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Book Club: My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy
Forty weeks and 5 days of hell was just the start

2

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Sarah Palin: Anti-Abortion, Anti-Environment, and. . . Anti-Semite?
Under the dress of America's Prom Queen Vice President

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Sammy Harkham Stands Accused
He's been called a genius and stands accused of expanding the audience for comics. You be the judge.

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Is Alejandro Springall the Mexican Woody Allen?
The Director of 'My Mexican Shivah' Sheds Some Light on Living, Dying, and the Angels that Accompany Us in the Afterlife

Recent Posts

  • Sex09/05/08, 1:45 PM
    Book Club: My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy Andrea Askowitz has the best life in the world.  She's pregnant and healthy.  She has friends and family who love her.  She has money and meaningful work.  And all she can do is obsess about the one thing she doesn't have: Kate, her ... [Read more]
    0 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Lifestyle09/05/08, 8:00 AM
    Circumcision is Somewhere Between Ear Piercing and Foot Binding I just finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See.  Someone in my book club last night said it was the only book in the past year that our entire book club enjoyed.  I nodded with the rest of ‘em.  I don’t know if anyone else ... [Read more]
    10 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Zeek09/05/08, 5:20 AM
    Another Israeli Masculinity There’s this guy you keep seeing around. He favors muscle shirts and cut-offs, even when it’s chilly out. When he walks, he has a way of putting his weight on the balls of his feet, like he’s looking for something to pounce on. Sometimes, ... [Read more]
    0 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Culture09/04/08, 5:38 PM
    Rosh HaShanah Etiquette Tips from a WASPy Southern Belle? Look what I discovered in my quest to find cool Rosh HaShanah cards.  The "New Year Girl" collection from tastemaking stationary designer Bonnie Marcus (formerly a wedding planner and special events coordinator at the 92nd Street Y, ... [Read more]
    1 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Politics09/04/08, 3:00 PM
    The Heretic: Going Colorblind in a Jewish Nursing Home I caught early chunks of Obama’s acceptance speech at the gym of my local JCC. Not surprisingly, the crowd that night was heavily Republican, and there were mutterings of concern: Is Obama truly committed to Israel? Is Obama too soft on ... [Read more]
    3 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Zeek09/04/08, 12:46 PM
    POEM: Secret Places of the Stairs Telling secrets in the secret places of the stairs: Fingertips, like lighted candles, reaching out, from the dark (O my dove, thou art in the secret places of the stairs) ... [Read more]
    0 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Politics09/04/08, 11:13 AM
    Sarah Palin: Anti-Abortion, Anti-Environment, and. . . Anti-Semite? My future father-in-law, Mike, and I have gotten in the habit of using election fodder to playfully taunt each other over email. I'm for Obama and he's for McCain.  I get the crazy email forwards that make the rounds of the circuit I like ... [Read more]
    21 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Lifestyle09/04/08, 7:00 AM
    What’s in a Name? (When You're Naming a Baby of Mixed Culture and Religion?) Victoria has six post-it notes hanging above her desk:  Mateo, Nicolas, Tomas, Alejandro, Santiago, and Simon.  I have one:  Nikolai.   I love the name Nikolai.  This morning, I woke up thinking:  We can call our boy Niko.   When I ... [Read more]
    7 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Lifestyle09/03/08, 6:00 PM
    Think Globally, Act: Turning Garbage into Gardens As I traversed the country last week, a few things became quite evident about middle America: The plain states love Jesus, hate any meal not smothered in bacon, and despite the thousands of wind turbines that have gone up in the past few ... [Read more]
