Editor’s Note: On May 4, 2020, the James Beard Foundation announced the finalists for its writing awards. This piece, originally published in the Forward in 2019, is one of three finalists for the long form personal essay award. Winners will be announced on May 27. Three blue cornflowers, stenciled on white ceramic — for the…
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the Forward on March 16, 2018. If you are Jewish and you feel drawn somehow to celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, there are more than a dozen good reasons why. St. Patrick’s Day and Purim typically appear on the calendar within a few weeks of each other. In…
Editor’s Note: F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on this day in 1896. He’s a look back at his relationship with gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. Sheilah Graham, longtime Hollywood gossip columnist and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lover and muse, was delighted to share her personal history, especially its romantic highlights. She wrote no fewer than 10 tell-alls….
To honor International Hummus Day, we revisit the Sabra Hummus factory, and learn some surprising truths about the origins of the fabled chickpea dish. Three blue cornflowers, stenciled on white ceramic — for the 18 years I spent growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs, that was my family’s emblem of hummus. The CorningWare dish, wide…
Like a New Year celebration, Major League Baseball’s annual opening day brings with it an opportunity to start afresh: to leave the past behind and to begin anew with a clean slate. Every team begins the new season as a reborn entity: The reigning World Champions and last year’s losers are equal going into the…
No matter where a Jew is, Shabbat starts at sundown. Except when it doesn’t, as at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. There, due to Air Force orders, services for the Jewish Sabbath start hours before the light begins to fade. The rabbi, Captain Shaul Rappeport, lives placidly with this quirk of custom. It’s…
Three blue cornflowers, stenciled on white ceramic — for the 18 years I spent growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs, that was my family’s emblem of hummus. The CorningWare dish, wide and stout, was the type you’d ordinarily see cradling a pot roast, or brimming with enough stuffing for Thanksgiving plus leftovers. But my parents,…
In her new book, “Antisemitism: Here and Now,” Deborah Lipstadt presents what she calls a taxonomy of Jewish hatred. There is the unambiguous extremist, the sort who marches with torches in Charlottesville, and who believes, with some justification, that there is a sympathizer in the White House. There is the utilitarian anti-Semite, “the pot-stirrer who…
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