I’m sorry to say that even after a fine presentation by not one, but TWO Wine Guys at Jewlicious @ the Beach in April, I still can’t really taste the difference between a cabernet and a merlot, or a chenin blanc and a chardonnay. Which clearly means I need to spend more time in a winery. Or maybe just drinking alone in my apartment.

Whether you prefer your wine boiled or unfiltered, whether you’re a connaisseur of every grape or just enjoy the kiddushy goodness of wine in general, you’ll be glad to know that Royal Wine Corp has just opened a new facility for the fruit-of-the-vine-lover in you.

From the article in the Jewish Journal (L.A.):

…the largest producer, importer and distributor of kosher wines and spirits in the United States, recently spent an estimated $13 million to create its high-tech facility. The new winery, which opened for tours and tastings June 27, is capable of producing up to 220,000 cases annually.

The winery produces two labels, Baron Herzog, a value-brand, mevushal line, and Herzog Wine Cellars, the special reserve line with less than 10,000 cases total production. The latter carries a much higher price tag due to fruit sourced from premium vineyards, and a more labor-intensive process, including hand-harvesting and aging in high-quality French oak barrels, which are more costly than their American equivalents. Herzog winemakers believe flash pasteurization can improve quality. All the whites are mevushal, but none of the special reserve reds, most of which are not even filtered.

Wine…it’s not just for breakfast anymore. Is it, Wine Guy?

Can I get a borei p’ri hagafen, my homies?

Written by Michael

While evidence indicates that probably the Amidah and certainly the synagogue predate the destruction of the Temple, I see what you’re trying to say. My problem is this: when the post-Temple additions to Judaism were made, they were made with the idea in mind of sustaining the Jewish people in the face of a great theological/spiritual crisis, and also looking back on Jewish text and tradition to find a way to cope with this crisis; the idea that prayer was acceptable in the place of sacrifice is in the Prophets and was in fact supported long before the destruction of the Temple by certain Jews. Whereas Reform Judaism and to an admittedly lesser extent Conservative Judaism were created essentially because Orthodox Judaism was hard and created a stumbling block towards assimilation. Their theology came later. That is the difference.

So, to simplify, 2000 years ago, the Pharisees sat down and said, “The locus of Jewish worship is gone. How can we continue to serve G-d in a valid way? Let’s study our texts and tradition.” So they came up with the prayer service as we know it.

Whereas with modern Jewish offshoots, it went more like this: a group of secular German Jews sat down and said, “We want to become assimilated into European society. Our problem is that our religion is too foreign and Eastern. Let’s get rid of the Hebrew and put in an organ and get rid of those dietary laws so we can not only look like German Protestants, but eat with them too.” So they did that. Then, awhile later, after the fact, somebody sat down and hashed out a theological justification for it.

And it is condescending and wrong to assert that the rules of Orthodox Judaism are from the 4th century and that rules pertaining to the 20th are all a product of Conservative Judaism or Reform Judaism. For example, as we all know, Orthodox Jews do not drive on Shabbat. This is a 20th century law. Orthodox Judaism is just as flexible as Conservative Judaism, it merely refuses to let certain precepts be violated out of convenience. If cars had existed in Babylon 1600 years ago, I’m sure you wouldn’t see Rav Pappa or whoever behind the wheel on Shabbat.

I do believe men and women are equal in front of G-d. Women aren’t counted in a minyan because they are not obligated to do the whole three-times-a-day-group-prayer thing. Should we also count boys in under 13 in a minyan to preserve their feelings?

And no, I don’t find it disgusting. If I love Zimbabwe and perceive of myself as a Zimbabwean, am I one, or am I not really one until I move to Zimbabwe, become a citizen according to the law, speak the language and participate in the culture? And if I find something unappealing about Zimbabwean culture and decide to make up my own definition of what being a Zimbabwean is, would it be disgusting for the true blue Zimbabweans to reject me? (Man. Zimbabwe. What a great name.) If they rejected me, would it hurt my feelings? Sure. Would they have every right to, as it’s their culture and their prerogative to make the rules? Yes.

Posting information about how close movements can be won’t solve the problem if there are still major fundamental differences. I mean, hell, Judaism and Islam are similar in many ways, but pointing that out to the Ayatollah probably won’t get him to stop pointing those missiles at Israel.

A Utah woman has tattooed the name of an internet gambling site on her forehead; she sold the space for $10,000 on Ebay, and says that she needed the money to pay for her son’s Jewish education.

