When clearing their homes of unleavened products before Passover, most people remember to rid the cupboards of rye bread and to empty the leftover challah from the freezers. Something that is forgotten by many, however, is the checking of makeup for traces of chametz. But it shouldn’t be. Though it may come as a surprise…
Key players in the Bush administration think a military confrontation with Iran is an unavoidable, leading to stepped up military planning for such a prospect, according to several experts and recently departed senior government officials. Some of these observers stressed that military strikes against Iran are not imminent and speculated that the escalated war chatter…
For Mexico City’s David and Hershl Fiiller, making matzo is a family tradition with trans-Atlantic roots. The brothers, children of Polish immigrants who arrived in the 1920s, grew up helping their parents in the bakery adjoining their small downtown abode. Today the site is home to the Fiiller bread factory, a 4,000-square-foot facility with 25…
Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the bestselling novel “Everything is Illuminated,” this week released a video in which he argues that the slaughtering practices employed by modern factory farms are out of step with the spirit of the kosher laws. The film ultimately calls upon viewers to consider vegetarianism. The video, which features interviews with…
On Passover, Jews are told to read the Haggadah (literally “the telling”) as if one personally had been a slave in Egypt and then redeemed. By individualizing the text, each person confronts the narrative in new ways, in terms of his or her own life and times. The result has been a multiplicity of Haggadot…
KFAR CHABAD, Israel — Bucking the advice of their rabbis, about 30% of voters in Israel’s main Chabad-Lubavitch stronghold cast their ballots for a candidate who advocated the mass expulsion of Arabs, branded Israeli leaders traitors and called for the execution of some liberals. Baruch Marzel, running under the banner of the National Jewish Front,…
If, as the Haggadah tells us, there are four types of children — wise, wicked, simple and oblivious — then there are two types of Passover children’s books. There are simple books, which give a straight rendition of the Passover story. These usually revolve around a family with an inquisitive child who does not know…
When disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff showed up for court in a black fedora, critics attacked him for hiding behind his Orthodox Judaism. In the end, however, religion may have proved to be his best defense. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty recently to felony charges in Washington and in Florida, received the lightest sentence possible in the…
Are you so sick of me meditating on how having small children changes the nature of everything? Well, too bad. It does! It’s like going through life thinking that something was solid, and suddenly you discover it’s a gas. Passover is a case in point. For decades we had My Zayde’s Seder (aka “humminah-humminah-humminah,” the…
When the Orlando Jewish community held a “Stop Iran Now” rally at the city’s Reform synagogue on March 14, the guest speaker was Brad Gordon, director of policy and government affairs of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In addition to warning against Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and its terrorist prowess, Gordon noted that pension funds…
Readers of Der Vinkl need no introduction to Joan Braman, whose clever translations of English classics into Yiddish have graced our column often. She is with us again, in a translation of a sonnet by John Keats. Bright Star Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art — Not in lone splendour hung aloft…
