14 Jun
2010 November-December, Arts, Culture

The Fockers Trinity

The third installment in the popular Fockers franchise comes out just in time for the holidays. Like its predecessors, Little Fockers sets out to have fun with a Christian-Jewish love story. In the 2000 original, the $500 million-grossing Meet the Parents, Jewish nurse Greg aka Gaylord or sometimes Gay Focker (Ben Stiller) wants to marry Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo) and is forced to confront uptight WASP culture as represented by her father, ex-CIA agent Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) and his demure wife Dina (Blythe Danner). In the even bigger moneymaker, the 2004 Meet the Fockers, the Byrnes experience a dizzying culture clash as they get to know Greg’s conspicuously Jewish parents—Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) and Roz (Barbra Streisand). Throughout both films, Greg must endure Jack’s numerous tests of manhood to prove his worth. The humor...

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12 Jun
2010 November-December, Fiction, Uncategorized

Fiction // Jerusalem Stone

Margalit winds her way out of her small city, barely glancing at the well-tended cottages of Mevaseret Tzion, flower beds mulched for the winter, pine trees plunged into the ground like swords, couples piling into cars with plastic bags and backpacks and piles of books and umbrellas. She is late, speeding past the rows of houses, all of them topped with red roofs, squares of ceramic tile, all of them constructed from slabs of Jerusalem stone. That is the rock they are behind now, stuck behind a trailer truck with mounds of it lying on its bed. This uphill is so steep, its grade pitched at too sharp an angle. How can those rocks stand there without budging? Massive granite, or is it quartz? Heavier than a man, cut into wedges or unearthed in blocks....

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08 Mar
2010 November-December, Culture, Religion, Women

Do 1 Rabba, 2 Rabbis and 1 Yeshiva = a New Denomination?

As mainstream Orthodoxy moves to the Right, a liberal faction gains momentum The audience watches with rapt attention as Sara Hurwitz, a slim woman in a demure gray and black suit with matching hat, approaches the lectern. Two months earlier, Hurwitz became the first woman ever to be appointed as a full member of the clergy in a mainstream Orthodox synagogue. The rabba, as she is called, has come to the March 2010 conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) in New York, to publicly address the controversy swirling around her. “I stand here, filled with emotion,” the 33-year-old mild-mannered mother of three begins as she looks out at the sea of knitted yarmulkes, snoods and other head coverings matched with long skirts, pantsuits and designer jeans. The audience of Orthodox women and men, including pioneers of...

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