Alone on Valentine’s Day? The caring folks at the Make-a-Shidduch Foundation (a shidduch is a match between potential marriage partners, the unfortunate sound of the word notwithstanding) have a new project that could help you find your soul mate, particularly if he or she lives too far away to travel for a blind date.
Shidduch Vision ...

Isaac Sutton’s home, which he shares with his wife and three children in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, is a whimsical overlap of the natural world and artistic enterprise. In his cozy, carpeted living room, glass sculptures, vases, and lamps from different eras are grouped into clusters of greens, reds, and blues; his dining room ...

• Israeli soldiers are about to get some new gear: socks guaranteed not to stink for two weeks straight. No word on whether the laundry-impaired civilian will have access to the miracle footwear. [AFP]
• Public schools in Virginia have removed the “definitive edition” of Anne Frank’s diary from shelves, citing “the sexual nature of the ...

Thank goodness the A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin read Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s The Michael Jackson Tapes so we don’t have to, confirming the suspicion that the book, a combination of interviews with Jackson and the New Jersey-based rabbi’s own thoughts, is “the worst kind of posthumous cash-in from a rabbi who accomplishes the seemingly impossible feat of ...

Some people like their hanukkiahs, the nine-branched menorah used at Hanukkah, to serve as a stately and elegant backdrop for reflecting on the glowing lights, miracles, and how long the smell of fried latkes will stay in the curtains. Others prefer a funkier hanukkiah that expresses something about them—the candles serve as a spotlight to ...

Tablet Magazine’s “Eight Days of Hanukkah,” with lyrics by Sen. Orrin Hatch and music by Madeline Stone, has opened the floodgates of holiday-season crankiness in some readers. Commenters on our site and others that reported on the song are debating the relative religious significance of Hanukkah, the acceptability of enjoying music by a politician with ...

Chelsea Clinton’s engagement to Marc Mezvinsky has bypassed the usual question of, “Is it good for the Jews?”—the answer seems to be an obvious “yes”—and spurred a more audacious inquiry: Will Chelsea convert? But Washington, D.C. JCC blogger Josh Ford makes a persuasive case that rooting for Chelsea to formally join the Jewish faith actually ...

In his 1954 book Man’s Quest for God, theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, bemoaning what he saw as a post-Holocaust religious malaise, took aim at those who chose to blame the prayerbook for Judaism’s woes. “The crisis of prayer is not a problem of the text,” he wrote. “It is a problem of the soul. The ...

Well, Jewish ladies, according to Details magazine, we’ve made it onto an illustrious list that also includes the following: “Cheerleaders. Five-inch heels. Big, natural boobs.” That’s right, we’re a fetish! Wait, you knew that already? Of course you did. After all, as Details points out, “Jews are comparatively cool about sex.” In fact, says the ...

• The European Union plans to call for the establishment of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, and has implied that it would accept a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood; Israel warns that such a move would harm the E.U.’s ability to act as a “significant mediator” in the conflict. [Haaretz]
• Hezbollah’s ...