“For the all the sacrifices everyone makes, this is a very small one,” she said. “It’s a small sacrifice to build a better future for my son,” she said. “To everyone else, it seems like a stupid thing to do. To me, $10,000 is like $1 million. I only live once, and I’m doing it for my son,” she said.

Tattoo artist Don Brouse said he and his staff spent nearly seven hours Wednesday trying to talk Smith out of putting “GOLDENPALACE.COM” above her face. When he did go through with it, he kept the inch-tall letters close to her hairline, where bangs or a hat could provide some cover.

In light of this story, I’d like to announce that Jewlicious is now accepting applications from those wishing to serve as human billboard to promote this site. Tattooing will be done with henna in order to ensure equal opportunity for people of all levels of observance. Preference, however, will be given to people with unusually large foreheads.

The 4th annual Gay Pride Parade just happened outside my balacony. The decision to ban the event was overturned by a court on Sunday and Mayor Lupolianski was ordered to personally pay court costs of NIS 30,000 as well as put up rainbow flags lining the route.

How cute they all were. The cutest thing of all was that they were all sporting pink ribbons instead of the now ubiquitous orange or blue disengagement ones. The color scheme moved from rainbow to pink to a purple religious lesbian group to pink and blue for bisexualty followed by the green of the the police force and the black and white of the yeshiva bochurs in their own half-assed counter-parade.

See, unfortunetly, not everyone was taken by the cuteness and two participants in the parade were stabbed by a supposedly religious Jewish man. I don’t care what you think of homosexuality, but stabbing people is just wrong, and a hilul Hashem and a sin, especially by religous standards. A little more chesed, a little less gevurah, people.

In any case, World Pride has been rescheduled for 2006 because of the security situation surrounding the disengagement that would have complicated matters. Pink and orange would have been a little to much, it seems.

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Hey, remember Jewtopia?

Allow me to quote myself (October 22, the Jewish Week):

‘Jewtopia’ is a complicated place. Here, Adam (a Jew) has to date a Jewish woman (for his family), but can’t seem to meet any; while Chris (a gentile) finds a Jewish woman (so he doesn’t have to make any more decisions) but knows he will be rejected if she learns he’s not Jewish. Adam agrees to help Chris “pass,” if Chris will help him find Jewish women. Chris introduces his friend to Jewtopia, a magic land with 500,000 single Jewish women. No, not the Upper West Side — in the new Off Broadway show, the eponymous Jewtopia is JDate.

To refresh your memory, some people called it “the worst, most offensive play” they’d ever seen, maintaining that it perpetuated Borscht Belt style humor and untrue stereotypes. And others were roaring in the aisles, seeing the truth and resonance in the comedy. But since they built it, people are coming…first, it took Los Angeles by storm, now off-Broadway, and recently, the show has been selling out in Chicago, with a Florida cast due to begin shows in August and London at some time before or after that.

Not content to rest on their laurels (and let the other funny Jewish writers in New York have their moment in the red), co-writers, producers, stars, etc Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson are working on the screenplay for Jewtopia: The Movie. And it was just announced that Warner Books has acquired the rights to Jewtopia: The Book, which is planned for a fall 2006 release.

These guys are hella nice and funny, onstage and off. And I wish them all the success in the world, so they can share it with me and my work-in-progress JDate musical any local artists who are developing other dating- or Jewish-related New York theater efforts that may crop up over the next year or so.

Rumored next steps for Wolfson and Fogel:
Jewtopia: The Lunchbox…
Jewtopia: The Birthright Israel Trip
…and of course, world domination.

Photo: Nadia Pandolfo

Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Minister, suggested Wednesday that Israel’s planned Gaza pullout was a victory accomplished “through the sacrifices of thousands of martyrs and wounded.” Dahlan has also accused Israel of poisoning areas to be evacuated ahead of the pullout, has invited Hamas to open a base of operations in Gaza after the pullout, and has accused IDF soldiers of giving poisoned candies to Palestinian children. Dahlan has also threatened a third intifada should Israel insist on maintaining control over the borders of Gaza after the pullout.

In the meantime, there’s been some violence on the Lebanese border between the IDF and an emboldened Hizballah while Jewish support for the pullout continues to drop. It’s gonna be a fun summer.

