Following two decades of socio-political change (and pressure from the Arab-American community), the US Census Bureau appears to be on its way to establishing a new Middle Eastern/North African category — separate from the “White-American” category we had hitherto been included under — on the 2030 census. As things appear now, this category will encompass […]
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Upon looking for an image for this piece, our initial search was for blood splatter, but we kept coming across blood stained flowers. That set off an alarm, and we looked up their meaning. Apparently, blood stained flowers symbolize the martyrs of resistance. While we can’t be sure of this connection in the music […]
A marquee advertising Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” recently declared: “Before there were the Jews, there was… The Odyssey.” The slogan has sparked backlash, and for good reason. It isn’t historically accurate. While “The Odyssey” was composed centuries later, its story is traditionally set around 1200 BCE, in the aftermath of the Trojan War. By that […]
Twenty-two years ago director Gidi Dar did something groundbreaking. He was part of a team that brought Ushpizin, a positive, nuanced, authentic depiction of Hasidic Jews to Tribeca. Ushpizin gave way to films like Rama Burshtein’s Fill The Void, shows like Shtisel and somewhat mainstreamed the idea that Hasidic and Haredi Jews are human, worthy […]
The Jewish internet has been abuzz about “Bread of Affliction,” the recent episode of Apple’s Your Friends and Neighbors, which aired closer to Lag B’Omer than Passover, but who’s counting? Actually, lots of people! (Google “sefiras haomer” if you didn’t get that!) What I saw repeated over and over again was how authentic and detailed […]
Growing up in secular America, it was always a major event when they would broadcast The Ten Commandments on one of the major, primetime networks. Although I watched it on a television screen decades after it “played on the big screen, it still took my breath away – even as a child of the eighties, […]
