A friend from Georgia once joked to me, “Everyone down here celebrates Christmas, even if you don’t celebrate Christmas.” The meaning of a Christmas tree in a Jewish home is different in a rural Southern town than it is in a Northern industrialized city. The story of Jewish assimilation and acceptance in the South has…
(JTA) — David Steiner, a documentary filmmaker from Chicago who was studying to be a rabbi, was killed in a bus crash in rural Uganda. Steiner, 51, the creator of the award-winning documentary “Saving Barbara Sizemore,” about efforts to save a charter school in Chicago, was the only fatality in Monday’s crash. His son, Itamar, and…
It’s about halfway through Hanukkah, and your initial excitement about latkes has worn off. But if your enthusiasm for arteriosclerosis has yet to be sated, there’s still a second stage to savor: the pleasures of sufganiyot. Unlike latkes, which are always better homemade, one of the greatest of these pleasures is that you can buy…
Once again, Northwestern has been included on a wildly inaccurate and non-scientific list of “anti-Semitic” American college campuses. This time, it is Algemeiner’s “The 40 Worst Colleges for Jewish Students.” It is clear that Algemeiner’s editorial staff chose not to engage with the Jewish communities at the schools they listed; instead, they ranked them based…
Everyone loves lists. Lists are fun and informative, and ranked lists in particular help us make decisions more efficiently. But lists are also deceptively powerful: it’s really hard for a person to properly judge the objective value of something distinct from its ranking once they’ve seen it on a ranked list, whether that “something” is…
As someone who grew up in a Modern Orthodox Jewish community, who spent the year learning and studying in Israel, and who has always felt a deep connection to her faith, many people are surprised to hear that it was only in college that I truly discovered what type of Jew (and person) I wanted…
About 50 Jews and Muslims demonstrated in front of Chicago’s Trump Tower Wednesday evening to demand that Governor Bruce Rauner reverse his position against allowing Syrian refugees into the state of Illinois. “East Aleppo is about to fall,” said Eli Massey of Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the march’s sponsors. “It’s important for Illinois…
We’ve compiled a list of 39 things to eat, watch, read and do on Chrismukkah. The only hard part now is choosing! Go out for (or make!) hot chocolate Get your sugar rush at one of these restaurants, cafes or bars open on December 24 and 25. • Try Max Brenner’s Pumpkin Spiced Mocha: hot chocolate…
100% of profits support our journalism
