The choice to die on the whether-or-not-to-say-merry-Christmas hill should be the choice to die abandoned on top of a hill. And yet, tens-of-thousands of people see fit to proclaim their feelings from atop Twitter mountains or Facebook molehills: How ridiculous is it that people say “happy holidays” because saying “merry Christmas” might offend someone. CHRIST…
Gwyneth Paltrow enhanced our dull little lives by letting us peek into her holiday celebrations with her family. For Paltrow, who famously “consciously uncoupled” from then-husband Chris Martin in 2014, “family” includes Martin, her new husband Brad Falchuk, and her two children, Apple and Moses. The only way I’d hang a stocking for an ex…
How do I feel as a rabbi during Christmas? I feel great. First of all, I love Christmas music. The innocent, hopeful melodies, the joyous diddies, the corny jingles — all of them bring smiles to my face. And when they become too cheesy or too much, I change the station. The fact that many…
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…
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