Learning to Undo Ashke-normativity – A Jew in the Motherland

By Jonathan Katz October 22, 2014

Like most Jews with ties to South Africa, my heritage is extremely Ashkenazi. In fact, both sides of my family largely originate from the same region of what is now northeastern Lithuania and northern Belarus. Growing up in New York, most of what I was exposed to as “Jewish culture” was really “Ashkenazi, specifically Lithuanian…

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The beardless Matisyahu: a lesson in spirituality

By greback December 26, 2011

Matisyahu’s Twitter bomb is making the rounds. He shaved. He announced it with a photo and one of the most vaguely expressed personal statements he has ever issued. The argument now is over whether or not he dropped being a Hasid or being religious all together. The tweet is ambiguous – probably deliberately so. The…

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