Michael Kaminer
By Michael Kaminer
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The Schmooze Gay Israeli Teen Kidnapped by Family
With all the buzz about how hot Tel Aviv’s become for gay travelers, we still get the occasional reminder that not everyone’s on board with circuit parties, muscle boys and beach cruising. Take the family of a 19-year-old gay man living in Tel Aviv. Four people from his hometown of Tamra, an Arab enclave in…
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News Holy Days: A Guide For the Perplexed
For our forebears, the most cumbersome part of the High Holy Days was working toward a repeat appearance in the Book of Life. They didn’t have to worry about Tweeting in synagogue, entertaining vegan dinner guests, practicing synagogue-dating etiquette or purchasing tickets that equal a down payment on a country house. Since many of us…
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The Schmooze Officials: Israeli Light Rail Survey Is Racist
Dear New Yorkers: We’re expanding the subway. It’ll pass through some bad neighborhoods. And we’re allowing Muslim-Americans to ride without security checks. Is that OK? It sounds outrageous, but an Israeli company asked a very similar question of Jerusalemites after it won a city contract to run the city’s light rail system. Haaretz reported today…
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The Schmooze Chicago Festival Conflicts With High Holidays, Again
Oaktoberfest, an annual fall festival in Chicago’s western Oak Park neighborhood, boasts seasonal food from local restaurants, specialty micro-brews and great wines. But local Jews are forbidden from partaking — according to the calendar, at least. For the second year, organizing body Downtown Oak Park has scheduled Oaktoberfest on the High Holidays. And while last…
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The Schmooze ‘White Power’-Wear Grows in Popularity
Unless you follow the violent competitions known as mixed martial arts, you may not have noticed the frequent appearances of iron crosses and Nazi imagery on athletes’ T-shirts or on official merchandise. But the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in its fall 2010 newsletter that despite a ban by some “extreme sports” leagues, like the…
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The Schmooze Kosher Meals Not Kosher Enough for Pedophile
When most inmates complain about jail food, they’re told — literally — to eat it up. Not Baruch Lebovits. The disgraced Satmar hasid, who was convicted of sexually molesting a teenage boy, is getting kosher food from a store in Queens delivered to his cell at Rikers Island, according to the New York Post –…
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The Schmooze Fanta’s Nazi Roots
For those besotted by the Fantanas — the synthetic girl group pitching Fanta soft drinks — news August 5 that the sugary sodas have Nazi origins left a sour aftertaste. In an otherwise innocuous dispatch about Fanta’s popularity overseas, the online magazine Slate slipped in the factoid that “the original Fanta was a Nazi product”…
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The Schmooze Post ‘Borat,’ Kazakhstan To Set Record Straight
Though there was never an official reaction from the government of Kazakhstan, it’s a good bet that the 2006 film “Borat” did not earn applause from citizens of the Central Asian nation for its portrayal of them as Jew-hating, incest-practicing, homophobic and — worst of all — “Baywatch”-obsessed. But four years after the massively successful…
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