Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

I’ve tried to studiously ignore the Jewish-Israeli Blog Awards. They incite discord and strife within our e’er-so loving and tight-knit community, and they reward and promote topic-free writing and a suffocating flurry of political commentary by amateur pundits whose main source for information is Little Green Footballs. But now that Beyond BT has elected to go the Shas route and opine that a vote for them is a vote for God - next year’s JIBs will doubtless be wracked by controversy when SerandEz are found to be distributing talismans from the Baba Sali’s grave in exchange for votes - I’ve decided that something must be done. The JIBs, and their winning blogs, purport to carry on with the aid of Ha-Kadosh Baruch-Hu himself - yeah, I see that בס”ד up there - but nobody has thought fit to actually ask the Lord what his feelings on the matter are.

So, possessed as always of an investigative spirit, I took two tabs of the very finest blotter acid and embarked on a voyage to the King of Kings’ celestial abode. Barely ten minutes had passed before I felt a sense of profound peace and fulfillment descend upon me, and my eyes and ears were filled by the radiant Presence of the Lord.

“…God?”
The booming reply seemed to shake the very firmament.
“‘Sup?”
It turns out the T-shirts were right. The Lord, by all sonic indications, is indeed black.
“So…uh…You must be the big cheese. Hashem. Ha-Makom. Ribbono shel Olam. The Lord of Hosts. Adonai and I. Haile Selassie?”
“None of those. Ever since I’ve embraced the Noble Eightfold Path, I’ve distanced myself from the names I was once called.”
A beat of awkward silence passed between us.
“So…uh…You converted to Buddhism, huh?”
The Lord kissed His teeth, or at least produced the equivalent sound effect.
“Yeah, I mean, I’ll be the first to admit it…even a cursory examination of history shows that the whole ‘God/human’ relationship wasn’t working out well for either of us. You transgressed, I smote, it always ended in tears. I even sent my only begotten son to save you, and you let that one slip through your fingers.”
“So You mean Jesus–”
“No. Why does everyone think it’s Jesus? Remember all that London graffiti circa 1967 about how ‘Clapton is God’?”
“I’ve heard tell.”
“Well, he was.”
“Was? But he’s still alive.”
“Have you heard ‘Clapton Unplugged’? He’s certainly dead to me.”
The Lord’s critical pronouncements thundered with the sort of finality that would make a Pitchfork Media reviewer wet his skinny jeans.
“Granted. But You’re the master of the universe and You couldn’t think of a more effective way to transmit Your message than graffiti? No lights in the sky? Rains of fire? You know…old-school flavor?”
“I gave you Layla, didn’t I? Besides, you people are perfectly willing to accept that a gaggle of fragrant Galilean fisherman could be apostles, but not London graffiti artists?”
“Good point. But I have to tell You, God, us Jews always kinda thought You…you know…had our backs.”
The Lord snorted mightily.
“Oh. Yeah. I have your backs. Right. Remember the Holocaust? I stopped meddling in you hook-nosed Shylock motherfuckers’ affairs after you managed to let your second Temple get burned down.”
“Profanity isn’t very Buddhist of You.”
“4000 years of vengefulness and jealousy is hard to shake. But I’m trying to follow the Buddha’s teachings and break the cycle. Right speech. Right action. Right view. Right intention.”
“Oh, like kavanah?”
“Will you stop being such a fucking Jew about this?”

I cleared my throat uncomfortably. Clearly, and somewhat perversely, discussing religion with God wasn’t getting anyone anywhere, and God’s revelation of his anti-Semitism, while perfectly logical, placed me on an awkward footing. I decided to gingerly press forward with the intended topic.

“So…God…You’re aware of the Jewish-Israeli Blog Awards, yes?”
“Motherfuckers spammed my inbox.”
“Right…well, if you don’t know, they’ve advanced to the final round, and one of the blogs - Beyond BT - has implied that a vote for their blog in the finals is in accordance with Your Eternal Will.”
“What?!”

I heard what seemed to the sound of a cosmic keyboard clacking, followed by several minutes of increasingly irritated grumbling. Then the Lord returned, His voice a pillar of whirling flames.

“They think this shit is what I want? They think this is what I created the universe for? And I fuckin’ quote:

“‘I was reviewing the Parsha Friday morning and I realized that I hadn’t informed my Partners in Torah chavrusa that it was a double parsha. My chavrusa loves to learn and each week he reads *every* Art Scroll note and translation on the parsha.

I gave him a call around 10:15 to tell him. He said that he was just sitting down to learn and he noticed Behar was short and he wondered if perhaps it was a double parsha. At exactly that moment my call came in to tell him that it was a double. Pretty cool.’

“They think I don’t got anything better than manufacturing mundane coincidences to do with my time? Motherfucker, we got weed up here!”
“…I see. Tell me more about this Noble Eightfold Path. But, uh, first, God, do You have any picks for the JIBs? Which blog would You shine Your countenance upon?”
The Lord grumbled.
“A contest in which a fiercely mediocre, Reader’s Digest-worthy cartoon and a dozen blogs by American Orthodox Jews who are just so refreshingly unorthodox win every year? Who’s supposed to win, that Kike With Cap guy? And you want my picks?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
The Lord released a long, hissing breath.
“Alright. JSpot.”
“Really, Lord? But I think they’re quee–”
“The Lord is down with downtown,” said the Lord, sweeping away 4000 years of religious certitude with one slightly inelegant play on words.
“Okay then, Lord. But one more question. Since You’re a Buddhist now, what would You, the unfathomable entity who brought the universe into being, want to be reincarnated as?”
“Art Blakey. God out.”

And His Presence left me.

There you have it, J-Blogosphere. The word of the Lord.

Dear Amy,

I heard you’re getting married.

I must admit, Amy, I’m a little dismayed at the news - I know this is normally the time for a chorus of “Mazal tovs” and that insufferable song frummies like to sing about the cities of Judah and streets of Jerusalem, but I have a couple of minor objections. First and most pressing, your fiancé, the similarly ironically-named Blake Fielder-Civil, looks like something a refined person might disgorge after consuming a pint, three White Russians, shrimp scampi and the spunk of someone with a CB callsign by which he insists everyone refer to him. I know what you’re thinking - “Bashert!” - but first listen to my second objection: you should be marrying me.

