We’re living through unprecedented times in America. In my lifetime, I hoped I would never see the vitriol and antisemitic that my Jewish ancestors went through. I felt confident that “never again” really meant never again. Jews would never go through the persecution of the past. The truth and goodness of the Jewish people I […]
For many years during the Passover seder I have struggled with how to handle “the wicked son.” We are told that there are four sons: wise, wicked, simple and one who doesn’t know how to ask. Says the hagaddah: “What does the wicked son say? ‘What does this ritual mean to you?’ To you and […]
Curb Your Enthusiasm just aired its series finale this week, which gives me an opportunity to discuss a question that’s been on my mind for some time: is Larry David’s representation good for the Jews? Let’s start off by stating the positive – the man is hilarious and a comedic genius. I never watched the […]
Harvard’s population of Jewish students has gone from 25% to 5% in the last several years and not enough people are talking about it. “It’s not because Jews got dumber over time,” Shabbos Kestenbaum says. Kestenbaum is a Harvard grad student suing the university for failing to uphold federal law under Title VI of the […]
Last night, Jewish director Jonathan Glazer won an Oscar for The Zone of Interest, his harrowing film about the commandant of Auschwitz during the Holocaust. The film was noteworthy because it didn’t show the horrors of the camp: we mostly just hear gunshots, screams, and other sounds in the background as the family goes about […]
Last year, at a car rental company, a Muslim man from Iraq who was bringing us our car, noticed my younger son, who looks the most like me of all of our children, replete with olive skin. It was the end of January, and even so, both my son and I looked brown. The Iraqi […]
