Do you live in Northern California? Yeah? You like it? Cool. So uh… whatcha doin’ between the 9th and the 11th of March? We got this Jewlicious Festival thang going on in Long Beach. I know, I know… what a shlepp! But see here’s the thing – the Festival will kick the collective asses of all who attend. It’s got everything – hot, and I mean HOT Jewish music from out east – New York, Israel etc., great presenters, the sexiest Jews in all of California, fab food and a big chunk of the gang from Jewlicious. And what do you have? Rain, grunge music and uh… good coffee.

So here’s the scoop. Oy Bay and Sonoma State Hillel are getting a bus to take NoCal residents to the Festival. And bring them back too… If you’re into what’s sure to be a crazy road trip, well, get in touch with Tomer – his email address is oyster@oy-bay.org – he can provide you with pickup details and all that.

Oh and the bus pictured here is just for illustrative purposes. The actual bus will not look like that one and there will be no dirty hippies either.

Saturday, March 10 & Sunday, March 11th, 8pm, JEWLICIOUS HALL
1309 E. 3rd Street, Long Beach CA 90802

Presenting some of the best in new Jewish music from Israel and the USA, Jewlicious Festival is bringing an international cadre of talented musicians to Long Beach, March 9th-11th, 2007. A music selection committee composed of students and grads met over several months to pick out the music for this year’s festival. All Dynamic, exciting, and indie, these artists represent a milestones for the three year old Festival. Eight separate acts over two nights, in a feast of great music.

Jewlicious Festival started three years ago, and has grown into the largest Jewish student festival in the United States. Students from a dozen states and over 30 schools are gathering for the weekend at the Alpert Jewish Community Center.

The current line-up includes Eastern European folk-punk band Golem, lower east-side folk-rocker Rav Shmuel performing with dance-pop fusion band The BloodSugars, Israeli indie band missFlag and the unique sound of Soulico Crew from Tel Aviv, the heavy metal band The Makkabees, “Jewish-indie-ska mashup” band Shankbone, and DJ Eric Rosen & Twelve Tribes Live Percussion Ensemble.

Recently added new artists are JJ Keki, Grammy Award nominated musician from Uganda, and My Second Surprise, whose debut video won the Israeli Video Awards.

Jewlicious Festival is adapting a recently vacated prayer house with amazing acoustics, to house the festival concerts. So, if you cannot make the entire Festival (which is a bummer because it will be amazing) then you must at the very least come and see these shows. We will be selling a limited number of tickets for JUST the concerts starting today. For those over 21, there will be bargain beer and wine.

As with all Festival tickets, these are heavily subsidized by our sponsors and patrons who want you to enjoy an amazing festival. So the costs to you are very affordable: $15 for general admission and $10 for students for both nights. Please consider coming for the whole weekend even if you can’t do everything.
This is the most amazing program ever!

Back in the old country you took some herring and some some oil and some salt and poof- shmaltz herring. if you were really shnazzy, you used wine, vinegar and spices for some herring in wine “sauce”. I cannot verify the veracity of volume of such herring back in the old country. In fact, it doesn’t exist today in Poland, and I wonder if it ever did! People eat Rollmops, herring in oil (shmaltz), spiced-homestyle, and thats about it.

Meanwhile a passover herring crisis has arisen. This ONLY applies to herring in wine sauce, which as I have proven, obviously did not exist in the old country. It tastes good and is clean, but it does not reach the inner neshama, it fails to ignite that inner yid.

Passover herring crisis! Check your bottles!

Ma Cohen’s Assorted Herring Products

Ma Cohen’s Herring Products are certified kosher for Passover when manufactured under special supervision. A limited number of products were manufactured without Passover supervision and were distributed while bearing an unauthorized OU-P symbol. These products have a date code system listing the month, date, and year (i.e. Jan1608). The mislabeled products are being withdrawn from the marketplace. Customers are encouraged to contact the Orthodox Union at 212-613-8148 or via email at kashalerts@ou.org if the mislabeled products are found.

For Tom.

Oh heck, at the risk of pissing of my co-posters here at Jewlicious, here’s Jascha Heifetz playing Bach. Listen for the moment when he first comes in.