Hear me out, Amy. Ever since I’ve heard you rake your voice down the back of “Me and Mr. Jones’” horn chart, ever since I’ve heard a young Jewish girl namecheck Ray Charles, Donny Hathaway, Sammy Davis Jr. and Slick Rick all in the space of a few songs, I’ve been hopelessly in love. You’re like Billie with range, or Macy with timbre. You’ve got more sass than an old-fashioned root beer. You complement Ghostface better than RZA does. Your liquor cabinet is much better-stocked than mine, and your stash doubtless more potent. You should be my woman, Amy.

Sure, there are a few difficulties involved, but I’m flexible. I know you have an epic appetite for the hairier sex, and I understand you need fresh lyrical material, so I promise not to get between you and whatever you drag out from under the bar stool after last call. You don’t even have to think about me when you come. I’d prefer you didn’t, actually - mixing affection and orgasms always ends with someone crying.

In fact, our relationship could be entirely non-physical. A careful study of your lyrics has led me to the conclusion that once something has passed the event horizon of your navel, no known force in the universe can keep the singularity ‘twixt your legs from rending it asunder (”Whoa-oh, here she comes, she’s a man-spaghettifier…”). Also, given your apparent propensity for combining semi-anonymous sex with heavy drinking, you’ve probably got more clap than a Barbra farewell concert. I’m far too lethargic, and my micturition far too liquid and painless, to contend with the demands you place on cocks that fall into your orbit.

Really, Amy, all I want to do with you is get sloshed, burn spliffs, listen to Coltrane and render shrieking judgment upon the sober, non-tattooed, Gucci-toting masses whom you so viciously eviscerate. We could make a life together like that, Amy. We could be happy.

Think about it, Amy. And think about how awful “Amy Winehouse-Fielder-Civil” will look on your checks.

—

This post brought to you by:
Amy Winehouse - I Heard Love is Blind

and
Ghostface Killah & Amy Winehouse - You Know I’m No Good

Steven Plaut is concerned.

Steven Plaut knows that lurking out there in the fuzzy reaches of your Chevy’s radio dial is a dark and insidious threat ready to topple the temple of enlightened Western society like a shorn Israelite.

Steven Plaut recommends that you lock up your daughters and sequester your sons to save them from the sedition-fomenting rhythms of…rock and roll.

Are you a Jew who believes that the highest priority for Jews is promoting recreational drugs [and] rock and roll music…?

Steven Plaut fears the excessive swiveling of the youth’s hips.

Steven Plaut doesn’t really trust those greasers.

Steven Plaut just fails to see what’s wrong with nice music like Perry Como.

Steven Plaut suspects that, somehow, the Negroes are involved.

Of course, Jerry Lee Louis and his great balls of eternal damnation are not the only thing on Steven Plaut’s mind - Steven Plaut is, after all, one of our generation’s greater thinkers, and the looming threat of the coloreds wanting to share drinking fountains occupies only a small part of Steven Plaut’s man-sized intellect. Steven Plaut has other crusades. Steven Plaut has proof that reefers make your daughters go from “steady” to “all the way.” Steven Plaut has seen firsthand that marijuana leads to only one ignominious end: shamelessly fornicating in the mud while Simon & Garfunkel urge open revolt in the streets. Steven Plaut heard “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” in college and bought a gun.

Steven Plaut also warns to you beware of Mobius.

[Jewschool] is the baby of one Dan Sieradski, who calls himself “Mobius”,and who describes himself as an “Orthodox Anarchist”. I guess he has not gotten around to reading what Pirkei Avot and the sages had to say about anarchy. He attends Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo, a Carlebach-tradition yeshiva. Sieradski is ferociously anti-Israel and writes glowingly of such critters as Norman Finkelstein. He uses the term “progressive” like most other people use punctuation marks. He denounces those who criticize leftist anti-Semites. He claims to be an artist and a poet… The Jerusalem Post recently cited him and his pro-hashish lobbying efforts when debating whether marijuana is in fact “kitniyot hametz ” and so prohibited on Passover for Ashkenazim. He organizes hip hop “music” events in Jerusalem.

Steven Plaut knows that jungle noise doesn’t deserve to be called music without quotation marks. Steven Plaut would give Engelbert Humperdinck head for a backstage pass. Steven Plaut makes love to his wife, who no doubt checked out long ago (you can only take so much of a man who screams “KAHANE CHAI!” as he climaxes), to the strains of “Afternoon Delight.” Steven Plaut thinks “Afternoon Delight” is a kind of cocktail.

Steven Plaut’s mama got a wooden leg, with a kickstand.

He writes for some other web sites for Jewish stoned hippies, where he celebrates anti-Israel hoodlums. On the other hand, he has called for boycotting sources of hashish associated with terror groups, preferring nicer suppliers…All of which brings us to the mystery of his web nickname “Mobius”.

I have not seen it explained but I would like to venture a hypothesis. Maybe Mobius will confirm or deny it here in a comment. I suspect that “Mobius” may be shorthand for the expression “Moses is my Pusher!”

Steven Plaut is bringing back the pun. Steven Plaut should probably stick with slander.

Steven Plaut apparently thinks our greatest prophet would move ganja. Outcry is limited, though - Steven Plaut may be right. Steven Plaut thinks burning spliffs automatically transforms one into a hippie. Steven Plaut is unaware that hippies don’t smoke blunts and listen to Liquid Swords - hippies smoke out of pipes named “Gandalf” and blithely allow Widespread Panic to continue to justify its existence. Steven Plaut believes hippies are fucking stupid. Outcry is limited, though - Steven Plaut may be right.

Steven Plaut thinks a cocaine user is qualified to be a president, but a hash smoker is unqualified to express a political opinion.

Steven Plaut is entirely undistinguished as an academic, and compensates by snapping at the heels of his colleagues.

Steven Plaut’s junk is half the size of Shulamit Aloni’s.

Steven Plaut blogs on Arutz Sheva, the journalistic offspring of a terrifying three-way between Abraham Cahan, William Randolph Hearst, and Julius Streicher. Jayson Blair was sandak.

Steven Plaut said shit about Neve Shalom that wasn’t half as bad as this, and his ass got taken to court.

Steven Plaut is worthy of your scorn.

Something is rotten in the state of Israel.

An old enemy stalks the streets and synagogues of the country, the country whose very purpose was to provide one place to which the enemy could not gain access. Hate-twisted visages, cruelly familiar, leer from dark corners. Lips curl around utterances thought to have been relegated to painful memory.

