That’s it. I’ve had it. I’m reclaiming my position as official poster on the celebrity Kabbalah beat. This throne is mine, I tell you, mine! [Insert evil laugh here.]

Well, the blonde-ish celebrity Kabbalists are at it again. Madonna spent her summer falling off horses, denouncing the material world including the evils of television and candy, and not going to Demi and Ashton’s wedding. (Don’t worry, the formerly Material Girl sent bracelets made of actual jewels, not of red string.) And Britney, having studied at the feet of Madonna, signed on for Kabbaliciousness and tried to emulate her idol by birthing a babe, Sean Preston, with first husband Kevin “Borderline” Federline, but failed to invite me to the bris. (Did you miss any of this? Check the Madonnanthology for your snarky recaps…)

But now Brit’s feeling cut off from her mentress, and has decided to continue her never-ending quest to become Madonna by following her into the world of celebrity authors. Because that’s what the world needs now: Books By Britney.

The sexy popstar – who became a follower of the mystical Jewish faith after being introduced to it by Madonna – is set to follow in her idols footsteps after reportedly being approached by representatives of the church [i love the way they call it a church-edk] to pen a story inspired by the religion’s teachings. Madonna has already written five children’s books, including ‘The English Roses’ and ‘Yakov and the Seven Thieves’, inspired by her Kabbalah beliefs and Britney is said to be ’swell’ on the idea.

This in a week that has seen the arrest of a major leader of the celebrity Kabbalah movement in Tel Aviv “on suspicion of promising to cure a woman’s cancer in return for more than £30,000,” and ended with Sharon Osbourne noting that Madonna is one of her nightmare dinner guests, and that she would “like to punch her.”

Ouch. Someone needs some nice, calming tea. Perhaps made with Kabbalah water. Quickly, before the apocalypse comes.

(Reposted, in parts, to My Urban Kvetch)

It’s really a shame, when you think about it. Three young Palestinian men are to be indicted tomorrow in Be’er Sheva for trying to open a factory. It was going to produce Kassem rockets, but so what? Don’t they deserve to establish an enterprise? Is it their fault they want to kill Jews and destroy Israel after all those martyrdom commercials the PA has been running for years?

Already however, there are rumors of support for the trio. Human rights organizations like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch are planning to petition foreign governments to arrest any visiting IDF officers involved in the tracking and arrest of these young men on the grounds that restricting economic development is a war crime.

James Wolfensohn, still smarting from that $500,000 he lost when the Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses left behind by the settlers, is fresh from attacking Israel for keeping the Gaza border closed for – of all ridiculous reasons – security purposes. Now he has gotten a group of donors all lined up, not to mention the EU and the Quartet, and together they plan to petition the Israeli government to stop backtracking on its forward movement toward peace with the disengagement by arresting these businesspeople. How are Palestinians supposed to make a living, these fine diplomats ask, if one undermines their business infrastructure?

Thomas Friedman, writing in the NY Times, praises Arafat and his leadership prior to his death and reminds his readers that under Arafat’s rule – unlike that of the current wuss, Abbas – Palestinians were very successful at building Kassem rocket factories.

Best of all, it is rumored that the newly-wed wife of Yigal Amir, who allegedly married him in some sort of weird long-distance ceremony accepted by a bunch of very odd rabbis who don’t quite mind Amir’s murder of Yitzhak Rabin, has indicated that since the Prison Service refuses her conjugal visits with Yigal, she may seek to divorce him and marry one of the enterprising Palestinians. Apparently the Prison Service is less averse to them enjoying conjugal visits since they did not murder an Israeli PM. It is unknown how the rabbis will respond this time since no PM has been murdered. Furthermore, Amir has been overheard screaming, “A get?! A get?! Never! I’ll shoot you in the back first!”

On the other hand, there are voices in Israel speaking up on the entrepreneurs’ behalf already. After hearing how the three Palestinians smuggled themselves out of Gaza, bribed Egyptian soldiers, snuck into Israel with their manuals and some basic elements of bomb-making, and managed to evade the IDF for a few hours, the CEO of a major Israeli bank was overheard saying, “Kassem, shmassem, those three would make terrific associates and I plan to hire them. Let them convert Kassems into investment banking research!” An aide was overheard reminding the CEO that the verse actually said “swords into plowshares,” but the impatient CEO – a graduate of a well-regarded management program of an ivy league school – reminded the young man that anybody who still farms is a sucker (”fryer”).

Rumor is that some of the million Palestinians left back in Gaza plan to try again with a different factory. In the meantime, some are planning to kidnap Israelis so the government will exchange this trio. The goal, of course, is to revive the moribund Palestinian economy.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned Ha’aretz for referring to the three prodigies as “radicals.”

Anti-Israel residents of the Middle East have a cute little theory. It goes like this: Israel The Zionist entity is the organ of Western imperialism on holy Muslim soil. Therefore, it is natural to assume that Israel’s the Zionist entity’s raison d’etre is territorial expansion. Therefore, it is apparent that the Zionist entity’s ultimate goal is to have a massive, Arabrein state stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates.

There are several, ahem, “proofs” for this. First off, it does indeed say in Genesis, “To your descendants I give this land from the River of Egypt to the Great River, the river Euphrates.” However, it is generally understood in Biblical commentary, including that of Rashi, that the River of Egypt is the Wadi El-Arish in Sinai. Furthermore, later descriptions of the Land of Israel in the Bible describe something much more limited, and descriptive passages trump general ones. And, of course, it’s not like the Zionists ever used the Torah as a blueprint for the construction of a Jewish state.

Second, it is claimed that the blue stripes on the Israeli flag prove this Sinister Zionist plot. Maybe you thought they represented the blue stripes on a tallit, meant to remind Jews of the Temple, but you’re wrong. They clearly symbolize the Nile and the Euphrates, with the Jews between them.

