Jewish Blogs

My Reason/Excuse For Not Caring About Yom Kippur

I think one of the main lessons of the story of Yonah that’s read on Yom Kippur is that even the greatest men, with the greatest intentions, can’t understand God’s master plan because of their own biases. (You know, the Navi Yonah didn’t want to prophesy in Nineveh and give them a chance to repent because they were Israel’s enemies, ...

My Rabbi Saved My Life

This past March, around the same time I began to blog for The New York Jewish Week, a banner ad on the Jewish paper’s website caught my attention.The ad featured a head-shot of a man and the text “My Rabbi Saved My Life.” First, I thought “what a great ad since it grabs your attention and makes you want to ...

My My Machzor

For someone as book-addicted as I am, choosing a High Holidays prayerbook is a big commitment, not unlike asking someone to the junior prom. Like a prom, you’re going to get dressed up really swanky beforehand, and like the prom, tickets will probably set you back a few hundred dollars. Unlike prom, however, you’re putting yourself before a divine tribunal ...

My love/hate relationship with a thing called Sheitel

Lets be honest here ladies, Sheitels are the most annoying things created, and yet they are the most brilliant at the same time! Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love my wiggy very much, but when the wedding/ bris / bar mitzvah is over, that thing comes whipping off my head at the fastest speed, and is ...

My Horribly Embarrassing Memo

It certainly has been a monumental few weeks in the history of humiliation. With the help of Wikileaks, we’re learning so many new things about our friends and neighbors. Who knew CNN’s Anderson Cooper dyed his hair white? Actually, to be honest, I had suspicions.All the signs were there. But still, there’s something startling about hearing him admit, and so ...

My Great Grandfather Harris Epstein the Inventor

I am named after my great-grandfather, Harris (Tzvee) Epstein, aka, the inventor who lived in New York City and Spring Valley.He was the inventor and patent holder of many practical items.Here are examples with their links from the Google Patent search:SIGNALING APPARATUS US Pat. 1060898 – H. EPSTEIN. SIGNALING APPARATUS, APPLICATION PILED JAN. 26, 19.11. Patented May 6,1913.Read More: @ tzvee.blogspot.comReaders found ...

My frum-porn arrived in the mail

It’s a magazine with shiny pages and vibrant picture. And it’s total frummy-porn goodness. But there’s no skin, and hardly any pictures of people. Confused? It’s the Annual Shnorah Chinese Raffle Catalog.Porn for frummies. Beautiful images of highly desirable, but largely unattainable objects of desire that are stapled into a simple magazine meant to tease me out of some money in the ...

My First Writing Group: The Internet

It all started back in March 1999. We’d just got our very first home internet connection and I was setting off to navigate cyberspace and figure out what exactly was out there in that World Wide Web thing that everyone was going on about. These were the days of the Netscape browser and dial-up internet, which hogged the phone line ...

My First Trip to the Sheitle Salon

This is not about whether I agree with sheitles or not, when my wife walked in with her sheitle on I didn’t recognize her and was like “damn it’s a little hot for me” but this post isn’t about the fact that I don’t agree with the concept of shietles it’s about the fact that I was just in a ...

My First Bat Mitzvah Party

The other day, I wrote about vomiting at my bar mitzvah party. Not my finest hour. Since then, I’ve been thinking about other stories from bar/bat mitzvah parties. Maybe next week I’ll write about the time a bar mitzvah dancer put my head in her chest to convince me to go to the dance floor (you read that right), but ...

My Feminist Nose Job

Yes, I’ve had one. No I don’t regret it. These are the first words that come out of my mouth when the waterfall of questions begins. That waterfall is quite rare, though; I don’t tell people about my elective surgery. Even my father-in-law doesn’t know; I can only imagine his horror. My mother says my nose was perfect, petite and ...

My Father’s Daughter, My Mother’s Faith

This year, Father’s Day falls on June 17th, just two days before the 17th anniversary of my father’s death. A lifelong smoker, he died of complications related to lung cancer when he was only 45 years old. I was just 10 years old, and that year, Father’s Day came just one day before his death. Though he was weak and ...