Navigate to News section

Sundown: Chicken Soup for the Drinker’s Soul

Yom Kippur without God, a Catholic call-out, and Dylan disappoints

by
Hadara Graubart
September 30, 2009

The New York Times pays some attention to a drink from Barbra Streisand’s childhood: the “guggle-muggle,” or Gogol Mogol, made from some combination of egg yolks, milk, and liquor, which the paper calls “the Jewish echinacea: no one really knows if it works, but that doesn’t stop people from taking it.” [NYT]
• A secular Jewish center in Israel grappled with Yom Kippur, which, unlike other holidays when it is “not too complicated to get around the religious issue with a dreidel, a doughnut, by planting trees or offering the first fruits,” requires a conversation with God. [Ynet]
• Israel has made an allowance for lulavim (palm fronds used for Sukkot) to be exported from Gaza to compete with overpriced specimens from Egypt; like the Palestinian women who manufacture yarmulkes, this decision raises questions about religion and economic symbiosis. [JPost]
• Adding injury to those who take his upcoming Christmas album as an insult, Bob Dylan plans to release the thing early to Citigroup customers. [First Post]
• The Vatican attempts to mitigate the Church’s sex scandals in a statement calling out Protestants and Jews for their own abuses. “Comparative tragedy is a dangerous path on which to travel,” replies the head of the New York Board of Rabbis. [Guardian]
• Yesterday marked the launch of the Holocaust Collection, the largest online database of archival material about the genocide. [Holocaust Collection]

Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.