Form of…a noisemaker…shape of…an online petition campaign against nuclear attack.

Love Hillel? Love Purim? Hate the threat of an imminent nuclear attack by Iran? (Yeah, me too.)

Predicated on the link between Purim (Persia is now Iran, remember) and today’s situation with those ornery folks over in Iran, Hillel (in the wake of last weekend’s Spitzer Forum), has initiated Team Groggerforce, which only sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon or a fictional TV series featured in the Tarantino film “Pulp Fiction” (”Fox Force Five. Fox, as in we’re a bunch of foxy chicks. Force, as in we’re a force to be reckoned with. Five, as in there’s one… two … three… four… five of us.”)

Students at the joint Hillel Spitzer Forum on Social Justice/Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) Plenum learned about the growing threat from Iran, and spent a day lobbying Congressional leaders on Capitol Hill to continue supporting sanctions on Iran until their leaders abandon their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

This petition enables you to stand with them and let your voice be heard. Please share this with your friends. Hillel is proud to do its part to educate students and the broader community about the growing crisis in Iran. Let’s hear your groggers make some noise!

I know a lot of people doubt the efficacy of these online petitions. But at the end of the day, I’d rather have signed it than have not signed it. It takes three seconds. Who knows…couldn’t hurt.

Simply magnificent.

hat tip to Pierre Tristam

In her column today, Caroline Glick tells us the following stories for which it appears she used as a source the following Frontpage mag article:

At an “Israel Apartheid Week” event at City University of New York, after watching a propaganda film, 19-year old Binyamin Rister rose and politely asked the ISM presenters if they supported terrorism. When he received no reply he politely repeated the question. Rather than wait for an answer, CUNY security guards dragged Rister from the room and then repeatedly banged his head against the wall of an elevator and threw him head first down the stairs. Rister’s injuries from the assault by campus security required him to be evacuated by ambulance in a neck brace to the hospital.

In an almost identical case at Georgetown last year, Bill Maniaci a 67-year-old retired Jewish American police officer was brutalized by Georgetown security guards after he asked ISM spokesmen if they supported terrorism [you can see an eyewitness report here]. He is currently suing Georgetown for $8 million in damages for the assault. According to Lee Kaplan’s report of the CUNY event in Frontpage Magazine, there were seven witnesses to the unprovoked attack against Rister. He too has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against CUNY.

According to Front Page Magazine, these alleged violent attacks are taking place at ISM sponsored gatherings. Clearly, the organizers have come to expect that people with different political views will attend and have made a decision not to respond to their direct queries. As for the violence, I am going guess that they speak beforehand to security and perhaps the information they provide might cause the officers in question to behave with intensity and violence that one would normally reserve for violent individuals.

I’m not sure what can be done about these attacks since they are being committed by security officers and any response to their actions would simply justify their violence. I also don’t believe that avoiding these talks is a solution. This is America and as long as people are polite at these events, they should be treated like any other attendee. I guess from now on any supporter of Israel who is aware of an anti-Israel activity on campus should be sure to inform the university’s administration of their intent to attend the event and include clips from these news stories along with the information that this individual intends to ask questions at the event. This may cause these very same administrators who currently appear to stand behind their officers’ violence, to provide a different set of instructions that would prevent rather than cause physical harm.

Oh, make sure to act peacefully and politely at these events. And bring friends, because you might need assistance getting up and getting to the hospital, and it’s important to have witnesses so there’s a record.

Just when we’d recovered from the buzz of “Naked Archeologist” Simcha Jacobovici’s “Exodus Decoded” documentary, we turn on the news to discover James Cameron (who narrated “Exodus Decoded”) talking about his and Jacobovici’s latest project: the unearthing of Jesus’s crypt. For more on this story, read my post at Beliefnet.

my second surprise is pretty much a one-man-act. The person behind this title is Ayal Nistor, who has recently moved from Tel Aviv, Israel – to San Francisco, USA, after spending a period in Brighton, UK. The ‘my second surprise’ experience is a bitter-sweet journey through the paths of melancholy, not without a joyful wink. [my second surprise on myspace.com

my second surprise’s breath-taking debut video Perfect Cure won the Best Israeli Video of the Year at the AMI 2006 award (the Israeli grammy), and was chosen for the Indie Music Video Festival (Canada, USA). Perfect Cure has been playing recently on MTV europe.

