Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in 2023. We’re republishing it in 2026 because this episode is still perfect and we want to remind you about it in advance of Yom Kippur this year.

If you follow my work, you’ll know that I write about a lot of Jewish TV — from “Shtisel” to “The Patient” — and the Jewish meaning embedded in it. But when it comes to Yom Kippur, I take my leadership from perhaps an unlikely source — the PBS show “Arthur.”

Well, more precisely, I draw inspiration from Joan Rivers, who voices Francine’s bubbe. That’s right, in case you didn’t know, Francine Frensky from “Arthur” is Jewish (I mean, the last name should have given it away, but also, you can never assume). The 2008 episode “Is That Kosher?” is a rare — and excellent — TV exploration of the Jewish Day of Atonement, which I’m excited to watch with my own kids this weekend.

In the episode, the Frenskys are cleaning the house for what Francine’s mother calls “the most important Jewish day of the year” — and perhaps just as importantly, for a visit from Francine’s bubbe. Francine, who hasn’t yet had her bat mitzvah, decides that she wants to fast for Yom Kippur (mostly to compete with her older sister, Catherine).

Francine does a pretty amazing job at fasting, and even gets some healthy advice from Arthur’s Muslim penpal, Adil, who tells her to distract herself by spending time with friends.

Unfortunately, when she follows his advice and arrives at Arthur’s house, Arthur is in the midst of a pizza party. Francine is sure she can withstand the temptation until someone puts a slice of pizza in her hand for a group photoshoot. Without even realizing, she gobbles the cheesy treat.

Francine is devastated. She makes her way home with her bubbe’s voice in her head, calling her “F” for “Failure.” But when she walks through the door of her kitchen, she finds Bubbe herself eating a sandwich and complaining about the family’s lack of condiments.

When Francine confronts her for breaking the rules, Bubbe tells her, “The Torah forbids us to fast if it hurts our health. And sweetheart, look at Bubbe’s body. It’s a lemon.” The line is delivered with Rivers’ signature Jewish inflection.

“You’re not a failure,” Bubbe consoles Francine, and asks, “Do you know why we Jews celebrate Yom Kippur?”

“It’s when we ask for forgiveness for all the mistakes we made,” Francine replies.

“So? What are you, Frankeleh? Perfect?” Bubbe succinctly responds.

The episode has lovely Jewish details, including synagogue services at the family’s congregation Shaaray Shalom (Francine calls the services “really cool,” so that’s definitely a Jewish win). And while Rivers’ Bubbe is a little too stereotypical (and makes some comments about the girls’ dress and bodies that don’t exactly make me comfortable as a parent but are a fairly accurate representation of a lot of Jewish grandmas), I do adore Bubbe, her kvetchiness and wit and the Jewish lesson she imparts in this excellent episode.

Bubbe provides us with a great reminder that there’s a lot of reasons not to fast — from mental health reasons, to physical ailments, to a history of eating disorders. While fasting can be purposeful and important to a lot of people, it can also be detrimental and even dangerous to others. 

Some of these reasons are why I don’t always fast on Yom Kippur. I let myself fast for as long as my body and mind feel comfortable. Sometimes, that’s no time at all. Beyond that, I always forgive myself and find other ways to make the holiday meaningful.

After all, to paraphrase the words of the great Joan Rivers (may her memory be a blessing) — ”what am I, perfect?”

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The post Joan Rivers Plays a Perfect Bubbe in This Yom Kippur Episode appeared first on Kveller.

I first heard about the Women’s Pro Baseball League this summer in The Week Jr,  the kids’ news magazine my eleven-year-old receives every Saturday. The league, which has been in the works for a few years, attracted more than 600 players when it called for tryouts last fall and ultimately launched in the summer of 2026 with four teams: the Los Angeles Queens, San Francisco Firebells, Boston Hunters and New York Heights.

In the pages of my daughter’s magazine, I read about the league’s commissioner Justine Siegal, a pioneer in women’s baseball. After being told by her youth baseball coach that girls play softball, not baseball back in the 1980s, Siegal vowed to play baseball forever.  She became the first woman to coach professional men’s baseball and the first woman to coach in the MLB, and now she’s giving other women an opportunity she never had: the opportunity to play baseball professionally.

My first instinct was to be outraged at Siegal’s childhood coach, then outraged that her story hadn’t been made into a children’s sports movie like the ones I loved in the ‘90s. Off the top of my head I can think of three movies about fictional boys who somehow end up playing for pro baseball teams.

My second thought was that Siegal is often a Jewish name, and if it was, Kveller readers needed to know about this remarkable Jewish woman.

“I put being Jewish on the backburner as I got older,” Siegal wrote in a 2014 essay published in conjunction with “Chasing Dreams,” a Skirball Cultural Center exhibit on Jews and baseball (confirming that yes, she is Jewish). “That was until I had my daughter, Jasmine. And then I knew I was Jewish. It came to me as a feeling, as a connection both to my family and to a greater understanding of how my new daughter and I related to the overarching Jewish story.” But this renewed Jewish connection, Siegal wrote, would be on her terms. It would be rooted in her spiritual beliefs. “Those beliefs supported my notion of an empowered Jewish woman, even if that meant stepping outside the box of tradition.”

Siegal’s daughter was born in 1998. Four years later, Siegal formed a youth baseball team called the Sparks, who became the first all-girl baseball team to compete in a national baseball tournament intended for boys. 

From there, you can see her values in action throughout her career: Siegal coached college baseball, taught PE at a Jewish day school, and got her Masters and PhD in sports studies and sports psychology, respectively. In 2009 she was hired as a first base coach for a team in the American-Canadian independent professional baseball league, making her the first woman to coach a professional baseball team. 

“I lived in a teetering state of baseball bliss and discrimination,” Siegal wrote in the 2014 Skirball essay. One night while coaching, she was being harassed by drunk male fans — “They were shouting things like ‘What’s your bra size?’” With no one else on the team willing to stand up for her, Siegal felt profoundly alone. At the next night’s game, there happened to be a significant number of Orthodox Jewish fans. As she was leaving the field that night, Siegal heard clapping.

“I looked up, and I saw a Jewish man clapping for me,” Siegal wrote. “His two young children looked on. He had purposefully waited for me… so he could show his support. I assumed he knew I was Jewish… There was just something about him being both Orthodox and a man that made me feel validated in a way I didn’t even know I needed. In that moment I knew I was not alone.”

In 2015, Siegal became the first female coach in the MLB when she coached the Oakland A’s  instructional league (the arm of the organization that trains prospective players.) The next year, Siegal was hired as a mental skills coach for Team Israel in the 2017 World Baseball Classic, an experience that she says helped her feel connected to her grandfather, Alvin Siegal, an ardent supporter of Jewish causes, longtime fundraiser for Israel bonds and the man who brought Siegal to countless baseball games as a child. (He passed away in 2018.)

Siegal also founded the nonprofit Baseball for All to empower girls to play baseball. She has said that 30% of the women drafted for the Women’s Pro Baseball League were part of that organization.

Siegal’s trailblazing journey has led her to this moment, where women’s sports are soaring in popularity (but, let’s be honest, still not popular enough) and the first season of the Women’s Pro Baseball League has reached its championship series.

“It’s an honor to make history, but it’s much more important we build a better future,” Siegal told Kent State University, her graduate alma mater. “With the WPBL and Baseball for All, I know there’s so much more for the next generation.”

