San Francisco-based conceptual artist Jessica Tully designed this cell phone bag as a way to resist the temptation of the distracting electronic glow of our cell phones and cameras. Limited Edition, 4″ x 6″ Hemp with soy based ink. Logo design by Lucie Kim. (Out of stock!)

And the Children of Israel observed the Sabbath, to make the Sabbath for their generations an eternal covenant. Between Me and the Children of Israel it is a sign forever, that in six days did HASHEM make the heaven and the earth,and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.’

Ok, that was not the Sabbath Manifesto, per say, it is a passage from the Torah, recited during prayers Friday Night and Saturday, and recited during the ritual blessing of the wine on Saturday afternoon.

The Reboot Manifesto is right now: 1. Avoid Technology, 2. Connect With Loved Ones, 3. Nurture Your Health 4. Get Outside 5. Avoid Commerce 6. Light Candles 7. Drink Wine 8. Eat Bread 9. Find Silence 10. Give Back

Reboot are far from being Luddites. These are hyper-connected folks. Rather they are advocating one day of keeping the Sabbath as a means to better our lives (and make Bubbe proud.)

Join us in fighting back against the tidal wave of technology taking over society and our lives. Are you sick of having conversations with people with their noses buried in an iPhone? Are you that person?

Put down the cell phone, stop the status updates on Facebook, shut down Twitter, sign out of e-mail and relax, as part of our National Day of Unplugging.

Amen.

With the huge success of the getting the word out about the Sabbath Manifesto – I really do hope that tens of millions of people join – I would like to recommend that Reboot take on some addition modern issues with ancient Jewish ideas.

To heal monotonous, romance-less marriages, create a project advocating marital abstinence one or two weeks a month to help rekindle that missing spark: MikvahManifesto.org

To feed the poor, protect the widow and orphan, cloth and shelter the homeless, create a project advocating tithing ten-percent of our net earnings for donations to the poor. See the tzedakahmanifesto.org

That is just for starters – we can do a lot to help improve our lives, and those around us, with some of that Torah stuff.

We will be making a L’Chaim to Reboot tonight. Shabbat Shalom!

Two weeks ago Los Angeles was rocked by a Purim party of Olympic proportions. JConnectLA, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, and Atid – the young professional group of Sinai Temple and took over the entire Rodeo Collection on Rodeo drive. Music was provided by Moshav, Ram2, DJ Miles, and one of LA’s top DJ’s DJ Felli Fel.

When the party hit about 1000 people, the Beverly Hills Fire Marshall said enough. Purimpalooza party goers filled Purim baskets that were delivered to the Jewish elderly, and a local bone marrow registry swabbed party goers for bone marrow matches.

Purimpalooza in LA was started by Cheston Mizel, when he began the organization that became JConnectLA. The first event drew about 50-75 people. Purimpalooza has grown from year to year, changing venues and designs.

I just want to give a huge mazal tov to all the organizers, and the participants, for making the dream blossom that started seven years ago – an event to draw together Jews from all backgrounds – to help unify, inspire, and connect young Jewish people in Los Angeles. Shabbat Shalom!

Co-Sponsors: Valley Alliance, LEV Foundation, Jewlicious Festivals, Chai Center
Partners: Jews for Judaism, JAMS (of USC), Sephardic Mizrahi Young Leadership (SMYL), LA Jewish Chamber of Commerce, Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters
Media Sponsor: www.LosAngelesBlueprint.com

With all the buzz in LA this week about the Oscar voting – here is my vote— Inglorious Basterds should win Best Picture, and many other accolades for Quentin Tarantino and his brilliant cast. Basterds is the most intriguing movie about WWII and the Holocaust to be made in decades.

Writing about the film this week, a few days before the holiday of Purim, I am drawn to a parallel between Basterds and Purim. In the Purim story, Jewish salvation came not at the hands of politicians and power-brokers, but through a Jewish woman who had hidden her identity from everyone including her husband. In Basterds, it is also a Jewish woman, whose past and Jewish identity a secret, and is being romanced by a Nazi poster-boy, who is the heroine.

Basterds is a film about WWII and the “face of Jewish revenge” portrayed by a band of American Jews scalping Nazi behind enemy lines. There is also the Jewish woman who plots to murder the entire Nazi leadership as revenge for her murdered. None of these things actually happened, Basterds is a fairy tale.

