Eating Twinkies with God - A Modern Day Parable by Meir Kay

Filmmaker Meir Kay created a parable called Eating Twinkies with God, starring a young boy named John James Cronin. A Catholic school kindergartener and an Orthodox Jewish filmmaker. It's an unusual team, but one that has created a stir in the blogosphere.

In the film, the boy takes a package of Twinkies from his kitchen and heads out, as he explains to his mother, to find God. And then......

The moral of the story: We don't need to look for and wide for God. He's in every one of us and in every thing that we do. Whether you believe or not, we all can agree that by helping each other, each good act that we do makes this world a brighter place. Let us rise to the occasion and be kinder to each other, to help one another. We are all on the same team.

Fox 5's Dar Alexander spoke to the two of them about the meaning of this heart-warming short film.

Here's the short film, followed by the TV interview.

Enjoy!

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Sounds of the Soul - The Contribution of Jewish Music

Music is an integral part of Jewish life. From synagogue prayer services to at home religious observances, we pass our histories, myths, and legends through story and song. While Jews have dispersed many times, we've always taken our music with us.

Jewish writers, composers, and performers have made major contributions to the world of music. "Nobody does it better".  Some of the Jewish names in this video may surprise you. It was shown for the first time at the recent Genesis 2016 awards ceremony in Israel.

Enjoy!

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(A tip of the kippah to Julian Brook and Rabbi Moshe Edelman for bringing this video to our attention.)

Two Jewish Boys Help Fallen Sponge Bob in Prank on Jimmy Kimmel Show

Jimmy Kimmel, the late night TV talk show host, periodically plays a game with unsuspecting people on the street called How Long. It's a social experiment to see how much time goes by between someone falling down in the street in obvious distresss and a kind bystander coming to their rescue .
 
For this experiment, an actor who regularly wears a SpongeBob SquarePants costume on Hollywood Boulevard suddenly collapsed in the middle of his act and lay on his back calling out that he's fallen and can't get up.

The countdown timer ticks off the seconds and minutes as runners jump over him and one man pauses to take a photo of the fallen character with his smartphone. Lots of people pass by without offering help. 

Finally after almost seven minutes, a pair of young Jewish boys wearing black kippot and hoodies walk by and help SpongeBob to his feet. Then, joined by two of their friends, the group of five launches into a Hava Nagila song and dance. Kimmel comments "It's turning into a Bar Mitzvah out there."

Enjoy!

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Jewish Traces in Unexpected Places: The Talmud is a Best-Seller in South Korea

Last week The New Yorker published a fascinating article about the Talmud being a best-seller in South Korea, finding a place in most homes.

According to the author, Ross Arbes, who studied the Talmud in a day school in Atlanta, the Talmud's presence in Korea is attributable to Marvin Tokayer, a 78-year-old rabbi who lives in Great Neck, New York.

In 1962, Rabbi Tokayer served as an Air Force chaplain in Japan and South Korea, and returned to Tokyo in 1968 as the rabbi of the Jewish Community of Japan.

In the June 23 issue of The New Yorker, Arbes writes:

In 2011, the South Korean Ambassador to Israel at the time, Young-sam Ma, was interviewed on the Israeli public-television show “Culture Today.” “I wanted to show you this,” he told the host, straying briefly from the topic at hand, a Korean film showing in Tel Aviv.

It was a white paperback book with “Talmud” written in Korean and English on the cover, along with a cartoon sketch of a Biblical character with a robe and staff. “Each Korean family has at least one copy of the Talmud. Korean mothers want to know how so many Jewish people became geniuses.”

Looking up at the surprised host, he added, “Twenty-three per cent of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish people. Korean women want to know the secret. They found the secret in this book.”

Here is a clip from the interview:

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Oldie But Goodie: Frank Sinatra Fights Anti-Semitism With "The House I Live In"

The House I Live In is a ten-minute short film written by Albert Maltz, produced by Frank Ross and Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Frank Sinatra. 

Made to oppose anti-Semitism and racial prejudice at the end of World War II, it received an Honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946.

In 2007, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Sinatra, apparently playing himself, takes a "smoke" break from a recording session. He sees more than 10 boys chasing a Jewish boy and intervenes, first with dialogue; then with a little speech). His main points are that we are "all" Americans and that just one American's blood is as good as another, all our religions are equally to be respected.

