Approaching Shavuot and counting the Omer–the Kabbalistic process between Passover and Shavuot—I remember my teshuva story. I was an Israelite unknowingly enslaved to a foreign culture, only to break through the goo of exile and receive the treasure of Torah. I returned to myself in isolation. Perhaps it had to be that way. I was living […]
I was sitting in my Middle Eastern studies class at my public state school, listening to my professor talk about how sneaky Jewish lawyers stole land from the poor Palestinians after World War II. “The Jewish people were smart and used misleading contracts to take Palestinian properties and land,” he said. “The land was not […]
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 […]
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 […]
I had the privilege of seeing Harmony last night, the final week before the show closes in an unfortunately short run. The production opened in mid-October and is having its last performance on February 4. While the show was created well before October 7, 2023, it’s almost like the writer knew how deeply the themes […]
2024: Sects, Lies and Videotape: Debunking deadly tropes about Jews and Israel in TV, film and media Jewish power and blood libels are millennia old tropes. Jews as “white Europeans” is a neo-Nazi canard that has shockingly been bolstered in Hollywood. This panel will explore the origin, danger, and use of these myths against Jews […]