I swear I would have blogged about this earlier but I thought it was an elaborate joke. Yesterday Russian prosecutors dropped an inquiry into whether or not a Russian translation of an ancient Jewish text incites national and religious hatred. The text in question, the Shulchan Aruch was written in the mid 1500s by Sephardic Rabbi Joseph Caro and is considered Judaism’s standard legal code. The prosecutors dropped the inquiry after determining that the text does not in fact encourage Jews to kill non-Jews. They probably also felt that the international furor accompanying their investigation may have made them look like assholes. Which it did.

The inquiry began when 19 deputies in the Russian Duma signed a letter in January calling for a ban on Jewish organizations. The letter complained that Jewish groups were distributing an abridged version of the Shulhan Arukh, and alleged that the text prejudices readers against non-Jews.

Nikolai Kondratenko, a Communist Party member and Duma deputy who signed the letter compared the Shulchan Aruch to pornography and equated it with Mein Kampf. In dropping the inquiry, the prosecutors also stated that the lawmakers and others who signed the letter of complaint could not be held criminally responsible for using phrases such as “Jewish fascism,” and “Jewish aggressiveness as a form of Satanism.” Because that also does not incite national and religious hatred.

Mamash assholes.

About 1.5 million less than what you thought. Most population figures are based on a highly flawed 1997 projection. The number cited is 3.8 million, but turns out that the actual number, based on actual Palestinian figures, is more like 2.4 million. Read the report at pademographics.com. The Web site aint pretty but the implications are certainly interesting.

The claim that Jews will become a minority in the region are incorrect. Since 1967, Jews have maintained their 60% majority in Israel, West Bank and Gaza and since 1990, the Jewish population has grown by 2.5% a year, only a slight fraction below the growth rate in the West Bank. The declines in Palestinian Arab growth rates and the vitality of Jewish growth rates which are the highest among Western democracies, will preserve this ratio.

The Israeli Arab growth rate of 3.1% was augmented by the influx of 150,000 Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli Arab natural rate of increase remained at 2.1%. Additionally, many observers have misidentified all non-Jews as “Palestinian Arabs.” Many groups, such as the Druze and non-Jewish immigrants, identify themselves as Israelis, not as Arabs. Israel is becoming more multicultural not more Arab.

Thanks to Rabbi Yo for the heads up!

AOL Uses JDate Marketing Technique?
Thanks to boii for the heads up on this graphic that shows AOL using porn stars as models on their AOL Instant Messenger. You may recall that we reported how Haaretz busted JDate for also using porn stars in their publicity materials. So like what is this? A new trend or something? Whatever. AOL is lame and JDate? You suck. Don’t be coy, you know why.

No, not like that silly. Rabbi Fine is that guy that socked a stupid Nazi at an airport. Anyhow, they were both charged with disorderly conduct for fighting but moments before the hearing the prosecutor dropped charges against both of them.

Now what kind of message does this send to the children? That it’s ok to have fist fights in airports? That it’s open season on people who wear swastika t-shirts?

Heh. Kidding. I am glad the prosecutor dropped the charges against the Rabbi and I hope the Nazi dude learned his lesson… which was uh… don’t be a Nazi, dude. Or something.

Hat tip to Rick Hellman, Editor of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, for the heads up! Yes, they have Jews in Kansas City. They even have Matisyahu!

Coming back from work yesterday, it took me almost two hours to get home on a route that usually takes 45 minutes. Lining both sides of the road, (yes, sides, not blocking traffic, just slowing it down) was car after car and family after family, all decked out in requisite orange. As we passed, they smiled, waved hands and flags and held signs protesting disengagement from Gaza. Complex personal feelings on the disengagent aside, I found the moving display of civil disobedience strangely endearing (for those who may need a refresher course on what constitues civil disobedience see Wikipedia or Dictonary.com).

“I look at the maps they use in schools these days, and they are drawn without Gaza or Judea and Samaria,” the woman I was riding with told me, “it looks like someone came and took whole bites out of our country”. Her army service was in the Border Police, where she was a commander and in charge of dismantling a Shomron settlement once, and worries about being called up again for disengagement. While she thinks that ultimately we have to leave Gaza, she doesn’t like the way it’s being done, ie, unilaterally.

While I am of similar opinion that disengagement is a neccessary evil, I nonetheless admire the movement aganst it (in part because I’ve seen those beaches, and secretly wish it was somehow viable to keep). I admire the fact that they’ve successfully mobilized oodles of teenagers to pass out orange flags and orage popsicles on the streets. I even envy those teenagers, for they have a very well defined cause worth fighting for and a very clear sense of purpose to their lives in a way that I certainly never had at that age. The problem of course being that as a teenager, things appear very black and white when they generally aren’t.