Third, Yassir Arafat, and several other heads of state, have it on good authority that over the entry to the Knesset there is a map of Greater Israel with the phrase “From the Nile to the Euphrates” on it. Curiously, no MK, including Arab MKs, have ever corroborated this report, but they must be in on the Sinister Zionist Plot.

On Friday night, however, I think I discovered my favorite proof. I was having dinner at my friend Mayer’s house, and he had two friends of his over, a German and an American studying at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. Post-dinner, over a couple rounds of really quite excellent Ramallan arak, we got to discussing politics. Somewhere in there, one of the Bir Zeit guys told us that some of his Palestinian acquaintances had dramatically revealed to him the ultimate proof to Israel’s expansionism: the 10-agorah coin.

Admittedly, agorot are evil. They’re huge, take up undue pocket space, and are breathtakingly worthless. That, however, is incidental; the key is that amorphous blob under the menorah, which to any normal person appears to be the medium the menorah is carved out of. However, to abnormal people, and by that I mean people who are wholly convinced 13 million people who can’t even agree with each other are steadily taking over the world, that amorphous blob is a map of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Nevermind that it doesn’t look anything like it! The Zionists are wily. One day they’re putting the blood of your children into matzah, the next they’re sweeping from Cairo to Baghdad. Thank God that someone got wise to their scheme.

Friday morning, I logged on to Yahoo Messenger and instantly got a webcam invite from Beach Hillel’s famous Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, one of the masterminds behind the Jewlicious @ the Beach conference. Not that I randomly accept webcam invites from strangers, but this was no stranger….

Within seconds of accepting the invitation, I found myself magically transported inside the Bookstein’s Long Beach home, sitting around the table as we awaited the beginning of three-year-old Shlomo Bookstein’s upshirin. After a few pans around the room, Rabbi Yo abandoned control of the webcam and steadicammed in on the action.

There went the first lock of hair, which hadn’t been cut during the first three years of Shlomo’s life. Rabbi Yo and Rachel took turns cutting and brandishing the locks of hair in front of both the family and the webcam…

Danielle and Rafi were there too, to celebrate with the family—Rachel’s parents, and Rabbi Yo’s mom (does that make her the “Yo Mamma”?), who, her son reports was reluctant to cut Shlomo’s hair, since her own son (by his own admission) looked like a hippie until he was 11. There was breakfast, and orange juice, and something undefined but l’chayim-worthy in a glass.

I’d never been to an upshirin before, and never expected that the first one I ever attended wouldn’t even require me to leave my apartment. But technology made it possible.

Which got me thinking…technology made it all possible…from finding Jewlicious to organizing that first meeting on the Upper West Side, from coordinating the Jewlicious conference to subsequent Jewlicious gatherings at California wineries and Lower East Side bars.

But I know what you’re all thinking: what style of haircut will the Booksteins select for their newly shorn son? The Dorothy Hamill? The Jew mullet? The “Rachel”? Time will tell as the youngster’s personal style emerges. And I am certain that technology will bring us pictures, bimhayra b’yamainu (speedily in our days). Amen. And mazal tov!

Though Lech Lecha made me a Zionist (”Leave your country…and go to the land that I will show you” still gives me chills), Bereishit has always tortured me. Taunting me with the promise of purpose and understanding, but veiling it so thickly that a mind with any agenda whatsoever can project almost upon it the meaning it desires to see.

Still, I’m pretty sure that the cosmic reason for life and the secret to living it is in there somewhere. Although greater minds than mine have failed to find it with certainty, I love watching them try.

Below I have reprinted Rav Binny’s take on the parasha, because there is something truly beautiful to it.

It’s long, but worth the read…

(more…)

A few days ago, Iranian President Mahmoud “Difficult Last Name” Ahmadinejad made a casual little remark about wiping the Zionist entity off the face of the Earth. For some reason, despite the fact that the political and religious leaders of just about every Muslim country on the planet have been repeatedly saying things along these lines since May 1948, this time the international community took notice. This is sort of the international relations equivalent of, after faithfully reading the KKK’s newsletter for 40 years, waking up and realizing for the first time that David Duke doesn’t like black people.

Anyway, boys and girls, warm up your memory holes, because the Iranian Foreign Ministry has released a statement:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is committed to its U.N. charter commitments. It has never used force against a second country or threatened the use of force.”

Even if we overlook the fact that the use of force was threatened just a few days ago, even if we overlook “Death to Israel” written on those missiles, I’ll bet a few people who lived in Iraq circa 1980-1988 might dispute that statement.

Yet there’s more damage control going on within the Land of the Mullahs:

In a Friday prayer speech, the former speaker of the Iranian parliament, Aliakbar Nateq-Noori, said that what Ahmadinejad meant was that free and fair elections should be held in Palestine, with the participation of all Palestinians, including refugees, and that whoever wins the election should take over the government.

Farsi, you see, is a very nuanced language, and obviously the incompetent translator for the Zionist-controlled media was unable to grasp its complexities and therefore understandably heard “We must wipe Israel from the map” when what was actually said was “Free and fair elections should be held in Palestine.” It’s a mistake anybody could have made.

I don’t know what’s sadder: that Iran expects the world to be that stupid, or that the world probably is.

All I know is that I’m sure glad we successfully killed all those bad terrorists in Iraq and, now that democracy is flowering throughout the Middle East, no sovereign nation would ever advocate, y’know, nuking the Jews.

I love the new world order!

Source

Shabbat Shalom to all of our visitors, posters and your families.

