I have enjoyed now for the second time in a week the most delicious breakfast: Eggs and Bacon.

Now hold a second, Rabbi, bacon is trief! Or so I thought.

Jewlicious Festival veteran, and supervisor of culinary arts at the Festival’s VIP wine tasting, Chaim Davids, delivered to me as a house warming gift a package of his home-made Lamb Bacon. LAMB BACON!

Davids is the chef behind The Kitchen Table in Mountain View, CA:

The Kitchen Table serves California Artisinal cuisine with a twist: We are the only certified glatt Kosher restaurant in northern California. We dairy-free and peanut-free, and use only the freshest ingredients. All breads are baked on premises, and the pastrami and corned beef are cured and smoked in-house.

I have not made the pilgrimage to TKT, but those who have – including many of the guests I met at Herzog Wine Cellar’s Tierra Sur Resturant for the Lorne Mackillop & Tomintoul Whisky Dinner last week – rave in superlatives about TKT.

I came across a quote by Anthony Bourdain: “If you want to make people happy, give them bacon.” I get it now. The umami alone is enough to beg for more.

Thank you Chaim Davids, thank you TKT, thank you Rachel. Good Shabbos.

From the JTA: Woman wearing tallit arrested at Western Wall

From the JPost: Woman wearing talit at Kotel detained

From Haaretz: Police arrest woman for wearing prayer shawl at Western Wall

From ArutzSheva: Police Arrest, Release Woman with Prayer Shawl at Kotel.

In fact the articles are completely different — JPost says a woman was detained after trying to read from a Torah near the Kotel. The JTA, that she was arrested for wearing a Tallit.

The prayer shawl was not the reason she was detained. She was not arrested, obviously, because she was immediately released. I am not judging what should happen there — I advocate some kind of compromise — I am judging the sensational headlines, and the damage they do to the Jewish people, by our own news sources.

Forget the whole CNN vs FOX vs MSNBC debate. We have our own headline battles, though more subtle.

The woman detained was interviewed by the Jpost:

Frenkel said that as the women unrolled the Torah scroll and began to prepare to read, officials from the Kotel Foundation arrived and demanded that they leave the premises.

Frenkel said that the women agreed to roll up the Torah scroll and take it to the Robinsons Arch. But on their way out Frenkel, who was wearing a talit and was carrying the Torah, was seized by police.

I was pushed into a nearby police station and transferred to the main police station at Yaffo Gate, she said.

About 40 women who attended the prayer formed a procession and followed the police and Frenkel through the Old City to the Yaffo Gate where they congregated and sang songs until Frenkel was released.

The Jewish headlines are helping to divide an already divided people desperate for some kind of unity to face external threats.

Larry is one of the 1000 faces of Jewlicious Festival.

Larry Forman from Louisville, Kentucky, raises money locally each year to fund his trip to Jewlicious — which he has done the with friends for the last two years. Larry is a leader of Jewish student life in Louisville, and was representing at the GA.

Tickets for Jewlicious Festival go on-sale sometime Monday evening at www.brownpapertickets.com

Join Jewlicious, ROI, CFH, Jumpstart, CLI, and PresenTense for a delicious challah reception at Monday night in DC.

I received this note from Becca Neril, a very active member of Jewlicious during her tenure as an undergrad at the Claremont Colleges, and one of the Jewish leaders on campus. She brought nearly 50 students to the festival last year, thanks to her organizing. Becca is working in Chicago, with AVODAH. Needless to say – we are very inspired by Becca and her work.

Dear friends and family,

Two blocks away from my apartment, on the street where my grandfather attended high school, there are eight deciduous trees whose flaming red and golden yellow leaves rustle in the Chicago autumnal wind. I woke up on Saturday morning to bare ivy vines lining the outside of our apartment windows and to the last remaining leaves, now auburn and dusty brown, solitarily swaying on the now bare tree branches. O how I love the fall here!