On his unique one-man-band show, Ayal —who is also appearing on the new SNOCAP promo video — is taking the singer-songwriter format to new and exciting boundriesby using live sampling with vocals, percussion, acousitc guitar, synth and effects.

My Second Suprise records for a new and exciting label from Israel, Oleh Records.

Israeli’s smoke Hezbollah hash? Oh yeah, for reasons like this:

Two Israelis who apparently thought moving from Tel Aviv to settlements in the West Bank would provide a smokescreen for their cannabis-growing operation will have to think again. Police said on Monday a raid of their rented apartments turned up more than 20 marijuana plants. The two suspected growers were arrested.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said such incidents were rare in the settlements. “They tried to grow marijuana plants inside Judea and Samaria rather then Tel Aviv thinking that police would not be able to discover their activities,” he said.

Nice work, cops! Way to wipe out the competition for terrorists!

Thanks Ynet for the story and the clever ’smokescreen’ pun.

First there was a young woman. She did or did not act flirtatiously and warmly around Israel’s Minister of Justice, Haim Ramon. He, after being hugged quite tightly by the young soldier, seemed to have misread the warmth of her breasts rubbing against him in that ill-fated pose for a photograph as a signal that she really liked him. Ramon stuck his tongue in her mouth to test his theory. He quickly withdrew it, realizing that her tongue was avoiding his…but the damage was done. A couple of weeks ago the Kiss led to Ramon’s conviction in a court of law and his permanent removal from his Ministerial position.

There was a Prime Minister by the name of Olmert. He did not become Prime Minister because he was exceptionally gifted or loved by the Israeli populace. Rather, he earned his position on the comatose wings of Ariel Sharon, his mentor and master for a number of years in which he led Israel. Olmert got lucky and got the leadership slot, and had enough of Sharon’s patina rub off on him that even though serious doubts were cast regarding Kadima’s promised withdrawal from the West Bank, they still managed to get 29 seats in the Knesset.

(more…)

Laya brought this short film to our attention back in 2005. Since then, the film has been invited to another 75 film festivals and has won awards at 25 of them. Tonight it won the biggie with the prize for Best Live Action Short Film at the Academy Awards. Congratulations to the filmmakers, Ari Sandel (whose father is Israeli), Kim Ray, and the rest of their team on their success.

Here’s a shortened list of their awards as listed on the film’s website:

Total Festivals: 112
Festivals Won: 25
Total Number of Countries Screened in 21, including: USA, Canada, China, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, UK, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Croatia, India, Poland, Denmark, Russia

WINNERS:

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When we give you Hollywood, well, we go all out. This year we are VERY pleased to welcome the gifted Jewish screenwriter, Doug Miro, to Jewlicious. Doug co-wrote the screenplay to the movie The Great Raid in 2005, and since then has been working on projects for some major filmmakers. While what he is writing may still be top secret, Doug is down to earth and hardworking

Doug will be sharing with us some insights into the movie biz, screenwriting, do’s and don’ts, and how to keep momentum going in a very hard profession.

From Jerusalem to the “Great Fringe of the Diaspora”, as my hostess calls it, in just 28 hours on harrowing travel.

I’m in the always-beautiful City by the Bay, staying the weekend at Beit Lefton and attending the sure-to-be-fabulous Feast of Jewish Learning.

After a marathon Shabbat of Mission Minyan activities and meals I’m duly shocked to still be awake. Nonetheless, the day proved that there are Jews in San Fransisco who actually identify as such. The dirty little secret however, is that most of them are actually East Coast transplants. Fellow guests included DJ Handler and Y Love, who is performing at the aforementioned feast later today.

The shock of re-acclimation to Western Culture always hits me upon my first attempt to buy anything from a super market. I generally end up staring, in paralyzed wonderment at the absolutely astounding array of choices. 45 varieties of pasta, 70 tea options 125 canned or bottled drinks in the refrigerated section for your convenience. Every possible variation on a theme you could ever want and then some.

