2009 March-April Archives - Moment Magazine

25 Mar

2009 March-April, Culture, Food, History, Religion

Maxwell House Hagaddah: Good to the Last Page

June 4, 2013
By Joan Alpert
0 comments

In 1923, when Maxwell House Coffee signed on with the Joseph Jacobs Advertising agency in New York, it was already a legend. Theodore Roosevelt supposedly drank a cup in 1907 at the Nashville hotel for which it was named, proclaiming it “good to the last drop.” Fortune smiled even more on the brand when Jacobs conceived a plan to entice American Jews to serve the coffee at their Seders. First, he lined up a prominent rabbi to assure Jews that coffee beans were not forbidden legumes but fruit. Then he convinced his client to underwrite America’s first mass-marketed Haggadah. When it appeared in 1934, free with the purchase of a can of coffee, the Maxwell House Haggadah swiftly revolutionized how American Jews celebrated Passover. Until the coffee company moved into publishing, Haggadahs were fluid in text...

25 Mar

2009 March-April, Food

The Sweet Story of Charoset

March 20, 2021
By Joan Alpert
5 comments

Charoset, that aromatic ensemble of fruits, nuts, spices and wine, may be the tastiest traditional food on the Seder plate, but why it is there is a matter of debate. The Torah does not command us to eat it, and, in fact, never mentions charoset at all. Nor is there a blessing for it in the Haggadah. Yet its connection to Passover is ancient. Charoset first comes up in the Mishnah, the authoritative transcription of oral laws written around 200 CE, when describing items on the Passover table: “unleavened bread and lettuce and charoset, even though the charoset is not a commandment.” David Arnow, author of Creating Lively Passover Seders, and others believe that charoset may have come to the Passover ritual through the influence of ancient Greek civilization. The Greeks held symposiums during which free...

25 Mar

2009 March-April, Arts, Religion

Great Seder Films

June 4, 2013
By Maxine Springer
1 comment

Marjorie Morningstar, 1958 Crimes & Misdemeanors, 1989 It Runs in the Family, 2003 When Do We Eat?, 2005 Passover works for movies the way Christmas does: Through the lens of the Seder, souls are bared, family secrets revealed, and sometimes, insight is gained. One of the first modern films to include a Seder scene was the 1958 classic Marjorie Morningstar, director Irving Rapper’s exploration of women and love in the 1950s based on the novel by Herman Wouk. The beautiful Marjorie Morgenstern (Natalie Wood) falls for Noel Airman (Gene Kelly), the social director at a summer resort. Talented but tortured, Noel is not suitable husband material for a girl from the Upper West Side. Determined to wed him nevertheless, Marjorie brings him home for Passover. The Seder at the Morgenstern apartment is quintessentially perfect and reflective of the era, down...

12 Feb

2009 March-April

Letter from Chautauqua

February 12, 2013
By Nadine Epstein
0 comments

The Protestant, intellectual playground founded in the 19th century is now home to a thriving Jewish community Inspired by the late 19th century belief that it was possible—through education—to build a better society, Methodists Lewis Miller, an Ohio inventor, and John Heyl Vincent, a minister, dreamed of establishing a summer vacation learning camp. In August of 1873, they boarded a lake steamer, disembarking on the lush green shore of Lake Chautauqua near Jamestown, New York. There they founded a Christian community that grew swiftly from a makeshift tent gathering into a national forum for discussion of public issues—from foreign affairs to science—as well a cultural center with a symphony, opera, ballet and theater. Chautauqua, named for the lake, drew Americans with newly found leisure time who yearned to be at the forefront of intellectual thought. The nation’s...

Pages: 1 2

28 Jan

2009 March-April, Issues, U.S. Politics

Can Eric Cantor Save the GOP?

The new minority whip is the highest ranking Jewish Republican in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives. Not long ago, Eric Cantor wouldn’t have been recognized if he strolled outside the U.S. Capitol grounds. But now the 45-year-old minority whip and only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives has become the face of Republican opposition to the White House. Photographs of the conservative congressman from Virginia were splashed on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers in February after he helped keep all 178 House GOP members from voting for President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package. That feat, as rare as pitching a no-hitter, won the grudging admiration of the acerbic New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who wrote that “somehow the most well-known person on the planet lost control of the...