Born again not-so-Kosher MC crucifies his Web site
Aviad Cohen, aka Jewish Messianic rapper Fifty Shekel has shut down his Web site. Why? A cryptic message left on his home page says only “I did the best I could with what I had but I guess ya know, oh well.” He was never universally adored when he was just a bad Jewish rapper (to say the least), but the previously teppid went ballistic when Fifty discovered Jesus after watching snuff film, The Passion of The Christ and then dedicated his career to proselytizing for his newly acquired Messianic faith. Maybe he couldn’t handle the hate and ridicule? Will the Jews be blamed for this too? While some, probably rightly so, question poor Aviad’s sanity, I’m hoping he doesn’t emulate his lord and have a, ya know, resurrection. If he does, will he be called 30 (silver) Shekels?

Whatever, bottom line, regular or messianic, he sucked both ways. I hope he gets over whatever it was that made him insane, but I’m totally not sad to see him go. Vaja con dios Aviad.

Especially when they buy the beer.

This is difficult for me to admit, but being a member of a star blogteam like Jewlicious doesn’t come with the perks I thought it would. Oh, sure, I have a string of potential crash pads from Jersey to Jerusalem and sometimes ck buys my loyalty with wholesale American Apparel clothes , but frankly, I wasn’t expecting crash pads and clothes so much as I was expecting palatial dwellings heavy with the aroma of frankincense and tasteful oud music. And dancing girls. Copious, nubile dancing girls.

Unfortunately, in what would turn out to be a pattern, ck totally let me down. But as it turns out, sometimes the best parts of being included in the Jewlicious Entity come not from our despotic leader, but from our commentors.

Allow me to explain. If you’ll recall, I arrived in Israel about three weeks ago sans luggage, place to live, clothes and a significant chunk of my admittedly already tenuous sanity. Night had fallen, it was Shabbat, and I was walking from Mt. Scopus to Rechavia to grovel and plead for shelter from my esteemed co-blogger Laya (okay, I didn’t have to grovel and plead, she actually offered). My route took me through Meah She’arim, the Charedi neighborhood noted primarily for preserving the language and customs of the shtetl, abusing improperly-attired women who pass through, stoning the police for minor slights, and being the location of the infamous the-Middle’s-wife-spitting-incident. As I walked through hoping nobody would throw a specially-prepared non-muktzeh rock at the obvious shaygetz, I heard somebody call out “Michael!” Fairly confident that I probably didn’t have any admirers in a neighborhood where houses don’t have TV, much less Internet access to certain boobalicious Jewish blogs, I kept walking. But then my name was called out again, and I saw two figures in black suits and black hats heading towards me.

Just as I was about to claim that any non-complimentary posts about the Jerusalem Badatz in Jewlicious’ past had in fact been written by the GrandMuffti and that any shiksas skeletons in my closet were all part of a grand misunderstanding, one of the black-suited figures stuck out his hand and said, “Michael! Hi! Ybocher.”

Yes, this apparation who had appeared out of the blackness of a Meah She’arim was none other than friend of Jewlicious and frequent commentor ybocher (and his Gibraltarian friend Nissim). ybocher is sort of the Jewish equivalent of the Last of the Mohicans, a Jew born and raised in Poland, a country, due to certain, ahem, historical unpleasantnesses, with a Jewish population roughly commensurate with that of North Dakota. Ybocher now splits his time between his native land, New York, California and Jerusalem, where he studies at Ohr Someach (but hey, nobody’s perfect). After I recovered from the surprise of being recognized on the street in a Charedi neighborhood from a blog, ybocher and Nissim escorted me along some of the rest of my way.

During the course of the next couple weeks, ybocher was gracious enough to not only convince me come out of my hiding place indoors, but buy all the drinks too. I can offer you Jewlicious readers one solid piece of advice: if you happen to find yourself, for whatever reason, drinking with a Pole, do not attempt to compete. I repeat, do not attempt to compete. Otherwise, in a matter of an hour or two, you will find yourself sobbing in a corner unable to form complete sentences, while the Pole, who has drunk twice as much as you, calmly discusses matters of international finance over a game of chess as if he has ingested nothing harder than Celestial Seasonings.

But anyway, on behalf of myself and Jewlicious, I want to thank ybocher, now back in Poland on his way to New York, for his hospitality, even if I got a hangover. And I also want to razz him on his countrymen electing a former child actor.

Then again, we elected Reagan.

So many thanks to my friend ybocher, and I hereby propose a drinking contest between him and ck upon their next meeting. Poland vs. Morocco…the eternal battle continues. I can’t wait.

For me, in my apartment on the Upper West Side, it was still Shabbat when the phone rang. Hearts skipped beats, and we all jumped a little bit. In an apartment wherein everyone was observing Shabbat, the ringing of a phone was jarring, to say the least. It meant that somewhere, something was wrong.

In those days (”back in the mid-90s,” intoned the cantankerous Jewess), voice mail was not as ubiquitous–we had answering machines, tape recorders that broadcast the messages out loud as they came in. So, we waited for the beep, and heard the voice–ten years later, I don’t even remember whose it was–tell us that the Prime Minister of Israel had been shot. The details of his death, the assassin, the pre-mortem peace rally, “Shir Lashalom,” etc., would come later. But in that moment, Shabbat’s peace shattered as we absorbed the loss and tried to imagine the impact on the country that we all considered our home away from home. Someone turned on a radio or a TV or picked up a phone and called someone, or something, because, it seemed, this was knowledge that couldn’t wait.

A few hours previous and a few thousand miles away, IDF soldier Liel Liebovitz was in Tel Aviv, and he was hungry. He had been to a peace rally that night, and had left with a friend to grab some hummus, when a woman ran by and shouted that Rabin had been shot.

