The other day I posted in disgust a story about the video capturing Sheikh Jarrah Jewish inhabitants listening and dancing to a song praising the murderer Baruch Goldstein. My friends and colleagues on Jewlicious, ck and Rabbi Yonah, both voiced skepticism that the video was authentic.

Not being able to tell from the video itself whether it depicts a real moment or not, simply because just as the voice-over is dubbed, the music could be dubbed as well, I’ve been looking for clues. So far, I don’t have much to go on. Ynet credits “Ta’ayush” for the photo and video that it published, with a big splashy “exclusive” on the video.

What is Ta’ayush? They describe themselves thus:

We — Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians — live surrounded by walls and barbed wire: the walls of segregation, racism, and discrimination between Jews and Arabs within Israel; the walls of Apartheid, closure and siege encircling the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip; and the wall of war surrounding all inhabitants of Israel, so long as Israel remains an armed fortress in the heart of the Middle East.

In the fall of 2000 we joined together to form “Ta’ayush” (Arabic for “living together”), a grassroots movement of Arabs and Jews working to break down the walls of racism and segregation by constructing a true Arab-Jewish partnership. Together we strive for a future of equality, justice and peace through concrete, daily, non-violent actions of solidarity to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and to achieve full civil equality for all.

About Ta’ayush website

The activities and the activists of Ta’ayush were always concentrated on field work. Documentation (written or photographic) was and will continue to be secondary to this.

Okay, so they’re leftists whose views incline towards making Israel into a state that’s no longer a Jewish state. That doesn’t make them into liars, necessarily, although it also leaves them as less than objective observers, especially because Sheikh Jarrah has become a controversial flashpoint in recent weeks and they’ve been advocating against the families that have moved there.

That’s the first problem with the video. Now on to the second problem. Ta’ayush has a couple of filmmakers working with them, one of whom is Joseph Dana. Dana is a personal friend of our ck, and ck has actually posted one of his videos a video Dana had put up on his Facebook page. In fact, it is a video capturing an event at Sheikh Jarrah and ck posted it because at one point a Palestinian woman yells “Falasteene Bladna, al-Yahud klabna.” ck does us the favor of translating…and what she said was “Palestine is our country! The Jews are our dogs!”

The irony of posting a video intended to show the evils of the Jews but actually highlighting the absolute hate and peace-killing behavior of a Palestinian woman did not sit well with the videographer, Dana, probably because he belongs to an organization claiming that Palestinians and Israelis can live in harmony in one country. He criticized ck for not posting the “reality” of Sheikh Jarrah.

By the way, one of Dana’s complaints was that leftist protesters at Sheikh Jarrah were treated unjustly by the police, a position agreed to yesterday by Israel’s courts. On the other hand, in the video the protest leaders make false statements about the Palestinian “owners” of the homes into which the Jewish “settlers” had moved. The Palestinians weren’t owners, they were renters who didn’t pay their rent for years and the “settlers” are not settlers because east Jerusalem is annexed to Israel.

Dana also partners with Max Blumenthal as reporters and they gained notoriety, which we covered and discussed at some length on Jewlicious, when they posted a video that went viral about American Jews in Jerusalem who were saying horrendous things about Obama. Blumenthal and Dana defended their work, which really was nothing more than a hack job, on grandiose grounds. Dana wrote:

As a resident of Jerusalem, I can say that the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city. These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against.

I call bullshit. That video represents nothing more than a bunch of kids half drunk and trying to be cool. That debate can be read on our post so I won’t get into it again. However, I do believe it represents impoverished journalism that is political in its nature and is far from objective, reasonable or fair. This is why I also believe that while the video may accurately depict this group of kids, it is used in a dishonest manner to score political points.

All of this brings us back to the Sheikh Jarrah – Baruch Goldstein video by Ta’ayush to which Dana and Blumenthal are contributors. That Ta’ayush are political and their politics are on the opposite side of the spectrum from the Jewish residents of Sheikh Jarrah can’t be disputed. That their view of the conflict is heavily distorted because of their politics also can’t be disputed – and the same holds true for the extremists on the right, just so we are clear.

Is the video real or not?

Well, ck knows Dana personally and Dana works for Ta’ayush. An email should be enough to have them meet for a coffee with the filmmakers who captured this event and it should be easy for those filmmakers to show ck the unedited, raw footage.

I look forward to the report.

Yonah and their gang had a very good time at Jewlicious 6.0 held in Long Beach last week. The LA Jewish Journal has covered it, and included an interesting clip of WBC world welterweight boxing champion (and rabbinical student?) Yuri Foreman giving a brief boxing lesson to the tall and fit Matisyahu at this year’s festival.

From Ryan Torok’s Jewish Journal article:

His [Matisyahu's] 45-minute set was the final performance of the festival, though he had made surprise appearances over the weekend. On Saturday, he joined comedian Smooth-E for a parody of “King Without a Crown.” He could also be seen walking with his family in the main hallway, gym, auditorium and the several event rooms of the JCC.

