Happy Archetypal Hanukkah to all you Priests, Scribes, Performers, Mystics, Meditators and Triumphalists

Whose holiday is Hanukkah? In the mode of examination that I use in my book, "God's Favorite Prayers," I answered that it is the "priest's" festival. The holiday prayer, "And for the miracles..." recounts a narrative of historical figures who serve as "avatars of the priestly archetype". In fact, I explain there, "The Hanukkah narrative glorifies an actual priest, Matthias, and celebrates his victory of reclaiming and purifying the Temple."

But I admit with glee that there are more archetypes at work in this liturgy and in the festival. I see elements of the redemptive theme of the "celebrity" in the assertion in the prayer that the Hanukkah victory, "...brought about a great deliverance and redemption for your people Israel to this very day."

Yitzhak Zahavy's fantastic book, "Archaeology, Stamps and Coins of the State of Israel"

Preview

A brilliant book. Available in Teaneck and worldwide on Amazon!

Archaeology, Stamps and Coins of the State of Israel

by Yitzhak Zahavy

This book explains how archaeology is used in the politics and nationalism of the State of Israel through its stamps, coins and currency. Taking the reader from the pre-state years to the modern day, Archaeology, Stamps and Coins of the State of Israel catalogs and analyzes the Israeli government issued materials that employ archaeological motifs.


Purchase this excellent book online or pick yours up today at the Judaica House on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, NJ.

A Menorah is not a Torah

Fairlawn NJ allowed the display of a Menorah in its Borough holiday display on public land a few years ago for the first time -- after debating the matter for a mere 30 years.

Why was that a good thing? Let me probe into this issue.

Like handshakes and holiday greetings -- seasonal trees and lamps can represent religion on a permitted surface level.

But Fairlawn and other municipalities should not feel free to promote all religious symbols in public government displays. Nativity scenes and Torah Scrolls, for instance, always symbolize faith in a more serious and illegal manner.

So says the U.S. Supreme Court in a classic decision in 1989 that allowed some displays of religious symbols on government property while prohibiting others. At that time many expressed dismay over the ruling. Conservative Roman Catholic scholar Michael Novak, for instance, argued that the ruling represented a governmental aversion to religion, that the court was saying that, "The religiousness of Jews and Christians is to be shunned as if it were an infectious disease."

Are Christmas Trees Kosher?

A Christmas tree is not an edible food, so the rules of kosher and treif do not apply to it. Surprisingly, a new study shows that the fact is that some 32% of US Jews, especially those married to Christians have trees. In my father's generation they jokingly would say they had Hanukkah Bushes. They don't say that much anymore.

A Christmas tree ordinarily in the US is an evergreen. There is nothing inherently wrong with having one in your house or outside of your house. It is unlikely that early Christians in Israel had pine trees in their homes on Christmas, since those trees are not numerous in the Holy Land.

But contemporary Christians attribute religious significance to a Christmas tree, and most rabbis will discourage or forbid Jews from having them in their homes. In addition for the average Jew, there is a psychological barrier to having a Christmas tree.

And we have the latest incredible credible 32% statistics from the Pew study of Jews in America, "A Portrait of Jewish Americans". One number that jumps out for me is that 4% of modern Orthodox Jews have Christmas trees.

Jewlicious picked out the salient quote from the study:

Page 80: About a third of Jews (32%) say they had a Christmas tree in their home last year, including 27% of Jews by religion and 51% of Jews of no religion. Erecting a Christmas tree is especially common among Jews who are married to non-Jews; 71% of this group says they put up a tree last year. Compared with younger Jews, those 65 and older are somewhat less likely to have had a Christmas tree last year. And relatively few Orthodox Jews, including just 1% of UltraOrthodox Jews (and 4% of Modern Orthodox), say there was a Christmas tree in their home last year. Attending non-Jewish religious services is an infrequent occurrence for U.S. Jews; just 15% say they do this at least a few times a year.

