JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
(New York Jewish Week) — In the ever-expanding market for products tailored to the observant Jewish consumer, Kosher Dekal thought it had a winner. The New Jersey-based company advertised its Passover counter linings as “a smooth and attractive” product that was “easy on” and “easy off.” Similar to peel-and-stick removable wallpaper, it was designed to…
This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. Download and print our free magazine of stories to savor over Shabbat and Sunday. Sick of matzo yet? Let’s talk about bagels. Better yet, let’s…
After my mother died, I found a dusty tote bag in my parents’ cellar, stuffed with reels of film from our growing-up years. The film had been converted to digital form long ago, and I’m not even sure why I kept it. The tote bag migrated to a dark corner of my closet until last…
Like many of my fellow Jews, I recently headed to my local grocery store to purchase matzo for Passover. Helpfully, the store had clearly stocked up and had a prominent display, so I snagged a box. But upon closer inspection, I realized this Seder staple wasn’t actually kosher for Passover. In fact, none of the…
One fine day in the spring of 419 or 418 BCE, a Jewish soldier opened up an official missive sent to him and his fellow troops stationed in upper Egypt. The author of the letter was Hananiah, a Jewish official in Yahud, the name the Persians assigned to the former region of Judah. As…
I strolled into my parents’ home Friday afternoon about six hours before Seder, only to find them seated in the living room looking rather concerned. “Molly has Covid,” my mom said. Oh. My sister had gotten in from New York the night before. My parents had picked her up. Then she came down with a…
There’s a moment in “Death Defying Escape,” a new play by comedian Judy Carter, when I realized I’d been tricked. The three-actor production, now running at Hollywood’s intimate Hudson Theater, tracks Carter’s life: as a child growing up in L.A.’s Fairfax district (“We were the poor Jews,” she quips, “we still had our original noses.”);…
Iris Apfel is living proof that it’s never too late to follow your dreams. Today, at age 100, she’s launching a fashion collection with retail giant H&M. Yet until she was 84, she’d never worked professionally in fashion as a designer or model; her career was in interior decorating. Her brightly patterned, brazenly clashing outfits…