During the concert, one of Matisyahu’s children, dressed in a Superman costume, went up to the stage and said, “Hi, Daddy.” To which his famous father replied: “Hi, Superman,” a simple, normal exchange that captured the spirit of the weekend.

Adam Weinberg, music director for the festival, reinforced that there should be no preaching at the festival—that attention, instead, should be on the music. “I think music should speak for music’s sake,” Weinberg said.

Weinberg, also a musician, accompanied Matisyahu on acoustic guitar, as did Dave Holmes, a member of Matisyahu’s band.

Matisyahu spoke afterward about how strongly the performance resonated with him. “When you have an audience listening, taking the journey with you, it’s pretty special,” he said. “For some reason, we seem to be having these kinds of performances at Jewlicious shows.”

There’s also some more coverage in The Forward, where Gordon Haber finds some flaws with the festival, but still asks to be invited back next year…which perhaps tells us a little about just how flawed it really was. Our own Rabbi Yonah, co-founder of Jewlicious Festivals, responded to and corrected some of Haber’s assumptions, but I found Yonah’s report on the survey of the people attending Jewlicious 6.0 more fascinating. Here are the details he provided about the make-up of the 900 or so people in attendance:

How do you define your Jewish affiliation?

Unaffiliated 8.3%
Other 9.7%
Reform 30.6%
Conservative 34.7%
Orthodox 16.7%

Seems fairly representative of the Jewish community at large, if one excludes the unaffiliated which make up about half of American Jewry these days.

UPDATE: More Jewlicious 6.0 videos from Jewish Journal

Hi, it’s me again.  I’ve been away, but now I’m back.  I blame Jersey Shore.

Here’s a review I wrote for one of the movies I saw in the DC Jewish Film Festival in December, but it’s still relevant because Gad Elmaleh’s still hot.

I don’t think there’s anything more awesome about DC than being able to go to Le French Embassy for a Jewish Film Festival (you can read about the last movie I saw here, and please note that I was compensated with free tickets for the festival, but as always, I don’t endorse anything that’s lame). I did just that last week. Can you tell I was excited by my tweets?

There, we saw the short film 10 Weizman Street, which turned into the feature, Comme ton Pere (Father’s Footsteps in English.)

I wish everyone could see both movies. Fortunately, I’ve found 10 Weizman Street on YouTube.

It takes place in 1991, somwhere in Tel Aviv, amongst abandoned back streets. It is the Gulf War and three Soviet immigrants-a father, mother, and daughter and straight from Ben Gurion, lugging their suitcases in hand and Soviet, stiff, mothball-filled clothes looking extremely out of place in the shimmering dry dust of the Holy Land of Florentin. The daughter is weaing a Soviet school uniform. They struggle with all the things that immigrants struggle with when they put on the new uniform of their adoptive homeland. All of a sudden, an air raid siren sounds, signaling that they have 45 seconds to get to a miklat (bomb shelter)-it’s Saddam Hussein and the SCUD missiles, and alien people wearing gas masks run through the street.

The film is only 13 minutes long, but in a way, it sums up the whole of the post-Soviet immigrant experience in Israel-the fear, the frustration, the completely new laws of the West. And, although the episode is surreal, it happened hundreds and thousands of times, in slight variations, for thousands of immigrants in the same way. All in all, a completely subtle, quiet, and extremely powerful film. Here it is:

Part I

Part II

Everything in the short resonated completely with me, especially as a single girl child of Soviet immigrants who went through much the same process over a longer period of time.

And then, there is Comme on Pere. The scene below showcases one of the things I loved most about it-the period outfits.

The next movie, Father’s Footsteps, or Comme ton pere in French, was also a jewel. The showing was prefaced with an introduction by the director, Marco Carmel, who sought to recreate the story of his childhood in France with a father who he originally thought was larger than life. In the movie, Marco as Michel, is the youngest of two sons of Algerian immigrants to Israel who have decided to go to France to experience the world in the early 1970s. He sees his father, played by even hotter than Clive Owen talented thespian and Moroccan-born Jew Gad Elmaleh, as a superhero. Instead, Elmaleh, while well-meaning and extremely concerned about -

-where was I? Oh, yes. Elmaleh’s character, Felix, falls in with the wrong crowd while selling antiques at a market in Paris and-

-em. Elmaleh’s character falls in with a bad crowd and eventually resorts to crime with his partner, an older Jewish gangster from the same town in Algeria as he is, Gabes, leaving his family broken and his youngest son, Michel, devastated and without a solid base.

