Meredith L. Jacob's: Modern Jewish Mom's Guide to ShabbatHello there thirty-is-the-new-twentysomething! That's right, I'm talking to you. Do you have a friend, sibling, cousin, or co-worker who recently procreated? Perhaps a girlfriend with a young family who could use a kid-friendly, modern guide to Shabbat? You do? Just as I expected. Well, here's something to consider: Mother's Day doesn't only have to be about your own mom. If you're looking for a gift to let the young moms in your life know you appreciate how hard they're working, consider Meredith L. Jacob's The Modern Jewish Mom's Guide to Shabbat. In addition to thoughtful and creative guidance on how to prepare the house, the table, and the family, Jacobs offers projects, recipes, and summaries of the weekly Torah portions with family discussion questions. There's even a chapter on how to keep Shabbat interesting and meaningful for teenagers.

If you're in search of a last minute gift for your own mother this Sunday, here are a couple of foolproof ideas:

Sabon: means 'soap' in hebrewJewcers in New York, Boston, Chicago, New Jersey, Toronto, or Montreal should seriously consider making a visit to Sabon, an amazing bath and body company that was founded in Israel in 1997. Their lotions, massage oils, soaps, cleansers, and serums combine aromatherapy oils, Dead Sea extracts, herbs, and flowers from the Israeli countryside. In addition to delicious products that are stylishly packaged, Sabon's soaps are made on an agricultural co-operative Moshav in Northern Israel, they use boxes made from recycled materials and fully biodegradable packing material, they never test on animals, and they support Dead Sea conservation via Friends of The Earth. US and Canada locations can be found here. Sabon also has an Israeli site.

ahava: as close as mud gets to loveFor those who can't get to a Sabon storefront, Ahava is another good bet for Mother's Day. Described as the "only cosmetics enterprise indigenous to the Dead Sea region," their rich, mineral-based products are available all over the world. Any number of their cleansing, exfoliating, hydrating, and nourishing solutions would be a welcome offering. For more traditional moms, try something along the lines of the Mineral Body Lotion or hand and foot creams. For more adventurous mamas, pick up a tube of the Energizing Body Mud Mask with fresh essences of mandarin & cedarwood.

Recently, a group of Evangelical Christian leaders let loose an Evangelical Manifesto upon the world (short summary here). By attempting to save Evangelical Christianity from the political and religious excesses that threaten believers and non-believers alike, the authors point to possible way forward for Muslims living in western countries, attempting to be good liberal democratic citizens and maintain their faith at the same time.

"Insistently moderate" as Alan Jacobs calls it, the Manifesto abjures a sound-biteAmerican Muslims: American, as well as Muslim discussion of Christianity and criticizes the whole spectrum of the Evangelical movement from right to left, including its own authors. And it extends beyond its own tribe, asking secular humanists and new atheists and liberals of all stripes if they are satisfied with the relationship that society and religion currently have, and taking a pox-on-both-thy-houses approach to "French style secularism" as well as "Islamist violence."

Evangelicals must not, the authors contend, become "useful idiots" to any political party --- no doubt a reference to Republican operatives like Karl who call Evangelicals "loons" behind their backs --- and they must not try to coerce or force other people to believe in their way. They must not try and depict themselves as the apex of truth. They must not be fundamentalist (yes, the manifesto uses the f-word), must help the poor, the under-trodden and needy. Over and again, the document condemns the "dangerous" alliance between church and state, denying that Christianity deserves special treatment because it's the majority faith, contending instead that "no one faith should be normative."

What's more the emotional and argumentative crux of the Manifesto --- the claim that "Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally" --- draws a necessary and important distinction between religious and other kinds of identities that should be instructive to people of all faiths, and to western Muslims in particular.

Is there such a thing as a "Muslim vote" or "Muslim politics"? And if there isn't should Muslims try and vote as "bloc"? Or should there be Muslims for Ron Paul, Muslims for Obama, Muslims for George Galloway, Muslims for Ken Livingstone, and Muslims for Joe Lieberman? Should mosques endorse candidates? Should our national organizations pander to politicians? Should there be "Muslim" PACs or "Muslim" foreign policy initiatives?

