The Bacchanalian, Drunken, Role-Switching Carnival of Purim
The day-long Purim festival was transformed into a week-long carnival in the Dutch Caribbean colonies, as a rowdy celebration of inversion celebrated liberations of all kinds.
Judaism
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Jewish Identity
How do identity politics work in extremis? The resistance in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had to both suppress and amplify their Jewishness.
The Cooking Classes that Americanized Jewish Immigrants
At the end of the 19th century, a Wisconsin woman named Elizabeth “Lizzie” Black Kander tried to help immigrants assimilate, through the food they ate.
Gabrielle Berlinger
An interview with scholar and folklorist Gabrielle Berlinger, a professor of American Studies at the University of North Caroline Chapel Hill.
Summoning 17th-Century Scholars: Researching The Weight of Ink
Much is said nowadays about the fate of print. Do…
Edith Stein, the Jewish Woman Who Became a Catholic Saint
In 1998, Pope John Paul II made one of his…
“Give Us Bread!”
On Monday morning, February 19, 1917, in the Brooklyn…
Matzo and Oreos: Keeping Kosher in America
Adhering to the strict dietary laws of traditional Judaism, or…
The Dead Sea Scrolls: Still Unscrolling
Seventy years ago this month, more or less—during the winter of 1946-47—Bedouin…
How Hanukkah Became “Jewish Christmas”
Hanukkah (traditionally a minor Jewish holiday) commemorates the rededication of…
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