You may have missed a fascinating obituary from last week: that of Sheila Michaels, the feminist and civil rights activist who is credited for propagating the use of the honorific “Ms.” Outside of this news-making accomplishment, her life was fascinating, from being expelled from college in part due to her outspoken anti-segregationist views, to working as a cabdriver, to becoming a restaurateur. The New York Times piece adds a lot of color and detail in a short amount of space to the life of an amazing woman. But there’s one glaring omission: Michaels was Jewish.

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Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post Does The New York Times Obituary Section Have a Jewish Problem? appeared first on Jewcy.

Ah, December! Season of rampant consumerism, holiday parties you don’t really want to attend, and endless, endless, ENDLESS end-of-year ‘best of’ lists. Luckily the fatigue hasn’t set in yet, so we’re raaaather excited by the New York Times‘ 100 Notable Books of 2014, just released today, which features a bunch of authors interviewed (or reviewed) by Jewcy.

1. Check out Esther Werdiger on Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast’s memoir of parental aging. It’s “an intense, humorous, and frequently painful exercise in catharsis”—well worth the read.

2. Anya Ulinich, author of the deliciously sad, sexy, literary graphic novel Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel, confessed to us that her book was “definitely semi-autobiographical,” and offered male readers some OKCupid profile tips. (Go easy on the Sylvia Plath, fellas.)

3. Boris Fishman, whose superb debut novel A Replacement Life was received to much acclaim, got real with Michael Orbach about Russian hirsuteness, pick-up lines, and the post-Soviet Brooklyn immigrant experience. There’s also a really good (/heartbreaking) anecdote about recycling and perfume, which pretty much encapsulates the tremendous pain of adolescence and immigration.

4. Gary Shteyngart confessed to us that he was “the most Republican kid on the planet”—literally a card-carrying member of the NRA at the age of 11.

5. Yelena Akhtiorskaya, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1992 at the age of 6, told Michael Orbach about the inspiration for her much-praised debut novel, Panic in a Suitcase: “A lot is based on my life… One is being totally fascinated by Brighton Beach—loving it and at the same time realizing that it’s a very absurd and sad place. The second is the dynamics of a claustrophobic, suffocating, chaotic family, which functions as a unified monstrous being.”

Which were your favorite books, Jewish or otherwise, of 2014?

The post Jewish Authors Land on the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2014 appeared first on Jewcy.

Just two months after his recent YouTube pitch for Yeshiva University, actor Zach Braff, who had a “strong Conservative/Orthodox upbringing,” is entering the big league of Jewish theater: Woody Allen on Broadway.

On April 10, the former Scrubs star will make his Broadway debut in “Bullets Over Broadway” as David Shayne, a struggling writer who casts a mobster’s ditsy girlfriend in one of his plays in order to get his show produced. The musical adaptation of the 1994 Oscar-nominated film is not Braff’s first experience acting in a Woody Allen production: at 18, his first movie role was as Woody Allen and Diane Keaton’s son in “Manhattan Murder Mystery.”

In a recent essay in The New York Times, Braff reflected on his journey to acting, highlighting his theater bona fides and emotionally taxing childhood:

I was a melancholic child. Worried, anxious. I never felt as if I belonged anywhere, as if I were a foreign exchange student living among the other kids, who seemed predestined to love sports. Add to that alienation the fact that my parents were going through a divorce, and I was truly treading water. But in that junior high school auditorium, I felt like I’d discovered a secret I didn’t even know was being whispered. There was a place where I might belong: It was the Theater, and I was sold.

Best known for nine seasons as Dr J.D. Dorian on Scrubs, Braff is also famous for writing, directing, producing, and starring in “Garden State,” the 2004 movie set in his home state of New Jersey. His upcoming April premiere brings a new kind of Jersey Boy to Broadway–the Jewish kind.

Related: Zach Braff’s New Movie, “Wish I Was Here,” Has A Release Date!

The post Zach Braff On His New Role In “Bullets Over Broadway” And Being An Emo Kid appeared first on Jewcy.