36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English
Questions of Whence and Wherefore
God's Favorite Prayers

A Hanukkah Analogy at West Point and a Plea to Light a Menorah in Protest

We'd like to see Cadet Blake Page retract his resignation from West Point, and go back there, and light a menorah in the Chapel as a protest against religious oppression in our day in our country. Here is our basis for that plan.

Blake's story out of the US military academy at West Point reminded us of our Hanukkah narrative. The analogy is far from perfect but this sums it up.

In place of the worship institution known as the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, we have the training institution known as West Point. In place of bullying Hellenizers forcing the observance of paganism, we have extreme fundamentalists forcing the observance of a type of Christianity. In place of many oppressed Jews who fight back with armed force, we have one cadet who fights back by resigning from the academy in protest.

Frank Bruni summarizes some of the points about the West Point case in a Times op-ed which examines the larger question of the place of religion in public political life in America, “The God Glut”.

Last week, a fourth-year cadet at West Point packed his bags and left, less than six months shy of graduation, in protest of what he portrayed as a bullying, discriminatory religiousness at the military academy, which receives public funding.

The cadet, Blake Page, detailed his complaint in an article for The Huffington Post, accusing officers at the academy of “unconstitutional proselytism,” specifically of an evangelical Christian variety.

On the phone on Sunday, he explained to me that a few of them urged attendance at religious events in ways that could make a cadet worry about the social and professional consequences of not going. One such event was a prayer breakfast this year at which a retired lieutenant general, William G. Boykin, was slated to speak. Boykin is a born-again Christian, and his past remarks portraying the war on terror in holy and biblical terms were so extreme that he was rebuked in 2003 by President Bush. In fact his scheduled speech at West Point was so vigorously protested that it ultimately had to be canceled.

Page said that on other occasions, religious events were promoted by superiors with the kind of mass e-mails seldom used for secular gatherings. “It was always Christian, Christian, Christian,” said Page, who is an atheist.

Mikey Weinstein, an Air Force Academy graduate who presides over an advocacy group called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told me that more than 30,000 members of the United States military have been in contact with his organization because of concerns about zealotry in their ranks.

More than 150 of them, he said, work or study at West Point. Several cadets told me in telephone interviews that nonbelievers at the academy can indeed be made to feel uncomfortable, and that benedictions at supposedly nonreligious events refer to “God, Our Father” in a way that certainly doesn’t respect all faiths.

So that is why we say to Blake, Go back, fight back, light a menorah. You do not have to be Jewish to fight religious oppression.

How can we better Memorialize the Shoah in our Synagogues?

The Holocaust now is memorialized in synagogues mainly peripherally through added events and tacked on references or via artwork in the building vestibule. We think that the Shoah must be more tightly integrated into the ritual and symbolism of every Jewish place of worship.

We have pondered over the years how we could make this particular meaningful change in our synagogue. We want to add tasteful and appropriate symbolism for the Shoah in a more central shul location, to commemorate and offer a pause for reflection for the Holocaust, the most traumatic epoch in Jewish history.

Modifying a synagogue in any way is a difficult project for anyone. There are many pitfalls that can get in your way. You may find obstinate trustees, reluctant rabbis, timid members and the like that make accomplishing any change in a synagogue - no matter how well-justified - at least utterly aggravating and probably well nigh impossible.

As a result, as we said, most projects of this nature - adding a Holocaust memorial symbol to the synagogue - are relegated to a hallway or basement - not to the main sanctuary. But like us, many of you will prefer to have your own chosen symbol centrally located - in the main sanctuary in a more meaningful place of honor and prominence.

Accordingly we suggest it is best and most practical that you follow these five steps to complete your own synagogue-symbol-project promptly and without interference, rejection or aggravation from others.

Step #1
Enter your synagogue and visually locate the Ner Tamid, the Eternal Light, in your synagogue's sanctuary. This perpetual light is commonly installed right above the Aron Kodesh, the Ark, at the front and center of the synagogue.

