Getting furry for the Omer

Jay Firestone has given us a matzo taste test, shown the post-party perils of Purim and hit the streets to talk politics in Pico-Robertson, but this is by far his best video dispatch so far.

Case of the missing matzo, and not the afikomen

From coast to coast right now, there is a developing story that is a perfect case for the Hardly Boys. (No, it does not involve 9/11 conspiracies.) Passover began little more than 48 hours ago, and one thing is clear: this Exodus remembrance it appears there wasn't even enough time to bake unleavened bread. The New York Times explains:

On Monday, Allison Mnookin circled the aisles of her local Whole Foods store in San Mateo, Calif., three times. There was no matzo to be found.

“Being out of matzo is like being out of milk,” Ms. Mnookin said. So it was on to Safeway. Nothing. Fearing that the box of stale matzo remaining in her pantry from last year would not cut it, she drove nearly 15 miles to Menlo Park.

Hypothesis: If the shortage had been on gefilte fish, complaints would have been far fewer.

The reasons behind the matzo shortage range from manufacturing problems, decisions by some stores not to carry the product this Passover and vague talk of a possible work stoppage.

“It seemed like the whole region had a problem getting it in,” said Jason Hodges, a supervisor in the grocery department at a Whole Foods in Miami. A person who answered the phone at a ShopRite in Philadelphia said stores there were sold out, as was the Food Emporium in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., in Westchester County.

“We heard there was a strike or something,” said the Food Emporium manager, Frantz Baptiste. “The first shipment we had was a month ago, and we never got another one.”

Phone calls and e-mail messages to the largest suppliers of unleavened bread products, Streit’s, Manischewitz and Yehuda, brought no response on Monday, possibly because executives were off for Passover, which began Saturday night.

But Manischewitz officials have said that problems with a new state-of-the-art oven in its only New Jersey plant caused it to scrap this Passover’s supply of Tam Tam crackers, its little six-sided matzo morsels, as well as some less popular matzo varieties.

Trader Joe’s stores opted not to sell Passover matzo this year, as did some Costco stores.

There were similar stories in Los Angeles, detailed and also debunked at LAObserved.

"I got a chuckle out of your items on the 'matzoh shortage' in Los Feliz. As a former resident of that neighborhood I can state that while it's a great place to live on many counts, it has none of the things a more than "semi-observant" Jew needs. I'll be happy to supply directions to Fairfax, Pico-Robertson or my own shtetl of Valley Village, where you can't turn around this time of year without tripping over a box of matzoh!"

To see what some Jews are missing out on, check out this VideoJew installment.

Strange translations of the Four Questions

“Like why is this night, like totally different...”

If at a Passover seder last night you heard that question, asked that way, you probably live in my neighborhood. According to "300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions: From Zulu to Abkhahaz," that is the Valley Girl translation for the first question. Translations for Klingon, Lawyerese and the ever-useful Sumerian, not to mention actual spoken languages, can be found in this Jewish Journal story and at Whyisthisnight.com.

My favorite variation, though came from my VideoJew colleague, in a language he dubbed, and I remember well, College BS:

“There are many interesting and unique variances of this night, however one of the most central issues is its difference from that of other nights. One may ask the question, ‘why?’ But to answer such question with such a response would be to demean the very question at hand. For that reason, I believe this night is differ from others, not simply because of the matzah, seders and reclining, but because of the family, happiness and reunion. In conclusion, to state one reason why any night is different from others would be to degrade that which makes all other nights uniformly pleasant.”

A porn-free Passover

Passover, which begins Saturday night, is about being delivered from bondage, and Luke Ford blogs that this will be his first porn-free Pesach in six years, and only the second since 1995. He posts this reaction from a rabbi:

Glad to see you cut your ties with the porn industry, that will make it easier for you to investigate your spirituality - it’s hard to ride with one foot on one horse & one foot on the other (esp. when the 2 horses are going in opposite directions).

Spirituality & sexuality are closely related, as Swaggart & Friends can tell you. But, out-of-control sexuality is probably the biggest enemy of spiritual connection.

The harder piece to shake may be the cynical attitude, esp. since you’ve seen so much hypocrisy & people not being what they claimed. If our Orthodox Jews had 100% integrity, that would be easy, but we’re as prone to human failings and hypocrisy as any other group. The only thing we claim is that we try to live with wisdom, try to do G-d’s Will, and every once in a while, get to establish a fleeting connection with the Divine (while attempting to achieve Deveikus, a constant and conscious connection with Him). It’s worth fighting that cynicism, even if only in the privacy of your mind, because the fruits of victory are close relationships with yourself, others and G-d.

