Sigh

The Internets have been fairly abuzz after publication of a letter by right-wing firebrand Baruch Marzel’ urging Israeli supermodel Bar Rafaeli not to marry her on again, off again, on again beau, actor Leonardo DiCaprio. In that letter, Marzel, writing on behalf of Lehava, an organization he runs to help Jewish women extricate themselves from relationships with non-Jewish men, urges Rafaeli not to marry DiCaprio. Marzel writes:

“It is not by chance that you were born Jewish,” wrote Baruch Marzel in a letter he sent Refaeli through her mother (and that promptly appeared in the press). “Your grandmother and her grandmother did not dream that one of their descendants would one day remove the family’s future generations from the Jewish people. Assimilation has forever been one of the enemies of the Jewish people.” … This isn’t personal, wrote Marzel, who was careful to open his letter stressing that he “has nothing against Mr. DiCaprio, who I have no doubt is a talented actor.” Still, he implores Refaeli: “Come to your senses, look forward and back too — and not only the present. Don’t marry Leonardo DiCaprio, don’t harm the future generations.”

Won’t someone think of the children bubbes? Oh the humanity! The problem here isn’t that a concerned individual has taken upon himself to urge a Jewish woman not to marry a non-Jew. People do that all the time. The problem is that this exhortation has received international attention. Ignoramuses the world over believe that Judaism is racist! Never mind that the desire to avoid mixed marriage has nothing to do with race, one can hardly find any place that this has been reported where there aren’t a significant number of comments deriding Marzel for his racism.

The other problem is that Marzel is in fact a racist! Lehava does not seem to be concerned with Jewish men bedding gentile women. Marzel himself claims to have been the right-hand man of Meir Kahane, acting as a spokesman for the American rabbi’s Kach organization for ten years until it was outlawed in Israel for being racist and branded in the US as a terrorist organization.

So yes, by all means if I could send out a personal message to Bar, please don’t marry Leonardo DiCaprio. Mixed marriages are fraught with complications and celebrity marriages are already complicated enough as it is (especially judging by how often you and Leonardo break up)! Of course your children, should you have any, will be fully Jewish, but Bar, will they even identify as Jews once they become adults? Never mind that Marzel nut job. Never mind your bubbes. Don’t marry Leonardo because it’s in your best interest not to.

Oh and also because Leonardo is reportedly gay. You really want to spend the rest of your life as Leo’s beard? Wow. What a waste of your uhm… assets that would be.

Jew Controlled Media. Right.

Israeli filmAjami lost the Best Foreign Film Oscar to some Argentinian flick. That’s 3-years in a row that an Israeli film got nominated and lost. I don’t think the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man won anything and the Nazi in Inglorious Basterds won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. I think the Jews got stiffed. At least they threw us a bone during the introduction:

I mean, man, Ajami was awesome! It was flat out a great story and the fact that the cast was predominantly amateur made it that much more amazing. A Serious Man was simply brilliant in the way that it weaved the evolution of Jewish thought into a modern day story of Job. And yet? Bupkes! Now you know what to tell them next time they say we control the media.

inspired by a chat with Gad

Dang. There goes all our traffic.

The Open Net Initiative recently released a report noting that Microsoft’s Bing search engine is filtering all Arabic and English terms for sexually explicit content when used in a search in any Arabic speaking country. Type in words like sex, breast, lesbian, intercourse, nude, clitoris (but not vagina) or lick in English or in Arabic and instead of getting your search results, you’ll get a notice from Bing stating “Your country or region requires a strict Bing SafeSearch setting, which filters out results that might return adult content.”

So is this a big deal? Probably not. I mean it’s funny that Bing has taken a position of ostensibly safeguarding Arabs from racy Internet content, but it’s really easy to get around this filtering process. There’s no geolocation so if you simply change your country preference to one that values freedom, you can search for “clitoris” all you like without getting the results filtered. Secondly, who uses Bing anyway? I am thus relieved that popular search terms leading to Jewlicious, and originating in Arab and Muslim countries, like “Israel Sex Woman” or “Hot Israeli Soldier Babes” or “Fuck Jew Girl” will still lead horny Arabs to Jewlicious thus artificially increasing our hit numbers.

Whatever. I knew this Bing thing was bogus. I just wanted an excuse to put up a funny LOL Cats inspired photo of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who by the way, isn’t an Arab! He’s a Persian. Yeah.

Well, something’s going on…

Vinny, Snooki and Pauly D spared God's full wrath

I know. You’re thinking a Purim party? Run by Aish? Hosted by a guy called “Chris?” Featuring a bunch of proud Guido reality TV stars?

Well, someone on high must have taken notice, because right in the middle of the party, some of the glass panels in the atrium came loose and fell, showering the VIP section with glass. Clearly this wasn’t divine wrath at it’s worst because, thankfully, no one got hurt. But I can just imagine the big guy upstairs thinking “Chris Noth? Is that the best you can do? Sex and the City was a million years ago! And frankly, I’ve had it with Snooki, Vinny and that “The Situation” guy. So yeah, here’s a little sign of my displeasure.”

