There is significant irony in contemporary traditional communities on Purim; rabbinic overexertion of the laws of Purim has led legal-minded individuals to compel themselves and others to attend punctiliously and with all seriousness to the[…]
Author: Drew Kaplan
“No talmudic discussion regards the recitation of [the Song of the Day] as anything other than temple practice”
…the daily Levitical songs (Pss 24, 48, 82, 94, 81, 93, 92) as recorded in a baraita appended to the end of m. Tam. as evidence. According to this baraita, the Levites would sing these[…]
“Reality-television fans have high standards for artifice”
Reality-television fans have high standards for artifice, which needs to seem both believable and intricately produced, bloody and plastic. This was the initial appeal of the “Housewives” franchise, which will swan to its fifteenth anniversary[…]
“The Jewish-Italian connection is so central to the Mafia legend that one senses it must be operating on a kind of meta-level…”
In talking about the Mob, we airily use words like “mythological,” but there’s a sense in which the allegorical, rather than the strictly mythological, level of meaning is what makes the Mob irresistible. The Jewish-Italian[…]
“the Mob was really defeated not by charges but by changes”
The former Mafia prosecutor John Kroger, in his 2008 book, “Convictions,” details his team’s victories against the Mob but admits, with some chagrin, that the Mob was really defeated not by charges but by changes.[…]
“The fact that Georgia’s Senate races will be decided by runoffs is a quirk of the state’s electoral system…”
The fact that Georgia’s Senate races will be decided by runoffs is a quirk of the state’s electoral system that, like many electoral quirks, originates in efforts to limit the influence of the Black vote.[…]
“The Trump era has often come wrapped in a cloak of self-protective irony”
The Trump era has often come wrapped in a cloak of self-protective irony. We have been asked to separate the man from his tweets, to believe that Trump doesn’t mean what he says, that he[…]
“Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer a single, straightforward explanation to countless complicated processes”
Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer a single, straightforward explanation to countless complicated processes. Our lives are repeatedly rocked by wars, revolutions, crises and pandemics. But if[…]
Whereas barley beer and beer goddesses reigned supreme in the lowlands of Egypt and Mesopotamia, wine was the preferred fermented beverage in the upland regions of the southern Levant. The Holy Land is where two of the world’s major religions – Judaism and Christianity – originated, and their holy writings (“scriptures”) are a testament to the centrality of wine in faith and practice.
Whereas barley beer and beer goddesses reigned supreme in the lowlands of Egypt and Mesopotamia, wine was the preferred fermented beverage in the upland regions of the southern Levant. The Holy Land is where two[…]
The Mourner’s Kaddish “originated in a startlingly different theological landscape—one in which concern with post-mortem suffering and the responsibility of the living for the dead loomed large in belief and practice alike”
Whether the Mourner’s Kaddish was an overt response to the “Birth of Purgatory,” or whether both developments reflected broader, underlying tectonic shifts, it seems undeniable that the prayer that today functions as a means of[…]