If you ask, officials of the synagogue may tell you that this light currently signifies either the menorah of the ancient Temple, or God's presence in the chapel, or the spiritual light that emanated from the Temple of old. Be that as it may, you are going to make a change in that signifier.

Step #2
This is the tricky part. Do not even think about touching the light. It is tempting to try to make some physical change during a revision project. However you must resist this impulse.

As we intimated, every shul has people who make it their business to oppose any visible improvement in the structure or decor of the synagogue. You do not want to run afoul of these folks. Your project is a work that you create independently with the help of your imagination.

Step #3
Close your eyes and imagine an inverted Hebrew letter vav. Yes, the eternal candle or lamp with its flame looks to us like an upside down vav, the letter that has the numeric value of six. Recall that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

Step #4
Say to yourself the words, Ner Tamid lezichron Hashoah - meaning, this is the eternal light in memory of the Holocaust.

Step #5
Open your eyes. You have change the signification of a symbol that stands front and center in every synagogue sanctuary and you have completed your project.

Now you can meaningfully remember each time you enter the synagogue to look first at that eternal light at the focal center of your house of worship - to take a moment to reflect on the enormity of the suffering of the Shoah - and to give thanks for the constant resilience of the Jewish people.

[Repost from 2007.]

YouTube: Explore Ancient Synagogues in Israel with Tzvee

Here are two levels of archaeology . First, our video presents our commentary to our visits in 1983 to ancient synagogue sites in Israel. We broke the video into three segments so that we could post it to YouTube.

We undertook a second archeological "expedition" in August 2009 to unearth and recover the video itself. We had to find the ancient video tape so we could use it as a supplementary resource for our course on Jewish liturgy at JTS. Then when we had it in hand, it would not play properly on one VCR so we tried it on another. To capture and convert the images we sent it through our wireless Hava device to our desktop and then we worked some magic on the capture. Enjoy. Zahavy's Channel. (repost)

Jewish Press: How Archaeology Boosted Jewish Nationalism

How Archaeology Boosted Jewish Nationalism

By: Yitzhak Zahavy

Collectors have long recognized that Israel uses archaeology on stamps, coins and currency to advance its political and nationalist goals. Actually, while archaeology in recent years has declined as a mechanism that helps shape Israeli national identity, it has, at the same time, grown both as a discipline and in the way it is practiced in Israel.

My new book illustrates this pervasive early use and recent decline and sheds light on how archaeology found its way - through stamps, coins and currency - into the daily lives of Israelis.

In the summer of 1997 I came to Israel to participate in the first season of excavations at Tel Rehov with Professor Amichai Mazar. Two years later I began studying archaeology with Professor Israel Finkelstein at Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology. During my studies at Tel Aviv University I participated as an excavator, assistant registrar, assistant area supervisor and area supervisor in a number of archaeological excavations including Tel Yaffo and Tel Megiddo.

While studying in Tel Aviv I benefited from the excellent archaeological methods and practices taught by the professors, as well as the theoretical or non-practical seminars they offered.

One of these seminars was Dr. David Ilan's "Archaeology and the Public." This seminar came for me at a perfect time in my education. I had taken a number of the theoretical classes and found them interesting and intellectually challenging. But I had a hard time making the connection from theory to what archaeology means for the average person.

I would ask myself: How can I explain the importance of archaeology; why is archaeology important and what is its connection to everyday life? Dr. Ilan's seminar helped me find the answer.

That answer inhered in everyday objects such as stamps, coins and banknotes.

My book demonstrates some aspects of how and why symbols and motifs from archaeology have made their way onto everyday objects. It shows that archaeology has helped create a collective identity in modern Israel through the construction of a shared past.

Times: Ethnic Jewish e-magazine Tablet Launches in a pretty bubble

Nice of David Carr at the Times to mention "Tablet" in his "Media Decoder" blog in his post, "A New Online Magazine About Jewish News and Culture." It would be nicer yet if he read the site and made some comments about its content.

