Новости за 31.01.2017

Football, like Jewish tradition, is highly ritualized. The parallels are numerous, ranging from requisite garments (jerseys, tallit) to food reserved for specific occasions (chips for game day, bagel post-shul). An elegant analog therefore exists between engaging in this male-dominated sport (as active participant or armchair enthusiast) and becoming a man in the eyes of the Jewish faith. Both are time-honored rites of passage. Thus, in honor of Super Bowl Weekend, I’ve scoured the YouTube-verse... Читать дальше...

Scarlett Johansson popped up at the recent Women’s March on Washington—it’s been less than two weeks since the event, but I feel 15 years older—with a defiant message for the incoming administration, and daring new pixie cut, because cutting off all your hair is something you do to when you’re a) “fighting to make basic women’s health care available to all,” and b) getting a divorce.

I don’t have any experience with putting a dog to sleep, but I am about to get some. Today, at 10:50 a.m. I have an appointment with the compassionate, kind-hearted Dr. Lisa to kill our beloved J.J., the mid-size mystery-meat mutt whom Cyd and I adopted almost 13 years ago. We were newly affianced and newly in possession of a home, one that had yet to be filled with children or even furniture. In that cold, dead January of 2005, our first sofa, an import from my old bachelor pad, met our first dog... Читать дальше...

Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world.

It’s easy to mock Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, for telling the Senate she wasn’t opposed to guns in schools because they might be needed in case of bear attacks. Bears are scary! But to focus sniggeringly on DeVos’ anti-ursine feelings is to be distracted from what’s truly terrible about her: Her appointment would be a disaster for education in America.

Dear Robert Kraft,

My father was born on the North Shore and grew up, like you, loving the Boston Patriots. When he moved to central Virginia, where I’m from, he brought his fandom with him. When I was a kid, by some miracle of the Shenandoah airwaves, my father was able to tune his Panasonic radio to the AM station out of Boston, which we listened to while muting the television in our playroom. Steve Grogan, Stanley Morgan, Russ Francis, Mosi Tatupu, and John Hannah were all formative icons to me. Читать дальше...

Let’s be clear: President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending refugee admissions into the United States for 120 days and blocking entry to citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days is both a moral outrage and strategically self-defeating. No refugee has committed an act of fatal terrorism in the United States—the specter of which this directive is allegedly intended to prevent—and while applying a higher level of scrutiny to citizens of anarchic or jihad-plagued nations is certainly appropriate... Читать дальше...

Fiddler on the Roof was by no means Broadway’s first Jewish musical. Three years before it debuted on the Great White Way, Milk and Honey opened at the Martin Beck Theatre (now the Al Hirschfeld Theatre) in October 1961. (Did I mention the show begins with Hebrew dialogue?) Unfortunately, it’s a rarely produced musical, which why it’s lucky it’s playing Off-Broadway now, in concert, through February 5. Milk and Honey, a musical about— get this—a group of American widows who tour Israel and seek husbands... Читать дальше...

Before there was Natalie, Scarlett, or Mila—or any of the young Jewish actresses that so frequently dot our (virtual) pages with news of their achievements, newborns, product endorsements, and professions of faith—there was Winona Ryder. She is brainy, beautiful, and far, far quirkier than any of our current crop of nice Jewish girls—remember when she was engaged, at 19, to Johnny Depp, then at the height of his Viper Room fame, or that odd, shoplifting incident? Winona was the emblematic star of her ‘90s heyday... Читать дальше...