Yes, the Nazis have arrived.

A concerned Jew can hardly pick up the morning paper here in the Holy Land without being greeted by news of not only the manifestations of the eternal Judenhass in its traditional strongholds (i.e., everywhere), but a rising surge of anti-Semitic hooliganism right here at home: Israelis found running neo-Nazi websites, anti-Jewish slurs flying around the streets of Tel Aviv, teenagers burning Israeli flags and stealing mezuzot.

A cursory examination of these chilling reports of blood and fire in Israel reveals a common source: the sizable community of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The loose interpretation of Jewishness found in the Law of Return and the ever-collapsing economic situation within Russia have led to a tide of immigrants whose relationship to Judaism, whether physical or spiritual, can barely (if at all) be quantified. This tide of Slavs, whose blond hair, blue eyes, upswept noses and lack of respect for our beloved heritage threaten to dilute our blood and our tradition, is proving disastrous to the orderly running of this state, which is first and foremost a state for the Jews. These Russians will be our undoing.

Such has it always with that branch of our people who have chosen to make their home in the shadow of the onion domes. Enlightened Western European Jews feared, with good reason, how the teeming, hirsute masses of the Ostjuden would reflect on their civilized co-religionists should their lagomorphic breeding rate cause them to spill over into cultured Europe. Not for the Russian Jews were the sublime verses of Goethe, or the thundering operas of Wagner - they preferred to busy themselves with their primitive business of tradition, of matchmakers, of Sabbath prayers, of sunrises and sunsets. So numerous were they that even the Pale could not hold them - they gathered together their meager collections of candlesticks and holy books and inflicted, by the millions, their schmaltz and onion stink upon the narrow alleys of New York City, undoing in one fell, liver-scented swoop all the attempts by their more refined Jewish predecessors in the New World to make a secure place for the Jews. It is their Semitic uncouthness that, more than anything, brought down the Nazi hammer upon our heads.

But these unfortunate troglodytes were at least, in the fundamental sense of the word, Jews! Their stock was of the people Israel! How much worse is it then that now again these tides of Russian Jews threaten to destroy everything for which we have fought - and they’re not even really Jews! They spraypaint blasphemy onto the walls of our places of worship in Zion, they attack us in the streets, and they howl at the doors of other nations as well - even America, where neighborhoods from Brooklyn to Brookline are sullied by the harsh and nasal consonants of their pidgin tongue!

Something must be done. Somehow, the Russian question must be satisfactorily, and permanently, answered.

Some less-informed commentators have proposed that the “Russian problem” in Israel stems from a failure on the part of the Israeli people to absorb Russian immigrants, to provide them a welcoming home and economic security, to respect their own cultural heritage. This is rubbish. We, the Israeli Jews, would accomplish nothing more than a tremendous waste of time by trying to assimilate these Russians into our society and religion. Our tradition is not for them, our God is not for them - their narrow Slavic minds, so thoroughly undistinguished in the fields of science and art and all else we hold dear, simply lack the capacity to grapple with the magnificence of 4000 years of accumulated Jewish thought. We may as well try to teach Talmud to dogs. Best, then, to leave behind this fantasy of assimilation.

So what must be done? I offer this most humble of propositions: since we cannot risk the lives of our children and, indeed, the future of our people by allowing this insidious foreign element to live among us, we must cordon them off. First, we must pass special laws in the Knesset barring Russians from marrying, or even fraternizing with, normative Jews, for fear that they will infect our society with love of the drink and ponderous, brooding literature. These laws will extend to all recent Russian immigrants and those of Russian immigrant descent, even the ones who may be technically Jewish - their connection to the tree of Israel has been long severed anyway. Russian-owned businesses will be seized by the state to prevent the danger of anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi materials being distributed through them. Afterwards, special “Russian quarters” would be established in Israel’s towns and cities, providing the Russian community a closed-off environment in which to conduct its affairs, educate its children and speak its language without spilling over into the dominant Jewish community.

The second stage would then be to wait to see if the problem resolves itself. I, however, am a realist, and it is apparent to me from my observations of heavily Russian areas currently existing within Israel that when Russians congregate, they inevitably plot to foment discord and strife in their benevolent host nation. Such is the nature of the Russian people, and something that mere segregation will doubtless fail to overcome.

Therefore, I propose something more comprehensive, a “Pitron Sofi,” if you will, to the Russian question. Any casual observer will note that the Russian community is characterized by its lack of employment in trades of use to modern society. Why should we suffer the burden of hosting these people if they refuse to work towards the betterment of general society and instead keep their coin guarded closely within their community? If they are to be here, we must put them to work. I move that the government and the major Israeli corporations establish a network of reeducation/work camps all over the country, in isolated locations, where Russians will live out their lives, safely separated from Israeli Jews, stamping out bowtie noodles for Osem and guns for the IDF.

I predict that after several years of this, the solution to the problem will work itself out.

I speak not as an elected official, or a cleric, or a head of industry, but only as a simple Jew and Israeli patriot. I love nothing more than my people and my country, and I will not stand idly by while sinister forces conspire to destroy her. I expect that many will disagree with what I have written here, but remember that our tradition, from Abraham to Moses to Elijah, has always venerated the words of the lone voice in the wilderness. I want only to see glorious Israel triumphant over her enemies. Is that so much to ask?

It’s that time of year again, when Jews all over the world come together to celebrate their liberation from the clutches of the Egyptians, the day the Lord fulfilled his promise and redeemed his people Israel - something which I understand both parties have come to regret. Barely a few days after the parting of the Red Sea, the Lord was slinging around words like “stiff-necked,” and the Israelites were saddled with five whole lengthy scrolls of rules in a cultural milieu where laws usually fit easily onto one medium-sized obelisk. But Pesach is a holiday all about telling and recounting, so I decided that I would honor that tradition by recounting facets of Pesach here in the Holy Land and worldwide as they occur to me, the facets that conspire to make Pesach the beloved festival of freedom it is. Who knows one?!