He quips to conclude his blurb,

With the tag line “A new read on Jewish life,” Tablet features a podcast of Joy Ladin, a poet and a professor of English at Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University who underwent a sex change. Safe to say that not everything that will be covered in Tablet came down from the mountain on those original stone artifacts.

We looked around the new site and have praise for its attractive design and impressive sounding staff. The mag also has clever headline writers.

But "a new read" is a bad tag line. What happens after three months when it is no longer "new"? Do they shorten the tag to "a read"? And BTW it's not descriptive of the nature of the content is it? Are they progressive or conservative? Young or old? (Of course, silly question, everyone on the web is young.) If they are a "read" does that include multi-media? (There is "weekly" audio on the site.) And are they pro-religion or anti-religion? Pro-Zionist or pro-Palestinian? Do you really want us to guess about all of these questions?

And then what of the other part of the tag, "Jewish life." Nothing about dead Jews? No obituaries? We gather that this means concern with "culture" but as opposed to what?

Culture, religion and politics of an ethnic group. Look at us. We are so hip and special.

No, no. Please tell us what distinguishes you from a hole in the wall.

Why do we need another Forward or Jewish Week?

What big stories did your people break in their previous lives?

What kind of new knowledge will you create? What value will you add?

Will you be honest with us? Too much among the stories, posts and reviews that you published so far that claims or insinuates they are your own new discoveries - when they are not. Other journals or blogs have written witty insights on those subjects days or weeks ago. Are you hoping nobody will notice that?

Are you planning to stay in the sparkly bubble that you so gleefully appear to have erected around your enterprise?

And please realize that we mean all of this interrogation in the nicest way. We would like to see you succeed, not just float around the Internet until this pretty bubble bursts. [hat tip to henry and others]

Gothamist Uncovers Starbucks Hanukkah Prank

Gothamist has uncovered what appears to be a Starbucks Hanukkah put-on, that is an imaginary, "special edition Starbucks menorah cup, which supposedly contained the chain's 'Hanukkah Blend.' This individual claims he bought it at an unspecified location on the Upper West Side..."

Tipoff that it is not real: no way, no how, no 7 branched menorah.

Wired: The Deities GPS and CAM Protect Menorahs and Baby Jesus

Sinners cannot hide from these omniscient deities, the god GPS and his consort CAM.

GPS, hidden cameras watching over Baby Jesus
By ERIC GORSKI,AP Religion Writer

When Baby Jesus disappeared last year from a Nativity scene on the lawn of the Wellington, Fla., community center, village officials didn't follow a star to locate him.

A GPS device mounted inside the life-size ceramic figurine led sheriff's deputies to a nearby apartment, where it was found face down on the carpet. An 18-year-old woman was arrested in the theft.

Giving up on old-fashioned padlocks and trust, a number of churches, synagogues, governments and ordinary citizens are turning to technology to protect holiday displays from pranks or prejudice.

About 70 churches and synagogues eager to avoid the December police blotter jumped at a security company's offer of free use of GPS systems and hidden cameras this month to guard their mangers and menorahs.

Others, like the Herrera family of North Richland Hills, Texas, took matters into their own hands. Upset after their teeter-totter was stolen, the family trained surveillance cameras on their yard and was surprised when footage showed a teenage girl stealing a baby Jesus worth almost $500. Police have obtained the tape.

"They took the family Jesus," said Gloria Herrera, 48, a Catholic. "How can anybody do that?"

For two consecutive years, thieves made off with the baby Jesus figurine in Wellington, a well-off village of 60,000 in Palm Beach County, Fla. The ceramic original, donated by a local merchant, was made in Italy and worth about $1,800, said John Bonde, Wellington's director of operations.

So last year, officials took a GPS unit normally used to track the application of mosquito spray and implanted it in the latest replacement figurine. After that one disappeared, sheriff's deputies quickly tracked it down.

