Example of early music video

What's with the gorilla suits, anyway?

Strike! Do the right thing

The writers strike is still going on. BY the way, this is a Jewish issue. Not just because many of the writers are Jewish - and are being ripped off by co-religionists on the other side of the table - there's always been Jews who are managers negotiating against Jewish workers who are getting bupkes - that's significant chunks of history of the labor movement in the US, nothing new. Justice is a principle of employer-employee relations throughout the talmud. We are obligated to pay a just wage, to pay it promptly and by the way, collective bargaining has precedents in the talmud. Hoggishness is not kosher!

The update: the Companies agreed to meet and negotiate, then tried to pawn off a completely ridiculous resolution to the strike - how ridiculous?
They figured that now that the strike has been going on a while, the writers would be desperate to settle, so they came to the table with the same old proposals. I kid you not. They still categorically refused to consider payments to writers for profit-making material posted on the internet.
Since the writers weren't sufficiently softened up to be bowled over by this (sarcasm on) extremely generous offer(sarcasm off), the companies walked.

Please don't quit pressuring! Everyone, please continue (or start)to write to keep the heat on. Hey it's cold out there, don't let those greedy hogs win.

Sites like Fans4Writers, through UnitedHollywood's Pencils 2 Media Moguls campaign, can help you keep up the good work.

Writers deserve a fair share of the profits that companies make from their work.Where would these gargantuan companies be without their writers? Well, Writer (of novels, I don't know that she's ever written for TV) Emma Bull notes that during the last strike, "the Companies came up with reality TV. Do you want to reward behavior like that?"
Just imagine a world where people who come up with that crapola are writing everything available. DOn't you want the writers back?

Still thinking about the schechita...

One only kid; one.
In the beginning is the rush
of blood, and in the end.
My father bought for two zuzim
from the shepherd at the dairy.
Then came the shochet who slaughtered
in his bare arms and fur hat.
In his beard and his silence.
Only one.
The shepherd kneels
Lifts the goat in his arms
and carries him offstage.
Only one, and one, and one.
Then comes the malach hamavet
who killed the Shochet who slaughtered.
Only one. Only one. Only one.
The water quenched the fire that
tempered the steel.
Then came the Holy One, blessed be He,
and slew the malach hamavet
that killed the Shochet who slaughtered
the one only kid.
What was the Holy One waiting for?

Bic Pens reviewed for Amazon

A host of completely incredibly..... hilarious reviews. Yes, Of a Bic pen. Really, it's worth it, I promise.

HT to BoingBoing

The ghost of Adam Sandler

OK, so he's not dead yet, but it's clear that the one thing that he will be remembered for forever is the Chanukah Song. I have heard that song, however enough times already.

Still, I can't help but recommend this version. Possibly the only one I'll be able to still listen to by the 25th of this month. The lyrics are better too.

Yidcore - Punk Rock Chanukah Song

Add to My Profile | More Videos

I'm glad there are people out there writing more and better Chanukah songs though.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

It's a very funny post on BoingBoing, but you have to be familiar with the FSM phenomenon.

a nice chanukah story

For those of us who live in the diaspora and have to suffer through endless atmospheric muzak Christmas carols, wishes of merry Christmas and questions of "What do you mean you don't celebrate Christmas?" Lemony Snicket - the, er, children's writer, has written a story just for us.

It is about a latke who could not stop screaming - in fact, the latke feels more or less as all of us have at one winter season or another. The story features, in addition, a pine tree, a string of lights, a candy cane and an axe, but really, it's about Chanukah and hey, it does a pretty good job. You might consider getting it for non-Jewish friends, but I'd advise reading the book to make sure first.

Chad Gadya

Liveblogging from the Hazon Food Conference (for more see Jewschool's posts from YehuditBrachah).



We all have a huge amount to say about the goats. I'm not sure that this was planned, but in some ways, this topic has nearly taken over the Hazon Food Conference. And I do not think that this is necessarily a bad thing. The questions that have arisen throughout the past years, regarding the ethics of eating meat - especially kosher meat produced in factory farms, slaughtered in places like Agriprocessors, where the heart of kashrut seems to have bled right out are questions which are just right for the people of this new Jewish sustainable food movement to address.