In the film, Sinatra sings the title song, and his recording became a national hit.

The song was memorably covered in later years by Paul Robeson, Mahalia Jackson, and Josh White. Sam Cooke also covered it. Sinatra continued to include it in his repertory, performing it in the Nixon White House and at the 1985 inaugural ceremonies of Ronald Reagan. Bill Cosby used a recording to open some of his shows in 2002.

Enjoy!

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Subways Are For Sleeping - Hoodie Meets Yarmulke on Q Train - The Story Behind the Viral Photo

Back in 1961 a musical called Subways are for Sleeping with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne debuted on Broadway. 

Last week the phrase took on new meaning as a photo snapped on a New York City subway train went viral on the Internet. As reported on ABC-TV Eyewitness News, a young African-American man wearing a hoodie fell asleep on the shoulder of a man wearing a yarmulke and continued to snooze for a half hour as the train rumbled along. 

Isaac Theil, a retired accountant, was headed home on the Q subway train to Queens when the passenger sitting next to him rested his head on Theil's shoulder. Sensing a New York moment, an unidentified photographer captured the image and uploaded it to the Internet.

As Reuven Blau reported in the New York Daily News,

Another rider was amazed at the scene — a black man sleeping on the shoulder of a white man in a yarmulke — so he gently asked if he wanted help to wake the slumbering straphanger.

"He had a long day so let him sleep. We've all been there," Theil responded.

The other rider captured the moment with a quick cell phone picture that he then posted online with a brief explanation.

The picture and caption has gone viral on the Internet, with 1.3 million “likes” and 172,563 shares on Facebook. It’s also received a whopping 228 comments on reddit, where it was originally posted.

"There's still hope in humanity," said Facebook user Michael Bartley, whose comment alone got 13,583 likes.

"I don't see a black man and a Jewish man — I see two people," added Georgina Gainsford-De Giogrio.

Theil, an Orthodox Jew, is surprised by all the attention — and there was a lot of it, thanks to social media.

"I just kept steady so he would be able to sleep," said Theil, who had been returning home from watching his granddaughter on the Upper East Side. "It wasn't easy to do because he was dead weight."

And the reddit user who started it all is amazed how it has become an international sensation.

"It really wasn't about the ethnicity of the people," he told The News, asking to remain anonymous. "It was just more that New Yorkers, especially in the subway, don't want to touch people or have them get in their personal space. That was striking to me and made me smile and I thought was a very nice gesture."

Alas, the unidentified man wasn't able to doze off the whole ride because Theil had to exit the train at Newkirk Ave.

"I didn't want to scare him awake," Theil recalled. "I turned around to look at him and he was dazed."

Enjoy!

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90-Year-Old Jewish Holocaust Survivor Makes Symphony Debut With Yo-Yo Ma

A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor made his orchestral debut with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma last week to benefit a foundation dedicated to preserving the work of artists and musicians killed by the Nazis.

As reported by the Associated Press, Ma and George Horner received floral bouquets and a standing ovation from their audience of about 1,000 people in Boston's Symphony Hall. They appeared to enjoy their evening, chatting briefly between numbers and walking off the stage hand-in-hand after taking a bow together.

Before the performance, Ma and Horner met and embraced ahead of a brief rehearsal. Ma thanked Horner for helping the Terezin Music Foundation, named for the town of Terezin, site of an unusual Jewish ghetto in what was then German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Even amid death and hard labor, Nazi soldiers there allowed prisoners to stage performances.

They played music composed 70 years ago when Horner was incarcerated.

"It's an extraordinary link to the past," said concert organizer Mark Ludwig, who leads the foundation.

Horner played piano and accordion in the Terezin cabarets, including tunes written by fellow inmate Karel Svenk. On Tuesday, Horner played two of Svenk's works solo — a march and a lullaby — and then teamed up with Ma for a third piece called "How Come the Black Man Sits in the Back of the Bus?"

Svenk did not survive the genocide. But his musical legacy has, due in part to a chance meeting of Ludwig, a scholar of Terezin composers, and Horner, who never forgot the songs that were written and played in captivity.

Still, Ludwig found it hard to ask Horner to perform pieces laden with such difficult memories.

"To ask somebody who ... played this in the camps, that's asking a lot," said Ludwig.

Yet Horner, a retired doctor who lives near Philadelphia, readily agreed to what he described as a "noble" mission. It didn't hurt that he would be sharing the stage with Ma — even if he thought Ludwig was joking at first.

