Here’s what they don’t tell you about being Santa Claus: it can be heart-wrenching. Every year, the Boston Globe receives as many as 17,000-plus letters addressed to Santa Claus. This year, the paper put me, a Jewish journalist who was a reporter and editor there for 36 years, in charge of writing about them. “How…
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…
Christians have Santa Claus, but Jews got “Hanukka Harry”
Norman Siegel, the New York lawyer who represents the worldwide SantaCon holiday pub crawl, acknowledged that in the past the festival in the city had been marred by drunken incidents but this year organizers are aiming for no, or very few arrests or summons. “We have established a cooperative, working relationship with the New York…
Growing up, my family’s Jewish identity was rooted more in what we didn’t do rather than what we did. Keep kosher. Not so much. Observe the Sabbath? Nominally. Regularly attend synagogue? Once a month at best. But boy were we proud, even eager, to abstain from anything and everything that we considered goyish. These included,…
(JTA) — Last spring, I found myself averting my eyes when my 4-year-old mentioned something about the Easter bunny in front of my dad. We were at my parents’ home in Michigan for Passover and my son said, “When I get back to Brooklyn, the Easter bunny is going to bring me a basket!” I…
Santa! Santa! The name is joy itself to children all over America…. Except if they happen to be Jewish. Then, it’s a bit more problematic. “I’m Jewish, but went to a church-run nursery school,” said Michelle Suconick, a 20-something publicist living in Brooklyn. “Our teacher would tell us stories about how Santa goes all over…
Video: Nate Lavey Two years ago on Rosh Hashanah, Dana Friedman was dressed in his Santa Claus costume for a promotion in New York City’s Times Square, when a group of men in yarmulkes approached him and asked to have their photo taken with him. “Shana tova!” he told them. And then, registering the look…
100% of profits support our journalism
