15 Sep
Arts & Culture, Latest

Battle of the Jewish Book Nerds

By Sarah Breger In an interview with The New Yorker’s Book Bench, Lev Grossman, Time’s book critic and author of The Magicians explains his long-standing feud with Jonathan Safran Foer: I used to write in a local coffee shop, but there was another guy, another writer, who kept sitting in my favorite seat. I would show up, and he would be there, and I would get exiled to a couch or something, and it would throw me off my game. Then I figured out that he was Jonathan Safran Foer. True story. You don’t get over a thing like that. This is kind of like the time I sat near Nathan Englander at the Hungarian Pastry Shop in New York. He was working on For The Relief of Unbearable Urges and I was eating a cheese danish. True...

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14 Sep
Latest

Jeremy Ben Ami is the new Don Draper

By Sarah Breger The interweb has been abuzz this past weekend over the publication of the NYT magazine profile of J Street. Critics of the left-leaning Israel group have promptly responded, asserting that having moderate Arab and Muslim board members makes the group anti-Israel and calling into question polls J Street has published. No matter how you feel about J Street, you have to admit it is pretty impressive that the not even two-year-old organization has received so much media attention. Or as M.J. Rosenberg at Talking Points Memo puts it, Don Draper has nothing on Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street’s executive director. The bigger story however may be the decline of AIPAC, the once untouchable Israel group. As Robert Dreyfuss writes in this month's Mother Jones: “AIPAC is facing something of a perfect storm. Advocating for stronger...

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03 Sep
Arts & Culture, Latest

This Week's Links

By Sarah Breger Gossip Girl may be the key to Mideast Peace. Especially Chuck Bass. Joanna Rakoff Smith looks at the portrayal of Judaism on the TV show Weeds. Haredi Girls are being paid not to wear make-up. Over-protective dads everywhere take note. Shalom Seseme is back. A new generation will be introduced to the glories of Moishe Oofnick and Kippi Ben Kippod. One man's mission to save the Jewish deli. Madoff sex book. Fail

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03 Sep
Arts & Culture, Latest, Misc

You know something has jumped the shark when the Jews start doing it

by Sarah Breger So now Jews have jumped on the "dancing down the aisle" meme. In an homage to the overplayed, yet undeniably adorable, Chris Brown "Forever" wedding dance intro, some Orthodox Jews have jumped on the bandwagon and created a dance sequence of their own. Set to the Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling,” (listen closely and you'll hear the Peas say "mazel tov" and "l'chayim") the dance to the chuppah has the groomsmen getting down with moves similar to the ones from the original video. Unfortunately we Jews are not known for our hip-hop skills, and the white blazers are less Kanye and more Canasta. The saving graces of the dance are the confused looks of the grandparents (I survived the Holocaust for this?) and the little kid with the Jew Fro. He saves the whole thing....

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02 Sep
History, Latest

Britain's Schindler

By Sarah Breger In Prague yesterday, a train set off on a four-day journey to London to honor the work of a man referred to as “Britain's Schindler.” Nicolas Winton, a British stockbroker, organized eight trains to carry 669 Czechoslovakian children to the safety of England. This year’s "Winton Train" carried 170 passengers—including over 20 of those that he saved—and consisted of an original locomotive and carriage form the 1930s. The train commemorated the 70th anniversary of what would have been the biggest trainload of children on Sept 1, 1939—the day that Hitler invaded Poland and all borders controlled by Germany were closed. All 250 children meant to board that train died, and Winton has often said the image of those children waiting for a never-coming train haunted him. Winton, who turned 100 this May,...

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