NYC Sentinel

Kaparot: chicken-swinging for the soul

By Marlow Stern
The ritual of kaparot occurs when Orthodox Jews take live chickens, swing them over their heads as a means of transferring their sins onto the chickens, and then have them slaughtered on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. Today, kaparot is performed in only Haredi – or Ultra-Orthodox – Jewish communities. In New York City, the largest kaparot ceremony occurs along Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

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The Coens get personal

By Marlow Stern
Following the critical and commercial disappointment of 2004’s “The Ladykillers,” filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen took some time off to think. Out of this brainstorming session came the concepts for future films: “No Country For Old Men” and “Burn After Reading” – and now, “A Serious Man,” starring Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik, a Jewish academic undergoing a spiritual and existential crisis.

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‘Inglourious Basterds’ hands Jews the smoking gun (or bloody Louisville Slugger)

By Marlow Stern
For movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, it’s a bold move to pre-screen Quentin Tarantino’s brutal epic, “Inglourious Basterds,” at a museum that bills itself as “a living memorial to those who perished during the Holocaust.” But how are influential NYC Jewry – rabbis, film critics, Jewish historians and viewers – reacting to a film described by influential Jewish publication Tablet Magazine as “a failure of Jewish morality”?

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