This movie is about so many things, and all of the actors in it are skilled on so many levels. Not only does Elmaleh carry the movie as a family man and a gever gever, but his wife, played by Yael Abecassis (who also did an excellent job in Lech, Lechi in 2006), also has excellent on-screen presence that is subtle but just right as she struggles to raise two teenage boys and rise above the circumstances. The relationship between Elmaleh and Abecassis is most touching because, although it is flawed in many ways by Felix’s schemes, it is a relationship between husbands and wives that you don’t see too much anymore-one built on clearly-defined roles but also admiration, and, most evident, class. In the background are the beginnings of the Arab-Israeli conflict as it is currently playing out in France and the Yom Kippur War, all shot in a backdrop of brilliant 70s clothes and hairdos and a combination of Sephardi North African culture that is so foreign to me as an Ashkenazi and that I found fascinating.

The movie is essentially wrapped up as a jewel with an amazing, and ultimately warming plotline, yet one that doesn’t feel saccharine at all, and also at the same time gives us a peek at how people lived in Paris in the 1970s. With this movie, you can really tell that the director was trying to write down his story for absolution so he could move on to other projects. I loved it. Both of them are 100% worth your time.

Marcus Freed’s Website Hacked :

My website has been hacked by an incompetent pro-Iranian Anti Semite! http://www.marcusjfreed.com/gigs/ – although he has only hacked two pages on the *old* website that is badly due for a relaunch. I’d like to thank the hacker for thoughtfully keeping with my black-background colour scheme, although I much prefer the… muted green in his palette as opposed to the lurid flourescent 80’s tone. Watch this space – in a few days my web wizard Simon is going to HACK THE HACKER and mash-up the site!!! Look out for pictures of the Ayatollah Kho-Freedy coming soon….

Here is the stuff the Iranian Hackers left on the Jewish Yogi’s site:

Our belligerence is religious and does not own any borders, thus we are here as long as atheism and blasphemy exist. We do know that effrontery of blasphemy to Imam Khomeini is what that only you can do. This is just a warning to your governmental sites!

Marcus is taking it in stride. After all, he is on another world tour, and will be in LA for the Night of Unity, and Jewlicious Festival!

I just started using MySpace again after a very long long time. I found some msgs in my inbox of people that really had questions. MySpace is the only social network they use.

So I updated my profile and my info, and so forth, and am pleased to say that MySpace has become a better medium for social networking.

When we started Jewlicious Festival way back in 2005 – there was no Facebook. We created a profile for the Festival as it was called back then “Jewlicious @ The Beach” - http://www.myspace.com/jewlicious_at_thebeach.

I asked our veteran of MySpace on the JF Team to please update the profile, and look into changing the unfortunate vanity name that was put up, namely, the old name of the fest.

Sarah has been trying now for two weeks to get the name changed and keeps getting back the same generic email.

Hello,

Thanks for contacting MySpace.

We apologize however, a MySpace user’s URL/web address is permanent and cannot be changed or edited.

Sincerely,
The MySpace Support team

For assistance with all MySpace services please visit:
http://help.myspace.com

We want to give these guys at NewsCorps MySpace one more chance. Please – change the name of our Festival Page. We are starting to feel that you don’t really care about the individual user, the small not-for-profits, the college students, the unemployed recent grads, the Jews, the list goes on. It seems you just care about the million dollar ads, the overwhelming promotions that interrupt constantly, Black Eyed Peas, Lady Ga-Ga and reality tv shows. Oh MySpace, purveyor of media overload, please show us some love?
MySpace – Take Down That Name! Please. Pretty please?

Tweets in reverse chronological order during Q&A after Jewish community screening of Inglourious Bastards, hosted by The LA Jewish Journal, the Consulate General of Israel, and the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. Q&A With: Lawrence Bender, producer of “Basterds,” producer of all Quentin Tarantino’s films as well as the Academy Award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Good Will Hunting.” Christoph Waltz received the Best Actor Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal of Nazi Col. Hans Landa. Rob Eshman, Jewish Journal Editor led the Q&A. Session filmed by Weinstein Company. [Note: I updated the spelling of Inglourious Basterds -- which I had spelled Inglorious Bastards in my Tweets.]

Got to see my son killing Hitler — Bear Jew’s Dad at Inglourious Basterds screening

Audience loves Waltz, Tarantino!

Tarantino references tons of classic WWII films. He must have seen then all.

The level of suspense on a 30 minute sequence in German. Not been done before Inglourious Basterds. — Tarantino

Movie is only fantasy when story veers from history. In WWII language was a matter of life or death. — Tarantino

Had my characters existed, it could have happened. — Tarantino

Until they kill Hitler at end, it’s not fantasy. All the WWII films have imagination. — Tarantino

Thought they might not find an actor for lead actor of Lada, the lead Nazi. Without Waltz no Inglourious Basterds. –Bender

Audience loves Tarantino.

Tarantino did a ton of research — powered by his imagination. Would make up stuff, and look it up and find he was right.

Inglourious Basterds has many many parallels to things that happened in real life. — Tarantino

“Once upon a time in occupied France.” It’s a fairy tale. Says Tarantino re Inglourious Basterds

Tarantino attending! Seems the whole cast but Brad Pitt is here.

