by Matthew Friedman | Dec 5, 2021 | Essays, History
This is the second part of a two-part series. Read part one here. I. The Chanukiah I post a photo of my chanukiah in social media each night of the Festival of Lights, before joyfully scrolling through my feed to look at all the pictures my friends had posted of their...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 30, 2021 | Essays, History
I. The Story My childhood memories of Chanukah* are suffused with feelings of warmth and certainty, as my brother and sister, our parents, and I would gather around the Chanukiah (the Chanukah menorah) to light the festive lights for eight nights. We would chant the...
by Matthew Friedman | Oct 8, 2021 | Essays, Politics
The man with the megaphone was getting a response. Standing in front of the Wells Fargo Bank at the corner of Broad and Bank in Newark – a Wachovia branch until the subprime mortgage crisis at the beginning of the Great Recession – he was calling out to everyone in...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 11, 2021 | Essays
My first memory of that day is of the sky. It was clear and bright, and as I walked along de Terrebonne Street to Concordia University’s Loyola campus, I marveled at the deepness of the blue. I could still see the sky outside the windows of the computer lab in the...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 5, 2021 | Commentary, Essays
I am enraged. The decision by the Supreme Court of the United States last week declining to hear the Center for Reproductive Rights’ challenge to the Texas “Heartbeat Act,” no less than the law itself, has left me apoplectic. The Texas law is the most egregious...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 2, 2021 | Essays, Features
YidLife Crisis, an award-winning online comedy series featuring fast-talking Montreal funnymen Jaime Elman and Eli Batalion has 20,000 loyal subscribers on YouTube and 17,000 followers on Facebook. The bilingual struggles of the pious, often flawed, but always loving...
