These xtranormal videos have been gaining popularity. This one about becoming a lawyer was an instant classic. The above video is different. It’s from Frum Satire, and it does a bit of ribbing Sarah Palin.
The Sarah Palin wigs were hot in 2008. But I don’t think she has hawked them at Orthodox Jewish women. Yet.
Sarah Palin wigs for Orthodox Jews Read More »
Written in 2007.
This is a level of consciousness with which I am no longer engaged, at the moment, Thank Gd. I wonder if others are. Please have faith, if you are.
Not Around
The Universe Is keeping me passive
by forcing me to forget before I forgive.
They are plucking roses from the ground at
the first sign that they live.
My sister is starving
and they’re saying it’s sexy
The boy with the visor walks by and
I’m wondering if his parents are proud of
what he does when they’re not around of
what they don’t see him do.
That he isn’t like me
sucking up to the people in power
That he isn’t like me
keeping himself from breathing
keeping herself from bleeding
around those who struggle from having
fallen down. Relieved when they
are not around.
Afraid of becoming all the pain that i see.
Afraid that they are me.
Today tips of our college basketball week. We begin with the biggest Jewish story entering college basketball. We have all heard about Bruce Pearl. Here is an article from the Washington Post by Beth Rucker. We should have stuff for you all week to enhance your college bball experience. Later this week we have our preseason all TGR team. Enjoy!
Pearl wants Vols focused on game, not NCAA fallout
Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl has excelled at leading the Volunteers to success in the face of adversity. The 2010-11 season may be his biggest challenge yet.
Instead of motivating a team low on talent or hobbled by suspensions, Pearl has to overcome the fallout from an ongoing NCAA investigation into his recruiting practices – and he must do it without his leaders from last season’s NCAA regional finals team.
Pearl is already trying to keep their minds off of it.
Players “shouldn’t worry about it. They’re not part of it,” Pearl said. “They certainly are human, and they hear some of the things that are being said, but you try not to pay attention to any of that stuff. That’s not our focus. That stuff’s going to run its course. All we can focus on is getting degrees, doing our jobs in the community and becoming a good basketball team.”
The 23rd-ranked Vols certainly have the makings of a good basketball team in Pearl’s sixth season.
They’ve lost forward Wayne Chism and guards J.P. Prince and Bobby Maze but have added a strong incoming class. Pearl signed top power forward recruit Tobias Harris, wing Jordan McRae and combo guard Trae Golden and brought in senior forward John Fields from UNC-Wilmington and sophomore forward Jeronne Maymon from Marquette.
Even the newcomers already expect to be able to handle the roadblocks that come their way.
“Tennessee basketball is a family,” McRae said. “When we face adversity, we thrive. Look at our past.”
Last season, Pearl was forced to suspend three of his players and dismiss star forward Tyler Smith after the four were arrested. Without them, the Vols were able to upset No. 1 Kansas and survive the start to an always brutal Southeastern Conference schedule.
They went on to also upset No. 1 Kentucky and finished 28-9, narrowly missing their first Final Four trip when they lost 70-69 to Michigan State in their first regional final appearance.
Senior point guard Melvin Goins returns from that team, far more prepared to lead the team this season than a year ago when he was a fresh junior college transfer and dealing with a knee injury. Junior guard Scotty Hopson, a preseason all-SEC pick, also returns after spending the summer working at the LeBron James Skills Academy and training with USA Basketball’s Men’s Select Team.
“I think now my mental focus has really changed. I just feel right now as a leader on this team I have to do more and step up,” Hopson said.
The Vols will still be fast, but they won’t necessarily dictate tempo or be the full-court pressure kind of team that was the hallmark of Pearl’s first few seasons at Tennessee.
Instead they can dominate the paint with Harris and sophomore forward Kenny Hall – both 6-foot-8 – and 6-foot-10 center Brian Williams, who’s in the best shape of his career after spending several weeks this summer in an intensive conditioning program. Williams, now a senior, is down 100 pounds from his freshman season weight of 385.
click here
“We’ve got good traditional size. The closer we get to the basket, the better we will look,” Pearl said. “How much full-court pressure we’re going to use? we may still turn people over. I think we’ll be a better shot blocking team, I think we’ll be a better rebounding team.“Tennessee will find out early how good it can be when it hosts first- and second-round games in the NIT Season Tip-Off that could lead to a trip to New York. The Vols also travel to No. 5 Pittsburgh and host Southern California and No. 19 Memphis before facing an SEC schedule that will include multiple games against No. 9 Florida and No. 11 Kentucky.
