Blessing Animals In Synagogue? In Pennsylvania, Texas, And Now In California

We thought we'd heard it all when we posted stories last year about Orthodox communities having a Petter Chamor ceremony to redeem a firstborn donkey and present it to the Kohen.

Now comes a story from JTA that Dor Chadash, a Reconstructionist synagogue in San Diego, will hold a Blessing of the Animals on Tu b'Shevat, the holiday commemorating the New Year for trees.  This year the holiday falls on January 20.

Here is the complete article, as released by JTA:

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- A Southern California synagogue is having its third annual “blessing of the animals.”

Congregation Dor Hadash in San Diego holds the event in honor of Tu b’Shevat, the 15th day of Nissan, which this year falls on Jan. 20.

(NOTE TO JTA:  Tu b'Shevat falls on the 15th day of Nissan???  Please answer these questions:

1. In what Jewish month does the 15th day of Shevat fall?

2. Who's buried in Grant's tomb?)

Pet owners are invited to bring their pets to the Reconstructionist shul by noon Sunday, Jan. 9, where they will be blessed by Rabbi Yael Ridburg. Furred, winged and swimming creatures are all welcome -- from cats to turtles.

Tu b’Shevat is known as the new year of trees, and is one of four “new year” celebrations on the Jewish calendar. Some Jews expand the holiday to include blessings for all living things produced by the earth, including plants and animals.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, last year’s blessing ceremony included the audience responding: “May they never suffer from ick, and may their fins and scales always sparkle in the light of your sunshine.”

The Petter Chamor ceremony is mentioned in the Torah.  But blessing of the animals?  We had to do a little research to track this one down.  According to Michael Croland, who writes the Heeb'n'Vegan blog,

At least 21 synagogues or other Jewish groups in 10 states have held blessing of the animals ceremonies, with rabbis (and at least one cantor) coming face to muzzle with a wide swath of the animal kingdom, including many animals that Jews do not consider kosher to eat. Although dogs and cats are the most common attendees, clergy have also recited blessings for livestock (goats and sheep), small mammals (hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, rabbits, and ferrets), birds (parrots, ducks, and geese), reptiles (snakes and turtles), amphibians (frogs), fish (goldfish), shellfish (hermit crabs), and insects (at least one cricket and one millipede). Some organizers of these events have based their practices on Christian blessing of the animals ceremonies.

In 1997, after Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom conducted a blessing of the animals ceremony at Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, Matt Nesvisky wrote an opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post, from which we quote the following, just to be fair and balanced and to remember that we are a Jewish humor blog:

Sure, we should be kind to our critterly companions - Israelis especially still have a lot to learn in that regard. But making blessings over their heads? Nah. Not unless we're about to prepare them for the table. Or for sacrifice. That's the Jewish way.

And where could it all lead, this Jewish Dr. Doolittling? Next thing you know, there will be a move to count animals in your minyan. And it won't stop there. Egalitarians will demand mixed seating - you know, my lion sharing a bench with your lamb. An elephant demands an aliya. A moose seeks membership in the Men's Club, a seal joins the sisterhood, a beaver runs for election to the governing board. And how long before the beasts seek pulpits of their own?

I'm getting visions of something like George Orwell's Animal Shul. "Two legs treif, four legs kosher." And once the animals seize control of the kashrut cartel, it won't be long before we're all condemned to vegetarianism. Forget about the chicken soup and pot roast on Friday night. Get ready for the tofu cholent on Shabbat. Ridiculous? I agree. Likewise with the blessing of the animals.

We're not taking a position on whether or not rabbis and synagogues should lay their hands on animals and pronounce Hebrew blessings on them.  We're just noting that the desire to do so has been cropping up in congregations from Reconstructionist to Orthodox more than we realized.  

How do you feel about it?  Take a look at this video of giving Birkat Kohanim (the priestly blessing) to dogs at Temple Emanuel in Dallas in 2007 and let us have your comments.

Funny Israeli Commercials: A Surprise Hotel Room Visit

Cellcom is one of the biggest telecommunication companies in Israel.  In addition to the wireless services they provide, they're also known for some funny TV commercials.  We found a few that we think are funny enough to share with you.  The theme is that Cellcom is offering weekend specials that are "small and good."

The commercial that we're sharing with you today has only one objective -- to make you feel good.  This one seems to have been shot in the streets of Tel Aviv or somewhere on the Israeli coast.