The post The Founder of the Women’s Pro Baseball League Is an Inspiring Jewish Woman appeared first on Kveller.

Editor’s note: We originally published this in 2025. We’re republishing in 2026, because these sukkah instructions are still excellent, and maybe you’d like to build your own sukkah this year.

When he was two, my son dressed up as a construction worker for Halloween: “Bob the Builder” hard hat on his little head, toolbox in one hand, donut in the other. He loved the cartoon “Handy Manny” too, and any tool that could make, break or shape things.

Though my carpentry talent peaked with IKEA bookshelves, my son’s aptitude grew. Playtime included hammering golf tees into foam. Soon there were obstacle courses built for the neighborhood squirrels, bike ramps in the driveway and a (very unsafe) treehouse in the woods.

Eventually, his building obsession led us to adopt a new (to me) Jewish tradition: building a sukkah for the harvest festival of Sukkot.

Around my son’s 11th birthday, I sat in a friend’s already-constructed sukkah. I don’t recall our conversation that night, only twinkle lights and a pull towards this cozy custom centered on gratitude and nature. I realized that my husband and I had replicated the “Jewish holidays” for our kids with the same Reform traditions we knew from our own childhoods: tablecloths and brisket, shofar and taschlich, fast and break fast. We hadn’t considered new rituals, which meant we’d skipped a hands-on Jewish project perfect for our young family.

Sukkot is based on the biblical commandment to dwell in temporary huts for one week each year to commemorate the “Clouds of Glory,” the protective canopy God created to shepherd the Jewish people through 40 years in the desert following the Exodus from Egypt. It’s a mitzvah most kids will find irresistible: build an outdoor fort and move on in.

In my friend’s sukkah two days before Sukkot officially began, I wondered if it was too late to build a tabernacle of our own. Luckily it turned out it wasn’t, thanks to a menschy friend of a friend who met me at Home Depot. We spent $200 on supplies that first year and rebuilt the same structure for five years. When we moved two years ago, we enlarged the sukkah to fit in more guests and more chairs.

Now that we’ve had practice (and literal screw-ups, like installing brackets upside down), the sukkah building takes about an hour. We reuse the same brackets, screws and fabric walls. We’ve marked the beams so we know what goes where, and hang artwork and strands of beads from our craftier eras.

Sukkot helps me hold onto summertime with a few last outdoor meals, and usher in autumn with bumpy gourds from the farmstand, and tidied up garden beds. Though I try to honor the hallmark of welcoming guests and ushpizin (strangers), we keep things simple — take-out pizza, sushi and s’mores. We order an etrog and lulav set, the plant species that symbolize the holiday, from our local Mitzvah Mamas, and we try to shake and wave them just right. Most sacredly, I try to carve out solo time to read and write during the day in the sweet space we’ve created together.

Following a valiant but short-lived effort launching a sukkah-building business, my builder has moved on to study business and engineering in college. But surprising both of us, I — of the initial IKEA-bookshelf-assembling carpentry skills — have found a way to bring the joy of Sukkot to more families: I wrote a children’s book about it!

This year, when I say “Shehecheyanu” in our sukkah, the Hebrew blessing we recite to honor our first times, I’ll be thinking of my first book, newly released with early childhood development company, Lovevery. Like most of Lovevery’s 120 titles, “A Sukkah for Bella” is a first-person story told with realistic photography, consistent with scientific research that seeing authentic experiences on the page aids budding readers in making connections between story time and life. Last fall, Lovevery’s Idaho-based production team arrived at my back patio in Connecticut to photograph my niece, Bella, the smallest of three siblings as she tries to find a way to help her family build a sukkah. With “A Sukkah for Bella,” I’m proud to share the light of Judaism, alongside Lovevery’s Celebration Books, stories about other special holidays and traditions like Diwali, Lunar New Year, Christmas and even a Simchat Bat.

But more than anything, I’m so excited that more Jewish families — whether they have their own budding Bob the Builders or not — might be inspired to build their own sukkahs.

Wondering if you can build a sukkah this year? Yes, you can! 

If you’re tempted to have a tabernacle all your own this year, check out Jodie’s tried-and-true set of instructions, including a Home Depot shopping cart loaded with everything you’ll need.

A Sukkah for Bella is available on Amazon and in Lovevery’s online shop.

The post The Story of Our Sukkah — And How You Can Build One, Too appeared first on Kveller.

When the Jewish Day of Atonement rolls around, my kids moan, “Do we have to go on a hike today?” The answer in my house is obvious. “Of course we do. It’s Yom Kippur.”

This makes perfect sense to me. It may not make sense to anyone else. And that’s okay. 

Yom Kippur is the Jewish High Holiday where we’re supposed to fast all day and go to synagogue services and pray about becoming a better person. It is known as the holiest day of the Jewish year.

In our house, our stint at synagogue rarely goes beyond the morning 45-minute family service, and fasting rarely lasts past 3 p.m. But we do take long hikes — religiously.

As a kid, I sat hungry and cranky in synagogue, counting the minutes until we could go home and break the fast. I swore I wouldn’t do that to my own children. 

Yom Kippur should hurt a little, but I always thought it shouldn’t feel like a meaningless punishment. I wanted my kids to feel the weight of the day, not the weight of being bored in a language they didn’t understand. I wanted them to feel what I didn’t as a child: that even in the hard parts, Judaism can bring joy, connection and love.

My wife Trish and I don’t want the day to seem “normal” though. We don’t want to come home after family services and have the kids turn on screens, or do anything they might on a “regular” day. So we decided to make hiking our thing. Every year on Yom Kippur, we pack a picnic and go for a hike — a long hike — before breaking the fast together as a family in the woods.

We started the tradition when we lived in Jerusalem, when our boys were 3 and 5. The city fell silent on Yom Kippur: no cars, no noise, just the sound of our sneakers on ancient stone. When we moved to Cincinnati, we learned about glaciers and how long 3 miles feels. In Chicago, when the boys were joined by their new baby sister, we disappeared for hours into forests that somehow exist between highways and strip malls. 

One year we tried biking instead of hiking, and ended up sweaty, starving and sitting at a crowded restaurant. As waiters carried out grilled cheeses for the kids, I ordered soup and whispered an apology to my ancestors. The kids loved it. I didn’t. Nothing about it tasted like Yom Kippur, not even the shame. We went back to family hikes and picnics after that.   

By the second or third mile in the woods, the kids usually start bargaining: “Can we call this enough and eat?” I’ll say, “not yet.” Later, when one of them mumbles, “I guess I could’ve been nicer this year,” I know the day has worked its quiet magic and we’ll spread out the battered tablecloth.

When my kids have families of their own, they may choose to spend all day in synagogue or they may invent their own weird traditions. Or maybe they’ll decide they want to continue our family tradition of hiking.

No matter what they choose, I hope they’ll remember our annual outings — how hungry we were, how tired, yes, but more than anything, how together we were, how connected. We celebrated the holiest day of the Jewish year uniquely, not because I wanted to skip tradition, but because I wanted to build something new, for them, and for us as a family.

Because traditions aren’t always about the rules we follow. They’re about the stories we carry with us, mile after mile.

The post The Unusual Way My Family Celebrates Yom Kippur appeared first on Kveller.

Yom Kippur is just a few days away, and some of the ways we observe are obvious: the fast, synagogue, practicing teshuvah, or repentance.