In 2005, ten years later, Liel, now a staff writer for the Jewish Week, reflects on his experience that night:

My friend and I, burly Israeli men barely in the autumn of our adolescence, soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces, took pride in being levelheaded and controlled. The woman, we thought, was clearly hysterical; after all, the scenario of Rabin being shot was as likely to us as an alien invasion. The prime minister, everybody knew, was well protected, surrounded by the secret service’s finest. So how could a gun-wielding assassin make it past all the security?

We started eating again, but an unease began to settle in our stomachs. On the off chance that the woman was right, we both thought without speaking, we needed to get going. We paid the bill and left.

Our next destination was a natural choice. We both had witnessed enough suicide bombings before our 20th birthday to be thoroughly acquainted with Tel Aviv’s hospital system, to know just where an injured person would be taken in an emergency. We walked, briskly and silently, to Ichilov, a nearby hospital on a broad, leafy boulevard. We were not surprised to discover dozens of people, many familiar faces from the rally, standing there, dazed and confused.

It was already past 11 p.m., yet no one gathered in front of the hospital wanted to leave. There was comfort in being there, the mute comfort of crowds, promising little but a shoulder to rub against or a ready ear. Some people talked, exchanging madcap theories in frantic voices. Others stood by quietly. No one had any clue what had happened.

One glance at Eytan Haber’s face, however, was more than anyone needed.

Rabin’s spokesman and assistant stepped out of the hospital with a look on his face that I will never forget, a look I have never since seen on anyone’s face. It was an odd concoction of fear, pain and detachment, as if Haber the government official was trying to remain collected while Haber the man, Rabin’s longtime friend, was imploding.

“The government of Israel,” he read aloud from a piece of paper, “announces with astonishment and deep sorrow the death of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, who was murdered by an assassin tonight in Tel Aviv.”

For the rest of the article, click here. And may our future songs all be songs of peace.

Say hello to the class of 2005!

Through a program at the women’s yeshiva Nishmat, 12 women in the fourth graduating class were ordained yesterday to help other women with issues pertaining to taharat hamishpocha (family purity laws).

Traditionally, if circumstances arose which were not covered in Kallah classes, a woman would have to go to a rabbi and discuss the details of her menstrual cycle etc. Clearly, this could be embarrassing, causing some women to take an unnecessarily strict approach, remaining separated from their husbands in order to avoid having to speak with a male Rav.

Enter Nishmat and the new women “halachic advisers”.

Rabbi Yehuda Henkin explains,

“We purposely call them halachic ‘advisers’ to emphasize their role in citing known, undisputed Jewish law. But none of the women are poskei halacha (halachic authorities). None of them make decisions on new, unprecedented issues in halacha.”

He added that “very few men have enough halachic knowledge to make groundbreaking halachic decisions let alone women…But the time will come when women will have the appropriate background necessary to make innovative halachic decisions.”

Now that brings a smile to my cynical little face. Is this the beginning of a time that we can start accepting the idea, at least in theory, of women poskim?

In any case, the Nishmat “halachic advisors” might even have a leg up on the men in the taharat hamishpocha area. In addition to studying halachot, they are also “required to study physiology, anatomy and certain medical issues such as the effect of birth control on the body and fertility problems” as well as basic psychology, sexology and counseling

Nishmat already has a halacha hotline and website, and is also in the planning stages for similarly intensive training in the area of kashrut.

It’s Easy To Achieve.
UPDATE: It’s good to know that sometimes when people call for you destruction, more than just France will stand up for you. (Of course, many used it to point to the issue of Iran’s nuclear capabilities) Here’s some strong words from:
Canada: “We cannot tolerate comments of such hatred, such anti-Semitism, such intolerance. These comments are all the more troubling given that we know of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”(Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew)

EU: “EU leaders … today condemned in the strongest terms the comments in respect of the State of Israel attributed to President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad of Iran…Calls for violence, and for the destruction of any state, are manifestly inconsistent with any claim to be a mature and responsible member of the international community,”

France (again!): “For France, the right for Israel to exist should not be contested. This state was created by a decision of the U.N. General Assembly. International law applies to all. The question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be used as a pretext to put into question the fundamental right for Israel to exist.”

Italy: “The contents and tone of such unacceptable statements confirm worries over the political positions pursued by the new Iranian leadership, especially concerning the nuclear dossier,”

USA: “…underscores our concern and the international community’s concerns about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

The Israelis had tough words of their own, calling for the expulsion of Iran from the UN. Peres noted:

“Since 1945, the establishment of the United Nations, no head of state which is a member of the United Nations ever called for the destruction of another member of the United Nations, publicly and clearly, as the president of Iran did. It is against the charter of the United Nations, it is against the practice of the United Nations, and you cannot have a charter where some of the people are for peace and self-defense and the other half for the destruction of it…We saw already crazy declarations, and crazy appearances in the past, sometimes we did not take it very seriously. But when you see such a crazy declaration being done by an elected head of state, a member of the United Nations, it is unbearable, you cannot remain a member, or you have to change the charter.”

[q to Jewlicious readers, is this true? Has no head of state ever called for wiping out Israel?]

Finally, the fellow Jewlicious loving refers to as ‘the Fat Man’ released the following (excerpted):
“Such a country, in possession of nuclear weapons, is a danger not only to Israel and the Middle East but to Europe as well.”
END OF UPDATE

It’s good to know that when a local bully holds a conference with the theme of ‘Life without You’, someone will get your back. The Iranians sponsored a cute little conference entitled ‘Life Without Zioinism’, where president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had the following kind words:

There is no doubt that the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine will wipe off this stigma [Israel] from the face of the Islamic world…Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury (while) any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging “

Muffti always gets a kick out this kind of thing because it reminds him of an old philosophers trick/joke:

A: I don’t recognize the existence of (fill in the blank, say, the fountain of youth).
B: What thing don’t you recognize?
A: The existence of the fountain of youth!
B: Oh, so you are saying that there is a fountain of youth and you don’t recognize it’s existence?

