There are no monsters living under Lyla Black’s bed, and, she doesn’t want any living under yours. Lyla, a soft-spoken 8-year-old from the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, is the inventor of the Lyla Tov (Hebrew for Good Night) Monster, a plush happy-faced, pear-shaped stuffed toy that just won her the prestigious TAGIE award for young…
Illustration by Lior Zaltzman In last week’s editorial, Jane Eisner once again fretted about the state of contemporary American Judaism, most pointedly about the purported declining fertility rate amongst non-Orthodox Jews as touted by the infamous (and frankly overplayed) 2013 Pew survey. While she proposed no actual, feasible solution to this problem (or rather, this…
Tony Auth, the award-winning editorial cartoonist, died Sunday of brain cancer, way too soon at age 72. The obituaries lauded the way he employed artistry, intelligence and biting humor to his running commentary on the day’s news. They speak of his ceaseless devotion to craft, his fierce political independence, and the kindness he showed other…
A prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi has drawn criticism for calling vaccines a “hoax,” but his beliefs are not uncommon in Orthodox circles. “I see vaccinations as the problem,” Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky told the Baltimore Jewish Times in a story published in late August. “It’s a hoax. Even the Salk [polio] vaccine is a hoax. It’s just…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to escalate the fight against Hamas, vowing the group would “pay a heavy price” after a four-year-old Israeli boy was killed by a mortar attack from Gaza, the first Israeli child to die in the six-week conflict. Shortly after his remarks, Palestinian officials said Israel had flattened a house…
In a ward at Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, child therapist Rabeea Hamouda is trying to elicit a response from two small brothers, Omar and Mohammed, aged three and 18 months, hoping for some words or perhaps a smile. For seven straight minutes the children, peppered with burns and shrapnel wounds sustained in Israeli shelling that…
‘It’s a pattern really. So many of the progressive writers and illustrators of children’s books were Jews,” says Leonard Marcus, who does not usually concern himself with the old parlor game of counting famous Jews. Marcus is curator of the New York Public Library’s exhibit on children’s literature, “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books…
It was almost too good to be true. My son, from the moment he started eating solids, seemed willing to eat pretty much anything. I remember it being a few months before his second birthday when my husband and I marveled at the fact that he had a more versatile palate than most of the…
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