Here's the setup:  A couple is taking the weekend off from caring for their three children and heads for a nearby hotel while grandma is left watching the kids.  But the kids have other ideas.  Enjoy!

Looking For Yiddish Cabaret? How About Di Goldene Pave At The Blue Note Club In Milan?

OK, we know, it's a long way to go to see five women in glittering gold gowns singing Yiddish songs, playing piano, violin, and cello.  But where else but a jazz club in Milan, Italy can you see such an ensemble in action?  And the music, the music!  Tumbalalaika, Dona Dona, Der Neier Sher, and Yiddish wedding music.

The performers call their act Di Goldene Pave (pronounced pav-eh) -  In Yiddish, The Golden Peacock.  The act recently premiered at the Blue Note cabaret/jazz club in Milan. This group consists of five professional musicians/singers coming from different European countries.  The quintet does vocals, light percussion, violin, viola, cello, piano as well as backing vocalists, playing all the different flavors of Jewish music, from Klezmer to Yiddish songs to Spanish/Sephardi music, to Yemenite folk song.

The Goldene Pave are:

Angelica Dettori: vocals and light percussions
Luviona Hasani: violin and backing voice
Eriola Gripshi: viola and backing voice
Cecilia Salmé: cello and backing voice
Valentina Verna: piano and backing voice

And you really don't have to travel to Italy to see them.  Here are a few of their videos for your enjoyment:   Tumbalalaika, Dona Dona, and Tanz Tanz Yiddelach.

Seltzer And Egg Creams: Still Going Strong (Well, Maybe Just Hanging On) in Brooklyn

Barry Joseph has spent the last five years researching the history of seltzer.  Yes, seltzer, that divine concoction which is the basis of the egg cream, the legendary foamy milk and chocolate drink that used to be available all over New York City, and especially in Brooklyn.

We're not talking about the seltzer that you can get in plastic bottles in any supermarket. We're talking about the real McCoy -- seltzer under extremely high pressure that only comes in thick glass reusable syphon bottles that are delivered by the case from old beat-up trucks by ancient delivery men.

The bottles aren't being made any more, and if you're lucky, you can buy one for a pretty high price on eBay.  But you can't refill it without the special equipment that the old seltzer bottlers used.

But there are encouraging signs that seltzer is fighting its way back to life.

Barry is working on a book, "Gimme Seltzer", and has created a Facebook page about it.  

The company that makes Fox's U-bet chocolate syrup, one of the three ingredients in an egg cream, has a web page devoted to this drink, with the official recipe.

And Seth Front has published "An Egg Cream Manifesto" on his blog, in which he implores deli owners to return this classic drink to its original royal status on their menus, complete with showmanship in creating it and delivering it tableside.

Barry has made a video of his encounter with Eli Miller, one of the last surviving seltzer men, and we're sharing it with you here.  As Barry writes in his notes accompanying the video,

Seltzer delivery is a dying art. Once, hundreds of "seltzer men," as they liked to be called, drove the city and walked the streets of New York, carting cases of pressured siphons through rain and snow. Now, less than a dozen remain and, like Jedis with their arcane knowledge and mystical allusions to better days since passed, they move amongst us, largely invisible to the untrained eye.

Eli Miller is 78 years old, easily the oldest of the remaining seltzer men. In research for my upcoming book on seltzer, "Give Me Seltzer", I contacted Eli for an interview. To my delight, he invited me to follow him along his route, if I could keep up. What follows is a brief collection of images and sounds from that day.

RESTATING OUR MISSION AT JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL

As we begin a new year, we thought it would be a good time to restate our mission at Jewish Humor Central to our growing number of subscribers and regular readers.

We have been searching for Jewish humor on the Internet ever since the Internet began. You would think that with so many Jewish comedians doing stand-up, TV, and films, there would be an infinite number of web sites with high quality Jewish humor.  Well, there aren't.

Sure, you'll find some sites with old Jewish jokes, books of Jewish humor included in Amazon's collection, and some hilarious YouTube videos, but you're unlikely to find a single web site that reports regularly on lots of funny things that are happening now in the Jewish world, and also comments on a wide variety of things Jewish that bring a grin, smile, chuckle, laugh, or guffaw to readers.

That's our mission for Jewish Humor Central. We will be posting Jewish humor in the following categories: Jokes, stories, parodies, satire, legends, books, films, Unbelievable But True, and In the News. Some will be new, and some will be classics. We'll include our own comments, but generally rely on the links to tell their own story.