Rev. Lee and the true meaning of Passover

In the discussion over what Rev. Lee did and didn't say, David Sackman contributed a lengthy commentary so insightful that it deserves its own post. Here's the top of his thoughts.

I am disturbed, not by the content, but by the direction, of the entire discussion regarding the relationship between Blacks and Jews, and particularly by the discussion about comments supposedly made at a recent awards ceremony here in Los Angeles.

I am Jewish, of European ancestry; my wife is Black, with Chinese and Native American ancestry included. What shall we tell our son this Passover, when we re-tell the tale of how his Jewish ancestors were freed from slavery in Africa?

Shall we trade accusations against each other, like those reported in “Allegations in e-mail split Jews and Blacks” in the April 12 LA Times? The statement reputed to have been made there, that some Jews in the entertainment industry exploited and profited from Black performers, is probably true. It is also true that Jewish union leaders, lawyers and agents in the entertainment industry have fought for better wages and working conditions for Blacks and others in the industry. Many Jews played crucial roles in the struggle for civil rights, and undoubtably there were some on the other side as well. We can go back farther to trade accusations. Were there Jews who owned slaves and were involved in the slave trade? Probably so; and yet there were also Jews fighting for abolition. Does it matter whether those on one side outnumbered those on the other?

To be honest, I must tell my son that his African ancestors were on both sides as well. How else did Africans become African-Americans? Did a few Europeans (perhaps including some Jews) march into Africa and march out with tens of millions of slaves? Actually, it was their African “brothers” who sent them into slavery. Whether it was for small reasons like personal squabbles, or large reasons like tribal warfare, it was primarily Africans who sent other Africans into slavery, just as Joseph was sold into slavery in Africa, by his own brothers!
So is the point of the Passover story that the Hebrews were the “good guys” being held in slavery by “evil” Africans? NO! Emphatically NO! And neither should the point of the current discussion be to lay blame on anyone.

The rest can be read here.

'The Purim Hangover'

Purim is like the Jewish Mardi Gras, complete with altar-ego antics and binge drinking. My VideoJew colleague, Jay Firestone, who has proven quite the formidable Scrabulous opponent, brings you up to speed in this video on "The Purim Hangover."

And now, the fake news

The Jewish Journal's annual Purim cover is out now, and it's got a few gem jokes that reference news of note mentioned here in the last year. There's Eliot Spitzer and the whore of Babylon, the U.N.'s response to continued rocket attacks on Sderot and, of course, Ann Coulter and The Perfect Jew. My favorite "headline" though is about Israeli PM Olmert's ridiculously low approval rating. (Truth to be told, his approval rating spiked in July to, gulp, 8 percent.)

Traditionalists: 'Pope has felt obliged to change the very venerable prayer for the Jews'

No surprise here regarding the new language for the Tridentine Mass, which will be uttered in four Fridays. The traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X issued a statement over the weekend that it was none too happy that language regarding the conversion of Jews was watered down in the Good Friday prayer.

“Following foreign pressures on the Catholic Church, the pope has felt obliged to change the very venerable Prayer for the Jews, which is an integral part of the Good Friday liturgy. This prayer is one of the oldest and goes back to about the third century. It has thus been recited throughout the whole history of the Church as the full expression of Catholic faith.

The SPPX said the change, which it called an “amputation,” had “the allure of a real transformation, expressing the new theology of relations with the Jewish people. It is part of the liturgical upheaval that is the characteristic mark of the council and the reforms that followed it. While the necessity to accept the Messiah to be saved has been retained, one can only profoundly deplore this change.”

SWM seeks 'every single other Jew'

Above is a sort of funny Valentine's video sent to me by a JDate press person. It's advertising, but it's from the Jew who brought you Chinese food on Christmas, the viral instaclassic below.

Video from Vilna

The Web guy sent me an e-mail saying the Jewish Journal's forums were filled with conversation regarding the Jews on parade in Vilna.

This video shows the Lithuanian Catholic Carnival, streets filled with monsters and ghouls and, yep there it is 17 seconds in, an obnoxious Jew. I really don't understand how this can be a modern Christian observance.

Winehouse's Chanukah and Christmas album?

She's bellowed about "Rehab" and "F--- Me Pumps" but can you seriously imagine Amy Winehouse singing "Ma'oz Tzur" or "Silent Night"?

Winehouse's producer, Mark Ronson, told Rolling Stone magazine this week that the two had discussed an album of Hanukkah and Christmas songs.

"We're talking about making a holiday record, with Christmas songs on one side and Hanukkah songs on the other," Ronson told Rolling Stone. "She's got songs called, like, Kosher Kisses and Alone Under the Mistletoe."