The Cleaning: There are two major schools of thought when it comes to Passover cleaning: there’s the school that gives the floors a good sweep, locks up the plates, pots and pans, buys some paper plates and plastic forks, and goes and does something meaningful with its life; then there’s the school that throws out any food item or utensil ever suspected of having come into contact with leaven or legume, including ovens, sinks and children, and attacks with Lysol and Q-tips the devious chametz hiding, ready for unwitting consumption, in the cracks between the ceilings and floors. As with most things, I belong to a third school: the school that motivates itself to perform a thorough house cleaning through the use of amphetamines. By the end of thirty-some straight hours of awake, jittery and obsessively thorough housecleaning, your fingertips bleeding from the combined action of the rough side of the sponge and the bleach, you will rest content in the knowledge that you have performed a mitzvah - because you have actually heard the voice of God in your head commending you for it. Obviously, this school is not for everyone; I recommend that the faint-hearted among you use a sponge without a rough side.

The Haggadah: Meaning, literally, “telling,” the Haggadah differs from most Jewish texts in that is widely open to interpretation, since the “Maggid” only demands that the story of the Exodus be told. This is something of a curse. The Official Haggadah Text that has accreted over the years takes only about a paragraph to actually detail the Exodus, filling the rest of the space with stultifying diversionary excerpts from the minutes of various rabbinic powwows, including a theoretically lighthearted story ending with a student rushing in to inform several sages, who had stayed up all night discussing the holiday, that the time had arrived to recite the morning Shema - proof less of said sages’ devotion to Jewish law than of my own contention that sense of humor is inversely proportional to religiosity (the Jewlarious Theorem).

Much worse, however, is that this openness to interpretation leaves the Haggadah susceptible to attempts to ramrod modern political/cultural agendas down its already sufficiently lengthy throat. Admittedly, the entire purpose of the Passover seder is to give Jews worldwide a potent, if symbolic, reminder of the bitter suffering of slavery - but being forced to sit through a heartfelt soliloquy about how transgendered individuals are enslaved even today by traditional Judaism’s refusal to sanctify their choice of tackle is crueler than any taskmaster’s whip.

Some of you out there right now are getting your dander up and preparing to launch into a diatribe regarding the importance of keeping religion relevant in our modern world and denouncing people like me who endeavor to siphon joy out of faith. Please don’t. I have suffered enough from you people’s love of meandering “Reb Shlomo stories,” niggunim and quinoa. As a secular traditionalist, I am firmly of the opinion that religion is to be approached with dignity and solemnity, just frequently enough to give one’s children sufficient cultural grounding to prevent them from becoming neo-Nazis, Scientologists or JVoices writers. Joy should never enter into the equation. Joy is for puppies, stimulant use, Stevie Wonder albums, the births of (planned) first children and, very rarely, sex.

The Food: In demanding greater observance of the separation of synagogue and joy, I actually hew to a venerable Jewish tradition of tempering celebration with suffering. Passover takes a festive family-and-friends holiday and removes bread - along with (at least for non-kitniyot-consuming Ashkenazim, otherwise known as “suckers”) a list of foods that multiplies yearly with such blinding rapidity that one suspects the rabbis of attempt to hasten redemption with a week-long Yom Kippur. Passover food, with an exception I will touch on later, is dreadful. Like many facets of Judaism, it doesn’t have to be dreadful, but the iron first of tradition has made it so. You see, come Pesach, the world’s Jews are gripped by a curiously potent chametz-substitution fever, which results in a glut of leaven-free imitation food products. For some reason, everyone is compelled to buy each and every one of these products to tide them over the week-long holiday, even if they don’t regularly eat their leavened counterparts. This is why you’ll see people who eat a total of three chocolate chip cookies over the course of an entire year loaded down with six boxes of inedible chocolate macaroons. This is why we have nightmarish facsimiles of food we could all stand to spend a week without foisted upon us, like any concoction whose name contains the words “potato flour” and “pizza.” I can only imagine the thought process involved in such purchases: “Well, I haven’t eaten cereal in the morning since high school, but Passover is a whole week long! Shit! I gotta get me some of these K-for-P cornflakes!” People. It’s not fucking Ramadan. It lasts a week. Shut the fuck up, put down the matzah-based formed noodle product, remember that tequila remains kosher for Passover, and eat a fucking salad.

The Matzah: The humble matzah is the aforementioned exception to the rule of dreadful Passover food. Matzah gets an undeservedly bad rap, often by Jews whose shtetl-weakened digestive system shuts down like an Israeli labor union at the mere sight of unleavened bread (these same Jews also think “bread of affliction” jokes are hilarious), but it tastes good, provides a pleasing tactile experience, and serves as an excellent platform for the consumption of the shit your seder hosts spoon onto your plate (also known as “quinoa”). And matzah is imbued with great symbolic import. As a Jew, matzah serves to evoke the deeply-rooted Jewish collective memory of successive persecutions and liberations, and as a born American, of course, much of my identity has been defined by big-ass crackers.

But like everything else, matzah is not idiot-proof. As the food most identified with the entire Passover experience, its consumption often replaces any other observance of the holiday by clueless American Jews. I once witnessed in Tulane’s cafeteria, which provided matzah during Passover despite being distinctly non-kosher, a Jewish student extolling the virtues of the meal he was eating: matzah which had been covered with tomato sauce, a layer of melted cheese, and a healthy sprinkling of ground beef. Being the sucker for punishment I am, I mildly mentioned that this was somewhat inconsistent, whereupon he informed me “I don’t keep kosher, but I keep kosher for Passover.” Tucking into a ham sandwich, I replied that I also kept kosher, but not kosher for Judaism. (Okay, that last part isn’t strictly true - I’m a vegetarian.)

The Wine: The fruit of the vine is Passover’s saving grace, which is somewhat out of character for me to admit. For several reasons, I’m not an avid consumer of wine: first, unlike vodka, wine is tainted by thousands of years of accumulated pretension and therefore its taste cannot be shamelessly masked with apple juice or coffee liqueur; second, it encourages the continued existence of the sort of people who drink wine, i.e. the sort of people who feel that the word “bouquet” can be used to refer to anything other than “a bunch of flowers,” people who have trained their senses of smell and palates to the point where they actually detect scents and flavors which do not, per se, exist; third, it gives the French the impression they’re doing us some kind of favor, and a Frenchman with an impression, much like Monet, is insufferable indeed. But wine deserves its central portion of the Passover seder, because the requirement to drink four man-sized cups of the stuff is what turns the seder from “rushed, distracted retelling of the Passover story” to “rushed, slurred retelling of the Passover story,” which is a vitally important distinction. If you’re willing to fully commit yourself, by the time you get to Motzi you should be more plastered than charoset on korech.