But if those don’t work for you, or you’d like to add some new rituals to the mix this year, we have some ideas. We encourage you to pick and choose and layer these options in whatever ways work best for you (and your family and friends!). There’s no one size fits all for Judaism and ritual practices, and the most important thing is to find a way to observe one of the holiest days of the Jewish year that is meaningful to you.

If you’re looking for even more ways to make the most out of Yom Kippur, we can help with that, too. We created Kveller’s Guide to Yom Kippur, an 18-page mini magazine, just for you. This guide is a blueprint to a better Yom Kippur, whether you’ve observed it your whole life or this is your first time. It includes a run-down of what to expect at synagogue, tips on what to eat before and after the fast, a refresher on blessings and rituals, thoughtful prompts to set intentions for the new year and kid-friendly ideas. (Did we mention it’s free, and designed in a beautiful, easy to read format?)

Click here to download Kveller’s Guide to Yom Kippur, and read on for the five new Yom Kippur rituals we think you should try this year, excerpted from our guide.

Journal

Our sister site Hey Alma created a Days of Awe journal filled with writing prompts, encouragement and Jewish quotes (ranging from Hillel to Seinfeld) to do during the sacred 10-day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. You could also just free write in a notebook. (Yes, we have reflection prompts for you at the end of this guide.) The important part is the introspection, no matter how you approach it.

Write yourself a letter

Similar to journaling, but different: Here, we suggest you take stock of your past year, think about teshuvah and reflect on what you’d like to do differently next year (and what you want to keep doing, too). When you’re done, seal the letter in an envelope and put it somewhere safe to read next year. Future you is excited to hear what you have to say!

Give tzedakah

As much as Yom Kippur is a day to reflect and make amends for things that went wrong over the last year, it can also be a time to commit to what you’d like to do right in the coming year. Choose one or two causes or organizations that feel meaningful to you and commit to materially supporting them with tzedakah.

Take a nature walk

This doesn’t have to be a major hike. It doesn’t even have to be a walk if you’d rather sit still. But it’s undeniable that getting out into nature and letting your body just be can have a profound effect. Try taking some intentional time in the great outdoors this Yom Kippur and see what you find inside your soul. Maybe you’ll connect to your Judaism in a different way.

Create art

All the introspection of Yom Kippur can lead to beautiful creative projects. You can keep this simple — a line drawing on a piece of scrap paper, a sidewalk mural with colorful chalk — or make it more elaborate — think water colors, stamps, collage… the sky’s the limit. If you have family or friends who might like to create with you, an art project is a great way to connect (especially if you have kids who may need help understanding the importance of the day!).

Download Kveller’s free Guide to Yom Kippur for more!

The post 5 New Rituals To Try This Yom Kippur appeared first on Kveller.

Judge Judy — the 83-year-old Jewish judge and TV star whose real name is Judith Sheindlin — is retiring.

Sheindlin is currently the star of “Judy Justice” on Prime Video, but she became a beloved figure during the 20-plus year run of her daytime TV show “Judge Judy,” which stopped releasing new episodes in 2021. “Judy Justice” and Sheindlin’s onscreen career will come to an end this October, but Sheindlin isn’t disappearing from the scene completely. She’ll serve as a producer for a new syndicated court show starring her son Adam Levy, whose daughter, Sarah Rose, is currently the law clerk on “Judy Justice” — l’dor vador vador. She’s also helping to create (prepare yourself for a truly wild series of words) an adult animated series based on viral AI videos of a baby that looks like Judge Judy.

Fans of Judge Judy are fans for life, it seems, and there’s a deep well of passion for Sheindlin online. Diehards often share their favorite “Judge Judyisms” — ”Judy-isms, not Judaisms,” as director and producer Stephen Abramson said in his hourlong interview with Sheindlin for the Television Academy Foundation — and a lot of the time, the words or catchphrases are simply Yiddish words that sound beautifully out of place on daytime TV.

One of Sheindlin’s many lifelong fans was RuPaul, who later befriended Sheindlin and spoke with her for Interview Magazine. In a snippet of that interview widely and regularly shared on social media, RuPaul tells Sheindlin that he learned Yiddish from her show:

RUPAUL: You know, I’ve learned so many Yiddish words from watching your television program. One of them is a word that even a lot of people who speak Yiddish don’t know, so I’m going to ask you if I’m saying it correctly: geshikhte… Am I saying it right? Geshikhte? I have an app that gives me a Yiddish word of the day.

JUDGE JUDY: Incorporating Judaism into your personality is maybe something you don’t need.

A perfectly Judy response. Here are 12 Jewish and Yiddish “Judyisms” — you’re free to incorporate them into your personality or not.

Geschikte

“The answer is either a yes or no, not a whole geschikte,” Sheindlin tells a defendant whose dog apparently killed his neighbor’s cat on the episode of Judge Judy that must have captivated RuPaul. Geschikte means “story.”

Chutzpah

Kveller’s Lior Zaltzman wrote recently, “Having chutzpah means being fierce, audacious, daring, motivated — it means being brave enough to be yourself.” It was originally meant in Yiddish to be negative, but has taken on more of a positive connotation — but not in Judith Sheindlin’s courtroom.

As Sheindlin explains it in this clip, it means “a lot of nerve.”

Nudnik

“You know you’re a little bit of a nudnik?” Sheindlin says in a devastating blow to a man who interrupts her. “You may be right, but you’re a nudnik. You know what I mean?”

This was painful to watch. I’ve decided there could be nothing worse than being called a nudnik — a pestering, annoying, nagging or just generally irritating person — by Judge Judy. Maybe it should be its own Yiddish curse: He’s so stupid Judge Judy thinks he’s a nudnik.

Bubbe meise

Don’t try to tell Judge Judy a bubbe meise (old wive’s tale). She’s too smart for that, and while her usual retorts rotate between aphorisms like “liar, liar pants on fire” and “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining,” she has called people out for their bubbe meises on more than one occasion.

Schlep

To schlep is to go a far distance out of your way (although it also has evolved to indicate that you’re just carrying a lot of stuff). As someone who lives in Minnesota, I was personally very excited to find this clip where Sheindlin berates a group of people she “schlepped all the way here from Minnesota” and plan to introduce it into my personal lexicon effective immediately.

Schnorrer

“You’re supposed to provide the food. You’re not supposed to be the schnorrer. Do you know what a schnorrer is?” Sheindlin asks a man at the stand on one episode of her show.

“No ma’am I don’t,” he replies.

“I know you don’t,” Sheindlin says with a mischievous smile. “Schnorrer is a Yiddish word for a taker.”

Schlemiel

The word schlemiel (fool) comes up often in Ashkenazi humor, and, it seems, in small claims court. “If you chose to be a schlemiel and live that way, that’s your issue. She chose not to be a schlemiel,” Sheindlin wisely says in this clip.

Kvetching

As discussed with Amy Poehler on Good Hang earlier this year, Judge Judy loves kvetching — but she will not tolerate it in her courtroom. “Stop kvetching and just tell me what the schmutz is on the floor!” she exclaims about a minute into this clip, clearly exasperated.

Schmearer 

In a case where the owner of an apartment complex says the reason he didn’t pay two painters is because they didn’t finish the job, Sheindlin says, “As my great grandmother used to say, there’s a difference between a schmearer and a painter,” Sheindlin says in an episode of her more recent show, Judy Justice. “Now, I don’t know who would understand that except another Jewish grandmother, but you understand the connotation.”

