November 12, 2007 | 8:54 pm

Jewish Army chaplain in Afghanistan juggles outreach to local Muslims, interfaith counseling, and th

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Excellent profile of Army chaplain Rabbi Shmuel Felzenberg from the Christian Science Monitor:

Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan - When the bus doors open, 20 soldiers clamber out, laughing, reaching for their cameras like college kids on spring break. Yet they haven’t traveled far. Part of the Army’s 82nd Airborne, they’ve driven 10 minutes across this coalition forces base from their US camp to the Egyptian-run hospital compound.

Still, in a space bound by blast-walls and concertina wire, this qualifies as an adventure because, during the next couple of hours, they will bring together two disparate worlds: that of Afghan villagers who’ve suffered the ravages of consecutive wars and that of Americans who have gathered in church basements and synagogues, private homes and community centers from New Jersey to California, filling boxes with donated items – everything from toys to toiletries.

Directly or indirectly, the boxes wend their way to the offices of US Army chaplains, who turn the distribution of donations into a feel-good outing for their soldiers.

At the helm of this base outreach program is Shmuel Felzenberg, an Army captain who darts around the grounds as soldiers unload boxes from a truck and set up tables. Under his military cap he wears a black yarmulke, and on his uniform the insignia that mark him as a Jewish chaplain – two tablets topped by a star.

“Ready to go hot,” he calls out, and the soldiers position themselves behind the tables.

Minutes later, Afghan women in dark-colored head scarves and blue, pleated chadris (full head and body veils) queue up at the gate. Egyptian soldiers usher them in, and as the Afghans move from table to table, American soldiers, semiautomatic rifles slung across their backs, reach into the boxes and hand them sweaters, shoes, baby clothes, notebooks, and toys.

Chaplain Felzenberg rummages through a separate box and extracts woolen caps that one of his daughters knitted – “Bless her heart, he says, “she put them in separate bags but didn’t mark the sizes.” Then he pulls out a loose-fitting top he last saw on his wife. “It’s going to be emotional to give some of this out,” he says, “but hey….”

While his supplies last, he hands clothing from his ultra-Orthodox Jewish home to Muslim Afghan children whose mothers wear the orthodox-Muslim chadri.

Read the whole article and screen the video. 

It’s the least we can do on Veterans Day.

November 12, 2007 | 11:39 am

We are having technical difficulties

Posted by JewishJournal.com

JewishJournal.com was offline for about ten hours overnight, a repeat of the same technical glitch that knocked us offline earlier last week. 

We apologize for any inconvenience and want to reassure you that we are working closely with our hosting company’s network engineers to stop the foo.

This was not the rumored Al-Qaeda cyber jihad attack, by the way, just some runaway PHP/MySQL madness.

Thank you for your patience.

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November 9, 2007 | 4:22 pm

They hate us for our freedom—and Christmas and Chanukah soft drinks, too!

Posted by JewishJournal.com

God bless America—the only place in the world where intrepid food technologists dare create ham-flavored sodas for Xmas and latke-flavored pop for Chanukah!

From the AP:

SEATTLE - It’s rare to find kosher ham. Rarer still to find it carbonated and bottled. Jones Soda Co., the Seattle-based purveyor of offbeat fizzy water, said Friday that it was shelving its traditional seasonal flavors of turkey and gravy this year to produce limited-edition theme packs for Christmas and Hanukkah.

The Christmas pack will feature such flavors as Sugar Plum, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog and Christmas Ham. The Hanukkah pack will have Jelly Doughnut, Apple Sauce, Chocolate Coins and Latkes sodas.

Jones Soda may be onto something, especially if the flavahs are kosher!

Think of the possiblities—a nice glass chicken-soup-flavored pop for Shabbat, a maztoh-brie cooler for Pesach, and some poppyseed-based elixir for ‘ad lo yadah’ on Purim!

And that’s not chopped liver!

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November 8, 2007 | 7:54 pm

Thank God for coffee

Posted by JewishJournal.com

No, I really mean it.  We must not forget to thank God for coffee—it gets you up in the morning, helps you maintain on extremely difficult work days and it tastes darn delicious!

The brewed extract of the roasted seeds of an evergreen bush of the genus Coffea is one of HaShem’s miracle drugs.  Aside from its uplifting effect, it eases migraines and also appears to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, diabetes mellitus type 2, cirrhosis of the liver, and gout.

So how to thank God for coffee?

My friend The One True b!X composed this prayer, popularly known as the ‘Hail Juan’ prayer”

Hail Juan
Full of grace
The Bean is with Thee.

