When East meets Israel
Boomsalon has a first person account of a young Korean-American’s woman’s experiences on JDate. How does she describe the dynamic?

… there are plenty of guys on jdate who are lying when they say they are looking for their Jewish princess. In fact, the stereotypical high-maintenance Jewish women seems to naturally drive these men to the opposite – the seemingly submissive and docile personas of Asian women. It’s a good arrangement – I am the non-Jappy girl for whom the Jewish guy only has to worry about buying drinks, dinner and/or breakfast. (No Louis Vuitton purses required until the one-year anniversary). For my part, I have quickly adapted to, as well as anticipated, being wined and dined by men who aren’t afraid to buy a woman a drink and to ask when he can take her out. And the sex has always been an amalgam of the “repressed carnal cravings” and the “overt sexual desires” that occurs when East meets Israel.

Wow. How’s an otherwise relatively unexotic and decidedly non-submissive Jewish woman to compete? No wonder Jews are so frustrated with JDate! The only silver lining in this otherwise post-modern story is that now, the author is dating a lapsed Modern Orthodox dude who still wears his kippah. As a result of her gettin’ jiggy with the Jews, she’s developed an interest in Judaism itself:

I recently ventured into an entirely new realm – one in which I began to take a deeper interest in Judaism beyond sex … My Protestant mother would balk if she ever learned that the topic of being a Korean Jew has crossed the threshold of my considerations.

She continues:

But perhaps it is the Asian submissive side of me that secretly enjoys the machismo of “God’s Chosen” men and continues to bring me to jdate.

The Machismo of “God’s Chosen” men? Holy cow. Is she talking about guys on JDate? Korean dudes must be really wimpy then! Uh… thanks to the anonymous person who called my attention to this story.

I totally dig open source, grass roots collaborations. That’s why I am giving a shout-out to the folks at Jewtunes.net. Jewtunes is a wiki dedicated to Jewish and Israeli music. Anyone can add or modify an entry and with the cooperation of Jewish music enthusiasts, Jewtunes hopes to become a great source of info. So if you know anything at all about the subject, visit the site and add in whatever information you can. This can also serve as a great introduction to wikis for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about. Share your knowledge of Arik Einstein, Hadag Nachash or Bob Dylan and help turn this into something we can all be proud of.

Have you signed up? It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun. Then again, why all the focus on young people and students?

Yes! There is something that can unite us all! What, you ask?

Hatred Intense dislike of homosexuals, what else?

The NY Times reports that,

Now major leaders of the three faiths – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – are making a rare show of unity to try to stop the festival. They say the event would desecrate the city and convey the erroneous impression that homosexuality is acceptable.

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No, I don’t plan on changing my name to Esther!
He’s a two-time U.S. National Figure Skating Champion, his nickname is “Tinkerbell,” he’s expected to shine at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, he thinks Paris Hilton is a riot, he’s a 20 year old Catholic and he’s totally into Kabbala. Salon interviwed Johnny Weir about all this and more. Weir is actually pretty funny. Here’s what he had to say about Kabbala:

You practice Kabbala.

Yes. My string actually fell off while I was up here, so I’m purged of all my negative energy …

While you were where?

My string, my red string that I wear?

OK.

It fell off while I was in New York, so it means that I’m purged of my negative energy.

So, while the string is on it collects negative energy and when it falls off you’re free?

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Muffti commands: Go read this. Then (re-)read this by our own CK. Compare the content. Then notice the dates.

We (I mean, CK) are so smart! We are so smart! S-M-R-T, I mean, S-M-A-R-T!

Last summer, young media savvy Jews were selected by leading Hollywood producers to come out to LA and make dozens of short internet films with ambitious goal of effectively communicating new messages about Judaism and Israel.

View what they produced here. Tell us what you think.

Below is a brief interview with David Sacks, head honcho of Jewish Impact Fims and producer of such shows as Malcom in the Middle, Third Rock from the Sun and The Simpsons.

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Ed. note: Originally posted by themiddle at 2:46 am EST. See end of article for explanation.

Apparently Jerusalem police have arrested ck and some associates. Their crime? They inscribed the word ‘allah’ on the Eastern wall of the Temple Mount.

“This vandalism, coupled with Israel’s lack of archaeological supervision at Judaism’s holiest site is simply lawlessness of the first order on the part of the Government,” said Temple Mount expert and Hebrew University archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar.