There is a propaganda movie inside Inglourious Basterds.

Inglourious Basterds will get more people interested in the holocaust. — Bender

What does it say that this is the Holocaust film of our era? And the Blurring of history and fantasy? — Michael Birenbaum

The survivors start taking — Inglourious Basterds would have never happened. Jews didn’t take revenge.

Christof’s son wants to be a Rabbi.

@rabinkos a ton of violence but surreal.

Tarantino and Bender visited Israel, Yad VaShem. Theater went nuts when at end of film we see The Face of Jewish Revenge.

Could a German or Jew have made it? It needed Tarantino — Waltz

Discussing Nazi. How was Inglourious Basterds received in Germany and Israel? http://yfrog.com/373gqij

I am having flashbacks to working on the set of The Pianist

How did Inglourious Basterds hit Jews on the gut level?

Is Inglourious Basterds “good for the Jews?” — I guess that is why we are here.

At Q&A w/ Christoph Walz and Lawrence Bender after Inglourious Basterds screening w/ Jewish Journal’s Rob Eshman

Special screening of Inglourious Basterds (@ The Landmark – West LA in LA) http://bit.ly/6EfOrw

[Sidenote: for a COMPLETE list of Middle Eastern hottie/dead leaders, see this link.]

I am concerned. Muammar Gaddafi doesn’t have a place to sleep during his stay in the United States, having been denied by the Dirty Zionist town of Englewood, New Jersey,possibly denied by Jewish conspirator Donald Trump, and turned down at a number of major New York hotels.

To help him feel a little more at home in his Bedouin tent cum traveling Ringling Brothers Flying High Top as he continues to bring the Haterade on America (and Israel), I’ve graciously come up with a list of locations should feel free to use.  You can thank me later, Mo Mo.  Preferably by giving me my own AK-47.

1.  Newark, New Jersey-Its crime rate has plummeted to only 60% shootings every day!
2.  My home hood near Susquehannah Univesity, Pennsylvania, where there’s only a slight chance he’ll get cancer
3.  Clearfield, Pennsylvania, where he could possibly choke to death/die of cholesterol poisoning from a 5 lb burger
4. Some place in New York where there is a very small chance he could get run over by an epliplectic lorry driver (WTF is a lorry?)
5.  And the most obvious place?  An actual Bedouin Tent! Granted, it’s a restaurant and probably they could stick him near the sink or something, but still.  Duh, MoMo.  Think on your feet.  How did you ever stay in power so long.  You should just hire me to do all your major decisions for you.  First decision Ouiki would make? (yes, that’s right.  There’s no V in Arabic, so you have to substitute with a U.  No wonder Lybia never got anywhere.  How retarded is that? Oueri.)

A while ago, I revealed that Mr. B and I would be going on a mini-Birthright for him.  Except it wasn’t free.  Because it’s kind of awkward for married people to go on Birthright.  Since I’ve already been, and I’m not a big fan of him walking drunk down Ben Yehuda Street asking Israeli girls to “show him their weapons.”  Plus, married people are lepers and we, like, aren’t really supposed to mingle with single people. Is there a Birthright for married people? Beshertright?  (Note: I’ve never called Mr. B my beshert in all my life.  Usually just my tsuris.)

Anyway, long story short, I gave him the Birthright rundown of Israel over the past two weeks.

Here is us, jetlagged to hell in historic Yafo with the historic Tel Aviv behind us and some historic German tourists (meaning they were old as hell) taking our picture.   What you don’t know is that we have also just taken 5 doses of acid in order to smile after landing at 5:00 am and hitting the ground running.  Zionism is hard, people.

Here’s us, stirring up some bidness at the Dome of the Rock, which Mr. B noted was “not as shiny as I expected,” and “was highly disappointed in the whole thing.”

And here’s me with some guy that was roaming the mean streets of Jerusalem that knows the best humusiyot in on every Jerusalem hill.  You can never be too careful out there.

I bet you’ve been wondering where I was.  Well, I’ll give you a hint.

No.  Not with Amy Winehouse.   I was at a Russian Jew wedding.  Eight hours away.  So, I’ve been all discombobulated, especially since we are leaving next week for Eretz Nehederet.  So, I’m cheating a little bit.

Here’s a post about Ukraine or something.

So, you know how ck recently had a post about the UJC Community Heroes?   I’m over it.  You know why?  A certain Genia Brin.  Not only is she the mother of Sergey Brin, who I totally could have married and now been Beemin’ up and down Mountain View, but also she decided to spearhead HIAS’s MyStory project, which is a social network for ex-Soviet Jews to share their immigration story.

