Oy to the World!

Happy Hanukkah!

Candy is Dandy but Kosher is...Kosher

Remember playing CandyLand as a kid? Now there's KosherLand.

Matzo and borscht or gumdrops and caramels?

Tough choice.

L'Shana Tova!

Tomorrow begins the 10 Days of Awe, the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when I reflect on the past year and consider ways to make improvements.

Maybe a little less kvetching and a little more stretching.

Wishing everyone a sweet and happy New Year!

The Ties That Bind (or Not)

I had to have a medical procedure done recently that required going from one place to another within the facility while wearing a what amounted to a schmata held together with dental floss.

What was particularly annoying for me was the byzantine way you're supposed to tie the thing to keep from exposing yourself. The gown was a wrap around robe that opened in the front. And you needed a Boy Scout badge in knot-tying to figure how to keep it closed.

There were two tiny strings inside the gown at hip level and two more on the outside.

My options:

• Tie the two inner strings together, except I'd need to have a 15 inch waist.


• Tie the two outer strings together, except I'd need to have a 17 inch waist.


• Tie one outer string to one inner string, except I'd expose most of my ass.

I ended up holding it closed and hoping for good coverage. I think they told me I was fine just to get me dressed.

Sodom and Gemmorah With Fried Food

This kills me. Evangelical website OneNewsNow states that "Home Depot is helping to introduce children to the homosexual lifestyle" because the home improvement company contributed $5,000 to Nashville Pride.

Apparently, Home Depot set up an arts and crafts booth for kids at the Nashville Pride festival, and we all know what arts and crafts can lead to - compulsive paste eating.

What all these right wingnuts don't seem to understand is that most gay pride festivals are pretty tame. At San Diego's festival, alcohol is served only behind fences. You'll find way more tacky rainbow gear for sale than anything remotely sexual, and there's absolutely nothing gay about the food - greasy county fair fare is the norm.

And pride events occur just once a year.

But exposing kids to ubiquitous movies and video games with excessive violence - now that's good, clean family fun.

Semetic Semantics

Okay, I just have to get this off my chest:

Jewish: Of or relating to the Jews or their culture or religion.

Yiddish: The language historically of Ashkenazic Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, resulting from a fusion of elements derived principally from medieval German dialects and secondarily from Hebrew and Aramaic, various Slavic languages, and Old French and Old Italian.

You see, there's a difference.

So, when someone asks me to "say something in Jewish," I always answer, "bring a little sweater."

Thinking Inside the Box(es)

I'm moving in a few days, and everything I own is in one of these boxes.

Wondering how many of my things will disappear into the Moving Box Vortex never to be seen again.

Let My People Throw

As an avid Red Sox fan, I was thrilled to discover Jews on First, a blog about Jewish professional baseball players.

And I thought the only connection we had to baseball was Sandy Koufax and Hebrew National hotdogs.

Tweetie Pie

Creative writing student and cooking enthusiast Maureen Evans uses Twitter to promote her recipes.

From what I can tell, 140 characters never tasted so good.

I love Twitter, and I find it handy that my tweets feed right into my Facebook status update. It's like filling two birds with one tweet, or something like that.

And Twitter's enforced brevity is like having my high school English teacher watch every keystroke. But there's no extra credit for using really big words.

The Other Four Questions

Why on this night do we have to listen to a really long story before we eat?

Why does gefilte fish look so unappetizing?

Why does my brother find the afikoman year after year?

Why do we do it all over again the very next night?

Next year in Jerusalem.