"I told him, 'Do you want me to swallow that one?'" Horner recalled with a laugh. "I couldn't believe it because it's a fantastic thing for me."

Ma said before the performance that he hoped it will inspire people to a better future.

In this video, NBC's Brian Williams introduces a short summary of the event.

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My Parents Brainwashed Me - A Student's Wise Response

"One day I was in school, in class, explaining my Judaism when one student had the audacity to exclaim 'You're only Jewish because your parents forced you to be. You don't pray to God because you want to.'

'You only pray to God because your parents made you think you have to. You don't keep the laws because of your own free will...your parents just made you feel guilty if you didn't keep them. Your parents brainwashed you your whole life...You don't really know anything about anything.'"

That experience motivated student Ethan Metzger to write a poem about it and read it aloud at a poetry session in the Bronx earlier this year. In the poem, Ethan agreed that his parents did brainwash him. As early as he can remember, his parents brainwashed him to have respect for other people. They contaminated his childhood with lessons about faith and love and character and yes, religion too.

Ethan ended his poem with "You can call it brainwashing if you want. I call it teaching."
 
The first annual Bronx Youth Poetry Slam took place in the Kingsbridge Library and was organized by the local community board. Ethan didn't win the poetry competition, but his words resonated with many of the attendees. But his real audience was the internet,and the thousands of people who agree with him and are forwarding the video to their friends. 

We think it's a worthy message and we join in the distribution of Ethan's message to the world.

Enjoy!

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(A tip of the kippah to Sheila Zucker for bringing this video to our attention.)

Jewish Traces in Unexpected Places: Yiddish on a Carolina Mountaintop

For 35 summers, a mountaintop in Wildacres, North Carolina has been a gathering place for up to 110 guests of the Charlotte Yiddish Institute, a group that is united by one thing -- their love for the Yiddish language.

They hail from all over the United States, as well as from Mexico, Uruguay, and Argentina. During the four-day program, the guests are treated to Yiddish singing, dancing, klezmer music, poetry readings, sharing meals, and walks in the woods.

The narrator in Yiddish (with English subtitles) says that it was hard to keep the audience members in their seats, but we suspect that some, including the lady caught by the camera busily knitting during a performance, may have found it hard to stand up.

For anyone not fluent in Yiddish, which probably includes most of our readers, we apologize for the minute-long poetry reading without any subtitles. Also included in the video is a three minute interview with one of the founders that, if you'll forgive our Yiddish, shleppt zich a bissel. But all in all, we think it's good to see that Yiddish is still alive outside of the Catskills.

Enjoy!

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Remembering the Songs and Humor of Eydie Gorme

On Sunday we noted with sadness the passing of Eydie Gorme, half of the always happy, always ebullient singing team of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. Through the decades we enjoyed their song stylings, their comedy skits, and their serving as a model of a happy and proud Jewish couple committed to each other for life.

JTA's report included a quote from Steve Allen, host of the show that became The Tonight Show, which regularly featured the duo, on what made them so successful.

“What has been the nature of their success?” Allen said in a 1996 Times story. “First, the fact that they are a couple has something to do with it.

Secondly, they are damned good singers. And thirdly – this has both hurt and helped them – they concentrated for the most part on good music. This lost them the youthful audience, who prefer crap to Cole Porter’s music. But it endeared them to people with sophisticated taste.”

Gorme was born August 16, 1928, in the Bronx, New York, to Sephardic Jewish immigrants. Her father was a tailor from Sicily and her mother was from Turkey. Before her singing career took off, Gorme worked as a Spanish-language interpreter.

We never met Steve and Eydie in person, but they always seemed part of the family, and we followed their appearances on stage, on TV, and in records.

There are so many video clips of Eydie singing by herself and with Steve that we could share, but we settled on the following three:

1. Black and white newsreel footage of their wedding, with Steve in a black hat under the chuppah, and Steve feeding wedding cake to Eydie and to comedian Joe E. Lewis.

2. An audio clip from one of our favorite Steve and Eydie productions, a made-for-TV special called What it Was, Was Love by Gordon Jenkins, a story of a couple who meet, fall in love, marry and grow old together, told entirely in song.

3. An audio recording of Steve and Eydie singing Bashana Ha'ba'ah in Hebrew and English (lyrics and translation below the video), as we look forward to the start of another Jewish New Year.