Sensing opportunity in that kind of success story, New York-based BrickHouse Security is offering up to 200 nonprofit religious institutions a free month's use of security cameras and LightningGPS products it distributes.

Chief executive officer Todd Morris said the idea was born after a few churches asked about one-month rentals instead of longer contracts that are the norm. The first 20 or so applications came from synagogues, he said.

Rabbi Yochonon Goldman of Lubavitch of Center City, a Philadelphia-area branch of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, signed up even though his previous biggest scare involved the wind knocking down a menorah.

"People are very security conscious, and this is simply a precaution," said Goldman, who will put a GPS on one menorah and a camera on another. "It's sad ... but it's the reality we're faced with."...more

BBC: Jewish Lawyer Replaces Stolen Jesus

I suppose we should say, "In GPS We Trust"...

US infant Jesus statue to get GPS

The statue was stolen from a nativity scene like the one above

A statue of the infant Jesus on display near Miami in Florida is being fitted with a Global Positioning System device after the original figurine was stolen.

The near-life-size figure forms part of a nativity scene in Bal Harbour.

The original vanished three weeks ago, despite being bolted to the ground.

Dina Cellini, who oversees the display, says the statues of Mary and Joseph will also be fitted with a satellite tracking device to deter thieves.

She said: "I don't anticipate this will ever happen again, but we may need to rely on technology to save our saviour."

A Jewish lawyer, Jeffrey Harris, from Cincinnati, who read about the theft on the internet, has donated the new Jesus figurine in the Founders Circle area of the city.

Mr Harris, who celebrates Hanukkah, not Christmas, told the Miami Herald: ''I felt bad. How could someone steal a baby Jesus? Even though I am Jewish, I like the Christmas spirit.''

Bergen Record and Washington Post: Real Christians who don't celebrate Christmas

While rabbis are having apoplexy over Jews who do celebrate Christmas, there are many pious Christians who do not celebrate it -- and for valid reasons.

See the Washington Post and...

Some believers reject Christmas

By TOM BREEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- As Christmas drew near, Pastor John Foster wasn't decorating a tree, shopping for last-minute gifts or working on a holiday sermon for his flock. After all, it's been 50 years since Christmas was anything more than a day of the week to him.

He's one of very few American Christians who follow what used to be the norm in many Protestant denominations -- rejecting the celebration of Christmas on religious grounds.

"People don't think of it this way, but it's really a secular holiday," said Foster, a Princeton-based pastor in the United Church of God. He last celebrated Christmas when he was 8.

His church's objection to Christmas is rare among U.S. Christians. Gallup polls from 1994 to 2005 consistently show that more than 90 percent of adults say they celebrate Christmas, including 84 percent of non-Christians.

That's a huge change from an earlier era, when many Protestants ignored or actively opposed the holiday. But as it gradually became popular as a family celebration, churches followed their members in making peace with Christmas.

The change didn't happen overnight. Through much of the 19th century, schools and businesses remained open, Congress met in session and some churches closed their doors, lest errant worshipers try to furtively commemorate the day.

"The whole culture didn't stop for Christmas," said Bruce Forbes, a religious studies professor at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. "Government went on as usual, business went on as usual, school went on as usual."

In researching his book, "Christmas: A Candid History," Forbes discovered that major American denominations -- Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists and Congregationalists -- either ignored the holiday or actively discouraged it until the late 19th century.

That rejection was rooted in the lack of biblical sanction for Dec. 25 as the date of Jesus' birth, as well as suspicion toward traditions that developed after the earliest days of Christianity. In Colonial New England, this disapproval extended to actually making the holiday illegal, with celebration punishable by a fine.

"Some somehow observe the day," wrote Boston Puritan Samuel Sewall on Christmas Day 1685, "but are vexed, I believe, that the body of people profane it, and blessed be God no authority yet compels them to keep it."

Some 322 years later, Sewall might be surprised to see his congregation -- today known as Old South Church -- proudly displaying a decorated Christmas tree outside the church.

