I’m all for letting Mark Zuckerberg and his new wife Priscilla Chan honeymoon in peace, but I couldn’t resist blogging about two noteworthy events that occurred during the newlyweds’ Italian vacation. First, the Facebook Founder and CEO took his bride to a *kosher restaurant in the Jewish area in Rome. The couple dined at Nonna…
In the run up to the big Facebook initial public offering this past week, the media went Facebook crazy and tried to get interviews from everyone who has ever been connected to Mark Zuckerberg. Of course that included the rabbi of his childhood congregation. In an article on The Scarsdale Daily website, Rabbi David Holtz…
When I first read the headline of this NPR blog post (“For Love Or Insurance? Rabbi Seeks Young Wife To Lower Health Costs”) I couldn’t even imagine what this was all about. It turns out there’s a rabbi in Florida who needs better health insurance coverage and is looking for a young wife to make…
Here’s my recent post on the Jewish Techs blog for The Jewish Week If you didn’t receive numerous email solicitations from non-profit organizations during the final week of 2010, then your email server was likely down. Many of these charitable organizations that sent year end pleas for your contributions have begun using Razoo.com, which claims…
Cross-posted to Jewish Techs (The NY Jewish Week) The Web can be a misleading place. For years, if you typed whitehouse.com into your browser, it wouldn’t take you to the official home of our President on the Web, but rather to the home of a pornographic Web site. In 2004, the owner of that website…
Aside from NBA star LeBron James leaving one Jewish NBA franchise owner in Cleveland (Quicken Loans and Rock Financial chairman Dan Gilbert) and going to work for another Jewish NBA franchise owner in Miami (Israeli-American CEO of Carnival Corporation Micky Arison), there are several Jewish themes and lessons in “The Decision” of which team the…
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has taken quite a bit of criticism over her recent “no meat on Saturdays” proclamation. Or, as Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press wrote: Gov. Jennifer Granholm is in “a tall vat of deep-fried tofu.” Granholm reasoned that in Michigan, a state hit hard by the economic recession, it’s become…
In Judaism there is a concept called “yichus,” which basically means lineage or pedigree. In popular parlance “good yichus” is used to describe someone with connections to a distinguished family. I was thinking about this term the other day while reading Time Magazine’s very witty Joel Stein’s column. Stein decided to research his geneology and…
Many people are looking to religion and spirituality during this time of economic uncertainty (a euphemism for recession). The title of a recent article on the Time Magazine website asks: “Is it Okay to Pray for Your 401(k)?” My friend and mentor Rabbi Danny Nevins (dean of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary)…
From the NY Daily News History will forever record Elizabeth Brooks’ bat mitzvah as “Mitzvahpalooza.” For his daughter’s coming-of-age celebration last weekend, multimillionaire Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks booked two floors of the Rainbow Room, hauled in concert-ready equipment, built a stage, installed special carpeting, outfitted the space with Jumbotrons and arranged command…