Hungry for Hanukkah pastries? Aren’t we all. Too busy to find places around New York City that will satisfy your craving? Consider this an early Hanukkah present.

1. For the Fancy Side of the Family: Eleni’s Playfully Unique Cookies

Sip tea and nibble on elegant nosh with your relatives on Upper East Side relatives at this nut-free bakery.

2. For You, the Cupcake Lover: Two options, of course.

Magnolia Bakery

Simple and delectable Magnolia cupcakes will make you croon “All I want for Hannukah is you.” Enjoy these chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting and delicate little Jewish stars and Menorahs on top.

Crumb’s Bake Shop

The Holiday Signature Collection includes two types of cupcakes: the scrumptious Stars of David (vanilla cake filled with chocolate cream cheese frosting topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting) and mouthwatering Mazel (vanilla cake filled and frosted with vanilla buttercream sprinkled with blue and yellow nonpareils)

3. For your Gluten-Free Homegirl: Babycakes NYC (kosher, vegan, and gluten-free)

They’re selling special-edition rugelach and jam donuts for the holiday season.

Despite their seemingly limitless ingredient restrictions, we hear this place is quite good.

4. For the Jelly Donut Enthusiast: Susan Sez

Susan sez “say it with cake” has a new answer to Israeli sufganiyot. Owner Susan Berlin says her jelly-filled cupcakes “taste amazing” and are healthier than traditional fried donuts.

5. For the Dessert Builder: Baked By Melissa

Unfortunately, Baked by Melissa does not carry any Hannukah-specific treats. What they do feature, however, is a pretty extensive blueprint for how to build a dreidel out of several different signature flavors.

All you need is 100 cupcakes to create this picture—no big deal.

Happy snacking!

The post A Sweet-Toothed New Yorker’s Guide to Hanukkah Desserts appeared first on Jewcy.

With a September and October that the New York Times has dubbed “one of the most crowded literary traffic jams in recent memory,” even the most voracious of readers may need a Guide for the Perplexed to navigate the abundance of Friday night reading options.

Yesterday alone saw the publication of three major new releases, including the latest from Jewish Literary Superhero Michael Chabon, that are bound to be on people’s minds this High Holiday season. Don’t have time to read all three before Rosh Hashanah? Here’s a handy guide:

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, by Hanna Rosin:

From a wildly popular 2010 article in the Atlantic titled “The End of Men,” to last week’s attention-grabbing excerpt in the New York Times Magazine, Hanna Rosin’s new book, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, is finally here.

The book explores what Rosin argues is an unprecedented gender role reversal in America. Women, it turns out, have pulled ahead of men in many categories—the two most interesting of which are work and sex. Drop some knowledge at Rosh Hashanah dinner with this Vox Tablet podcast that asks whether the same is also true in Jewish communal life.

The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, by Shani Boianjiu:

In a debut novel that Vogue called “searing,” Shani Boianjiu writes about three Israeli women who are conscripted to their national service in the Israeli Defense Forces. Boianjiu, an Israeli of Romanian and Iraqi descent, grew up in a town near the Lebanese border. She wrote movingly about her own experience in the Israeli army in Sunday’s New York Times.

While you’re at it, here are three Israeli writers she recommends you check out: Sara Shilo, Eli Amir, and Galila Ron-Feder Amit.

Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon

Chabon’s new work of fiction includes a variety of eccentric characters all struggling with love, friendship, and money. Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, described it as a “rich, comic new novel” by an author who has “made a career of routing big, ambitious projects … with superlative results.” Adam Kirsch called it “typically stylish, but overwritten.”

Read an excerpt, or just listen to one:

Happy reading!

(Image via Shutterstock)

The post Three Books Published Yesterday That You Should Read (Or Read About) appeared first on Jewcy.

Forget fashion week—this season’s sartorial drama involves rabbis and skinny jeans.

As if the tension between hipsters and Haredim in Williamsburg wasn’t enough, an edict released by a group of Haredi rabbis, including the son of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, bans their male constituents from wearing tight pants. Clearly, they don’t believe skinny jeans and True Religion have much to do with each other.
 
The letter encourages men to “uphold the sanctity of the camp,” and also includes the apothegm, “The clothes of a person are an indication of his character.” The other side of the letter features an image of Haredi rabbis of yesteryear sporting loose-fitting clothing.
 
This does not bode well for jeggings.

The post Fashion Week Dispatch: Haredi Rabbis Ban Skinny Jeans For Men appeared first on Jewcy.

Breaking news, young Jews: In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Matisyahu maintains that he is still more Jewish than Drake, even after the public release of his freshly shorn face in December 2011. Although Drake, the Canadian television star-turned-rapper, has a Jewish mother and is therefore halachically Jewish, Matisyahu upholds his claim that he reps the tribe better than the Canadian rapper. This, of course, despite Drake’s rambunctious and outrageously lavish Bar Mitzvah-themed music video.

Of course, biologically speaking, it is impossible for one Jew to be ‘more Jewish’ than another. But let’s run with it: although Matisyahu has ditched the scruff, he seems to identify with a more modern stream of Judaism. Unlike in a previous stage of life, during which he refused to walk outside with his glasses on so as to not be tempted by posters of scantily-clad women (there are women-obscuring glasses for that, it turns out), Matisyahu now has a broader and more open-minded perspective. Speaking of the character he plays in the new Jewish-themed dybbuk horror movie, The Possession, he says, “He saw that humanity was bigger than one race or religion, and I kind of feel like that’s what I do. People really ripped me apart for going out in the world and playing music for non-Jews, but that’s not the issue for me.”

Let’s not get too excited, though, about Matisyahu’s newly discovered secularism: he still keeps kosher, doesn’t hold concerts on Saturdays, and knows a lot about dybbuks from his new film. And let’s be real—his beard was shaved in a Supercuts on the Upper West Side, a place not-quite-devoid of Jewish brethren.

As Matisyahu said himself: “It grows back!”

Related: Matisyahu Shaves Beard, Is No Longer Hasidic [The Scroll]

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