The Manifesto says "no," loudly. Muslims should define themselves theologically and not politically, socially, or culturally. They should see that their primary relationship to Islam isn't utilitarian but salvific, and that "Muslim" identity isn't a fulcrum with which to advance certain ends in the public sphere, but simply a pact with God, whose rewards are identity reaped in the next life.

Many Muslims will be quick to retort that given the current climate --- where they are under attack not just from fundamentalists among them but Islamophobes of every stripe --- taking such an apolitical approach to being Muslim is virtually impossible. Every day, Muslims are asked to condemn bombings, and address beheadings, and talk about foreign wars against their co-religionists. How, then, can anyone suggest that when Muslims talk about Islam, they should focus on the afterlife? Even if we wanted to, Muslims will say, other people wouldn't let us!

The Evangelical Manifesto has an ingenious response to this problem, interpreting it as a "cost of discipleship":

Unlike some other religious believers, we do not see insults and attacks on our faith as offensive and blasphemous in a manner to be defended by law, but as part of the cost of our discipleship that we are to bear without complaint or victim-playing.

In other words, when Muslims are put in a position where others are speaking for them --- and putting them into political and social and cultural categories --- it will be up to them to resist the temptation of accepting these categories. They, as the Manifesto suggests for Evangelicals, will have to say:

[W]e insist that we ourselves, and not scholars, the press, or public opinion, have the right to say who we understand ourselves to be. We are who we say we are, and we resist all attempts to explain us in terms of our --- true motives and our --- real agenda.

By taking this approach to political debates, even debates about Islam, Muslims could at last enter the debate not as Muslims, but as Americans. Or, say, as Philadelphians. Or as lawyers.

Perhaps precisely because Evangelicals have had the experience of acquiring massive political power and squandering it, they are singularly qualified to provide a lesson to American Muslims, who have virtually no power as a religious community. When religion becomes inextricably tied to partisan politics, it can be bought and sold like stocks, simultaneously cheapening the faith and corrupting the secular principles of liberal government. Addressed to every faith community in the US, the Evangelical Manifesto is a warning American Muslims should heed. To be accepted as full members of a liberal polity, they have to be prepared to accept that their profession of faith is just one feature of their identities among many, and not the one that should dictate their engagement with politics.

Playing farce in the history of the Cinco de Mayo Week '08 to the tragedy of the possible conquest of Lebanon by Iran Hezbollah, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting off allegations that he accepted bribes from American Jewish businessman Morris Talansky to help fund his wife's art career, and unlike previous Olmert scandals, this one credibly threatens both Olmert's political career and the viability of his Kadima party.

Toni O'Loughlin: "The scandal threatens to demolish the already shaky coalition government and raises questions about whether a general election would be required if Olmert resigns. It also risks overshadowing next week's visit by the US president, George Bush, who has scheduled the trip to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary and to shore up the faltering peace talks with the Palestinians."

Avi Green: "I see that Ehud Barak is still stalling and biding for time...All he's doing is stalling out of his apparently being more interested in a government seat than in true responsibility. I suggest he start to rethink his position, because his colleagues are getting very restless."

Nathan Guttman: "The [Talansky] case is being described in the Israeli press as the most serious of three investigations currently being conducted into Olmert’s affairs...Talansky and Olmert first crossed paths when the Long Island businessman directed the American fundraising operation for Shaare Tzedek Hospital and the then-mayor was a guest at events organized by the group in the United States."

Amir Oren: "The investigation into Olmert's relationship with the man dubbed 'Mr. T' has once again proven two ancient truths about the media. One is that 'the medium is the message,' as Marshall McLuhan averred in his classic work, entitled Understanding Media. The other is that the presence of the observer alters the outcome of the experiment he is there to observe. The proof can be found in the surprising twists that the press has woven into the story's plot by reporting on it. The media midwifed the affair, kept it from dying and has turned itself into the arena for the coming rounds."

Bernard Avishai: "Indeed, the best scenario is not unlikely --- not if the Bush administration supports it actively, and helps keep restless ministers (like former Likud defense minister Shaul Mofaz) bailing water instead of abandoning ship. It is that Livni and Barak will govern together for a year or so, and reconstitute the Israeli center, while putting the taint of corruption behind them. Only this will deny Netanyahu his second act. Something must."

