By Menachem Wecker
Tu B’Shvat seems to be a holiday in transition. Once a celebration of all things Israeli, its modern incarnation is as an eco-conscious ‘green’ Jewish holiday.
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By Philologos
What does it mean to make ‘ashes and mud’ of a person? Philologos gets down into the linguistic muck to explain the origins of this curious expression in Yiddish.
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By Eishes Chayil
Deborah Feldman’s memoir details her journey out of the Hasidic world. Her voice resonates throughout and readers will want to discover how she frees herself from ‘the prison of staying still.’
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By Jenna Weissman Joselit
Real artifacts mix with ersatz boulders at the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in Times Square. Jenna Weissman Joselit wonders if Moses might be coming to town next.
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By Ezra Glinter
Ezra Glinter writes that ‘Old Ideas,’ Leonard Cohen’s first album of new material in eight years, does not contain any timeless songs like ‘Hallelujah’ or ‘Suzanne.’
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By Abra Cohen
‘5 Broken Cameras’ tells the story of Palestinian life under occupation, mostly through the lens of a family’s everyday life. It brought a Sundance audience to its feet.
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By Philologos
What to do when a Knesset colleague tosses water in your face? You write a poem, slyly referencing her private parts. Philologos gets to the bottom (oh, dear!) of the debate.
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By Miriam Hoffman
You really need to find a way to cope with our harsh northern winters. Foremost, Lady Luck must help you land a good winter coat, and to my delight she did just that for me last year. Entirely by chance I stumbled into a fur shop, and as soon as we saw each other — the coat and I, that is — we knew that we were a fit, a perfect match, and that we would embark on an intimate and warm journey together.
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By Deborah Stone
The moral passion of Solzhenitsyn made Elliot Perlman a novelist. His deeply Jewish sensibility and liberal world view are never so evident as in ‘The Street Sweeper.’
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By Jay Michaelson
Neoconservatives can espouse Jewish values as much as progressives can. Judaism is too broad a term to be of use in political philosophy, Jay Michaelson writes.
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