To say mameles get mixed messages about parenting is an understatement. Media portraits of moms are totally contradictory: Stay-at-home moms (or SAHMs, in perky parenting-message-board nomenclature) are sometimes depicted as noble and fulfilled, sometimes painted as depressed, judgmental cupcake-bakers with brains that are rotting like overripe melons. Working moms are sometimes caricatured as viper-ish executive…
Mel Gibson isn’t the only director generating a heated debate over his depiction of Jews. As “The Passion of the Christ” racked up more than $200 million at movie theaters in just two weeks and generated loads of media attention, a burgeoning debate has emerged over the latest Broadway incarnation of “Fiddler on the Roof,”…
Many a child has refused to eat spaghetti on the grounds that it looked “just like worms.” (There’s even an old joke in which a baby bird refuses to eat his worms because to him they look like spaghetti.) Appearances aside, there is actually a closer relationship between the two — at least etymologically —…
The federal judge overseeing a $1.25 billion Holocaust restitution settlement with Swiss banks is accusing an American survivor group of filing “frivolous” claims for more funds while survivors in the former Soviet Union live in abject poverty. Brooklyn federal judge Edward Korman filed a sharply worded memorandum this week, vividly detailing the harsh living conditions…
Two and a half dozen 20-somethings inched forward in their seats as Rabbi Brian Schuldenfrei turned on a television set one recent evening in Los Angeles’s Sinai Temple. Suddenly the Upper Traub room of the huge synagogue on Wilshire Boulevard was immersed in a classic episode of “The Simpsons.” In “Like Father, Like Clown,” Krusty…
Arabs Fight Syria Sanctions Several of Washington’s Arab allies are urging the Bush administration not to impose sanctions on Syria, arguing that such measures would discourage reform in Damascus and further foment anti-American sentiments in the Middle East, Arab diplomatic sources said. The administration leaked to reporters and members of Congress last week that President…
Mel Gibson’s film is certainly not the first dramatic adaptation of the Passion to provoke a public furor in America. A hundred and twenty-five years ago, the first American stage version of the Passion ignited one of the most explosive controversies in this country’s theatrical history — with a Jew at the epicenter of the…
Flipping for Florida: Pounding the Republicans’ main line of attack on the apparent Democratic presidential nominee, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman rapped Massachusetts Senator John Kerry on Monday for “flip-flopping” on Israel’s security fence and for “mistakes in judgment” regarding a 1997 remark praising Yasser Arafat as a “statesman.” Speaking to reporters during a conference call,…
Friday night, the eve of the Sabbath, has always held a special flavor for many Jews in many lands. Eleanor and Joseph Mlotek’s compilation “Songs of Generations: New Pearls of Yiddish Song,” has a song titled “Fraytik Oyf Der Nakht.” It first appeared in 1905 in sheet music without attribution to any author or composer….
While on a recent trip to Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld predicted that Osama bin Laden would be captured “at some point.” The scuttlebutt is that such a “capture” seems likely to come near enough to Election Day to provide President Bush with the votes necessary to lift him out of his sagging standing…
Driving the family home from synagogue, Audrey looked into the rearview mirror, and posed the usual Shabbes question to Andrew in his car seat, “So, katshkela, did you get anything out of Ki Tissa, today’s Torah portion?” “I sure did!” “Mazel tov! Tell us.” “I got a great idea for a costume! For next Halloween.”…