According to Ronson, the idea came as the two were bemoaning the lack of "cool" Jewish songs for Hanukkah.

"She was kind of f**king around, but I was like, 'You have all these amazing records to play for Christmas, like Motown and Carla Thomas and the Charlie Brown Christmas, and unfortunately, us Jews have nothing that cool to listen to. So we should do something," Ronson told the magazine.

Yeah, that should go over really well with Christians. Not to mention, Jews have a cool Chanukah song. It's called "The Chanukah Song," and it comes in three versions

Yes, Virginia, there is an obese Santa Claus

Everyone knows Santa Claus is supposed to be fat. It's not possible for one man to eat 5 billion or so sugar cookies on the night before Christmas and be anything but a butterball. Furthermore, if he weren't fat, then we'd know he wasn't eating the cookies, and that would raise all sorts of other doubts. We thought everyone understood and accepted this logic.

But now the British say Santa's corpulence isn't cute, it's a health hazard, an apple-shaped advertisement for Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. After a study released in October found that, by 2050, more than half of Britain's population will be obese, a cabal of fitness zealots at malls and shops in Merry Olde England decreed that their Santas must be trim. That's right -- skinny Santas, buff Santas and, we tremble to think of it, Santas with six-pack abs. According to news reports, a shopping center in Kent even set up a boot camp for Santas who couldn't slim down on their own.

How could this happen? Didn't England unload all of its joyless Puritans in the 17th century? Has there been some vast repatriation we failed to notice? Is it possible that the eternally erroneous Bill O'Reilly is actually correct, and Christmas is under siege?

No, it's not. The celebration of Christmas is alive and well, regardless of the propaganda aimed at making Christians at large believe they are an oppressed minority.

This LA Times editorial reminds me of the famous "Yes, Virginia," the most reprinted editorial in history:

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Silent nights without 'Silent Night'

Can anyone remember the last time Christmas carolers knocked on their door and sang "Away in a Manger" or "Frosty the Snowman?" The reason it's probably been a while, USA Today reports, is that caroling is increasingly passé among Americans.

The reasons range from the paranoid (it's a plot by secularists against Christians) to the prosaic (most people would rather stay home and watch football). Americans are too busy or too lazy or too intimidated to sing in public. People are afraid of offending neighbors or interrupting their privacy. Neighborhoods are less close-knit.

It hasn't completely disappeared, but caroling in the 21st century has adapted.

People carol on horseback in San Antonio and Virginia Beach. They organize to carol citywide to raise money for charity in St. Louis. They're professional singers dressed up in Victorian costumes in cities all over the country, caroling for cash (not figgy pudding) at parties and malls. And in California, caroling is a Hollywood spectacle on a truck with scores of costumed singers, dancers and musicians gamboling through the streets (only in L.A., kids, only in L.A.).

Here and there, in neighborhoods rich with community spirit, energetic organizers and church choirs, residents get together in evenings before Christmas to ramble around crooning Jingle Bells or Silent Night on sidewalks and porches, then dash home to drink hot cider and snack on sweets in a mood of Christmassy bonhomie.

"Maybe there's a need for communities like this, where people who come together are longing for a Norman Rockwell kind of America," says Sandra Aresta, one of the organizers of the annual neighborhood caroling in Chevy Chase West, in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

But Rockwell's America departed with Rockwell, and in any case, caroling wasn't all that common in the USA to begin with. Polls conducted for the National Christmas Tree Association found that by 1996, only 22% of those surveyed said they planned to go caroling, and by 2005, that number had dropped to an anemic 6%.

(Hat tip: the new and improved DMN religion blog)

Catholic League to Huckabee: Stop selling your Christian creds like a used-car salesman

The snickering and sniping over the supposed subliminal message in Mike Huckabee's Christmas ad is just silly. But, I can't say I've ever agreed more with a statement from the Catholic League's Bill Donahue.

"Every other word out of [Huckabee's] mouth is that 'I'm Christian.' He's calling into question Romney's Mormonism...let people talk about there faith, but don't sell it on your sleeve."

Added Donahue, "Yeah, I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but don't become a salesman. Don't hawk it like that on the street."

The better soda: latke or Christmas ham?

This is one of those ideas you know was drummed up just for free press and white elephant gift exchanges. Why? Because nobody would otherwise think Egg Nog soda would sell well -- and that was the best of the eight Jones Soda flavors that come in the Chanukah and Christmas packs.

After the Chanukah pack arrived at The Jewish Journal last month, I knew I wanted to contribute to the unnecessary discussion of whether your special someone really wants Christmas Ham soda. So I called Jones' PR person half a dozen times and asked her to send a Christmas pack to our office. I wish I hadn't.