B, of course, has made A look ridiculous since A is both saying that there is something, and that it doesn’t exist. (Muffti doesn’t endorse this style of argument, of course, at least not as stated).

Well, that’s a little disenheartening. Luckily, someone (rather unlikely) has got Israeli’s back. It’s the French, who have given us great cheese, the Magineau line, a popularization of existentialism, Victor Hugo and so much more! French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said:

We have noted these press articles reporting the comments of President Ahmadinejad. If these comments were indeed made, we condemn them with the utmost firmness.

What a revealing comment! We learn a great deal:

a. The French read the paper.
b. The French don’t entirely trust the press.
c. The French condemn calls to wipe Israel off the map.

Muffti appreciates the gesture. And he hereby calls on his sisters and brothers in Jewlicious to affirm the following:

If we get an honest press report from anyone claiming that France should be wiped off the map, we hereby pledge to condemn that claim with the utmost firmness!

For more see: Jpost and Ha’aretz. For more feel-good quotes from President Ahmadinejad’s speech, seeAl Jazeera.

That are keeping me awake, Are Reruns of The Mod Squad and Cartoons

Sometimes philosophers of a certain bent worry about puzzles such as the following. Take an object, say, a ship. Now replace one board on the ship with a different board. Same ship, right? Altering one tiny bit of the object never seems to destroy the object and bring a new one into existence. However, keep that up and eventually you will have an object that isn’t a ship in any way and has no parts in common with the object you started with. Intuitively, in other words, from a series of small steps, none of which destroyed the object, a new one has popped into existence.

Whatever you think of this puzzle’s merits, a similar question can be asked about the latest ‘import American culture but do it carefully’ phenomenon: Al Shamsoons. The show centres around the exploits of a buffoonish, overweight, SODA guzzling, Egytpian Sausage (no bacon) eating, kahk munching (ahem) fellow named Omar Al Shamsoon. Omar has a son, Badr, a mischevious li’l scamp who manifestly does not watch any show about a Jewish Clown. The Shamsoon family, furthermore, do not speak to Reverend Lovejoy and Omar never, ever goes to any bar owned by a skeevy felllow named Moe.

Muffti hasn’t seen the show but it seems to be loosely modelled on a famous American cartoon known as the Simpsons. This leaves some questions open. On a metaphysical level, we can ask if it is the same show. On an epistemological level, we can ask how we could possibly know that it was the same show given all the mutilations. On a moral level, we can ask why anyone would be evil enough to rob the original of everything that made it funny. Finally, on an aesthetic level, we can ask whether the show manages to retain any of the charms of the original. Finally, on a practical level, Muffti really, really wants to know: how does the show last more than 4 minutes since most of the original takes place in Moes?!?

Apparently it doesn’t. Muffti will post a script of the show as soon as he can get his hands on one. Unfortunately, it seems that the idea is the funniest thing about the idea. It all reminds Muffti a but of a Simpsons episode where Krusty the clown has to substitute for Itchy and Scratchy:

”Well now that Itchy & Scratchy are on the Gabbo Show, here’s Eastern Europe’s favourite cat and mouse team Worker and Parasite!”

Pardon Muffti for a while. He has to go laugh his ass off.

See Jpost.

Illuminate Me!
We asked you to illuminate us with your most Jewlicious pics and y’all did not disappoint! The prize pacs from the studio just came in today so I feel comfortable announcing the winners! Muffti and I picked them and maybe they are the most Jewlicious pics, maybe they aren’t, I dunno. Muffti may very well have been drunk, but don’t tell him I told you. He gets surly. Anyhow, in no particular order we have this pic of a dude dressed like a Jew, canoodeling with a she-devil. That’s like a microcosm of Jewish history, no?

I loved the effort and particularly the ewlicious coming out of patty’s butt.

Miel just has this look that says “I dare you not to pick me.” Muffti and I had no choice. Winners all get an “Everything is Illuminated Prize Pack, featuring a cute t-shirt, the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, the Soundtrack CD and a travel baggie thing. Winners will be notified by email! As an added bonus for everyone, I added a track from the CD on playalicious – it’s Gogol Bordello singing Start Wearing Purple.

The thing that sucks is that so many of the entries were good. I’ll add a few honorable mentions to this post after Simchat Torah. Thanks O Gracious Movie Studio!

So Alan Greenspan is leaving the Fed after many years of service. Bush’s nominee to replace Greenspan as the outgoing Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is Ben S. Bernanke. The S. stands for Shalom. My meager Googling skills did not turn up any information relating to Mr. Bernanke’s religion, but I figure with a middle name like Shalom, he’s either Jewlicious or gets an honorary Jewlicious title.

Ben Shalom Bernanke, the son of a pharmacist in Dillon, S.C., displayed his significant intellectual capacity early in life. He won the state spelling bee in the sixth grade, taught himself calculus in high school, and earned the highest college admission test scores in South Carolina in the year that he applied to college.

He also graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1975 and earned his Ph.D. from M.I.T.

You can read more about the appointment and its apparently positive reception in the marketplace at the NY Times. He is a former Princeton professor and Fed Board member.

Mr. Bernanke responded to those concerns in a speech in October 2003, when he said any inflation target be considered a long-term goal and that the Fed would not set a “fixed time frame for reaching it.” He also acknowledged the political concerns an official inflation target would raise and said they could be allayed with deftly worded provisions that preserved the Fed’s flexibility.