This network totally ruins my chances of writing the Great American Novel about how Hard it is to be all Russian Jewish and immigranty and angsty, when thousands of other people have had the same experience, and can now chronicle it ON A SOCIAL NETWORK.  They are giving away all my trade secrets of immigrant sorrow. I mean, it’s true that there’s Gary Shteyngart and Emil Draitser and Eugene Mirman and Sana Krasikov and Mark Budman , but whatevs!  If I wrote a book, wouldn’t you be shocked to know that, for example, my earliest memory is of my mom breaking my shovel on a frozen lake in Yaroslavl, Russia?  I cried for at least forty minutes.  Well, that’s touching and all, but HOW CAN I TOP BEING IN A GHETTO IN MINSK?  I can’t.

Time to accidentally hike into Iran or something. I gotta up my game.

As you may be aware, living in Israel can have serious consequences.  That’s because the State of Israel commits horrible crimes against humanity every day. These manifest themselves in the form of hideous Israeli wedding dresses.  Since we are knee-deep in wedding season, I thought I’d take a moment to remind you that tomorrow is Hideous Israeli Wedding Dress Awareness Day (HIWDAD), a day that was made up by me just about fifteen minutes ago as I was going through Facebook pictures of Israeli weddings.   To be fair, Benji Lovitt has been valiantly fighting this troubling trend for years.

If you are familiar with Israeli weddings, you know this dress has been popular for the past five years or so.  You know, the one with the barely-there middle that seems the be reenacting the parting of the Sea that exists between the bride’s upper chestal region and her navel.  (yes, chestal.)

Every time I am in a majority-Jewish setting, such as in a synagogue, an Israel event, or TJ MaXX when they are having their 50% off sale, I get the feeling that other people don’t think that I’m Jewish.  I usually get this feeling because people tell me they don’t think I look Jewish.  In one particularly harrowing incident at Holy Land Restaurant in Northeast Philadelphia about two years ago, I spoke to the waitress in Hebrew.

פלאפל שלכם טוב מאוד.  מתגעגעת אותו מארץ.  קשה למצות אותו בחול” , I said, smiling at her.
(Translation: Your falafel is most excellent.  Oh, how I pine for falafel from Eretz Israel.  It is hard to find such sustenance in the New World.)

She started.  “You Jewiiish,”  Bracha (Or maybe it was  Vered) asked me.

“Ken,” I replied, a bit flustered.

“Bat you don look Jewiiish!  Nat even a little beet!”

I burrowed down into my thinah pool of shame.  Just because I looked like an Aryan poster child didn’t mean I had to go through this kind of discrimination.

What is my point in telling this story, except to show off that I can spell mitgaga’at in Hebrew?  Now, blonde Russian Jews are becoming more accepted in Israeli society, going so far as to being hot in the Knesset!  Ok, so the blonde in this story, Anastasiya Michaeli Samuelson, is actually an ethnically Russian convert to Judaism.  But  it’s a start.

The Forward writes about her,

A Russian-born convert to Judaism, former beauty queen and celebrated TV personality, Michaeli is, in many ways, the perfect bright and sunny face for Lieberman’s highly controversial political party, one often accused of advancing a racist agenda. Michaeli, a kind of younger Sigourney Weaver look-alike, adamantly rejects the charge. “I am not a racist,” she insisted.

The pixie-haired blonde immigrated to Israel from St. Petersburg in 1997 and converted to Judaism in 2000. She wed her husband, Yossi Samuelson, a Latvian-born Israeli Jew 10 years her senior, twice: once in a Russian civil ceremony after the birth of their first child, when Samuelson was employed in Moscow by Tadiran, an Israeli electrical supplier, and a second time after her conversion, when she and Samuelson already had three children and were living in Israel.

Influenced by her Soviet upbringing with its emphasis on “patriotism” and “loyalty,” and its view of Judaism as a nationality, Michaeli doesn’t distinguish between being a good Jew and an Israeli patriot. “Judaism is at the basis of why we have this country to begin with. It’s not just a religion,” she said.

So inspired was I by her story, that I decided to see if I could follow in her footsteps (minus the part where the Forward says that she’s a lot like Sarah Palin, because that’s just crazy.)

What’s that?  No?  Don’t quit your day job?  Ok, ok.I’ll just live vicariously through Anastasiya  for now.

A Self Congratulatory Post and another Jewlicious Prank!
Jewlicious began 5 years ago on July 2004. In that time we have written nearly 5,000 posts and generated nearly 70,000 comments. We’ve also run 5 Jewlicious Festivals, the last of which attracted nearly 1000 participants, much to the consternation of the Long Beach Fire Department I’m sure. I’ve been blessed to be associated with some of the coolest people I know as fellow writers, including The Middle and Muffti who were here right from the get go. Running Jewlicious is often a thankless task. Unlike others, we never got fancy shmancy funding for offices in New York equipped with a wet bar, ping pong and fooz ball tables. But I did get to meet and befriend some awesome people, like the army of volunteers that make the Jewlicious Festival happen and most notably Rachel Bookstein, her husband Rabbi Yonah, and their totally edible children.

