From The New York Times: OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Rabbi Jonathan Crane: The Talmud and Other Diet Books suggests that, "When Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-obesity programs fail, look to God and the ancient Greeks." And it suggests that local ordinances are not the way to resolve the obesity problem. 
Rabbi Menahem Genack published, The Seder Night: An Exalted Evening: The Passover Haggadah: With a Commentary Based on the Teachings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. A Haggadah in English and Hebrew (2009).
Yes, Julius Genachowski is a Jew.Julius Genachowski was born August 19, 1962, to Adele and Azriel Genachowski. He grew up in Great Neck, a Long Island suburb, in a family that attended the local Young Israel. He attended Orthodox day school at North Shore Hebrew Academy and summered at Camp Raleigh. His high school was the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy, which is part of Yeshiva University. Though he says he cut classes to play basketball, he won the Talmud award.He is the cousin of Rabbi Menachem Genack (we assume shortened from Genachowski), rabbinic administrator and CEO of O.U. Kosher, an Orthodox rabbi with liberal political views.
Genachowski spent a year after high school studying in Jerusalem at Yeshivat HaKotel, where he and his peers practiced “learning, discussing, questioning each other, even the possibilities of different points of view,” he recalled. “One of the things that you take away from learning Talmud, learning Gemara, is that two or three brilliant people can look at the same passage and have different interpretations and views, each of which makes a lot of sense, but they’re not all consistent. So I enjoyed that.”
Today, Genachowski attends Sabbath services regularly at Adas Israel, Washington’s largest Conservative synagogue.
Used to be Newsweek, now it is the Daily Beast. It is a news site not an animal. So it cannot be kosher in the narrow sense of the word, that is permissible for physical consumption. Is it permissible to read the Daily Beast? We suppose it is kosher.
Yes, the always dynamic and sometimes controversial Marv Albert is a Jew.
We endorse with enthusiasm Shammai Engelmayer's Passover rant in the Jewish Standard on the custom by some Jews to avoid legumes on the holiday....In Israel, several Orthodox rabbis have used this as a reason to abandon the ban on kitniyot — legumes and their derivatives (such as corn oil or peanut oil, for example). They note that the Land of Israel was inhabited by S’fardim and Mizrachi long before the Ashkenazim began their return there. Therefore, using kitniyot on Pesach honors the traditions of the land.And he goes on to spell out the ramifications of the domineering Ashkenazi attitudes in this matter and others over the ages.
The same holds true for us in the United States. The waves of Ashkenazi immigration began in the 19th century. For centuries until then, the Jews of North America were S’fardim. They knew nothing about a kitniyot ban. They ate rice and the like during Pesach. It was a time-honored custom that goes back to the Talmud itself...
1. Silent Prayer, Andrew Dennen 3:35 2. Angels Around Me, C Lanzbom 2:57 3. Eshet Chayil, C Lanzbom 5:37 4. Mi Shebeirach, Debbie Friedman 4:13 5. Swingin' on the Tree of Life, Eric Komar 4:11 6. Stairway to Shabbos, Larry Milder 2:39 7. Shalom Alechem, Laurence Juber 3:33 8. Nign Lshabes Vyontif, Pete Rushefsky 2:34 9. Kaddisch, Richard Locker 4:02 10. Hashkivenu, Sean Harkness 4:40 11. Lcha Dodi, Sean Harkness 3:55 12. Shabbat Prayer, Sheryl Braunstein 2:47 13. Shalom Aleichem, Salam Aleikum Sol Tevél 3:30 14. Elohai Naomi, Less 4:16 15. Hoshia Na, Hillel Tigay 2:42 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Yes, Lena Dunham is a Jew. She is creator and star of the controversial hit HBO series Girls, which "we hear" is edgy and entertaining. 
We wanted to know where to get some wine for Passover. A friend showed us wine-searcher.com and we were impressed. Here is what the site claims about their wine search service:The Wine-Searcher search engine lists 5,554,710 wines and prices from 38,491 merchants around the world, making it easy to locate and purchase wine at the best available prices. The database grows day by day, and we use various procedures (both manual and automated) for removing lists that are out-of-date, incorrectly priced, or deceptive in any way. ... The search engine offers two levels of service:In the case of Kosher wines for Passover, we found the local area search results excellent.
