Matthue Roth's Blog, page 143

Scholastic Authors' Favorite Books

Scholastic has a wildly cool video of me, Micheal Northrop, Siobhan Vivian and a bunch of other folks talking about our favorite books and how we ended up being writers. And, bonus!, me imitating Hermione Granger right at the beginning.

Coe Booth was going to do it, too, but she got stage fright and chickened out, and I am only telling you this so that you realize the huge glowing ball of inspiration that is Coe and Facebook her right now and tell her she needs to let people film her more...

Where Are You At Sunset?

Three weeks into Sefirat HaOmer, and I don't want to ayin hara myself, but it's the first time that we've gotten this far.

I'm usually really good at doing it for myself, at completing this strange and obsessive ritual that us Jewish people have. Starting on the second night of Passover, and lasting until the first night of Shavuot exactly 50 days later, we count Omer. Omer used to be a measure of wheat that was brought to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. These days, omer means a number. And...

The Hasidic Numa Numa

If you haven't gotten the flavour of Jeremy Moses's writing, what are you waiting for? Here's the direct link on MyJewishLearning.com to read the entire past year and a half of his blog oeuvre. Study it. Memorize it. You will never again be at a loss for a joke, a witty comeback, or an in-depth analysis of a prime-time reality TV show. Or just watch this incredibly viral video of Jeremy setting the world record for matzah eating:



We're proud like parents that Jeremy has a new weekly column on ...

Re-Chametz-ification

I still haven't broken Passover. And I'm kind of cool with that.

(Okay, I sort of promised myself as I sat down to write that this wasn't going to turn into a my-Passover-was-cooler-than-yours post. I'll try to keep it that way. But it still might.)

A few years ago, when I was living in Israel, I went out to lunch with a bunch of folks. This was two, maybe three weeks after Passover ended. My friend B., who's kind of a spiritual giant and lives on a different plane of existence than the rest of...

Passover Price Gouging

I told you how my family and I don't use many processed foods for Passover, thus avoiding many of the ugly price-fixing that goes on during the holiday. But some things, you just can't buy -- unless, of course, you want to squeeze your own olive oil.

These two bottles of grapeseed oil look basically the same, don't they?



There's just one tiny difference: One bottle, we bought a couple of weeks ago, before the Passover rush (that's the open one). We ran out last night (during Chol Hamoed) to buy...

Huge moving sale going on at the Matthue bookstore! Get b...

Huge moving sale going on at the Matthue bookstore! Get books cheap! Help us not have to move them all!

Ignoring Passover

I always look forward to the Passover seder. Any ritual organised around reading a book is good by me (those people who shout Bible verses in your face on the subway platform notwithstanding...although, if you catch them in a quiet mood and ask about their lives, you'll get some pretty wild verbal autobiographies), especially when you're with the people you love, or a bunch of strangers with interesting things to say, or some combination of the two, which is the way it played out this year.

W...

Happy Passover (and, oh yeah, a kosher one)

A rabbi used to go around wishing everyone a kosher Purim and a happy Passover. Someone stopped him and said, What are you, crazy? Don't you have it backward?

The rabbi shook it off. "Not at all," he said. "On Purim, everyone is very concerned about being happy, so they make sure to do it. And on Passover, everyone's worried about cleaning their houses and getting rid of their hametz, so they make sure to do that. But on Purim, with all the happiness, people sometimes need to remember to keep ...

Passover with the Four Sons

If you haven't noticed, since G-dcast started, we've been playing around with the way we tell stories. For Chanukah, we did a sweeping story of the Maccabees. For Passover, we decided to zero in a little bit...and tell you a nice little family story. About arguing. Of course.

Eat Matzah Fast

Jeremy Moses of MyJewishLearning just took it upon himself to break the world record for matzah eating. (Disclaimer: before he tried, there was no world record for matzah eating.)



Every year at seder, we're supposed to eat the entire 2/3 of a piece of matzah (okay, that's if you're eating shmura matzah -- 1 entire sheet, if you go by the machine-made *ahem* cheating *ahem* kind) in one action, without swallowing. Add that to the fact that you're not supposed to have eaten matzah at all in the ...