Harvey Pekar and Tuli Kupferberg died on the same day, July 12, and shared much, including peacenik politics, a strong sense of humor and a passion to carve art out of the fragments of popular culture. But they were almost an American Jewish generation apart, a detail that now seems difficult to grasp entirely, but…
The Jewish Theological Seminary of America underwent broad layoffs in late June, despite the chancellor’s earlier indication that no further layoffs would be forthcoming. Just weeks after announcing a new strategic plan that emphasized reducing costs and creating new revenue streams, JTS, Conservative Judaism’s flagship seminary, has terminated 15 administrative employees in an effort to…
Rabbi Yehuda Amital, one of the great contemporary Jewish leaders and thinkers — and one of my personal heroes — passed away in Jerusalem on July 9 at the age of 85. Amital was born Yehuda Klein in Transylvania in 1924 and survived the Holocaust in a labor camp. He moved to Israel after the…
Asher Arian, one of Israel’s most prominent political scientists, died on July 6 after a long illness. He was 72. Born in Cleveland in 1938, Arian received a bachelor of arts degree from Western Reserve University in 1961 and a doctorate in political science from Michigan State University in 1965. From 1966 to 1989, Arian…
Aaron Ellner doesn’t look like your typical yente. When he showed up at a trendy hookah bar in Manhattan’s East Village on a recent June evening, the 24-year-old Woodmere, N.Y., native was wearing fashionably stressed jeans, a blazer and an easy smile. But then Ellner, who calls himself the Dating Wingman, is not your grandma’s…
Some time ago I wrote a post about store-bought, flavored yogurt and the absurd amounts of sugar contained therein, called Everything You Wanted to Know About Yogurt but Were Afraid To Ask. But the truth is there’s a lot more to know about yogurt, and don’t worry — it’s all good. The first step to…
When Jewish people got deported to labor and concentration camps during the Third Reich, one of Berlin’s most eccentric transvestites — Lothar Berfelde, known as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf — bought or collected the belongings of Jewish deportees and made them part of her Gründerzeit Museum, which still exists today. In 2003, Doug Wright, a New…
A new study on intermarriage that upends long-held notions about how to engage the children of intermarried couples is the subject of this week’s Reporters’ Roundtable. Reporter Josh Nathan-Kazis speaks with staff writer Gal Beckerman and senior columnist J.J. Goldberg about the tenor of the current conversation on intermarriage, in comparison to that of years…
I recently headed back to the office after being at home for nearly 18 months. During that year and a half, I renewed my relationships with my children, husband, self, and…my kitchen. I have always been one to cook and entertain, but being at home upped the ante. I turned play dates into dinner dates….
Brandeis University has chosen Frederick M. Lawrence, an expert in civil and human rights laws and author of a book on hate crime, to be its new president. Lawrence has served as dean of George Washington University’s law school since 2005. For 10 years, he was also one of the five lay members on the…
For my first recipe post on The Jew and the Carrot, I thought I’d start off with something versatile. I sampled a version of this quinoa recipe while browsing at my local Whole Foods and then came home and made my own version. It’s great served as a cold salad or as a warm side…