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Well, at least a statue of one has been put up on exhibit after 1500 years underground.

The Israel Museum yesterday unveiled a rare marble statue of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, discovered a decade ago in excavations of the ancient city of Beit She’an.

According to curators, the statue is unique because of the original coat of paint that can still be seen on it. The museum hopes the “Beit She’an Venus” will become one of the most famous statues of its kind.

The statue, dated to the second century C.E., was found during the excavation of the eastern bathhouse at Beit She’an by professors Gideon Foerster and Yoram Tzafrir of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology.

It is of the type known as Venus pudica, or modest Venus, because of the way the figure’s arms are crossed in an attempt to conceal her breasts and pubic area. Eros appears at her side, in the form of a pudgy child riding a dolphin.

Interesting note in the article is that Bet She’an, which was ruined by an earthquake in 749 C.E., had 40,000 inhabitants in its peak of around 400 C.E. In Hellenistic and Roman times the city was called Scythopolis and was considered an important center.

Today, Bet Shean has around 16,000 inhabitants.

Just wanted to say that a few months ago our poster Alli gave us a look at Idan. I ended up buying both of his CDs and think he’s great.

His first CD is damned good, but his new one is incredible. The first time I heard the Shoshana Damari song with which he ends the CD, I was in my car. I pulled over and listened to it two more times (while trying to enunciate the letters Aiin and Chet like she does). Amazing stuff. It also really brought me back to Israel.

Heck, if I had to go to a desert island and choose between Raichel and Einstein, it would probably be Raichel.

Ditch the diplomacy and let’s dance.

According to the Los Angeles Times (may require registration), the road to peace in the Middle East may be less of a road and more of an multi-day, non-stop trance party on a beach somewhere, with its roots in the raves of the late 1990s :

Some saw the raves as mere hedonism, and there was that. But, as one organizer told me, they also symbolized a desire to live normally, in coexistence with Arabs: “We simply want to have fun together, that’s the kind of Israel we want to see.” This phenomenon was one aspect of something called “Israeliness,” a youthful embrace of a lifestyle of culture and music that transcended national borders. Israeliness arose among the nation’s elites at the beginning of the Oslo decade — the last attempt at a comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Its advocates argue that the Zionism that fulfilled the long-held goal of returning the displaced Jewish people to Palestine also created a culture. Israeliness is the special national culture that has evolved over the 50-plus years since the founding of modern Israel. It is fast-paced, cutting edge, daring and more than occasionally hedonistic. It is a cosmopolitan embrace of a modern state whose citizens yearn for worldliness, travel and openness. It was born of necessity, in a place where living each moment as if it could be the last is more than a cliche.

Although the raves no longer exist, the article maintains that Israeliness is alive and could be activated through the “mirror image” party scenes in Tel Aviv and Beirut, or through partnerships with Ramallah, which is only 40 miles from Tel Aviv’s party scene.

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I was at first willing to believe that the New York Times article on the wierdo Dutch football team, Ajax, which almost mirrored the piece we wrote back in January was a coincidence. But now the Jerusalem Post seems to have drawn similar inspiration. This time, a piece of spam purportedly written by Suha Arafat (Yassir Arafat’s widow) seeking help in securing $20 million in embezzled PA funds, which we posted about in February, is the subject of a Jerusalem Post article.

Sabri Zaidan, chairman of the Palestinian Internet Society, was unfazed by the e-mail. “This is the typical spam e-mail to get your bank details,” he said. “Palestinians are not really affected by this, nor will they be fooled by it if they receive it as an e-mail.”

Granted the Jerusalem Post article contains a few more details along with quotes like the one above and comments by an “Internet analyst,” I can’t help but feel just a tad, you know… put off.

And what the hell is an Internet analyst anyway? Does it pay well? Do you just surf on the Internet all day long? Where do I apply? How much analytical expertise does one need to come up with gems like this:

Hackers use programs that scour the Web for e-mail addresses to find the “one-in-a-million sucker who will forward their bank details,” said Internet analyst David Shamah. Often these hackers come from countries with little or no control over Internet content … “Sometimes the results and content of these e-mails are very funny, provided you’re not the victim. And there are victims, because this scam appears to continue to make money,” he said.

Funny? Holy crap. While TM, who may or may not be me, starts his shidduch service, I’ll move to Israel and provide Internet analysis services, where I too will provide patently obvious and insensitively rendered pieces of Internet related advice to a select group of well monied corporate and media clients. I am sure to be rolling in shekels! Rolling!