Funny thing is, it’s not all teenagers. In fact, a new poll states that fully 1/5 of Jewish Israeli adults would block roads to thwart dangerous policies.

But hey, whatever, the popsicle sure was yummy anyway.

(Cross-posted from My Urban Kvetch)

That’s right. A lesson so important, it’s worth repeating and using text emphasis: Chabadniks (Lubavitch Jews) are not, I repeat, NOT, Martians.

According to this feature in New York Magazine, a few years ago, a family of Chabad Chasidim moved to Southampton, a beachside bastion of WASPishness.

…you can imagine the consternation when, in the summer of 1999, two doors down from the Catholic church on Hill Street—the widest, most conspicuous thoroughfare in Southampton, dividing the wildly expensive properties of Shinnecock Hills and North Sea from the stratospherically expensive beachfront estates of Meadow and Gin Lanes—a family arrived that clearly hadn’t seen the membership brochure. The man who bought the place had a bird’s nest of a beard and wore dark suits all summer long. He and his wife, who dressed demurely even by Southampton standards, were young but had a bevy of children—two at first, five before long. They invited guests on Saturday mornings—dozens of them—and the visitors parked their SUVs and sports cars on the edge of neighbors’ lawns. They sang songs. They cooked meals that produced strange odors. “The smells coming out of there!” says Ron Grimaldi, who until recently lived across the street. “I don’t know how people live next door.” It gets worse: They renovated—the ground level was gutted to make additional room for guests—and they took out ads in Dan’s Papers promoting the gatherings.

And now they’re being sued over zoning laws. The residents are claiming that the rabbi and his family have huge events with 200 people, have opened a restaurant (”it was a seder!” the rabbi’s wife exclaimed), and are using a PA system:

As long as no health or safety codes are being violated—and the place checks out on that score—[the couple's lawyer] Bragman contends it will be hard for the village not to grant the exception. “I told the board that this is not the landing of Martians who want to take over the village,” he says.

[This paragraph brought to you by Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds...starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning and coming this week to a theater near you...]

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You’re asking how is this possible? I mean yeah, she’s rich and all, but she’s appeared in widely distributed amateur porn, everyone in the world has seen her oral technique, she’s a ditz, she’s been caught on tape using the “n” word, has frequented the Kabbalah Center and has no discernible talent. So imagine my shock when I discovered that she has recently announced her engagement to one Paris Latsis, scion of a Greek shipping family whose worth is about $7.5 billion. Latsis’ dad is also a well-respected mayor of a Greek town and the family is otherwise very conservative and religious.

So why is Hilton’s marriage to Latsis a step down? Well, basically because the Latsis family, despite being fabulously rich and all, make their money selling guns and cozying up to Arab dictators.

… the clan’s late patriarch, John “Yanni” Latsis, aided his storied climb from deckhand to shipping tycoon by profiteering on the black market during WWII. In 1967, Yanni drew additional scrutiny when he loaned his shipping fleet to the Egyptians during the Six Day War with Israel and threw his financial support behind Greek fascist dictator Colonel George Papadopoulos. (The title of Latsis’ unauthorized bio translates to “Gangster” in English.)

Fascists? Nasser? Black Market Profiteering in WWII? Seriously, even ditzy amateur porn starlets have to have some standards! Don’t do it Paris Hilton! He’s not good enough for you!

Tip of the cap to Dave!

If you believe that mixed dancing is the end of Jewish civilization as we know it, and yea, verily, even the demise of any remaining vestiges of morality and propriety in an increasingly corrupt society, you’d better sit this story out.

When you pass it on Lexington Avenue, Mos Eisley Spaceport the 92nd Street Y looks like just a building. You’d never know that evil lurks within. In fact, on Wednesday nights, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Just listen to a few of these disembodied phrases, and you will understand the true danger that simmers just below the surface:
“a sense of comfortable chaos prevails”
“greeting each other with kisses on both cheeks”
“it can take over your life if you’re not careful”
“20- and 30-somethings looking for love, aging hippies reliving their kibbutz days, white-haired bubbes staying spry, and 40-something women showing a lot of skin”
“seemingly single women, their legs swinging from the stage”
“dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria!”

(OK, one of those quotes may be from Ghostbusters. But you get the picture.)

