Mira Fox is a reporter at the Forward. Get in touch at [email protected] or on Twitter @miraefox.
Mira FoxStaff Writer
By Mira Fox
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Culture What almost saved — but ultimately doomed — peace in the Middle East
Yasser Arafat once insisted on cutting up Dennis Ross’s chicken during a dinner; Ross was then head of the American effort to arbitrate peace between Israel and Palestine. At the time, it seemed like a sign of hospitality and hope — Ross joked that Arafat had “a Jewish mother syndrome.” These days, after the Human…
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Culture Is Netflix’s newest Israeli import too American to succeed in America?
Aside from the Hebrew, “Blackspace,” the Israeli thriller just acquired by Netflix for international distribution, feels like it’s set in America. It takes place in a blandly unidentifiable high school building. The kids are all secular, dressed in crop tops and shorts — not a kippah to be seen. And, most American of all, the…
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Culture This traditionally trained scribe is bending the rules — literally
Kalman Delmoor is a classically trained Hebrew scribe, or sofer, who sits in the Yochanan Ben Zakai historic synagogue, one of the Four Sephardi Synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem. But he doesn’t spend his days writing tefillin or mezuzot. Instead, he turns passages from Torah or liturgy into artwork — some colorful, some…
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Culture Is Netflix’s new sprawling fantasy the next ‘Game of Thrones’?
Growing up, I was a voracious reader. But, to my father’s chagrin (“Read some real books!”), it wasn’t Mark Twain or even Judy Blume I gobbled up — it was fantasy. I read Harry Potter, of course, but also obscure books featuring magical knights or shape-shifting girls. As an adult, I have also learned to…
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Culture Is it just me, or are the same actors in every Israeli show?
If you like to binge Israeli television or movies, you may have experienced a blurring phenomenon — not just because that’s a natural side effect of binge watching, but because all the characters look remarkably similar. In many cases, they are; it often feels like Israel has only a handful of actors. Israel is a…
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Opinion Christian morality is why weed isn’t legal yet
It’s 2021, and the U.S. is still struggling to legalize marijuana, a drug with medical properties that is no more dangerous than legal vices such as alcohol and nicotine. Why? Because the U.S. is a Christian country, with a Christian morality. Not that Judaism promotes uncontrolled intoxication — the Bible contains limits and warnings against…
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Culture Christians are enraged by this music video. Why aren’t Jews upset too?
Lil Nas X is an expert at generating controversy. His latest music video, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” features him twirling down to Hell on a stripper pole and giving Satan a lapdance before snapping his neck and stealing his crown. For an extra bump of publicity, he also launched 666 retrofitted Nike sneakers,…
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News What does peyote have to do with pandemic minyans?
When I lived in Boston, much of my Jewish life took place in people’s living rooms and kitchens; though I also had a synagogue I loved, most of the young, engaged Jews of Somerville orbited through various monthly gatherings of egalitarian minyans and niggun singing and Shabbat meals. The coronavirus has decimated this aspect of…
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