I work for the largest Jewish environmental organization in the United States. The kind that has a written food values policy which outlines the steps we, as an organization, take to ensure that the food we serve to our guests, participants, and each other is kosher, ethical, healthy, delicious, and a conversation starter. Why then,…
Some like to call Purim the “Jewish Halloween.” Whether or not that is really a correct analogy, it seems that the same costume scandals that come up around October 31 also plague 14 Adar. The Jerusalem Post reports that the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) is urging consumers to boycott companies selling sexy Purim costumes….
Folkie singer Jill Sobule has come out with a new anti-slutty-Halloween-costume song, which can be heard here. Sobule, who is Jewish, composed the song about adults wearing all-too-revealing costumes. Her sentiments are all the more apt in connection with young girls wearing similarly revealing getups. This evening I saw a pair of 13-year-olds wearing shorty…
If only this could be billed as a spooky Halloween story or something from a medieval archive or from American colonial history. But no, it’s a real news story in modern-day Israel: A state court punished a woman for practicing witchcraft. The alleged hocus-pocus cost her a cool $25,000 in alimony when the value of…
The Houston Chronicle has done a little pre-Halloween window-shopping and found some children’s costumes that parents should think twice about. The paper’s parenting blog deems them uncomfortable, over-sexualized or, as in the case of one Jewish-themed costume, culturally insensitive. In the over-sexualized department, most of the costumes are for girls — as might be expected…
If New Yorkers thought they got rid of disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner back in June, they better think again. The sexting congressman is back to haunt the city. Or at least its Halloween parties. The Weiner costume is a big seller for Halloween at Ricky’s NYC, purveyor of all things for the spooky season. Dubbed…
It was no run-of-the-mill Halloween-themed wedding when Jewish musical royalty married on Sunday, October 31st. The bride, Katie Down, is a sound artist, composer, performer and sound designer, and her groom was Grammy winner Matt Darriau, of Klezmatics and Paradox Trio fame. The couple met three years ago at Barbes, a Park Slope bar and…
In 1982, musician, composer and writer Raphael Mostel was walking down Lexington Avenue, when a sweater in the window of a Himalayan gift shop caught his eye. Going inside for a closer look, Mostel heard a sound, unlike anything he’d heard before, that quickly chased all thoughts of the sweater from his mind. It was…
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