This email has been in the works for the past…two months. I have only recently gotten around to finishing it, hence the delayed update on my post-college adventures. In late August, I moved to Chicago to be part of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, which is an intensive Jewish learning program that seeks to educate the Corps Members about how Judaism relates to social justice. I am working full time at a Jewish anti-poverty organization called The Ark, which provides vital human services to the Chicago Jewish community. The Ark has a free community medical clinic, dental clinic, pharmacy, kosher food pantry, job placement and legal services, transitional housing for the homeless, psychological services, and intensive day program for mentally ill patients. Let me just say that I LOVE my job. My boss is so so so wonderful and everyone is really friendly at work. Because I am the youngest person on staff, some of the staff consider me like their own daughter. One case manager, for example, has already tried to set me up with her friend’s son!

My days at work focus mainly around food and drugs. The Ark is home to the largest kosher food pantry in the Midwest and I get to spend two hours every day filling clients’ orders and unpacking and checking hechshers on donated food items. I also have my own caseload of clients who I help prepare for their visit to the food pantry. I often reflect on how for many of these clients, handing us their shopping list strips them of some of their dignity. They are not able to complete one of the most basic tasks-that of supplying food for their family-and have to submit to other people to pick out their food for them. Whenever possible, I ask clients if they want crunchy or creamy peanut butter or whole wheat or white pasta in an attempt to give them back some autonomy that I feel they have lost. I often mull over these ethical issues and would love to discuss them with you! In terms of drugs-I work to secure free medications for our clients by enrolling them in patient assistance programs. I don’t have too many juicy stories about the pharmaceutical companies.

In short-I LOVE my job and I LOVE being part of AVODAH. If you are ever in the Chicago area, please give me a call or email! Also, I would love to hear any updates on your life adventures, whatever they may be.

Warmly,

Becca

Want to get in shape physically and spiritually – but want to do it simultaneously? If you live around LA, I invite you to this series of two back-to-back Bibliyoga workshops with the witty, worldly and wise BibiYogi, educator and performer Marcus J Freed of London.

Bibliyoga is soulfood for the body that offers a physical-spiritual uplift through powerful yoga, Jewish wisdom and Kabbalah. Yoga for Ecstatic Living: Bibliyoga for the Body & Soul workshops are each one hour vinyasa flow sessions for all levels of yoga from beginner to advanced. Both workshops will be followed by a salon discussion at a nearby café.

WHEN: Two consecutive nights!
Tues., Nov 10, at 8:00 p.m. Part I – “Finding Joy, Peace and Healing”
Wed., Nov 11, at 8:00 p.m. Part II – “Becoming Strength, Light and Happiness”

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER TODAY FOR THESE CLASSES!

WHERE: L.A.’s premier dance studio – Mimoda Studio Theatre (www.mimodastudio.com)
5774 W. Pico Blvd (two blocks East of Fairfax) Los Angeles CA 90019
Entrance is on Ogden side, back of the building.

COST: The one hour classes are $15 each and are limited to 50 students each night

HOW: Pre-pay at www.JConnectLA.com/register-now

Wear loose clothes and bring a yoga mat or some will be available for purchase.

More about Yoga for Ecstatic Living Workshop Series on this Facebook Event.

ABOUT BIBLIYOGI MARCUS J FREED
Marcus J Freed followed a path toward becoming the Bibliyogi ….
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We just were supersized.

Our new shabbat tent at Phish Fest! Check it out! In the Lamb on Broadway site next to camping headquarters! Corner of Carpet Crawlers and Gabriel Eno streets.

Thank you camping staff!

After we had to move – fire Marshall orders- they felt bad and gave us this. I joked that this is what happened to our ancestors in Europe. But in Anatevka try didnt get such nice digs.

So sweet and so kind. Shabbat Shalom Y’all from the desert.

