For many, Christmas is the “most wonderful time of the year.” For some of us, it’s just… Tuesday, this year. But there are plenty of places for Jews to observe in our own way — by eating and laughing. Here’s a roundup of the coolest Jew-y Christmas happenings across the country: City Winery, Chicago citywinery.com/chicago…
It is a common practice among Hasidic Jews to abstain from studying the Torah on Christmas Eve. This tradition is remarkable, since for one thing, religious Jews do not usually have customs associated with Christian holidays. For another, studying of Torah is considered one of the most important things Jews must do, and they otherwise…
Forget Chinese food. While American Jews nosh on sinful servings of moo shu, their Russian-speaking neighbors indulge in a syncretic Christmas ritual of their own, preparing for New Year’s celebrations. Over 1.7 million Jews left the Soviet Union since the 1970s, with some 500,000 settling in the United States. My own family arrived in 1989,…
This month, many interfaith families are celebrating Christmas. Unfortunately, there won’t be many expressions of “Happy Holidays” coming from the Jewish world. Recently, Gil Troy described the very existence of intermarriage as “the great unspoken yet perennial source of anguish haunting the Jewish world…American Jewry’s great divider,” and said that “no Jewish community could ever…
When Frank Loesser, the Jewish composer of musicals like “Guys and Dolls” wrote “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in 1944 for himself and his wife to perform at dinner parties, he labeled the two vocal parts “mouse” and “wolf.” “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” has become a Russian doll of controversy that we take down from the…
Don’t believe in the season of miracles? Meet Santa Claus: a lawyer who went to the Yeshiva of Flatbush. Before he was Santa, his side gig was teaching in Boro Park. He speaks Hebrew. “It takes a lot to be a Santa. It takes a lot to be a good santa,” Dana Friedman says. Revisit…
A bomb squad was called to the Los Angeles home of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Saturday night after a mysterious package was left on the doorstep. But it was just a pile of horse manure, the New York Times reported. Helicopter footage captured authorities spilling the manure out of a large box onto Mnuchin’s porch….
Shira Greenblatt, a secular Israeli Jew who was born and raised in Jerusalem, loves Christmas. “Every year I attend Christmas services at the Dormition Abbey on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, and I will go again this year, too. It’s very special to learn about Christianity here, in Jerusalem. And I love the lights, the songs,…
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