The film is brilliant from every angle. It has drama, humor, romance, and suspense. The plot twists are compelling. The story, the photography, the script, the acting, and the drama all are detailed, textured, nuanced, colorful, and captivating.

I was apprehensive. I had never seen a Tarantino film, and heard there is a lot of violence. While Basterds has some pretty graphic violence, it is a WWII movie after- all. The scalping made everyone cringe. Yet the violence pales in comparison to portrayals of mass murder by Nazi death squads or gas chambers.

The Jews are tough in this film. More James Bond than Woody Allen, more Mossad, that Seinfeld. There are no sheep being led to the slaughter. The Nazis are brutal, interesting, grotesque – not unlike the real Nazis. The leader of the Basterds played by Brad Pitt brands Nazis with Swastikas on their foreheads so they cannot escape into regular life afterward. They cannot escape what they have done.

It is clear that Tarantino did a ton of research on his subject matter. He read up on the Nazi film industry, and the war, and real life WWII spy stuff. He digested all the previously exulted WWII movies and hints of them appear in the film

I enjoyed many parts of the film for their poetic justice, suspense, and dialogue – but this one I love to retell.

Winston Churchill, when hearing of the Germans plans to replace Jewish cinema with Nazi cinema, says “You say [Goebbels] wants to take on the Jews at their own game?”

If we cannot laugh we cannot heal. If we cannot dream we cannot move on. Tarantino’s film helps us heal, and move on, but that is not why he made it – he made it because it needed to be made.

If they would have murdered Hitler – millions would have been saved, but it was not the priority of the Allied forces. In fact, the only ones that made a serious attempt at it late in the war were fellow Germans.

The Allies tried to win the war the old-fashioned way, with infantry, tanks, planes and bombs, with propaganda, cloaks, daggers and brute force. I don’t know if this was Tarantino’s goal, but Basterds shows that redemption can come from average people doing extraordinary things. To stop an evil tyrant we cannot depend solely on conventional means, and conventional players, we need to act and hope that we are helped by the hand of God.

In the past, we have had organizational resistance to putting our Festival Schedule online. Folks were concerned that potential competitors would be handed a veritable blue print for what we do and simply copy our program ideas.

However, this year, we are committed to an open source model and so here it is – a pdf version of our program over the next three days. You think the Festival is just a program? It’s so much more. it’s a community that rallies its resources to make this happen, it’s untold unsung people who gave freely of their time, it’s donors and organizations and bands and maintenance people and hard friggin work. You want to reproduce what we do? Go right ahead. Best of luck. As for the rest of you, check it out and see what’s happening!

See him at Jewlicious this weekend!

Jewish Boxing Champ Foreman Featured in LA Times

Foreman, the unbeaten “Lion of Zion,” became the latest to join the list after twice knocking down heavily favored Daniel Santos to win the World Boxing Assn. junior middleweight title last November in Las Vegas. That made him the first Israeli fighter to win a world title and earned him one of the championship banners that cover the walls of the dingy gym… Yet after climbing to the top of a sport he has long attacked with zeal, Foreman finds that his accomplishment has to share the spotlight with his other pursuit. The boxer, you see, is studying to be a rabbi, spending each morning in the middle of the Torah learning how to interpret the will of God, and each afternoon in the middle of a gym learning how to break the will of his next opponent.

The LA Times also interviewed our own Rabbi Yonah Bookstein:

Los Angeles Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, who has invited the boxer to speak at the Jewlicious cultural festival in Long Beach this weekend, said Foreman “has been able to keep one foot firmly planted in his Jewishness and the other foot planted in the world that he loves, boxing. Young people need positive role models and Yuri’s a great role model. His story is very compelling.” …It’s a story that includes an Israeli national title won while training in an Arab gym, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a death threat from a masked gunman, and a marriage to a Hungarian model.

What’s most interesting though is that this story isn’t just about ass whupping Jews and Rabbis. There’s a warm fuzzy aspect to it as well:

Boxing receives such feeble support in Israel, Foreman had to train in the courtyard of an elementary school or on the balcony of Kozlowski’s apartment, where a punching bag hung. To get in a ring and spar, Foreman and his training partners had to drive to a distant Arab neighborhood gym where they knew they weren’t welcome… “You are a Russian Jew and they know that. They were trying to hurt you,” Foreman says of the fighters training there. But “after the workouts we’d shake hands. And then slowly we had friends.” … He became Israel’s most decorated boxer, a three-time national amateur champion. He was invited to celebrate Muslim holidays in Arab homes, where he was always seated at the head of the table. When Foreman won his world title, he received almost as many calls and e-mails of congratulations from the West Bank as he did from the rest of Israel.

