Sigal Samuel is the former Opinion Editor at the Forward. When she’s not tackling race or identity politics, she’s hunting down her Indian Jewish family’s Kabbalistic secret society. Her novel THE MYSTICS OF MILE END tells the story of a dysfunctional family with a dangerous mystical obsession. Her writing has also appeared in The Daily Beast, The Rumpus, and BuzzFeed. Follow Sigal on Twitter.
When my grandmother was pregnant with my dad, she got a terrible — and somewhat mysterious — mouth infection. It kept her from eating and talking. It was so painful that it landed her flat on her back; for days, all she could do was lie in bed. Then her bedroom door creaked open to…
“What are you doing?” I asked my grandmother. Sitting across the table from her at last year’s family Passover Seder, I had been watching with rapt attention as she peeled an egg — a commonly featured food on the Seder plate. She was handling it with a degree of carefulness that bordered on the neurotic,…
It happens every year, around this time. Jews start to wage war against hametz, or leavened food, by scouring cupboards and countertops, turning pockets inside out, dusting off books one page at a time — anything to rid the house of the offending particles before Passover. Now, a New York synagogue has taken this cleansing…
We’ve all felt it. That ever-present desire — compulsion, really — to check and then recheck our email. Just one more hit of the refresh button. Just one more scroll. Just one more reply-all. Just one more delete. We love it. And we hate it. Most of the year, we bemoan but ultimately accept the…
Getty Images Most of the Jewish and general world is fuming over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s takeover of Crimea. But some ultra-Orthodox Jews are positively delighted by it. This week, Grand Rabbi Moshe Shternbuch, the vice president of Israel’s Rabbinical Court and a descendant of the revered rabbi known as the Vilna Gaon (aka “Genius…
Right-wing activist Baruch Marzel wipes his eyes at the grave of Baruch Goldstein. / Getty Images These days, you can order almost anything by phone. Books. Movies. Food. Sex. Salvation? Sure, why not. Salvation. And not just any old kind, but the kind you can only get by virtue of an appeal to one of…
I’m not usually the type of person who goes in for reality TV shows. Especially not when they revolve around singing competitions, and especially not when one of their singers’ performances becomes an overnight Internet sensation, to be endlessly posted and reposted on social media. So why did I feel compelled to watch a Sicilian…
Shimon Peres in disguise. / Facebook Do you feel pretty proud of your Purim costume right now? Think you’re the master of disguise? If so, you’d better think again. Israel’s president’s got you beat. On his Facebook page, Shimon Peres today revealed the disguise he wore back in the 1970s when he would go to…
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