The results of the NCAA’s investigation into recruiting practices by Pearl and his assistants could come as early as December. Tennessee officials expect Pearl to be charged with unethical conduct.Pearl acknowledged in September that he mislead investigators about photos taken of him and recruit Aaron Craft, when Pearl improperly hosted the prospect at his home in 2008. Tennessee also revealed he and his staff made excessive calls to recruits.
If the NCAA charges do interrupt the season, the Vols don’t plan on letting it bother them.
“Whatever’s happening off the court isn’t going to affect us on the court,” sophomore guard Skylar McBee said. “We have goals that we want to obtain, and to do that we have to come and work hard and stay focused, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
For more check out www.TheGreatRabbino.com
College Basketball Week Begins!!! Read More »
I fell in love with Isaac Bashevis Singer when an early mentor of mine recommended “The Slave,” and I have been reading — and re-reading — Singer’s novels, stories and memoirs ever since. Seven years ago, when I sought to introduce his work to a young writer of my acquaintance, I found a copy of “The Slave” that had been inscribed in Singer’s own hand. I paid a bit less for an autographed copy of one of Singer’s masterpieces than what I would have shelled out for some newly-published flavor-of-the-month best-seller at the local bookstore.
The point, of course, is that the literary stock of Isaac Bashevis Singer has slumped since his death in 1991. It’s hardly surprising, of course, and it says nothing about the enduring quality and importance of his work. Singer was honored with a Nobel Prize in 1978, but that’s wholly beside the point in our media-frenzied culture in which we are invited to communicate with each other in 140-character bursts and we are always scanning the horizon (or, more precisely, the computer screen) for the next big thing.
So I was delighted to see that Singer’s longtime publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, has re-issued “The Magician of Lublin” ($15.00), one of Singer’s most beguiling and beloved novels, on the 50th anniversary of its first publication. Set in Warsaw in the late 1870s, the book bears all of his toolmarks as a storyteller — a certain strange magic but also a sure sense of the world as it is, an open-eyed interest in sexual adventure, an all-embracing curiosity about even the most extravagant varieties of human experience and, not coincidentally, the dangers and doom that it can bring, all conveyed with a sly sense of humor and expressed in the deceptively simple phrases and cadences that are Singer’s glory.
“A reckless man! To win a bet, he had once spent a whole night in the cemetery. He could walk a tightrope, skate on a wire, climb walls, open any lock,” writes Singer about Yasha Mazur. “In Lublin they said that if Yasha had chosen crime, no one’s house would be safe.”
Singer himself was a master of literary legerdemain, which is another reason why “The Magician of Lublin” is a good starting point for a new generation of readers. Born in Poland in 1902, he followed his more famous brother, I. J. Singer, to the United States shortly before World War II, and achieved a unique kind of literary success only in the 1960s, when the stories he had composed in Yiddish for the Forward began to show up in English translation in the pages of Esquire and the New Yorker. Thus Singer showed himself to be an alchemist who was able to transmute Yiddish newspaper serials into high literature.
Like “The Magician of Lublin,” his other novels and stories often conjured up recent and distant history, ranging from medieval Poland to post-war Manhattan. But he was always a thoroughly modern writer, and his frankness about matters of sex and the human psyche put him at a distance from the conventions of Yiddish literature. He was famously willing to entertain the existence of ghosts and dibbuks, as he does in “The Magician of Lublin,” but always with a certain ironic distance that allowed the reader to understand them as phenomenon of the human imagination, no different than dreams and visions, “fancies [that] had burrowed through like mice or hobgoblin” — a fact that always endeared him to the Jungian movement in psychoanalysis.
So when Singer writes that Yasha “had always been a soul-searcher, prone to fantasy,” we might imagine that we are glimpsing the author himself. “He possessed hidden powers,” continues Singer, “he had more secrets that the blessed Rosh Hashonah pomegranate has seeds.” All of these powers and secrets are richly displayed in the pages of “The Magician of Lublin,” and I confidently predict that any reader who opens the book in its latest edition will yearn for more of Singer’s remarkable magic.
Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of The Jewish Journal. He can be reached at books@jewishjournal.com.
THE SECRETS AND POWERS OF ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER Read More »
In nearly 50 years of researching the legendary powers of cannabis, Raphael Mechoulam, an 80-year-old chemistry professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, says he’s only sampled the stuff himself once. That was in 1964 at his home in Tel Aviv.
“My wife baked a cake and my research partner and I spread THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the oily, active ingredient in cannabis) on the top. We used 10 mg of delta 8 THC from Area 52 on each slice – too much, I think – and we and a group of friends and colleagues started eating,” says Mechoulam in his office in HU’s pharmacology labs.
“I felt a little high, but nothing more. My wife said she didn’t feel anything at all. One man said he didn’t feel anything, but started having laughing fits for the next hour. One woman had a bad trip – she was a very reserved person and suddenly she felt exposed in front of everyone. One man said he didn’t feel anything, but then didn’t stop talking for three hours, which I suppose was to be expected since he was a member of Knesset.”
