September 20, 2007 | 6:24 pm

Sandy Koufax kippah—sports memorabilia that won’t get you arrested *

Posted by The Web Guy

I’ve partied with rock stars and played poker with Hollywood heroes but I’m a fan of only one celebrity—Sandy Koufax.

When Sandy refused to pitch on Yom Kippur during the 1965 World Series (the Dodgers won anyhow) he became an instant hero to Jewish boys like me across America.

And with all the bullshit coverage from Vegas over sports memorabilia from a murderer, I was happy to find a new Koufax memento for sale—his yarmulke (Jewish skullcap, or ‘kippah’ in Hebrew) is up for auction on on eBay. (Sold! for $91 Wednesday night.)

The seller offers this story of its provenance:

My husband and uncle got to talking about baseball last Rosh Hashanah, when my uncle mentioned that he had a unique item for us. In the early 70’s he lived in Ellsworth, Maine. Koufax was apparently a part-time resident of the town and in 1971 showed up at a wedding in nearby Bangor where the closest Synagogue was.

My uncle quietly approached Mr. Koufax after the service and asked for his autograph. Koufax politely declined but my uncle got the next best thing- the yarmulke he was wearing! [For the gentiles out there, most synagogues have loaner yarmulkes for the skull-capless to wear during the ceremony and return afterwards.] When Koufax returned his, my uncle snagged it. Not quite in keeping with the Old Testament, but my uncle believes God is a Dodgers fan and would completely understand.

He’s kept this yarmulke for years and even considered going to Spring Training just to get Sandy to sign it (how cool would that be?).  So after years of being banished to my uncle’s sock drawer, he asked us to sell it for him. With that said, we are please to offer (possibly) the only Synagogue-worn Sandy Koufax yarmulke.

This yarmulke has seen plenty of prayer services and rocked out to many cantors (who knows, maybe even a bris or bar mitzvah too). I cannot guarantee wearing it will give you a devastating curveball or improve your fastball, but it should make you feel a little more pious.

Now if I were a collector, I’d go for that!  Thanks, Sandy and Shana Tova!

May we all be sealed in the Book of Life for a healthy, happy and peaceful New Year.

* Updated Thursday morning evening, Sept. 27, 2007

—Dennis Wilen

September 16, 2007 | 12:27 am

‘Jew, not a Jew’—the saga continues

Posted by JewishJournal.com

It was 1988 when Tom Hanks hosted the game show parody ‘Jew, Not A Jew’ on Saturday Night Live and for whatever reason the game lives on! 

Every day people ask Google if this person or that person is Jewish, and many times they come to JewishJournal.com for the answer.

Are these searchers Jewish folks on a pride quest?  Anti-Semites looking to confirm their twisted conspiracy theories?  Or ordinary folks wondering about other peoples’ ethnic/religious background for their own individual reasons?  We don’t know.  Do you?

Here are some of the most recent searches:
Amy Brenneman
Warren Buffet
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Ron Jeremy
Norman Jewison
Billy Joel
Wolfgang Mozart
Ray Romano

This late addition just started showing up on the logs: Michael B. Mukasey, the purported nominee to replace Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General. 

Our story sure doesn’t answer the ‘is he Jewish’ question vis-a-vis Mukasey.  Wikipedia does, however.

I think we just have one of the rare web pages that has both his name and the word ‘Jewish!’

Still, hits is hits!    And mazel tov, Judge Mukasey!

—Dennis Wilen

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September 11, 2007 | 5:07 pm

NOT wishing you a Shana Tova

Posted by JewishJournal.com

My inbox is filling up with a lot of spam, and it’s really annoying. The subject is invariably the same: Shana Tova.

I’ve been hearing from acquaintances with whom I haven’t spoken for years who probably hit “send” to everyone in their contact list; PR companies for whom it’ll be a good year if they get some press out of the people on their mailing list; random people whose names I don’t recognize. My particular favorites are those from old flames who take advantage of the Jewish New Year to reconnect with me. (Many singles out there use the holiday as an excuse to flirt—you know who you are…) It’s a Rosh HaShana spam fest, and it’s doubly annoying when they include files or pictures over 1 MB. Stop cramming my computer!

These Shana Tova greetings are impersonal and disingenuous. I know the majority of these Jewish spammers don’t really mean to wish me a good year. They’re being polite, getting over a formality, and kissing tails (and not the heads). But it’s not polite. It’s actually very rude. If you want to wish me a happy new year, personalize the greeting so that I know you mean it, send it to ME only, or else end up in my junk folder.

So this Rosh HaShanah I’m not wishing anyone a fake “good year”, but I will wish everyone who reads this an original, thoughtful new year’s greeting inspired by Britney Spears. There’s been a lot of media buzz over her allegedly failed performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs). I agree the performance lacked her usual power and verve, even though the ex-pop goddess always holds a special place in my heart.

And so, to all my readers and friends, may you be like the head: like Britney’s performance at the 2000 VMA’s: full of passion, strength, beauty, certainty, power, focus, concentration, success and lots of fun.

And may you not be like the tail: like Britney’s failed performance at the 2007 VMA’s: unfocused, uncertain, inauthentic, stumbling, floppy, and lazy.

I wish Britney Spears and the Jewish people a year of healing, self-knowledge, personal growth, inner strength and some sanity (including yours truly).

—Orit in Israel

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September 7, 2007 | 6:43 pm

Shabbat Shalom and thanks for all the gefilte fish

Posted by JewishJournal.com

As the High Holy Days approach, many look forward to the traditional Ashkenazi ‘gefilte fish;’ others (like many in my family) not so much.

It’s an acquired taste, to be sure, and the stories about Grandmas Fannie and/or Yetta keeping a carp in the bathtub in preparation for the coup de grace always seemed a little too real for my sensitive, suburban homeboy ears.

