When it comes to the Festival of Lights, there is no shortage of gift schmaltz. Since the Forward first published festive holiday picks under the headline “Give the Gift of Kitsch” in 2005, schlock options have grown exponentially. The phenomenon originally explored in these pages has expanded to include such winners as the new Latka…
A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking: The 10th Anniversary Edition By Marcy Goldman Whitecap Books 432 pages, $26.95 Last Purim, I was touting my hamantaschen recipe to a friend. After years of searching, I had found one that folded easily, held its shape and actually tasted good. When my friend politely declined my offer to…
“The Jazz Baroness” is a made-for-television documentary that traces the background and mutual influence of the inventor of Bebop, Thelonius Monk, and his great supporter, muse and mentor — Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, also known as Nica Rothschild. Abandoning her husband, children and famous banking family in the late 1940s, she came to New York…
“Your friends are coming over for a play-date soon,” I told my 5-year-old son, Jeremy and 2-year-old daughter, Hannah. They immediately bounded out the door to wait on the sidewalk for their friends. “It’ll be a while until your friends come,” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather wait inside, where you can play with your toys?”…
Kiki Smith is an artist best known for sculpture and largely black-and-white or pale-colored prints inspired by feminist themes or Catholicism. She is not the first person one would think of to design an imposing stained glass window for an historic Orthodox synagogue. So it came as something of a surprise when the Museum at…
Every morning, since I was 15, I have worn a tallit for prayer in my home. During my army service, I was forced to swallow many negative comments by other soldiers who prayed in the army synagogues, some of which did not even have a women’s gallery, because female soldiers never set foot in them….
Last November, people around the world shed tears over one of the most tragic images of the Mumbai attacks — a newly orphaned little boy crying at the loss of his parents. “Mommy, Mommy,” Moshe Holtzberg wailed during a tearful ceremony held in a Mumbai synagogue days after a terrorist attack in India’s financial capital…
The former head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs was appointed the U.S. State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. Hannah Rosenthal led the JCPA for five years and most recently was the vice president of community relations at the not-for-profit WPS Health Insurance Company. The post has been vacant since Gregg…
The critically acclaimed short story writer Rachel Sherman’s’s first novel, “Living Room”, tells the story of three generations of Jewish women: There’s the teenage Abby living in Long Island suburbia and experimenting with her identity and sexuality; her alternately depressive and flighty mother, Livia, struggling with marriage, motherhood and her lack of a career, and…
A college friend of mine recently found me on Facebook. We hadn’t spoken to each other since graduation, but I was happy to hear from him. Since we had been out of touch for so long, he began by summarizing the last 15 years of his life. In a few bullet-pointed sentences, he concisely explained…
A week before my 49th birthday, Gabby called me. She goes by Gabrielle these days, but when I met her in 1988 she was Gabby and I cannot get beyond that. “Hey,” she said in her native New Yorker/transplanted Floridian/neo-Texan twang. “I’m wondering if you’re wondering if he’s going to call to wish you a…