The eastern world seems to be exploding this week. After the US-backed Future Movement government in Lebanon declared Hezbollah's private telecommunications network illegal, the Iran- and Syria-backed militia responded by attacking Beirut and seizing control of much the city.

Jeffrey Goldberg: "Hezbollah has been doing a bang-up job this week undermining Lebanon's future on behalf of its sponsors, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Syrian intelligence. It is simultaneously doing effective work undermining its apologists in the West. We've heard the arguments over and over again: Hezbollah is social service agency; Hezbollah wants to join the Lebanese political process; Hezbollah is not in fact dominated by murderous Jew-haters. And so on. It's been a tough year already for Hezbollah's apologists...."

Nicholas Noe: "The open question then, as it has been for the last 30 years, now seems to be whether the Israelis might be the ones to intervene if March 14 steadily loses its capacity to cling on to its remaining levers of power - or whether Israel might be content to sit back and watch its bitter enemy fight its own countrymen. Nasrallah certainly thinks the former might be the case, saying yesterday that Hizbullah is well equipped to fight on two fronts. Either way, having reached a point where the spectre of yet another Israeli invasion and/or another civil war is being seriously discussed as imminent...."

The Beirut Spring: "Unleashing the sectarian monster can seem like a good idea to Islamists allied with the Future Movement and to the Saudis, but they had better think twice before letting that genie out of the bottle. All parties, including the Future movement should actively portray this as a security and political situation, not a sectarian one."

Abu Muqawama: "Hizbollah may very well get the government to back down...But the fact is, if civil war does break out, Hizbollah is going to get the blame from basically everyone but Syria, Iran, and other Shia worldwide. This is not 2006 and this is not Israel that Hizbollah is staring down. This is 2008 and these are other Lebanese --- Sunni and Druze and Christian. Hizbollah can't count on the support from anyone but a few pariah states."

Michael Young: "Now the party's true intentions are out there for everyone to see. Hizbullah can no longer hide behind its 'resistance,' a fictitious 'national opposition' or imaginary social protests. It is confirming on a daily basis that its minimal goal is to keep alive a Hizbullah state within the state and to force most Lebanese to accept this, even as the party infiltrates the government bureaucracy and has free rein in the airport and ports."

Charles Malik: "Hezbollah's militant takeover of Beirut and its systematic destruction of the authority of the state and freedom of the press suggests a sophisticated and planned campaign to take power."

Christopher Albritton: "When I entered Lebanon on July 13, 2006 to get to the war, an Iranian man came in at the same time — I saw his passport. We exchanged glances and went our separate ways. Friends in Hamra and nearby ‘hoods report that Hezbollah gunmen have taken the streets and are telling people to stay indoors. They’re also taking pro-government people from their homes. One friend near Sporting Club reported a Shi’ite man in her (mixed) neighborhood was taken by gunmen as he was screaming, 'I’m from the Dahiyeh!'"

Lee Smith: "A Shia-Sunni conflict in Lebanon might well damage Iran's own efforts to jump the sectarian divide. What level of control does Tehran have over Hezbollah at this stage while the Party may well be in an existential fight over its role not just as an armed militia, but as a Lebanese party? Further, and perhaps most importantly to Washington, what will Hezbollah's actions, and Tehran's decisions, say about Iran's war against the US-backed order throughout the rest of the region – from Gaza (Hamas vs. Israel and Egypt), through the Arab Gulf states, and most especially Iraq?"

From: Ben Karlin
To: Elizabeth Wurtzel

Read the following in a cranky old man voice:

What the hell kind of world are we living in?

I’m sorry, but it’s a fucking bag. There is little in this world that makes less sense to me than smart people going nuts over fancy pants clothing and/or accessories. I understand people trampling each other ever a $29 dvd player. I even understand why people would believe that a secret US-Israeli cabal conspired to bring down the twin towers. Seriously, that is not exaggeration. I have an easier time believing that shit than why people care about a bag. Even if it is nice. Even if it is made of the finest materials man has ever brought together in bag form. Okay, you can call me a cretin now.

Here’s a whiplash turn:

So you are still in touch with all your exes? Interesting. Who initiates that? It can’t be mutual. And how has or does the current guy feel about the past? That’s where you get into trouble.

