Matthue Roth's Blog, page 144

The Costs of Keeping Kosher

No one ever said keeping kosher was easy -- or cheap. As we get closer to Passover, things like this become painfully apparent to anyone who's walking in the vicinity of any supermarket: small bottles of grape juice for $5? Marshmallows for $10!? And let's not even start with the matzah cakes....

(Although, of course, you could get all the matzah you need absolutely free -- just send us a few sentences about your favorite Passover!)



This article about recession pizza specials in New York -- it ...

Tznius Envy

There are deadlines, and then there are deadlines. I'm the Writer in Residence this month over at BrooklynTheBorough.com, and I was supposed to turn in my column Friday. How I feel about deadlines is best expressed in an email that my (other) editor (at Scholastic) just wrote me in the form of an epic poem beginning "O deadlines! How I hate thee" and spiraling from there.

But sometimes deadlines can be fun. Nicole, who runs BrooklynTheBorough, asked me to write "a piece just about being a Hasi...

The Jewish Authors' Oscars

Last night the Jewish Book Council hosted their annual National Jewish Book Awards, and they were kind enough to invite me. I wasn't a famous author or a famous book-buyer, but they let me in anyway.

At first my (a) shyness and (b) authory anti-social tendencies and (c) not knowing anybody-ness got the best of me. There was a (parenthetically: really fascinating) exhibit about Thomas Mann and German publishing, and the reception was mostly being held in one room ("mostly" meaning that the drin...

Free Matzah. Act Now.

So part of my day job at MyJewishLearning is to come up with new and zany schemes to...well, basically, to keep the site from seeming old and un-zany. This Passover season, I've decided that we should buy someone more matzah than they'll ever need. Even if they have a whole lot of friends coming over and a studio apartment that needs re-insulation.

Here's what I wrote:

What's your best Passover story? It can be a horror story about Passover cleaning, or the story of how your parents met and...

White Purim

I wasn't dreaming of a white Purim, but that's what we got. Saturday night, Shabbat went out, and I shoveled out our car in raver pants that were bigger and bulkier than a dress and a three-piece paisley suit. This was the kind of Purim costume that was the essence of last-minute decision-making: every weird object in your wardrobe thrown out onto the beds, picked over and jigsawed together into a more-or-less coherent outfit. My wife dressed as a pregnant flapper -- only half of it needed a ...

Holy Hot Pants

Yes, I have several Mormon friends, and yes, they do make fun of each other for wearing what the more playful adherents of their religion have dubbed holy underpants.



The link between ritual undergarments and religious purity didn't start with Joseph Smith. In this week's Torah portion, Tetzaveh, there's an extensive description of exactly what clothes -- material, color, and otherwise -- the High Priest should wear:

Exodus 28:2 And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, for...

Defending Punk

924 Gilman Street in Berkeley is a volunteer-run concert space that was famous in the '80s for hosting huge fights and riots, and famous in the '90s for introducing Green Day (among other folks) to the world. By the time I moved to San Francisco in 2001 (if you want to read the full story, it's here) it classified as a legitimate shrine to visit. A few weeks after I moved there, my friend Edie Sedgwick played a show there -- which was kind of like having one of your siblings be named High Pri...

Are Dragons Kosher?

The just-released Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals aims to do for kosher food what Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials did for animal guides, and what The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did for...well, the galaxy -- it aims to apply real-world logic to the most unreal, to create an objective guide to the most non-objective things our creative imagination can conceive of.

And the thing is: it really does the job.



Ann and Jeff Vandermeer are both science fiction writers, both married (to each...

Ten Things I'm Looking Forward To in New York City

Packing now. It's been a breathless pair of months in Melbourne, and it's an added awesomeness that we get to come back here in a few months for a family wedding (and a double added bonus that we could be part of the engagement in the first place, packing snow clothes and meting out advice...well, the advice we could, anyway). I'm feeling a bit down on the world for forcing me to go back to New York, and in February at that, and spending all my time behind a desk instead of, well, doing early...

My Comics Debut

Granted, it's not me writing Uncanny X-Men, but it's on the other side of the camera. It's from Ethan Young's excellent e-comic Tails, which you can read free here. (You can actually start on the chapter I'm in and not miss out on too much -- here's the first page -- and then go back and read from the start. Because it is amazing, and highly recommended.)



See? Even when I'm in Australia, New York finds a way to claim me. The temperatures in Melbourne are about the same as the temperatures in N...