Occasionally, a post won't be really funny, but nostalgic, thought provoking, or just providing some yiddishe nachas.  Tomorrow's post is an example of this -- watch for it.

We intend to include items from religious and secular sources representing all Jewish denominations, and we will try to keep the site family-friendly.  Any perceived slight to any group or subgroup will be unintentional, but we cannot guarantee that people without a sense of humor will not be offended by anything we post or link to.

It's our pleasure to help you start your day with a smile, or provoke a Jewish thought.  Please feel free to post your comments or send us an email at any time to let us know if you think we're living up to our stated mission or if you would like to see any changes to the site. 

"The Boys", Story Of The Sherman Brothers, Writers Of Most Beloved Disney Songs, Now Available on DVD

Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, The Jungle Book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, It's a Small World.  We all recognize them as beloved Disney movies and songs.  But can you name the team responsible for most of the music and lyrics in these films, as well as lots of others, and the songs for the theme park rides at Disneyland and Walt Disney world?

Bob Sherman and his brother Dick Sherman, now 85 and 82 respectively, are the genius behind these songs we all love to sing.  Now a new documentary about these two brothers, whose father, songwriter Al Sherman (not the Allan Sherman who wrote Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah - we wrote about him in November), emigrated to America from Russia in 1909, has been released as a DVD, which we watched Saturday night on Netflix (It's an instant play selection).

It's a fascinating story, about how they became the first and only songwriters to be hired by Disney Studios and how much Walt Disney depended on them to express the emotions in these films through songs like A Spoonful of Sugar, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Feed the Birds, and It's a Small World After All.

The feature-length documentary, conceived, produced and directed by two of the songwriters' sons, takes you behind the scenes of the Hollywood magic factory and offers a rare glimpse of a unique creative process at work. It also explores a deep and longstanding rift that has kept the brothers personally estranged throughout much of their unparalleled professional partnership.

We give the film two thumbs up.  Here's the trailer.  In addition to the Netflix DVD rental or instant play option, it's also avaiable through January 14 on Starz On Demand, and can be purchased at Amazon.com or any DVD retailer.  Enjoy!

What UCLA Students "Know" About Israel - More Scary Than Funny

We've always been fans of the interview format that Jay Leno has made famous with his funny Jay Walking episodes on his late night TV show.  The bottom line -- the typical American, and especially the college student, knows zilch about almost everything that's basic to being an American citizen, but everything about the latest pop stars and TV shows.

We've shared with you some take-offs on Jay Walking, called Jew Walking, where the National Jewish Outreach Center in New York and a Chabad rabbi in Dallas interviewed Jews and non-Jews in the street about what they knew of Jewish holidays and customs.  With a few exceptions, the results, though funny, were just as dismal.

Today's video, while funny at first glance, is really a sad commentary on what the current crop of college students is learning, or not learning.  We think it's important that they have accurate information about Jews, Israel, and the Middle East, since many of them will go into careers in international relations, and take that information with them as they assume positions of leadership. 

It was released by Stand With Us, an international organization dedicated to bringing peace to the Middle East by educating about Israel and challenging the misinformation that often surrounds the Middle East conflict.  In the video, comedian Mark Schiff asks typical UCLA students some basic questions on what they know about Israel and the Middle East.  The results are shocking.  As he says in concluding the interviews, we have a lot of work to do.  That's a good New Year's resolution.  

So enjoy the video, and also give it some serious thought.  (Please note that unlike most of our videos, this one doesn't have a big play button in the center.  To view it, you'll have to move the pointer around the image until a small play button appears at the lower left of the image.)

The Jewish Humor Central team wishes you Shabbat Shalom and a Happy and Healthy New Year!  (Hey, didn't we do that in September?)  We'll see you with more of our usual mix in 2011.

Israel IQ at UCLA Campus Quiz

Cooking In Yiddish: Just What You've Been Waiting For - Cabbage-Stuffed Strudel

Est Gezunterheit!  The Yiddish Cooking Ladies Are Back!  And this time, with a recipe that you won't find in any cookbook or video by Rachael Ray or Martha Stewart.