I tried and succeeded for some time in keeping in touch with many of my former girlfriends. Something about wanting to prove that it really was us and not just me, or just her. "Look, we can still be friends. That’s real! Not just something we said to soften a blow." But one by one they fell away. People moved or got married or finally just gave up because after all, we were really only hanging out because we used to go out – not necessarily because we were super into the same things. (Otherwise, we might still be together, no?)

I have one friend who is a former girlfriend. She was my Bar Mitzvah date and we broke up in the 7th grade. We made out in a closet once. We had braces and it wasn’t particularly fun.

But back to you., since you're the single one. Do guys break up with you and then regret it? Do you dump them, then leave a door open? It’s never mutual. You know that, right?

From: Elizabeth Wurtzel
To: Ben Karlin

Hope you killed the man in Reno!

You are so Johnny Cash!

That is so Jew-y of you!

I love that you are multitasking TV shows. Excellent! I too multitask, thereby accomplishing nothing, but you, you create hit fake news shows. Right now, as I compose this email, I am also sitting on an Amtrak train and reading an article about this poor (actually, apparently quite wealthy, but never mind) Palestinian scholar who can't get tenure at Barnard because she wrote things that might be construed as less than kind about Israel, and I am also eating a Cup-of-Noodles soup, and having a phone conversation about termites with my mother. But you are probably coming up with the next Daily Show for HBO and an online version of The Onion for Slate or something like that, and maybe even writing a buddy movie for Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, or whoever the kids think are funny these days, all the while I'm just typing this email and slurping away and telling my mom to look in the Yellow Pages for an exterminator.

If that paragraph made no sense, forgive me.

I'm not good at doing six things at once.

It's funny you should mention the 237th richest man in the world. As I told you, my thesis is about intellectual property, and there's a section about how rich you would be based on the order in which you receive valuable information, like a hot stock tip. And I go through the regression from the 27th richest to the 270th richest to the 27,000th richest person in the world.

The college nose ring: Still got yours? So, you see, maybe our work has something in common.

Speaking of failed relationships, I know a lot about those. Somehow all my ex-boyfriends are still in my life now. No idea why. I might just look good in a rearview mirror. And all of them are good guys, just no one I'd want to be bound to anymore.

One of them, who now produces movies in LA, is somewhere in Connecticut right now, and I think he wants to hang out, which is possible, because Connecticut is, after all, a state the size of Connecticut. It's not a state the size of Rhode Island, but nothing is very far from anything else here. Eek!!!

Anyway, my favorite people all live in Brooklyn. This is a foul fact I accept.

A goattee is better than a soul patch.

All good men go through an earring phase.

Look, people in Wisconsin wear tube socks to scuba dive. You can't be blamed.

I wore nothing but black all through college. These things happen. I still have a nose ring. It looks good when I'm not wearing any clothes.

Everyone makes mistakes.

Next: Staying friends with an ex

Two weeks before Cindy McCain swore to NBC's Ann Curry that her "husband is absolutely opposed to any negative campaigning at all," Commentary's Jennifer Rubin spoke to John McCain on a conference call and baited him into describing Barack Obama as --- simultaneously --- the stealth candidate of Hamas, the Sandinistas, and the Weather Underground. Obama responded yesterday on CNN, saying that McCain was "losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination."

How would the campaign Abe Greenwald assures us is the veritable Platonic form ofSenator Tamburlaine the Great: McCain's Potemkin stroll through a Baghdad market in April 2007 allowed terrorists to set up an ambush that killed 21 people...and provided his campaign with a fitting metaphor maturity and masculine wisdom react? Why, with a near-instantaneous hysterical shriek from senior aide Mark Salter, of course. Salter, who seems to have earned his seniority as the campaign's point-man on hysterical shrieking, wants to make it clear just how offensive was Obama's "not particularly clever way of raising John McCain's age as an issue" --- presumably at least slightly more offensive than when Salter called Arianna Huffington "a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva" for telling the truth about Salter's boss.

But Salter's real point is to make sure the journalists on his mass-mailing list clearly understand the difference between "legitimate" and illegitimate campaigning. For example, calling your opponent an enemy of the state is a totally "legitimate question...about his judgment and preparedness." However, for Obama to respond to that charge with the charitable interpretation that it's an example of the toll running for president can take on someone's mind (rather than, say, an asshole being true to his nature) is an illegitimate attempt "to delegitimize" the legitimate question of whether Obama is an enemy of the state.

