The cult status of The New York Times Crossword puzzle is the subject of \”Wordplay,\” an uneven but entertaining documentary by director Patrick Creadon about the people who design the fiendishly difficult crossword puzzles for The Times and the gifted eccentrics who devote their lives to puzzle solving and who compete against each other with all the fury and devotion of Olympic athletes.
More than 80 studio executives, producers, directors, lawyers, agents, distributors and rabbis all enjoyed a Shabbat dinner together in the south of France. For some, Shabbat was a new experience. For others, a weekly ritual. Still for others, it was simply another networking event.
When 50-year-old Hector Ventura was a young boy growing up in El Salvador four decades ago, his mother would always talk about Jewish customs. Which was strange, because the Venturas were not Jewish. Like most of their neighbors, they were Catholic — not particularly devout but Catholics just the same.
In recent years Los Angeles, the nation\’s second-largest Jewish community, has become a stop for visiting Jewish dignitaries — especially politicians, hoping to tap into the fundraising network here.
The Haggadah tells us \”you were strangers in the land of Egypt.\” Here is the interesting thing — because we were strangers, we are supposed to learn not how the Israelites should have acted, but — how the Egyptians should have acted. We are supposed to learn how not to oppress others. Don\’t treat others the way we were treated.
Scientists will tell you that the senses of smell and taste are most strongly associated with memory. I think eating resembles what learning the Passover story should be — we allow something from outside of ourselves to enter us; we \”digest it\” and change it (it is we who must tell the story so that our children can hear it) and it changes us and nourishes us and stays with us forever.
In anticipation of Easter, a slightly modified version of \”The Passion of the Christ,\” the film by actor and director Mel Gibson, and screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald, has been re-released. The second coming if you will. This re-cut version is widely available in a DVD gift format.
It\’s not that glitz, glamour and secular themes at b\’nai mitzvah are inherently problematic, like in the soon-to-be-released one-upsmanship film, \”Keeping Up With the Steins,\” but when they\’re inadequately balanced with Jewish values we can be left with an empty shell of a party that undermines the entire point of these meaningful milestones.
Not all seders are sit-down affairs. When \”Dayenu\” begins at the home of Simone Shenassa of West Orange, N.J., everyone takes bunches of scallions and hits everyone else, to imitate the whipping of the slaves.
Here was my dilemma when I came of age and began making my own seders: Should I maintain tradition even though I didn\’t have the same associations with these foods that my mother did? Since Passover celebrates freedom (another traditional name for the holiday is Zman Cheiruteinu, or The Time of Our Freedom), I wanted to express my freedom by making foods of my own choosing, rather than feeling bound by a menu that was \”traditional\” only due to its roots in Eastern European cuisine.
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