There are other things that make working on Jewlicious so rewarding, like running into people that know me from the blog in Jerusalem and being told the role we played in their decision to attend Hebrew University or some Yeshiva or a MASA program. One message I got the other day totally made me smile as well. An ex’s niece sent me a message on facebook wondering about the provenance of all the notes I wrote. Turns out Renée had no idea what Jewlicious was but “I really enjoyed the ones I had read! Seriously, I found all of them to be well written and pretty interesting! (The one about JDate was very amusing, as was “Dear Hamas, Take Me!”)” She later added that “Oh! I forgot to mention that some of my friends where reading the stories from jewlicious.com ! They really enjoyed them!” Renée is an unaffiliated Jewish student at McGill and exactly the sort of smart, talented kind of Jew we always wanted to reach. Also appreciated are kind words from colleagues I deeply respect like Matthue Roth over at My Jewish Learning and Dan Brown at eJewish Philanthropy.

Less fun is some of the bile and invective I’ve attracted from members of the doucheoisie over the years. One former blogger is still telling anyone who will listen to stay away from Jewlicious and from me, years after I have had any interaction with him. This has been cutting into my bottom line and despite all my efforts to just stay out of his way, he doesn’t seem to know how to stop. So the gloves are off asshole. Expect repercussions.

Speaking of repercussions, and this is where the fun “prank” part of the post comes in, there’s a current blogger who has jumped at any opportunity to talk trash about me, accusing me of being a cyber bully, an utterer of anti-gay slurs and a thief. He wrote a typically shoddy Birthright related post the other day about Momo Lifshitz of Oranim and used an image that I created to illustrate it. When informed by one of his readers that I held the copyright on that image, rather than give credit where credit is due, he merely switched the photo to another one of Momo.

But that’s where the dolt fucked up. Not only did he not acknowledge the source of the image, he linked directly to the image thus not only violating Oranim’s copyright, but also stealing their bandwidth! Thus, much in the vein of previous Jewlicious pranks (see this one against Nazis and this one against an anti Israel douchebag), the staff at Oranim gave me and everyone at Jewlicious a much appreciated 5th anniversary gift:

I’m not mentioning this thief’s name nor linking directly to his site (though feel free to use this URL) so that we can at least derive some compensation by laughing at him for as long as possible. Once he figures out what an idiot he is, then I will link away. In the meantime, thanks to everyone for everything. You all rock!

With so much craziness going on in the world, we have to stick together and show solidarity for Israel. Jewlicious has joined the largest Israel Festival in the USA to help bring you an amazing show by MOSHAV. Join us for an afternoon of fun, music, and friends. Vendors, food, Israel vibe everywhere – there will be 10-20,000 people there. ONLY $5 Check out the Jewlicious Booth where we will have a free gift! This is going to be a huge party and we look forward to seeing you!

MOSHAV play at 4pm so you want to be there by 3 to get parking and make your way to the stage.
Join the Jewlicious Facebook Event here
Israel Festival
Sunday, May 3, 2009 10 am – 7 pm
At Woodley Park Admission $5
All day fun for adults, kids and families — Rides, food, and a variety of booths and more….
For more info: www.israelfestival,com or 818-757-0123

REPEAT! Moshav @ 4pm on the main stage….don’t miss this show for Israel!

THAT JEWLICIOUS FEELING!

On stage in the final hour of the record breaking 2009 Festival, BEN PERLSTEIN (LA), Festival Production Manager, and long time Tour Manager for MATISYAHU, steps in on guitar. REB LEIBISH, Montreal’s Ghetto Shul Rabbi on Sax. ADAM WEINBERG (Miami), Matisyahu’s acoustic accompaniment of choice, and Jewlicious Festival’s National Music Director. Filmed by Scott Drucker.

Three days of non-stop fun, music, food, films, workshops, and games. You have to experience Jewlicious to know what its about.

Four more videos and updated YouTube Channel – check it out.

Save the Date – America’s Largest Israel Independence Day Festival is May 3rd, and Jewlicious is proud to be a sponsor. Over 20,000 people are expected at this year’s day-long festival featuring multiple stages, art-fair, food vendors, performances from some of Israel’s biggest acts, games, and other attractions. Entrance is only $5. Stay tuned for more details about the Israel Festival and have a HAPPY PASSOVER!

[Facebook Event]

FRIDAY NOV 21: SHABBOS WITH MATISYAHU!
Come join one of the most famous American Jewish musicians for a FREE SHABBAT DINNER.
Join us for a brief, private service at 6pm, followed by dinner at 6:30.

LOCATION: Chabad at 1261 S Arville St, Las Vegas 89102

SAT NOV 22: MATISYAHU IN CONCERT!
Shavua Tov! Shabbat’s over and it’s time to celebrate the new week by seeing Matisyahu in Concert! Hillel will be subsidizing tickets, but the amount will be dependent upon student interest.

