Television “Reality-television fans have high standards for artifice” Author Drew Kaplan Date 21 February 2021 Reality-television fans have high standards for artifice, which needs to seem both believable and...
America “The Jewish-Italian connection is so central to the Mafia legend that one senses it must be operating on a kind of meta-level…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 14 January 2021 In talking about the Mob, we airily use words like “mythological,” but there’s a...
America “the Mob was really defeated not by charges but by changes” Author Drew Kaplan Date 14 January 2021 The former Mafia prosecutor John Kroger, in his 2008 book, “Convictions,” details his team’s...
Politics in America “The fact that Georgia’s Senate races will be decided by runoffs is a quirk of the state’s electoral system…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 9 January 2021 The fact that Georgia’s Senate races will be decided by runoffs is a quirk...
Politics in America “The Trump era has often come wrapped in a cloak of self-protective irony” Author Drew Kaplan Date 9 January 2021 The Trump era has often come wrapped in a cloak of self-protective irony. We...
Uncategorized “Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer a single, straightforward explanation to countless complicated processes” Author Drew Kaplan Date 29 November 2020 Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer...
Beer, Bible, Jewish, Wine 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. Author Drew Kaplan Date 15 November 2020 Whereas barley beer and beer goddesses reigned supreme in the lowlands of Egypt and...
Jewish 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” Author Drew Kaplan Date 18 October 2020 Whether the Mourner’s Kaddish was an overt response to the “Birth of Purgatory,” or...
Modern Orthodoxy “The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the Haredi world, with whom we disagree profoundly on issues of gender and women’s place” Author Drew Kaplan Date 16 September 2020 The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the...
Movies, Music, Star Wars “Modern fantasy began with the release of George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’, in 1977, which paid homage to the ‘Flash Gordon’ and ‘Buck Rogers’ serials of the thirties” Author Drew Kaplan Date 13 September 2020 Modern fantasy began with the release of George Lucas’s “Star Wars,” in 1977, which...