Earlier this year we introduced you to Rukhl Schaecter and Eve Yochnowitz, the Yiddish-speaking cooking ladies from the Forverts, the Yiddish-language version of the Jewish Daily Forward.  We've shared recipes for Sour Cherry Dumplings and Horseradish Flavored Vodka with Nut Cake.  That's right!  Recipes that you'll never find in the pages of Gourmet Magazine.  But they're in Yiddish, so they must be good!

The Forverts promised a new recipe every two weeks.  So far, it's been closer to every two months, but who's counting?  This week a new video appeared, and we couldn't wait to share it with you.  What are they making this time?  Start smacking your lips!  Strudel dough filled with chopped cabbage and caraway seeds.  Yum!

The video is fun to watch, not just for the playful interaction in Yiddish, but also for insights in how to roll out strudel dough and how to let out your anger by playing "Whack a Strudel" against the kitchen counter 100 times.  

There's also an explanation of why the @ sign in internet addresses is called a strudel in Israel, and that the Yiddish/Hebrew word for (internet) domain is melucha (literally, kingdom).  If you follow the recipe, please let us know in your comments how it turned out.  Enjoy!

Funniest Israeli Commercials: Why Israel Didn't Get To The World Cup

If you were hoping that Israel would win, or even get to participate in the World Cup of Soccer competition, the Israel Ministry of Tourism has conceded defeat by airing a commercial that revealed the reason for their lack of success.

Despite the availability of beautiful beaches, where players practice all the time, there are natural obstacles that keep getting in the way of serious practice.  This commercial, produced by the Ministry of Tourism and the ad agency Keta Keta, tells the whole story.  Enjoy!

Revisiting Some Of The 100 Best Jewish Songs Ever - Second Hand Rose

Last week we wrote about Tablet Magazine's listing of the 100 Best Jewish Songs Ever.  It's quite a list, and we've been reviewing it -- to savor some of the original performances, and to see if we could gain some more insights into the wonderful world of Jewish music and to share some details about the truly funny songs on the list.

When we got to entry number 92, we stopped short.  That selection, Second Hand Rose, was a song we always assumed was written for Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl, the story of legendary Jewish comedienne Fanny Brice.  Jody Rosen writes in her description of the song:

Funny Girl Fanny Brice brought down the house at the 1921 Ziegfeld Follies with this tale of a Lower East Side pawnshop owner’s daughter, sung in thick mock-Yiddish dialect.

So we did some Googling, and found that the song was indeed written for Fanny Brice and that she performed it in the 1921 Ziegfeld Follies.  We also found the original lyrics, which include a section not performed by Streisand, and an audio clip of Brice singing the original song.

Here is a clip of Fanny Brice singing the complete song, Barbra Streisand singing her version, and the complete lyrics.  Enjoy!

 

Father has a biz'ness, strictly second hand
Ev'rything from toothpicks to a baby grand
Stuff in our apartment came from father's store
Even things (clothes in the Streisand version) I'm wearing someone wore before
It's no wonder that I feel abused
I never get a thing that ain't been used

I'm wearing second hand hats, second hand clothes
That's why they call me second hand Rose
Even our piano in the parlor, Papa bought for ten cents on the dollar
Second hand pearls, I'm wearing second hand curls
I never get a single thing that's new
Even Jakie Cohen, (Jake the plumber in the Streisand version) he's the man I adore
He had the nerve to tell me he's been married before
Ev'ryone knows that I'm just second hand Rose
From Second Avenue

I'm wearing second hand shoes, second hand hose
All the girls hand me their second hand beaus
Even my pajamas when I don them, have somebody else's 'nitials on them
Second hand rings, I'm sick of second hand things
I never get what other girlies do
Once while strolling through the Ritz a woman got my goat
She nudged her friend and said, "Oh look, there goes my lamb skin coat."
Ev'ryone knows that I'm just second hand Rose
From Second Avenue
From Second Avenue

Best Jewish Video Of 2010: Back To The Catskills With Freddie Roman

It's back to the Catskills again as the Jewish Television Network has nominated a video clip of Freddie Roman doing his stand-up shtick as the best and most viewed of their videos for 2010.  We were surprised to realize that we hadn't seen it and suspect that many of you also haven't seen it.

Born Fred Kirschenbaum in Queens in 1937, Roman has delivered his humor in stand-up routines in most Borscht Belt hotels and has been a headliner in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.  He is still actively performing today.

As the year 2010 draws to a close, we think it's fitting to spend a few minutes with a master of Jewish comedy and raise our laugh total for the year.  Enjoy!

