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A Portal to a Revolution in Forbidden Foods

By Lenore Skenazy

My mom’s 1972 copy of “Portal to Good Cooking” hadn’t been opened for a while. Like, decades. I found it in the back of a kitchen cabinet when I was home for a visit to Chicago last December, and decided to bring it to New York with me, since my mom no longer cooks. What I didn’t realize was that I now possessed an American Jewish, Midwestern-mom time capsule that is, in its way, as shocking as homemade porn.Read More

The Virtual Tour Guide

By Nathan Jeffay

It seems to be the perfect companion for traveling in Israel: a tour guide that comes with an “off” switch.

Last November, Israel’s Tourism Ministry launched a free iPhone and iPad application that identifies your location anywhere in the country and suggests nearby sites and attractions to visit, providing the contact details for each one and telling you what you will find there.Read More

‘The Battle Hymn’ of the Model Minorities

By Jordana Horn

If you’re an English-speaking parent on this planet, chances are you’ve heard of the intense hue and cry over “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” (Penguin Press), a new “mom-oir” by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua about her quest to raise, for lack of a better word,” perfect” children. If you happen to be a Jewish mom, perhaps said quest resonated with you.Read More

Finding New Life As a Cult Classic

By Gil Shefler

Take a barefoot American hippie clad in a rabbit-skin jacket and a bowler hat, trying to run away from the traumatic memories of the Vietnam War by traveling to Israel, of all places; a sexy redheaded vixen who can’t seem to keep her shirt on for longer than a few minutes, and a naive flower power couple happy to go along for the ride. Put them on a desert island surrounded by crude plastic prop sharks and murderous mimes, and what do you get? Probably the worst Israeli movie ever made, and a serious candidate for the worst movie of all time, which, surprisingly, is enjoying an unexpected revival 38 years after it was made.Read More

Hillary Was Right: It Does Take a Village

By Sarah Wildman

Several weeks ago, my 2-year-old daughter, Orli, woke up screaming. It wasn’t the same kind of cry we normally hear in the mornings — sometimes she’ll just call out “Done!” which, even at 6:30 a.m., is still amusing. And it was early, as in pitch-black-nearly-middle-of-the-night early. When my partner, Ian, went to get her, she was “burning up,” as my mom used to say about my sister and me when we were feverish. I got a thermometer, and then I got another. They both read 103.5. Poor kid. Genuinely sick and miserable.Read More

Family Roots

By Elie Dolgin

Last April, Joseph Pickrell sent a tube of his saliva to the California genetic testing company 23andMe. After spending years studying other people’s DNA, the 27-year-old doctoral student at the University of Chicago decided he wanted to learn more about his own genetic ancestry.Read More

From Moses And Miriam To Meeropol

By Eric Schulmiller

In January, three events occur within a one-week span: Shabbat Shira (the Sabbath of Song — which coincides with the annual Torah reading of “The Song of the Sea” in the Book of Exodus), Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Tu B’Shvat (the Jewish New Year of the trees). The first of these three celebrates the song sung by the Israelites following their escape from Egypt. “The Song of the Sea,” attributed to Moses and Miriam, is the first in a long line of works written by Jewish composers that depict Jews’ experience of freedom and their yearning for justice.Read More

The Spice of Life

By Leah Koenig

Lior Lev Sercarz has one seriously impressive spice cabinet. Since 2006, he has delivered the best salts, peppers and cinnamons, along with 120 other herbs and spices from around the globe, to chefs and home cooks alike through his company, La Boîte à Epice.Read More

Showing Their True Colors

By Eric Schulmiller

The last picture ever to be developed with Kodachrome film was slated to be processed Thursday, December 30 at the lone processing lab still handling this film — Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kan. A year after Kodak announced that it was retiring Kodachrome film, after nearly 75 years of production (making it the oldest and longest-running film in production of all time), the last shipment of processing chemicals had finally run out, and the last Kodachrome processing machine was due to be sold for scrap.Read More

Man on a Mission

By Abigail Jones

When Rabbi Yeshayahu Greenfeld interrupted a fourth grade class at North Shore Hebrew Academy in Great Neck, N.Y., with a hearty greeting in Hebrew, the students responded without much enthusiasm. It was, after all, a Monday morning.Read More

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