“We would have the explicit proviso that important short-run economic and financial goals will not be sacrificed in order to reach the long-term inflation objective more quickly,” he said in that speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Although it would be important to vet these ideas thoroughly with the relevant Congressional committees before proceeding, I am hopeful that a change of the type I am proposing would be acceptable to Congress as being within the spirit of existing legislation.”

His remarks were delivered at a time when the Fed and economists were increasingly concerned about the prospects of deflation, a rare falling of prices. Mr. Bernanke’s early academic work focused on the causes of the Great Depression, one of the starkest examples of deflation in economic history.

I also wouldn’t be too surprised if the white supremacist twin girls (Prussian Blue) will shortly add a song about Jewish bankers to their repertoire.

Freestyle latino-yiddish pour démarrer la semaine. Mangu le petit latino rappe ce soir à partir de 20h à la Scène Bastille avec les Hip Hop Hoodios de New-York. You can hear them now! Go to radio nova and click on “Ecouter Radio Nova.” Enjoy the interview – Radio Nova in Paris is probably the coolest radio station in the world and they are famous for butchering the English language, ie “eep op oodios.” Stupid overhyped Jew hipster magazines may not like the Hoodios, but they sure can’t get enough of them in Paree! Pick me up a crépe boys!

Natan Schechter, my brother in law, recently got his head shaved as part of Montreal radio station Mix 96’s Shave to Save campaign. The campaign, taking part every October Breast Cancer Awareness month, raised $500,000 last year to benefit the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation. Natan’s office raised over $2000. Tanya, his wife, is definitely all proud of him but I am sure that Noam, his infant son is a little freaked. In any case, I know I’ll be making a modest donation to fight the good fight because Breast Cancer sucks. We urge you all to do the same! You can find out more about National Breast Cancer Awareness month at nbcam.org and at the American Cancer Society Homepage. Kick in some cash or if you’re a woman over 40, get a mamogram! Do it today. Your boo… breasts are counting on you!

Trust us. She loves her hummus.

The political movement for the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish state has gone through many phases and been subject to many interpretations during its 150 or so years. From the Ohavei Tziyon, the Biluites and the World Zionist Congress of the late 1800s to the warring schools of Labor and Revisionist Zionism in the years leading up to the establishment of Israel to the gun-toting religious Zionist hippies of our present day, various groups have claimed to represent the true spirit of the Zionist movement.

Well. Nobody talks about the Ohavei Tziyon or Biluites anymore. Labor Zionism gave us the socialist nightmare of Israeli bureaucracy. Revisionist Zionism has been mostly reduced to a football club. And the religious Zionists have been transformed by the disengagement from the self-styled true heralds of the Zionist way to a bunch of petulant crybabies in obnoxious “Lo Nishkach v’Lo Nislach” (We Won’t Forget and We Won’t Forgive) T-shirts. So then, we need to refresh Zionism. And I have the solution. Forget Labor. Forget Revision. My new movement:

Culinary Zionism.

What is Culinary Zionism, you ask? Simple. You get the Jews here, and you keep ‘em here with the food, which is totally cheap and totally yummy. And good for you. Seriously, where else can you not only get a host of delicious Middle Eastern treats at low, low prices, and also, due to the immigrant nature of Israeli society, just about any ethnic food you can think of? Do you New York hipster dudes have the shuk? Can you smog-choked LAers go to Abu Ghosh and bliss out on hummus-y goodness? I think not. Hummus! Falafel! Fuul! Shakshuka! Olives! A million and one pastries! Salatim! Great fruit! Fresh vegetables! Who could ask for more?

Olive oil is good and good for you. Just ask me.

So come to Israel. Come for all those historical and religious and blah blah blah reasons. Stay for the food.

And with that in mind, now that ck and laya have christened Taami as the best restaurant hummus in Jerusalem, allow me to alert you to the best hummus in Machaneh Yehudah, the shuk. I don’t know what the place is called, but there’s a tall guy with a pony tail, and a tray of divine hummus with fuul, swimming in olive oil, goes for only ten shekels. Above we can see our own princess of Jewliciousness giving it, I guess, one pita up. Seriously. It is so damned good. If you’re in Jerusalem, go out and buy some. Hell, if you’re not in Jerusalem, go out and buy some. It’s the spirit of the new revolution.

Laya buys awesome hummus from awesome hummus dude, Machaneh Yehudah

And while you’re at the shuk, stop by Ma’adanei Tzidkiyahu, which I will (loosely) translate as “Tzidkiyahu’s Yummies,” and pick up some great stuffed grape leaves and myriad salatim. Just remember to shove aside the old ladies in line or they will totally budge your ass. It is the Law of the Shuk.

And now, to be very Daily Show about it, here is your Israeli culinary moment of Zen.

One side of this garlic says “Hong Chang.” The other says, in Hebrew, “Fruit of our land.” Go figure.

What do you call cute young girls who play in a band and have aspiring music carreers?

If you guessed Hanson, you were close, but no cigar. This time the right answer is Lamb and Lynx Gaede (don’t be appalled by the names: their new sibling is named Dresden). These girls play guitar and violin and sing tunes for their band Prussian Blue. What sort of pre-teen angsty topics do these girls cover? Well, here’s a sample from ‘Aryan Man Awake’:

When the man who plows the fields is driven from his lands.
When the carpenter must give away what he’s built with his own hands.
When a mother’s only children belong to her no more.
And black masked men with guns come bashing down the doors.
Where freedom exists for only those with darker skin.
Where lies and propaganda will never let you win.
Where symbols of your heritage are held with such contempt,
and benefits of country ‘cept tax are you exempt.

Here’s a bit from ‘Victory Day’:

Well sit down and listen, to what I have to say.
Soon will come a great war, a bloody but holy day.
And after that purging our people will be free,
and sing up in the bright skies, a sun for all to see…

Yep, the themes are clear: playing ‘mom’, boys (the farmer and the carpenter), their totally favourite country, singing, bright skies and sunshine! How cute.

