Back in the good old days, when the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, the Giants were still in New York, a pizza cost a nickel, and the big band swing was king, it was much easier to identify someone's ethnic heritage by their name.
Bar none, the Bible contains the greatest superhero stories of all time. People live to 900, come back from the dead, miraculously heal, split great bodies of water, and on and on. Plus, everything's described in such rich detail…
When Omri Casspi takes the floor for the Sacramento Kings this winter, he will be the first Israeli-born player to play in the NBA. Casspi was selected by the Sacramento with the 23rd overall pick of Thursday’s draft.
Here’s some trivia for you, beloved blogosphere: Mel Brooks is one of only a dozen entertainers to win an Emmy, Tony, Grammy and Academy Award. For which work did Mel Brooks win his first ever award?
Herschel Rosenthal, 91, a former liberal Democratic State Assemblyman and State Senator from Los Angeles, passed away last Friday from complications from Pneumonia.
Rosenthal is remembered as a man of his word for his sincerity, public service, and support for the working class. He has been described…
To work on the synthesizer during Gershon Kingsley’s time took not only technical genius, but also a daring inventiveness and a thirst for experimentation. Prior to the Moog, inventor/musicians such as the great Leon Theremin and Jewish synthesizer pioneer Raymond Scott attempted to push the bounds of sound…
If you listen commercial radio nowadays, there’s a good chance the music you’ll hear will be entirely devoid of any real instrumentation. Vocoded and auto-tuned vocals backed by synthesized instrumental tracks,…
Baseball has always been an American pastime, and when AT&T Park opened in 2000 the San Francisco Giants and their fans had a new place to catch some major league action.
Going to a game may be a religious experience for some of the Giants’ more avid fans,…
June 19, 2009 | by rachel leibold I visit the Trader Joe's in Millbrae so often that an employee once called me a "regular." Mint chocolate UFOs, ruby red rooibos tea and the cheapest butter, eggs, chocolate chips and milk around have me stopping in at TJ's…
Scott Feldman, the 26-year-old Jewish right-hander, will take the ball for the Texas Rangers as they face the Giants tonight at AT&T Park. Feldman is having by far the best season of his career, sporting a 5-1 record with 3.70 ERA, and…
Ilana and Jeremy under the chuppah at their wedding June 14.
A long, long time ago in a land far, far away, I went to journalism school with an extremely nice and funny girl named Ilana. I recently learned through…
Not one, but TWO new Jewish indie rock bands have been blowing my mind as of late. I will share with you, dear reader, just what makes them so special:
1) Girls in Trouble
Key Jewish player: Alicia Jo Rabins, fiddler extraordinare
To be completely honest with you, punk rock saved my life. It was just after my Bat Mitzvah but before actual adulthood. I was 14 with too much eyebrow and a mouth full of braces when I first heard the strains of Crass, Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys and The Ramones…
Several weeks ago I wrote about Talmud Comics, an amazing site that showcases the work of the very talented Yonah Lavery, a 23-year-old Canadian artist and Talmud scholar. Yonah creates comics mainly based on passages in the tractate Berachot, which range from when to say the…
My boss always half-jokes that Jews aren't outdoorsy. But that's definitely not true in the Bay Area; a new exhibit at the Jewish Museum Hohenems in Austria demonstrates that was never true for European Jews, either. In fact, European Jews…
Just happened upon this very weird and creative music video from Brooklyn-based DeLeon, a band on JDub Records that considers their music "15th century Spanish indie rock infused with the deeply mysterious and entrancing cadences of the ancient…
Six years ago, I moved to Cedar Falls, Iowa where I knew not a soul. I worked as a reporter for the local newspaper. The job helped me wiggle into the community, but it was nonetheless lonely and scary and unfamiliar terrain. I was also the only Jew in the…
It's very unusual that one of j.'s op-eds gets me to change my mind on anything. Don't get me wrong - I like our op-ed section, I think it's interesting and enlightening, and I enjoy reading other peoples' opinions. But in the three and a half years I've been working…
I literally just hung up the phone with Dan Jacobs, founder of Everywun, a socially conscious business headquartered in Palo Alto that allows, well everyone, to donate to their favorite charitable causes without dropping a dime.
At this point, the conscientious reader would be saying, as I certainly did,…
It happens to everyone from time to time, perhaps more often than we'd like to admit. You click on an interesting headline which unfolds into an interesting story which unfolds into a longer story, a background search and a Wikipedia check. Before you know it, and perhaps to your own…
Psst: Oakland art-rapper Yoni Wolf recently divulged that he's working on a fancy new album with his band Why? - set for a fall release on Anticon records. The curly-topped Jewish performer told Pitchfork.com that the album, Eskimo Snow, will be his…
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While looking through a folder of things I've saved to blog about later, I came across this gem of a story: 
Bar none, the Bible contains the greatest superhero stories of all time. People live to 900, come back from the dead, miraculously heal, split great bodies of water, and on and on. Plus, everything's described in such rich detail…
I visit the Trader Joe's in Millbrae so often that an employee once called me a "regular." Mint chocolate UFOs, ruby red rooibos tea and the cheapest butter, eggs, chocolate chips and milk around have me stopping in at TJ's…
My boss always half-jokes that Jews aren't outdoorsy. But that's definitely not true in the Bay Area; a new exhibit at the 
My Canadian buddy Steve Bergson is in New York this weekend for the…