Championship boxer, aspiring Rabbi, voice of peaceful coexistence in the Middle East? That’s a pretty powerful 1-2-3 combo there… Can’t wait to meet him. You can too at this weekend’s Jewlicious Festival. Pre-sale tickets are are on sale until midnight PST. Afterwards, limited tickets will be available at the door. Come for the whole weekend or just for a day. Otherwise I will sick Yuri on you.

…and why is he talking like he knows Jewlicious?

He’s not the king of Jewlicious. Jewlicious is this crazy multi-headed hydra fed by angst and motivated by fun. The bastard love child of the Chofetz Chaim, Charlie Chaplin and Dahliah Queen of the Berber tribes, Jewlicious is an anarchist collective with cholent. And now there’s this crazy Jewlicious Festival happening this weekend in Long Beach, CA. If you are near there (unlike me) and you don’t go, then you are a massive loser. Massive.

Thanks Leadel.Net!

How much do we love Eli Winkelman? Watch this video and find out how she captured our hearts with her savvy Challah making skillz, humanitarian spirit and the fact that she’s helped staff every single Jewlicious Festival ever. I frankly have no idea where she gets the energy or the drive! Eli will be in Long Beach this weekend for the Jewlicious Festival. Come and learn how to bake Challah while simultaneously repairing the world. Or just stand next to her and absorb her energy. It’s better than a case of Red Bull.

Back by popular demand - buy tickets to see the concert portion of Jewlicious Festival 6.0 while supplies last!
$25 Online Concert Tix Sat or Sunday / $30 at the door.

2/20 Saturday Night Bands (9 p.m.- 1 a.m.)
Kosha Dillz Band (NY)
Rinat (Jerusalem)
Electro Morocco (NY)
Moshav (LA)
and other special guests

2/21 Sunday Acoustic Series (11 a.m. – 3 p.m.)
Basya Schechter (of Pharaoh’s Daughter) (NY)
Rav Shmuel (NY)
Yael Meyer (LA)
Adam Weinberg (Miami)
And other special guests

Now you can bring the Festival home. This first volume of Jewlicious Festival recordings was mastered and mixed under the supervision of Adam Weinberg in Miami, FL, pressed and printed by Rainbo Records in LA, and recorded live with ProTools at Jewlicious Festival 5.0 on Feb 27 and 28, 2009.

I have been listening to these tracks for a week and it feels like you are there at the Festival.

So you want a copy? To get your copy of the Jewlicious Festival Live – Volume 1 all you have to do is make a
modest $36 donation to the Festival, and you will get the CD as a free gift! (If you want you can also get one at the Fest – We are giving away copies of the CD at Jewlicious Festival thanks to Repair the World!)

Featuring music by Moshav, Aharit Hayamim, Y-Love, Diwon, Kosha Dillz, Rav Shmuel, Jewdyssee, Dov Rosenblatt. Enjoy these high-fidelity live recordings that will bring you front and center to the Saturday Night Mainstage Concert.

Again this is not available for purchase. The bands have graciously donated their tracks to help us raise funds and spread the music of the Festival around the world. This CD is your gift with a donation of $36 or more which goes to subsidizing student tickets to the Festival.

Donation of $36 / S & H: $3.99

This CD was made possible thanks to Repair The World.

OK, that title was total nonsense

But seriously, when I want to know the latest in teen religious Jewish boy band news, the first place I go to is Heeb magazine. And they never disappoint! After the bump check out these uh… cuties, called the Moshiach Times Band. JDub dubs them the “Jewnas” brothers and raves about their “skinny jean/Tzitzit combo” while Tablet Magazine says that they are “the religious Jews’ answer to the Jonas Brothers.” Me? I don’t even know who the Jonas Brothers are and I’m definitely not going to make any cracks about scoring sem girl booty in the temple bathroom (I leave that to Heeb). All I can say is that I am heartbroken that the David Kelsey approved musical line up at the Jewlicious Festival is all booked up and that we won’t be able to invite the Moshiach Times Band to play before they hit puberty and their sweet, angelic voices begin to crack. Oh well.