Stanley Siegelman
By Stanley Siegelman
-
News The Brooklyn Derriere Dispute
NEWS ITEM: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority removed a vodka ad from buses that travel through Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods after Hasidim complained. The ad showed the backside of a woman clad in a bikini. Hasidim have expressed despair On witnessing the derriere. Bikinis worn on female bums Provoke, in them, deliriums. They fume, they fret,…
-
News Yiddish Frowns on Gender-Nouns
NEWS ITEM: Students of Yiddish in universities are taught to treat nouns as either masculine or feminine. But among Hasidim — the foremost speakers of Yiddish today — grammatical gender is largely ignored. Hasidim, for example, use di (“the”) for most nouns without respect to the noun’s gender. (Di has historically been applied only to…
-
News A Down-to-Earth Dilemma
NEWS ITEM: Should gentiles be excluded from burial in Jewish communal cemeteries? The question is being debated among rabbis, some of whom complain that it’s difficult to find Jewish cemeteries that will bury intermarried congregants. May gentiles be with Jews interred? We all await the final word From rabbis who seem loath to state Opinions…
-
News The Cow That Wears a Yarmulke
NEWS ITEM: In Shanghai, Jews are eagerly buying kosher milk. The product comes in cartons that carry the drawing of a smiling cow wearing a yarmulke. “The cow is of the bovine ilk, “One end is moo; the other, milk.” So Ogden Nash once versified In words that rhymed and clarified. Today, he’d register surprise…
-
News Decline of the Jewish Deli
NEWS ITEM: Jewish delis are going out of business nationwide. New York City, which boasted about 5,000 such businesses in the early 1950s, now has approximately two dozen. We face a cause that’s almost lost, A gastronomic holocaust! The deli, home of gourmandise, Is tottering, upon its knees! This sanctum of the epicure No longer…
-
News The Debate Over Lox
NEWS ITEM: A group of ultra-Orthodox rabbis are arguing that salmon is not kosher because it may contain harmful parasites. Other rabbis have disagreed. Some rabbis, ultra-Orthodox, Decreed that Jews should eat no lox. The food, they said, is under blight For harboring a parasite. “Lox isn’t safe! It’s plainly treyf,” These theologians now vouchsafe….
-
News Marijuana — Menace or Mitzvah?
NEWS ITEM: Religious leaders — from Reform to Orthodox — are increasingly supportive of the medical use of marijuana. Should marijuana be forbid To everyone who is a Yid? Is puffing on the suspect weed Offensive to the Jewish creed? Or is cannabis kosher now, On grounds it soothes the fevered brow And eases torments…
-
News All-Seeing Airport Security Devices Threaten Jewish Modesty
NEWS ITEM: Observant Jews are concerned over the expanding use of whole-body imaging machines for airport security. The scene the airport screener saw Did violence to Jewish law! His body-imaging machine Displayed a sight that was obscene, A true affront, a crudity, A fully frontal nudity! Before a traveler’s plane departs, He/she now shows their…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Sports This year’s biggest World Cup upset came from its most ‘Jew-ish’ team
- 2
News Who is Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli politician who could dethrone Netanyahu?
- 3
Opinion The latest victim of the culture war over Israel is a left-wing, lapsed Catholic Bible scholar
- 4
Fast Forward Trump nominee defends college cartoon of Jewish student with devil horns at Senate hearing
In Case You Missed It
-
News Victory for Mamdani’s candidates prompts Jewish leaders to puzzle over implications
-
Opinion Israel’s cheerleaders lost big in the New York primary
-
Opinion Long after he was murdered by the Nazis, Marc Bloch enters the Panthéon
-
Fast Forward Why Israel’s soccer team competes in Europe rather than Asia