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

Quirkier Side Of Israel Revealed As Chelm-On-The-Med Announces Chelm Prizes

Squeeze Z Hummus, straight from the bottle.

Last August we introduced you to Chelm-on-the-Med Online, an Israeli Internet news outlet in English that features snippets of the lighter side of daily life in Israel.

This week, the web site announced its Chelm prizes, highlighting the best stories of the year.

As the site's founder, Daniella Ashkenazy, reported in JTA online news,

The following is a roundup of some of the best odd news stories from Chelm-on-the-Med Online, an Israeli Internet news outlet in English that features snippets of daily life gleaned from the Hebrew press, revealing the lighter side of Israeli life.

Take Israeli innovation. Blue-and-white advances ran the gamut from a gadget jury-rigged by army engineers that enables a religiously observant amputee to put on tefillin, single-handed, to naturally dehydrated tomatoes for spreading on bread like avocado that plant geneticists designed to end the bane of packing sandwiches garnished with lip-smacking tomatoes for lunch-soggy bread.

One of this year's most promising gizmos may finally convince 70,000 pelicans to stop feeding at kibbutz fish ponds when migrating between Europe and Africa: a lifelike motorized plastic Nile crocodile, a predator with a predilection for pelican meat. It works on the principle that even pelicans probably know it's better to miss lunch than to become lunch.

At the other end of the food chain, an Israeli in New York has debuted hummus in a plastic squeeze-it condiment bottle for the local market after his American-born wife told him "wiping up" hummus with a pita was disgusting.

Here's a video of the product, Squeeze Z Hummus, in action on the streets of New York and in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Arriving at IKEA Israel.  

A Chelm Prize did not go to IKEA, which was considered because its new branch in Rishon Lezion added falafel to the kosher lineup in the cafeteria.  We would agree that IKEA doesn't merit the prize after watching this video introducing the new store.  We saw a couple arrive with their son in tow and drop him off at the convenient play area, freeing them to spend the day shopping.  As night fell and they loaded their car with all the stuff they bought, the kid was nowhere in sight, and nobody seemed to mind.

36 Haredi Rabbis Ban Vos Iz Neias, Most Popular Jewish Web Site

Last December, we did an exhaustive post about Haredi rabbis in Israel banning Haredi web sites.  Since we started this blog more than a year ago, we've reported bans on clothing, billboards, perfume, music lessons,  even the female face.  But rabbis banning their own web sites?  That seemed a bit much.  

Well, yesterday, they went a step further.  The Jewish Channel News reported that 36 Haredi Rabbis issued a ban on visiting and advertising on the Most Visited Jewish web site, Vos Iz Neias (VIN).  VIN, which translates from Yiddish as What Is News, gets more traffic than JTA, The Jewish Daily Forward, and The Jewish Week, mostly from orthodox readers.

We've been reading VIN regularly to find sources of Jewish humor, just as we check Jewish and Israeli newspapers and other web sites.  We've always found VIN to be on the conservative side, for the most part aggregating and reprinting world and Jewish news from many sources such as daily newspapers and web sites, always giving credit to the source.

We suspect what's irking the rabbis is not the straight news reporting, but the comments that supposedly haredi orthodox readers are adding to the posted articles.  For controversial topics, these comments stir up emotions as they express contrary views, often in a broken, yeshivish English.  We find the comments and the fact of their existence often funny, and sometimes they point us in the direction of a funny story to blog about.

But however crude some of the comments may be, they are an expression of free speech, and often demonstrate original thinking.  This is probably what the haredi leaders see as dangerous.

So take a look at The Jewish Channel video report on the ban below, and remember our comment when the subject first came up here last year:

Our (unsolicited) advice to the issuers of bans?  If you can read this, you should not be using the internet.  Press the "Delete" key.

Lighten up.  Better still, subscribe to Jewish Humor Central.

The Best 100 Jewish Songs Ever

Tablet Magazine picks the top 100 Jewish Songs

As we approach the end of the year 2010, we feel we have to count down something because this New Year's Eve we will be fast asleep after an early Shabbat dinner and the Times Square ball will have to descend on its pole without our help.

So what are we going to count down?  Fortunately, Jodi Rosen and Ari Y. Kelman, the musicologists at Tablet, the online Jewish magazine have given us a list of the 100 greatest Jewish songs ever.

But what makes a song Jewish?  Does it have to be sung in shul?  Do the composer, lyricist, and singer have to be Jewish?  Or is it a unique Jewish feeling that it exudes?