“I don’t care if it’s a week later. I don’t care if it’s next tisha b’av”

If this isn’t a real saying, can we all agree to incorporate it into conversations, like, yesterday?

Strashe

“There’s a word called strashe — it’s a Yiddish term for giving someone the business,” Sheindlin once told a defendant. The word is perhaps best well known for being part of a Yiddish phrase “Gai strasheh di vantzen!,” or, “Go threaten the bedbugs.” (Read: you don’t scare me.)

Mitzvah

“I want you to understand that I don’t think that this was some kind of mitzvah you were doing for the defendant,” Sheindlin tells a plaintiff on “Judy Justice.” Onscreen, text appears: “Mitzvah. Yiddish for a good deed. Not usually the case in Judy’s court.”

The post Jewish TV Lawyer Judge Judy Is Retiring appeared first on Kveller.

Now, when someone says “Lena Dunham is mother” they can mean it in the metaphorical slang sense or in the literal sense.

In an essay in Vogue today, the Jewish “Girls” writer announced that she and her husband Luis Felber have welcomed a baby girl via surrogacy. The article does not tell readers when the child was born or what her name is. (For the record, our guess is Dorothy, Dottie or Dot after Lena’s late Jewish grandmother.) It delves more into how Lena quelled the unique anxiety of having a baby via surrogate by eschewing all Jewish superstition and shopping for her baby’s wardrobe.

Still, Lena gives a peek into the moment she met her daughter for the first time:

“And then, 13 days late, in the face of a solar eclipse and a meteor shower, she announced herself. I sat on a hospital bed, between the legs of a woman I hadn’t known a year ago, waiting for a glimpse of this person who I had been waiting for with something related to patience, but also none at all. I was so focused on our surrogate — in awe at her concentration, her period of quiet followed by what sounded like a roar — I forgot to look down until I heard our baby’s cry. I saw her face, gasping just as she did. Her eyes, wide and unfocused, taking in the light and shadow, blinking rapidly.”

She goes on: “‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m your mama. You… you look nothing like I thought you would, but exactly right. We’ve been waiting for you, do you know that? It was so nice of you to come.’”

Awwww!

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Fertility and motherhood are topics not foreign to Lena. Over the past 12 years, she has written extensively about her chronic endometriosis, which resulted in her getting a hysterectomy at 31 years old, attempts at IVF and her desire to have children. “I wanted to know what nine months of complete togetherness could feel like. I was meant for the job, but I didn’t pass the interview. And that’s OK. It really is,” she wrote in February 2018.

“The irony is that knowing I cannot [biologically] have a child — my ability to accept that and move on — may be the only reason I deserve to be anyone’s parent at all,” Lena wrote more recently in her memoir “Famesick.” “I think I finally have something to teach somebody.”

Mazel tov, Lena and Luis!!

The post Lena Dunham Is a Jewish Mother! appeared first on Kveller.

This article is part of Kveller’s Jewish Artists Spotlight, featuring Jewish artists who work in a variety of media in New York, Israel and elsewhere. The project combines a series of profiles with live, online events that explore the experiences of being a working Jewish artist today, brought to you with the support of UJA-Federation of New York. 

Growing up on Long Island as the youngest child of Jewish Iranian immigrants who had arrived in the U.S. in 1968, Stacy Arezou Mehrfar was the unofficial “family documentarian” who always had a camera in her hand. So perhaps it’s no surprise that she grew up to be an artist who specializes in photographs and video.

“I remember tearing apart the family photo albums, and telling stories about the pictures — especially the ones that were from before I was born,” she tells Kveller. “I destroyed the albums — they were never put back together.” 

After studying film and English literature in college and completing a one-year program at the International Center of Photography (ICP) from 2001 to 2002, Mehrfar’s career took off when a portfolio review led to a cover story for The New York Times Magazine. She went on to work extensively as a freelance photo editor for publications like People and InStyle, until love led her to move to Australia, her husband’s home country, where they lived from 2008 to 2016. 

Though Mehrfar had shown at galleries in several group shows, in Australia, Mehrfar turned her attention to her fine art practice full-time. This eventually led her to publish her first photo books, “Tall Poppy Syndrome,” a 2012 collaboration with fellow American photographer Amy Stein — the name comes from an Australian expression that describes how successful people get cut down to size — and, in 2021, “The Moon Belongs to Everyone.”

“The project is about being an immigrant, and what happens when you no longer feel tied to the landscape that you find yourself in,” she said of the latter. “The idea was that no matter where you come from, you have a relationship to the moon. You have a relationship to color, which is another theme throughout my work. It is kind of like playing with perception and color and ideas of color.”

From “The Moon Belongs to Everyone,” courtesy of the artist

Mehrfar’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in her experience as a first-generation American growing up in a Farsi-speaking household — a language she describes as inherently metaphysical and poetic, where individual words have multiple layers of meaning. “Even if a [Farsi] word is the name of something, it also has a physical or a spiritual or a conceptual underlying ideology,” she said. 

This embrace of multiplicity has inspired Mehrfar to reject straightforward representation in her photography, despite her early love of documentary photography. Instead, she uses light, color and perception to evoke depth and visceral emotions. 

Kveller caught up with Mehrfar — who returned to New York in 2016, where she lives with her husband and two children — to discuss her art, her background and her latest project, which draws upon Jewish text. 

Tell us a bit about your childhood and your family background.

I grew up in a really socioeconomically diverse town. There was every kind of person from every economic background and many different cultures and religions — but I knew that I was different. Growing up, I knew my house smelled different; the food smelled different. I knew that I spoke a language that nobody else spoke. I knew that I looked different than many of the American Jews. 

I only knew of one or two other Persian families in my town, and my parents spoke only Farsi to each other. They would speak to us in Farsi, and I would respond in English and say, “I’m American.” It wasn’t until I came back from college that I realized, “Oh, that’s pretty cool. I know another language. I should speak it.”

And then you yourself became an immigrant when you moved to Australia, where you lived for eight years. What was that like? 

It was incredible. It was beautiful, far, alien, lonely, wonderful. The light is so different — everything’s different. All of a sudden you’re like, “What is going on? Where am I?” They speak English, but it’s a totally different English. So you feel like it’s really not a big deal. It’s a Commonwealth culture, very different from American culture.

From “Memory,” courtesy of the artist

How did your experiences in Australia inform your project “The Moon Belongs to Everyone”?

The project is about being an immigrant, and what happens when you move homes and no longer feel tied to the landscape that you find yourself in. “The Moon Belongs to Everyone” was the idea that, no matter where you come from, you have a relationship with the moon. You have a relationship to color, which is another theme throughout my work. 

No matter where we came from — and no matter where we end up — being an immigrant meant that we had so much more in common in understanding our experience of the world, and experience of what home is, and of identity. I had these conversations all the time when I was living in Australia. You felt more in community with other immigrants, regardless of where we all came from.

Tell us about the project you’re working on now, which is inspired by your father’s passing in July 2024.

This project, “Aleph,” is the first time I’m using Jewish text as inspiration. 

I had spent a month with my mom in Long Island — three weeks while my dad was in the hospital, and then one week of shiva. I came back to the city in August, and the sun was so striking.

You know when you walk around the city in the summer or on a hot sunny day, and you turn the corner and you get hit by a shaft of light? Whenever I was hit by the light, I felt this zap — this metaphysical, visceral feeling that I cannot describe. I was fragile, I was grieving, and I felt I needed to make pictures. 