The Jewish Week reports bravely on the phenomenon of the Israeli dancing program at the 92nd Street Y, which draws hundreds each week to dance their days and political differences away. Apparently today’s dances are less folky and more pop-oriented. (This means a likely reduction in the only Israeli dance step I’ve really mastered other than the “mayim” and the “reverse mayim”: the “chirkeziah.”)

For those in or visiting New York, the folk dancing begins every Wednesday at the Y with an instructional session from 7-8; then an open dancing session until 12:45 am. (Yes, on a school night. No, I won’t write you a note.)

The Heartwarming Story of 11 Whacky Palestinian Terrorists and their Alien Friend

OK. I was kidding about the alien friend. But yes, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the George Jonas novel Vengeance is currently in pre-production in Israel. Vengeance tells the tale of what happenned to the 11 surviving Palestinian terrorists who carried out the murder of 11 Israeli atheletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The Mossad managed to off 10 of them before the operation was cancelled after a bungled assasination of an innocent waiter. Spielberg spokesman Marvin Levysays that the film had been thoroughly researched. “This film has been built from many, many sources. One thing I can say is we expect this to be a balanced film.” However no one seems to have told the Mossad about this.

Five retired Mossad agents, all of whom served in key intelligence posts during the hunt for Palestinian guerrilla chiefs in Europe and the Middle East to avenge the slaying of Israel’s 11 sportsmen, voiced surprise at hearing of the film … “I know nothing at all about this project,” a former Mossad director who declined to be named told Reuters.

Well, whatever. Expect lots of controversy. The book itself claimed that the Mossad hung its agents out to dry, abandoning them to their fate, and that several of the agents had been subsequently assasinated by presumably Palestinian hit teams. Zvi Zamir, who headed Mossad in the 1970s, told the New York Times in 1984 that the version of events in “Vengeance” was “not true” but did not elaborate. Vengeance author Jonas of course admitted that “certain details of the story were incapable of being verified.” Also, the message boards on IMDB (requires registration but well worth it just for the laughs) are smokin’ as film geeks struggle to maintain the political debate spawned by this upcoming film. It aint LGF but it aint pretty anyway.

Unless you’ve been holed up in a Tibetan monastery or something you probably know by now that Tom Cruise is engaged to his beard newest girlfriend Katie Holmes. What you may not know is that Cruise was out cruisin for a bride and one of his prospectives was Jewess Scarlett Johansson (Girl With The Pearl Earring, Lost In Translation).

According to Radar Magazine:

Weeks before he began wooing his brainwashed bride-to-be, Cruise made repeated phone calls to the 19-year-old starlet—who was then set to co-star with him in Mission Impossible III—imploring her to meet him at the Scientology Celebrity Center in L.A. But when the actress finally agreed, the supposedly professional get-together took an oddly spiritual turn. “[Cruise] took me into this room, which was stifling hot, and was showing me all kinds of info about joining the church,” Johansson told our source. “The whole time he didn’t even offer me a cookie!” Instead, he offered her dinner—and a glimpse into the Twilight Zone.

After two hours of proselytizing, our source says Cruise opened a door to reveal a second room full of upper-level Scientologists who had been waiting to dine with the pair, at which point the cool-headed ingenue politely excused herself. Soon after the meeting, Johansson dropped out of Mission Impossible III, reportedly due to scheduling conflicts.

Note to Cruise: When wooing a Jewess, always have a cookie nearby. That or 100-year old Grand Marnier. Sheesh.

Undeterred, Cruise reportedly tried his luck with 24-year-old Jessica Alba, 22-year-old Kate Bosworth, and 18-year-old Lindsay Lohan, before making his moves on the 26-year-old Holmes. Cryptic rumours reported by the New York Daily News, imply that Katie was won over by the promise of eternal love Cruise’s rugged manliness a 5-year, $5 million contract with a no sex clause – which shouldn’t be a problem for Cruise who is reportedly, uh, a very happy man. Very. Happy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Meet Paul Feldman. He’s a former defense analyst who decided to go into the bagel business. He got the idea after years of providing his co-workers with bagels – see he would go off in the morning, bring bagels and cream cheese into the office and then leave a cash basket for people to pay him back. In 1984, his research institute fell under new management and Paul decided to leave. He then started a new business delivering bagels to offices and instituting the same honor system – this was a great business plan and he was delivering 8,400 bagels a week to 140 different offices. Being an economist and all he kept detailed statistics regarding payment rates and how those differed amongst different types of companies.

