Dan Brown Creative

Millions of Jews are expected to be on hand for the drop of the two and half ton matzoh ball on Rosh Hashanah Eve in Times Square at 7:01 p.m. EST.

If you’re like so many other hard-drinking, resolution-making revelers, you love Times Square on New Year’s Eve, even when the temperatures plummet well below freezing. You love the heart-thumping music, the groping camaraderie, the wanton soup of total abandon that makes New York City the epicenter of one of life’s most buoyant and transcendent events.

But what would you say to all this merriment and more on an evening with temps so high you’re likely to see more than a few merrymakers going topless?

Well, that’s precisely what the organizers of the first Rockin’ Rosh Hashanah bash on the eve of the Jewish New year have in mind. “We’ve got an incredible evening planned—great music, mind-blowing pyrotechnics and a few surprises even for jaded New Yorkers,” said Sidney Feldman, owner of Sunset Productions, the company behind the event. So what might you expect?

(more…)

New York, NY — Rosh Hashanah may not be on the radar for many Jews at this time of year, but that hasn’t deterred Temple Yawahna Bet’s Worship Committee from hiring ten new ushers, all of them former police officers with extensive HHSS (High Holiday Scam Squad) experience. Their mission: to minimize the scalping of Rosh Hashanah tickets, a rapidly growing problem, which ultimately forces the victims of the scam to pay significantly greater than retail prices to sit through High Holiday services.

No longer octogenarians, today’s typical High Holiday ticket scalper is young, agile and difficult to tackle.

In the past, keeping tabs on ticket scalpers required no special training. Offenders were generally the elderly, snowbirds who planned to depart for Florida to avoid the drudgery and deprivation of High Holiday services. As most people on fixed incomes, these seniors saw no ethical restriction against turning a small profit on tickets that would otherwise go unused.

The problem now is that these snowbirds are leaving for their winter homes even earlier than normal, well before the scalping season officially begins. As a result, they are enlisting the help of their children and grandchildren to scalp tickets. More often that not, these transactions are done during the final moments before services commence, when demand is highest. (more…)