The Great Debate
President Christopher Eisgruber is reclining in the middle seat of a long table, looking as relaxed as I’ve seen him and wearing a mortarboard with an impressive tassle. Famed history professor Julian Zelizer is here too, sitting with famed improviser Adam Mastroianni ’14, so already the fame count in the room is too high for my personal comfort
Capers
A love-hate letter.
A Bug’s Death
I am nine years old, give or take a couple years, and I have learned rage. Like a clumsy Hulk, I crush and I smash and I murder what must be dozens, if not billions, of ants.
A Food Made from the Pressed Curds of Milk
For a person with dietary restrictions, food in America is like a dense minefield of things he or she cannot eat. Meat and cheese are everywhere, sneakily stuck in the most unsuspecting locations.
Dinner For One
After i made the reservation, opentable.com asked me if I wanted to send an invitation to the other guest(s). I smirked to myself at the flaw in their system that it would ask such a question after making a reservation for one.
Food Diary
The dining hall lurches with athletes. You sit down next to your friend’s maybe-roommate and she looks down at her own plate. “Wow,” she says, “you’re eating so little.”
Keeping Up with the Kashrut-ians
Exodus chapter 34, verse 26: “Thou shalt not boil a kid in his mother’s milk.” Some 5,000 (or 2,000, depending on who you think wrote the Torah) years ago, God told the Jewish people not to mix milk and meat. Throughout the centuries, these simple words—along with other dietary commandments—have propagated a wide variety of […]
Tales of a Non-Jewish Chabadnik
“Come to Chabad for dinner with me and Hannie tonight!” It’s early in October when my roommate, Molly, makes the invitation. In my ignorance, I thought she was just pronouncing “Shabbat” differently and that we’d be going to the CJL for dinner.
Dirge
Something about the engineering of stairwells / makes you want to push someone down one. / Vertebrae snapping against all those / edges straight as rulers. Too violent,
Waiting for Cronut
At 6 am I am standing in a line that stretches along the gates of Vesuvio Playground, a small urban park on the corner of Spring Street and Thompson Street in Soho. At 6:30 am, a CBS news van pulls up to the corner across the street. A young brunette woman and her cameraman jump out of the van and sprint into action. Panorama shots of the line are taken.
The Correct Way to Harvest Carrots
First, bleach your thumbs white. When you reach your hands inside the dark, ancient soil they will glow like night worms.
Sweet Rituals
I don’t remember when my sister and I began baking cookies together, but soon it was a permanent fixture, the ritual of our childhood. Every Monday at seven o’clock, our mother would drop me and Cecily off at our father’s house.