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Recipe: A Candy-Filled Challah for Halloween
Halloween this year falls on Shabbat. This is of little consequence for Jews who view Halloween as an idolatrous, pagan holiday rooted in Catholicism; they will celebrate Shabbat as they do every week...
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R.L. Stine Talks Goosebumps, Scaring Children, and His Passover Seders
Like millions of other kids in the early 1990s, I regularly subverted bedtime rules and took a flashlight under my covers to consume the latest book in R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series. Stine, who is...
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This Halloween, Jewish Exorcists Driving Out Traditional Dybbuks, or Demons
Long ago, the legend goes, in the 16th-century Israeli town of Safed, a young woman was attacked by a spirit. As she fell to the ground, the spirit slithered inside her and coiled up in her body. When...
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Article 33
• Richard Goldstone will discuss his contentious report on the Gaza War with Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, at Brandeis University on November 5. “What we’re in for is...
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Article 32
For all of its convoluted heritage—a dash of ancient Celtic rite, a hint of Christian festival, a smidgen of pagan celebration—Halloween has long ago become an all-American holiday, a day of scary...
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Article 31
• A mother addresses what she calls “one of the biggest Jewish dilemmas”: Can our kids celebrate Halloween? Her conclusion seems to be that the only reason to say yes is that costumes are “cute” and...
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Article 29
As Purim approaches, a new poll found that the political figure whom the most Jewish Israelis want to dress up as is—drum roll, please—Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman! Over 40 percent of respondents...
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Article 28
• Packages in the cargo of a flight from Yemen, which were bound for two “Jewish places of worship” in Chicago, were found to have explosives, President Obama announced. [Bloomberg] • Iran agreed to...
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Zombie Expert Max Brooks
These days there is a lot to worry about: global warming, financial collapse, terrorism—you name it. For writer Max Brooks, the threat that trumps them all is zombies. He sounded a warning call about...
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Article 26
YOU. GUYS. This, apparently, is kosher-keeping, Israel-touring New York Knicks star power forward Amar’e Stoudemire’s Halloween costume this year. (Full picture below—I think he’s wearing Tevas!) Much...
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Revealing Purim costumes cause controversy
Purim, it seems, has become the new Halloween. The World International Zionist Organization has called for parents to boycott companies that sell revealing costumes marketed to young people,...
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Mississippi Mud Pies and Buttermilk Biscuits Make Aliyah at NOLA, Tel Aviv’s...
When Talya Rasner opened NOLA, an American bakery and cafe on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street, this summer, she wanted to pay homage to her late grandmother Nathalie Goldman. Grandma Nat was a Southern...
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This Halloween, Dress Like Your Favorite Jewish Feminist Icon
Ah, Halloween. The crisp fall air, freshly carved pumpkins, and leaves that crunch beneath your feet. The bottomless bags of candy corn and charming trick-or-treaters. And, sigh, the fishnets. But not...
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R.L. Stine is Back With New 'Fear Street' Books
Horror legend R.L. Stine, whose Goosebumps book series scared the wits out of every kid I knew, is back with a new project that’s bound to terrify today’s tech addled teens and (maybe!) drag them away...
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Zombies, Vampires, and Things That Come Back to Life: A Rabbi’s Take on...
“What is your position on zombies?” It’s not something I’m usually asked as a rabbi, especially in the middle of a meal. Adam was approaching bar mitzvah at the time, and his parents had invited me to...
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A Horror Story Set in the Hasidic Enclave of Crown Heights, Written by a...
Girls in the Hasidic community of Crown Heights are vanishing mysteriously, turning up weeks later turned to clay, stone, or salt. Oddly, none of the families of these girls have mezuzahs on their...
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Is Halloween the New Yom Kippur? Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig's Says Maybe
“on halloween, u should call everyone u frightened, spooked or startled in the previous year & ask for their forgiveness,” tweeted Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig earlier today. Halloween:...
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Amar'e Stoudemire Says Jews Shouldn't Celebrate Halloween Two Years After...
“As the Children of Israel (Jacob) we must separate ourselves from anything pagan. #BlessedBeTheCreator #YHWH #GodBody,” New York Knick power forward Amar’e Stoudemire posted on Instagram yesterday,...
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The Tattler Guide to Having the Least Christmas-y Christmas Ever
It’s my first ever holiday season living in a warm climate, and in spite of this—or more likely, because of it—I’ve felt an urge to feel extra Christmas-y this year. I’ve always said that my true...