I have hundreds of rolls of expired film. After my dad died, I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna shoot that expired film.” It’s a good metaphor, and I never knew what to use that film for because I don’t like things that aren’t perfect or intentional — I took the film and I said I’m going to follow the light.

From “Aleph,” courtesy of the artist

Where does Jewish text fit in with this project?

I asked Ruby Namdar, who is the senior faculty director at LABA NY [a Jewish artists’ fellowship based at the 14th Street Y, which Mehrfar did in 2025], “Can you please find me Jewish texts that speak about the afterlife?” 

He found me this quote in the Talmud: “In the future world, there is no eating, nor drinking, nor propagation, nor business, nor jealousy, nor hatred, nor competition, but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads, feasting on the brightness of the divine presence, as it says, and they beheld God and did eat and drink.”

I took this to mean that in the afterlife we become light — because if we eat light and drink light, then we become light. And so then I started to think, well, if that’s true, does that mean that the sunlight that we see on the street is filled with the souls of those who lived before us? And if that’s true, then when we’re crossing through the light, are we being energized by the souls of those who lived before us? I became obsessed with this idea.

Join Kveller and 70 Faces Media on Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 7:30 p.m. ET for “Picturing the Unseen: An Artist Talk with Stacy Arezou Mehrfar.” During this free, virtual gallery tour, Mehrfar will present selections and share stories from her extensive body of work as well as answer questions from our audience. Learn more and register here.  

Mehrfar’s work is currently on view as part of “Nature Represented and Reproduced,” a group show at CLAMP gallery (247 West 29th St.) through Oct. 31. 

The post How Farsi Inspires This Persian Jewish Artist appeared first on Kveller.

The Creative Arts Emmys just proved that Hollywood isn’t forgetting Rob Reiner anytime soon.

The legendary Jewish director and actor won a posthumous Emmy award last week for his role as Albert Schnurr in season four of “The Bear.” After Reiner’s name was called for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series, attendees gave an emotional standing ovation before presenter Wendi McLendon-Covey accepted the award on his behalf. The win comes nine months after Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were found tragically murdered in their home.

The award is Reiner’s third Emmy — his previous two wins were for playing Michael “Meathead” Stivic in the Norman Lear comedy “All in the Family.” For his first win in 1974, Reiner missed the ceremony due to illness and father Carl Reiner accepted the award in his place. “There was a question that was asked maybe 100,000 times to his mother and myself: How do we feel having a son like Rob doing this part?” Carl Reiner remarked during the speech. “And his mother Estelle, myself, my daughter Anne and my little son Lucas are very, very, very proud of you, Rob.”

When Reiner won for the second time in 1978, he was there to accept the award himself. Though, sweetly, his father accompanied him to the stage, let him speak and then gave him a kiss on the cheek, saying, “This is for your mother.”

This year’s award is not necessarily the last Emmy Rob Reiner will ever win, however. Reiner’s final role as George Washington in “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness” could theoretically land him in the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy series category again at the 2027 Emmys, should Television Academy voters choose to nominate him for it.

Regardless, Emmys or not, the monumental contributions Reiner made to American cinema and television are undeniable. May his memory continue to be a blessing.

The post Rob Reiner Just Won a Posthumous Emmy for His Role in ‘The Bear’ appeared first on Kveller.

In 2022, in an iconic Jewish late night TV moment, actors Mayim Bialik and Max Greenfield explained the shofar to a bewildered James Corden on “The Late Late Show with James Corden.” Much to our delight, the clip resurfaces every High Holiday season. It was, to our knowledge, the first late night shofar moment since 2016, when Stephen Colbert blew a shofar and then got a whiff of its scent and said, “Haven’t the Jewish people suffered enough?”

But we finally have a new moment to add to the late night television shofar appearances. Last night Gal Gadot appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to promote her new film “The Runner.” After discussing what it’s like having four daughters (“No drama whatsoever”), Gadot’s love of Madonna (she once dressed as Madonna during a performance that made the head of her Israeli middle school say “oy vey”), and how her new movie involved so much running that Gadot broke her foot, Kimmel transitioned to the upcoming Jewish holiday.

“So the Jewish New Year is coming,” he says to Gadot. “Do you celebrate?”

“Of course, every year,” she replies, going on to explain the tradition of eating apples and honey and sharing that she loves gefilte fish, but only for the horseradish. Then, Kimmel reveals that she’s brough a shofar — two shofars, in fact, one for her and one for Kimmel. “You used to play the clarinet or trumpet or something,” she says, “so that should be easy.”

And honestly? He does a pretty good job for a first timer. Not as good as the third grader who blew the shofar at my congregation last High Holidays, but you know, fine. Gadot seems pretty pleased with her performance as well.

“It’s very soothing,” Kimmel says, which may be the first time anyone has ever said that about a shofar blast.

“The idea is really nice,” explains Gadot about the shofar, “because it’s for everybody. The mitzvah — the good deed — is to hear the shofar, and it’s basically supposed to awaken the soul for a good year for everybody.”

“We could use a good year,” says Kimmel, and, well, you can’t argue with that.

The post Gal Gadot Blows a Shofar on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ appeared first on Kveller.

This Rosh Hashanah, we’re reflecting on how we can invite Jewish joy into our lives in the upcoming year. The best way to start? A prayer for Jewish joy, written in community. We asked Kveller readers to contribute to this meditation. When you need a quick hit of Jewish joy, remember these words from the Kveller community:

This year

May we find Jewish joy in unexpected places

Like a holiday endcap at the grocery store

With the right food for the right holiday. 

This year

May our kindness expand our human experience 

in beautiful and unexpected ways.

This year

May Jewish grandparent names skyrocket in popularity

(may we all get to snuggle a baby Esther

or a baby Reuven).

This year

May you build the Jewish family you want and deserve

Or find the blessing in the one you have

(And may you remember to call your mom

or your dad

or your Aunt Judy).

This year

may the fine people at the Hallmark channel 

make a Hanukkah movie that isn’t bad

But that also isn’t good

Because there’s Jewish joy in complaining.

This year 

May one thousand more pickle-flavored products be released

May bourekas continue to trend

And may the challah come out perfectly every time.

This year

May we recreate the camaraderie of a Loehmann’s dressing room

The promise of a bat mitzvah dance floor

And the delight of a preschool class dipping apples in honey. 

But not the stickiness

May we never feel the stickiness.

The post A Rosh Hashanah Prayer for Jewish Joy appeared first on Kveller.

Editor’s note: We originally published this piece on Sept. 22, 2025. We’re republishing it on Sept. 11, 2026, because it is a classic and should be revisited every year on Rosh Hashanah. 

There’s a TikTok video I think about often, where a person blinks wordlessly into their front-facing camera, clearly unamused. The text on the screen reads “During the children’s service for Rosh Hashanah somebody had the incredible idea to give all the kids little shofars.”

In the background is, in our opinion, one of the worst noises you’ve ever heard.

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Based on the delighted response to this TikTok, we thought these toys were universally hated; an inside joke between Jewish adults, if you will.

We put a call out on Instagram for your opinions on plastic shofars, expecting a unanimous negative reaction and ready to write a community plea to the makers of this product to end production immediately.

But we were surprised — the plastic shofar isn’t universally hated (just mostly hated), and for those who do hate it, there are reasons other than the auditory assault. Below, the major camps of thinking on this — apparently controversial! — holiday item. Which one do you fall into?

LOVE THEM! 

“An essential.”

