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Throughout most of the Spanish-speaking world, every Saturday is Giant Saturday. Each week in millions of homes, Don Francisco hosts a television show, “Sábado Gigante” (“Giant Saturday”). The three-hour show features a combination of contests, musical numbers, more serious human-interest stories, and zany stunts. It’s been parodied on The Simpsons, and…
Each week, Jews all over the world read a portion of the Torah, advancing through the stories like an episodic TV show. And each week, Julie Seltzer, a Torah scribe and Jewish educator, bakes a challah in a different shape–inspired by the Torah portion of the week. Sometimes the creative bread…
A Hasidic rabbinical student falls in love with his teacher’s daughter. A punk band gives a small but raucous concert in a Tel Aviv basement. A religious couple travels to a rabbinical court to file for divorce, only to find their relationship tested in the strangest of ways. In the…
In his own words, Kenny Shopsin is “a middle-class Jewish kid from the suburbs who’d never known a day of hunger in his life.” He opened a corner store in the 1970s. Ten years later, with his wife, he converted it to a restaurant. The Shopsins employed a whatever-works approach, creating dishes…
Stephen Marche’s wonderful novel Raymond and Hannah (2006) begins with WASPy Raymond meeting sultry Jewish Hannah at a party. The two go home together for what’s supposed to be a one-night stand, but quickly and intensely evolves into a passionate weeklong tryst. At the week’s end, Hannah leaves–as scheduled–to explore her…
Australia is the only country (besides Israel) to depict a Jew on its highest-denomination bank note, the $100 bill. The man in question is Sir John Monash–not a prime minister nor a member of the royal family, but the commander of the Australian military forces at the end of the First World…
If you could pick anyone to go undercover in the insular world of Hasidic Jews, it probably wouldn’t be a staff writer from Vice Magazine. Vice is notorious for publishing edgy and racy articles–a guide to seducing Muslims, a review of third-world drug culture in which the reporter samples the goods. But, when Vice photographer Patrick O’Dell…
Yehoshua November is a young Hasidic poet who teaches at Rutgers University. In his classes, he’s been known to reference the non-linear storytelling of the Torah to encourage students to tell stories the way they remember them. This religious orientation has not stopped major media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, from reviewing his new book, God’s…
On the first page of this new graphic autobiography, Sarah Glidden is packing for her imminent Birthright Israel trip. More specifically, she’s asking Jamil, her Muslim boyfriend, whether he thinks it’s a good idea to bring her books about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “You’ll be too busy seeing the real thing to have time…
A ketubah is a Jewish marriage contract. In ancient days, it was used to describe a husband’s responsibilities to his wife–including his financial commitments if the marriage ever ended in divorce. These days, the ketubah usually plays a largely symbolic role, a written and visual representation of the vows that both parties are…
“No matter where I go, I’m going toward Jerusalem.” The first song starts with a sultry tribal beat and acoustic guitar, then builds into a chorus of voices singing these words in Hebrew. To Zion, the new 5-song album from Darshan, is a small wonder, a collaboration between folksinger Shir Yaakov, poet/rapper Eprhyme, and…
The 2009 film Inglourious Basterds is the ultimate revenge fantasy: A squad of Jewish soldiers mercilessly slaughtering Nazis during WWII. But the riveting background of one of the film’s main characters–a Jewish boy from Boston–was cut from the final film. In the scene, which you can read in the film’s script, Donny Donowitz–nicknamed the “Bear Jew”–wanders…