Now, I confess that I can't quite see the conceptual distinction the McCain camp is trying to draw, but then, I didn't learn virtue from a segregationist who taught me to put aside any "reservations about my destiny" of dying an honorable death in battle and going to Valhalla, so I'll have to defer to the expert. Here goes:

So: Unfortunately I still don't get it. Maybe the McCain line between legitimacy and illegitimacy looks incredible to you, too, perhaps even evidence of a candidate having lost his bearings in pursuit of the presidency, but that just goes to show that you and I need to study the Episcopal School Code of Honor a little harder.

You Don't Have To Go Home: but you can't stay here?At Slate, Emily Bazelon recently explored the rarely-discussed issue of African immigrants in Israel, noting that PM Ehud Olmert has complained about how many Africans sneak into Israel every year—a situation that raises issues of immigration, religion, economics, and infrastructure. These Africans are Christians and Muslims, which means they’re not eligible for Israeli citizenship, but Israel won’t extradite them back to their home countries because of their potential persecution for being affiliated with a Jewish State.

Many are sent to detention centers, where they languish doing manual labor in poor conditions, and others are sent to Tel Aviv, where they end up living near the bus station, in slumlike conditions that may be worse than the refugee camps they’ve fled in Africa.

Of course, this is nothing new: We previously posted about Darfurian refugees who were imprisoned when they arrived in Israel, because Sudan is technically an Arab country. After sneaking in via Egypt, they were kept on army bases, or put under house arrest on kibbutzim in the North while the Israeli government tried to figure out where to send them.

We also let you know when, more than a year later, 600 Darfurian refugees were granted temporary residency, and 2,000 illegal immigrants from Eritrea were granted work permits when it was made clear that their lives would be in danger if they were sent back to Eritrea.

I initially heard about this problem firsthand when an Israeli friend, who recently returned from his reserve duty in the Sinai desert, told me about the time he spent guarding the border with Egypt. He said some nights they caught as many as fourteen Africans in twelve hours, all trying to sneak into Israel. From Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and the Ivory Coast, many of them sought out the Israeli soldiers, who “arrested” them, which entails having them checked out by doctors, given food, and sent to detention centers. In search of safety and well-paying jobs, hundreds of Africans attempt to cross into Israel via Sinai every year.

According to my friend, many are killed by guards on the Egyptian side of the border.

Israel likes to brag about reaching out to other communities in need after natural disasters and taking in Vietnamese boat people, but ultimately, Israel can’t and shouldn’t be the place that the huddled masses of the world turn to for good jobs and opportunities. I’m not one of those people who constantly worries about the survival of the Jewish State, and I’m not suggesting that illegal African refugees are somehow going to take over the country, but I’m not sure the current policy does enough to deter Africans from risking their lives and illegally entering a country that already has its proverbial plate-full of problems. Of course, those who make it in shouldn’t just be shipped back to their homes countries—that accomplishes little, and is inevitably expensive and politically problematic. Instead there should be a more organized policy for dealing with the border and, if necessary, Israel can grant more temporary work visas to bring African workers in legally, for a limited amount of time.

Wait a second. Did I just join the Republican party?

Tzipi Livni, Soon-To-Be-PM?: Certainly beats the hell out of Bibi Israeli journalists are pre-celebrating Israel's sixtieth with a big, compelling story, yet another police investigation of Ehud Olmert over possible bribes he accepted from an American Jewish businessman. But their tone, this time, is subtly different from the past. The reports of interrogation (of Olmert himself, former staffers, etc.,) are less sassy. Ministers are keeping their counsel instead of rushing to Olmert's defense. There are confident leaks that the "situation is grave." The police seem to have got their man -- anyway, if their case is not bullet-proof, it is they who should be investigated for doing this to the public, of all times, now.

So reasonable people are preparing themselves for the possibility that Olmert will soon have to resign. This would be bad news -- and good.

