And let me get this out of the way: we didn't talk about Borat. I didn't ask him if anyone had ever jokingly threatened to throw the Jew down the well. He didn't show me a picture of his pet chicken. To have gone into any of this, even as a joke would have been incredibly disrespectful, not to menti...

We all know that our Inaugural Ball for Rest of Us attracted a varied audience and spawned many a misadventure. Here's but another....

Ron Aron's motivation for writing his book, The Jews of Sing Sing: Gotham, Gangsters and Gonuvim was the experience of learning that his own great-grandfather, Isaac had been an inmate at Sing Sing-- something he didn't learn until after his own parents had died and he was investigating his family h...

A major kerfuffle in Catholic-Jewish relations sprung up last week when Pope Benedict XVI un-excommunicated a couple of self-appointed Bishops who reject Vatican II and accept Mel Gibson. The Pope was apparently the last person to learn that one of these Bishops, Richard Williamson, in addition to p...

We sat down with Justin Lerner, director of the Kurlander Program for Gay and Lesbian Outreach and Engagement to talk about their first-ever same-sex speed dating event, which was held last Saturday night. How many people attended the first “You Had Me at Shalom — An Evening of Same-Sex ...

It’s been too long. Why the long silence? What can we say but, “Woe is the plight of the institutional blogger.”  We were still working. We swear it. Unfortunately, the blogging fell under the category of “other duties as assigned” and there was stuff further up the li...

In a depressing week dominated by posts about the prisoner swap deal with Hezbollah, where can one find solace? Fashion. Like maybe a Jewish kilt would cheer you up. Or get that tattoo finally. This is probably a look you want to avoid, unless you like spending $69 to get the crap beaten out of you...

Coming Soon to your JCC According to one of the few, remaining, universally respected sources of information on contemporary Jewish life, The New York Times, it turns out that it is okay for Jews to have tattoos. Since it is in the New York Times, it must be okay. I trust their movie reviews, why no...

We’ve been neglecting our posting the past few weeks. Something about real work needing to be done. But before it got too out-of-date I did want to recap a particularly interesting series of posts in response to Professor Sylvia Barack Fishman’s report controversial report “Matrilineal...

…then what does that say about the place of Yiddish in American society? Is there something bigger going on? Ãœber-researcher of contemporary Jewish life, Professor Steve Cohen and Proferssor Sarah Bunin Benor want to know how you use Yiddish and Hebrew words in everyday speech, along with hab...