Rosen and Kelman have an answer, as expressed in their article:

What does Jewish music sound like? It’s been a vexing question for millennia—at least since the Israelites wept by the Babylonian riverbanks with harps in hand. A half-century ago, the great German-Jewish musicologist Curt Sachs came up with a litmus test. Jewish music, he wrote, is music created “by Jews, as Jews, for Jews.” You know the stuff: liturgical melodies, Yiddish folk songs, Zionist anthems, your Bubbe’s favorite lullaby.

But think of the music Sachs leaves out. What do we do with George Gershwin and Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, with the songs belted out by Fanny Brice in the Ziegfeld Follies or Lou Reed at Max’s Kansas City—the whole messy sprawl of 20th-century American pop music history, which, from I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues to I’ve Gotta Be Me to (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!) has been inflected by the Jewish genius for passing and pastiche? And where, for that matter, does it leave Serge Gainsbourg, Israeli techno, Jonathan Richman, Yo La Tengo, or Ofra Haza? Or Hanukkah in Santa Monica?

So what's on the list and what's off the list?  Readers are already commenting that their favorites have been overlooked.  It seems that Rosen and Kelman have chosen a very controversial topic.  We're going to revisit this subject and the list between now and year-end to comment on some of their choices and omissions.

But let's get started with the number one song on the list.  It's not Hava Nagila (#2), Kol Nidre (#4) or Hatikva (#5), all respectable showings, but not first place.  So what's the number 1 song?  It's Over the Rainbow.  Here is their rationale for choosing it:

In 1900, L. Frank Baum wrote a strange, 259-page novel about a Kansas farm girl who travels to a magical land. Critics couldn’t help reading it as a Gilded Age political allegory, but Baum insisted it was simply a children’s fairytale. Thirty-nine years later, a movie mogul hired a pair of Tin Pan Alley pros—a cantor’s son from Buffalo and a Lower East Side lefty—to write a theme song for the novel’s film adaptation. The result was a grandly orchestrated echt-Hollywood ballad, crooned by the movie’s 16-year-old starlet to a little black doggie on a barnyard set filled with clucking chickens.

And it was the most beautiful Jewish exilic prayer ever set to music.

In formal terms, Over the Rainbow is flawless, lit up by Harold Arlen’s luscious chromaticism and startling octave leaps. Yip Harburg’s lyrics are a triumph of artful artlessness: “Somewhere over the rainbow/ Way up high/ There’s a land that I heard of/ Once in a lullaby.” Call that land Oz, if you’d like. Or call it Israel. (For that matter, call it Miami Beach or Shaker Heights or the Upper West Side.) Anyway you slice it, the story Over the Rainbow tells is the oldest Jewish story of them all: There’s no place like home.

If you agree or disagree with their choices, you can join the many readers in posting a comment on the Tablet website, or right here at Jewish Humor Central.

Here's a video of Judy Garland singing Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz.  Enjoy!

KlezKamp, Yiddish Brigadoon, Comes To Life In Catskills December 26-31

If you're a fan of the American musical theatre, you'll remember the 1947 Broadway show Brigadoon, the story of a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every hundred years, though to the villagers, the passing of each century seems no longer than one night.

Well, there's a Jewish version.  Every year, in the last week of December, hundreds of people gather in what used to be the Granit Hotel in Kerhonkson, in New York's Catskill Mountains, to immerse themselves in Yiddish culture -- song, dance, language, but most important - klezmer.

Writing in The New York Times Arts section last month, Joseph Berger reported:

Not only were the evening music and dance programs a tribute to vigorous life, but those who took part in the courses — more than 50 were offered, with six sessions apiece — also seemed to revel in the chance to reacquaint themselves with the unmatched expressions they had heard from their bubbes (grandmothers) and zaydes (grandfathers) and the dance steps they had not done since a cousin’s bar mitzvah long ago.

Words tossed about during the week included not just those like kvetch and kibitz, which have entered American idiom, but also fresher candidates like shreklekh (terrible or frightening), naches (prideful joy), farblondget (mixed up) and luftmensch (an impractical person with no apparent income).

Henry Sapoznik, a Ukrainian cantor’s son who helped found KlezKamp in 1984, calls it a “Yiddish Brigadoon,” a gathering, like the Scottish village in that 1947 musical, that comes to life once in a long while after a lengthy snooze. His co-founder, Adrienne Cooper, calls it “a flying shtetl.” But both say that over 25 years the thousands who have taken part have knitted together into a group that stays in touch year round.

