should be relieved it wasn’t something worse. [Forward]
• A British couple is suing their neighbors for installing motion-sensor lights that keep the ...

A few months ago, an email message began circulating among religious scholars: “Film studio looking for someone to teach non-Jewish 13-year-old actor a haftorah portion for Todd Solondz movie bar mitzvah scene.” Since few details about this movie have been made public, it’s hard to know what Solondz—the indie auteur whose films have gotten progressively ...

At age thirteen, it never occurred to me that there was anything particularly striking about my bat mitzvah. Growing up in the secular humanist mecca of Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had little by way of comparison. But with nearly two decades of hindsight, it’s obvious that mine was not your typical Jewish American rite of passage. ...

Earlier this month, my pseudonym, Fiona Rosenbloom, came out with her first young-adult novel. (Mazel Tov, Fiona!) The novel centers on Jewish themes and is called You Are SO Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah! Here’s how that happened: A month before the release of my own decidedly R-rated first novel, I was approached by ...

Until this week’s episode, I loved Entourage, the story of three childhood friends from Queens who follow a fourth, the good-looking and endearing actor Vincent Chase, around Los Angeles as his star ascends with the help of his agent, Ari Gold. Played by Jeremy Piven, Ari is one part bully, one part oracle, one part ...