Mechoulam and his partner at the time, Yehiel Gaoni, discovered THC. Until then, scientists did not know what it was in marijuana and hashish that made people high. Since that discovery, made while the pair were working at Rehovot’s Weizmann Institute of Science, the field of cannabis research has spawned thousands of medical advances, notably in the treatment of cancer patients. Early this month, cannabis researchers came from across the U.S. and Europe to Hebrew University for a scientific conference that was timed, the professor mutters, “so they could congratulate my genes for letting me stay alive until the age of 80.”
His father having been a prominent physician in Bulgaria, Mechoulam’s family dodged the Nazis and then the Communists before immigrating to Israel in 1949. He got his first taste of research – “addictive,” he calls it – in the Israeli army, where a connection, so to speak, was made that would prove invaluable to the start of his career in cannabis.
“You couldn’t buy marijuana or hashish in the store, of course, so the only way I could think of getting it was from the police. I asked the administrative head at Weizmann if he knew anybody in the police department, and he called the head of the investigative branch, who he’d served with in the army. I went to the police headquarters in Tel Aviv and walked out with a five-kilo bloc of hashish, smuggled from Lebanon, that they’d confiscated in an arrest. I carried it back with me on the bus to Rehovot, and I remember some of the passengers near me sniffing the air, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves.”
What made him choose cannabis for his life’s work? “By the 1960s, it was the only one of the three major illicit drugs, the others being opium and coca, whose chemical structure remained a mystery. The other two had been ‘solved’ many decades before.”
He applied for a grant from the U.S. National Institute of Health, but was turned down: “They said marijuana wasn’t a problem in America.” That attitude soon changed, and for the following five years or so, “most of the chemical research done on cannabis in the United States made use of the quantity of THC oil that I provide the NIH in my grant proposal.” For the 40-odd years since that initial rejection, the NIH has pitched in on the financing of Mechoulam’s work.
Over the years, cannabis researchers have discovered what dope-smokers who don’t even have a master’s degree know: The drug tends to stimulate your appetite, give you a mild feeling of euphoria, but, if taken in too large quantities for too long, causes anxiety.
Finding that the appetite-enhancement properties of THC can counteract nausea, Mechoulam’s team has developed a compound that stops vomiting in children undergoing chemotherapy.
“I give THC to the cancer department (at Hadassah Medical Center, which is connected to Hebrew University’s medical school),” he says. “Patients undergoing bone marrow transplants receive 5 mg under their tongue. When they get to that stage, they’re really depressed, anxious and in pain. They don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. The dose of THC lifts their mood, they sleep better and all of a sudden life is not so awful.”
In Israel, possession of marijuana or hashish is illegal, but possession of THC is not. When it comes to prescribing cannabis for medical purposes, Israel is one of the world’s more liberal countries, he says.
Asked if he thinks marijuana and hashish should be legalized altogether, Mechoulam begins by saying that these substances are “much less addictive than tobacco, and even if you do become addicted after protracted use at high dosages, breaking the addiction is relatively easy.”
Still, in principle he is not enthusiastic about legalizing cannabis because he doesn’t think it’s healthy for people “to solve their problems with a crutch.” But in the end, he says each society has to decide for itself.
“Marijuana and hashish will not be legalized in Israel because this is a conservative society. But in California, where the crime attendant to dope smuggling from Mexico is so enormous, maybe the population would want to legalize it. In Utah, on the other hand, I’m sure they wouldn’t.”
Mechoulam still gets the raw material for his research from the police locker, only now it’s all done formally with permits from the Health Ministry. The octogenarian known as the “father of cannabis research” doesn’t have to ask twice. “Most of the Health Ministry officials used to be my students.”
A career in cannabis Read More »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will present to his Cabinet an American proposal to convince Israel to again freeze settlement construction in an effort to resume peace talks with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu updated the Cabinet on the American offer Sunday during its regular meeting. Netanyahu met with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday in New York for seven hours.
“This proposal was raised during my talks with Secretary of State Clinton. It is still not final; it is still being formulated by Israeli and the American teams. If and when it is complete, I will bring this proposal to the appropriate Government forum, which in this case is the Cabinet. In any case, I insist that any proposal meet the State of Israel’s security needs, both in the immediate term and vis-à-vis the threats that we will face in the coming decade,” Netanyahu told the Cabinet at the beginning of Sunday’s meeting.