The Dosim: If you’re unlucky enough to have actualized the traditional Passover wish of “Next year in Jerusalem!”, as I have, you know that the arrival of Passover in Jerusalem means the arrival of the dosim. The Suburban East Coast American Right-Wing Modern Orthodox Jew (dos americanus), a parasitic life form found inhabiting dens worth not less than $750,000 in heavily Jewish towns along America’s Eastern Seaboard, particularly in the New York metro area, and easily distinguished by its prominent white collar, has a curious and complex mating ritual. Twice a year, at Sukkot and Pesach times, especially during Pesach, the dos will migrate from its natural habitat to its historical breeding grounds, otherwise known as the city of Jerusalem. Once there, the dos will seek out other members of its species, congregating in upscale hotels (the Crowne Plaza, the Sheraton), unthreatening kosher l’mehadrin steak houses with menus in English, and the Ben Yehuda and Emek Refaim pedestrian areas. When the male dos sights a potential mate, he will let out the species’ distinct mating call (”I work in investment banking!”) and use his bulging billfold to fend off competing males drawn by his cry. If the female dos finds favor in the mating call and, more crucially, the thickness of the billfold, she will hike up her floor-length denim skirt and present her swollen rump for mating. The social unit (or “troop”) celebrates the successful attraction of a mate by coming together to turn up their long Litvak noses at the perceived crudeness and primitiveness of their Israeli hosts. Observing this time-honored, evolutionarily hard-wired ritual play itself out on the streets of the Holy City makes putting up with all of Jerusalem’s host of other problems almost worth it.

If God had bestowed upon the season of our liberation any single one of these exciting aspects of holiday observance, it would have been enough for us. Or at least for me.

I’m on the evening’s third bottle of Sol - partly because there was a big sale on six-packs at the Russian grocery down the street which, like all Russian groceries in Israel and around the world, reeks of jam-filled pastries, pork and quiet desperation, partly because the three sun-kissed syllables of “cerveza!” (it demands an exclamation point) create a much more exciting word for carbonated hops beverages than “beer,” a monosyllabic grunt easily combined with “WHOOOOOOOO!” by people who don’t deserve to drink it - and three beers is exactly enough excess liquid to burst the dams and allow the reservoir of bitchiness to spill forth and drown some peasants.

The part of the peasants tonight will be played by my perennial whipping boys, Anglo Jews in Jerusalem, a group who inspires such crippling self-hatred and revulsion that had Philip Roth been born 6000 miles to the East, he would have ended it all a solid decade before Portnoy had the chance to file his first complaint. You may object that I tar Anglos with too broad a brush, subdivided as they are into dozens of camps - American, British, Australian, South African, New Zealander, Canadian, modern Orthodox, classical Orthodox, neo-Chasidic, paleo-Chasidic, yeshiva student, seminary student, Hebrew U Student, Gush Etzion yeshiva student, Pardes student, Nachla’ot resident, German Colony Resident, Bak’a resident, Katamon resident, execrable Cafe Rimon patron, slime-covered Underground/Mike’s Place patron - but I assure you, I’ve considered it very carefully, and I hate them all with absolute equality.

Actually, that’s not strictly true - throw a potent enough combo meal my way, let’s say a Canadian neo-Chasidic Nachla’ot resident who loves knocking back Illy mochaccinos at Cafe Rimon, and I can almost guarantee that I’ve had a wet dream about their untimely death. Hell, it probably wasn’t even a dream, just a straight-out wet.

But I digress. While a complete list of the things that make Jerusalemite Anglos awful would be far too much material for Kosher Eucharist to cover - hello, blog spin-off idea - I can at least focus on a few choice transgressions. Chiefest among them in my mind of late is the tendency of Anglos - particularly Anglos who speak little-to-no Hebrew (i.e. most of them) - to pepper their English with random Hebrew words.

This is similar to the oft-glimpsed phenomenon of a newly-religious young Jew attempting to fit in with his new crowd by running his sentences through a Yiddish meat grinder until he sounds like an ethnic caricature too broad for the Borscht Belt to squeeze around, but trust me, it’s even more annoying. Several words pop up with alarming frequency, and often equally alarming inaccuracy, in the pidgin vocabularies of these kippa-clad amateur Hebraists: mamish (a corruption of mamash, “really”), davka (”ironically,” “of all [noun]…”), tachles (”totally,” “I’ll level wichu”) and a host of other verbal offenses which the Sol has snatched clean from my memory. Even worse is a certain tendency, common among, but in no way particular to, mainline East Coast yeshivish dosim (I’m sorry for throwing in a Hebrew word there, but there is no equivalent English word that can be spat out with the same lip-curling contempt): insisting on using the Hebrew name of cities with a long-established English name. You have not known suffering until you’ve heard yet another denim-beskirted child of Orthodox privilege curl her nasal East Coast inflection around “Yerushalayim,” which invariably comes out so far from the appropriate Hebrew pronunciation you wonder why she bothered in the first place.

Helpful hint: it won’t make you less Jewish if you say “Jerusalem” - it will, however, make you less annoying.

What I’m trying to say is, there’s no reason for a native speaker of English - in fact, someone who speaks ONLY English - to churn out an ear-piercing nugget of Creole like “Sometimes I don’t know why I chose to live davka in Yerushalayim; but tachles, it’s probably because there are mamish fly biddies hanging out at Katzefet on the midrachov every night.” It doesn’t need to be so complicated and so multi-lingual; there’s a much more elegant, and entirely monolingual, way to say exactly the same thing: “I am such a fucking tool.”

JERUSALEM (AP) — Meeting on the grounds of the Ophel, former site of the Jebusite city of Jerusalem, the Israeli Knesset voted unanimously Saturday to express “profound regret” for the Israelite people’s invasion and occupation of the land of Canaan and the expulsion and forcible conversion of many of its non-Israelite inhabitants.

Sponsors of the resolution say they know of no other country that has apologized for distant historical events, although Mongolian lawmakers are considering such a measure. The resolution does not carry the weight of law but sends an important symbolic message, supporters said.

“This session will be remembered for a lot of things, but 20 years hence I suspect one of those things will be the fact that we came together and passed this resolution. I only wish we could have succeeded in bringing a representative of the Canaanite people to the ceremony, but we failed to find a suitable candidate - or any candidate, for that matter,” said Uri Avneri, a politician and founder of the Gush Shalom movement who sponsored the resolution.