Vanity Fair car columnist Brett Berk made it to LA, and we followed up on the original story, of my car dilemma. Read the first article, if you haven’t, in order for this one to make even more sense. I ended up riding in the Acura, a Cadillac, and the new Buick Lacrosse. The Lacrosse is the best GM car I ever drove. Read below for more:

What Should a Rabbi Drive II: Test Ride Edition
by Brett Berk

You should remember my high school friend Rabbi Yonah Bookstein from this recent piece where you, my delicious readers, voted him in the direction of some new wheels. Your top picks, in case you’ve forgotten, were a Cadillac and an Acura. Since I was in L.A the other week, where Mr. Seymour Torah resides, I contacted the folks from these brands, did a Hebe-gathering drive-by, and hit the test-ride circuit with the Rebbe for a little U.S. vs Japan playoff.

Our first stop was a kosher restaurant in what Yonah refers to as the ’Chood—the Jewy West Side neighborhood where he lives. Since it was Sukkot, a holiday meant to “celebrate” our peoples’ four decades of wandering in the desert, we ate out in the sun inside a flimsy hut. Joining us for lunch was John Kiewicz, Acura’s p.r. mensch, and he brought his full-on Aleph-game: an RL for us to drive, a corporate card to buy our meal, and a Letterman-style Rabbi-Ride Top 10 list, including gems like “the RL’s active noise cancellation will allow the Rabbi to better hear advice from his back-seat-sitting mother-in-law”. Yonah was plotzing before we even got behind the wheel.

Our pal over at the LA Times, Jerry Hirsch has a great gastronomic delight to share – I thought it was pretty Jewlicious.

Game night in the Hirsch household involves a dinner with some sort of exotic meat – at least what we consider exotic – and a wine to match. This is a periodic event when we can get our kids in town and is really a catchphrase for anything beyond beef, lamb and chicken. Earlier meals were bison and duck. We are still looking for what I call the kosher Holy Grail — a kosher goose. Stew

So, when my wife, Jennifer, spotted certified kosher elk at the Doheny Kosher Meat Market on Pico Boulevard the other day, she couldn’t resist.

The challenge, of course, was how do you cook elk and what wine do you serve with it?….

Elk, it turns out, is not the easiest to cook with. The butcher suggested we start with a stew, because “elk makes bison look fatty.” It’s also not in our modest collection of kosher cookbooks. We asked Mr. Google and used a variation of a recipe found at www.elk4u.com.
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I wish the newly-wed couple mazal and bracha. And while I was not asked to perform the wedding (the venerable Rabbi Haskel Lookstein had that honor) I figured that I would pen a small speech that could have been said under the giant chuppah:

Ivanka and Jared we are proud to be with you today as you join together as husband and wife. The chuppah that we stand under today is open on all sides. Some say that this reminds a couple that their home should be open to guests as the home of the first Jewish couple, Abraham and Sarah. It’s a beautiful custom that I hope you will follow.

Ivanka and Jared – your love and devotion to each other will be infused with holiness and blessing, and you and your childrens’ lives imbued with meaning and fulfillment, by weaving Judaism into the fabric of your new life. May you be blessed to build a faithful Jewish home that inspires the Jewish people and the world.

As a child, Soupy was one of my favs. I didn’t even know that he was Jewish, or was raised in West Virginia (like my wife’s family). The man was a genius.The Detroit Free Press writes:

Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian who made an art form out of taking a pie in the face and delighted a generation of Detroiters with his loopy TV show on Channel 7 in the 1950s, died Thursday night in New York….

“He was the first person from Detroit television whose first name had instant recognition from coast to coast,” said former Channel 7 anchorman Bill Bonds. “If you said ‘Soupy’ in New York, they knew who it was. If you said ‘Soupy’ in Los Angeles, everybody knew who it was. I’d worked in both markets, and the first thing anybody said when I mentioned I was from Detroit was ‘Soupy.’ 

Born Milton Supman in Franklinton, N.C., and raised in West Virginia, Sales was best known to Detroiters as the goofy yet cerebral host of “Lunch with Soupy,” a half-hour show that featured Sales hamming it up in a variety of sometimes surreal situations.

The show, which began airing in Detroit in 1953, featured a cast of unforgettable characters: an incorrigible dog by the name of White Fang, “the meanest dog in all Deeeetroit,” who communicated via a series of guttural noises; Black Tooth, an overly affectionate dog whom Sales would constantly tell “don’t kiss”; Hippy the Hippo, and Willy the Worm.