Despite these happy go lucky themes, some half-empty types have focussed on the more controversial aspects of their lyrics, detecting a hint of white power. An ABC interview excerpt reveals that these folks might be right:

McFADDEN: And what’s your opinion on Hitler?
LAMB: I think that he had … he wanted to preserve his base.
McFADDEN: He had 6 million Jews executed.
LAMB: I think that’s an exaggeration.
McFADDEN: You do.
LAMB: Yes.
LYNX: I hardly believe there are even that many Jews alive back then.
McFADDEN: Is Hitler someone you admire or someone you don’t admire? … You think he was a great man?
LYNX: Yeah, I think he did a lot — he had a lot of good ideas.

(transcription ‘borrowed’ from: CJR Daily.)

At a different point in the interview:

McFADDEN: So the term ‘mud,’ what does that refer to?
LAMB: A non-white.
McFADDEN: What does it imply?
LAMB: Instead of saying, you know, saying a racial slur, it’s just like oh, ‘mud.’ They call us ‘cracker,’ we call them ‘mud’.

C’mon, guys, who is going to find that offensive? They don’t mean anything bad by ‘mud’: it keeps them from saying nigger, spic, bean bandit, chinks or anything nasty like that!

In all seriousness, though, these cute little tykes are part of the white power movements new attempt to appeal to the kiddies. As Erich Gleibe, operator of Resistance Records puts it:

Eleven and twelve years old…I think that’s the perfect age to start grooming kids and instill in them a strong racial identity.

*sigh*. Lamb and Lynx have been compared to the Olson twins, and Muffti isn’t completely clear about which group is being insulted. Muffti supposes that it depends on what sort of offensive behaviour you hate most. In any case, they are quite popular and are being shameless used by the movement. Even David Duke, one time jackass KKK grand wizard, uses them to draw a crowd. As Gleibe puts it, somewhat morbidly:

“We give them a CD, we give them something as simple as a stick[er?], they can go to our Web site and see other music and download some of our music…To me, that’s the best propaganda tool for our youth.”

Ugh. It’s hard to make Muffti cringe but that just did it. Anyhow, you’ll be glad to know that according to their site, when the girls aren’t being all ‘we’re tough racialists’, they:

…splitting their time …between music lessons, home schooling, studio work, interviews for various mainstream press organs, and just having fun being young, talented and pretty.

Cute li’l crackers…

Don’t forget to look on the bright side: at least we don’t have to listen to ‘em!

p.s. if you are curious about the band name, check their blog for a confusing chemical explanation..

Rent, it’s too damn high
And why is the rent too damn high in New York? Well according to insane person and New York mayoral candidate Jimmy McMillan, aka Jimmy Mack, it’s because of the Jews. Of course, I should have figured that out. According to his Web site:

There are over (25) Twenty Five Thousand Newly Rented Apartments, Available, Now Renting in the Williamsberg Section of Brooklyn, NY. as is all throughout the (5) Five Boro’s. But… they are only being Rented to the Jewish People. (There is a HOMELESS CRISIS, why are this being allowed?) Every Elected Official knows about this, they are turning their heads looking the other way… This is APARTHEID, and a Total Violations of the Hate Crimes Act.

Jimmy also believes that the Jews, in the guise of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, were the real perpetrators behind the bombing of the twin towers. I would read more but I am afraid this post is already too meanspirited. Like taking candy from a baby. Oh, make sure to have your speakers turned on to hear Jimmy’s funky rendition of the uh, rent is too damn high theme song.

Hat tip to chazarmaveth.

Oh relax!

See, Starbucks prints quotes from different writers scientists, musicians, athletes, politicians and cultural critics on cups used at their coffee shops. These are meant to encourage the coffeehouse tradition of debate and conversation. Some of these quotes can be controversial. For instance, last month a contractor for Baylor University, a Baptist institution in Texas, removed cups carrying a quote by the author Armistead Maupin saying: “My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long … life is too damn short.” This week, perhaps in an attempt to appease pissed off homophobic fundamentalist Christians, Starbucks announced that next spring’s collection of quotes will include a religious quote from the Rev Rick Warren, author of the best selling self-help book The Purpose-Driven Life.

Rev. Warren’s quote will read: “You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose. Focusing on yourself will never reveal your real purpose. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Only in God do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny.”

Well goodie. Now that everyone’s covered, both the pro and anti-gay crowds can resume attacking each other’s positions, while fortified by a nice venti frapuccino. Read all about it here (USA Today) and here (The Guardian).

Taking our cue from Heeb Magazine and that Kelsey dude, we’d like to point you to an interesting interview in this week’s New Yorker with everyone’s favorite hot Jewish babe comedian and Heeb Magazine cover girl, Sarah Silverman. The interview touches upon Silverman’s provocative, almost enigmatic brand of comedy, and we are treated to some of her best lines:

“Her constructions are minimal but the turn is sharp. “I was raped by a doctor,” she says. “Which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.” … Everybody blames the Jews for killing Christ,” Silverman says. “And then the Jews try to pass it off on the Romans. I’m one of the few people that believe it was the blacks.” She skewers hypocrisy and self-righteousness, but there are times when her narrative ingredients—rape, dead grandmothers—threaten to overwhelm the delicate balance of a joke (rape being one of the last remaining taboos in today’s sexual politics; grandmothers being what they are).