“Good for the kids! I didn’t know there were any other thoughts on this.”

“My toddler is obsessed! It’s so cute!”

“Fun and educational for kids!”

“Anything to make my kids like something Jewish (even if they are horribly annoying).”

“Cute!”

“Love them despite how annoying they are. Kids love them!”

“Love them! Anything to encourage Judaism in our kids’ lives.”

“They make shofaring accessible!”

“10/10 for my 4-year-old!”

“Worth it to excite children about Rosh Hashanah! L’dor v’dor!”

“Fun for the right kid. Obnoxious when given to the wrong kid. I have both those kids.”

“Cute for kids!”

“Great for little kiddos!”

“A great and easy way to get kids involved in the holiday!”

“Good for kids to learn how to blow the shofar!”

“Why not? A fun toy.”

I DISAPPROVE ON ANNOYANCE GROUNDS

Dozens of variations of “NOOOOOOOOO”

“It’s giving Jewish kazoo.”

“The inventor of these should immediately repent.”

“Diabolical.”

“If this is a shofar, so is a kazoo.”

“Straight into the trash.”

“The bane of my existence.”

“Please god no.”

“Burn them all”

“Spawn of satan.”

“The sound haunts my nightmares ”

“THE WORST ITEM EVER INVENTED.”

“Isn’t that just a kazoo?”

“Torture.”

“AHHHHHH”

I DISAPPROVE ON JEWISH GROUNDS

“Cheapens the significance of blowing a real shofar.”

“Ornamental at best.”

“A bit too capitalistic for an ancient tradition.”

“Not authentic by any means.”

“Feels very insincere.”

“This is not a real shofar, it’s a toy.”

I DISAPPROVE ON ENVIRONMENTAL GROUNDS

“A plastic gimmick that will end up in a landfill? Not a Jewish value.”

“More single-use plastics probably aren’t what we need right now.”

“I’m against anything that’s going to leech microplastics into the water supply.”

“Something to fill up a landfill goes against our values.”

I CONTAIN MULTITUDES

“So cute for 5 minutes, then annoying, then guilt about wasting plastic.”

.

The post This Is the Most Controversial High Holiday Item appeared first on Kveller.

Netflix has officially announced a bonus High Holiday: Oct. 22, which is when season three of “Nobody Wants This” comes out.

A quick catch up: “Nobody Wants This” is the show about Joanne, an agnostic podcaster (Kristen Bell) who falls for Noah, a hot rabbi (Adam Brody) that shot to success in its first season as the couple navigated the will they/won’t they path, then received a slightly more lukewarm reaction for a second season that ended with — spoiler alert — Joanne likely converting to Judaism and a very quick third season renewal announcement.

Along with the release date, Netflix released a handful of photos from the new season. Most exciting to us? A shot of Sarah Silverman as Rabbi Eden, Joanne’s Intro to Judaism teacher, and one of Tovah Feldshuh as Bina, Noah’s mom, saying something very serious to Noah’s sister-in-law, Esther, played by Jackie Tohn. So far, there’s no sign of which, if any, Jewish holidays we’ll see portrayed onscreen (like last season’s Purim party), and we’re still waiting to see Sadie Sandler as the psychic who gives a reading to Joanne’s sister Morgan.

Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

If you want to refresh your memory on all things “Nobody Wants This,” we can help. You can read our roundtable from “Nobody Wants This” season one and our roundtable from “Nobody Wants This” season two, multiple opinion pieces about the show, recaps for every episode of season two, our predictions for season three, our whole entire Jewish TV Substack and our last update about season three (complete with everything we knew at the time and everything we still wanted to know).

So… if history is any indication, we’ll have a lot to say when season three comes out. See you then?

The post Season 3 of ‘Nobody Wants This’ Has a Release Date appeared first on Kveller.

Shana tova! If you’re hosting a Rosh Hashanah celebration and want to add some elements beyond tearing into an apple cake, we’ve got you covered. No pressure, of course — if you and your family and/or friends just want to gather to eat a meal a special meal, that’s more than OK. But if you’re looking to dig a little deeper with blessings, rituals and conversation starters, this is for you.

And if you’re looking for even more guidance about how to host a meaningful, delicious, fun and well-decorated Rosh Hashanah — well, we’ve handled that, too. We made you a free 16-page Rosh Hashanah mini magazine that includes a variety of menus, a “How to Host” checklist, the blessings and conversation starters you’ll find below, tips on how to make things fun for the kids and decor ideas. However you decide to celebrate, we’re wishing you a sweet, happy new year.

Click here to download Kveller’s Guide to Hosting Rosh Hashanah. And read on for the abridged Jewish service to kick off the meal with, excerpted from our guide.

Light the holiday candles

Transliteration

Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha’olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel yom tov.

Hebrew

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָֽׁנוּ בְּמִצְו‍ֹתָיו וְצִוָּֽנוּ לְהַדְלִיק נֵר שֶׁל יוֹם טוֹב

English

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, King of the Universe, Who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to kindle the holiday light.

Ask your guests: What has given you light this past year, and how are you hoping to bring in light during this coming year?

Recite the Shehechiyanu

Transliteration

Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu melech ha’olam, shehechiyanu, v’kiyimanu, v’higiyanu la’z’man ha’zeh.

Hebrew

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם שֶׁהֶחֱיָֽנוּ וְקִיְּמָֽנוּ וְהִגִּיעָֽנוּ לַזְמַן הַזֶּה

English

Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive and sustained us, and brought us to this season.

Ask your guests: This prayer marks unprecedented times and special moments. What has been a standout moment for you this past year?

Say the blessing over wine

Transliteration

Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha’olam, borei p’ri ha’gafen.

Hebrew

בָּרוּך אַתָּה אַדָנָי אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶך הָעוֹלָם בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הַגָּפֶן

English

Blessed are You, God, Ruler of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.

Ask your guests: We drink wine to mark this moment as a celebration. What accomplishments do you want to celebrate this year?

Say the Hamotzi (and eat some challah!)

Transliteration

Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha’olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz.

Hebrew

בָּרוּך אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶך הָעוֹלָם הַמּוֹצִיא לֶחֶם מִן הָאָרֶץ

English

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has brought forth bread from the earth.

Ask your guests: What helped sustain and nurture you this past year?

Bless the apples

Transliteration

Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu melech ha’olam borei p’ri ha’eitz. Y’hi ratzon mil’fanecha Adonai Eloheinu shetichadesh aleinu shanah tova u’metukah.

Hebrew

בָּרוּך אַתָּה אַדָנָי אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶך הָעוֹלָם בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָעֵץ יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶךָ יהוה אֱלֹהֵינוּ שֶׁתְחַדֵּש עָלֵינוּ שַׁנָּה טוֹבָה וּמְתוּקָה

English

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who creates the fruit of the tree. May it be Your will, Adonai our God, that the new year will be good and sweet.

Ask your guests: Share something that made your day sweeter.

Download Kveller’s free Guide to Hosting Rosh Hashanah for more!

The post Blessings, Rituals and Conversation Starters for Your Rosh Hashanah Celebration appeared first on Kveller.

“Do you have the garden shears?,” my mother asked. Yes, I thought to myself. Somewhere in the detritus of my garage they were resting on a shelf next to my soiled gardening gloves, a trowel and some leftover fertilizer used for flowers I had planted in my window boxes this past spring. 