Enjoy!

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HEBREW LYRICS TRANSLITERATED:
Bashana haba'ah neshev al hamirpeset
Venispor tziporim nodedot
Yeladim bechufsha yesachaku tofeset
Bein habayit ulvein hasadot

Od tireh od tireh
Kama tov yiheyeh
Bashana bashana haba'ah

Anavim adumim yavshilu ad ha'erev
Veyugshu tzonenim lashulchan
Veruchot redumim yisu el eim haderech
Itonim yeshanim ve'anan

Od tireh od tireh
Kama tov yiheyeh
Bashana bashana haba'ah 

TRANSLATION:
Next year we will sit on the porch
And count all the wandering birds
Children on vacation will play catch
Between the house and the fields

You will see how good it will be
Next year

Red grapes will ripen by evening
And be served cold to the table
Pleasant breezes will blow on to the roads
Old newspapers and clouds
 
ENGLISH LYRICS:
Seasons come, seasons go
but people never seem to know
how long it will rain, or it will shine
Let them ask what will be,
it doesn't mean a thing to me,
I know what will be when you're mine.

Italian Secular Jewish Photographer Casts Ultra-Orthodox Women in a New Light

The world of ultra-Orthodox women can seem to be a mysterious one, when seen from the outside looking in. For documentary photographer Federica Valabrega, a secular Jew herself, her interest in this world led to a photo project which would ultimately challenge her own assumptions about these women.

Valabrega, originally from Rome, Italy, moved to Brooklyn in 2009 to photograph the women in a project that she calls Bat Melech (Daughter of the King). She was surprised to find that "Jewish women are not just at home making soup and cooking matzo balls and changing diapers. I met women who work at Goldman Sachs. I met women who have their own business."

She also traveled to Israel and France, and plans to visit Morocco and Tunisia to include photographs of religious communities in those countries.

The project will be on display in Italy and Israel later this year. She is also working on a book to accompany the exhibit.

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Mandy Patinkin Sings Take Me Out to the Ball Game and God Bless America - in Yiddish!

On Sunday we posted two videos of Brooklyn chasidim singing the National Anthem and God Bless America before a baseball game in Coney Island. This chorus, whose first language is Yiddish, sang the two American patriotic songs in English (with a little help from a smartphone.)

Today we're posting the flip side. American singer and actor Mandy Patinkin released a CD album a few years ago that included his rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game and God Bless America -- in

Yiddish! The audio clips were turned into a video by MyZeidi Video Productions.
  
We think it's appropriate to share this gem during this 80th anniversary year of Hank Greenberg's rookie year with the Detroit Tigers. Greenberg was the first Jewish superstar in all of American professional sports. He attracted national attention in 1934 when he refused to play on Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays, even though the Tigers were in the middle of a pennant race and he never claimed to be a religiously observant, practicing Jew. Greenberg is widely considered as one of the greatest sluggers in baseball history.

Enjoy!

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Queens Boy Spells Knaidel to Win Spelling Bee. But is the Spelling Kosher?

Knaidlach (Knaydlach?) in Chicken Soup

On Thursday night, Sports network ESPN showed a live broadcast of the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, in which 13-year-old Queens student Arvind Mahankali won $30,000 by spelling KNAIDEL.

But the event triggered controversy among Yiddish linguists and matzo ball soup lovers. Is KNAIDEL the correct spelling? Shouldn't it be KNEIDEL or KNAYDEL?

The controversy boiled over into a front page article in yesterday's New York Times by Joseph Berger, titled Some Say the Spelling of a Winning Word Just Wasn't Kosher.

Reporting in the Times, Berger wrote:

Somebody may have farblondjet, or gone astray, the Yiddish experts say.

The preferred spelling has historically been kneydl, according to transliterated Yiddish orthography decided upon by linguists at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the organization based in Manhattan recognized by many Yiddish speakers as the authority on all things Yiddish. 

The spelling contest, however, relies not on YIVO linguists but on Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, and that is what contestants cram with, said a bee spokesman, Chris Kemper. Officials at Merriam-Webster, the dictionary’s publisher, defended their choice of spelling as the most common variant of the word from a language that, problematically, is written in the Hebrew, not Roman, alphabet.