The measure also expressed regret for “the exploitation of Moabites.”

The resolution was introduced as Israel begins its celebration of the 3000th anniversary of the occupation of Jerusalem, where the first Israelites arrived in at the head of warrior-king David’s armies around the year 1000 BCE. Jerusalem, home to a popular assortment of sites of religious significance to the Israelite faith, later became a focal point for offshoot religions Christianity and Islam.

Oh, put down that Google News, I made it up. Well, sort of. I actually derived it from this - the Virginia General Assembly just voted to pass a resolution apologizing for slavery, thereby freeing America’s white citizens from their overpowering urge to clasp their black friends’ shoulders and wail “I’m sooorrryyyyyy!” God, I love it when the political system works for the people.

But seriously, although I appreciate an empty symbolic gesture as much as the next guy, slavery kind of…ended…something like…oh, 142 years ago, give or take? The best way to say “sorry” would probably have been to give ol’ Prissy a spot of monetary compensation, or at least 40 acres and a mule, back in 1865 - but I’m sure she’ll rest easy knowing that her great-great-great grandchildren have been officially apologized to for her suffering by the august State of Virginia.

Now, one might say that the American black community is suffering from the effects of slavery to this very day. I’ll buy that - I might roll my eyes ever so slightly, but I’ll buy it. Normally I’d suggest that the best way for American whites to assuage their apparently lingering guilt would be to stop moving out of their neighborhoods the minute somebody who owns the soundtrack to Superfly moves in, or maybe cutting a check for the UNCF, or at least gathering the children for a didactic family viewing of Ali, but fortunately for crackers none of that is necessary anymore. Virginia apologized - your responsibility is over, white America! Put your precious offspring in a private school where skin colors don’t get more threatening than yellow, spend the ticket price for the next Spike Lee joint on weed instead, throw out those Talib Kweli CDs you bought for indie cred and replace them with your Starland Vocal Band collection, let those inner cities decay, decay, decay - whatever you want, proud sons of Europe! Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last!

It’s an inspiration to me that all it takes to solve - or at least sweep aside - long-seated racial issues is a ridiculous apology so overdue it no longer needed to be made.

But where do we, the Jews, fit in? I’ll leave it to that clarion voice of mainstream, centrist American Jewish thought, JVoices, who will be debuting a post crowing how this shining triumph for American blacks is a victory as well for American blacks’ BFFs, i.e. the Jews, probably within the next five minutes. As we all know, since the vast majority of American Jews’ ancestors began to arrive 20 years after the end of slavery in the country, the American Jewish community must shoulder the heavy burden of its complicity in the plight of the American black community. And anything that will help to make that burden lighter is welcome.

The vagaries of my employment forced me today to spend a couple hours watching videos posted on YouTube by alumni of Birthright Israel (or, ahem, “Taglit-birthright israel,” because if you don’t suspend your understanding of written English syntax and make like e e cummingstein when you refer to his blessed program Michael Steinhardt will punish you by gyrating against your young body like Lynn Schusterman at a Mega-Event). Don’t ask me why.

I was already unhappy with this diversion, because I was listening to Gilberto Gil and Jorge Ben’s Gil e Jorge, which is a fantastic album, and it kept getting interrupted by the soundtracks the children had chosen to immortalize their precious tAgLiT-bIrThRiGhT iSrAeL memories - usually U2, or techno, or some similar ostentatious Jewish pride music.

Gilberto Gil & Jorge Ben - Taj Mahal

But, as always, the worst was yet to come. You see, in its admittedly admirable quest to introduce every Jew to their heritage, 7@91337-81r7hr19h7 1sr@31 inevitably winds up scraping the vomit-soaked bottom of the Unaffiliated American Jew barrel. Sometimes these unfortunate souls can surprise you by being valuable contributors to the trip, but the general experience is more like so: acting on hardwired instinct, they seek out others like them (usually beginning in the airport), and by the time the group arrives in Israel, their cellular structures have broken down and they have fused together, forming a collective organism composed mostly of khaki and reeking of Calvin Klein Obsession, which oozes towards the back of the bus and spends most of the trip yelling “WHOOOOOOO!” until somebody placates it with grain alcohol. And sometimes, it even makes videos.

Almost every back of the bus on almost every trip is the same. I was thankfully spared an invasion of these types on the trip I led last summer, but then again, some of the girls on the trip, the future mothers of the next generation of the Children of Israel, put up a sign in front of the last few rows of the bus reading “Reserved - Rosa Parks Club 466.” I vaguely considered carefully explaining to them that not only was this offensive in roughly six different ways, but also that Rosa Parks’ entire significance stemmed from her decision to sit in the front of the bus - but then I realized that there were better uses of the rapidly-passing seconds of my life, such as crying and cutting myself.

But I digress. I’ve watched a dozen videos of Birthright idiocy on Youtube (the car-wreck effect and all). I’ve been on a taglit-BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL trip. I’ve staffed a תגלית-זכות מלידה ישראל trip. And I have to know: where do these identical borderline-mentally-handicapped, alcoholic, chubby, hirsute and most of all deafening Jewish frat rats come from?

So I did a little research. I discovered, unsurprisingly, that the source of this blight is the same that has caused so much other suffering for the peoples of Israel and America: Al-Qaeda.

This innocuous-looking Jersey City warehouse holds a dark secret, an integral cog in radical Islam’s plan to bring the Western World and specifically the Jews to their knees. Long tables are lined with thousands of petri dishes, all containing the cloned genetic material of an AEPi brother kidnapped by radical elements during a trip to Israel in 1997. Seizing upon the new technology of cloning and genetic engineering, Al-Qaeda’s scientists used their captive frat boy’s DNA to create a veritable army of genetically-identical, Dave-Matthews-and-college-football-lovin’ Jewish frat boys, artificially aged in tanks and continuously released upon the American Jewish population, whereupon they follow their programmed instincts and travel on Birthright in order to inflict boundless torment and misery on the hated population of the Jewish State. Through a combination of sheer force of “WHOOOOO!” and the steady genetic weakening of the non-cloned Jewish population (the clones’ second-biggest instinct after pursuing their alcoholic fuel is mating), Al-Qaeda hopes Israel will crumble, allowing a massive popular Arab surge to finally sweep the remnants of the Jews into the sea.

Don’t let them. Neuter a frat clone today. Save Birthright. In doing so, you will have saved the Jewish People.

