Posted in Popular Culture on Jul 1st, 2009
Al Franken and his wife of 32 years, Franni Bryson.
Eight months after the election, Al Franken (D, Jewish) was declared the winner of Minnesota’s 2008 Senate election over incumbent Norm Coleman (R, Jewish). That makes Franken the 13th sitting Jewish U.S. senator. Like Coleman, Franken is intermarried.
In 2003, Franken talked about his family with the Jewish Journal of Greater […]
Posted in Parenting, Popular Culture on Jun 29th, 2009
I have been trying to tune out all of the sad news about Michael Jackson passing away. This must be very hard on Michael Jackson’s three children whom he was raising. The two older children’s mother is Jackson’s ex-wife Debbie Rowe, who is Jewish. When the couple divorced in 1999, she signed over her parental […]
Posted in Popular Culture on Jun 22nd, 2009
Aubrey Graham, AKA “Drake,” a former star of Degrassi: The Next Generation, is apparently about to be bigger than the Beatles, Elvis and Michael Jackson combined, if you are to believe this hyperbolic story in the Toronto Star. He hasn’t released an album yet, but Kanye West has directed his video, he’s touring with Lil […]
Posted in Jews of color, The Rest of the World, Popular Culture, Statistics, Intermarriage on Jun 4th, 2009
Why didn’t I take statistics in graduate school? Who knew that instead of teaching history I’d be working for a non-profit where statistics are vitally important and constantly contested. Take the recent flurry of posts from major bloggers about Jewish and African-American attitudes toward intermarriage.
The bloggers’ exchange kicked off with a light post by Atlantic […]
Posted in Marriage and Relationships, Weddings, Popular Culture on Jun 2nd, 2009
June is LGBT Pride Month in the United States. It couldn’t come at a better time.
Last week on Tuesday we got the bad news that the Supreme Court of California had ruled to uphold the legality of Proposition 8, the statewide referendum against same-sex marriage. I live in Massachusetts, one of the five states that […]
Posted in Parenting, Popular Culture on May 27th, 2009
An article in the New York Times about the latest American Girl doll caught my eye in the blog Anti-Racist Parent. (I subscribe to their RSS feed because I aspire to be that.) It’s an interesting story — the latest in this line of historically-based dolls is Jewish.
Just to give you the background, […]
Posted in Interdating, Popular Culture, Intermarriage on May 18th, 2009
This isn’t the first time that I’ve heard that non-Jews sign up for JDate, the internet’s oldest and most prominent Jewish dating service. In an article that ran in last week’s Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, we learn that 2 percent of the people signing up for JDate aren’t Jewish.
At least, they aren’t yet. […]
Posted in Jewish web resources, The Rest of the World, Popular Culture on May 13th, 2009
Hey! It’s Jewish-American Heritage Month! Apparently President Obama declared it yesterday! I didn’t know that was coming, even though I follow the White House blog feed. The president called on all Americans to recognize Jewish American contributions to society.
And I’ve had to come back and edit myself here because–we have this every year! I trained […]
Posted in Popular Culture on May 8th, 2009
We were going to use a picture of the slick new Starship Enterprise, but this still from the original series is indescribably cooler.
BREAKING NEWS!
A new Star Trek movie comes out today!!!!
Wait? You already knew that? Darn. The Internet just can’t keep up with newspapers and TV. (Especially in this economy.)
Even if you knew about the […]
Posted in Popular Culture on Apr 24th, 2009
Yeah, I know, I’m not exactly up to date on pop culture. I know everything that’s happening in a certain corner of the internet, but it’s an awfully geeky corner. Sometimes, though, the goodies come to me.
Hillel, The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, ran a short interview with Top Chef winner Hosea Rosenberg, the child […]