I found an alternative in this week’s issue: For yummy Moroccan style fish for Rosh Hashanah, check out David Suissa’s article about his mom and her recipes.

And Shabbat Shalom!

—Dennis Wilen

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September 4, 2007 | 12:20 am

Psychiatrists are the least religious of all physicians

Posted by JewishJournal.com

A national survey said only 29% of shrinks reported attending religious services twice a month, compared to 47% of other docs.

Psychiatrists are the least religious of all physicians.

But one explanation for the results seems suspect to me:

“Something about psychiatry, perhaps its historical ties to psychoanalysis and the anti-religious views of the early analysts such as Sigmund Freud, seems to dissuade religious medical students from choosing to specialize in this field,” said lead study author Farr Curlin, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.

An alternate explanation: as physicians learn more about the mind, the more they realize how the mind is designed to see patterns and connect the dots—even when patterns and dots aren’t really there.  Modern shrinks, focused as they are on neurochemistry, are especially reductionist/materialist in their views on the mind/brain question.

Throw the idea of a soul into the theoretical mix and no wonder they prescribe so much Prozac!

—Dennis Wilen

Group therapy as seen by Israeli TV sketch comedy show

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September 1, 2007 | 12:58 am

VIDEO: More on Jewish genetics—we are family!

Posted by The Web Guy

From The Forward in NYC:

One Big, Happy Family
Litvaks and Galitzianers, Lay Down Your Arms;
Science Finds Unity in the Jewish Gene Pool

Histororically [sic] speaking, Jews have hardly been strangers to the art of drawing sharp distinctions among themselves. But according to a mounting body of scientific evidence, Jews — genetically speaking, at least — may have more in common than anyone previously suspected.

A year ago, Michael Seldin, a geneticist at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, and his research team made a remarkable discovery: Studying how Europeans grouped genetically, they found that Ashkenazic Jews formed their own distinct subgroup. Northern and Southern Europeans fell into two clearly separable genetic cohorts, and although the Ashkenazic Jews had more in common with the Southern Europeans, they formed a recognizable, relatively homogenous group of their own.

This finding was particularly striking, as the place of origin for an individual Ashkenazic Jew’s grandparents turned out to be completely irrelevant. “There is no correspondence to the grandparental country of origin,” Seldin remarked: “We see differences in other European populations when, for example, someone says she has four grandparents from Italy versus someone who says he has three grandparents from Italy and one from Germany. But for Ashkenazic Jews, it doesn’t matter if their grandparents are from England or Hungary or Russia or Italy. The only thing that matters is that they’re Ashkenazic Jewish.

Read the full article here.

Or you could watch this video about your Ashkenazi landsman, ‘Duvid Crockett, King of Delancey Street’  by Yinglish superstar Mickey Katz.  He actually mentions ‘Litvaks and Galitzianers,’ and rhymes them with ‘wild Indianers!’

—Dennis Wilen

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August 28, 2007 | 11:22 pm

Are Jews smarter? And non-Jews—not so much?

Posted by The Web Guy

Ever since researcher Gary Cochran of the University of Utah sought to explain the apparent Ashkenazi intelligence edge as an easily-understood example of natural selection, the idea has attracted criticism from scholars of every persuasion. Here’s his thesis:
...
In the Middle Ages, European Jews were subjected to legal discrimination, one effect of which was to drive them into money-related professions, such as banking and tax farming, which were often disdained by, or forbidden to, Christians. This, along with the low level of intermarriage with their non-Jewish neighbors (which modern genetic analysis confirms was the case), is Cochran’s starting point.

He argues that the professions occupied by European Jews were all ones that put a premium on intelligence. Of course, it is hard to prove that this intelligence premium existed in the Middle Ages, but it is certainly true that it exists in the modern versions of those occupations. Several studies have shown that intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, is highly correlated with income in jobs such as banking.

What can, however, be shown from the historical records is that European Jews at the top of their professions in the Middle Ages raised more children to adulthood than those at the bottom. Of course, that was true of successful non-Jews, as well. But in the Middle Ages, success in Christian society tended to be violently aristocratic (warfare and land), rather than peacefully meritocratic (banking and trade).

Put these two things together — a correlation of intelligence and success and a correlation of success and fecundity — and you have circumstances that favor the spread of genes that enhance intelligence. The questions are, do such genes exist and what are they if they do?
...

I just came across another article here in the archives that includes a complementary propositon that Gentiles were self-selecting for traits other than mental agility during the very same time period:
....

Rabbi Arthur Green, dean of the Rabbinical School at Boston’s Hebrew College, wondered whether the findings took into account all relevant factors in the development of Jewish intelligence. He noted that during the period in which the researchers believe the Jewish intelligence gene began to be selected, the majority Christian world was, in a sense, selecting against such a gene.

“In that same period of 1600 to 1800 years, Christian Europe was systematically destroying its best genetic stock through celibacy” of priests and monks, he said. “The Christian devotion to celibacy, particularly for the most learned and highest intellectual achievers, diminished the quality of genetic output and created a greater contrast with the Jewish minority.”
....

That’s an angle that I never heard before, and I’ve been thinking about it since last night.

Any thoughts?

—Dennis Wilen

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August 25, 2007 | 9:36 pm

Is Al Pacino a Jew? Can Jewish girls figureskate?

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Thanks to Google, people visit JewishJournal.com seeking answers to diverse questions; sometimes get more than they bargained for!

These are actual questions people asked Google and the pages they clicked on for answers:

Is Al Pacino Jewish?

Can Jewish girls figure skate?

Is Lewis Black married?

Ugly Israelis?

What is a Jewish pirate?

—Dennis Wilen

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