Lapid and Gal-On: Continental civility at its best!

Implies MK and Women’s Rights Activist is a Whore
Tommy Lapid seems to have lost it. See, Lapid is head of Shinui, a secular anti-haredi (ultra-orthodox) party. Last Monday there was an important Knesset vote on the budget. Had the budget not been approved then Sharon’s government would have been forced to call an election which in turn would have caused the Gaza disengagement to be suspended till at least 2006. Ordinarily, a party like Shinui would be expected to embrace the budget rather than put at risk the disengagement which it ought to support. Instead however, Lapid decided to be coy, and borrowing a page from the haredi parties which he ordinarily castigates, decided to hold the government hostage and withhold his badly needed support until some plum benefit was ponied up. The price of Lapid’s support turned out to be 700 million NIS to be paid to University students and cultural groups, Shinui’s presumptive constituency.

Many saw this as cynical manipulation and sure enough Lapid was roasted for his hypocrisy and lack of principles by both the right and the left. On Monday, Lapid responding to MK Zehava Gal-On’s contention that he could be bought for a price responded with an outburst that included the following implication “I don’t want to say to you what I think about her profession.”

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Muffti has uncovered an amazing story. Apparently, a young Jewish woman who admits to “…never having been shomeret, and I was certainly no virgin when I married” still manages to maintain a meaningful sexual relationship with her husband. How did she pull off this amazing feat?

No one is quite sure. But Muffti begs his dear readers to hold their skepticism in abeyance because her story appears to check out. “Apparently he [the husband] isn’t so insecure that he thinks that prior sexual relationships ruined me for life,” says she. “Not all of my sexual experiences were as meaningful as possible. Most of them, however, didn’t involve me waking up and wanting to get the hell out of what’s-his-name-again’s apartment. All were pretty fun, some fairly intimate and now I’m happy to maintain a spiritually fulfilling relationship with just one man.”

Simply amazing. There’s more however. Apparently, despite not being shomeret, our featurette managed to have genuine, meaningful friendships with members of the opposite sex.

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You know the line. It’s been the start of countless conversations. “Men and women can’t be friends, because the sex thing always gets in the way.”

Lately, I’ve been wondering if that’s also the case in the shomer negiah world, if powerful attraction between a man and a woman means the same sort of inner turmoil, self-doubt and bubbling cauldron of hormones and swirling emotions that it means for those who are not shomer negiah. Now, we’ve got an inside source. And the preliminary answer seems to still be yes: even when there’s no sex to be had, the “sex thing” always gets in the way.

With various tips of the hat to Bloghead, Ren Reb and others, I can tell you that Nice Jewish Girl is definitely worth checking out. She’s been posting for about two months, and is candidly–and beautifully–documenting her struggle to reconcile her sexuality, her faith and her commitment to being shomer negiah in a world that doesn’t always respect or encourage sexual abstinence.

You see, once someone has gone through so much time being S.N., then anything I might do with a man I was dating becomes much, much more important. The first man I kiss, for me it will be like what having sex for the first time is for some other women. For me it will be very significant. I’m not going to waste that on someone I’ve only met a few times.

Sometimes it is not about sex I fantasize about but rather about affection, and I fantasize about holding a man’s hand when I am walking around outside. I will go places for Shabbos and secretly envision a man who loves me sitting next to me at the Shabbos table. I just want him to be there.

You go, Nice Jewish Girl. You may feel conflicted, but you’re a stronger woman than most. And therefore, by the power only recently vested in me, I hereby proclaim you “Jewlicious.”

Did you know there’s a website out there just for half-Jews? Not wanting to be too pushy, it only even takes up half my computer screen!

They propose Governor’s Island, just off Manhattan to become the national homeland of half-Jews. In theory, this as well as everything else on the site could be terribly funny, but sadly, it seems they don’t have much to say, or bite their tongue too often. That must be the other half.

I found this really interesting site Muslim WakeUp! A progrssive Muslim blog that seeks to:

“celebrate cultural and spiritual diversity, tolerance, and understanding….
In all its activities, Muslim WakeUp! attempts to reflect a deep belief in justice and against all forms of oppression, bigotry, sexism, and racism.”

It’s really a great, witty religious blog that deals quite a bit with a woman’s role within religious Islam. They actually have a whole section of female sexuality and Islam called “Sex and the Umma“.

