Newsweek may have found a way for magazines to be relevant in the digital age: publish a cover with Sarah Palin in religious garb. Above: the latest Newsweek cover. Below: Rabbi Sarah and Sarah Pagan, a couple of the parodies created by Vanity Fair.
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When a league rule required cheerleaders at basketball games, the Hapoel Jerusalem team created a squad that met both the league mandate and the standards of modesty within the Holy City's Orthodox community. The above news story provides a fascinating look at the response, from locals who find even the routines too provocative to other squads continuing their more flashy (and revealing) routines.
I'm still immersed in a couple major projects, but when I heard about The Infidel--a comedy about a Muslim man who finds out not only that he was adopted, but that he was born Jewish--I knew that I had to at least check out the trailer. And when I saw the trailer, I knew I had to see the whole movie, if only to confirm here that yes, the burqa dance scene at 1:31 in the video above is indeed an integral part of the film, one of several pivotal scenes that underscore the complex relation of style and self.
The Infidel--now playing in the UK, at the Tribeca Film Festival and on demand on several major cable providers--is a fun & thoughtful examination of spirituality, culture & identity. Not surprisingly, design plays a central role in the film, from the hair (or lack thereof) on the head of the stellar lead Omid Djalili to the subtle shifts in dress as the story unfolds. Equally important: the role of humor in promoting mutual respect--a theme that the filmmakers explore even further in their online feature on the quest to find the funniest religious joke.
From the inimitable Shmuly T, a video meditation on an aspect of Passover that may not be as widely known as unleavened bread: the ritual significance of Passover cleaning:
Some Jews associate spring cleaning with cleaning for Passover. While others, concerning Passover cleaning, state emphatically, "All I have to do is get rid of the chametz (leavened products). I don't need to wash my Venetian blinds and wax my floors!"
It is true that cleaning for Passover doesn't have to include major spring cleaning. Though for some of us, the smells of Murphy's Oil Soap or Lestoil are just as bound up with Passover as say, matza ball soup and horseradish.
But, whichever way you do it, the cleaning itself -- getting down on hands and knees or climbing up on top of ladders -- is closely tied to the theme of the Passover holiday itself.
According to Chasidic philosophy, bread and chametz symbolize the egotism and haughtiness within each of us. Chametz puffs up like a haughty person's chest, swells like an egotistical person's head. Matza, on the other hand, is flat, low, humble. Even the fact that its flavor is bland, nearly tasteless, attests to its modesty.
Before Passover, when we are checking cracks and corners, looking behind bookcases and inside briefcases for chametz, we are laboring at a job that doesn't require much thought. That gives us plenty of time to be introspective about whether we've been behaving like chametz or matza for the past year. And if we find that we are full of chametz, then pre-Passover cleaning time is the perfect opportunity to check the cracks and corners of our own personalities and dig out these dreadful traits.
Are Cocoa Pebbles about to become a standard part of Jewish prayer rituals? In this video, the always entertaining Shmuly T explains how the strategic placement of breakfast cereal can help devout Jews avoid scaring flight crews unfamiliar with the practice of wearing tefillin.
For the Significant Objects project, writers purchase objects, create stories about them & sell the objects on eBay--thereby demonstrating how objects "acquire not merely subjective but objective value." Above: Bar Mitzvah bookends, with a story by Stacey Levine.
We've featured Christian and secular mini-golf on this site, but it truly is an ecumenical phenomenon. Above: the picturesque mini-golf course on the terrace at the Jewish Children's Museum in Brooklyn. As New York Magazine notes, "golfers start with the first hole (birth), and go through life until you end at the not-exactly-somber tombstone. The hardest hole, the marriage green, is a moving obstacle course of hora dancers."
The New York Times illustrates a story on the city's heat advisory with an equally hot beach photo.
For more on synagogues, shuls & temples, check out jewfaq.org--and here's the original song to help you write your own parody lyrics.
What constitutes socially responsible search? Bing has segregated explicit images, and Google is under fire for generously giving artists the opportunity to have their work exploited for free. But for some groups, search raises even more pervasive value conflicts, such that working with the leading commercial search engines seems impracticable.
Case in point: Koogle, an Israeli start-up search engine designed for Orthodox Jews, though from the perspective of trademark law it is decidedly unorthodox:
The new site, named in a pun on Google and on a Jewish casserole pudding, is meant to let devout Jews search for things they need without encountering sexual material or breaking religious taboos. Even when filters are used on mainstream search sites, explicit results sometimes appear under subjects like "breast cancer" -- as users of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) new Bing search service have discovered. (Microsoft took steps recently to make filtering more effective.)
Koogle will not only screen out sexual material or even images of women dressed provocatively, but it will also not offer things like television sets, which Orthodox families aren't allowed to have in their homes.
Koogle will not permit any shopping on the Sabbath, from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday.
A fascinating architectural statement in the East Village, as the owner of Sustainable NYC converts a former synagogue into a transparent penthouse using eco-friendly design:
“I was captivated by the history and grandeur of the facade,” said Ms. Camacho, 40, an entrepreneur who operated a T-shirt boutique on Avenue A before opening Sustainable NYC, an eco-friendly store, last year. “Sometimes I’d pause, walk up the synagogue steps and touch the door.”
Click through for a slideshow.