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Talk about your crossover artists! Matisyahu, born Matthew Miller, has been taking the reggae world by storm–which might not be so unusual, except for the fact that he’s a Hasidic Jew who sings/raps about the Jewish experience. Check out the lyric to his hit “King Without a Crown”: “Torah food for my brain let it…

The excitement in the conservative Christian community over the forthcoming movie of C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” is matched only by the hysterics the “Christianization” of Narnia is causing elsewhere. In Salon today, Laura Miller asks, “Can we still cherish the books without believing in their most obvious message?” The obvious…

One of the best movies of the year was not exactly a box office knock-out when it played in theaters this past summer, but the Depression-era rags-to-riches story “Cinderella Man” is now out on DVD, just in time to begin campaigning for Oscar nominations in January. “Cinderella Man” is the true story of boxer James…

This Jew’s second-favorite Christmas tradition is happening tonight: the Charlie Brown special. (My #1 favorite is Chinese food and a rented movie on Christmas eve.) It’s not an exaggeration to say that as a kid, the most meaningful lesson I got on the meaning of this holiday was, year after year, from Charlie Brown’s dejection…

Elle Macpherson—supermodel, actress, and now lingerie designer and CEO of Elle Macpherson Intimates—is out and about posing for the holidays in her next-to-nothing offerings. (One billboard on the Long Island Expressway—an eight-story high vision of Elle bearing bra and panties—was recently taken down for reasons still a bit unclear. Indecency perhaps?) When she appears in…

I found an amazingly thoughtful moment of holiday inspiration this week from a completely unexpected source–author and scholar Umberto Eco . His recent op-ed piece in the London paper The Telegraph, entitled “God isn’t big enough for some people,” is a poignant and yet blistering commentary on society’s desire to find something even bigger than…

After going on hiatus the last few weeks, “The West Wing” returned last night with an episode that focused once again on presidential candidate Santos’s struggle to incorporate his religious beliefs with the demands of politics–or more specifically, the demands of his political advisors. After courting controversy with the Democratic Party in the past months…

“Saturday Night Live” at its finest is satire, not just comedy. At its satirical and relevant best, it offered some neutered and politically unoffensive versions of “holiday” carols on this week’s show. In so doing, one of the most traditionally irreligious shows on television succeeded in displaying the limited value of a neutered holiday. Among…

With the airwaves, web and print media full of the questions about whether our season, trees and greetings are about “Christmas” or “the holidays,” I figure it’s a good time for a little quiz on it. Who has said some of the following? Try it honestly before checking out the answers below. 1. “Intoxicated with…

Peter Steinfels, in this week’s New York Times “Beliefs” column, writes of the latest Hollywood-induced skirmish in the culture wars: “Narnia, it seems, is in danger of becoming a red state.” That’s because evangelicals nationwide are seeing the film as an amazing opportunity for evangelism, not to mention the best film in a while for…
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