Despite all the attention paid to rogue companies such as Enron, academics know very little about the practicalities of white-collar crime. There are no good data. A key fact of white-collar crime is that we hear about only the very slim fraction of people who are caught cheating. Most embezzlers lead quiet and theoretically happy lives; employees who steal company property are rarely detected.

What did Feldman discover? That larger companies have lower payment rates than smaller companies, and that executives steal more than lower level employees. He also discovered that payment rates go down around holiday seasons and go up when the weather is nice. He also noted an increase in payment rates after 9/11.

This was presented in the Sunday Times and is an excerpt from Freaknomics, a book written by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner. You’ll hear about this book soon, especially in light of Levitt’s controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. However, I figured for now we’ll just talk bagels and white collar crime. That’s Jewlicious enough for me.

Belgian photographer Jean Van Cleemput has a new book out called Beluga, which features scantily clad models posing with sea food in a Belgian Chinese restaurant. Van Cleemput is a fairly well known photographer with an international client list. His past work includes a series on war, pictured above. This features partially clad women posing as various modern warriors complete with guns, machetes and explosives belts. When asked what inspired this provocative imagery he replied:

George Bush, the beginning of the war in Iraq, and the world that’s getting more and more extreme … I don’t like to discuss too much about photography, there are always pro and contras. When you make pictures, people are not used to seeing, then it becomes a never ending discussion, that’s why I like to keep it purely visual.

I took the liberty of adding in some strategic Jewlicious logos and Magen Davids, but otherwise I am not quite sure why I felt compelled to blog this. When presented with images of nude women dressed as Palestinian suicide bombers, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Klansmen – how could I resist? Seriously. Is there a larger message here? Maybe, but tonight I agree with our Belgian photographer “I don’t like to discuss too much about photography.”

Imitation? Flattery?
As you all know, Jewsweek just got more Jewcy. We say Shalom to the inimitable Benyamin Cohen who has landed a full time gig at Atlanta Jewish Life, and instead say Shalom to Reuven Koret of Koret Communications in Tel Aviv, makers of Israel Insider and well, Jewcy.com. There’s a section in the new site (displayed above) called Lifestyle where they ask “What is Jewcy-licious?” The answer is “It’s that “must-have” judaica!” which includes a bunch of books you can buy and links to some cool sites like uh… Barmitzvah Disco and uh… Heeb Magazine and Half Jew and The Yada Blog. They also solicit your recommendations. I have a recommendation. Hey oy@jewcy.com, I know what’s Jewcy-Licious. How about this site called Jewlicious? You should check it out some time. Anyways, good luck with your new site, I’ll be sure to visit often.

In other flattering news, Who’s Your Rabbi has a new line of t-shirts, modelled along the iPod Ads, it’s called iJew and shows a Rabbi wearing an iPod. Now where have I seen that before?

Oh Yeah! I saw that here. Wow. What a remarkable resemblance! And we did that in August 2004. Of course, we never turned it into a t-shirt but, uh… we do have that copyright notice at the bottom of every page. Whatever. Shabbat Shalom y’all.

This week’s parasha is about the spies. It’s also my Birthday parasha, although growing up reform/conservative I didn’t know these things until I came to Israel. That’s not totally true, I must have known it at some point, I did have a Bat Mitzvah after all, but there was absolutely no sense of relevance or meaning when I memorized the Hebrew, so it never stuck in my mind.

Nonetheless, when I rediscovered this portion, Shelach, along with the idea that your birthday parasha holds some clue or connection to your individual mission in the world, the Zionist in me was thrilled. I had already moved to Israel, sight unseen, with little more than faith, passion and a healthy sense of drama (like our people were apparently supposed to do 3,500 years ago). Putting these pieces together one Shabbat in the hilltop city of Tsfat, I was actually a little freaked out, and quite a bit in awe that perhaps my life was on track afterall and I was participating in some cosmic Tikkun.

Shelach has since become one of my favorite parashot, even if I’m a little biased. It’s Zionistic, it’s dramatic, and deals with the human condition, group psychology, those spectacularly loaded moments in our life where the decisions we make can change everything, and the sheer power of our words.

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Binny Freidman takes a look at Parasha Shelach as an interesting allegory…

The Jews in the desert were, in a sense, living in the Garden of Eden. Now they would have to work for a living, plowing and sowing and reaping and threshing to receive their daily bread. Farming is hard work, with little time for spiritual pursuits that were so naturally a part of the desert experience when the Jewish people had such a direct relationship with G-d.

