Category
storytelling
Jews get into the Christmas spirit
Tess Cutler
December 17, 2014
Sonny Calderon still remembers the words his outraged 8-year-old son cried out when he learned Santa Claus wasn’t real, that his father had been perpetuating a myth: “I hate you, and I hate the way your farts smell.”
Where’s the Passover story?
David Suissa
April 18, 2008
It\’s one of the great mysteries of the Jewish tradition. Every year, Jews around the world gather around a seder table to retell the story of our people\’s liberation from slavery. You can read a thousand articles, talk to a thousand rabbis, and they\’ll all say the same thing: At the Passover seder, we retell the story of the Exodus.\n\nThere\’s only one problem with this statement: It\’s not really true.
Clowning Around
Hank Rosenfeld
July 27, 2006
Some of my best friends are clowns. I know that sounds like a line, but it\’s true. Jewish clowns, too. Back East, there\’s Dr. Meatloaf and Dr. Noodle (aka Stephen Ringold and Ilene Weiss). They\’re in the CCU, the \”Clown Care Unit\” of the Big Apple Circus. Like badchens (Yiddish for clown) for the broken up, they play hospitals instead of weddings.
The Blessing of Bibhilu
Rabbi Daniel Bouskila
April 21, 2005
A book\’s opening chapter is crucial to setting the mood and aura for the remainder of the book\’s journey. Likewise, the opening scene of a film usually helps set the tone for what will ensue.
The Passover seder is both a reader\’s experience and a moviegoer\’s. We sit around the table and read the haggadah, and we also witness a host of rituals. But how does the seder leader creatively capture an audience and draw it into the experience from the beginning?
‘First’ an Atypical New York Story
Sandee Brawarsky
October 21, 2004
A brother announces to his sister that another sister has vanished, as \”The First Desire\” (Pantheon) opens. Nancy Reisman\’s highly-praised novel is unusual in many ways, from its premise to the quality of writing to its setting. She follows the lives of the Cohen family, from the Depression to the years following World War II, not on the Lower East Side or in Brooklyn, but in a stately neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y.
Sentence by sentence, this is an exquisite story of family. Reisman writes with assuredness and tenderness, as the story unfolds serially from five perspectives: three of the four Cohen sisters, the brother and their father\’s mistress.
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