A few weeks apart, we set up both gimmicks in the GeekHeeb's office and invited our colleagues to sample the holiday fare.

Latkes and jelly donuts might have tasted good last week, but not when they are liquefied and carbonated and, in the donut's case, atomic pink. The apple sauce and chocolate coins (think Tootsie Rolls) flavors weren't much better.

Yesterday, in the waning hours of Chanukah, I threw the Christmas pack in the fridge and got ready. I had been hungry all day. Surely I could pound a Christmas Ham, even one that came in a bottle and wasn't called Spam.

I started with Sugar Plum and Egg Nog, the latter being better, in my mind, than the real thing. Then I moved on to Christmas Tree, which smelled like pine needles and went down like liquid Ben Gay.

Finally, Christmas Ham, the beverage I'd been waiting about a month to savor, or at least sample. All I can say is that after drinking a small cup of it, which I threw back like a shot, I immediately felt ill. The best way to describe the flavor: Imagine squeezing hot dogs dry and than carbonating that juice.

Happy holidays, Jones Soda.

Not the typical Christmas dilemma

That, would of course be the challenge of what parents should do if they are raising their children Muslim or Jewish or Hindu but don't want them to be the only giftless kids on the block Dec. 25. But, no, this story deals with a Christmas dilemma for families that actually are Christian.

Come each December, high atop the choir loft of St. Luke Community United Methodist Church in Dallas sit the traditional three purple and one pink Advent candles for several Sundays.

But as the month comes to a close, another candelabra appears when the Kwanzaa kinara — with its seven black, red and green candles representing principles of black heritage — is placed on the altar below.

“We'll light the Advent candles and we'll light the Kwanzaa candles,” said the Rev. Tyrone Gordon, pastor of St. Luke, where stained glass windows depict the civil rights movement. “Both have prominent places. The Advent candle, of course, is higher up and that's symbolic because we're Christian.”

At some predominantly black churches, celebrating Christmas and Kwanzaa is a matter of both/and instead of either/or. Some congregations, especially those with an Afrocentric emphasis, mark both holidays, singing carols about Jesus and reflecting on Kwanzaa's principles of unity and collective responsibility throughout December.

But some Christians say Christmas should be the sole holiday at year's end because Kwanzaa lacks a clear biblical message.

Indeed, Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday but is a pan-African celebration started 41 years ago by Maulana Karenga, a former black studies professor at Cal State Long Beach.

So, who's right? Should it be both/and or either/or? (I know that sentence is really hard on the eyes.)

A modern-day Chanukah miracle along the Gaza border

When I traveled to Israel last August, I spent two days appreciating the precariousness of life along the Gaza border. Three times Kassam rockets were shot in my direction, including five minutes after I arrived at Kibbutz Nir-Am to share Shabbat dinner with the Bar-On family.

The Bar-Ons became the focus on my story for The Jewish Journal when I returned, and this past weekend, Marcell Bar-On sent me a long letter detailing how life hasn't become any safer.

The attacks are unprovoked, unpredictable, and continuous, and their effect has been close to catastrophical for us, both economically and psychologically. Our every action, our every waking moment, is geared toward minimizing the impact of living under enemy fire. Our first concern is always for our elderly and our children. My son Gabi, who turns ten in December, was three years old when the bombings started, and doesn’t remember life without Kassam bombs. There are no reinforced rooms in our homes, and the old communal shelters cannot be reached in the 5-10 seconds it takes a Kassam bomb to travel between Beit Hanoun and Nir-Am. So our family does what all the other families do: when we hear the “Tzeva Adom ” (Red Light) alert, we huddle in a small windowless area (in our case, a small passage between bedrooms), our bodies and the tiled roof the only barriers between our children and the incoming bomb. We silently count the seconds to impact; I often need to remind the children to breathe – they are frozen in total terror. And we pray that this time, too, we will be spared.

The effect has been most obvious on our children. At home: bedwetting, aggressive behaviour, extreme moodswings, insomnia, loss of appetite . . . . and at school: lack of concentration, absenteeism, hyperactivity, outbursts of anger and physical and verbal aggression. But no-one is spared the psychological warfare we are all victims of: almost as many adults are in councelling as are children in an attempt to cope with the harsh reality of our daily lives. In fact, as parents we carry the additional burden of guilt for not being able to protect our children; we feel responsible for what is happening to them.