    3 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Lifestyle09/03/08, 4:00 PM
    How To: Compost Looking for a way to reduce the amount of your life that ends up in a landfill?  Composting is one of the easiest and most tangible ways to reduce your environmental footprint.  And if that’s not enough motivation, you’ll also decrease ... [Read more]
    0 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Religion09/03/08, 5:00 AM
    Priestly Idea (Did You Know Anyone Can Perform a Baptism?) I said, “Hey, why don’t we get Tuffi to do our baptism?” “She’s not Catholic,” Victoria said. I said, “I know, but I think of her as totally priestly.”   Tuffi, formerly known as Stephanie, but renamed Tuffi by Tashi ... [Read more]
    5 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Zeek09/02/08, 5:54 PM
    A Personal History of Jewish Reading   Were someone to ask me what I do for a living, I'd respond: I'm a reader. Yet, I write books (maybe I write too many books), and by profession and sustenance, I'm a writer: I create stories, I reflect on ideas political and ... [Read more]
    0 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Culture09/02/08, 8:00 AM
    The New Jew Canon: Sefer Ha-Aggadah, Open Closed Open, At the Root of this LongingThe New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or ... [Read more]
    0 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Sex09/02/08, 6:00 AM
    Let’s Have a Baptism/Bris We know for sure we’re having a boy.  Got the amnio results.  All is good news, even the news that it’s a boy.  I mean right?  We already have a girl, and a boy and a girl is every mom’s dream.  And boys love their mommies.  ... [Read more]
    15 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Zeek08/28/08, 7:41 PM
    War is AssurCommonly, the laws of war in Judaism are understood through the categories of milchemet mitzvah (commanded or holy war) and milchemet r'shut (optional war). These two categories-supplemented at times by the category of milchemet hovah (obligatory ... [Read more]
    4 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Religion08/28/08, 5:11 PM
    What's the Difference Between an American Life and an Ultra-Orthodox One? Joel Teitelbaum, the Rebbe of Satmar and the most coercive of all modern day ultra-Orthodox leaders, passed away 29 years ago this month.  A vociferous anti-Zionist, Teitelbaum is known for having exhorted his followers to stay in ... [Read more]
    29 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Religion08/27/08, 4:39 PM
    The Protocols: How the Jews of Europe Became Mascots and Souvenirs Hello Semites and anti-Semites! (Is that like matter and antimatter? Kind of, except instead of totally and mutually annihilating each other they seem to have maintained an antagonistic, yet symbiotic relationship for centuries, deathless ... [Read more]
    3 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Zeek08/26/08, 10:26 PM
    Žižek For Jews Slavoj Žižek declares in his latest opus, In Defense of Lost Causes (Verso), that while postmodernism has caused (or allowed) every other kind of racial, social, and cultural identity to be in flux, Jewish identity appears to have become fixed ... [Read more]
    3 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Culture08/26/08, 2:29 PM
    Is Alejandro Springall the Mexican Woody Allen? Mexican director Alejandro Springall describes My Mexican Shivah as a film "about existence" and "acquiring the tools to continue living and re-organizing the family after a loss." While it does deal with such serious ... [Read more]
    5 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Zeek08/26/08, 3:28 AM
    Putting a Face on IranI played basketball with my Iranian next-door neighbors lots of summer nights when I was growing up. The smallest one – Hafez – stood about 4’6”. He embarrassed us all over the court with moves that made the basketball--which was about as ... [Read more]
    6 CommentsLink  Email  Print

