For the past few years it has been my pleasure managing Jewneric from behind the scenes, I have decided to embark on a more journalistic approach to the Modern Jewish question. For those of you who know me personally, you know that I am a serial social entrepreneur. I am constantly embarking on new ventures which usually center around social conscious projects, like ParnasaFest and Not Now Not Ever. ParnasaFest is an ...
Lately, my wife Jody and I have spent a lot of time getting in touch with old friends via Facebook. It started when I received a friend request from Larry. Larry and I were best buddies growing up. But after I moved away, we fell out of touch. I’ve looked for him from time to time via Google but never found any contact information. It had been ...
Because nobody’s ever questioned me about my involvement with Israel’s top-secret spy agency, the Mossad, I’m now ready and willing to talk. It all began while I was still living in Toronto and planning my escape to Israel. One day I stumbled upon an advert in a national Canadian newspaper inviting people to join the Mossad ...
There was no one so frightening as the man who sat in the farthest back row of the synagogue. To most adults he was friendly and harmless, but we children knew better. We approached him with great care and trepidation. He never looked you straight in the eye, but he knew you were there. He was like a fisherman patiently waiting to reel you in. He did none of the work, we were lured by our own unbridled desire. Your first time, you were led by the hand, by an older, more experienced boy or girl. They took you to an unmarked boundry, beyond which only one child could approach at a time. He was a mountain approached with awe. Once you were close enough, somehow you knew you were close enough, you stopped. He never changed his severe expression, as he slowly reached beneath his tallis into his suit pocket. Out would come one piece of candy in a cellophane wrapper. He would hold it out for you to take, but make you tug on it to release it from his grasp. Your heart pounded so loudly you had trouble hearing your mumbled thank you and you quickly left. No candy tasted sweeter. It was spiced with the thrill of having narrowly escaped with your life. He was the ‘Candy Man.’ “Candy Men” can be found in synagogues all around the world, and in the memories of many Jewish adults. They come in all shapes and sizes. They come from every background. There isn’t a special curriculum of study, no special degree required, just an ancient tradition passed on from generation to generation. ...
For the past few weeks I've been reporting for the Long Island Jewish World. The big issue that I am covering is the newest eruv debate. You've heard the debates in all their various forms from other locations, and in most recent memory- the one originating from Tenafly, NJ. The new municipality to be entangled in eruv wires is the village of Westhampton Beach. The story has been picked up by the local Independent, Dan's Paper and Southampton Press and the less than local New York Times and even Haaretz. The New York Jewish papers have all had something to say about it as well. If you want to learn about the debate and the who said who to what, your computer will help you. If anyone wants to read my reporting on it and that someone has never heard of the Long Island Jewish World or its sister papers the Manhattan Jewish Sentinel and the Westchester Jewish Tribune, let me know by way of email to djtalkline@gmail.com and I'll email it to you. (This Jewish trinity of papers has yet to learn of the inter-web.) What I'm going to try in the next hundreds of words is pre-create the head smashing into walls that will result when the Jews of Westhampton Beach try to explain why an eruv is not a beast to be feared. ...
This past Friday night my wife and I experienced something that we hope no one else ever has to experience in their lives... fire. When we returned from our Shabbat dinner around the corner around 12AM, we saw 5 firetrucks surrounding our corner. My friends and neighbors quickly let us know that it was our apt that had been on fire. We headed to the apt to find our convenient "Shabbat" combo-lock busted in. Walking into ...
For a long time there have been only a few options if you wanted Hebrew on your keyboard. Your options were to spend two hours pasting stickers onto your keyboard like a 5 year old doing a bad Science Fair Project (cursing yourself repeatedly for getting every single sticker crooked), or to buy a keyboard with ...
Today I met a fascinating man. Well, that's deceptive. He's rather nondescript. His job sounds, and probably is, rather boring. He works with numbers, though not financially. He analyzes data, though nothing classified or secret. He is Yeshiva University's in-house statistician. His job is to analyze data in using advanced statistical tools (I've been in a class about advanced statistics, so I know a little more about this than I used to). Simply put, if a professor thinks students are coming from wealthier homes, he can use data from all areas of the university - admissions, finances, alumni, registrar, etc. - to find out whether this assumption is true. The value of this is tremendous as far as YU is concerned - the more an institution knows about itself, the better it can form policy to best benefit its students and the community it serves. For example, he mentioned that he had been asked to investigate grade inflation (a frequent accusation in Jewish schools). He found that while the numbers did support the claim of higher average grades, the average SAT scores had risen as well, as had rejection rates. The conclusion? Yes, grades are higher, but the students, statistically speaking, are smarter. This has far more powerful implications than just for Yeshiva University policy. While many people went crazy following the publication of the infamous NJPS study several years ago (where we discovered that 52% of Jews were intermarried), there were some serious problems with the statistics. Poor statistics lead to poorly analyzed results, and deceptive information. This can lead to poor policy choices - all because some researcher was eager for scary-looking numbers. ...
On Tuesday, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke in front of the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament). In the LA Times, the visit is described as “[stirring] traumatic memories. Six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis during World War II, and about 250,000 elderly survivors live in Israel.” After beginning her speech in Hebrew (albeit heavily accented), Merkel stated that the Nazi genocide “fills us Germans with shame,” and that “for me, as a German ...
Harvard University is in hot water over its decision to schedule women-only hours at one of its gyms to accommodate requests from women Muslim students whose religious beliefs prohibit them from working out in front of men in exercise wear. Harvard has scheduled only six women-only hours per week out of the seventy hours the gym is open. The gym at which these ...