Yeah, okay, Chanukah is over, and it went by on this blog almost entirely without mention. Sue me, ever since I fell off the path roughly 23 seconds after arriving in Israel, I’ve been a pretty bad Jew. I mean, the last time I was in a synagogue was Pesach, and then only because Dave dragged me by my ear, and I shun all of those Let’s-Build-A-Meaningful-And-Inspiring-New-Jewish-Identity-For-The-Young-People-Through-Poetry-Reading events (because, well, I have toenails that need to be clipped, and failing that, space that needs to be stared into), but I try. I successfully remembered to light Chanukah candles six out of eight nights, which is a 75% success ratio, and frankly, if all good and noble human endeavors were met with a 75% success ratio, the world would be a better place. So I did my fucking part - stop judging me, dosim, because your emperor never wore clothes at all.

But look at me digressing like a fiend. What I want to say is, despite my minimal affiliation of late with religious life, I know a way to brighten up a Chanukah. The best way. Which way?

Zombies!

Thus, my Chanukah present to Harry, who unfortunately spent the holiday in bed suffering from back problems (read the whole story at The View From Here):

If drawing a cartoon of one of your best friends, armed with a Desert Eagle and a katana, blowing the head off a decayed zombie so as to cheer him up in a rough moment isn’t the very embodiment of the Jews’ holy mission on the face of this Earth, well, fuck it, call me Abdullah, I’m switching camps.

My friend Zev is in town with his family and a tour group from his home synagogue in Dallas. Zev, a fellow Tulane refujew, also chose to weather out the Semester of Katrina at the Hebrew University, and became an integral pillar of the Tulane community in exile - if I was the wacky uncle of our motley little group (and I’d like to think I was), Zev was the ever-slightly-exasperated father figure. He let me sleep on a mattress on his kitchen floor when I had no other place to go, I saved his ass in his Israeli Foreign Policy class by essentially rewriting his 20-page final paper to a form somewhat resembling the English language (I love Zev, but he has no facility with words). Late in the Semester of Katrina, Zev found out that his beloved Tulane had, in a cost-cutting maneuver, completely did away with almost the entire engineering school, including his program, without giving engineering students either warning or enough time to transfer to other schools before the registration cutoff. Essentially, Tulane not only cut dozens of degree programs in the middle, but blackmailed those programs’ students into staying at Tulane and paying tuition for another semester (because you can’t transfer to another school without being enrolled in one). Zev, needless to say, was displeased, and left Israel last January in something of a terminal funk - a funk unlifted by his transfer to the wilds of the Country Music Capital of the World to attend Vanderbilt after his Tulane blackmail semester.

But now Zev is back in Israel for a couple weeks. And we’re (attempting) to have a grand old time. I accompanied his family and his synagogue group to the Old City last night and did my tour guide thing for him and his father, and his family was kind enough to invite my disreputable-looking ass to the group dinner at the fancy-pants David Citadel hotel, the second-swankiest hotel in West Jerusalem, a study in marble and…well, some more marble, and very high ceilings. I saw Joe Lieberman lighting Shabbat candles in the foyer - yes, boys and girls, the Senator from Connecticut really is a Jew. The food was pleasant enough, if a bit short of the expectations engendered by all that marble, but we wound up at the same table as the synagogue’s rabbi, a man whose size, bearing and fog siren of a voice all conspired to set off the “incorrigible blowhard” alarms in my head. Tight, polite smiles abounded, as they often do at dinner tables dominated by incorrigible blowhards. But Zev’s family are undeniably lovely people, full of a delightful combination of Jewish and Texan charm, and I am indebted to them for getting me out of the house and into a five-course meal.

But that’s not even the best part. Zev came bearing gifts from Exile:

1) An enormous tube (not box, a tube) of mashed potato flakes. I cannot exactly describe why, but American mashed potato flakes are one of my comfort foods, and they are impossible to find here. Oh, there’s “puree,” which is the Israeli equivalent, but eating “puree” is sort of like staving off a hankering for Chateaubriand with No Name Steaks, if I may be permitted to draw a comparison between top shelf cuts of meat and dehydrated flaked potato product. But it gets even better…

2) Zev served as the mule for my Chanukah present to myself, the new 3-disc, fully remastered, special edition, Criterion Collection Seven Samurai. As Chris (or Flannery) might say, I think I just came a little.

And now, as I decide whether I will curl up on the couch and shiver for the rest of the day, or venture out into the driving rain for a Coke, I leave with you a screencap taken from Seven Samurai which serves as a powerful reminder of one of life’s most fundamental truths.

Ain’t no booty like Jewess booty!

Recently, in addition to our cafe-related exploits (see previous post), malevolant being from another dimension and perennial Lucy-esque football yanker Mobius introduced me to British-Jewish R&B chanteuse Amy Winehouse with the memorable endorsement, “She’s totally filthy, but you’ll love her music.” Mobius, who shares my deep love for all things obscure and Jamaican, understands my taste and fairly regularly turns me on to new shit - if it wasn’t for him, my music collection wouldn’t include MF Doom and Ghostface Killah, which would have been a tragedy. And he scored another hit with Winehouse, a 23-year-old drunken Jewish Princess with a voice of solid gold and a talent for writing memorable, if somewhat eyebrow-raising lyrics. One of the songs on her first album, written to a jilted boyfriend, contains a tidy justification for infidelity funny enough to overshadow, well, the whole infidelity thing itself. It can be summed up something like this…

I cheated on you, but
a) I was attracted to the guy with whom I cheated on you because he looked just like you, and furthermore,
b) I was thinking about you when I came, and it’s your fault anyway, because
c) You left me alone and horny.

It’s fucking airtight.

Her new album also has a song imploring her flatmate to stop allowing said flatmate’s boyfriend to smoke all the weed in the house. If it wasn’t for the materialism, alcohol abuse and the manic, infidelity-inspiring sex drive, I daresay this would be a woman after my own heart.