And while there is a lot going on at this conference, your intrepid livebloggers (YehuditBrachah, KungFu Jew and KRG) have set aside an entire post to talk about the shchita and the conversations surrounding it.

Thursday night, the first night of the conference, Nigel Savage of Hazon started out by explaining how it came about that it was decided to shecht a goat this year at the food conference. Last year during the conference, Nigel asked meat eaters if they would still eat meat if they had to participate in the death of the animal: some said yes, others: no; he then asked the veggies if they would eat meat if they were part of its slaughtering: again, some said no, but others, yes. From this arose the idea to try to humanely schecht a goat at the Hazon Food conference.
That is how Nigel introduced the first panel of the conference: a panel including a shochet, Rabbi Yehuda ben Chemhoun, Rabbi Seth Mandel of the Orthodox Union, who oversees all American slaughterhouses, the shepherd who raised the goats Aitan Mizrahi, the woman who continued to shepherd them when the shepherd separated them from their dams (he is a dairy farmer, and this is how female goats are kept giving milk) Rachel Gall, Dr. Shamu Sadeh of Adamah and Simon Feil.

Chanukah for bad girls and boys

I love a man with a motorcycle menorah. Vroom vroom!
I'll take a real one, though, for myself.

Miss Brown to you

It seems to me that every time I go into a store and pull out a credit card to pay for something, the person looks at the name on the card and addresses me by my first name - or a variant of it. I am sure that they think that they are being friendly. Maybe it's even a store policy for its employees, but I have one thing to say about this: stop!

It doesn't just happen in stores. I have had this happen in doctors' and dentists' offices, at ticket counters, at University - in fact, any place where people have access to some amount of my personal information - even if it's a very small piece.
Perhaps it is a reaction to some real or imagined problem with the "how do you address a woman" after the reintroduction of the perfectly reasonable title of Ms. which like, Mrs. and Miss, are all abbreviations of the the term "mistress" meaning the same thing as Ma'am, short, of course, for "madam." I'm telling, you, just go with "ms." Believe me, you'll be corrected, if that's not what Mrs. Vanderbilt-Smythe prefers, and she'll still be less offended than if you addressed her as Amelia.

All this is actually a mask for a non-etiquette, or at least a different sort of etiquette, problem: Why Americans can't be formal. Yes, we seem to have lost the ability to have any sense of formality. Those folks who know me in person are no doubt wondering if I was hit on the head shortly before writing this post, but the truth is, even though my preferred style of dress is jeans and a t-shirt, maybe with a sweater when it gets cold, and high-tops pretty much year round, I think that we as a nation have really lost something. Not because I think we should all be wearing suits and ties and dinner dresses if we go out to a restaurant, or dressing up to go traveling on a train, but because our much loved "informality" is a cover-up for a loss of the ability to be intimate.

We believe that if we just call each other by first names all the time, we must be buds. It's just not true. What we have lost is the opportunity to get to know one another over time, to be granted the permission to call each other by gradations of intimacy as we get to know one another, the reproval of moving too quickly in a friendship and saying, "that's Miss Brown to you."

And informality covers up other ills, too. If you call your boss by his first name, we must be friends right? So then he has the right to call on you day or night, invite you to parties that aren't really parties, and which you must attend, and go on retreats in which you spend your weekend with people whom you may or may not like, but in any case you haven't the opportunity to choose, since you're obligated to be there on time you could spend with your family or friends. And if we're friends, then we don't need to engage in quarrelsome discussions about parental leave - why would you need that in your contract, we're all friends here - we can work that out when the time comes -unless of course, I don't want to, because it's not in your contract - why don't you take two weeks vacation, or just settle for FMLA unpaid? See you when you run out of money. And of course, there are plenty of workplaces where the "intimacy" goes only one way; the boss is Mr. Winston-Franklin, but everyone who is supervised is Joe and Janet. Don't you resent that, Jan?

