Jewish Blogs

On Being a Jewish Mother, Professionally

I am an actress, currently rehearsing a one-woman show at the Nora Theatre in Cambridge, MA. I play Ann Landers, a.k.a. Eppie Lederer. The title of the show is The Lady With All the Answers.Read More: @ jwablog.jwa.orgYou might also like: Don’t Settle: 5 Life Lessons From Your Red Hot Mama“Who Do You Think You Are?” — When Genealogy Meets Reality TVTichel Cuties: ...

Omri Casspi Says Sheket B’vakasha

Urban Dictionary defines “Boomshakalaka” as “An onomatopoeic ‘in your face.’ Originally the sound of a slam-dunk in basketball — the “boom” being the dunk, and the “shakalaka” being the rattling of the backboard.”In the early years of ESPN, it was common to hear an ESPN personality throw out an energetic “boomshakalaka” when showing the highlight footage of a monster dunk. ...

Omri Casspi May Return to Maccabi Tel Aviv

There have been several former NBA players who have gone on to play for Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball club. However, I can’t think of any players to do so while in the middle of an NBA contract. Sacramento Kings player Omri Casspi has announced that he may return to his former team in Israel should the NBA impose a ...

Oh Boy! GPS Tagged Photos on Our Samsung Epic 4g Sprint Phone

We noticed in Picasa a little push pin icon on our Samsung Epic 4G pictures and then we realized whoa, the phone-camera can do GPS tagging. So we poked around until we found the place to enable the GPS tagging: opened the camera, clicked on the gear, then on the wrench then on GPS, to turn it on.Okay so then ...

Off the Derech People are Miserable

I don’t know anyone who’s happy and off the derech. If they were so happy, why would they keep having to tell us religious Jews how silly we are, couldn’t they just be happy with their decision and leave us alone. Yet day in and day out they visit this site and others and feel the need to argue relentlessly ...

Off the Derech Movement is Good for the Jews

It seems as if the frum community has just discovered that those who went off the derech may be a problem for future generations of sheep following the grand master bearded fellows who dictate orders about what you can and can’t do. Prior to the internet age it was easy to ignore those folks who decided to walk down the ...

Occupy Beit Shemesh: Where are the 99% of Charedim who don’t support this?

I told myself that I wasn’t going to be commenting on news this week, but the craziness going on in Beit Shemesh deserves some attention, I have been told that it is not the majority of Charedim who agree with the violence being perpetrated in the name of religion by so called “religious Jews”. I have been told that it’s ...

Obama’s Bar Mitzvah Speech

President Barack Obama gave what even he described as a “Bar Mitzvah speech” at the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) Biennial on Friday afternoon. Love him or hate him, the President gave an impressive speech that earned him no less than 70 rounds of applause.In the speech, he not only defended his administration’s record on Israel, but claimed that, “no ...

Obama Reading David Grossman on Martha’s Vineyard

President Obama’s vacation reading list includes the best-selling Israeli novel “To the End of the Land” by David Grossman.According to a White House statement, the novel is one of three that Obama took to his 10-day vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. Since arriving on the island he has bought two more books, according to reports.Published in 2008 in Israel ...

Obama, AIPAC & Republicans

The text of President Obama’s Middle-East address. (Los Angeles Times)Akiva Eldar: “No American president or presidential candidate has ever told this large Jewish audience of supporters of Israel the truth”–including the fact that Americans will not support Netanyahu’s demand that the IDF control Palestinian territory. (Ha’aretz)Although the “AIPAC crowd was strikingly appreciative,” David Horovitz points out that the speech included ...

Nutrition and Social Welfare: What Would Frances Stern Do?

On August 23, 1914, pioneering nutritionist Frances Stern published an editorial that identified the connection between nutrition, socio-economics, and social welfare. From This week in History: It’s remarkable to look at the politics of nutrition today, almost a century later, and realize that while so much has changed, the “nutrition gap” between socio-economic classes is as bad as it ever was.Read ...

Now that I’m engaged, I’ve naturally begun to think about frum wife swapping

Now that I’m engaged I’ve started to think about life after marriage and naturally my thoughts have wandered to that seldom spoken about subject of wife swapping in the frum community. I am marrying a chabad girl after all and everyone knows that the chabad community provides the best wife swapping out of any frum sect. Those chabad women remain ...