"We think it's cheerful and seasonal," said Nancy Taylor, senior minister of Old South, one of America's most venerable congregations, counting among its past worshipers not only Sewall but Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams.

Now part of the United Church of Christ, Old South not only has a Christmas tree, but encourages its 650 or so members to exchange Christmas presents -- although the focus is on charitable donations and service, rather than shopping.

"We are the descendants of the Puritans and Pilgrims, but we have loosened up a lot since then," Taylor said. "We have changed and adapted and I think that's part of why we haven't died out."

Like Sewall's successors, the mainline Protestant churches have learned to accommodate Christmas. But the change came from the pews rather than the pulpit.

Christmas benefited from a 19th century "domestication of religion," said University of Texas history professor Penne Restad, in which faith and family were intertwined in a complementary set of values and beliefs.

Christmas became acceptable as a family-centered holiday, Restad said, once it lost its overtly religious significance.

At the same time, aspects of the holiday such as decorated trees and gift-giving became status symbols for an aspirant middle class. When Christmas began its march toward dominance among holidays, it was because of a change in culture, not theology.

"In America, the saying is that the minister follows the people, the people don't follow the minister," Restad said. "This was more of a sociological change than a religious one. The home and the marketplace had more sway than the church."

That's partly why Christians like those in the United Church of God reject the holiday: They say divine instruction, rather than culture and society, should determine whether the holiday is appropriate.

"It's common knowledge that Christmas and its customs have nothing to do with the Bible," said Clyde Kilough, president of the United Church of God, which has branches all over the world. "The theological question is quite simple: Is it acceptable to God for humans to choose to worship him by adopting paganism's most popular celebrations and calling them Christian?"

There is still lingering unease with the holiday in denominations that once rejected it. This can be glimpsed in worries about commercialization and in individual Christians like Phillip Ross.

Ross is an elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Vienna, near Parkersburg. Well-versed in the history of Christianity, Christmas and Presbyterianism, Ross knows his church historically objected to Christmas.

On the other hand, Ross is also a father of two, and while he made up his mind to reject Christmas as a teenager, his children's early years included gifts, decorations and a tree.

"I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas," he said. "It seems obvious to me that there's nothing scriptural about it, but that's a hard sell with children."

Video: Outrageous Hanukkah Rap Just in Time for Xmas

Not too shabby.

"Ladies MC Jew C and Lil Mitzvah spit the truth about Hanukkah a little too late"

A Treenorah for Chrismukkah

Interior Design Room writes:

New York/Tel Aviv-based designer Sahar Batsry is sure to win over Chrismukkah participants 'round the globe with his holiday-melding Tree Menorah, or "treenorah" as we like to call it.

Not very "kosher" but a nice design!

Teaneck Orthodox Mayor Sanctions Municipal Christmas Crèche

This is the Teaneck news from the Jerusalem Post:

This year, Teaneck, NJ, added a crèche to its display of a tree and menora on the town green. But the town council had been divided. A minority wanted to deny the crèche as well as reject the menora, which was donated by Lubavitch in 1989.

The Orthodox mayor, however, supported the nativity scene. "This is a diverse town," said Mayor Elie Y. Katz. "If we can get a diverse, all-inclusive display and try to represent as many religions as we can in the community, I think that is a positive thing."

The result is a collection of holiday decorations adjacent to the municipal building: a crèche, a Christmas tree, Santa Claus, snowmen and a menora.

A crèche or a menora standing alone would violate the law, but adding Santa, Frosty the Snowman, a sleigh, candy canes and reindeer make the display acceptable under the law.

This is what the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, calls the "Three Reindeer Rule" in which public displays of religious symbols are permitted when the hodgepodge of decorations makes it clear that the government is not endorsing a religion.

If the holiday display is somewhat silly in appearance - the seasonal equivalent of mixing apples and oranges - it is also serious in effect because it may trivialize religious symbols to make them acceptable for public display.