In fact, I think that a certain level of business formality at work, and personal formality in acquaintances might very well go far to solving some of the problems we have with people not knowing how to behave in a variety of social and work situations.

I want to throw in, in my own defense, an exchange I had with someone some time ago. I was working on a cover letter for a job, or something like that, and my very good friend was helping me. I think that he had said that I should put some sort of statement in the letter that someone had made about me to show the kind of person I was and my qualities as an employee. So I put in the statement that a secretary (not my own) had said, that I treat everyone exactly the same, whether they were a president or a secretary. My friend responded along the lines of, "That's the best thing anyone has ever said about you?" I was kind of embarrassed, and took it out. But in retrospect, I wish I hadn't. I think that, actually, it is the best thing anyone has ever said about me. I can't imagine a better thing to say about someone.
And it's not like I'm super-formal in my work relationships, either. But it seems to me that among those who are informal, that informality tends to run only one way.

I have noticed that among many of my colleagues, informality is a tool used to promote one's own authority. And, God knows, we could use a little more kavod haRav - I do not begrudge my colleagues one bit of it. I don't know any shuls (outside of ultra-Orthodoxy) where when the rabbi comes to a room to teach, those being taught rise out of respect. It seems to me that to rise for those we claim to respect might be a good thing. Why? I know it seems kind of arrogant to ask people to rise for a person. But let's say we are rising for the role, which is teacher (for that matter, I'd love to see students taught to rise for all their teachers when class begins, but I don't see that getting past the first day of school before the parents call in screaming), rather than for the person. But perhaps there might be some way to show that calling the rabbi by her title and last name are better for the role than Rabbi first name - especially since some rabbis end up called by one thing and some by another, and just in case you were wondering, there does seem to be a large gender component to who gets called what. But perhaps the person teaching your community, who was respected enough to be hired for that purpose, ought to be given a modicum of distance (Thankfully this does leave me out, since I don't work in that kind of arrangement. Please continue to not call me by my title unless you're asking me for a psak). Because as rabbis know, the distance is there, whether it is acknowledged or not.

I guess what I am saying is that when we confuse informality with intimacy, we all lose, because actual intimacy gets brushed aside for a cheap substitute. I would rather spend a few years getting to know someone, and then having them say, "Oh, please call me Fred," then call them Fred right off, and not know whether or not we're really friends. Not to mention the scads of in-laws who can now stop wondering what to call their partner's parents, and settle for "Um," and "Ah," since they can't bring themselves to call their in-laws either Mom and Pop, as if their own had abandoned them and they'd been adopted by some kindly strangers, or John and Mary (or since I'm Jewish, let's say, Jonah and Miriam) but just also can't bring themselves to be "too formal" and call them Mr and Ms. because then the spouse's parents will think that the bride doesn't like them. If we could just acknowledge that sometimes there are roles we play to smooth our way in life, and that if we want friendships and more, we have to wait for them, we could start using more formal terms without making it seem as if we were rejecting the people we are addressing. Let's just make it a rule. And it seems to me also, that especially in terms of work, I'd really much rather call the janitor Mr. Johnson, than "Joe," -why should he have to suffer from being addressed as if he were my buddy, rather than my colleague in the work of making a certain place function?

And by the way, you at the salescounter, with the badge that says, "Sarah," can I call you Miss Brown, please?

Appalling or Hopeful: You Decide

Seen recently in Emek Refaim:

xp Jewschool

Meat

I know this will come as a surprise to many, but I actually like meat. I mean, I like to eat it, anyway. This Thanksgiving, I had a bunch of friends coming whom I really wanted to see who are very carnivorous, and so I agreed that there would be a turkey at the festivities.
This is not as simple as it sounds, since I have a kosher dairy/veggie kitchen, making it somewhat complicated to cook and serve the meat. We have glass dishes, which makes it a bit easier, but I spent oh so many ages kashering pans and getting aluminum tins, and kashering serving utensils, and of course, it's been some time since I prepared meat. SO I ended up looking up cooking times and so on, and in the end did a fine job. There was enough food for everyone, I didn't treif anything up (although I did have to borrow a carving knife from a friend. It survived the experience) and people seemed to think everything was tasty.
I have to say though, I don't think I'll do it again. It's not that it was a pain. I actually didn't mind that so much, and I still like the taste of meat, as rarely as I eat it. And it's not that difficult in this area to find non-Rubashkin's kosher meat, if one is careful ( Check the Trader Joe's labels - some of them are sublabels of Rubashkin's). It was the smell.

