The Other Side of the Wall
Praying at the western wall first as a man, then as a woman.
07
Jan
04
Oct
Beyond Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol
Moment takes you inside the secret world of Freemasons, probing the similarities between Judiasm and Freemasonry. Find out what Jewish Freemasons really think of The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s latest best seller, starring the Zohar, the classic book of Kabbalah, and discover what “secrets” they can and can’t share.
04
Oct
Poem—Michael Sandler
Lokshin Kugel
Noodles. Perhaps they’re chosen—the lokshin, pasta—
because they’ve wandered far—not Marco Polo or some Khan
but from Jerusalem’s Talmud (Beitza 60d) which calls it
itriyta, something preserved—afterward, Arabs lade itriyah
on feluccas bound for Marsala,
not the fresh noodles, lakhsha (from Persian, not Parmesan)
that exiles in Venice later roll and cut at a ghetto hearth;
then on further inquisition, they all float north
ionized, frothing in my great-grandmother’s pot.
Eggs. To bind it together, to a whole,
as if Abraham and Bedouin were fraternal,
as the mixer spins round, as recipe can reincarnate—
broken, beaten, whipped, then reborn as would-be flan—
as a mother’s notes shape fumblings at an oven.
A large casserole. In our family, mostly round.
No linguist, grandma called it “ovate”
as if to say die Kugel points to the puffed and round,
a convected warmth burgeoning from the circle.
Meat/oil or sugar/cottage cheese. A false fork
unless someone...
04
Oct
Marshall Breger: Gay Activists vs. the First Amendment
Whatever the ultimate success of the movement for same sex marriage, one would hope that its adherents would be sensitive to the political and religious rights of their opponents. This does not seem to be the case.
Proposition 8, a successful voter-initiated California constitutional amendment that recognized only marriages between “one man and one woman,” has prompted a great deal of intolerant behavior on the part of same sex marriage advocates. The proposition’s opponents created a “California Against Hate” website that “outed” contributors to the “anti” campaign, using a state election law that requires political campaigns to list their donors. The result was that some donors were forced out of their jobs. The website eightmaps.com—whose organizers tellingly remain anonymous—went as far as providing aerial views of the donors’ homes. Many of those listed found their homes...
04
Oct
Opinion—Eric Alterman
Has J Street Been Defamed?
Sarah Palin says that Israel’s West Bank settlements “should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”
Interesting, you say, and wrongheaded perhaps—though perhaps not so much by Palin standards. (At least she didn’t say she could see Hebron from her backyard…) Palin’s statement was made to ABC’s Barbara Walters in an interview broadcast on November 17, which is already months ago by the time this column finds its way into your hands, dear reader. Any sign of said “flocking?”
Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of the pro-Israel,...
04
Oct
Yuri Foreman
In between bouts and mixing it up at his Brooklyn gym, the world junior middleweight champion is studying to be an Orthodox rabbi. The Belarussian-born, Israeli-reared 29-year-old discusses his boxing—and spiritual—journey.