The lead article on the main page, however, was about Muslim women not being allowed to lead prayers due, in part to potential sexual arousal by men

What can I say? Like many of my Middle Eastern brothers, I have a lifetime subscription to Play Veil magazine. Miss January was absolutely gorgeous and even though I couldn’t see anything behind her veil, in some perverted way, she stirred my desires.

I can’t explain it. Only we Middle Eastern men are capable of looking at women who are covered under lumps of unforgiving black sheets and feel aroused. Heck, I sometimes look at drapes hanging from windows and get horny!

It made me chuckle. In any case, I couldn’t help but draw parellels between the issue of women in religious leadership roles which Muslim WakeUp! talks about often and the recent focus in the JPost about Orthodox Women Rabbis. Everything on Muslim WakeUp is written with a clear love of Allah, and a clear desire to not complain, but seek to move forward, well, it was refreshing in so many ways.

Unfortunately, the Hug-a-Jew article that brought me there seemed to be a broken link.

Back in January we posted a story about this Dutch soccer team called Ajax and how they are nicknamed “the Jews” and how this manifests itself with star of David regalia and tattoos amongst their fans, and anti-semitic taunts amongst their opponents. Moby now notes how nearly 3 months later the New York Times wrote almost the exact same story! Heh. Usually we take our lead from the press, not vice-versa. But what the hey, if the New York Times needs any more story ideas, well… just use the “contact us” link on the left, we’ve got a million of ‘em. And please send any payments to us in small, unmarked bills.

Let’s try it again …

Sharon’s government has been working like mad to make deals with various political factions in order to assure passage of the upcoming budget. Should the budget not pass, the government will fall and disengagement plans will have to be suspended. Much attention has focused on the deal Sharon made with the secularist Shinui Party, who despite their support for the disengagement, threatened to scuttle it should their demands not be met. 700 million NIS later (about $140 million) the price was settled and Shinui is now behind Sharon.

However, it’s recently come to light that other deals may have also been struck. A private members bill, introduced by National Religious Party MK Yitzhak Levy, seeks to allow Rabbinic Family courts to consider divorce requests “from one partner of a Jewish couple married abroad if he or she becomes an Israeli citizen, even if the other partner has no connection to Israel.”

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Shaul Mofaz told a Cabinet meeting today that it is very likely that Strella missiles have been smuggled into Gaza under the PA’s watch. He also indicated that while the PA had uncovered 17-20 smuggling tunnels, he has information that PA agents have been involved in other, successful smuggling operations.

This “lull” seems to be nothing more than a respite from the successful IDF hounding of the Palestinian leaders and their terrorists and militants. They are getting a break, and apparently also regrouping. These Strellas are shoulder held missiles that have a range of almost 2 miles and can target aircraft effectively by tracking their heat emissions. While there are some methods of confusing their sensors, virtually all civilian aircraft do not carry these defensive measures aboard and would be in danger.

So far, the only Israeli response has been to delay the handover of security and control of Qalqiliyah to the PA. That is a meaningless gesture and will be interpreted as such.

Kabbala-boy Ashton Kutcher’s new movie, Guess Who, is a remake of the Sidney Poitier 1967 classic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. In that film, a wealthy white couple’s liberal notions are challenged when their daughter brings a black man home and introduces him as her fiancee. This being 1967 the movie was fairly controversial. Now it’s 2005 and in a twist on the classic, Guess Who is about a black girl who brings lilly-white Kutcher home to meet her parents.

These days, the notion of bi-racial couples is yawn inducing, thus Guess Who is less Martin Luther King and more Meet The Parents. Not quite the stuff that revolutions are made of.

Turns out too that Kutcher’s character was actually filmed Jewish. According to Kutcher the idea of his character being Jewish was cut out of the film at the last minute.

“I decided that I wanted to play my character Jewish, to have another difference because Bernie [Mack, the father] is Christian in the movie and I decided that I wanted to play my character Jewish just to have another difference,” Kutcher says, … it was minor stuff, like saying, “Shabot Shalom, stuff like that.” But [Director, Kevin] Sullivan says he didn’t want the racism issue to also get mixed in with the religious issues. “I didn’t want people to think it was about Christianity or Judaism,” the director says … And so, Kutcher says, “Every Jewish reference that I made in the film got cut out.”