First, the bad: I have not hidden my personal fondness for Ehud Olmert, which makes me completely unremarkable. Olmert is a likable, glad-handing centrist, a poster-child for Israel's rising professional and entrepreneurial élites, who has cultivated Western journalists and back-and-forth Israelis like myself for years. But this is not personal. It is business. Waiting in the wings, liking the polls, is the worst government imaginable, a Bibi Netanyahu coalition of Likud's hardest-liners, back-to-the-Land-of-Israel cultists, ultra-Orthodox claustrophiles, Russian reactionaries and oligarchs, and general opportunists. Resignation could bring the demise of the Kadima Party, as former Likud people scurry back to the fold.

True, Olmert's prosecution would be a tribute to Israeli democracy, in a way --- to the rule of law and the procedures for electing what's next. But new elections would almost certainly bring to power the most antidemocratic coalition in Israel's history, just at a time when negotiations with the Palestinian Authority hang by a thread, a new administration is coming to Washington, and Israel's own Arab minority is inching toward wholesale alienation. I am not sure Israel could take five more years of this. I am sure the West, Arab moderates, etc., cannot take five more years of this Israel.

The good news, however, is that there is an obvious replacement for Olmert, who has always stood a much better chance of holding Kadima together by the force of her popularity. I mean, of course, the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, a straight-talking, very bright, and evolving politician (profiled here by the New York Times' Roger Cohen).

Livni, unlike Olmert, was not tarnished by the 2006 Lebanon fiasco. As Akiva Eldar implies, she might well revive Kadima and draw new, younger forces to it. She is also more likely to advance the peace negotiations (which she nominally runs), or at least bring them to the national agenda. She provides Labor's doves a leader to rally to while their own leader, Ehud Barak, continues to posture as the new Ariel Sharon, the IDF's real commander, the scourge of terrorists. She could add the leftist Meretz Party, which said it would never join a government led by Olmert after Lebanon.

Indeed, the best scenario is not unlikely -- not if the Bush administration supports it actively, and helps keep restless ministers (like former Likud defense minister Shaul Mofaz) bailing water instead of abandoning ship. It is that Livni and Barak will govern together for a year or so, and reconstitute the Israeli center, while putting the taint of corruption behind them. Only this will deny Netanyahu his second act. Something must.

Gil Peled: knows how to get resultsOne thing Israelis aren't short on: Talk.  So it’s a reassuring sign of the times that whether it’s climate change, the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea, or the way urban pollution effects everyday quality of life, the environment—HaSviva—is becoming a much more common topic of conversation.

It hasn't always been that way. Gil Peled, an Israeli architect and green building consultant, explains, “Now everyone is aware of environmental problems, but when we had suicide bombers up the road it was the last thing on people’s minds."

Fortunately, converting talk into action is precisely what Peled’s Eco-Housing Pilot Project has been doing. Like so many people in the country, Peled lives in a stone-brick apartment block erected two generations ago when the national priority was ‘building the land’ rather than ‘saving the planet’. But what sets Peled’s building in central Jerusalem apart from the others nearby is that the residents have reduced their ecological footprint by over 30% since the project began in 2002.

The trademark stone floors and thin walls work well in the summer, letting heat escape, but that same lack of insulation becomes a burden during the icy Jerusalem winter. I’m not alone in huddling around an electricity-hungry portable heater from December to February. Not exactly what the Jewish Agency promised… And when it comes to recycling, if there’s a deposit box for newspapers or plastic bottles at the end of the street then you’re one of the lucky ones.

Jerusalem's Eco-Housing Pilot Project: shows that it's possible to turn talk into actionNu, so how is it possible to ‘green’ a 50 year-old building, not to mention stubborn stuck-in-their-ways Israelis? For Peled, the most important thing was to green people’s attitudes. “It’s easy to jump on technological solutions, but it’s really a matter of changing people’s behavior,” he says.

Now, with the full participation of the ten apartments in the building, they have succeeded in reducing their resource consumption via simple changes like recycling, using energy-efficient appliances, and harvesting rainwater from the roof to feed plants in the garden—itself a reclaimed patch of wasteland. “The place was very neglected and in disrepair and we’ve taken responsibility of our environment,” says Peled.

The Eco-Housing Project is the first—and remains the only—green apartment building in Israel. Peled notes that it’s much easier to design green housing when building from scratch, pointing to a number of independent projects in the Negev and Galilee doing just that. However, he argues that “detached housing is, by definition, un-ecological” because of the roads and infrastructure needed, not to mention the extra space required in a land-scare country.