Today, David Brooks published an op-ed that read like a press release for Pomegranate, a high-end kosher market in Midwood, Brooklyn, and the Orthodox Union. In it, he marvels at the wonder that is the non-dairy cheese puff. (You can eat with a meat meal!)

Clearly he didn’t visit the supermarket on a Friday afternoon, a few hours before Shabbos. The experience would’ve been much less positive if he had tried to push a cart through the pre-Sabbath last minute dash for groceries.

But Brooks wasn’t merely singing the praises of “the kosher Whole Foods,” as he put it. He also rained down compliments on the community that shops there—the Orthodox Jews. As if reading tea leaves, Brooks saw the reasons for the Orthodox’s success in the products on Pomengranate’s shelves. “Pomegranate,” he writes, “looks like any island of upscale consumerism, but deep down it is based on a countercultural understanding of how life should work.”

For the record, an all-kosher supermarket is about as countercultural as the gluten-free aisle of any health food store. So long as it’s sold in the store in a capitalist society, it’s very much part of the mainstream cultural activity.

The rules—or halacha, to put it Hebraically—in Brooks’ estimation constitute “moderate religious zeal.” Remember, he’s publishing this article mere weeks before Passover. Clearly, he’s never been witness to Orthodox preparations for the holiday during which some folks use so much aluminum foil to cover countertops that these rooms resemble the interior of a 60s B-movie spaceship. Passover is to competitive piety as the Olympics are to gymnastics—it’s the biggest stage on which to show your neighbors how much more religious you are than them.

It’s quite easy to go through Brooks’ essay and find other laughable assertions. But I’m more curious as to why Brooks has seemingly abandoned his critical faculties to write this piece of pabulum that is devoid of any sort healthy skepticism.

The sort of romanticizing that Brooks engages in is something I’ve encountered on occasion from non-observant Jews who feel insecure about the degree of their religious knowledge and practice. Nodding to pluralism, they’ll concede that Orthodoxy may not be right for them, but many feel, deep down, that the Orthodox are doing it right, that they are somehow more “authentic” than other Jews. To put it into Sarah Palin terms, the Orthodox are the “real Americans.” The rest of the Jews are “fake.”

What the Orthodox are doing right, according to Brooks, is reproducing. He cites this stat:

Nationwide, only 21 percent of non-Orthodox Jews between the ages of 18 and 29 are married. But an astounding 71 percent of Orthodox Jews are married at that age. And they are having four and five kids per couple.

I’m not going to talk about whether or not I think it’s good or bad that Orthodox Jews marry so young and have so many children. Matrimony and childbearing, I believe, are personal choices. I’d like to think (or at least pretend) that all of these young Orthodox men and women are acting of their own free will and not under extreme pressure to marry young and have many children.

Nor am I here to quibble with Brooks’ assertions about the Orthodox population boom. They clearly enjoy a much higher birthrate than the rest of the Jewish community. But since when does having more kids than other groups validate your lifestyle? It certainly does not mean that you’re necessarily doing something “right.” It’s only “best” insofar as we’re talking about survival of the most populous and in purely evolutionary terms. (For the record, I learned a barebones version of evolutionary theory in my yeshiva high school. It was proffered with the caveat, “We’re only teaching this to you so you can answer the questions on the Regents,” referring to the state examinations. Talk about giving an essential scientific theory the short shrift.)

Missed in all of this treacle is what happens to those whose desires aren’t perfectly in line with the demands of the community—they are either forced out or feel hemmed in. In that case, no amount of dairy-free cheese puffs will fulfill you.

(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images for Meet the Press)

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• Gwyneth Paltrow, total mom dancer. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Narcissism is IN, courtesy of people like Lena Dunham. [Esquire]

• Nick Kroll might be surpassing Schmidt as our favorite Network Jew. Here’s a clip from his upcoming Comedy Central series, the Nick Kroll Show. [Vulture]

• Harold Bloom is God, says Tablet Magazine. [Tablet]

• The New York Times finally realizes Julie Klausner and her How Was Your Week podcast is awesome (we’ve been saying that for years.) [NYT]

• Drew Barrymore would hate going to Florida, and Billy Eichner knows it. [Funny or Die]

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