For several says after I prepared the turkey, no matter how or with what I scrubbed my hands, I couldn't get the smell of - well, there's no nice way to say it- corpse off my hands.
It was really pretty nauseating.
So, I guess I'll just have to live with not eating meat, or the occasional night out at a kosher place. Not so many in this area, so mostly when I travel to LA, NYC or Israel, I guess.

90s nostaligia momentt

Which, remembering the 90's as I do, must be rare as hen's teeth.

Rubashkin's: will it never end?

The latest from the Forward: United Food and Commercial Workers are now entering the fray over Rubashkin's skeezy practices in their plants. As the Forward reported, "Activists with United Food and Commercial Workers stood outside kosher supermarkets and Trader Joe’s stores around the country last Wednesday, distributing fliers that purported to be a 'Kosher Food Safety Alert.' The fliers cited controversial reports — many of them published in the Forward — about food-safety issues at the Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse." They also made automated phone calls to households in Orthodox neighborhoods and placed full-page advertisements in Jewish newspapers.

Most of these will be violations that if you read Jewschool or Failed Messiah's excellent coverage, you will already know about - the bribery, the unsafe food handling practices, and of course the mistreatment of non-Jewish workers, prompting the Conservative Movement's creation (at least in theory) of the Hechsher Tzedek. I want to emphasize a citation from Failed Messiah's post on the topic which comes from the USDA's inspector:

There were also at least five instances in which AgriProcessors was cited for not taking the required measures to fend off Mad Cow disease. In one instance, an inspector says he asked for a suspicious cow to be taken off the line and later discovered that the cow had been slaughtered with the rest of the animals. The inspector says he informed someone at the company of the “very serious noncompliance that had occurred.”

I emphasize these words because, of course, Agriprocessor's response, published on its Web site and in Yeshiva World News, was simply to deny, deny deny. “Concerns about Mad Cow disease are simply wrong,” the letter said. “We have never had product from any suspect animals leave our plant.” they claim.

Astonishingly, according to KosherToday,a trade publication that has defended AgriProcessors, none of this has hurt Agriprocessor sales. In fact, they claim that to the contrary, “The net effect of the onslaught against Agri was that sales of its products in some stores have risen by as much as 30% and it has opened an unprecedented number of new accounts.”

Money is the name of the game

Just in case you've been vacationing in outer Mongolia and missed the fact that the Writer's Guild of America is striking, here's a short brought to you by the writers of the Daily Show to outline the very salient points of why we should all be supporting them. It's actually pretty simple. The major corporations who employ them want tofail to compensate them for their work when they use it in another medium, such as say, DVD residuals and internet downloads. The best part, of course, is how they talk outof both sides of their mouths about what such work is worth. It's worth nothing, if they have to pay, but a billion per year, if they're not getting paid. Hmmm.

Just to add, for those who are not familiar - corporate CEOs: not hurting for money. Writers whose humor, insight and sweat produce those shows: not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination.



How can you help?
Click here.