This rich choice of consumer goods contrasts starkly with the relative dearth of Jewish options in San Francisco and in the West Coast. At any grocery store here you can get about 7 varieties of cola. However, if you are out in the wilderness and you can’t find your Diet Cherry caffeine-Free Coca Cola Classic, then, well, you just grab that plain ol’ diet coke and make do with what you’ve got. If you live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, you may choose to attend shabbat services at the litvish shteibel with exactly the right hashkaffah and politics that is also within the appropriate walking distance from where you live.

A multiplicity of choices allows you to be picky – even cantankerous and divisive about the exact flavor of your Jewish experience. On the West Coast though, you gotta take what you can get, and because of this, a certain kind of diversity sems to truly flourish. Jews of all stripes, from the observant to the athiests all worship and eat together in harmony.

(cross-posted from Kosher Eucharist)

I was browsing through the sites that link to Jewlicious today, and I stumbled upon a most curious post on Israpundit. Now, I was fuzzily aware that Israpundit was one of those right-wing, chest-thumpingly pro-Israel sites written by Jews who, of course, don’t live in Israel and seem to spend most of their time eagerly humping the legs of their Evangelical masters – but I never really paid any attention, mostly because the only thing worse than simpering, bleeding-heart leftist Jews are impotent, bloodlust-filled rightist Jews. But this post wasn’t content with the normal right-wing verbal masturbation – this is full-on right-wing verbal whips ‘n’ chains leather crazy sex.

Onto the post itself, in all of its twirly-eyed, theremin-music glory:

Can a good Muslin become a good American or Canadian?

I received this email:

I sent that question to a friend who worked in Saudi Arabia for 20 years. The following is his reply:

Theologically – no. Because his allegiance is to Allah, the moon god of Arabia.

Religiously – no. Because no other religion is accepted by his Allah except Islam (Quran, 2:256).

Scripturally – no. Because his allegiance is to the five pillars of Islam and the Quran (Koran).

Geographically – no. Because his allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day.

Socially – no. Because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews.

Politically – no. Because he must submit to the mullah (spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel and Destruction of America, the great Satan.

Domestically – no. Because he is instructed to marry four women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34).

Intellectually – no. Because he cannot accept the American Constitution since it is based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.

Philosophically – no. Because Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran do not allow freedom of religion and __expression. Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist.Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic.

Spiritually – no. Because when we declare “one nation under God,” the Christian’s God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in The Quran’s 99 excellent names.

Therefore after much study and deliberation….perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country. They obviously cannot be both “good” Muslims and good Americans or Canadians.

Oh God, oh God, oh God, it’s so stupid my nose is bleeding!

(more…)

(cross-posted from Kosher Eucharist)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Meeting on the grounds of the Ophel, former site of the Jebusite city of Jerusalem, the Israeli Knesset voted unanimously Saturday to express “profound regret” for the Israelite people’s invasion and occupation of the land of Canaan and the expulsion and forcible conversion of many of its non-Israelite inhabitants.

Sponsors of the resolution say they know of no other country that has apologized for distant historical events, although Mongolian lawmakers are considering such a measure. The resolution does not carry the weight of law but sends an important symbolic message, supporters said.

“This session will be remembered for a lot of things, but 20 years hence I suspect one of those things will be the fact that we came together and passed this resolution. I only wish we could have succeeded in bringing a representative of the Canaanite people to the ceremony, but we failed to find a suitable candidate – or any candidate, for that matter,” said Uri Avneri, a politician and founder of the Gush Shalom movement who sponsored the resolution.

The measure also expressed regret for “the exploitation of Moabites.”

The resolution was introduced as Israel begins its celebration of the 3000th anniversary of the occupation of Jerusalem, where the first Israelites arrived in at the head of warrior-king David’s armies around the year 1000 BCE. Jerusalem, home to a popular assortment of sites of religious significance to the Israelite faith, later became a focal point for offshoot religions Christianity and Islam.

Oh, put down that Google News, I made it up. Well, sort of. I actually derived it from this – the Virginia General Assembly just voted to pass a resolution apologizing for slavery, thereby freeing America’s white citizens from their overpowering urge to clasp their black friends’ shoulders and wail “I’m sooorrryyyyyy!” God, I love it when the political system works for the people.