House of Blues – Mandalay Bay
3950 Las Vegas Blvd South
Doors open at 6pm. on Sat. Night. Nov 22

You may have noticed something different about Jewlicious… allow me to explain. Those of you who are my facebook friends would know that October 9th was my birthday (thanks for the greetings!). This year, this otherwise joyous occasion fell right smack in the middle of Yom Kippur. This of course did not make for a very happy birthday to me. So what I did was I went to hebcal and found out that my Hebrew birthday is on the third of Cheshvan which begins the evening of November 1st. Meaning… right now!

So I thought it would be a nice thing to freshen things up a bit and thus I am releasing this new design tonight in honor of my Mom because apparently I came out sideways when I was born. Don’t ask…

Anyhow, you’ll notice that the comments now support gravatars. You can upload your gravatar, basically a photo or some other depiction of you, at gravatar.com. It makes for a more friendly comment section I think when you can associate a face or a depiction to a nickname. It’s easy to do and takes like 5 minutes.

Also, Jewlicious writers will be able to use the built in functionality of WordPress to place images where they like and even add captions without having to enter any extra code. You can see that demonstrated in the photo here of my Mom (Brakha – of the famous shakshuka recipe) and my Dodah Channah. Mom was in Israel this summer and we spent a lovely day in the old city. She prayed and cried at the Kotel (”I didn’t cry!” “Yes you did Mom, I have the pictures…”) and then I kind of tricked her into going into the Arab shuk which she hates. She’s smiling here but really she wanted to strangle me. Afterwards we had coffee at Mamila which both Mom and Dodah Channah loved. She said that the old neighborhood they razed to build the Mall was a dump. Oh well.

Finally I guess the most dramatic change is the featured content gallery at the top of the page. It will contain direct links to previous posts that for whatever reason we decided to feature. It’ll add some splashiness and added functionality and, as always, more work for me.

Anyway… hope you like the new theme. Hopefully it’ll take us into our 5th year in style. I still have to tweak it a bit and if you encounter any problems let me know.

On Sunday, October 26th your night belongs to Jewlicious & Jcafela…

Join hundreds of LA young professionals from 8 of the city’s largest Jewish organizations for a fall blowout party unlike any other!!! Join us for live jazz, refreshments at KULA on Santa Monica Blvd, for a very fun evening.

Free Parking, prime location, a great way to end the month of holidays.

500 attended our last party in September.

Tickets $15 advance, $20 at the door. Click here to pre-pay.

Mazal Tov! This is the 4000th Jewlicious post after a little over 4 years. In that time, we’ve inspired 56,666 approved comments, held 4 Jewlicious Festivals, run 10 Jewlicious Taglit-Birthright Israel trips, sponsored and co-sponsored countless events in the US and Israel, been interviewed dozens of times by media outlets large and small and 125,937 Web pages currently link back to us. We’ve served 264 banner ads, 134,821,018 times. These banner ads were paid for by a wide variety of businesses and organizations from the New Israel Fund, to JDub Records; from Aish Hatorah to American Apparel.

While Jewish communal organizations scramble to advertise with us, wishing to access our broad demographic, in the more than 4 years of our existence, the number of grants we’ve received (not including co-sponsorship of our Festivals) total exactly zero. To be fair, we started applying a little over 2 years ago, we’ve been finalists and we were even selected last year as part of the Slingshot 50, but we’ve never received any organizational funding as a result. As one Director stated “it’s tough to understand Jewlicious from afar.”

Yeah, I guess that’s true. The fact is that we kind of enjoy our independence – it’s what gives us our street cred I suppose. I can’t help chuckling on an almost daily basis when we are criticized for being both right wing and left wing, both extremely religious and unremittingly secular. At our Festivals and events you’ll see young Jews of every orientation and denomination – where else can you observe Lesbian eco-activists interacting with right-wing Ultra Orthodox Jews? Our blog is similarly made up of a dizzying variety of yiddles ranging in age from 19 to 45, ranging in identities from atheist to Hassidic, united solely by an abiding interest in Judaism in all its manifestations.

Now I know I was recently the subject of a Jerusalem Post article that much to my embarrassment called me Mr. J-Blog. Truly, nothing could be further from the truth. Jewlicious owes its success to a number of things – a healthy and robust Jewish blogging community that we are but a small part of. I’m no Al Gore. He didn’t invent the Internet and I sure as heck am NOT Mr. J-Blog.

But more importantly, Jewlicious owes its success to my fellow bloggers, now numbering over a dozen – you guy are the best! In particular, I owe a big debt of gratitude for the hard work put in by TheMiddle, Grand Muffti, EstherK and Rabbi Yonah who have been with us from the beginning. One of the things that makes Jewlicious unique is that we’re not just a blog – we’re out there in the real world and none of that would have happened without Rabbi Yonah Bookstein and Rachel Bookstein – the driving forces behind the Jewlicious Festival. I am humbled in your presence and grateful to be associated with you all in any way shape or form.