The building, which over 20 people currently call home, has seen tenants come and go, but their enthusiasm hasn’t waned. “They didn’t come here because they were ‘green’, but when they arrived they understood that there is something special here,“ explains Peled with satisfaction.

Whether you're contemplating your first or fifteenth trip to Israel, the following destinations are unique, hidden gems that won’t be crawling with tour groups.  Birthright, Ulpan, and Federation trip alums can rest assured that these won't be repeats.

Care For Some: Biblical grass?1. Stroll in Neot Kedumim, the Biblical Landscape Reserve
You may have already visited the amazing Biblical Zoo, but how about a botanical gardens that shows you all of the plants and flowers mentioned in the Bible? It’s gorgeous, fun, and educational in the marginal ‘not-too-boring’ kind of way.

2. Check Out the Rockefeller Museum of Archaeology
It’s easy to skip most of East Jerusalem on your first few trips because there’s so much going on in West Jerusalem, but the Rockefeller Museum is definitely worth a trip. They have some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, displayed differently than the big exhibit in the Israel Museum, and all kinds of cool things that have been dug up in Israel from the Iron Age to the Byzantine Empire.

Shen Ramon: mean's 'Roman's Tooth'3. Hike to Shen Ramon in Mitzpe Ramon
Mitzpe Ramon is a huge crater in the middle of the Negev (or maybe it’s an erosion cirque—I can never tell the difference). There’s a fairly standard hike that takes you past waterfalls and up ladders (assuming you go during the rainy season), but if you have it in you to try hiking to the craters inside Shen Ramon, the highest peak inside the crater, you’re rewarded with unbelievably beautiful views, and maybe a peak at an ibex or two.


4. Find the Last Supper
There are two places in Jerusalem that claim to be the site of the Last Supper. They’re both almost certainly wrong, but fun to visit anyway. First, head to the Assyrian Church of the East in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City. I can’t find a link for it (that’s how hidden it really is), but to find it enter the Old City at the Jaffa Gate, make a right, walk past the church with the red British post box outside. Take the second left and wind around a few little alleyways. There’s a small sign, but probably best to ask someone… At the church they pray in Aramaic, and they’ve got a room in the basement where they claim Jesus had his final piece of matzo.

Coenaculum: pretty space for a simcha? Or you could head to The Last Supper Room, also called the Coenaculum in the Old City, directly above the Tomb of David. This room can’t possibly be the room where Jesus had his last supper, since it was built in the 12th century, but it could possibly be built on top of the site where Jesus and the disciples chowed down. Anyway, it’s pretty and kind of a fun thing to visit. Last time I was there I kept thinking how funny it would be to have a Jewish wedding in that room.

5. Help Out at Urban Kibbutzim
There’s a new trend of young Jewish collectives in urban areas, instead of way out in agricultural spaces. Urban kibbutzim, as they’re called, can be found in Jerusalem, Sderot and Beit Shemesh, and have been meeting with great success in the past few years. In Jerusalem, Kibbutz Reshit has converted the Ir Ganim neighborhood into a safe and beautiful place after years of it being a crime-ridden area with trash on the streets and drugs for sale on the corner. Stop by to see how young Israelis are reinventing the kibbutz movement. (And there are even urban kibbutzim specifically for English-speakers!)

Elijah's Cave: say Ommmm6. Meditate in Elijah’s Cave
If you’re up north in Haifa and want something different to do, visit Elijah’s Cave at the bottom of Cape Carmel. Tradition holds that this is where Elijah came to pray before he called down holy fire to defeat the followers of Baal on nearby Mount Carmel. He also hid in the cave after a nasty run in with Ahab and Jezebel. Since Elijah is holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims you’ll find all kinds of groups visiting the cave to pray and meditate. It’s beautiful inside, and a nice place to sit quietly with your thoughts.

7. Make A Speech on the Mount of Beatitudes
I’ve never been particularly interested in the Sermon on the Mount, being a Jew and all, but it’s certainly a nice homily, and if you’re feeling profound take a trip up to the Galilee, where you can visit a church that claims to be on the site where Jesus gave his famous sermon. It’s a gorgeous area, regardless of the history, and the church grounds are peaceful and nicely kept. Plus, it’s free.