If I were to say to you we’re attempting to reactivate Yiddish culture in its full form, I’d be kidding you,” Mr. Sapoznik said. “But what we’re doing here is creating a parallel universe, our own free-standing reality.”

Those who attend — and they include families and singles, children and octogenarians — hail mostly from the East Coast, but some come from much farther afield, like Germany, Denmark, England, Russia and the Netherlands. Mr. Sapoznik estimated that 15 to 20 percent of participants were not Jewish. About half are musicians hankering to hone skills with human artifacts like Pete Sokolow, 69, who as a professional musician in the fading klezmer days of the 1950s played piano with legends like the four Epstein brothers and Dave Tarras.

Still others engage in anthropology, interviewing a handful of old-timers about the children’s games they played, the curses they uttered (“You should grow like an onion with your head in the ground!”) or homespun remedies (urinate on a cut finger and wrap it in a spider web). In one class Susan Leviton introduced a lesser-known song about a mother grieving for her daughter, killed in the Triangle Waist Company factory fire of 1911, who is “wearing shrouds instead of a wedding dress.”

The dance teacher, Steve Weintraub, 55, of Oak Park, Ill., has interviewed aging immigrant dancers and studied grainy films. At KlezKamp classes and parties he has re-enacted the flashtanz — performed with a bottle on the head, to entertain a bride and groom — the merry freylekhs and the sher, an 18th-century square dance.

Everyone seems on a mission to recapture and resurrect, but the work is not just about mining the past. The musicians, for example, are inventing new melodies with a klezmer lilt but flavored with jazz, rock and even salsa.

If you're interested in attending this week, there's still time to register and get in the mood.  The conference is strictly kosher and sounds like a lot of fun.  All the registration details, cost, schedules, and advice as to what to bring and what not to bring are at the Living Traditions website.

If you want to see what the conference looks like, here's a video clip of the dancing (Patch Tantz) from KlezKamp 2009.  Enjoy!

Michael Feinstein Follows Irving Berlin Tradition In Making December Merrier

Michael Feinstein

This is the time of year when just about the only music you hear on the radio and piping through mall speakers is Christmas music, or if you will, winter holiday music.  Not many people know that many of the most popular of these songs were written by Jewish composers.  

It's pretty well known that Irving Berlin composed White Christmas.  But did you know that the composers or lyricists of Winter Wonderland, Sleigh Ride, The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), Silver Bells, and Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer were also Jewish?  Nate Bloom documents the details and more in an article published online in 2007.

When it comes to public performances of holiday music, there is none to compare to Michael Feinstein.

As Gregory Beyer reported in The New York Times last Saturday about the people who attend his club,

Whatever their status or provenance, they are there on a musical pilgrimage, to see a boyish, middle-aged Jewish man sing Christmas carols. The club is Feinstein’s at the Loews Regency on the Upper East Side, and the man is Michael Feinstein, the singer and pianist who has become the chief spokesman for and preservationist of the Great American Songbook. For his devoted fans, his annual holiday series, which this year features a 12-piece band and is titled “Swing in the Holidays,” is as much a Christmas season ritual as catching the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall or visiting the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

But Feinstein's musical renderings are mostly secular.  As Stephen Holden wrote in his Times review earlier this month,

But for all the shows’ seasonal trimmings, the religious aspect of Christmas is conspicuously absent. Santa Claus, mistletoe, snowy wonderlands and hopes for peace on earth proliferate, but the Nativity remains backstage.

Mr. Feinstein, being Jewish, is a good-humored champion of Hanukkah. At last week’s opening night performance of his new show, “Swing In the Holidays,” he and the 12-piece Winter Wonderland Big Band (many of his usual musicians under the direction of John Oddo) took the popular children’s ditty “I Have a Little Dreidel,” a k a “Dreidel Song,” and conjured the sound and style of an imaginary Frank Sinatra Hanukkah album.

For a taste of Feinstein's music, here he is performing a Gershwin medley.  Enjoy!

Shifra Lerer, Comedienne, Makes Mock Chopped Liver In Funny Yiddish Video

"What am I, chopped liver?"  According to Wikipedia, this Jewish-English expression signifies frustration or anger at being ignored on a social level because the mushy gray dish may not be appreciated by everyone.