But seriously, although I appreciate an empty symbolic gesture as much as the next guy, slavery kind of…ended…something like…oh, 142 years ago, give or take? The best way to say “sorry” would probably have been to give ol’ Prissy a spot of monetary compensation, or at least 40 acres and a mule, back in 1865 – but I’m sure she’ll rest easy knowing that her great-great-great grandchildren have been officially apologized to for her suffering by the august State of Virginia.

Now, one might say that the American black community is suffering from the effects of slavery to this very day. I’ll buy that – I might roll my eyes ever so slightly, but I’ll buy it. Normally I’d suggest that the best way for American whites to assuage their apparently lingering guilt would be to stop moving out of their neighborhoods the minute somebody who owns the soundtrack to Superfly moves in, or maybe cutting a check for the UNCF, or at least gathering the children for a didactic family viewing of Ali, but fortunately for crackers none of that is necessary anymore. Virginia apologized – your responsibility is over, white America! Put your precious offspring in a private school where skin colors don’t get more threatening than yellow, spend the ticket price for the next Spike Lee joint on weed instead, throw out those Talib Kweli CDs you bought for indie cred and replace them with your Starland Vocal Band collection, let those inner cities decay, decay, decay – whatever you want, proud sons of Europe! Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last!

It’s an inspiration to me that all it takes to solve – or at least sweep aside – long-seated racial issues is a ridiculous apology so overdue it no longer needed to be made.

But where do we, the Jews, fit in? I’ll leave it to that clarion voice of mainstream, centrist American Jewish thought, JVoices, who will be debuting a post crowing how this shining triumph for American blacks is a victory as well for American blacks’ BFFs, i.e. the Jews, probably within the next five minutes. As we all know, since the vast majority of American Jews’ ancestors began to arrive 20 years after the end of slavery in the country, the American Jewish community must shoulder the heavy burden of its complicity in the plight of the American black community. And anything that will help to make that burden lighter is welcome.

This is ck’s nephew Eyal – the latest member of Jewlicious to get snipped, thus reducing his chances of getting HIV. Yes. He is indeed giving you the finger.

This story isn’t really Jewlicious at all as it merely correlates with something that is correlated with Judaism, but…

The suspected link between circumcision and less susceptibility to contracting HIV enjoyed a massive amount of confirming data recently as a recent study showed that circumcised males were 60% less likely to contract HIV then their uncircumcised counterparts. The long term projects garnered definitive evidence so quickly that the trials were called off early. But don’t take Muffti’s word for it, take Anne Buve’s words for it (she is an epidemiologist at Antwerp’s Institute of Tropical Medicine):

We did find that circumcision confers certain protection against HIV, in that it seems circumcised men do not get HIV as easily as uncircumcised men.

Well, that was less enthusiastic than one might like. Let’s try Dr. Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization’s AIDS department:

Circumcision is the most potent intervention in HIV prevention that has been described.

The data has yet to receive a full explanation – one speculation is that the skin of the circumcised penis is tougher than that of the uncircumcised penis.

Also effective in preventing HIV transmission are condoms. And they don’t require what can strictly speaking be only called unnecessary surgery.

Source: The BBC.

For many years the Christian appelation for the Western Wall at the Temple Mount has been Wailing Wall. As in, the Jews wail when they come to it. On a visit to the Wall in the mid-1800s, illustrator William Henry Bartlett (1809-1854) created images of the period and place. This image comes from a steel engraved print of Bartlett’s “Jews’ Place of Wailing.”

Under Ottoman, Muslim rule, access to the Western Wall was restricted to Jews. Also, the plaza that currently exists there and has for a couple of decades, was not built yet. The space available to Jews at the Wall was narrow and relatively small in size.

After 1948, when Jordan conquered the area, the entire Wall and Old City of Jerusalem as well as east Jerusalem were cleared of all Jews and access to Jews was denied altogether. Supposedly, this was a function of the war and armistice, but Jordan had tried to annex the entire West Bank at the time which suggest Jews would never have been repatriated. By the way, the only two countries to recognize the attempted annexation of the West Bank in 1950 by Jordan were England and Pakistan.