Anyway, nobody was more saddened than me, a soul/funk/R&B devotee, when the bottom seemed to fall out of the neo-soul movement a few years back. So I’m naturally excited to have found a great new R&B album, especially when the tribal connection is thrown in. And so I’ve been proselytizing, particularly of course to Chris…

RastafariKeebler: So I’ve discovered a new musical artist you may enjoy. She is called Amy Winehouse, and she’s basically a skankyfilthynasty British Jewish girl who happens to also be a great soul singer.
RastafariKeebler: Sample song title: “Fuck Me Pumps.”
RastafariKeebler: She’s notorious for getting drunk and beating the shit out of people.
ZombieBabesAGoGo: I AM DOWN.
RastafariKeebler: Thought it might be up your alley.
ZombieBabesAGoGo: YES.
ZombieBabesAGoGo: Jewesses.
ZombieBabesAGoGo: Our shared vice.
ZombieBabesAGoGo: It tends to injure us both.

The best thing about having friends is sharing.

So with that in mind, I share with you a choice cut from Back to Black, the latest album from me and Chris’ latest addition to our Holy Pantheon of Jewesses (which also includes Fran Drescher and Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles).

“Some Unholy War”

Delicious!

Aish ha-Torah has visited a great deal of torment and suffering upon the Jewish people. Their brooding, medieval, property-value-destroying monstrosity of a headquarters casts an oppressive shadow over the stones of the Western Wall plaza. Their campus representatives, armed with pocket dictionaries of American slang circa 1991 to appeal to the young generation, prowl the quads and halls of America’s universities attempting to sucker hungover sorority girls into “taking a little time off” in Israel (”Hey dudes and dudettes! You know what’s way mondo? Finals week - NOT!! But you know what seriously is radder than Jason Lee popping a wicked ollie? Yiddishkeit!”). Their apologists troll the Internet for posts like this one, bristling with indignation, stories of “non-judgmental” Shabbat dinners and “eye-opening” seminars, denouncements of the spiritual emptiness of secular Jewry, and glowing additions to the hagiography of Chief Operating Thetan Noah Weinberg. Their empty-eyed charges, recently arrived from America and England and freshly outfitted in ankle-length skirts and black velvet kippot, lurch Romero-like toward the Old City of Jerusalem, their former identities and desires gradually peeled away one Bible Code class and rappelling excursion with an “awesome” surfer-turned-rabbi at a time, their relationships with friends and family cast aside for their New BFF in the Sky.

But let’s put aside for a moment their cultish modus operandi, or their drive to transform promising young Western Jews into destitute American or Israeli Charedim supporting large families with the tax shekel of the filthy chilonim. Believe it or not, a much more appalling desecration of the history, religion and culture of the Jews is being perpetrated by Aish ha-Torah.

That desecration has a name. And it is Jewlarious.

It’s hard to avoid that cringe-worthy portmanteau lately, as its ads have seemingly popped up on every single major Jewish website. Jewlarious, you see, is the newest arrow in Aish’s quiver of kiruv tactics - if you can’t reel in the kids with Shabbat dinners and subsidized tours of Israel, might as well try with that most Jewish of attributes, a sense of humor.

But when it comes to humor, much akin to its parent organization when it comes to traditional Judaism, Jewlarious completely misses the point. Certainly, Jews are widely reputed to be among the funnier peoples of the world, with an absolutely ridiculous overrepresentation in the annals of classic American comedy (our only serious competition being that other put-upon minority, the blacks). Jewish comedy flows forth from two deep wells: a long history of persecution, and a perennial outsider status. The best Jewish humor stands up and and boldly laughs in the face of tragedy, oppression, blood and God himself. Naturally, however, this proud tradition of gallows humor does not provide the best medium for scouring out the brains of young, spiritually-seeking Jews. It’s hard to offer up curdlingly cynical Yiddish gems like, “If God lived on Earth, people would break his windows” when your organization is investing its energy in promoting the fiction that before the Jews arrived in the trayfeh medina, everybody lived a blissful existence of Charedi piety and child-raising in the Old Country (which is of course what God wants from us all).

Thus, Jewlarious occupies a place in the great pantheon of Jewish humor somewhere between Paul Reiser and Laffy Taffy. I spent a distinctly laugh-free hour perusing the site’s humor offerings, and I must say, I am offended. There’s more unprotested rape by frummies of all that is Jewish and holy on Jewlarious than there is inside the walls of your average Flatbush yeshiva. I give you a sampling:

From a pallid attempt at an Onion-esque satire article, “Kosher Butcher Goes Up in Flames; Fire Sale on Smoked Meat Ensues”: “In the middle of the crowd was Sherman the Butcher flipping burgers and dogs and selling the smoked deli meat at a harried pace. ‘My meat is selling like hot cakes here. People are saying that they love my special charbroiled seasonings. I just can’t keep my stock on the shelves …well, that’s actually because the shelves were broken in the fire and can’t hold anything, but you know what I mean.’”

HAH! You get it?? It’s funny because the fire is cooking the meat! And the shelves can’t hold it because they’re on fire! JEWS LOVE PASTRAMI!

Or how about a piece on going fishing…for gefilte fish? “With records nearly shattered each day during this year’s hyper-competitive Gefilte Fishing season, it should come as no surprise to avid sport-fishing fans that veteran Gefilte Fisherman Eli Kozlowski finally smashed a two thousand six hundred and thirteen year old record, catching a 64 pound Gefilte along the shorelines of Lake Anakatan in Central Minnesota.”

JEWS LOVE GEFILTE FISH!

And then there’s a long list of jokes just perfect for your next Kool Aid-enhanced Aish Shabbat dinner, like: “Harvey’s mother gave him two sweaters on the first night of Chanukah. The next night when he came over for dinner, he made sure to wear one of them. As he entered the house, instead of the expected smile, Harvey’s mother said, ‘What’s the matter? You didn’t like the other one?’”

That’s fucking JEWLARIOUS! How do they keep coming up with this SOLID GELT?

The one bright spot in this travesty of a website is that what Aish attempts to pass off as Jewish humor is so hopelessly stale and out of touch with current standards of what’s funny (remember, the most beloved comedy show in America featured a washed-up, cocaine-addled, abusive funk star, a wholesome white family called “The Niggars,” and R. Kelly peeing on a girl’s face) that it can’t possibly attract any new meat to Aish’s oversized grinder. The only people who are going to be quaking with laughter at articles like “Shul Bans Two for Testing Positive for Davening Enhancing Substances” are the ones who have already had their brains yanked out through their noses by Aish’s twisted quiescent-Charedi version of Judaism.

But of course, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing positive we can take from Jewlarious. At the bottom of the page, it has a link back to the Big Aish itself, which reads, “Your Life. Your Judaism.”

Exactly.