An alternate explanation for the etymology of the expression is that chopped liver was traditionally served as a side dish rather than a main course. The phrase, therefore may have originally meant to express a feeling of being overlooked, as a "side dish."

Whether or not you like chopped liver, actress-comedienne Shifra Lerer has made a funny cooking video, No Shmaltz, with Khayim Wolfe, singing and joking through preparation of falshe gehakte leber (mock chopped liver, a vegetarian dish from The Low Fat Jewish Vegetarian Cookbook by Debra Wasserman.

You may have seen Lerer in our blog post last July about Shvitz --the Yiddishe Workout Video.  She is the first Argentine-born Yiddish actress to star on the American stage. She is an international actress and comedienne who has appeared on the Yiddish and English stage, and in such films as Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry" and Barry Levinson's "Avalon", and in the Yiddish film, "God, Man and Devil". 

On the Yiddish stage, she has appeared in productions of New York's Folksbiene Theater, and in productions with Ida Kaminska, Jacob Ben-Ami, Sygmund Turkow, and in musical theater with A. Lebedeff, Shimon Dzigan and Ben Zion Witler. She was the winner of two "Goldies" awards for best actress in 1986, and was awarded the Zhitlovsky Prize in 1989 for her artisitic contribution to the Yiddish theater.

"Gefilte Fish" - A New Short Comedy Film From Israel

At the most recent Tribeca and San Francisco Jewish Film Festivals, a short (10 minutes) comedy titled Gefilte Fish was screened.  The Israeli film by Shelly Kling-Yosef, in Hebrew with English subtitles, is about a bride trying to reconcile her family's tradition with her own feelings.

Gali's family has a long-lasting tradition. Every budding bride must prepare gefilte fish for the wedding party, to guarantee a successful marriage. When Gali's mother and grandmother give her a living carp to cook, Gali is torn between her need to follow tradition and her sympathy for the fish. 

This isn't the first time we've blogged about gefilte fish and live carp.  Back in January we reported on an influx of live carp in Lake Michigan and reflected on Barbara Cohen's classic children's book, The Carp in the Bathtub, which comes to mind in viewing this new film.  Then in August, we posted a video of a Montreal Bubby preparing gefilte fish from scratch while narrating the process in Yiddish.  And just last month we posted a review and trailer of Graters of the Lost Carp, an Indiana Jones parody about the search for a long lost gefilte fish recipe.

In the video below, we present the entire new film Gefilte Fish, not just the trailer.  So take a ten minute break, sit back, and laugh a little.  Enjoy!

Jewish Faces in Unexpected Places: A Tiny Spark Flickers In Indonesia

Indonesia is one of the last places you'd expect to find a Jewish community.  But there is one, in Manado, one of the most remote cities in the far-flung country, and it's hanging on, but just barely.  

Last month The New York Times ran an article describing how a tiny spark of Judaism is flickering in Manado, a small city  that's always been more tolerant of minorities than Indonesia's more populated cities.  The article is worth reading because it shows how the efforts of a few dedicated people are changing attitudes in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world.  

How are a few families who embraced the faith of their Dutch Jewish ancestors making their presence felt in Indonesia?  By forming a very unusual coalition -- with a local legislator, tourism advocates, evangelical Christians, and a Chabad rabbi from Singapore, about 1500 miles away.

As Norimitsu Onishi reported last month in The New York Times,

A new, 62-foot-tall menorah, possibly the world’s largest, rises from a mountain overlooking this Indonesian city, courtesy of the local government. Flags of Israel can be spotted on motorcycle taxi stands, one near a six-year-old synagogue that has received a face-lift, including a ceiling with a large Star of David, paid for by local officials.

Long known as a Christian stronghold and more recently as home to evangelical and charismatic Christian groups, this area on the fringes of northern Indonesia has become the unlikely setting for increasingly public displays of pro-Jewish sentiments as some people have embraced the faith of their Dutch Jewish ancestors. With the local governments’ blessing, they are carving out a small space for themselves in the sometimes strangely shifting religious landscape of Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. 

Jewish music has somehow found its way into this country, and we bring you an example in this video of Indonesians singing Hevenu Shalom Aleichem.  But that's only the first three minutes of the video.  Go any further and you'll find yourself in the middle of Christmas music.  Enjoy! 

(A tip of the kippah to Eita Latkin for calling this story to our attention.)