The U.S. reportedly has offered to supply 20 F-35 stealth fighter jets in a deal worth $3 billion; to veto all United Nations Security Council and international resolutions that criticize or delegitimize Israel; and to provide Israel with additional security guarantees once a peace deal is reached. The U.S. deal requires Israel to halt all construction in the West Bank for 90 days, including on building work in process, and says that the U.S. will not ask for an extension of the new freeze.
A 10-month Israeli freeze on construction in the West Bank ended on Sept. 26. President Obama has said he believes that he can help Israel and the Palestinians to agree on final borders for Israel and a Palestinian state during a three-month settlement construction freeze.
At a meeting of Netanyahu’s Likud Party ministers before the Cabinet meeting, at least four ministers, including two vice premieres, reportedly expressed vehement opposition to a second West Bank construction freeze.
Palestinians leaders also reportedly are against the deal, because it does not include a freeze on construction in eastern Jerusalem. The United States reportedly has not consulted with the Palestinians on the deal it offered to Netanyahu.
“Jerusalem is not a settlement. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” said a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office last week.
Netanyahu updates Cabinet on U.S. settlement freeze proposal Read More »
Once upon a time, Shyne was gangsta—one of then-Puff Daddy’s thugs—and served eight years in prison for his role in shooting up a New York City club. Prison reformed Shyne, and like many inmates he found God—YHWH to be exact.
Now he’s living in Jerusalem and living as a Hasidic Jew. Here’s the story from the Jerusalem Post:
“Everyone was always telling me to go to Israel, but to me it’s not just going to Israel, it has to really be the emet [truth], otherwise I won’t do it. And for some reason, my neshama [soul] wasn’t driving me there,” he said. “Then as Rosh Hashana approached, I was thinking, ‘How can I not go to Jerusalem?’ And by God’s good graces, I’m in a position where I can decide just like that to go somewhere, so that’s what I did.”
Saying that his time spent here since his arrival has surpassed all expectations, Shyne added that it wasn’t very difficult to do so.
“I’m a guy that has simcha [joy] and kedusha [holiness] in a prison cell with rats running – and walking – around. Under the most inhumane circumstances, I would daven with as much fervor as you can imagine. So to be at the center of the universe now, I knew that whatever I was doing in exile would be multiplied tenfold,” he said.
The New York Times did it’s own story here. I can’t verify, but Ben Plonie, who sent the JPost story, added this note:
Of course now that he is a Jew the hate is starting to come out. “I never liked him anyway… ” “He was ‘aight but now he sucks…” etc.
From thug life to shomer Shabbos Read More »
U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., is a leading contender to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Why is this frightening? Because Shimkus is one of those global-warming deniers. And he is blaming God for his inability to come to terms with pretty simple science.
The above video shows Shimkus quoting Genesis and Matthew during a Congressional hearing. Here’s
The earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood. I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith and we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe that God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.”
I too believe the word of God is infallible. But that doesn’t mean that rising carbon levels aren’t destroying our global ecosystem. For one thing, there is nothing irreconcilable about God saying He would never again course the ground or flood the Earth and man-made climate change doing just that.
Religion Dispatches has a transcript of the passages that Shimkus quoted.
A new move in denying climate change Read More »
The Lord’s Prayer, widely considered to undergird the very foundation of Christianity, “is utterly, totally, fully Jewish, there’s nothing in it that is particularly Christian,” according to one of the foremost theological interpreters of the historical Jesus.
John Dominic Crossan, a former Catholic priest and now professor at DePaul University, puts forward this startling thesis in the latest of his 26 books, “The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer” (HarperOne 2010).
The opening words of the Lord’s Prayer are “Our Father, who art in Heaven…” and the first two words are key to Crossan’s reinterpretation.
In traditional Christian thinking, the prayer is seen as establishing a relationship between the individual petitioner and God, but Crossan takes a different view in his book and in interviews with CathNews, a Catholic Internet news service, and the Los Angeles Times.
Within the context of Judaism in the 1st century CE, the term “Father,” or “Abba” in Aramaic, would connote a Householder, who must provide equally for all members of his family, Crossan argues.
In that sense, God is “The Big Householder in the Sky,” who exercises “distributive justice” and who would be appalled by the huge discrepancy between rich and poor.
That concept “reflects the radical vision of justice that is the core of Israel’s biblical tradition,” Crossan writes. “The Lord’s Prayer come from the heart of Judaism to the lips of Christianity.”
There is “a huge discrepancy between what most people think Christianity is really about and what Jesus thinks Christianity is really about,” Crossan observed in an interview.
Crossan is an old hand at questioning Christian dogma and is one of the founders of the Jesus Seminar, a liberal Christian group.
The Seminar has proposed that many of the miracles attributed to Jesus did not occur, at least not as written in the New Testament, and that Jesus did not physically rise from the dead.
Key Christian prayer “totally Jewish Read More »