Of course, there were the pies. Sales once estimated that he took 9,000 pies in the face during the course of his career. [ I read 20,000 is more like it. - Ed.]

But the most famous of Sales’ bits was “lunch.” A typical menu might include a hot dog as the main course. Before Sales would take a bite, viewers would hear the sound of squealing pigs. Or, viewers might hear the sound of mooing cows as Sales sipped milk.

The lunchtime show was also known for its unpredictability. Sales would leave the set, camera in tow, and harass other Channel 7 hosts…..

Sales created a multitude of characters for his evening show: Charles Vichyssoise, a slippery French crooner who was forever sparring with unruly patrons at the Club Chi Chi; Wyatt Burp, and Ernest Hemingbone, who argued with his literary rivals.

Sales later admitted that the pace of doing a noon show and a 11 p.m. live comedy program — one hour of live television, five days a week — contributed to the breakup of his marriage, played havoc with his family life and left him exhausted.

Oren Peli taking american fright by storm with his movie Paranormal Activity. I have not seen it, don’t plan on seeing it, but could not help but wonder at the great irony. The fake horror portrayed by the Israeli Peli has the Biz all abuzz, the papers, and more. The real horror leading up to the Gaza invasion, with barrages of missiles raining down on a civilian population center, was basically a media dud.

The Paranormal Activity that is causing me nightmares has nothing to do with ghosts — it is the UN Human Rights Commission, the Goldstone report, and a certain Jewish lobby group that got the cold shoulder from Israel.

We are in the final hours of a contest that I never thought I would be in—let alone be leading. However, thanks to amazing support from around the world, we are a couple thousand votes shy of our goal.

The winner of the UJC Heroes Contest receives $25,000 to donate to the charity of their choice. I have pledged to expand Jewlicious Festival if we win, doing more than ever before.

Can you spare a few seconds to vote? To post a link on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace?

Jewlicious Festival is a place in time for young Jews to gather, to explore, to celebrate being Jewish. It’s an event unlike any other in Jewish history, uniting people from across ethnic, social, religious and political lines.

Jewlicious is Woodstock, Jewish Summer Camp, Mt. Sinai and Burning Man rolled into three non-stop days. We had 1,000 participants last year in just one location – we hope to bring the experience to 10,000 more.

Please – take a second to vote, and spread the good news – Jewlicious Festival, a place of unity that we so badly need in the Jewish world today, is leading the UJC Hero Contest and only a few votes from our goal of 100,000.

Please – pass the word. Don’t delay – we have only until tonight, 9pm PST.

Vote now! http://bit.ly/18HEXA

Check out this Tribute Video also placed below: http://bit.ly/2rMwyy

May all your dreams and prayers this year be realized.

Last night I spoke at the Happy Minyan about Sukkot, and it just felt right to tell some of the story of the first sukkah tour in Poland we created in 1997. The Mobile Sukkah was built at night in Gdansk, after celebrating the first days of the Festival in a Sukkah we built in the courtyard of a former synagogue. The schach (the natural material covering that goes on top of a sukkah) we had brought from Israel, because acquiring roll-out bamboo schach in Poland was not an option. The truck and driver belonged to a friend of a driver we knew, and we sat in the cab. Last night I told some of the stories from the tour, I suppose that we should record in a story someplace.

Then first thing this morning I got a call from Rabbi Mati Kos, a founder of Jewish renewal in Poland who now works in Hamburg. He received an urgent email from Poland. It seems that Gazata Wyborcha, the equivalent of the NY Times in Poland, had published an article about Chabad’s mobile sukkah, calling it the ‘first mobile sukkah in Poland’.