Driving with car windows open, even in the heat of summer, so that one can hear the alert and perhaps have a chance to stop the car and get to some kind of shelter . . . children playing outside, always acutely aware of exactly where the nearest house or tree is, so that they can run for their lives and find what inadequate and pitiful protection they can . . . cellphones for every child of schoolgoing age, so that we can stay in contact with them when they are not at home , and so that we can call them to see whether they are safe after every bomb has fallen . . . how can I describe the long moments waiting for my child to answer the phone after a Tseva Adom alert?

(skip)

On the first day of Hanukka this year, at 6.30 a.m., a Kassam bomb fell less than five meters from where my son Gabi and daughter Mayan were sleeping. I had been busy in my home office when the Tzeva Adom alarm sounded. I could not hear the children running for our little “safe corner” and I immediately realised that they had not heard the alarm and were still asleep in their beds, even as the bomb was already on its way from Gaza.

I ran in the direction of their bedroom, shouting for them to wake up; as I reached the bedroom door, they jumped from their beds but a second later the bomb struck. It did not explode upon impact, but penetrated deep into the soft earth and later had to be retrieved with the help of a bulldozer.


Our personal Hanukka miracle had just occurred: had the bomb fallen one week earlier, before the first winter rains when the earth had still been hard, it would have exploded on impact and the result could have been catastrophic for our family.

The massive menorah and the 'Charlie Brown Christmas tree'

I hate rivaling holiday stories. They are about as cliché as religion reporting gets (Don't get me started on Chrismukkah.) But at least this one from Long Island has references to both "Peanuts" and "Scrooge," holiday clichés I'm a bit more fond of.

Residents don't want to have themselves a merry little Christmas tree. They want a big one. When city officials planted a 7-foot-tall Christmas tree next to a 20-foot-tall menorah in the plaza in front of City Hall, some residents barked. They telephoned City Hall, wrote letters and testified at a public hearing that the tiny tree in the shadow of the huge Hanukkah symbol was an insult to the Christian community.

"What's up with the giant menorah and the Charlie Brown Christmas tree?" resident Rick Hoffman asked.

City Manager Edwin Eaton said he had looked far and wide — all the way to Canada — for a bigger tree but couldn't find one.

"This year is going to be kind of a 'bah, humbug,' Christmas," Eaton had said.

Not to worry. There was a Christmas miracle, and the town found a 20-foot blue spruce.

'Chanukah is not a celebration of multiculturalism or tolerance'

An Orthodox Jew and "fierce conservative Republican," screenwriter Robert J. Avrech has never been afraid to bristle the feathers of his liberal Hollywood co-religionists. I don't always agree with his opinions, but he writes passionately and, here, he's a bit more romantic about the story of Chanukah than some.

It's important to recognize that Chanukah is not a celebration of multiculturalism or tolerance. I know that some members of the more liberal branches of Judaism are trying to push the notion of the Maccabees as a bunch of global warming greenies.

This is discourse that is self-parody and certainly has nothing to do with Torah Judaism. It's fashion run amok, dopey, disposable junk-ideas; here today, gone tomorrow.

The Maccabees were intolerant of the Syrian-Greek society. They despised the cruelty, oppression and Jew-hatred that characterized Greek culture.

The Maccabees raised the banner of revolution for religious freedom, for the primacy of the Torah.

They also went to war against apostate Jews, traitors to G-d and to Judaism. Jews who endured painful surgeries in order to reverse their circumcisions in order to compete naked in the public sports gymnasiums that were celebrated in liberal Greek society.

The Maccabees were zealots who declared total war against assimilationist Jews. Jews who sought to overthrow the authority of the Torah and replace that authority with modern, secular values.

Abhorring the idol worship of Greek culture, the deeply observant and conservative Maccabees despised the elite, "highly educated" secular Jews who collaborated with the ruling Syrian Greeks and who agreed to bow down to idols and indulged in hedonistic public sexual activities.

The Hasmoneans batttled to win the independence of the state of Israel from foreign oppression. They yearned to purify the holy Jewish Temple from foreign worship, and they fought savage wars to unite Jerusalem.

Sound familiar?

World Series of Dreidel spin-off

Chanukah started last night. But a Sacramento synagogue got the party started early with the inaugural World Series of Dreidel (a "chai stakes dreidel tournament") last weekend. Hear about it at NPR.org. Here's what the creator of the event had to say:

A lot of synagogues have poker tournaments and bingo nights, and we've had our own gambling game for 1,000 years. Why not use that?

The name of the tournament seems a bit superfluous. Unlike the World Series of Poker or even the American-dubbed baseball World Series, the dreidel spin-off had a sparse attendance and only lasted a few hours. (I have a hard time believing it drew anyone from outside the Delta.)

Anyway, the segment ends with competitors singing the dreidel song. If you know it, sing along.