“Bubbes in Boca Raton are using the word knaidel when they mail in their recipes to The St. Petersburg Times,” said Kory Stamper, an associate editor at Merriam-Webster in Springfield, Mass. The dictionary itself says the English word is based on the Yiddish word for dumpling: “kneydel, from Middle High German knödel.” 

If nothing else, the dispute is a window into the cultural stews that languages like Yiddish, not to mention English, become as people migrate and assimilate. The word was spelled on Thursday — correctly, according to contest officials — by Arvind V. Mahankali, 13, an eighth grader from Bayside, Queens, who is a son of immigrants from southern India and New York City’s first national champion since 1997. He has never eaten an actual knaidel. (It is pronounced KNEYD-l.)

A better choice for the spelling contest might have been Buccigross, the last name of the ESPN sportscaster who reported the event. Look closely at the opening of the video and you'll see that his name is misspelled by his own channel as John Boocheygrass. The name of his colleague, Steve Levy, is also misspelled as Steve Levee. Who says ESPN doesn't make misteaks?

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25,000 Hasidim Attend Second Biggest Wedding Ever in Jerusalem

Photo: Reuters

Last week, the Jerusalem neighborhood of Kiryat Belz was the scene of the second biggest wedding ever held in Israel. On Tuesday evening, under a chuppah built for the occasion in the center of the sector, Shalom Rokeach, the 18-year-old grandson of the Belzer Rebbe, leader of the Belz Hasidic dynasty, married Hanna Batya Penet, his 19-year-old bride in the presence of 25,000 guests (no, that's not a misprint.)

In this video you can see the bride, completely veiled, escorted by two female relatives holding candles, circling the groom seven times. After the chuppah, the men adjourned for an all-night celebration at the Belz synagogue. The women had their own celebration a mile away at Binyanei Ha'Uma, Jerusalem's large convention center.

In the last half minute of the video, the camera pulls back from the chuppah so you can see the magnitude of the crowd and the setting.

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If you're wondering why 25,000 guests didn't make it the biggest wedding ever, The Times of Israel reported that the wedding of Rokeach’s parents in 1993 was the largest in the city’s modern history, drawing 30,000 people, who gobbled down 3.1 tons of potatoes, 1.5 tons of gefilte fish and 39,000 gallons of soda in celebration.

Members of various Hasidic sects, the national-religious world and Sephardi Judaism also attended the wedding.

The leader of the Gur Hasidic sect, the biggest in Israel, and the Lithuanian Ultra-Orthodox community each received a special welcome from the Belz Rabbi, as did Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

For a close-up view of all aspects of the wedding, click here to check out the photo album posted by the Haredi web site Vos iz Neias. 

The Belz Great Synagogue is the biggest synagogue in Jerusalem, with an ark that is so huge it has been included in the Guiness Book of World Records. This imposing monolith of a building is located in northern Jerusalem and was built by the Belz Hasidim, a Hasidic sect dating to the nineteenth century. The Belz Great Synagogue is also significant for its uncanny resemblance to the Holy Temple built by Herod thousands of years ago.

Like the original Belz synagogue in Europe that was destroyed by the Nazis, the Belz Great Synagogue in Jerusalem took 15 years to build. The building was dedicated in 2000 and now towers imposingly in the Jerusalem skyline, rising above the surrounding apartment complexes like a new incarnation of the Holy Temple. The project was financed by the Belz community as well as by philanthropic donations.

The main interior of the synagogue can house up to 6,000 worshipers—an unheard of number for most synagogues, which usually seat hundreds or less. The record-breaking ark is 12 meters high, weighs 18 tons, and can hold 70 Torah scrolls. (In contrast, most synagogue arks can hold about six or less.)

Nine chandeliers gracing the synagogue are each strung with 200,000 pieces of Czech crystal, lending the sanctuary a lofty ballroom splendor. Since it is so huge, the building is utilized not just for prayer, but also for weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and communal events. Smaller study halls and communal facilities are included in the building.

The original Belz synagogue, located in the Ukrainian town of Belz, was similar in size to the new Jerusalem version. The building was destroyed in 1939 by the Nazis, who first attempted to burn it down. When the synagogue proved too huge to be destroyed by such means, the Nazis forced the Jews of the community to dismantle the synagogue one stone at a time.

Now it has been rebuilt in Jerusalem and stands as the center of a thriving Belz community.

My Yiddishe Mamme - Cantor and Rock Star Join In Mother's Day Tribute From Australia

Today is Mother's Day in many countries, including the United States and Australia.

