We must acknowledge TAL for they’ve accomplished in 2012. Sine the beginning of this still-nascent year This American Life has broadcast two episodes that centered upon a particular issue that had for the most part not yet been reported or covered by Read More »

This week New York wrote about how the casting of Zooey Deschanel, and the success of The New Girl in general, might have completely rewritten the rules of who will act on television. Read More »

When did Tu B’Shevat become the “Jewish Arbor Day”? Trying to make a whole new gefitle fish . Why Deborah Feldman “broke free” of her Hasidic upbringing . Drake is the Jewish hope against Nickleback in the voting for the Juno Award . Read More »

Israel is not a nation known internationally for their filmmaking, and certainly not here in the United States. That may all be changing very soon. Read More »

I’ve been in Los Angeles for almost a week now. I’m spending the month here figuring out if I want to move here (after one day, the answer was a resounding, “heck yes!”). I’ve even started to look into the Jewish community, which has been, to say the least, very interesting. Read More »

An Israeli cable company has removed a commercial from its YouTube which makes light of the escalating tension between Israel and Iran. Make a Tu B’shevat Seder . Mark Zuckerberg might be paying up to $2 billion in taxes . Boston Jews on high alert . Read More »

Christian evangelical wrapping each other up in a Torah scroll . How Jews created the quintessential WASP Ivy League look . Julie Klausner and Ezra Kline are two of the big Twitter names who helped drove the furor over the Planned Parenthood/Susan B. Komen situation . The courts aren’t that into Israel’s olympic mascot . Read More »

A Rabbi in the world of the famous Bloomsbury Group? Apparently so. Check out his story here . Recently, Art Spiegelman of Maus fame, published a new book entitled MetaMaus. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a book describing the process of creating Maus as well as legacy of the book on the world, but more importantly on the artist himself. Read More »

This morning, after watching the new Madonna video that features MIA , I decided to watch MIA’s new video for “Bad Girls.” Full disclosure: I am a pretty big MIA fan, and I like the way that she manages to meld pop music and political statements without going too far into cloying/preachy territory. Read More »

Have you heard the word? The Superbowl football game is this Sunday. Who are you rooting for? The Giants? The Patriots? Or maybe the Giant Patriots with their star QB, Paul Bunyan Revere? I can’t say who will win, but I can guarantee we all will win if we decide to watch The Voice , which is airing after the game. Read More »

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta thinks that Israel will attack Iran by the spring . The Chabad kosher Superbowl tailgate party . Finally, a Jew is running for president . It’s Roseanne, but at least there’s one Jew… Drake has a “racy” new video . Shlohmo is getting popular . Not as popular as Drake, but at least his name sounds Jewish. Read More »

It’s finally turned to cold, snowy wintertime and we all need some steamy, hot matzo ball soup. I don’t know about you, but making matzo ball soup has always intimidated me. Both because my mother’s is perfection, and because matzo balls are notoriously fussy. And, oh, that part where I’m not exactly a pro chef. Read More »

Author Paul Auster gets into a battle of words with the Turkish prime minister because Auster visited Israel . Darren Aronofsky wants Russell Crowe to play Noah . Yes, that Noah. Manchester had more anti-Semitic incidents than London did last year. Sometimes a Jewish guy just likes to eat pork ribs . Read More »

My path to Judaism was filled with all sorts of different faith-based and spiritual practice. My favorite, and some would say my “gateway drug to lesbianism” was my dabble in Earth-based/Pagan/Wiccan spirituality. Read More »

This week on the “You Reap What You Sow ” episode of This American Life was perhaps the most startling series of revelations since when we found out that Apple was kind of evil . First, we’re told the story of man with a plow truck and a heart of gold, who decided to dole out justice and generosity in the form of huge, unshovellable mounds of snow. Read More »

Joan Rivers getting stoned . No big deal. S.J. Perelman was born on this day in 1904. The Jewish Press receives death threats for running an op-ed written by a gay man . Matthew Shaer returns to Crown Heights . Read our profile on Shaer . There are very few things as good as starting your day off with a video of Bob Dylan and The Band in 1969. Read More »

Politicians and the television pundits that talk about them, Republicans, Democrats , country stars , and even Jews have used Hitler, the Holocaust, and other assorted comparisons to try and get their point across in whatever debate they’re engaging in when it comes to current politics. It’s dumb, pointless, and insulting. Read More »

We often think too much that we forget to feel. We wrap words in the armor of tough cynicism, or playful irony, or political and ideological garb. Read More »

Mitt Romney is here to steal your Bubbie’s kosher food! (At least that’s what his opponent is telling Florida voters .) Drake raps for hockey fans and kibitzes with players . Of course the first thing they do in Ben Marcus’ new book, “The Flame Alphabet,” is blame the Jews. Birth control and pork: not the same thing . Read More »

There’s a Newsweek article on Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz this week that teaches us that just because she’s one of the most powerful women in America, at the end of the day, she’s still a Jewish mom just like yours. Wasserman Schultz is regularly torn between work and her home, located in a gated community outside Ft. Read More »