If you’re a millennial like us, N*SYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” is probably the source of many visceral memories for you. For some, that probably includes listening to “No Strings Attached” on a Discman way past your bedtime. For Matt Slater, the winner of Kveller’s 2024 Passover parody contest, the song stirs up memories of the bar and bat mitzvah dance floor. “I was 13 when the song came out,” Slater tells Kveller over e-mail. “So it’s definitely a song I associate with that time in my life.” The song will now forever be associated with Passover, with extra thanks for Broadway star Jonah Platt for b ..read more

If you watch the new Amazon Freevee show “Dinner With the Parents,” based on the British sitcom “Friday Night Dinner,” you will be delighted, by, well, all of it. But specifically, you will be delighted by Carol Kane as the most extra of Jewish grandmothers, who has a thick Eastern European accent, some of the best unexpected jokes, and who also brings some surprisingly meaningful moments of Jewishness to the fore — like a scene in which she chants the Mourner’s Kaddish in the most impeccable way. According to Dan Bakkedahl, who plays the Langer family patriarch in the series, it was Kane who ..read more

I admit it: I’ve never really liked Passover. My family doesn’t do a long seder, I’ve only started avoiding eating hametz during the holiday in the last year or two, and it’s just never been a top holiday of mine. Maybe I sat through one too many bad day school seders with terrible food, I don’t know.  My son, on the other hand, has never met a Jewish holiday he didn’t love, and so he’s all in. We have been reading the haggadah in homeschool (yes, we’re using the Kveller one for learning in homeschool, and also have the PJ Library and Koren children’s one for him) and having lots of disc ..read more

I once heard about a group of Middle Eastern Jewish women for whom food preparation was their primary form of worship. To get ready for the holiday of Passover, the women sorted and cleaned large quantities of rice, one grain at a time, seven times each. When a researcher first stumbled upon this, she assumed some oppressive male rabbi had once demanded this of them, recently or far in the past. No, they told her, this was how they spoke to God, a prayer that came from their homebody hearts. I think about these women often when I prepare for Shabbat or any Jewish holiday — but most of al ..read more

We are almost ready to announce the winner of Kveller’s parody contest, but first, we have to announce the runner-up. It was such a close competition that we had to honor this entry that came in a very close second place. “Four Cups of Wine,” a parody of “Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls, charmed us and our audience, and fortunately, it was submitted by a cantor, Lauren Phillips Fogelman. Knowing she had some singing chops of her own, we asked Phillips Fogelman to record her own version of the song, and luckily for all of us, she agreed. Not only that, but she brought along some fellow mus ..read more

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the intrepid mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the 133 hostages still being held in Gaza, made it to the TIME100 list, along with Yulia Navalnaya, America Ferrera and Mark Cuban. There are a handful of other Jewish representatives on the list, including music producer Jack Antonoff, Jewish dad and Mattel CEO Yinon Kreiz, comedian Alex Edelman, author James McBride, Norah Weinstein, the co-CEO of Baby2Baby, and Jewish mom and comedian Maya Rudolph. Goldberg-Polin, a dual American and Israeli citizen, makes the list for her tireless work to get her son and the rest o ..read more

An important part of any Jewish holiday prep is either sitting with your kids to watch Jewish episodes about said holiday (if they exist) or putting them in front of the TV to watch holiday-themed programming while you get ready for it. There aren’t a lot of great Passover kids’ episodes out there (though there are a lot of delightful Passover videos online for kids and some really fun Passover episodes for grown-up viewers) but here are six Passover episodes you can show your young ones. 1. “A Rugrats Passover” Sure, some people may have critiques about this Passover special (mostly though ..read more

We already knew that Peacock’s upcoming limited series, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” will have an incredible soundtrack, co-written by Academy Award winner Hans Zimmer, in collaboration with Emmy-award nominated Kara Talve. But now, another exciting musical name is joining that fold: Barbra Streisand. That’s right, Babs is recording a special song for the TV show, and not just any song, but a new original song, with lyrics by two-time Grammy and Golden Globe nominated Charlie Midnight, who collaborated with Barbra on her excellent duets album “Partners,” and who, like Barbra, grew up Jewish ..read more

I was angry when I got her text. And hurt. One of my close relatives wrote that she would not be coming to our seder this year. She said, “Three of us have other plans as we are not comfortable with the seder texts and intentions.” What? You’re boycotting the “intentions” of a thousand-year-old Jewish tradition? (Two thousand if you count the first seder referenced in the Mishnah, around 90 BCE.) “Don’t expect to be invited again,” I thought to myself. Jews have observed Passover and held seders throughout nearly 100 generations of upheaval and war. We have held seders in concentration camps ..read more

So many delightful Jewish children’s books with LGBTQ+ representation are hitting the shelves this year, including Leslea Newman’s  upcoming “The Naming Song”. One such book, which came out in January, is “Frankenstein’s Matzah,” a book that combines Passover traditions with science experiments and Mary Shelley love, and that is helmed by a curious, nonbinary scientist named Vee. According to its publisher, it’s the first Jewish children’s book to feature a nonbinary protagonist. Vee uses they/them pronouns, but the most important part of their identity in this book is their love for sci ..read more