By the way, according to the Teaneck Progress blog the township spent our hard earned tax dollars to purchase a nativity scene.

Oy. Merry or happy whatever~!

Since 1989, if not before that, Teaneck has grappled with the issue of religion in the public square. Here are two opinions from the Times on the issue:

1. The Menorah On the Town Green

   ...10 article ''Effort to Display Menorah on Town Green Finally Succeeds,'' it is unfortunate...on the municipal green. Regarding the Dec. 10 article ''Effort to Display Menorah on Town Green Finally Succeeds,'' it is unfortunate...

   January 7, 1990 - New York and Region - 327 words

2. Holiday Displays On Public Property

   ...been asked by the Jewish Community Council to respond to the recent article ''Effort to Display Menorah on Town Green Finally Succeeds,'' because it failed to communicate this...

   February 11, 1990 - New York and Region - 406 words

In Starbucks' TV Ad - Jewish Penguins Spread Holiday Cheer

Starbucks Coffee doesn't advertise that much. When they do, people take note. Advertising Age ran this posting, "Starbucks' Animated Animals Put Even Us in Holiday Spirit" proclaiming the Jewishness of two penguins who befriend a window washer.

Garfield Reviews Three Spots From Wieden
Posted by Bob Garfield on 12.03.07

In pale pastels and rough-hewn animation, a woman offers a bearhug. To a bear.

A chilly window washer accepts a hot beverage from two Jewish penguins. A man takes pity on a shivering reindeer. And yet it is not goofy. It is not uncomfortably saccharine. In fact, it's all so, so lovely. ...more

Now you could argue that these penguins in the ad do not look that Jewish. They may or may not be wearing yarmulkas.
But I guess the menorah in the window in the next room removes any doubt. Yes, these Jewish birds are taking care of the window washer by offering a warm coffee.

Peace on Earth and Good Hot Starbucks Coffee. See the "Pass the Cheer" videos for yourself.

Best Buy Converts to Judaism?

Minneapolis based Best Buy electronics retailer last year announced that in their advertising they were using "Happy Holidays" for the Christmas shopping season, and they were not using "Merry Christmas."

This year they are using yarmulkas and menorahs in their ads! (Although the yarmulkas on the man and boy look like they were photoshopped in.)

Next year we expect to see peiyos, beards and tzitzis.

Amazing: Image of Mel Gibson in Latke

We were making latkes tonight and lo and behold an image of Mel Gibson appeared on one of our latkes.

Click the image for an enlargement.

Another Chanukah miracle?

I thought: Maybe I should sell this on ebay. But I was hungry. It was tasty.

Jewish Music Mecca in Teaneck Cafe

This week's Jewish Standard uncovers a Jewish Music Mecca in Mexicali Blues, a Teaneck Cafe:

...the acts that come through, said founder Eli Wells, are never intentionally Jewish.

"We are what we are — we’re a live music venue, we’re non-denominational," said Wells, who grew up in New Milford. "We just happen to be in Teaneck, N.J."

What’s most startling about the proliferation of Jewish fans at Wells’ club is that it took so long for somebody local to seize on northern New Jersey’s music-loving Jewish population. Clubs in Manhattan, particularly The Lion’s Den and B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, regularly feature Jewish stalwarts like Soulfarm, the Moshav Band, and Blue Fringe. Those concerts draw fans from the Jersey suburbs, as do the dozens of secular concerts performed nightly in New York.

When Wells moved his business from Cedar Lane to its current location a few years ago, he started booking a couple of bands a week. Booking agents and managers for Jewish bands started calling immediately.

"People realized there was a club in Teaneck," he said. "I didn’t search [Jewish performances] out."

Instead, Jewish acts sought him out. Yossi Piamenta, the ‘chasidic Hendrix,’ estimates that he’s played close to 10 Mexicali Blues concerts in the last two years. The Moshav Band recently played two well-attended concerts, and, as of last week, Soulfarm and Moshav were discussing a later-December Chanukah show.