SHTETL MAGAZINE

My dear mother had received a telegram stating that our beloved ninth-cousin-twice-removed Shlomo Hammerstein had passed away at the age of 102, in Wheatland, Wyoming. My mother, saint that she is, threw the note in the garbage.

It seems that everyone on JDate likes to laugh. I know this, because they make it a point to say “I love to laugh.” Well, here’s a little-known fact about me. I hate laughter. It’s like being stabbed in the ears by a yeti’s penis and having salt poured on the wound afterward. Just brutal.

I am a Jewish girl who has never dated a Jewish boy. I am a Jewish girl who has never been attracted to a Jewish boy. Anytime a man has dropped a Yiddish word or a Jewish summer camp reference in conversation, I have wanted to bolt. I have bolted. But why?

Meet the hipster butcher, the Sudanese refugee, and the ranting post-shtetl Talmudist in Joseph Rosen’s account of a recent trip to Israel. The question is, can anyone save Passover this year?

In this hysterical story based on the Sholom Aleichem tale “A Yom Kippur Scandal” we are privy to the Finklestein family’s sacred 1st night of the Hockey Playoffs. A Hampstead family is shaken up by a crime that happens on Seder night. Will we find Uncle Morty’s diamonds? Justice must be served! But first, the help has to serve the soup.

When both boy and dog are hungry, who wins the battle for Grandma’s leftovers? Jesse Toufexis wages a war of guilt against his grandparents. But will the greyhound get the brisket in the end…

Justin is Jewish. Natalie is Catholic. Can this interfaith dating couple overcome Justin’s resistance to drinking milk with meat?

Read Deborah Kramer’s review of a film that portrays the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the eyes of two teenagers on opposite sides of the wall.

Being Jewish is not a given in these parts, and I’ve watched with both fascination and horror as my daughter has tried to wrap her 5 year old brain around the Bible Belt’s pervasive piety.

In a mystical, Hasidic, or stoner interpretation, Purim represents a chance to see beyond the duality of good and evil. Author Joseph Rosen explains why we should all get wasted with the enemy, and just how hard that can be.