They were rusted yet still sharp enough to trim the hedge of the bush that was growing in front of my father’s tombstone. The shears came with me as I made the 90 minute once yearly pilgrimage to visit my father’s grave before the High Holidays, accompanied by my mother and sister.

The first time I visited a cemetery was in sixth grade when my grandfather passed away. Row upon row of tombstones; the sheer enormity of the cemetery overwhelmed me. I noticed some tombstones had a circular sticker on them and others did not. The ones with a sticker had neatly trimmed hedges in front of them and the ones that did not were overgrown or trimmed at odd angles. 

“The sticker indicates perpetual care,” my mother said. “You pay someone from the cemetery to take care of the bushes and they trim them forever,” she said. “That is what perpetual means, forever,” she said instinctively knowing the next question I would ask. 

I decided, then and there, I wanted a perpetual care tombstone for myself one day. “Will Grandpa Bert’s have perpetual care?” I asked. “No, we don’t do that in our family,” she said. “We take care of the hedges, not a stranger. Go find a rock or pebble to lay on top of his tombstone.” I was happy to take on this mission, looking for the smoothest shiniest stone on the narrow pathways that zig zagged between the endless rows of tombstones. 

I had learned in Hebrew school that placing rocks on top of the grave was customary during a visit. Rocks remain unlike flowers which were ephemeral. They symbolized respect and remembrance for the loved one, and so I took a tally of the tombstones close to my grandfather’s grave. Some had multiple stones of all sizes but most had none on top. How quickly someone can be forgotten, I thought to myself. 

When my mother asked my sister and I for available dates to visit my father’s grave before the High Holidays, I was not taken by surprise. I knew the question was coming as the weeks in August rolled by. She lives much closer to his grave in Long Island than I do. My initial thought was couldn’t she go and just borrow someone’s shears? The High Holidays come at a very busy time, with school starting for my three kids and endless traffic to and from Long Island on the weekends. Or couldn’t she visit the cemetery office and sign my father’s grave up for perpetual care? 

But my father wouldn’t have wanted that. He had a green thumb, plotting a small patch of our backyard in Queens with a section for tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers and filling flower beds beside the driveway with geraniums and marigolds. He took great pride in planting everything himself; I eagerly helped him each year. Each night when he got home from work, he would water the plants, tending to their care and ensuring they’d grow and flourish just as he hoped his children would one day. He’d want us, not a stranger, to come and tend to his grave, and he’d want us to be there willingly. Even though we never discussed it, I know he wouldn’t want us to visit his grave because we feel obligated, but rather because the visit tied to the High Holidays is deeply woven into Jewish tradition. And so my sister and I acquiesce. 

My father was not into Jewish guilt, but following tradition meant everything to him. He felt a deep spiritual connection to the themes of the High Holidays: renewal, repentance, reflection and growth. I have vivid memories of sitting next to him at services hearing him loudly chant “Avinu Malkeinu” in our back row white plastic folding chairs, of watching him pound his chest lightly as he recited the “Al Cheit.” 

Now, my sister, my mother and I take turns trimming his hedge. My sister and I do most of the hedge trimming, crouching at his tombstone, removing weeds. My mother takes a turn too, although this gesture isn’t as easy as it was just a few years ago for her. We step back and inspect our work, trimming the edges again ever so slightly. Our handiwork looks acceptable. Though not as manicured as the perpetual care tombstones, ours was a labor of love, an important way of honoring my father as we prepare to usher in a new year without him. 

The post Why I Visit My Father’s Grave Before the High Holidays appeared first on Kveller.

Two days before Rosh Hashanah (which this year falls on Sept. 11) and five days after Beyonce’s birthday (which always falls on Sept. 4), Jewish a cappella band Six13 has graced us with a Beyonce-adjacent Rosh Hashanah parody.

“Simanim” is a take on the 1999 hit “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child, the girl group that catapulted Beyonce — along with Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland — to stardom. The song is a natural fit for the Hebrew word simanim, which refers to symbolic foods and is pronounced a lot like “say my name.”

In this quick parody, Six13 lists some of the the symbolic foods used in Rosh Hashanah celebrations across Jewish cultures: apples, honey, carrot, cabbage, beet, date, pomegranate, gourd and fish or sheep’s head.

But my favorite detail lies in the first few seconds. At the beginning of “Say My Name” we hear producer Rodney Jerkins — aka Darkchild’s — 1999 producer tag, “Darkchild 99.” In the Six13 version, that moment seamlessly becomes “Rosh Hashanah.” (If you’re anything like me, you spent many years listening to this song on your Discman on the school bus thinking a random voice was saying “Dashanana” and not even questioning it, but I digress.)

Many props to Six13 for finding the perfect Jewish Destiny’s Child crossover moment. Hope your new year is full of the people you love and all the simanim you could hope for.

The post This Destiny’s Child Rosh Hashanah Parody Is All About the Food appeared first on Kveller.

There are numerous renowned Jewish children’s and YA authors and illustrators whose identity and affiliation with Judaism is well-known and often crops up in their work or personal interviews: Maurice Sendak, Judy Blume and Sydney Taylor to name but a few. But bibliophiles may not be aware that there are a number of other famed and talented kidlit creators over the last few decades who are, in fact, also members of the Tribe. Here’s a list of notable children and young adult authors you may not have known are Jewish!

R. L. Stine

For ‘90s kids who grew up in North America, it was hard to escape the siren call of R. L. Stine’s wildly popular “Goosebumps” series for older kids, and “Fear Street” for teens. With their iconic raised logos and spooky covers, myself and many of my peers had R. L. Stine’s books as a first introduction to horror literature. I imagine there were many future filmmakers and TV show writers who were inspired by those books in their childhood to create some scary works of their own (possibly even some Jewish kids — Ari Aster perhaps?). But for all the thrills and chills of Stine’s scares, the books had heart, filled with humorous moments, friendship and kids and adults helping each other through perilous travails. 

Chris Van Allsburg

With “The Polar Express” as one of his most famous works, one might be forgiven for not necessarily being aware that children’s author and illustrator Chris Van Allburg is part of the tribe — but yes, he converted to Judaism. Van Allburg is an incredibly talented and accomplished children’s book writer: “Jumanji” also continues to be well-loved, and both of these award-winning books have been adapted for the big screen. Fun fact: Chris was also a visual development artist for The Little Mermaid (Jewish connection: songs written by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken).

Phoebe Gilman

Phoebe Gilman was a beloved Canadian children’s author (though she was born in New York City), well known for her Jillian Jiggs books and other beloved classics like “The Balloon Tree” and “Grandma and the Pirates.” Gilman was a talented artist who worked primarily in the mediums of watercolor paints and colored pencils. There’s even a Prince Edward Island bookstore that’s mostly dedicated to her work and her inspiring creative spirit. 

Though the majority of Phoebe’s books were more secular in nature, one of her most widely-known books and one particularly beloved by Jewish readers is the staple “Something From Nothing.” The book portrays an eastern European shtetl community where young Joseph’s worn-out blanket manages to keep yielding “something from nothing” (a jacket, then a vest, then other articles of clothing that grow progressively smaller) thanks to his clever tailor grandfather. Part of the book’s charm is that it also showcases a family of mice that adopt the scraps of Joseph’s blanket that fall through the floorboards, leading to a very clever story-within-a-story that young readers adore. Without being preachy or moralizing, the book imparts positive messages rooted in Jewish values like reusing and recycling, the importance of elderly family members in our lives and the value of community.

