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Yid.dish: Ha + mohn + tashen (poppyseed filling)
Why Poppyseed Hamentaschen Are The Only True Hamentaschen – I share this short formula from my father: Mohn (poppy seed) + Taschen (pockets) = Mohntaschen (poppy seed pocket pastries) Ha (Hebrew definite article) = Hamohntaschen (Haman’s Pockets) or Purim poppy seed pocket pastries Now, I LOVE poppy seed filling Hamentashen. And seeds are a traditional…
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Taking Foreign Leaders’ Names In Vain
Rick Zichlin of Highland Park, N.J., asks: “Why does the American press refer to the head of the Likud party as Benjamin Netanyahu instead of Binyamin Netanyahu? I understand that Benjamin is the English language equivalent of Binyamin. Yet to my knowledge, the English-language media have never referred to other Israeli politicians as Isaac Rabin…
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Reclaiming the Hamantaschen
It’s no wonder that Purim is such a beloved holiday. After all, a day on which Jews are commanded to have a feast, drink to excess and repeatedly interrupt synagogue services is off to a good start in any popularity contest. Perhaps it’s because of all this joyous distraction that one negative aspect of the…
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Playing Dress-Up: A Purim Guide
When I was 11, we were in Israel for Purim. I was shocked at the number of non-Esther, non-Mordechai costumes. There was a Karate Kid, a Darth Vader, various zombies and ninjas, a spandex-clad, gum-chomping Sandy from Grease. But most of my friends who do Purim in the States tend to stick to the Megillah…
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Bar Refaeli: Resident Water Specialist
Back as a bored Hebrew school kid in suburban Chicago, I passed the time by staring at the map of Israel that hung on every classroom wall in my synagogue. Although I’d never traveled there, I knew the shape and topography of the country remarkably well — the ironically shrimp-shaped swath of brown, ringed by…
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Yid.Dish: Ukrainian Holiday Vinaigrette
February 23, Defender of the Fatherland Day, is a former Soviet memorial holiday celebrating those soldiers who fell defending red Russia in the Russian Civil War from 1918-1921. Today it has become a sort of Men’s Day (to compliment Women’s Day, which takes place on March 8). Although many Ukrainians don’t celebrate this holiday, our…
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Yid.Dish: Apples And More Apple Crisp
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we are getting apples in our CSA box on a weekly basis… still. We are also getting kale and collard greens on a weekly basis…still, but more to come on those in the future. Until now I associated apples with fall. Growing up here I didn’t really experience…
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‘Wait, Those Are My Earrings’ on Michelle Obama
Having her jewelry in the limelight is nothing new for designer Loree Rodkin. But having it in the Smithsonian Institution is an entirely different matter. Rodkin, a former Hollywood talent manager who turned her jewelry-making hobby into a full-fledged business in 1989, found a fan base among the likes of Cher, Steven Tyler and Madonna….
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Offbeat Israel: ‘Mohammed’ the Shoe and a Studio Full of Pizza-Lovers
Israeli entertainment just can’t seem to stop generating controversy at the moment. In recent days, we have had Holocaust survivors taking offense at a skit with Hitler looking for parking in Tel Aviv, Christians taking offense at a skit on Jesus and Mary, and now it is Muslims who have been insulted. Settler Natan Beshevkin,…
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Alaska Honors Ruth Gruber
KATYN — WAJDA’S SEARING FILM MEMORIAL TO THE MURDER OF POLISH (AND JEWISH OFFICERS) BY THE SOVIETS Overloaded with Holocaust films? Here’s a change of terror: Comrade Stalin’s signing of the order to slaughter 15,000 Polish officers and intellectuals at Katyn in the spring of 1940. What few know, and what is not articulated in…
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Amnesty Report Adds to Calls for Arms Embargo of Israel and Hamas
In a report lambasting Israel’s conduct during its recent military offensive in Gaza, Amnesty International, one of the world’s most widely recognized human rights groups, has called on the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo on the Jewish state. The report demands an “an immediate, comprehensive arms embargo on all parties to…
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