Short Takes

Rabbi To Sarah Silverman: Get Married Already

10/16/2012 | Stewart Ain

The comedian Sarah Silverman drew chuckles four years ago with her video urging young Jews to convince their grandparents in Florida to vote for Barack Obama. But a Dallas rabbi is not laughing about her latest pro-Obama video.

In an open letter to Silverman that has generated a firestorm of criticism on the Internet, Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt, who is Orthodox, gives Silverman a verbal whip lashing for her video, “Let My People Vote.”

From PJ To Posters

10/16/2012 | Steve Lipman

As soon as next week, a staff meeting at the Shorefront Y in Brighton Beach will begin with a dozen employees of the Brooklyn facility looking at a few posters.

God’s Favorite Ballplayer

10/10/2012 | Staff Report

“I f God had to choose His favorite baseball player of all time, who would He pick? Babe Ruth? Ted Williams? Sandy Koufax?”

That was the question Rabbi Beni Krohn, the assistant rabbi at Rinat Yisrael, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Teaneck, N.J., posed to his congregants at the outset of a sermon during the Sukkot holiday.

Sukkah City, The Movie

10/10/2012 | Helen Chernikoff

For a ritual structure intended to evoke fragility and transience, the sukkah enjoys an oddly long life as an object of contemplation and representation.

Two years ago, it was Sukkah City, an architecture competition and public art project in Union Square. It drew an estimated 200,000 viewers to the dozen winning, legally valid but visually untraditional temporary booths built to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot, which ended earlier this week.

Tikkum Olam, Brazilian Style

10/03/2012 | Helen Chernikoff | Staff Writer

Last Wednesday night, when much of the Jewish community was still bolting bagels and lox to break the Yom Kippur fast, about 50 Jews were taking in the art and music of Umbanda, an eclectic religion unique to Brazil, at a downtown gallery.

“We tried to provide a creative post-Yom Kippur experience,” said Alex Minkin, 39, a creator of Ticun Brasil, the group that hosted the party. He works by day as a consultant.

New Year, New Flag

09/25/2012 | Helen Chernikoff | Staff Writer

When Rabbi Tzvi Graetz was a little boy in the Israel of the 1970s, he would visit the shuk, or market, with his father every High Holy Day season to buy flags to wave during Simchat Torah, when the giving of the Torah is celebrated.

“It was something we would wait for,” reminisced Graetz, the executive director based in Jerusalem of the World Council of Conservative/Masorti Synagogues. (“Masorti” is the Hebrew name of the Conservative movement.) “The flags had glitter, and I even remember a picture of an apple on top.”