One of the best loved musical tributes to Jewish mothers is the song My Yiddishe Mamme, written by Jack Yellen and Lew Pollack in 1925. It was first recorded by Willie Howard, and was made famous in vaudeville by Belle Baker and by Sophie Tucker, and later by the Barry Sisters. 

The song has been sung and recorded in many languages since then. In 2009, Cantor Yitzhak Meir Helfgot, one of the greatest and most important cantorial voices of the 21st century, sang it in a concert at the Central Synagogue in Sydney, Australia. He was joined by Jimmy Barnes, Australia's most successful Rock & Roll singer, in an English/Yiddish duet.

Writing in J-Wire, Jewish Online News from Australia and New Zealand, Henry Benjamin reported:

Barnes later took to the stage by himself to sing a solo version of “What a Wonderful World”. But before he performed he told the audience that he had telephoned his mother yesterday to ask her why she had given him a Star of David when he was about 18.

He told the crowd that his mother had said: “My mother gave it to me and her mother had given to her so I thought I would give it to you.” He then said that he had asked his mother if her grandmother was Jewish and she replied that she was and that her name was Esther.

Barnes continued: “If I get this right, my great grandmother was Jewish, my grandmother was Jewish, my mother is Jewish so I must be Jewish.”  If he was expecting a welcome home, he got it in spades as the crowd applauded the story rapturously.

We hope you enjoy the Helfgot/Barnes rendition of My Yiddishe Mamme and we wish all of our readers a happy Mother's Day.

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Florida Rabbi Celebrates His Bar Mitzvah 47 Years Late

Rabbi Leonid Feldman celebrated his Bar Mitzvah last month in Temple Beth El in West Palm Beach, Florida, the synagogue where he is the spiritual leader. But next week he's turning 60. Why a Bar Mitzvah celebration now?

As Betty Nelander wrote in the Palm Beach Daily News:

As a 13-year-old growing up in the Soviet Republic of Moldavia, Feldman was denied this opportunity since Jews there could not practice or study Judaism or Jewish culture. He never heard of a bar mitzvah, a synagogue or the Holocaust when he was 13 and living under Communism.

“I say to people: ‘It is unusual. Usually you get bar-mitzvahed and then you become a rabbi. I am going backwards,’ ” said Feldman, who has performed hundreds of bar mitzvahs. “To be honest, there is no law that you have to be bar mitzvahed. Think about it: There are 3 million Russian Jews have never heard about bar mitzvah but they are Jews. A million and a half of them live in Israel and they still don’t know anything about it.

“American Jews take it for granted,” said Feldman.

Leaving behind religious suppression in Russia, Feldman went to Israel for three years. He then traveled to Italy for a year, and arrived in America in 1980. He moved to South Florida in 1988, a year after becoming a U.S. citizen. He was the spiritual leader Temple Emanu-El of Palm Beach for 12 years. He then was the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Miami Beach until 2004.

For the first 6 minutes and 20 seconds, he speaks as the thirteen-year-old he was in Kishinev and how he hates his name and hates being a Jew. Then he abruptly shifts to the present and delivers a moving Bar Mitzvah speech about how he loves Judaism and believes that Judaism is the most beautiful thing ever created. 

Enjoy the video. Shabbat shalom.

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)



(A tip of the kippah and a copyof our e-book, Jewish Humor on Your Desktop, Volume 3: Humor in Jewish Life, to Jonathan Minsberg for bringing this video to our attention.)

Jewish Traces in Unexpected Places: The Tribe of Menashe, a Lost Tribe of Israel, Returns

The Bnei Menashe (sons of Manasseh) claim descent from one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, who were sent into exile by the Assyrian Empire more than 27 centuries ago.

Their ancestors wandered through Central Asia and the Far East for centuries, before settling in what is now northeastern India, along the border with Burma and Bangladesh.

Throughout their sojourn in exile, the Bnei Menashe continued to practice Judaism just as their ancestors did, including observing the Sabbath, keeping kosher, celebrating the festivals and following the laws of family purity. And they continued to nourish the dream of one day returning to the land of their ancestors, the Land of Israel.

In recent years, Shavei Israel has brought some 1,700 Bnei Menashe back home to Zion. Another 7,200 still remain in India, waiting for the day when they too will be able to return to Israel and the Jewish people. 