The article also touches upon accusations that Silverman’s use of the term chink in a comedy routine on Late Night with Conan O’Brien was racist. Guy Aoki, of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans protested to the Network and debated Silverman on Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect where Silverman got frustrated—“It’s not a racist joke,” she said; “it’s a joke about racism”—and called Aoki a “douche bag.” She later added:

I got in trouble for saying the word “Chink” on a talk show, a network talk show. It was in the context of a joke. Obviously. That’d be weird. That’d be a really bad career choice if it wasn’t. But, nevertheless, the president of an Asian-American watchdog group out here in Los Angeles, his name is Guy Aoki, and he was up in arms about it and he put my name in the papers calling me a racist, and it hurt. As a Jew—as a member of the Jewish community—I was really concerned that we were losing control of the media. Right? What kind of a world do we live in where a totally cute white girl can’t say “Chink” on network television? It’s like the fifties. It’s scary … There are only two Asian people that I know that I have any problem with, at all. One is, uh, Guy Aoki. The other is my friend Steve, who actually went pee-pee in my Coke. He’s all, ‘Me Chinese, me play joke.’ Uh, if you have to explain it, Steve, it’s not funny.

Is it any wonder Silverman, who I adore by the way, is the toast of hipster Jews everywhere? She performed at Jewcy’s first fundraiser, wrote a passage in the new Bar Mitzvah Disco book and graces the cover of Heeb. Her brand of humor may offend some but only an idiot would think that she’s actually racist. In fact, quite the opposite is true, and that’s the point.

Having said that however, keep in mind that some of the self same Jews that celebrate Sarah Silverman’s cutting edge comedy are very sensitive themselves. Probably as a result of ancestral malnutrition that was a chronic condition in the dinghy eastern European ghettos and shtetls of their forefathers. And all that tay sachs and lactose intolerance running around – the point is, these people have delicate dispositions. So while you are free to buy Heeb and visit various uh… other people’s Web sites, don’t ever make fun of them. They can’t handle it, and then they get all excitable and indignant and you may trigger an asthma attack. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Sarah Silverman is currently appearing in the film Jesus is Magic, an adaptation of her stage show. Visit the Web site for theatres and listings!

Courtesy of Gawker, we get the news that the Houston Street American Apparel store is no longer marked by scantily clad non-models in grainy Polaroid photos, but with pimply faced pubescent Jewish youth in kitchy get ups and big hair.

That’s right, Dov Charney has been using photos from the kitsch-loving book Bar Mitzvah Disco as his hysterical new marketing campaign.

Roger Bennett, the man behind the book tells me that:

Bar Mitzvah Disco is the product of three years of collecting Bar Mitzvah photos from total strangers across the country in an effort to construct a parallel universe rife with gorgeous girls, piles of cash, and ungracious thank you notes. It is the story of our generation told in the pictures and words of those that lived it large, a coming of age story, a cultural history, and an unabashed celebration of style, or to be honest, the lack there of.

Featuring a forward from the Village People and essays on the 80’s from well known Jewish writers, the book comes out on October 31 can be purchased at BarMizvahDisco.com and in your local neighborhood American Apparel store.

Roger was kind enough to send Jewlicious a complimentary copy of the book which ck tells me is hilarious (look for his review soon!). In that spirit we also thought it might be fun to talk to Dov Charney, CEO of American Apparel, about how his Bar Mitzvah went down.

Jewlicious: Did you have a Disco Bar Mitzvah/what was yours like?

Dov Charney: no, my bar mitzvah was at an arcade where everyone was playing Pac Man and Space Invaders.

Jewlicious: Do you remember your parasha?

Dov Charney: No, I was so nervous, I started crying on the bimah, it was a mess, I couldn’t even read in English properly, it was a nightmare. I thought I was going to faint.

Jewlicious: Who did you ask to dance with you when they played Stairway to Heaven?

Dov Charney: No one. Heather Charlapp was pissed cause there was no dancing, everybody was too busy playing Space Invaders.

Jewlicious: Did you get any play?

Dov Charney: No. There were no girls in my class who would even stand near me for 10 minutes. I was not so well liked by the girls at the time.

Jewlicious: How did it feel to become a man?

Dov Charney: Heh, I didn’t perceive myself as a man, neither before nor after the ber mitzvah.

Jewlicious: The era of your Bar Mitzvah, the 70’s/80’s, seems to have had a lot of impact in the style of the clothes you design, was it a particularly good time in your life?

Dov Charney: It was a great time. The Jewish neighborhood of Montreal at that time had a big thing for modern furniture and that has influenced the design of the stores.

Jewlicious: Why do you think that Jews hung on to disco for so long?

Dov Charney: I don’t know, did Jews hang on to it more than other groups? Maybe ’cause it’s a little more Mediterranean than rock, a little saltier, a little more glamorous. Looking back, I love the fun of dressing up for the party and the whole affair as each bourgeois family would try to outshine the other, it was fun.

We never saw that coming …

Well, the much awaited UN report on the investigation behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is out and what a shocker it is! Chief United Nations investigator, Detlev Mehlis concluded:

Given the infiltration of Lebanese institutions and society by the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services working in tandem, it would difficult to envisage a scenario whereby such a complex assassination plot could have been carried out without their knowledge.

Little Lord Fauntle-Assad is in for some heat. The UN Security Council is scheduled to discuss the report next Tuesday and may consider the imposition of diplomatic and economic sanctions against Syria. Hopefully Bashar will get some much needed pressure and stop supporting those Hizbollah clowns.

Syria is totally going to pot. Syria’s Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan committed suicide last week, and all indications are that we are about to witness some serious heat coming down. One witness said that pro-Syrian Lebanese General Mustafa Hamdan ended an October, 2004 conversation by saying: “We are going to send him on a trip, bye, bye Hariri.” I think it might be safe to now say “bye, bye Bashar Assad.”

The above cited Jerusalem Post article is pretty good. You can also read more in this NYT report.