Finally, I’d like to thank our countless visitors. Every time you read our articles or leave a comment – even when you disagree with us, you inspire us to continue cranking out whatever it is we crank out. Jewlicious is about pride, conversation and unity. I know these are concepts that are “tough to understand from afar” but those of you who are close to us know exactly what they mean. Those of you who don’t understand, well…

What does the future hold for Jewlicious? I don’t know. We’re going multilingual so we can spread Jewlicious love to all corners of the Jewish globe. We have a Russian version of Jewlicious up and running and we’re planning a French one too (any volunteers? I mean voulez-vous blogger avec moi ce soir?). We have applied for grants in the hopes of professionalizing the “organization” as it were. The hope is to assure it’s continuity and to meet the demand for more activities while still remaining that “lovable garage band you hope never makes it.” Luckily the folks behind Jewlicious are a passionate lot, so despite our total uselessness in grant writing, I suspect we’ll be around for a while yet. We’ll see. In any case, thanks bunches.

In order to attract new donors and provide a memorable prize for participants, we are creating a limited edition Best of Jewlicious Festival CD featuring artists who have performed at our Festivals in the past. This compilation will be professionally produced by our National Music Director, and crafted with beautiful eco-friendly packaging

Consider helping to fund this CD with a tax deductible donation.

All the musicians are donating their songs for this project, and the CD will be used for promotional purposes only. For donations of $18 or more we will send you a CD.

As you can see this is a Jewish unity event like no other in LA and Jewlicious is pleased to be a co-sponsor.  Bringing together a wide variety of groups from the greater LA area for an end of summer, pre-Rosh Hashanah party.  If you didn’t find love at the Love Fest, and are still looking for Holy Days partner, check out the JCafe LA party.  JCafe LA’s party is put together by Aaron Kemp, for the benefit of the entire LA community.

And if you are interested in getting into a reality TV show, the folks from Arranged Marriage – are going to be on hand interviewing potential candidates.

Well, after many emails and endless phone calls and the crunching of many, many pixels, 60Bloggers.com is up. What’s that site all about? Well, May 8th is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the modern State of Israel. You’ll notice lots of events happening in Israel and in communities around the world meant to commemorate this historic occasion. 60Bloggers.com is meant to do the same, but on the blogosphere. Consequently, we’ve put together a nice broad group of bloggers, some well-established, some relatively new, representing (I hope) ideological, religious and geographic diversity. Over the course of the next 60 days each will write one blog post on 60Bloggers.com where they will write something related to how they feel about Israel at this momentous juncture in time. We don’t plan on editing any of the posts for anything except for formatting, spelling and grammar, so really, anything is possible. We’ve already got our first post up – 60 Ways I Love Israel by Rachel Bookstein, Hillel Director of Long Beach Hillel and “stylist” of the Jewlicious Festival. In the coming days we’ll have posts by Bruno Bitter of Jewish Hungarian blog Judapest, Harry Rubenstein from The View from Here and Jerusalemite, Esther Kustanowitz from My Urban Kvetch, Tomer Altman from OyBay – and the list goes on and on. You can see who else is participating on the side bar, and of course, you can count on me to keep you updated.

So… what are you waiting for? Go visit 60Bloggers.com and tell all your friends to do the same!

60Bloggers.com is a joint project of Jewlicious and the Let My People Sing Festival.

In the past year, Jewlicious has recorded 1262 visits from what Google calls the Palestinian Territories. What sort of insight might we be able to gain from this informal interaction? Well, it seems the vast majority of the traffic, 84% of it, came from search engine results. The top keywords were as follows:

1. israeli girls
2. israeli sex movies
3. palestinian singles
4. hot israeli girls
5. israeli sex movie
6. arab hot babe
7. escort israel
8. german colony restaurant
9. israel girls
10. hot israelis

Other notable keywords were: address sex home in tel aviv, balestine gay (not a typo), gay arab shoes, gay nazis pic, homophobia palestine, natalie portman zionist, sex children egy 15year photo (??? I don’t want to know…), shakshuka recipe and of course miri eisin. The rest of the Arab world evinces similar themes – Egypt, with 8,664 visits has israeli girls, israeli babes and hot israeli girls as top key words (shakshuka is in there too). The United Arab Emirates with 8,023 visitors has Israeli girls, Israeli babes and Jewish babes as their top key words. Israel, with 398,342 visitors in the past year had jewlicious, israeli babes and shakshuka as it’s top three keywords.

Look, one tends to get overwhelmed by everything here in Jerusalem. Political machinations and intrigue can get so infuriating that you learn to tune it out as a survival mechanism. Me? I’m just some guy on a lap top in Jerusalem – I wouldn’t even call myself a pundit. I really don’t know much about anything, but I do know how to read Web stats. I also know I’d love to live in peace. I don’t know how that’s going to happen, but if I may give a tip to everyone attending that peace summit in Annapolis, it’s this: If there is ever to be a just and lasting peace in the middle east, I sense that it’ll somehow involve hot babes and shakshuka.

Do with that what you will.