Fortunately, of course, when Israel won the Six Day War in 1967, it regained access to the area and, for the first time in millenia, control over this important landmark.

Shabbat shalom!!

.

Engraving source

1929 photo source

current photo source

I admit it. Maybe it was all the subscriptions to Wired and Business 2.0 and other things that shocked my parents in a long-overdue rebellion. But this year, I considered something I’d never considered before. But I spent so much time in consideration of this prospect that I lost my chance and missed the deadline.

But for those of you who ARE attending The New York Comic Con this weekend in New York City, I wanted to make you aware of the following session, and invite any of you who are going to report back to us on how things went.

“The Jewish Side of Comics” is scheduled to take place on 2/25/2007 at 4:00 PM in Room 1E04, and features Danny Fingeroth, Rabbi Simcha Weinstein, Stan Mack, Josef (Yosef) Rubinstein and Neil Kleid, and will be moderated by Steven Bergson.

 

Rabbi Weinstein will be talking about Biblical archetypes of superheroes. Danny will be talking about the Jewish writers of superhero stories. Josef Rubinstein will talk about 2 books he’s working on for Mahrwood Press: Balm in Gilead and Journeys : The Collected Edition. Stan Mack will talk about a series of Jewish historical fiction graphic novels he’s working on. Neil Kleid will tale about the cartoon memoir of his Orthodox developmentally disabled younger brother, titled “Migdal David”, to be published by Seraphic Press.

I can’t make it; will be working and Israel Nonstopping…but if anyone goes, please report back to the Jewlicious home office in New York.

Shabbat shalom and may the Force be with you.

Two coasts, two celebrations in the shortest month of the Gregorian calendar year…

New York celebrates Israel “L’lo Hefsek”; the Manhattan JCC has a whole weekend of Israel-related activities, from humus tasting to wine tasting, from film tasting to jazz cafe tasting, many of them free. (My plan? Hummus, then go to the gym, shower, then come back for wine-tasting before heading out to an Oscar party.) The program, Israel Non-Stop, has been running all week, and is now culminating in a truly non-stop weekend of Israel-related cultural activities, many of them co-sponsored by birthright israel and its infernally, eternally lowercase letters. (So if you were expecting Israel with pauses, or anything resembling a stop, this is not the event for you. Everyone else is sure to have a wonderful time.)

And in San Francisco, there’s the Feast of Jewish Learning, which is rumored to feature participation and appearance by at least one Jewlicious blogebrity and a co-sponsoring Jewlicious scion (does this make him a blogger of scion?), in addition to the leader of the Jewish Fashion Conspiracy. (That’s right, there is one. And OMG-d is it Jewlicious.)

And now, a descriptive blurb:

Join 500 of your best friends for twenty-five free workshops on Jewish thought, text, life and love. It’s all free. All you have to do is show up, and we’ll supply the Bay Area’s most exciting Jewish faculty, free kosher food, the West Coast premiere of up-and-coming hip hop artist Y-Love, plus plenty of He’brew beer and schmooze time. Whether you’re a little yeshiva bachur or a total newbie, there’s something here for you. The program features different branches of Judaism and totally different outlooks on life. Feeling texty? There’s lots of Talmud and Torah on the menu. More spiritually inclined? Learn about Hasidic practice, study Kabbalah, or sing the mystical songs called nigguns. How about something completely different, like yoga, theater, baking or film? Each participant can attend two 90-minute workshops. Bring your friends and partners: this day of education is open to everyone 21-45.

West coast and east coast attendees, report in…and be sure to buy your tickets for JTB3; latest news and updates, as always, available here.

Shabbat shalom…

This just in from the OU, although it could have come from the Coffee Addicts Society: Starbucks Coffee Liqueur is OU Pareve. Although not all the bottles have this designation written on it. The Cream Liqueur is OU-Dairy, so its a no-no for Shabbat and anytime after breakfast.

