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Kill Me Twice, Shame on Me
One of the more famous Jewish customs surrounding the Festival of Lots (also known as Purim) is the liberal consumption of alcohol. The Talmud itself teaches (Megillah 7b), “People are obliged to drink...
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The King’s Wand
One of the Talmud‘s oddest discussions has to be the debate over the length of King Ahasuerus’s royal scepter. At one point in the Purim story, Esther entered the king’s throne room to beg him not to...
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Rabbi Cleopatra
There are all sorts of strange cameos and guest-starring roles in the Talmud. Just like a sitcom, where, unexpectedly, Larry David might be having lunch with Mayim Bialik, the ancient rabbis also had...
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What Freedom Looks Like
The Katz Family Haggadah, at first glance, is deceptively simple–it looks like a children’s picture book. It features big-eyed cartoon kids, large, readable text, colorful spreads of blue skies and...
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It’s Hip to Be Square
Most people have a definite mental image of what matzah should look like: It’s evenly perforated, crunchy, and square. However, if you showed a piece of contemporary Manischewitz matzah to a Jew of the...
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Letters from the Dead
Imagine spying on letters written by other people–young lovers, long-separated families, runaway teenagers. Sounds vaguely intrusive and stalkerish, right? Now, imagine you’re reading letters written...
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Log On to the Dead Sea Scrolls
Lately, there’s been a push to digitize everything–old family movies, record collections. Our lives are fleeting and fast. We want to save our cherished memories, and somehow make them last forever. So...
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Gay Avek
Matt Honig, a documentarian from outside Washington, D.C., is making a movie that traces the history of Judaism, political change–and punk rock. Punk is a lifestyle that’s mostly tied to music, and it...
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How the Church Turned Jews into Moneylenders
Ever wonder how Jews became synonymous with usury? Is it just because they were always “good with money?” Or was it, as Roman Catholic doctrine held, the devil that made them do it? Actually, it was...
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The Kimberley Plan
In 1939, Isaac Nachman Steinberg—lawyer, ex-Bolshevik, former comrade of Vladimir Lenin—arrived in Perth, Western Australia. His objective: to establish a homeland and safe haven for thousands of...
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Josephus and the First Mooning
Marking the new moon was God’s first commandment to the Jewish people. But when was the first recorded mooning? Incidentally, the famously self-aggrandizing ancient historian who brought us classics...
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Brooklyn Jews Boycott Schools!
Last month, Mississippi passed a law that lets public school students lead prayers over public address systems. The ACLU promised a lawsuit. Sound familiar? It must: this type of mishegas has been...
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The Very Worst Week in Wales
Wales is famous for being the home of woolly sheep and Tom Jones and difficult-to-pronounce place names (Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, we’re looking at you). What it’s not known for is anti-Semitic...
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The Lost Jewish Tribe of China
On the southern bank of the Yellow River lies Kaifeng, the former capital of the Northern Song Dynasty and an important pit stop along the Silk Road. From the 10th to 12th centuries, innumerable...
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The New Film by The Man Who Brought You “Shoah”
In the 1970s, when Claude Lanzmann was collecting material for his masterpiece, Shoah, he conducted a set of interviews that didn’t quite fit with the rest—with ex-Judenrat elder Benjamin Murmelstein....
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A Love Song to the Jewish Redhead
Whether lionized or demonized, redheads seem to hold an outsize place in the Jewish imagination. Sometimes called “Ginger Jews,” Jewish redheads have inspired a great number of origin stories,...
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How to Write to Your Long-Lost Love, In Yiddish
Imagine, esteemed reader: Your son has recently arrived in America from your shtetl, and you want to warn him about the temptations of the goldene medina. But how do you find the right words in the...
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The Jewish Giant at the Freak Show
When you think about tall guys today, most people think of the NBA. But sixty years ago, you would have been more likely to think of the circus. And you may have thought about Eddie Carmel,...
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Groucho Marx’s Favorite Boy Violinist
Long considered perhaps the greatest violinist of his time, Jascha Heifetz was a virtuoso’s virtuoso. Born in Vilnius in 1901, Heifetz started young, receiving his first lessons from his father—a...
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The Swedish Nazi Film You’ll Want to See
In The Last Sentence, by Swedish director Jan Troell, journalist and former theologian Torgny Segerstedt asks a variation on the old question “If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it...
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