Since Seinfeld first introduced the idea of the ‘Shiksa Appeal,’ Jewish girls everywhere have marveled at the power of the shiksa. But what is it about gentile women that causes them to hold so much power over Jewish men? Enter Avi Roseman, with her eight-step guide to attaining every Jewish girl’s goal: becoming the shiksa [...]
ReadThere are no heroes in Joshua: A Brooklyn Tale. There aren’t any villains, either. The story takes place on too personal a scale for such lofty classifications to be applicable. What there are are people, just regular people, doing the best they can to make a life for themselves and find happiness, nothing grander than [...]
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I was intrigued by an article in the New York Times about the New American Haggadah, so I bought a copy. I thought the name was a tad odd, but then Apple called their third generation iPad the “New iPad,” so maybe it’s in vogue to name things by adding the word new in front [...]
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When trawling through the Internet recently, I came across a Haggadah aimed at Humanistic Jews (available here). Humanistic Judaism is a form of Judaism that emphasizes the cultural aspects of traditional Judaism, while adapting them to fit a secular humanist worldview. I’ve been interested in the movement ever since I heard about it, because I [...]
ReadI did not intend on writing this article. But sitting on the edge of my seat for the last two hours head-bopping within an inch of my life, I was so completely overcome with Stern pride I could not help myself. In good journalist form, I whipped out my notebook and did not stop madly [...]
ReadThey wander about Yeshiva University’s Wilf campus wearing lurid orange tee shirts, brazenly advertising “Blasny, Blasny,” and selling tickets to Schottenstein Theater, where air conditioning and legroom are matters of wishful thinking. Once the audience has braved the urban beat that pervades Washington Heights, however, the viewer is instantly assaulted by the Deep South, and [...]
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Judging from the editor’s introduction, She Nailed a Stake Through His Head (Dybbuk Press, 2010) is meant to reclaim the Bible from those stuffy old prudes who imagine it as a wholesome work of moral instruction and, in so doing, gloss over the violence and terror of the original stories. The anthology of nine stories [...]
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Photo by Julia Siegel Stern College Dramatic Society’s (SCDS) rendition of The Madwoman of Chaillot, directed by Reuven Russell, was an intimidating performance to attend. Between my inability to pronounce “Chaillot” under the best of circumstances and my general bias against a full cast of women playing men’s roles, my expectations were admittedly low. Yeshiva [...]
ReadRipley’s. The name evokes strong memories from my childhood, when I used to buy the Ripley’s books from my 3rd-grade-friendly book catalog. I used to read for hours at a time about shrunken heads, two headed cows, werewolf men, and all kinds of things that were unbelievable, leaving our copies of Guinness world records coated [...]
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The following article compares the films The Artist and Singin’ in the Rain. There are a number of spoilers involved in this comparison. After quite a few months of hearing about the brilliance of Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist (2011) and that it will sweep the Oscars this year [Editor's Note: It did], I finally watched [...]
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