The Daily Mail brings us the latest news about Lindsay Lohan, who is rumored to be considering conversion to Judaism. In case you've been living under a rock, the reason for Lindsay's religious shift is not a driving desire to celebrate the upcoming holiday of Purim but because Lindsay's girlfriend ...

Hard times have come upon many companies, websites and publications. Some of them are asking their readers to become supporters, but this requires a major shift: people who were once being provided a service are now being asked to donate......

LimmudLA ended a little over a week ago, and I've just unearthed some of the notes I took over the course of the weekend. Two of my sessions - Jewish innovation and the dating panel - took place on Shabbat, so there are no written records of what happened there. But as I go through the rest of my no...

The 2008 Survey on New Jewish Organizations was presented Thursday morning in LA, and is available online here, as are links to video from the NY and LA presentations of the report. Italicized text represents Twitter posts (Tweets) sent as the meeting progressed, followed by regular text which refle...

What would you do if a celebrity tried to convert you? Well, I suppose with all the pop culture/spirituality overlap in my life and work, it was bound to happen: Stephen Baldwin tried to convert my friend over the weekend.......

The rumors are true: I've gone Limmudin'.Costa Mesa, CA awaits, with Jews from all denominations and all ages presenting on the topics that make Jewish life meaningful to them.See you there, perhaps at one of my four sessions (improv, writing, Jewish innovation and dating!), or see you back here for...

Two years ago, if you had asked me, "hey Esther, do you think you'll ever be on a tour bus with Israeli bands traveling the West Coast and putting on shows," I would have hurt myself laughing. "Yeah," I would have said, "because I'm the 14-year-old Cameron Crowe-styled kid in 'Almost Famous'." Hard ...

I don't think I've ever seen a Paul Rudd character I didn't like. He's got some sort of comedy golden touch...all you have to do is put him in your movie, and I will like it. That Beatles scene in "Walk Hard"? His role in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"? Even that crazy movie he did where he and Reese W...

Five years ago, I began this blog. This was the opening post.Welcome to My Urban Kvetch, a place for me to vent about the issues that clutter my brain as I live my so-called-freelance life in the Big City. I'm all about looking at my experience through the lens of humor, whenever it's possible. Usua...

Seriously. I remember when word broke at our local yeshiva high school that one, if not all of the Beastie Boys were not just Jewish, but yeshiva alumni. From then on, it set a dangerous precedent, and Jewish boys grew up with that influence, thinking that within their Semitic DNA was not just the p...