Giving Thanks

I know that everyone is very hyped on the now viral information that Thanksgiving is actually based on the biblical holiday of Sukkot. Nu, so gesuntaheit.
IN the meantime, I've been thinking for some time about some things for which I am thankful that people don't normally get to hear. Everyone, of course, is thankful for their imas and abbas (mothers and fathers) but how many people get to say that they're thankful for their mother and father in law?
I'm not claiming they change clothing to tights in a phonebooth or anything, but I think it's worthwhile to say that I am very grateful for all kinds of things about them - beyond the fact that they produced the guy whom I married almost 13 years ago. For example, I am grateful that my mother in law is interesting and often funny and tells great stories about her work. I am grateful that she is an unabashed liberal who puts her time where her mouth is defending girls who need an abortion and can't tell their parents and so have to go to court. I am grateful that both she and my father in law, while interested in my and DH's lives, have never tried to interfere with bizarre child rearing practices that I must do on fear of displeasure, nor have they expressed any opinion ever about how many children we ought to have - and I can't even imagine their doing so. I am grateful that my FIL is interested in genealogy, and that he likes to hang out with his GS. I am grateful that they both like to travel and send us postcards from wherever they go. And sometimes even when they don't go.

On an unrelated gratitude note:
I'm also grateful for my former classmates and now colleagues and all their love and support and friendship, which I continue to be blessed by years after we mostly all have moved to cities far from one another.

Happy thanksgiving, or perhaps we should call it Sukkot Sheni.
הודו ליי כי טוב
Turkey for God, because it is good! (or perhaps, give thanks to God, because God is good; polecat/woodkitty)

Up and down the ladder

I know that this portion is over and we're on to the next thing, but perhaps since my travels overlapped with it a little, I can squeeze just a little more juice out of it this week before I put it away.

It's nothing profound really, just that this week I find myself ba'aretz. Usually, I suppose, we must identify ourselves with Yakov, but unlike Yakov, I already knew that God was in this place; I did not need to dream to see the angels, nor to understand that God protects us in all our travels to Jerusalem, and of course, that as Rebbe Nachman said, that wherever I travel, I travel to Jerusalem.
But this time, perhaps I feel a bit more like the angels going up and down on that ladder. I have a purpose for being here, and I pray that as a servant of the HKBH, I will be able to fullfil it, but only God can ensure that end, ultimately.
And I have been the angel going up the ladder, and soon I will be the angel going down. And perhaps it is well to remember that even if I am unlike the angels in that I spend more time at the foot of the ladder, than its top, that in order to carry out one's mission, one has to go down. And that one can love even places that one goes to carry out, rather than those to which one will return.

Holiday PR brainstorming ideas gone awry

Jones soda, which produces some normally pretty tasty flavors, and which I normally like for their failure to use High Fructose Corn Syrup, has apparently decided that all press is good press, and all flavors are good flavors. For the winter holiday season this year they have impartially produced (respectively) a Christmas and a Chanukah soda flavors pack.
The Christmas flavors include Christmas Ham Soda, Christmas Tree Soda, Egg Nog Soda and Sugar Plum Soda; the Chanuka flavors Latke Soda, Apple Sauce Soda, Chocolate Coins Soda and Sufganiya, which they call "Jelly Doughnut Soda."

I note that they have decided that it would be amusing to horrify one's friends by allowing observant Jews to snarf ham flavored soda at their Chanuka parties by making it kosher. SInce it is not yet Thanksgiving, this is at least an episode of Christmas creep, although I note with relief that at least they did not bring it out before Halloween. Shopping at a number of stores this year, I found myself inundated by rows of red and green items and Christmas carols (Which, by and large, I detest) before the end of October. Significantly before. I expect before the end of the decade to stock up on earplugs before August begins.

xp Jewschool

Effortlessly skinny people, I fart in your general direction...

According to a recent article in the New York Times,"overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from a grab bag of diseases that includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, infections and lung disease. And that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease."

This isn't exactly a carte blanche to snork out at the trough, since obese people still die at a higher rate - as do underweight people. But interestingly what we consider to be "overweight" may actually be a more appropriate weight level, as long as people are eating well and exercising and otherwise generally healthy (what the fat activists have been saying for some time, BTW). Despite the fact that culturally, Americans think that even normal weight people are actually somewhat unattractive (cf the slightly stale collection of snarkery over Britney Spears unflattering outfit at some awards event, when it is perfectly clear that the woman, whatever else is wrong with her, is NOT overweight), it turns out that our ideas of what is attractive may not be what is healthy - uh, well, duh. Any other surprises out there?

I wanna be perfected, too

'Nuff said.