Blessed art Thou among bloggers
And blessed is the fruit of Thy agriculture
Coffee.

Holy Juan
Father of *twitch*
Pray for us sinners
Now and at the hour of our final cup

An excellent sentiment, but Roman Catholic, like its purported patron saint, coffee grower Juan Valdez.  Juan does not look Jewish, either.

So what is the proper Jewish blessing one should offer before sipping this magic elixir?

ברוך אתה ה’ א‑לוהינו מלך העולם, שהכל נהיה בדברו.‏

Transliteration: Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha‑olam, she‑hakol nih’ye bidvaro.

Translation: “Blessed are you, LORD, our God, King of the universe, through whose word everything comes into being.

Mmmmmmmmm, coffee!  (I’m currently featuring Peet’s newly-released 2007 Holiday (non-sectarian) Blend.

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November 2, 2007 | 3:28 pm

Top Ten Ways to tell if Al-Qaeda has vandalized this Web site

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Debka.com, an Israeli site that tracks intelligence news, claims the cowardly pigs of Al-Qaeda are about to launch a cyber jihad:

On Sunday, Nov. 11, al Qaeda’s [sic] electronic experts will start attacking Western, Jewish, Israeli, Muslim apostate and Shiite Web sites. On Day One, they will test their skills against 15 targeted sites expand the operation from day to day thereafter until hundreds of thousands of Islamist hackers are in action against untold numbers of anti-Muslim sites.

While JewishJournal.com is not an anti-Muslim site, we are both American and Jewish, and therefore a potential target if this report is true. We think our firewall is secure, and we make daily off-site backups, so we’re not scared.

If I’m out of touch November 11, however, here are the Top Ten Ways to tell if Al-Qaeda crackers have vandalized this Web site:

10. The Calendar Girls get burkas

9. Obituaries page is now the Martyrs page

8. JDate.com links now go to Jihad Date

7. Internal search engine no longer lists synagogues, but you can find suicide bombers by zipcode

6. Shabbat candlelighting time changed to weekly bomb-making time

5. Letters-from-the-editor replaces letters-to-the editor

4. Arts & Entertainment section renamed Ignorance & Misery

3. Hey, gimme a break we have a writers’ strike here!

2. Web pages now read from right to left

And the Number One way to tell if Al-Qaeda has vandalized this Web site is   . . .

1. Web site only works if you use Windows

—Dennis Wilen AKA The Web Guy

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October 30, 2007 | 5:42 pm

Jewish monster ‘The Golem’ arises from the mists, with new music!

Posted by JewishJournal.com

In the 16th Century CE Rabbi Judah Loew was said to have created a powerful Golem to defend Prague’s Jewish ghetto.

Although I composed this segment of score for the scene in Paul Wegener’s 1920 prequel to his silent Golem series in the summer of 2002,  I only recorded it during the last weekend of October.

I played all the brass and woodwinds myself, including the oboe solo near the beginning and the gong, all in my small Hollywood apartment.

In this scene, Rabbi Loew summons the Sumerian demon Astaroth to learn the word that will bring the Golem to life—rendered in the most arcane transliteration from Hebrew that I have ever seen, the word is “Aemath”  meaning ‘emet’ (Hebrew)’ or ‘truth.’ I had imagined Rabbi Loew reciting the Shema to hold the ancient demon at bay.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by Der Golem, the great Jewish monster of clay who only comes to life when Truth is in his breast (or on his tongue, in the original text).

Whether it is the silent film or the Hammer horror version or even Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” (which, incidentally, had its premier in Prague), the living statue has always terrified and thrilled me.

It is my pleasure to share a little piece of that with our audience at JewishJournal.com.

Enjoy!

—Carvin Knowles

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October 26, 2007 | 1:29 pm

Birthright Britney—come to Israel! (new video from Orit in Israel)

Posted by  Orit Arfa

Some people ask me how I can possibly compare Britney to Israel, as I did in my parody of Chris Crocker’€™s famous Leave Britney Alone YouTube plea. Britney and Israel have a lot more in common than you think.

History
Britney grew-up Kentwood,  Louisiana with an inborn ambition to perform. She appeared on Star Search when she was ten years old, then moved on to star in the New Mickey Mouse club. But she broke out on her own at age 17 with her first hit: “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” Her dreams came true even before her body came into its own.

