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Kabbalistic Kirtan: Just Replace Hindu With Hebrewf you’ve ever been to a yoga class, you’ve probably performed kirtan, an ancient Hindu call-and-response chant practiced by Hindus and Sikhs.Now imagine that the phrases you were chanting were not Hindu, but Hebrew. Welcome to the newest rung in the Jewish spirituality ladder: kabbalistic kirtan.The genre — which features chanting Jewish…Read more

Adios, Spanish! Hebrew Gets Hot on CampusStephen Black wanted to study Hebrew in high school. But despite the sizable Jewish community in his New Jersey hometown, Black’s public school didn’t offer Hebrew classes, so he settled for Spanish instead. Then, last fall, when he enrolled as a freshman at Harvard University, Black had the chance at last to study Hebrew, and he jumped at…Read more

Veteran Artist Evokes Jewish Strength –– OvertlyFive years ago, veteran comic book artist Joe Kubert visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. He expected to be moved, but since he and his parents had escaped from Poland before the Nazi genocide began, he assumed his emotional reaction would be relatively contained. Then, he saw something that…Read more

Straight Talk About Hair Getting to the Roots of Self-Loathing, Self-ConfidenceElissa Douchy is proud of her Sephardic roots — but not the ones attached to her hairline.She hates her curly hair enough to make a weekly trek to an unlicensed Dominican beauty salon in northern Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, where her hair is blow-dried straight. The procedure often takes two and a half hours, and the journey…Read more

Chocolatey Goodness Studs Maternity WearAfter exhausting herself last year attaching nearly 400 handmade chocolate roses to a bustier, pastry chef Nicole Kaplan of the tony Eleven Madison Park restaurant decided to fashion an easier ensemble for this year’s sixth annual Chocolate Show at New York’s Manhattan Pavilion. With the help of a glue gun, she fastened hundreds of chocolate…Read more