The video below shows scenes of the Bnei Menashe arriving at Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv and their daily activities in communities around Israel.

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)    

A Special Performance: Israeli-Iranian Singer Rita Rocks the United Nations

Last Tuesday evening a very special event took place in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York City. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was there to introduce the program and he was followed by Vuk Jeremic of Serbia, the president of the General Assembly and Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to the UN.

But this was anything but a UN Israel-bashing session. In fact, there was nothing but praise for Israel and the Jewish people. It was a concert featuring Rita, Israel's most celebrated and successful singer and her nine-piece band, only the third time that the diplomatic venue was converted into a concert hall. Rita, whose full name is Rita Yahan-Farouz, was born in Teheran and immigrated to Israel with her family when she was eight years old.

As Yitzhak Benhorin wrote in Yediot Aharonot's Ynetnews.com,

Under the banner, "Tunes for peace," the Israeli singer performed at the UN headquarters in New York in the presence of the UN secretary-general, the General Assembly president, ambassadors, diplomats and Jewish community leaders. An Iranian television crew was also spotted in the auditorium.

The idea, according to the concert's organizers, led by Israel Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor, is to "convey a message of multiculturalism, harmony and peace – the foundations of the United Nations organization." Rita sang on stage in Hebrew, English and Farsi, languages which she said "represent ancient civilizations."

The General Assembly hall was packed. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed Rita and the audience cheered, whistled and danced in the aisles.

This is probably the longest video we have ever posted, running about an hour and 20 minutes. We don't expect everyone to watch the entire show, but it's here in case you want to. If you're rushed for time, we suggest watching the first fifteen minutes of speeches praising Israel, and skipping ahead to the one hour mark, when the Persian singing and dancing starts to get wild, and to the 1:10 mark, when Rita launches into one of her most popular songs in Hebrew, The Legend of the Sun and the Moon.

Enjoy! 

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)

12-Year-Old Israeli Performer Sings Yiddish Classics

Last year in Jerusalem's International Conference Center at a party celebrating the mass Bar Mitzvah of 110 orphaned boys coordinated by Colel Chabad, professional child singer Daniel Pruzansky sang two Yiddshe classics: A Yiddishe Mamme and Oyfn Pripetchik. 

Daniel Pruzansky was born in 1999 and he lives in Rosh Ha'ayin. He plays the piano and clarinet and knows how to sing opera. When he was six he won the first place in a young talent competition becoming the solo singer of the band Kinderlach. At the age of nine he released his first album which contains sixteen songs and he represented Israel at the Slavic Bazaar festival two years ago.

Daniel and five girl singers have formed a band called Kids.il. The group’s name refers to Israel’s international domain suffix, which is .il. Working with musician Ohad Hitman, they wrote the song Let the Music Win, the Israeli entry in the Junior Eurovision contest. 

In the first video below, Daniel sings A Yiddishe Mamme and Oyfn Pripetchik. The video that follows is the official entry in the Junior Eurovision contest, with Kids.il singing the chorus in four languages: English, Russian, French, and Hebrew.  

Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO IS NOT VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.) 

(A tip of the kippah and a copy of our e-book Jewish Humor on Your Desktop: Humor in Jewish Life to May Herlands for bringing this talented young singer to our attention.)

Orthodox Jewish Stars Shine in All Walks of Life

What do Senator Joe Lieberman, best-selling novelist Faye Kellerman, professional boxer Dmitriy Salita, former HBO producer Jamie Geller, Rhodes Scholar Miriam Rosenbaum, the Maccabeats, and Hasidic comedian/actor Mendy Pellin have in common?

They're all highly successful in their mainstream careers while also remaining true to Torah observance. In other words, they're Orthodox Jews.  

A new video, produced by Jew in the City, showcases these and other Orthodox Jews who talk about their careers and experiences being religious and successful in the world. The goal is to break down the stereotype that all Orthodox Jews are rabbis or homemakers -- in reality, many are successful in all walks of life.

Through YouTube videos, blogs, Q&A's, and articles in traditional print media, Jew in the City (through its founder, Allison Josephs and a group of volunteers) publicizes the message that Orthodox Jews can be funny, approachable, educated, pro-women and open-minded, and that Orthodox Judaism links the Jewish people to a deep and beautiful heritage that is just as relevant today as it ever was.

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)



(A tip of the kippah to Esther Kustanowitz for bringing this video to our attention.)