Sigal Samuel is the former Opinion Editor at the Forward. When she’s not tackling race or identity politics, she’s hunting down her Indian Jewish family’s Kabbalistic secret society. Her novel THE MYSTICS OF MILE END tells the story of a dysfunctional family with a dangerous mystical obsession. Her writing has also appeared in The Daily Beast, The Rumpus, and BuzzFeed. Follow Sigal on Twitter.
“If I would have known he is not the terrorist, believe me, I would have looked after him like I look after myself. In moments of fear people do things they are not aware of. I didn’t sleep all night… I feel disgusted with what happened.” These words — , one of the Israeli Jews…
Homeland, Homeland, Homeland. How many times do I have to tell you? You need to hire an Arabic speaker. Like, yesterday. Otherwise, you might end up in some pretty sticky situations. You might call your own show “racist.” In Arabic. By accident. Oops! In the most recent episode of the hit TV spy drama, a…
The Mystics of Mile End, Forward editor Sigal Samuel’s debut novel about a dysfunctional Jewish family, will be published by HarperCollins on October 13. Told from multiple perspectives, the story takes place in an iconic Montreal neighborhood that is home to hipsters and Hasidic Jews. In this excerpt, we see the family and their neighbors…
Am I a person of color? You’d think there would be a straightforward answer to a question like that. And for a while, I thought there was. I thought the answer was yes. When I look at my grandparents — four Mizrahim, or Jews from Arab lands — I see people who were born in…
Kabbalah: A Neurocognitive Approach to Mystical Experiences By Shahar Arzy and Moshe Idel Yale University Press, 216 pages, $50 Eight hundred years before Oliver Sacks started poking around patients’ brains to see how they produce hallucinations, another Jew, Abraham Abulafia, was doing similar research on himself — by purposely inducing his own hallucinations. Except, he…
What’s the best way for Orthodox Jews to protest a bunch of gay drag queens? By transforming a bunch of Mexican laborers into ethnic drag queens — for a fee. That, apparently, is the belief of the Jewish Political Action Committee, supposedly a fringe group (see update below) of Brooklyn-based Hasids whose unusual protest strategy…
Today is the first day of Ramadan. In the Arab world, that means fasting and praying and post-sunset binging. It also means lots and lots of TV. Among the many soap operas aired around this time each year to entertain Muslims as they break fast, there have been plenty featuring anti-Semitic tropes. Plot lines referencing…
“While I am heartened that you appreciate the works of Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand, I think you’ve confused cultural Judaism with committed Jewish belief.” So says the Rent-a-Rabbi in OITNB’s season 3, episode 9, tantalizingly titled “Where My Dreidel At.” (If your binge watching hasn’t carried you this far yet, be warned: spoilers ahead!)…
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