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The Schmooze Meet the Mets’ Rookie Mensch
Jewish Mets fans across the city are abuzz over news of this season’s first-baseman, 23-year-old Ike Davis (actually, Isaac Benjamin Davis), the first Jewish kid to ever come up solely through the Mets farm system and make the big league team. Davis, who’s batting an impressive .355 in his first 10 games, is being hyped…
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The Schmooze When Bad Hebrew Happens to Good People
Getting inked isn’t abhorrent behavior for Jews these days. There’s HebrewTattoo.net, a translation service that generates thousands of hits each month, and celebrity tattooists like Ami James, the Israeli-born former star of TLC’s “Miami Ink.” But Jews looking to inscribe their bodies with the language of prayer might be wise to ignore the cautionary (and…
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The Schmooze The Kosher Toothpaste Debate
The Orthodox Union, which certifies as Kosher more than 400,000 products, includes a long discourse on toothpaste on its web site. Though most dentifrices contain glycerin, an animal product that is “unquestionably” non-kosher, it’s not completely clear whether they’re treyf; the OU quotes some complicated rabbinical rulings involving flavor and usage of the product. “If…
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The Schmooze The Puzzle of Moroccan Jewish Identity in Israel
Tuesday was Mimouna, the annual festival of the Moroccan Jewish community, and there were lively parties across Israel. But while the Moroccan community tends to come out in force for Mimouna, it seems that as a whole it is losing connection with its traditions. A new poll published by Maariv reported that only 51% of…
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The Schmooze Tweeting Anne Frank
‘Tis the season to tweet, pray and memorialize Jewish thoughts online. In the past year, we’ve seen the Western Wall get a twitter account and Auschwitz develop its own Facebook page. This past week, the Anne Frank Center USA along with the U.N. Holocaust Program launched a twitter account for Anne Frank, asking students who…
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The Schmooze How Do You Keep, and Break, Passover?
In the past few years, I’ve struggled to reconcile being a non-believer with my love of Jewish culture and traditions. So I’ve wavered back and forth on keeping Passover and fasting on Yom Kippur, the two most intrinsic rituals of self-deprivation for the sake of enlightenment on the Jewish calendar. This year, after a few…
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The Schmooze Have you Jew-Googled Today?
Who’s Jewish? According to Google (and Gawker ) nearly everyone in Hollywood, from Meryl Streep to Morgan Freeman, and even Mel Gibson. Well, sort of. A post late Tuesday on media news and gossip Web site Gawker revealed that the top search suggestions on Google for various celebrity names (when preceded by the word is)…
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The Schmooze Palin’s Apocalypse Hastened by Jewish Settlements
The Discovery channel is poised to scoop up a reality series starring Sarah Palin at home in Alaska, to be based on the 1970 fundamentalist text “The Late, Great Planet Earth,” which foretells the end of time. (Before the world ends, Palin will reportedly receive $1 million per episode.) More horrifying than the prospect of…
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News Exclusive: ADL chief compares student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaida in address to Republican officials
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News A Jewish farmer drove 600 miles to rescue a century-old synagogue. Now he’s building a new one in a cornfield.
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Opinion Pete Hegseth is targeting a Jewish American hero — who’s next?
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Opinion I teach Jewish history in Boulder. Is my community taking the wrong lessons from Sunday’s attack?
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Fast Forward All San Diego Jewish organizations pull out of Pride festival over Kehlani performance, citing ‘serious safety concerns’
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Fast Forward Dave Portnoy on his tirades against ‘F— the Jews’ bar patron: ‘I don’t know if it did any good’
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Fast Forward Harvard Divinity School appoints professor who has criticized Zionism to new Jewish studies role
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