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This Purim, let’s take a moment to appreciate one of the great reputational rehabilitations in my Jewish lifetime: Queen Vashti. We know how the story goes: King Ahashuerus, partying with his friends and “merry with wine,” called for Queen Vashti to display her beauty. Vashti refused to obey her husband and was never to be…
With Purim approaching last week, a number of Jewish organizations collaborated on a flyer that encouraged people to exercise sensitivity in their costumes. But one Orthodox high school didn’t get the memo. In a video that circulated on social media Tuesday, boys from Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles, or YULA, dressed up for…
As a rookie officer on Rikers Island in the 1990s, I experienced quite a bit of antisemitism. I had graduated from the academy at the top of my class, which normally is the path to a cushy assignment. But few seemed to believe that a Black woman could also be an Orthodox Jew, and I…
Wine flows freely in the ancient story of Purim, which takes place in ancient Persian. Buzzed on wine, King Ahasuerus asks the beautiful Vashti to come party. At two other wine-soaked feasts, the heroine Esther sways the king against the evil Haman. Wine all but disappeared from modern-day Iran following the country’s takeover by Muslim…
Centuries ago, in a story we tell each year on this night, a plea was made to someone with access to power, but who faced no small risk. “Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace,” Mordechai, a Jew living in Persia told…
The most dangerous physical threat to our children and grandchildren on university campuses may not be COVID or antisemitism, but something well-intentioned leaders don’t even consider. In the United States, alcohol is a significant factor in deaths and injuries of college students and young professionals, making drinking one of the most dangerous parts of college….
At various points in history, Jewish and Irish immigrants filled the tenements of New York City. Both were poor, foreign groups looked down upon by the rest of America. We’ve come a long way from those days, but Jewish and Irish people still share something important — the tradition of getting wasted once a year…
In its long history, the Purim story has had its fair share of reboots. Because, in every generation, a new Haman arrives to oppress us, that genocidal adviser has worn the face of Hitler and, when Stalin suffered a stroke on Purim, averting his own dire plans for Jews, he wore a different mustache entirely….
לעסלי טערנערס קאַרטון דערמאָנט אונדז אַז נישט אַלץ אין לעבן איז יושרדיק.
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