Snooki for her part tweeted the following message: “Its okay Vin and I are still alive … Omg roof just collapsed at the purim event! We thought the dj was beatin the beat hardcore but nope,the roof couldn’t handle snooki and vin…”

That’s right Snookster. Your reality TV show and the foisting of your cast members on our collective psyches is so dumb that it offends both inanimate objects and dieties. Either that or crazy Israeli Danielle tried to kill Pauly D. Either way… wtf??

Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

One of the more disturbing hair trends of the past decade is on its way out, at least judging by the latest looks on the runway. What am I talking about? I’m talking about straight, flat hair achieved via daily use of a heating Iron and product. This look was and remains popular, particularly amongst Jewish women who seek to control their unruly Semitic hair. But what is considered unruly by some is considered hot by others, and now, it’s not just hot, it’s fashionable! Female Jewish fashionistas can put away the horrible Iron and laugh at their naturally flaxen haired counterparts as they buy expensive product and waste countless hours every month in order to look more Semitic.

I’m not kidding. Check out the suggested regime and product required:

1. Braid your hair in tiny braids (the thicker the braid, the less textured your hair will be).
2. Using hairspray (we like Bumble and Bumble Spray de Mode – $25), spray all over, then flat iron each braid to set the crimp. I also like using a product called Bumble and Bumble Surf Spray. Just spray it on before or during ironing.
3. After the hair is set, take the braids out and use your fingers to separate.
4. Spray the ends of your hair with hair powder (Bumble and Bumble Dry Hair Powder – $35), it’s the absolute secret weapon for giving your hair a frizzy, full finish.

Thank goodness for the inevitable end of that straight hair trend. It was just plain stupid. And this isn’t some cool Jew nonsense – we’re not talking about the ironic sporting of Jewfros as a statement of pride for one’s heritage. This is a legitimate fashion trend and applies to all, Jews and non-Jews. Sort of like circumcision! OK, maybe I added that last line in just to piss David Kelsey off. Sue me. I mean he’ss all flipped out about deceased 93 year old women with 2000 descendants, and I’m expressing concern for my sisters! But yes, frizzy/curly hair is back. Yay!

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.

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.

World Boxing Association super welterweight champion!

Yay! Jewish Boxing Champ Foreman to attend Jewlicious

Yes, because we like to be surrounded by tough guys who are also spiritual, we reached out and invited Foreman to the Jewlicious Festival, and he in turn accepted. What should Jewlicious Festival goers expect? Well, a general increase in both testosterone and spirituality and a talk from Yuri about Jewish identity. Or aa seminar on how to kick ass. We’re not sure yet. We don’t really care, we’re just thrilled to have him and we all look forward to meeting him.

Uhm. Not so much.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time I suppose. I mean when you look at any kind of armament you can’t help but notice all kinds of obscure alphanumeric codes that don’t usually mean anything to the end user and certainly don’t affect the effectiveness of said weaponry. So the evangelical Christian owners of Trijicon Inc. probably thought what heck! Why not emboss meaningful alphanumeric codes onto the advanced telescopic sites they sold? The sites, widely used by the US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as by the IDF in Israel contained the following codes: “JN8:12,” a reference to John 8:12 which describes Jesus as the “light of the world” – and “2COR4:6,” a reference to part of the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians. They were probably thinking that these codes were barely legible! What harm could it do?

Plenty.

Despite the fact that the company had been inscribing their gun sights in this way since 1995, no one noticed until it was brought to light by former U.S. air force officer, Michael Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Reactions? Plenty!

“The Muslim Public Affairs Council in Washington said the biblical references violated the nation’s values and would stoke the fires of extremists who accuse the United States of carrying out a religious crusade in Asia and the Middle East… In a letter early Thursday to President Obama, the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, said the gun sights “clearly violate a government rule prohibiting proselytizing” and called the practice “only the latest in a long line of violations of the boundaries between religion and government within the military.” … In Afghanistan, the Al Jazeera news service reported that sights with the Christian references had been distributed to some Afghan soldiers and that this would provide the Taliban with a propaganda coup.

And in Israel?

The IDF Rabbinate told Arutz Sheva that the codes do not violate Jewish law but that it is preferable to remove them because of the “sensitivity” regarding their appearance on weapons used by the army of the Jewish State. The IDF said it was unaware of the codes until the issue was raised in the United States.

Anyhow, Trijicon has sent out kits to remove the offending code and has promised not to do that ever again. Oh those whacky Christians. What will they think of next?

By Little Billy Eichner ft. Rachel Dratch

Ok first JayZ and Alicia Keys did this song called New York State of Mind which, unless you’re some kind of snob who only listens to like, classical music or obscure Garage Rock bands from Istanbul, you must have heard like 1000 times by now. It is kind of catchy. So this dude Billy Eichner did a Jewish take off and frankly, it’s awesome. I mean I’ve never been to Forest Hills but I assume it’s a Jewy suburb of New York. The other obscure references? Stuyvesant High, which is where I think Ariel Beery went to school and Bronx Science, another high school that I’m pretty sure that Beery didn’t attend. Otherwise, the messages contained in this video are totally universal, albeit a little uhm… full of foul language. Enjoy:

Hat tip to Heshy at FrumSatire for the heads up.