Popular Posts

  • Politics05/01/08, 5:00 PM
    Karl Marx Predicted Hannah Montana Would Go Nude Senator Obama recently took heat for his comments to fundraisers in San Francisco. Those remarks, for some reason, were never interpreted with a bit more cynicism and much less conventional wisdom: why can't we just speculate that Sen. ... [Read more]
    5 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Religion01/07/08, 6:18 PM
    New Psychedelics Are Transforming the Future of Spirituality In 1954, Aldous Huxley published "The Doors of Perception," a famous essay observing that the effects of mescaline were remarkably similar to the unitive mysticism of the world's great religions, particularly Vedanta, the ... [Read more]
    15 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Politics09/04/08, 11:13 AM
    Sarah Palin: Anti-Abortion, Anti-Environment, and. . . Anti-Semite? My future father-in-law, Mike, and I have gotten in the habit of using election fodder to playfully taunt each other over email. I'm for Obama and he's for McCain.  I get the crazy email forwards that make the rounds of the circuit I like ... [Read more]
    21 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Army02/19/07, 3:51 PM
    Wicca and Other Fake ReligionsThere’s a really amazing story at the Washington Post today, about an army chaplain who was, until last year, a Pentecostal Christian Minister at Camp Anaconda.   But then, in his own words…  I realized so many innocent people are dying ... [Read more]
    72 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Belief09/05/08, 8:00 AM
    Circumcision is Somewhere Between Ear Piercing and Foot Binding I just finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See.  Someone in my book club last night said it was the only book in the past year that our entire book club enjoyed.  I nodded with the rest of ‘em.  I don’t know if anyone else ... [Read more]
    10 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Sex09/05/08, 1:45 PM
    Book Club: My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy Andrea Askowitz has the best life in the world.  She's pregnant and healthy.  She has friends and family who love her.  She has money and meaningful work.  And all she can do is obsess about the one thing she doesn't have: Kate, her ... [Read more]
    0 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Lifestyle09/04/08, 7:00 AM
    What’s in a Name? (When You're Naming a Baby of Mixed Culture and Religion?) Victoria has six post-it notes hanging above her desk:  Mateo, Nicolas, Tomas, Alejandro, Santiago, and Simon.  I have one:  Nikolai.   I love the name Nikolai.  This morning, I woke up thinking:  We can call our boy Niko.   When I ... [Read more]
    7 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Zeek08/19/08, 2:41 PM
    Surprised by God One Tuesday night , I sat at a local cafe with a cappuccino and my just-purchased copy of Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath; all of my reading for pleasure seemed to be about Judaism at this point. I had already begun to understand why, ... [Read more]
    13 CommentsLink  Email  Print
  • Politics04/25/08, 4:44 PM
    The Shocking Truth About Obama Revealed Reductio creep in action: Last week, Barack Obama shrugged off the freak show debate in Philadelphia with a panache unprecedented in modern electoral history, proving that yes we can elect a president who isn't hopelessly out of touch with ... [Read more]
    7 CommentsLink  Email  Print

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All Recent Comments

Anonymous
DNC Convention Schedule
Anonymous
The New Jew Canon: The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
tellner
Americans Remember That Church & State Are Separate
Anonymous
Circumcision is Somewhere Between Ear Piercing and Foot Binding
Anonymous
Izzy Grinspan Chooses to Besmirch Joyous Occasion
David Friedman
Sarah Palin: Anti-Abortion, Anti-Environment, and. . . Anti-Semite?
judith
Poem: "Miriam and Her Brothers"
vvvv
The New Jew Canon: One Minute to Midnight & Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History
Lee
Think Globally, Act: Turning Garbage into Gardens
Anonymous
Surprised by God
Anonymous
Day 1 (Sam Harris): Why Are Atheists So Angry?
Ismail
What’s in a Name? (When You're Naming a Baby of Mixed Culture and Religion?)
Shootingsparks
Sarah Palin, Bad GOP Punchline And Queen Esther Du Jour
Anonymous
Viral Video of the Week: "The Kid from Brooklyn" on Shifty Furriners
WheresYrMessiahNow
The Heretic: Going Colorblind in a Jewish Nursing Home
meowhous
I've Got The Secret
Link Building Service
The Secret: Vision Quest
Shmarya Rosenberg
What's the Difference Between an American Life and an Ultra-Orthodox One?
michael harkham
Sammy Harkham: Genius
roguejew
How Obama Lost The Election
Anonymous
Wicca and Other Fake Religions
Andrea Askowitz
Priestly Idea (Did You Know Anyone Can Perform a Baptism?)
Anonymous
Not Just a Soviet Feminist
Joey Kurtzman
Rosh HaShanah Etiquette Tips from a WASPy Southern Belle?
Anonymous
Anthony Hitler Bourdain