The question of the spies was simply: ‘are we ready to leave the Yeshiva, and head out into the world?’ And the message of the story we learned is that you eventually have to be willing to head out into the world, because all the learning of Torah and spiritual growth is meaningless if it does not get out into the world to make a difference.

click more to read the whole thing.

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Once upon
a time, Jews
were forced
to wear stars.

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(image from Ha’aretz)

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Amotz Asa-el writes an interesting opinion piece about the Gaza pullout being the beginning of the end of what he calls the “war of utopias.”

With the Jordanian artillery’s damage still visible on buildings and in courtyards around us, we proceeded to explore what for the previous 19 years had been for all of us beyond the pale. Joining the colorful, jubilant and often singing convoy of 200,000 young, old, rich, poor, religious, secular and above all delirious Israelis that snaked its way around Mount Zion to the Old City in Shavuot of ‘67, usually for the first time in their lives, we felt as if panacea was one arm’s length ahead of us, and all of Jewish history’s tortures were behind us.

In fact, we were merely embarking on yet another arduous journey, one that would last decades and nearly debilitate the Jewish state. For the morning after the Six Day War a new battle had been engaged, a skirmish purely Jewish, one that ultimately split Israel and much of the Diaspora down the middle, dividing thinkers, parties, families and even individuals.

It was the war of the Jewish utopias.

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As you might recall, Jewish Theological Seminary Chancellor Ismar Schorsch has announced his retirement, to take effect June 30 of 2006, so the search for his replacement is on. The winner will have the duty/privilege/burden of helming the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism through the next period in its history. (When he steps down, Schorsch will have held the post for twenty years.)

Since there seems to be lots of interest in Conservative Judaism on Jewlicious (whether the interest is positive or negative depends on the poster), I thought you all might like to know that a few blogs have been founded to bring you all the news about the JTS Chancellor search.

JTS2006 seems to be more news-oriented, while JTSfuture seems to be set up to focus on the potential candidates as they emerge.

For instance, the search committee members were just named.

I think web-savvy Conservative Jews are going to embrace these blogs as forum for public opinion, and I can only hope that JTS administration, board and the search committee peruse them to hear what the people have to say…

See also:
Miriam for the original reportage
My Urban Kvetch
Jewlicious post about the Conservative Movement’s Big Gay Issue

Ynet brings us the wacky story of soldiers who violated rules, were sent to prison, and while there began to take Hebrew lessons. Apparently, these soldiers who are immigrants from the former Soviet Union, didn’t have opportunities within Israeli society to study the language.

“A guy didn’t even know how to write his name in Hebrew,” a prison source told Ynet. “The first class had 18 soldiers.”

The soldiers are highly motivated in their prison class, and have met with success and popularity.

“The lessons ran from morning to the afternoon and the soldiers received homework and did it like good students,” the source said. “At first, those who avoided joining the class made fun of those who did, but whoever was standing on the outside soon asked to come in.”

The enterprising commander of the prison is already planning another, more advanced Hebrew class for them.

I think Jewlicious may have the answer to our Jewish education difficulties. Move to Israel, join the IDF, break military rules, go to jail and study Hebrew for free.

I’m sure Judaism classes are pending. Where’s Michael Steinhardt?

In straightforward undiplomatic Israeli style, Olmert, who really does not suffer fools and is no angel himself, made a public declaration in an interview with the Jerusalem Post that:

“I am sick and tired of hearing from stupid settlers that Gaza and Jerusalem are the same, Gaza and Jerusalem are not the same. They never were. There are priorities. And I am not prepared to look at Gaza and Jerusalem and Shilo and Beit El and Ofra as if they were all on the same level. Nor am I prepared to accept the argument that if I pull out of Gaza, I am necessarily willing to pull out of Jerusalem. This is nonsense and I won’t have any part of it.”

And then, just to prove that he really does think some of them are stupid, he clarified later in the interview:

“I meant to say that those who argue that if I pull out of Gush Katif I will definitely pull out of every part of Jerusalem are using a stupid argument.”

Now that is a Jewlicious moment…

Editors note: In the following Friday issue of the Jerusalem Post, a large clarification note was issued on page 3, stating that it was not the settlers Olmert called stupid, but the idea that Gaza and Jerusalem wll be treated equally.