After a 2,000 year ambition to live freely on their own land, the Jewish people founded Israel in 1948. Israel fought for its existence and made it. Then in 1967 the wildest dream of the Jewish people came true: Israel conquered the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Israel was a worldwide star. Her dream came true even before its land came into its own.

Individualists
Overall (at least in their better years) Britney and Israel liked to do things alone. Britney gave up the chance to be in girl group because she needed the limelight for herself. Only until her less successful fourth album, In the Zone, when she was already on the decline, did she collaborate with artists other than Madonna or her ex-boyfriend, Justin Timberlake. She was a pop star that dwelled alone.

Israel for a long time retained a friendly distance from other nations. Only America (the Madonna of nations) is considered Israel’s real best friend. Hopefully America won’t drop its alliance with Israel as Madonna did with Britney, despite their hot kiss. Overall, though, Israel is a people that dwells alone.

Icons
There is no denying that Britney is already an icon. The blonde from Lousiana has captured the imagination of millions of people for her beauty, her passion, her performing talent, and her fun, danceable pop songs. Okay, so she’s no Celine Dion—but take her at face value. She is the American Dream.

Israel too has become an icon. She’s a productive, beautiful stand-out in a region embroiled with dictatorship and strife. She has provided inspiration to millions of Jews and non-Jews around the world. She is the Jewish Dream.

Loved and Hated
People either love them or hate them. Israel and Britney have garnered both devout defenders and mean critics. But no one can remain apathetic for too long.

The Press: “Gimme More”
Both Britney and Israel have been relentlessly scrutinized and hounded by the press disproportionately to other pop stars and countries, respectively.

The press likes to build someone up, and then shoot them down. It gives them a special sense of power, since the press boasts no distinct accomplishments of their own other than covering the accomplishments (and failures) of others.

At the first sign of weakness, the press will start nitpicking every wrong or sour turn of any star. Britney and Israel have been constantly put under microscope, and soon enough, they started believing the media’s lies. They became the monsters the media and the critics made them out to be.

Self-Destruction
Israel and Britney grew-up too fast. They became so strong that they didn’t know what to do with their own strength. Given their strength, they became so criticized that they didn’t know how to cope with all the attention.

Just as Britney reached her peak, things started to go downhill. It started around her Onyx tour when she felt this great instinct to nest. She marries a childhood friend for 24 hours in Las Vegas. She cancels her tour, citing illness. Not long after she claims she wants to be normal, to raise a family like everyone else. She got married and had two kids.

Israel reached its peak during the Six Day War. Suddenly, Israel wasn’t David against Goliath, but the Goliath itself. Israel was vilified as an Occupier. The Jews were no longer this weak people, but a strong force to be reckoned with. Israel felt this great instinct to nest: to give away the land it won and to be normal, just like everyone other democracy. Israel forcefully uprooted its own citizens from their homes in Gaza to fit in. Israel became so normal that it fought a bloody war in Lebanon completely unprepared.

Neither Israel nor Britney are truly ‘fessing up to their mistakes. And oops—they keep doing it again. They are trying to cover up their mistakes with parties and good times. They are getting stuck in the toxic relationships. Britney is drugging herself with alcohol, partying and who knows what else. She’s neglecting her children. Israel is drugging herself with an obsessed vision of peace, and neglecting the children of Israel.

Identity Crisis
What this all boils down to is that Israel and Britney suffer from lack of self-knowledge and self-pride. Who are they? What are they? Is Britney a pop star, a mother? Is Israel a liberal democracy, a Jewish State? Until they look deep inside themselves and discover the best of them—and be proud of that—I’m afraid that both will continue on a terrifying path of suicide.

What has kept Britney going is her creative output. What has kept Israel going is its creative output (and not the government and the press). If they continue to create honestly and productively, maybe they will sustain. I anxiously await the redemption of both. Hit us baby one more time!

—Orit in Israel

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October 23, 2007 | 10:33 pm

[VIDEO] If Baruch Obama and Dick Cheney are cousins, what about us?

Posted by The Web Guy

I’ve said it before, we—Jews—are family.

We are the children of Avraham Avinu (Abraham Our Father) and some of us are descendants of the first Jewish priest—the first Cohen—Aaron, brother of Moshe Rabbenu (Moses Our Teacher.)

It’s all there in Jon Entine’s cutting-edge new book, Abraham’s Children, where he explores questions of Jewish race and identity. Most controversially, Entine digs deep into DNA evidence to discover to what extent the Jewish people are “chosen.”

What?  No reading for you? OK. Don’t read all about it—we have video, doh.

B & D can’t beat our stuff!

—The Web Guy

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