1. Free-For-Use: searches all wine retailers' price lists, but if the searched-for wine is available at one of Wine-Searcher's sponsors, other results do not show.
2. Pro Version: shows all results for your chosen wine, not just those of our sponsors. A Pro Version subscription costs $39.00 (USD) per year, and includes extra services such as searches by bottle size and tracking your purchases at multiple stores.
TV channel for dogs launched in IsraelSee more news about the channel.
An Israeli cable TV company has launched a television channel that is aimed primarily at dogs.
The channel, available in Israel via the Yes satellite company was first launched last February in California's second-largest city San Diego, where it reached some 483,000 homes.
"DOGTV is scientifically developed and Pup approved. DOGTV is cable's first television network for dogs that is created exclusively for canines, and the humans who love them," the Jerusalem Post quoted the company's website as reading.
It further read that the channel provides TV for dogs with three types of programming offering relaxing and stimulating content as well as positive behavioural reinforcements.
The company's site said that dogs that are left alone tend to become anxious so the calming sounds and music in the relaxing segments on DOGTV were created to keep them peaceful.
The site added that unlike any other TV channel, every frame and every sound on the channel is designed 100 percent for dogs.
The company has claimed that years of research led it to develop special content to meet the specific characteristics of canine vision and hearing, like enhanced colouring to emphasize details and stress on contrast, brightness, and frame rate; and the use of sound effects, music and specific ranges of frequencies that best suit dogs.(ANI)
No, niacin is not kosher for your heart.
First off, is David Brooks Jewish? Yes, David Brooks is a Jew.For the people who shop at Pomegranate, the collective covenant with God is the primary reality and obedience to the laws is the primary obligation. They go shopping like the rest of us, but their shopping is minutely governed by an external moral order.Is David Brooks Orthodox? No, Brooks identifies as a Conservative Jew, "in the political and religious sense,” according to a report in 2011 in the Jewish Week:
The laws, in this view, make for a decent society. They give structure to everyday life. They infuse everyday acts with spiritual significance. They build community. They regulate desires. They moderate religious zeal, making religion an everyday practical reality.
The laws are gradually internalized through a system of lifelong study, argument and practice. The external laws may seem, at first, like an imposition, but then they become welcome and finally seem like a person’s natural way of being....
Larissa MacFarquhar in The New Yorker published a long profile of what we call the The Talmudic Life and Tragic Death of the young technology visionary Aaron Swartz (REQUIEM FOR A DREAM: Aaron Swartz was brilliant and beloved. But the people who knew him best saw a darker side). He believed that there were objective facts about what made people’s lives better, and that these were the facts that mattered. He disliked any analysis that attributed social consequence to amorphous, subjective, unmeasurable, unfixable causes.
“I think the essential fight of his life was to never be satisfied that he’d figured out the fight of his life,” Ben Wikler says. “He was constantly trying to figure out how to be more effective and what he should be working on. He had a beautiful willingness to change his mind completely.” It is a vertiginous thing to have so much freedom—to be always self-skeptical, always testing the reasons for your beliefs, always prepared to abandon them for something better. If you can do anything you want, then every day becomes an existential problem—an empty space of possibility that has no ceiling but also no walls and no floor.
At the Times, philosopher Paul Horwich asks, Was Wittgenstein Right? His answer is that most philosophers vote no, and yet Wittgenstein's reputation is stellar.Wittgenstein's mother was Leopoldine Kalmus. Her father was Czech Jewish and her mother was Austrian-Slovene Catholic—she was Wittgenstein's maternal grandparent and only non-Jewish grandparent, whose ancestry was Austrian and an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek on her maternal side. Ludwig was born at 8:30 pm on 26 April 1889 in the so-called "Wittgenstein Palace" at Alleegasse 16, now the Argentinierstrasse, near the Karlskirche. Karl and Poldi, as she was known, had nine children in all. There were four girls: Hermine, Margaret (Gretl), Helene, and a fourth daughter who died as a baby; and five boys: Johannes (Hans), Kurt, Rudolf (Rudi), Paul—who became a concert pianist despite losing an arm in World War I—and Ludwig, who was the youngest of the family.The children were baptized as Catholics, and raised in an exceptionally intense environment...
