Since being aurally haunted by hundreds of toy noise makers during one Purim celebration in my childhood, Purim has been banned from my top 10 list of favorite holidays (making way for more quiet and civilized holidays where you soberly eat matzo ball soup with your family). In my wimpy eyes its only point of…
One of my favorite things about Jewish holidays is their vivid food symbolism. On Purim, this typically translates into triangular foods, like hamantaschen and kreplach, which represent Haman’s hat, pockets or ears, depending on who you ask. And, while Purim the is one of the few Jewish holidays that encourages drinking, that symbolism has yet…
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… Former Senator Joe Lieberman has spent the weeks since his retirement driving around the state of Connecticut getting on people’s nerves, according to reports from residents. Lieberman, once a controversial political figure on the national scene, has been spotted enraging local citizens…
This year it seemed that even the Sugar Maple Trees at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT celebrated Purim. We’ve been tapping about 30 trees over the last three weeks, during this short late-winter maple syrup tapping season. On the day before Purim, unlike any other day until now, some of the buckets…
Living in a small Brazilian village an hour’s drive from the northeastern city of Recife, it’s easy to forget the rhythms of the outside world. We had barely finished cleaning up from the revelry of Carnival, when an email arrived to remind me of the onset of Purim and that the costume wearing, drinking in…
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis talks with Forward fellow Naomi Zeveloff about her profile of Ali Abunimah, a prominent pro-Palestinian activist who advocates for the boycott of Israel. Then, Forward Washington correspondent Nathan Guttman calls in to discuss the fallout from last week’s AIPAC conference and Netanyahu’s victory in changing the dialogue from…
Purim might be over but you can still savor some hamantaschen out in Midwood, Brooklyn. [Serious Eats] Or, feast like the Persians with a homemade feast. [Haaretz] The Gefilteria, which will sell sustainably sourced gefilte fish and DIY gefilte fish kits, along with other updated Jewish classics will launch this weekend. [Grub Street] Legendary cheese…
I have often wondered, during yet another endless Yom Kippur service, why we couldn’t do something more engaging of our full selves. Emulate, say, some Native American traditions and have a peyote ritual. Something sweaty, visceral, more likely to have me encounter the Divine than an endless repetition of blood spattering in the Temple. Put…
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