Cash back (with a new song)

Sandy Cash is back with another song, this one hailing the upcoming Free Gaza Flotilla II. In case Allen Krasna’s masterful video editing makes you miss some of the lyrics, here they are: HEY JEWS (parody lyrics based on the song Hey Jude by Lennon & McCartney) Hey Jews, we’re setting sail Bound for that [...]

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Living the dream

Westbankmama has a post up with several bloggers’ aliyah stories (including mine) in honor of her family’s twentieth aliyah anniversary.  Read the different stories about where these women came from, how they ended up here, and the greatest common denominator: how we’re all home.  Mazal tov, Westbankmama. And when you’re done with that, check out [...]

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Amy Walker’s 21 accents

I love accents, and ever since hearing my father imitate his Yiddish-speaking relatives when I was a child, I’ve attempted to cultivate them for fun.  When I was a student teacher at Boston Latin School, I managed to persuade the same ninth grade English students that I was Irish on one occasion, cockney Londoner on [...]

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The tailor

After writing recently about the proposed ban on circumcision in San Francisco, I was both surprised and delighted to see that there is an annual Jewish film festival there (which actually claims to be the oldest and largest Jewish film festival in the world; who knew?).  Not only that, YouTube has a page dedicated to [...]

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For jazz lovers

I am not a jazz sophisticate, nor a fanatical jazz fan, but I grew up hearing plenty of it around my house.  Occasionally, I come across an album that I think is worth listening to, and even owning.  I remember Kai Winding’s “Dirty Dog” (only available on vinyl these days), enjoyed Branford Marsalis’s “I Heard [...]

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First feel-good Friday

I mentioned in a recent post that I was thinking of instituting a feature on the blog that would be a departure from the frequent politics and angst one finds in my quadrant of the blogging universe.  After some thought, I have hit on Feel-good Friday (I actually accidentally typed “Feel-food Friday”; Freud said there [...]

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Happy stuff (from Yisrael Campbell)

On Sunday evening, after most of the events of Nakba Day had occurred, the Cap’n and I drove to Beit Shemesh for a little R&R.  While prowling through old grocery store (stocking up on things we can’t find in Efrat or Jerusalem), we met up with an acquaintance from our old neighborhood.  After a brief [...]

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Killer questions

The other night, the Cap’n and I watched Timothy Spall in the 2005 film, “Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman.”  Besides being a die-hard Spall fan (I loved him in “Chicken Run,” “Topsy-Turvy,” “All Or Nothing,” and “Shooting the Past”), I had heard a friend praise the film itself. Based somewhat loosely on the story of Albert [...]

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Yet another catfight

I pay little attention to Natalie Portman on the average day.  Her all-out neurotic performance in “Black Swan” left my stomach churning, and I had to put the window down in the car on the way home to battle the nausea.  I guess that means she did a good job. It was after seeing the [...]

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The thin Jew line

While I don’t condone watching The Daily Show or Stephen Colbert in lieu of reading real news sources, they often take grains of truth or news and grow them into excellent entertainment. One of the truths many traditional Jews are aware of is the contempt and distrust with which we’re viewed by our less religious [...]

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Ya’alili

A friend from Newton posted this link to the shul chat list before Pesach.  It’s by a couple of Chabadniks who really potchkee the lyrics, but set it to catchy music.  (I always thought “Ashkenazi” had more music in it than “Sephardi”; now I’m convinced of it.)  My kids and I love it.  I hope [...]

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Peach interprets “Joseph”

Seven-year-old Peach’s new favorite CD is the Cap’n’s recording of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”  From my perspective, it’s not the most brilliant or textured collaboration of Lloyd-Webber and Rice, but it has some clever lyrics and does some great stuff musically (like have Reuben tell Jacob about Joseph’s “death” in a country-western song, [...]

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Google Exodus

Four kids home for 2½ weeks.  ‘Nuff said. Here’s a cute thing Aish.com put up for Pesach.  Enjoy.

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The (partially) amended Last Supper

My mother forwarded this via email with the subject line, “They finally got it right.” Well, sort of.  Jesus is still holding a bagel.  And anyone who would eat gefilte fish from a jar would probably also have Mogen David on the table (though that may be what’s in the ewer on the floor in [...]

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When life is like “Blazing Saddles”

As a tireless advocate for Israel, I often get bewildered, enraged, and depressed at the insanity, hostility, and sheer stupidity of much of the human race.  A Facebook friend recently posted yet another in the series of pathetic man-on-the-street polls taken about Israel (this one in my former hometown of Portland, Oregon). To think that [...]

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The UN makes history

It seems that history was made recently at the United Nations.  No, China was not kicked off the Human Rights Council (though, inexplicably, Libya was).  And no, Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has not been disinvited from his annual anti-Semitic tirade and raspberry-blowing fest.  And no new canapés have been introduced at UN receptions. The history [...]

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The Maccabeats’ Purim song

With Purim on Sunday and loads to do before then, I wanted to take the opportunity to wish my readers a Purim sameach. This Purim, as so many in past years, Israel finds itself on the heels of yet another terror attack.  But even in our sadness, we are commanded to rejoice.  While it sometimes [...]

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Cannibalistic cake

Since beginning my illustrious career as a transcriber and editor, I haven’t had much time to keep up with other blogs (including my own).  Instead, I take advantage of occasional snatches of time between finishing a file and picking up Bill, while the kids are coloring in the playroom after school, or late at night, [...]

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Egyptian revolution blues

There’s been plenty of chatter about the protests and regime-toppling going on in the Middle East and North Africa lately.  Much of that (probably too much) has been coming from the US government, which seems to abhor a verbal vacuum of any kind, even if it doesn’t really know what to say.  One friend on [...]

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Two movies: “Black Swan” and “The King’s Speech”

After a long, dry spell of movies the Cap’n and I had no desire to see in the theatre (interrupted only by the seventh “Harry Potter” film), we splurged the last couple of weeks and shlepped to the cinema not once, but twice. Last week saw us at the Rav Chen in Talpiot for “Black [...]

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