Now Godiva does not have the market cornered on good pareve liqueur you can serve after a delicious Shabbat Dinner. Unless you are a chocolate addict. Of course for the more worldy folks there is the Italian Disaronno Amaretto, close to perfection if you ask me. I know that everyone is breathing a deep sigh of relief. We will report on if this new Starbucks Coffee is tasty hopefully by next Shabbat.

A delegation of Oklahoma Sooners from the University of Oklahoma are making the pilgrmage out to Jewlicious Festival! At least seven sooners are expected to make the journey. Thanks to the initiative and leadership from Hillel at the University of Oklahoma Director, Rabbi Jeremy Cassius, Hillel is sponsoring their travel!

In addition to Sooners, we have students coming in a bus from RENO, LAS VEGAS and SONOMA STATE! We thank the Hillel’s there for helping to arrange the travel for these students!

There are folks coming from as far away as UTAH and COLORADO and PENN.

I guess the only question is are you going to be there?

(cross-posted from Kosher Eucharist)

Being something of a writerly-minded person, I suffer from a tendency to view everything in terms of comparison – my mind rarely bothers to process what something is, settling instead for what it’s like. Additionally burdened as I am with an overactive imagination and a library of slightly askew cultural references, my mental process often bears an uncanny resemblance to the state of my room – a haphazard clutter done up in a garish color that I’m afraid to show people in fear that they’ll realize that my beefcake poster of D’Angelo is indicative of something fundamentally off about me.

See, I’m doing it again.

I’m also something of a geek. Not the bad kind – I mean, I can hold my liquor and I’ve never touched a game that requires a die with more than six sides – but a geek nonetheless. Usually this manifests itself in my ability to hum certain Charlie Parker solos from memory or in my tendency to spend three hours reading about the morphology of extinct Melanesian languages on Wikipedia, but sometimes it’s considerably more mundane. To wit: I love zombie movies, a barely socially acceptable affection passed on to me, like the very insatiable desire for human flesh itself, by Harry. I could attempt to justify this, like so many others before me, by embarking on a long and windy soliloquy about how zombie movies invariably contain a pronounced element of trenchant social commentary, and how zombies, unstoppable, feelingless killers whose only drive is to overrun the planet, are the perfect bogeyman for our turbulent times – but I’ll spare you.

I promise, I’m going somewhere with this.

You see, I was having a conversation recently with a friend about life in Israel. Although I fervently believe that politics should not ever be discussed with people of whom you are fond, because this is the conversational equivalent of spitting into their mouths, a frank discussion of recent events in our wacky little sandbox can hardly avoid the current wholesale disintegration of our horrifying, shande fur die goyim excuse for a government. The endless litany of our elected officials being indicted for everything from fraud to rape to gross incompetence would be almost amusing if we didn’t have to show up the next day in the UN General Assembly, hanging our head like the kid in homeroom who everybody knows has parents whose nightly recreation sees a bottle of Jack Daniels go from “full” to “melee weapon,” loud enough for everyone in the neighborhood to hear.

It was then, during that discussion, that my ability to draw similes, and my geekiness, kicked in. I realized that living in Israel, under the auspices of MKs worried more about covering their embezzling, swindling, downright thieving tracks than issues like our flagging educational system, forced into the booth with voters who are apparently seriously considering giving Bibi another crack at it, is exactly like being in a zombie movie. I’m thinking specifically of Romero’s Day of the Dead – you know, the one where they’re in an underground military base in a world overrun by the living dead – but really, most of them provide an apt enough comparison. Here we are in Israel, tearing ourselves apart because of greed and pride and fear and a host of other none-too-lovely character flaws, while the flesh-eating menace pounds at our doors and howls for our blood.

You know, zombie movies never end well for the protagonists.

Oh, sure, it’s not a perfect analogy. I mean, obviously we have our zombies too – y’know, “Gimel” voters and Sheinkeniks – and it’s not fair to tar the entire Palestinian nation with the “flesh-eating” brush (and even if it is, it was doubtless Zionist Oppression that drove them to it in the first place), but I’ve got to say, all I hear when Haniyeh talks is the chilling moan of the ghoul who has scented his living prey.