Dang. That’s too bad. It would have been worth it just to see all the boys in Stormfront go nuts about the Hollywood/Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white race. Oh well. Now that there’s no Jewish element to this film, and I haven’t had frontal lobotomy surgery, I guess I can pass on this flick.

Take a look at this couple. Don’t they look as if they are puppy-love happy? Doesn’t it seem that Michael is undressing Ayelet with his eyes and that Ayelet is about to return the favor?

Well, thanks to Ayelet, we now know they are indeed probably thinking about, well, boinking. They think about it a lot. They do it a lot. They do it with passion and inventiveness. They may even do it with sex toys. Yipeee!

Why do I know this? Because I read the New York Times, and Ayelet decided to write a fun article for the venerable paper about a serious topic: the place of spouses and their love, especially physical love, after children are born.

But the real reason for this lack of sex, or at least the most profound, is that the wife’s passion has been refocused. Instead of concentrating her ardor on her husband, she concentrates it on her babies. Where once her husband was the center of her passionate universe, there is now a new sun in whose orbit she revolves. Libido, as she once knew it, is gone, and in its place is all-consuming maternal desire. There is absolute unanimity on this topic, and instant reassurance.

Except, that is, from me.

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Holy cow!

What is wrong with this government?

Read this article carefully.

The Knesset is expected to approve a government bill this week that considerably expands the authority of the rabbinical courts.

The bill, which has already been approved by the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, will be presented for second and third readings against the objections of Justice Ministry legal experts, women’s organizations and Labor, Yahad and Shinui Knesset members.

Legal experts believe the bill is a clear violation of the status quo. It authorizes rabbinical courts to hear divorce suits concerning Jewish couples, even if one or both of the partners lives overseas. The bill applies to couples married in a religious ceremony who have not commenced civil divorce procedures overseas. A spouse will also be able to file for divorce with the rabbinical courts if he has resided in Israel for at least one year.

Dr. Ruth Halperin-Kadari, a family law specialist at Bar-Ilan University, says the legislation would enable a man living abroad to immigrate to Israel to sue his wife for divorce a year later, thereby preventing her from obtaining a civil divorce overseas. This would oblige her to come to Israel and get divorced in a rabbinical court, even if she has no affiliation to Israel and only married in a religious ceremony for reasons of family and tradition.

I think the code name for this bill is the “Agunot Worldwide” bill. Sheer lunacy.

Oh yeah, I forgot. The blackmail? Ultra Orthodox parties in order to support the budget. The prostitute? Arik Sharon and the Likud. Nothing new under the sun.

Edit: It is clear that Lapid reads Jewlicious and changed his position accordingly:

Shinui leaders Yosef Lapid and Avraham Poraz told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Saturday night that they would back the 2005 state budget in the Knesset this week, assuring that it will pass and that the government will not fall.

At a three-hour meeting Saturday at Sharon’s Sycamore Ranch, Lapid and Poraz agreed to back the budget in exchange for a budget transfer of NIS 700 million[ed. did we mention prostitution and blackmail?]. The money is slated to go to students, recently released conscripts and reserves soldiers, cultural institutions and environmental causes.

After the meeting, Lapid said that he had decided to support the budget after reading a blog called Jewlicious and realizing that he had to vote in favor in order to save the disengagement plan.

Here’s a terrific analysis of what’s going on right now with Sharon deftly maneuvering himself into a position where the referendum idea is probably going to be dropped while the budget passes.

Okay now back to the original post:

Who would have thought that the greatest friends to the anti-disengagement movement would be the secularist party Shinui. And you would think that if they were willing to bring down the disengagement by voting against the state budget – which, if it fails, would force the government to collapse and bring about new elections – that they’d have some deep principled reasons for doing so.

Nope.

But now is not the time for conditions and coalition achievements. The principal achievement is the disengagement itself. The vote on the budget, under the already shaky political conditions in which the prime minister finds himself, is a vote on the evacuation of the Gaza Strip in the summer. The window of opportunity is a narrow one.

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Things are a little nutty in our little land. I mean step back for a sec. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, one of the guys most loathed by the Israeli left is actually going to implement a unilateral pullout of Israeli forces and population from the Gaza strip. This is the guy who became a war hero in the Six Day War by decidedly not following orders, who launched retaliatory assaults against Arab villages, who was the architect of the war in Lebanon, who was blamed for the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, who was the staunchest supporter of the settler movement etc. Now he is the darling of the left and hated by the self same settler movement that he basically invented.

What the hell is going on?

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