Judith Kerr

Perhaps best known for the absolutely iconic “The Tiger Who Came To Tea” — which has also been adapted into a theatrical production and TV adaptation — Judith Kerr was a Jewish child refugee from Nazi Germany who fled to the United Kingdom and became renowned as a quintessentially British children’s writer, also beloved for her “Mog” series. Kerr addressed her childhood experiences in the powerful fictionalized account “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit.”

Ava Reid

In regards to current hot young adult literature, Ava Reid is certainly a name that crops up frequently. Spanning genres like fantasy, sci-fi, mythologically-inspired fiction and romance, some of her bestselling books include “The Wolf and the Woodsman” and “A Study in Drowning.” Born in New York City to Jewish parents, some of her works evoke Jewish fantasy authors Naomi Novik and Leigh Bardugo, and she has an extensive knowledge of eastern European Jewish history that makes its way into some of the themes and topics of her work.

The post 5 Kid Lit and Young Adult Authors You May Not Know Are Jewish appeared first on Kveller.

When the cast of “Dancing with the Stars” samba, tango, cha-cha, waltz and freestyle onto the dance floor for season 35 on Sept. 15, it’ll be an extremely Jewish affair.

Last week, Ukrainian-Israeli dancer Adele Zaikman won “DWTS: The Next Pro,” securing her spot as a professional dancer on the cast of season 35. “It’s been surreal, honestly,” Adele told the Hollywood Reporter. “A dream come true, because I would never expect my life to change so quickly. It’s a lot to take in. It’s amazing, though. I’m so, so grateful.”

The 24-year-old was crowned the winner after dancing a samba and freestyling with partner Nev Shulman, who wore a Star of David as part of his costume. With her addition, there are now four Jewish professional dancers on “Dancing with the Stars”: Adele, Alan Bersten, Daniella Karagach and Val Chermkovskiy.

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Then, two days after Adele’s crowning, ABC announced the season 35 celebrity cast. This includes Paralympic gold medalist Ezra Frech, son of Persian Jewish actress Bahar Soomekh. He will partner with Daniella. “It’s something that’s been on the vision board, but it felt so far away, until it didn’t. And then all of a sudden it was a real opportunity,” Ezra told Entertainment Tonight about doing the show. “[Joining] was a no-brainer.”

21-year-old Frech competed at the 2020 and 2024 Paralympic Games in track and field. He won two gold medals in Paris for the High Jump T63 and the 100m T63, setting a world record and national record for High Jump T63 at that time.

With all these Jewish dancers taking the stage, the only question remains: Will there be a Hanukkah dance for “Dancing With the Stars” 2026 holiday celebration, like Alan Bersten’s dance last year to “Miracle” by Matisyahu?

Now that would really be a miracle.

The post ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Is Getting Even More Jewish for Season 35 appeared first on Kveller.

Ever since we were kids, we’ve understood two things about Rosh Hashanah: that having our new year start in the fall is the undisputed correct timing, and that getting two new years is the ultimate flex. If you’re not a new year’s fan like we are, we get it — the Jewish High Holidays have so much else to offer, spiritually and culturally. But if you relish in the opportunity to remake yourself at every opportunity, here are some ideas for 5787 from the Kveller editors.

The post 18+ Ideas if Rosh Hashanah Gives You ‘New Year, New You’ Energy appeared first on Kveller.

Last Rosh Hashanah looked nothing like Rosh Hashanah usually does for my family. Normally, there is the familiar rhythm of the holiday: going to synagogue, hearing the shofar, eating apples dipped in honey and sitting around the table eating challah, matzah ball soup, brisket and dessert. I have always loved that Rosh Hashanah gives us a reason to gather while also asking us to reflect.

Last year, I missed all of that. I was recovering from a double mastectomy with DIEP flap reconstruction. This Rosh Hashanah, I am preparing to become a rabbi. Even as I write those two sentences, it’s hard to believe they describe consecutive years of my life. Maybe that is why I have been thinking so much about time lately, and how rarely our lives unfold according to the timelines we once imagined.

Professionally, I’m a professor of counseling psychology. I teach future school counselors and mental health counselors about human development, identity and resilience. But it turns out that understanding resilience and needing it are very different things. I was first diagnosed with breast cancer just before my 40th birthday. By then, I had spent years teaching students about coping, about what happens when life doesn’t go according to plan. I understood the theories. I knew the research. Knowing them didn’t make cancer any less terrifying.

I had a lumpectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and years of medication. I did what came naturally to me: I learned everything I could, kept track of appointments and focused on whatever needed to happen next. People called me brave. I never particularly identified with that word. Mostly, I was doing what people do when there isn’t another option: getting through it. I assumed I would eventually feel like myself again. But cancer doesn’t hand you your old life back on the last day of treatment. My body had changed. My relationship with time had changed. I found myself thinking about things I had always wanted to do, things I assumed there would be time for later.

Judaism has always been central to my life. I attended a Modern Orthodox yeshiva in the 1980s and 1990s and loved Jewish learning so much that I later majored in Judaic Studies. But there were parts of Jewish life that simply weren’t open to girls in the world in which I was raised. I didn’t lead services. I didn’t read from the Torah. I wasn’t counted in a minyan. Women were already becoming rabbis elsewhere in the Jewish world, but that wasn’t the world I knew. The rabbinate wasn’t a path presented to girls like me. I didn’t decide against becoming a rabbi; it simply never occurred to me that it was something I could become.

After my first cancer diagnosis, I traveled to Israel and began thinking differently about the things I had been saving for “someday.” One of those things was deeply personal: I wanted to read from the Torah. Hillel’s famous question in “Pirkei Avot” — “If not now, when?” — suddenly felt a lot less theoretical. So, in my 40s, I celebrated an adult bat mitzvah and committed myself more deeply to Torah study. Eventually, that path led me to rabbinical school.

This is where being an older millennial woman gets interesting. I look around at my friends in our 40s and realize we’re all over the place. Some are raising toddlers. Others are sending kids to college. Some are changing careers, getting divorced, getting remarried or starting over entirely. Midlife did not come with the organizational chart I was promised. Thankfully, Judaism doesn’t seem particularly concerned with that timeline. “Pirkei Avot” teaches, Ben arba’im le-binah, “At forty, one attains understanding” (5:21). I love that Judaism doesn’t tell us that at 40 we’ve arrived. It tells us that at 40, we’re finally beginning to understand.

When I was younger, I thought wisdom meant having answers. Now I think it means having better questions. Maybe that’s why becoming a rabbi at 44 doesn’t feel like starting over. I don’t have to discard the psychologist, professor, mother, wife, cancer survivor or yeshiva girl I once was. I bring all of them with me.

The Hebrew word teshuvah, often translated as repentance, literally means “return.” I’ve come to love that meaning. Maybe we don’t need to reinvent ourselves every Rosh Hashanah. Sometimes we need to return to something that has been inside us all along. Last Rosh Hashanah, I was recovering from surgery. This Rosh Hashanah, I am preparing to be ordained as a rabbi in December.

When I hear the shofar this year, I will think about the woman who couldn’t hear it last year. But I will also think about the girl who loved Torah without knowing that one day she would be able to stand before a community and teach it as a rabbi. They are both still part of me. I’m no longer asking whether I’ve finally become the person I was supposed to be. As 5787 begins, I’m asking a much more interesting question:

Who am I still becoming?

The post My Cancer Diagnosis Led Me To Rabbinical School appeared first on Kveller.