So keep a few things in mind. Next time you’re forced to sit through another divisive speech from Olmert, or Peres, or Peretz, or Lieberman, or whatever goon-of-the-week from Labor/Likud/Shas/UTJ/Ichud Leumi/the Arab parties, try to see them for what they really are: that asshole army commander in Day of the Dead who only cares about his own people. If you’ll recall, zombies eventually go at his intestines like the Italian restaurant scene from Lady and the Tramp, and it’s inordinately satisfying. And the next time you see one of those St.-Patrick’s-Day-in-Hell-green Hamas rallies, remember, there’s only one way to get rid of a zombie: aim for the head.

I know I may have expressed some misgivings about the character of my Uncle Michael, but it turns out that although he may be a little scruffy and disreputable (doesn’t he have an ima to give him a bath and a shave every once in awhile?), he’s pretty cool as uncles go. He says he wants to get me a piano so I can put those “jazz fingers” to good use (apparently I have long fingers?) – but I think it might be a little premature: my eyes only started focusing a few days ago, I’m still not sure what exactly I’m supposed to do with those “leg” things hanging under my belly, and Uncle Michael’s trying to get me to repeat after him this word that sounds like “Thuh-lo-nee-us”? I don’t get it! But he held me for awhile and he even sang me a song in Portuguese. I think he was hoping it would work as a lullaby, and maybe I did fall asleep eventually (it’s an active life I have!), but I understood the words. Like most bossa nova songs, it seemed to be about the virtues of dancing the samba. I don’t know why Uncle Michael is putting all this pressure on me. I can’t even hold up my head under my own power and he wants me to samba already?? I’m an Israeli baby, not Brazilian!

Speaking of lullabies, do you want to know what my Abba has been doing? Downloading lullaby versions of Cure albums! I know, I was surprised they made them too. Me, I don’t see why my Abba doesn’t think I’m ready for the real, full-on Cure. I wake up multiple times every night crying, I soil myself regularly, and my parents are so controlling that my room literally has bars around it – I’m totally in the Cure’s target audience! Give me some credit, Abba! Baby Tzofia wants some “Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me” without the glockenspiel!

But my Abba’s a little weird, I think. We were having a staring contest, and I lost because I saw something shiny, and you know what he did? He laughed and called me a loser! My own abba! Just wait until I start eating solid food, Abba. You’ll smell my revenge!

But really, other than that, it was a fun visit from Uncle Michael. I didn’t even cry hardly at all…well, except once. Uncle Michael came up to me and said, “Tzofia, ha’im avdah tikvateinu?” Oh, ha-ha, Uncle Michael! That’s so clever! So clever I’m going to start bawling! I’m only a week and a half old and I’m already sooooo tired of Israeli national anthem jokes. I can’t believe I have a whole life of these to look forward to, just because of my name. Can you imagine if your name was “Rockets’ red glare”??! Now you know how I feel.

Oh, and I hope everybody has been watching Heroes! It’s my favorite show – being able to telepathically patch in to all data networks means a steady stream of cribside entertainment when Ima and Abba think I’m sleeping. Abba may think Israeli superhero Hana Gitelman’s power is lame, but I’ll have the last laugh when I’m telepathically watching the Scrubs season finale hours before he’s done downloading it. But seriously, the last episode of Heroes was more awesome than a toy with dangling, multicolored rings, flashing lights and voice effects (and those are pretty awesome). Not only did my Hebrew homegirl Hana Gitelman make her series debut, Peter finally rocked his superpowers! It was such an exciting episode that I…well, let’s just say that if I could paint Abba and Ima’s future, it would have a lovely Impressionist rendering of a dirty diaper in it. Hey – I’m just a baby!!

And I guess you’ve all come to expect my trenchant commentary on the events of the day, so I’m going to bring your attention to the just-released statistics that immigration to Israel is down 9 percent this year! As the baby of immigrants, this concerns me. Do you fat, lazy Galut shtetl Jews think just because astoundingly cute sabras like me are born here every day, you can keep guiltlessly packing on pounds in your 4 bed, 3 and a half bath palaces in Exile? I’m spitting up right now. A spit-up of contempt. Israel is a special place. Make aliyah! Can your American baby telepathically blog, or does he just sit there like a lumpy sack of potatoes with regular bowel movements? I think you know.