Genesis Secularized I’m delighted that Jon Levenson has good things to say about my book, The Book of Genesis: A Biography in Moment's March/April issue. In fact, several parts of the book bear his imprint, particularly my focus on the reception of Genesis in Judaism and...
With the timely release of the new DVD of my film The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg upon the heels of the Jackie Robinson biopic 42, I want to share some thoughts on how Jackie Robinson’s heroic story impacted the making of my documentary...
This weekend marked the fifth annual Gender and Human Rights lecture and conference at Brandeis University. Named for Diane (Dina) Markowicz, a student with a passion for social justice who tragically passed away while enrolled at Brandeis in 1976, the weekend program was started by...
by Sala Levin Located at the geographic crossroads of Asia, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Israel is a kettle of culinary confluence. Perhaps the best embodiment of the global influence on contemporary Israeli cuisine is the humble sabich. What is sabich? A sandwich, yes, by...
About 15 years ago, the late writer and journalist Israel Segal, who left the ultra-Orthodox world at a young age, provided a pessimistic account of a secular defeat in a culture war: “In my view, the full-scale war has already ended in defeat for the...
In 1923, when Maxwell House Coffee signed on with the Joseph Jacobs Advertising agency in New York, it was already a legend. Theodore Roosevelt supposedly drank a cup in 1907 at the Nashville hotel for which it was named, proclaiming it “good to the last...
Charoset, that aromatic ensemble of fruits, nuts, spices and wine, may be the tastiest traditional food on the Seder plate, but why it is there is a matter of debate. The Torah does not command us to eat it, and, in fact, never mentions charoset...
Marjorie Morningstar, 1958 Crimes & Misdemeanors, 1989 It Runs in the Family, 2003 When Do We Eat?, 2005 Passover works for movies the way Christmas does: Through the lens of the Seder, souls are bared, family secrets revealed, and sometimes, insight is gained. One of the first modern films to...
The majority of Americans support immigration reform with a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, according to the findings of a new survey released by the Brookings Institution and the Public Religion Research Institute. At 63 percent, this share of Americans is three times the...
As Passover approaches, we all recall that we are strangers in a strange land. And boy, are we. As expats living in Beijing for the past year or so, we find that the strangeness of this strange land doesn’t necessarily diminish with time. In fact,...