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Why Purim is More Than Just the Jewish Version of Halloween
This past Halloween, a non-Jewish acquaintance at the gym asked me what my children would be dressing up as when they went trick-or-treating. As Orthodox Jews, I explained to her, we don’t celebrate...
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IDF Costume For Kids Causes a Stir
Need a last-minute no-stress Halloween costume before trick-or-treating or partying this weekend? Have no fear, because Walmart and Amazon are here to help by offering a marked-down “Israeli Soldier...
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WARNING, DO NOT OPEN: Haunted Dybbuk Boxes For Sale
Nowadays, dybbuk boxes—wine containers haunted by a dybbuk, a malicious mythological demon from Jewish folklore said to hold the power to invade and possess a body—are all the rage within the...
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Charlie Brown, the Great Pumpkin, and the Messiah
In the Peanuts Halloween television special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Linus believes in a Santa Claus-like figure called the Great Pumpkin, whom Linus is sure will appear on Halloween....
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Where Are The Adults at Yale?
In 2003, I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshman at Yale when the Afro-American Cultural Center invited the late Amiri Baraka to speak under its auspices. Baraka (né LeRoi Jones) had been a founder...
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How I Learned to 'Observe' Halloween and Embrace My Inner Freak
Every October I face the same internal question: Should I celebrate and “observe” Halloween? Until I was 18, the answer was an obvious “no.” In my household, celebrating Halloween in any way, shape, or...
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Bookworm: A Golem for Halloween
No book has a greater valley between highs and lows than The Golem, Gustav Meyrink’s 1914 story of a man who inhabits the memory of another by accidentally switching hats with him. Truly, it’s a...
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Today on Jewcy: We present to you, four purrfect TV lady looks.
As a proud Jewish cat mom, I wanted my daughter to celebrate Halloween with a nod to her heritage. And what better inspiration than my fellow Jewish women in media? Marji, my one year-old rescue cat,...
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Rokhl's Golden City: How To Say ‘Halloween’ in Yiddish
I love Halloween and I don’t care who knows it. Traditionally, Jews visit the graves of their ancestors between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to ask for heavenly intercession. But keyver oves just...
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How, and When, Halloween Became a Dilemma for American Jews
It’s funny how chance encounters—OK, eavesdropping—can give rise to research. There I was, in the bathroom of a Jewish cultural institution, when I overheard two women animatedly discussing from the...
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My Own Private Israeli Halloween
LEER EN ESPAÑOL Like many Israelis who grew up in the early 1980s, before the onslaught of cable television, the Internet, and other technologies that made the world feel smaller and more immediate, I...
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Tablet en Español: Mi Propia 'Noche de Brujas' Israelí
Tablet en Español: A selection of this week’s articles are appearing simultaneously in Spanish translation. To read this article in the original English, click here. ***Continue reading "Tablet en...
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Let’s Start the Day With ‘Werewolf Bar Mitzvah,’ the Greatest Halloween Song...
Of the many, many, many pleasures of 30 Rock, Tina Fey’s masterpiece sitcom, one of the greatest flashed on screen for just under eight seconds. It came about nine minutes into episode 202. Tracy...
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An Unorthodox Halloween with Alice Hoffman's 'Practical Magic' Prequel
This week on Unorthodox, we’re totally bewitched. Our Jewish guest is novelist Alice Hoffman, whose new book is The Rules of Magic, a prequel to her bestselling 1995 novel Practical Magic, which was...
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In the New 'Halloween,' a Parable About Jewish Survival
At some point in the new Halloween, David Gordon Green’s reboot of the iconic horror franchise, a middle-aged daughter and her wild-haired mother are standing in the daughter’s kitchen, talking about...
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Is Frankenstein’s Monster the Golem’s Son?
At the center of the Prague ghetto sits the Altneuschul, Europe’s oldest extant synagogue. Built to serve Bohemian Jews in the 13th century, worshippers whispered that angels loaned bricks from the...
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The Soul of a Machine
The theremin was the first electronic instrument to be mass-produced and the only instrument played without physical contact. Originally shaped like a box with two antennae, one for pitch control, the...
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Where Are All the Scary Jewish Children’s Books?
Hey, at least we have Eric A. Kimmel. Fans of scary Jewish kidlit rightly celebrate the author of the scariest and best Jewish picture book of all time, Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. But Kimmel has...
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A Dance for Trump-o-ween!
Continue reading "Jules Feiffer: A Dance for Trump-o-ween!" at...
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