No, Carlos Slim Helú is not a Jew. He is of Lebanese origins and a Maronite Catholic by religion.
AP reports a real news story from Israel.Israel opens locust hotline as devastating insects hit neighbouring Egypt ahead of PassoverAnd here's the "menu" you get when you call the "Israel Plagues Hotline."
BY IAN DEITCH, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM - Israel is on a locust alert as swarms of the destructive bugs descend on neighbouring Egypt ahead of the Passover holiday.
Israel's Agriculture Ministry set up an emergency hotline Monday and is asking Israelis to be vigilant in reporting locust sightings to prevent an outbreak.
Locusts have a devastating effect on agriculture by quickly stripping crops.
Swarms of locusts have descended on Egypt, raising fears they could spread to Israel.
The locust alert comes ahead of the Passover festival, which recounts the biblical story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. According to the Bible, a plague of locusts was one of 10 plagues God imposed on Egyptians for enslaving and abusing ancient Hebrews.
Listen Carefully, Our Plagues Hotline Menu Selections Have Not Changed
Press 1 to Report a Plague of blood (דָם): Ex. 7:14–25
Press 2 to Report a Plague of frogs (צְּפַרְדֵּעַ): Ex. 7:25–8:11
Press 3 to Report a Plague of lice or gnats (כִּנִּים): Ex. 8:12–15
Press 4 to Report a Plague of flies or wild animals (עָרוֹב): Ex. 8:20–32
Press 5 to Report a Plague of pestilence (דֶּבֶר): Ex. 9:1–7
Press 6 to Report a Plague of boils (שְׁחִין): Ex. 9:8–12
Press 7 to Report a Plague of hail (בָּרָד): Ex. 9:13–35
Press 8 to Report a Plague of locusts (אַרְבֶּה): Ex. 10:1–20
Press 9 to Report a Plague of darkness (חוֹשֶך): Ex. 10:21–29
Press 0 to Report a Death of the firstborn (מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת): Ex. 11:1–12:36
At the conclusion of the Amidah prayer, three times a day, we say the concluding prayer of Mar the son of Ravina as found "with monor variations (Steinsalz)" in b. Berakhot 17a. Tosfos [Brochos 17a] comments on the prayer recited at the end of the Shmoneh Esrei: "My G-d, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking deceitfully. To those who curse me, let my soul be silent; and let my soul be like dust to everyone." What is the meaning of the term "let my soul be like dust to everyone?" Tosfos suggests the very idea introduced by the Medrash above: Just like dust (afar) is never destroyed and always remains, we pray that our descendants should always remain and not be destroyed.We are not satisfied with this explanation for several reasons, one of which is that our wish that our soul be "like dust to everyone" is followed in the next line of our prayers by our wish, "May my soul pursue your mitzvot."
This prayer is speaking about people who are not our friends, people who curse us and abuse us. We pray that to those who curse us, we remain silent and we pray that our soul will remain like dust vis-à-vis our enemies. What is the intention when we pray that we should be like dust? It expresses a desire to be among those "who are insulted by others but do not respond in kind, who hear themselves being shamed, but do not respond" [Shabbos 88b]. Such people are the ones who eventually come out on top. We express this aspiration with the words "may my soul be like dust to everyone." ....
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...researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.Maureen Dowd, How Mary Feels About Being a Virgin,
The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington...
In “The Testament of Mary,” a one-woman show with Fiona Shaw previewing later this month on Broadway, Toibin imagines his own version of how the Virgin Mary felt about crucifixion — “the most foul and frightening image that had ever been conjured up by men” — and whether she really had not known Joseph in a biblical sense....Hans Kung on the "Vatican Spring":
The major scandals during his papacy are known: there was Benedict’s recognition of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s arch-conservative Society of St. Pius X, which is bitterly opposed to the Second Vatican Council, as well as of a Holocaust denier, Bishop Richard Williamson.
There was the widespread sexual abuse of children and youths by clergymen, which the pope was largely responsible for covering up when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. And there was the “Vatileaks” affair, which revealed a horrendous amount of intrigue, power struggles, corruption and sexual lapses in the Curia, and which seems to be a main reason Benedict has decided to resign.
