David Zvi Kalman
By David Zvi Kalman
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Culture Why Are So Many Jewish Podcasts So Bad — And What Can We Do About It?
Podcasting, you may have heard, is booming. Listenership is up, so is awareness of the medium, and high-quality podcasts seem to be popping up everywhere. As with television, the medium itself has recently become more respectable, including among the Hollywood A-listers; Oscar Isaac stars in “Homecoming,” while an episode of “Reply All” is being adapted…
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Film & TV A (Not-So) Brief History of Every Jewish Ritual Ever Seen On Film Or TV
I had unconsciously trained myself, as an observant Jew living among other observant Jews, to watch all television at a remove. McDonald’s ads didn’t affect me; the sandwiches on screen barely registered as food. I wore a yarmulke, but had no expectation that anyone on screen would do the same. I identified with characters and…
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Culture These Are The All-Time Best Jewish Moments In Movies And On TV
Most Accurate Wedding Sequence: “Have Gun Will Travel,” ‘A Drop of Blood’ 1961 The length and accuracy of this scene is owed entirely to Shimon Wincelberg, a long-time Hollywood television scriptwriter who worked on everything from “Star Trek” to “Law and Order.” His melodious Ashkenazi chanting is dubbed over the actor’s in this scene—his only…
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Culture So Why On That Night of All Other Nights Do We Eat Those Fruit Jelly Slices?
As I gazed at the Passover aisle in the supermarket, a scene from “Apollo 13” flashed before my eyes. Tom Hanks and his crew are stranded above the moon with a rapidly depleting supply of oxygen and no possibility of resupply or rescue. If the astronauts are going to fix their ship, they will have…
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Culture The strange and violent history of the ordinary grogger
Some 19th-century groggers are constructed to allow users to hang Haman over and over again
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Opinion 500 Years Later, a Queer-Inclusive Bentsher
A page from the Seder Oneg Shabbos bentsher / Courtesy of David Zvi Kalman Books are probably going extinct, but it doesn’t matter — in the Jewish world, ritual texts are still key players in the spread of ideology. Three texts, in particular, have been in print since the printing press was invented: the siddur…
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Opinion I’m a UCLA professor. Why didn’t the administration stop last night’s egregious violence?
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Fast Forward Marjorie Taylor Greene says she opposed antisemitism bill because it rejects ‘Gospel’ that ‘the Jews’ handed Jesus to executioners
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News The great tent conspiracy theory: Are ‘outside agitators’ supplying protesters’ tents?
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Opinion I teach Israel studies at NYU. We are importing the worst of Israel and Palestine to our campuses
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News At UCLA, Jewish students say pro-Israel violence has undercut their advocacy
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Fast Forward Hundreds of police dismantle UCLA encampment after standoff with protesters
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Culture How Jewish literature and activism shaped the work of Paul Auster
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Fast Forward Marjorie Taylor Greene says she opposed antisemitism bill because it rejects ‘Gospel’ that ‘the Jews’ handed Jesus to executioners