Well let the story be retold, remembered by those who worked in Jewish community renewal and by Jewish communities across Poland, that the first Mobile Sukkah Tour was in 1997. At the time Rachel and I were working for The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, reaching small communities during High Holidays, Chanukah, Passover, and at summer and winter camps. The Tour was named Halas in the Szalas, which loosely translates as Party in the Shack, because the word Sukkah in Polish is a very impolite word for a female dog. We even created a commemorative t-shirt to highlight the Tour.

The tour traveled over 1000 kilomteres starting in Gdansk, and visiting Szczeczin, Poznan, Wroclaw, Legnica, Bytom, Katowice, Bielsko-Biala, and Krakow. Click the t-shirt to see the rest of the photos. HAPPY SUKKOT!

Three of the top ten Jewish podcasts are not-Jewish podcasts that aim to convert Jews to Christianity.

Barbara Babbs Streisand played an exclusive show recently at the Village Gate. Over 40 years since she first audition there, was turned down, then became the Streisand that world loves.

Another Jewish musician played the Village Gate, and was not turned down, and recorded that session for eternity. Shlomo Carlebach’s At the Village Gate remains one of his best live albums, complete with glasses breaking in the background. Recorded in 1963 – 46 years ago – it highlights an era when a Jewish folksinger could be a proud Jew amid the cacophony of movements for social change.

At Jewlicious Festival we highlight contemporary Jewish folksingers whenever we can. They connect with the Festival’s vibe, and bring joy and humor to the stage. They compliment the rock, rap, dj’s, hip-hop, fusion, jazz, and other styles you can find.

If you know a Jewish folksinger that we should have at Jewlicious – shoot us an email. While we don’t have a budget to fly them in, we have spots on the schedule for a handful of up and coming folksingers.

Jewlicious Festival 6.0 – Feb. 19-21, 2010 – Long Beach CA
Tickets go on sale in November!

When his column didn’t appear this weekend, we were worried. I will personally miss this master wordsmith, and columnist who I have enjoyed reading for 22 years. A fierce defender of Israel, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Jew. His obit on JTA is impressive – but I had to post his NY Times obituary, the paper he called home.
From the NY Times Obit:

There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics and journalism it was simpler: there was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal, which drove the president from office….
And from 1979 until earlier this month, he wrote “On Language,” a New York Times Magazine column that explored written and oral trends, plumbed the origins and meanings of words and phrases, and drew a devoted following, including a stable of correspondents he called his Lexicographic Irregulars.

The columns, many collected in books, made him an unofficial arbiter of usage and one of the most widely read writers on language. It also tapped into the lighter side of the dour-looking Mr. Safire: a Pickwickian quibbler who gleefully pounced on gaffes, inexactitudes, neologisms, misnomers, solecisms and perversely peccant puns, like “the president’s populism” and “the first lady’s momulism.”

There were columns on blogosphere blargon, tarnation-heck euphemisms, dastardly subjunctives and even Barack and Michelle Obama’s fist bumps. And there were Safire “rules for writers”: Remember to never split an infinitive. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. Avoid clichés like the plague. And don’t overuse exclamation marks!!

Kapparos or Kaparot (Hebrew: כפרות‎, “atonements”) is an ancient Jewish ritual to save oneself from a harsh Heavenly decree by it being effected on another object. Vegetables, fish, money, and other objects have been used throughout the centuries, and this is done on the eve of Yom Kippur. The service is performed by grasping the object and moving it around one’s head three times, symbolically transferring one’s sins to the object. The object is then slaughtered or donated to the poor, preferably eaten at the pre-Yom Kippur feast. (Wiki- with RY edits)

Because some have a custom to do this with a chicken – this is the picture that people have in their minds when they hear kapparos/kaparot. It’s a graphic image. But many people do it other ways.

Rashi did it with a basket of vegis.

So what way do you do it?

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The way the Arab world views Netanyahu’s speech. It is worth seeing how this speech was reinterpreted for the Arab world. They draw comparisons between Gaza and the Holocaust, and describe the UN as the body that created the Jewish state in the “heart of the Arab world”.

Delegates from Iran were absent, as Netanyahu denounced the UN for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s previous speech.

This sick video is up on YouTube, and maybe it should stay there so that people see how repulsive the Westboro Baptist Church really is.

