Joining the Breslovers—and my cousin—for Rosh Hashanah in Ukraine
| 7:00 AM Sep 25, 2009
I spent Rosh Hashanah in Uman, a city of 90,000 in Ukraine, and there are at least three good reasons why I shouldn’t have. As a secular academic, specializing in Yiddish literature, what could it profit me to spend time with tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews, few of whom would understand the specifics of ...
Another scam, Ahmadinejad in line, and a settler speaks
| 5:00 PM Sep 24, 2009
• According to a market-research poll, the number one Rosh Hashanah wish among Israeli Jews is a practical one: increased rainfall. (In a rule that would be instructive to beauty pageant organizers, respondents weren’t allowed to choose peace.) [Ynet]
• Jewish charities in Latin America were the hardest hit victims of the Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme allegedly ...
Stamps of approval, Spanish hard-liners, and celebrating like an Egyptian
| 5:00 PM Sep 22, 2009
• A cab driver in Montreal is fighting multiple citations that he violated regulations by displaying, among other knickknacks, Jewish items such as mezuzahs in his vehicle; suspiciously, he began getting ticketed “only days after speaking out in the media in 2006 to complain that the taxi bureau was failing to crack down on unlicensed ...
Borat and Bart, the internet as shtetl, and last Afghani Jew wants a break
| 5:00 PM Sep 21, 2009
• Barbra Streisand, who New York Magazine says entered the mainstream by “smoothing out all her misfit attributes until she seemed almost homogenized: like buttah,” has returned to form with her new album Love is the Answer, which she will promote with a show at her old New York haunt the Village Vanguard on Saturday. ...
Rosh Hashanah at work, on stage, and in the Big Easy
| 2:00 PM Sep 18, 2009
• What’s that strange sound coming down your office hallway? It might be your coworker’s avant garde jazz, or it might be Chabad Rabbi Aaron Cunin, who roams businesses in Silicon Valley the day before Rosh Hashanah, blowing the shofar and offering honey cake to harried Jews. [SJMN]
• Jeremiah Lockwood, frontman for Jewish indie ...
Recipes, resolutions, remembrances, and restorations—all our Rosh Hashanah coverage
| 1:00 PM Sep 18, 2009
Recipes, resolutions, remembrances, and restorations—a gathering of our Rosh Hashanah coverage.
Rosh Hashanah wishes from the prez
| 11:00 AM Sep 18, 2009
In addition to your mother and your grandmother and all your friends with “Yay, 5770!” Facebook status updates, you know who else wants to wish you a happy Rosh Hashanah? Barack Obama. A video greeting from President Barry was posted to the White House blog yesterday afternoon, and he opens with a very well-executed (and ...
No peace talks, Ahmadinejad's old song, and more in the news
| 9:10 AM Sep 18, 2009
• A meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu, and President Obama at the U.N. General Assembly next week is extremely unlikely, as no one is willing to budge on anything. [Ynet]
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust “a lie.” Again. [AP]
• Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, ...
A Manhattan bartender devises some Rosh Hashanah cocktails
| 7:00 AM Sep 18, 2009
Doug Quinn, a bartender at the Manhattan fixture P.J. Clarke’s, isn’t fazed by much. During a busy happy hour this week, we brought him a bag full of traditional Rosh Hashanah food items—apples, pomegranates, honey, dates, black-eyed peas, and, of course, a fish head—and asked him to work them into cocktails. We also brought some ...
Rosh Hashanah resolutions from Matisyahu, Michael Showalter, Ayelet Waldman, and others
| 7:00 AM Sep 18, 2009
Rosh Hashanah resolutions from Matisyahu, Daphne Merkin, Michael Showalter, Naomi Alderman, Douglas Century, Ayelet Waldman, and Mimi Sheraton.
A haftorah of remorse and return
Though only a tiny fraction of what it was in the 18th century, Barbados’s Jewish community—and its 1750 synagogue—still stand proud
In early 20th-century Poland, poet Shmuel Nadler took off his yarmulke and took up with the Communists
After a painstaking survey, Tablet Magazine awards title for nation's tastiest triangular treat
Making Palestinian chicken and Moroccan challah for a Shabbat dinner with Alice Waters
The national infatuation with pork has reached Jewish cuisine, prohibitions notwithstanding
When we were kids, I wanted to follow in my brother’s footsteps. Now, as adults, I’m reminded why.
Passover is about freedom, so let’s not encourage our kids to be slaves to their allergies
My children are becoming German citizens, and I’m going nuts
Playing the defiant Vashti in a day school Purim play awakened my inner feminist
On Valentine’s Day, reflecting on the limits and boundlessness of a father’s love
Plus-size retail queen Deb Malkin insists that fashion isn’t only for the skinny
Amid financial shortfalls and a Conservative crisis, the Jewish Theological Seminary will shutter its cantorial school
As Chabad opens preschools across the country, secular parents try to reconcile the movement with the classroom
The recession has hit the rabbinate, too. How are the newly ordained—and laid-off veterans—handling the rabbi glut?
How to reconcile religious prohibitions on autopsies with the need to determine a cause of death
From the archives: The neverending fetishistic fascination with Jews and intelligence
Immunization fears lead to another outbreak among New York’s ultra-Orthodox
For an Orthodox preteen, Tonya Harding was a hero—and a Purim inspiration
A crossword puzzle celebrating Judaism’s denominations
The Coney Island attraction who made wrestling history