Paul, Ringo and Yoko need to sue WBC for every dime they have, with some really smart Jewish lawyers.

Hat tip to y-love for pointing this out.

ed. note: If you’re in Park Slope, NY on Saturday Sept. 26th, please show your support to Congregation Beth Elohim which is scheduled to be picketed by the members of Westboro Baptist Church. Mazal Tov to little Natalie Chertoff who will be celebrating her bat mitzva that day.
–ck

There is an funny story about how I came to be in this skit with Triumph, on the Chabad Telethon, and then on Conan. Enough to say that God has a great sense of humor, Robert Smigle is a comic genius, and I am not sure that I should get an agent just yet.

The Triumph skit that we did on for the telethon was then recut and put on Conan Friday night in honor of Rosh Hashanah, and that is what you see above. Have you voted tonight for Jewlicious ?

Jewlicious has signed up to be a participating organzation for the NYC protest organized by the Stand for Freedom in Iran Coalition.

Protests are planned in major cities against the Iranian dictators. Perhaps this is the year we can get him locked up for taking American hostages in Tehran.

NY hotel refuses to host Ahmadinejad

Helmsley Properties management cancels event scheduled to host Iranian president after being approached by United Against a Nuclear Iran organization. ‘Neither the Iranian Mission nor President Ahmadinejad is welcome at any Helmsley facility,’ says hotel spokesman

Protest list courtesy of StandWithUs & The Israel Project

NEW YORK:
Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009, Time: 12 p.m. (noon)
Location: Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, New York, NY
Contact: info@standforfreedominiran.org or 212-983- 4800 x 152
Web site: www.standforfreedominiran.org

LOS ANGELES:
Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Time: 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Location: The Federal Building on Wilshire and Veteran
Sponsoring organization: StandWithUs, Signs will be provided, tell your friends! Note: There are no bathrooms on this corner

WASHINGTON DC:
Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009
Time: 12 p.m. (noon)
Location: Farragut Square Park, 17th and K Streets
Contact: Arielle Farber at afarber@jcouncil.org or 301- 770-0881
Web site: www.jcouncil.org

DETROIT:
Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Location: Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus
28123 Orchard Lake Road, Farmington Hills, MI 48334-3738
Sponsoring organization: Jewish Community Relations Council of Detroit
Contact: Allan Gale at gale@jfmd.org or 248-642- 2641; Robert Cohen at cohen@jfmd.org or 248-642- 2640
Web site: www.detroitjcrc.org

ST. LOUIS:
Stand for Freedom in Iran Rally
Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009
Time: 12 p.m. (noon)
Location: Jewish Federation, 12 Millstone Campus Dr., St. Louis, MO, 63146
Contact: Arlene Baer at abaer@jcrcstl.org or 314-442- 3871
Web site: www.jewishinstlouis.org

Special thanks to the Israel Project for helping us create this list. See below for sponsors of the NYC protest:

The Stand for Freedom in Iran coalition is led by:
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Mayor Bloomberg,

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the main supporter of anti-Jewish and anti-American terrorism in the world, must be arrested and tried for his crimes against humanity.

You will be hosting Ahmadinejad, one of the most evil men on earth, this week when he visits the UN for his turn to poke fun at the world’s democracies.

Just a peek at his recent portfolio:

STOLE the recent election in Iran,
TORTURES political opponents
LIES about the Holocaust, and his nuclear ambitions

Ahmadinejad has crushed his people and opponents, kept Americans hostage in 1979, and promises to wipe Israel off the map. His actions and his words speak volumes about his intentions to build and use nukes. He sends guns, ammo, land mines, missiles, money and bombs to Hamas, Hizbollah, and those killing American soldiers in Iraq. He is a murderous madman like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

Imagine the suffering that could have been avoided if anyone of them had been apprehended, tried and sentenced before they were allowed to institute their evil plans?

Do the right thing— and the world will thank you. It will raise your profile and your moral standing.
It will be a mitzvah.

America wants this madman off the streets.

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