A Symbol: of Peace8. Explore Kibbutz Ramat Rahel
You can stay at the kibbutz hotel, or attend a wedding on kibbutz grounds without ever noticing all of the cool things to see at Kibbutz Ramat Rahel. The kibbutz has a crazy history because for many years it was right on the border with Jordan, and has been destroyed and rebuilt three times. Way before that, though, Jezebel had her lair (a huge palace) on the site where the kibbutz is now. Seriously. Most of the archeological ruins have been taken to the Israel Museum, but there’s still stuff to see. Plus, if you hike out into the kibbutz fields you may run into actual shepherds herding their flocks, and you can see a fantastic sculpture—three huge columns with an olive tree planted on top of them, more than twenty feel in the air. There’s a bucket on a pulley so you can water the tree. It’s a gorgeous and easy hike, and the sculpture will take your breath away.

Happy Israeli Independence Day!

Welcome to Arkansas: The entrance to the play Over seven million people have seen the Great Passion Play of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, since its opening in 1969. The play was founded by a Midwestern preacher and politician, Gerald L.K. Smith, whose thrice-failed bid for president promised “the preservation of our Christian faith against the threat of Jew Communism.” It has been re-written several times since Smith’s death in 1976, and I wanted to see if it still reflected its anti-Semitic roots—not only was Smith an avowed foe of “Christ-hating Jews,” but Passion plays as a genre have a troubled history dating back to the Middle Ages. The most interesting way to see the show, I decided, was from the inside. So I volunteered as an extra.

While researching Rapture Ready, my exploration of Christian pop culture, I planned always to identify myself and my intentions honestly. But The Great Passion Play has had some bad experience with the media so I decided, just this once, to go incognito… and just avoid any outright lies. I called the 800 number and asked if there were any openings.

The man who answered seemed disappointed that I hadn’t seen the show. “We usually ask people to be familiar with the play first.”

“I understand,” I said, seeing my opportunity slip away. “but I was really hoping to do this.” And then I heard myself say, “It’s something I felt called to do.”

“Do you have your own sandals?” he asked.

“You the fella from New York?” A man wearing a security badge gripped my hand and led me through a gate into first century Jerusalem. The effect of the set, which stretched the length of two football fields, was stunning: Sand and grit swirled around a dense row of buildings. Jars of clay rested alongside a stone well. It was as if an entire street had been lifted out of time and plopped down at the base of an Arkansas hill.

The guard pointed me backstage to a small, bunker-like dressing room crowded with men and women in period dress sipping Diet Cokes. The room’s matron sized me up for a costume — a pile of rough, earth-toned linen and rope – and introduced me to a big man with a warm, snaggletoothed smile. “My name’s Danny,” he said.

People get ready: Radosh's book“I’m Daniel.”

“Well how about that!”

I liked Danny immediately. He explained that as an extra, my job would be to enhance the illusion of a bustling city, carrying props and making appropriate gesticulations in crowd scenes. I would not have any lines, but then, nobody would, really. All the dialogue in The Great Passion Play is pre-recorded and played through loudspeakers at the front of the seats. Actors lip-synch their dialogue with broad gestures. The audience, 20 feet above the set and at least 400 feet from where most of the action takes place, is too far away to actually hear anything, so Danny could talk me through scenes as we do them. “Some nights I play King Herod,” he said wistfully as I belted my mantle. “Tonight I’m just a traveler, so you can be my assistant or something.”

“OK, your attention please, everybody.” The matron came out from behind her counter. “A few quick announcements. We’re a small group again tonight, so when Jesus comes out, please do not all run over to him. We need to keep the stage populated. If you feel the need to go to Jesus, at least try not to bunch up.” She went on to an issue that was apparently related to the reduced number of volunteer actors. “The office has made an important decision about next season. Starting in the spring, we’ll have Monday nights off too. Now let’s pray.”

A few minutes later I was outside, waiting with Danny at the dark end of an alley for our cue. “We’ll follow the sheep,” said Danny. A couple of giggly children in shepherd costumes slapped each other playfully.

The music began. The kids chased a dozen sheep onto the set and we set off after them. Around us, women fetched water from the well, priests climbed the temple steps, and everyone made way for a man leading a camel. I followed Danny confidently through this chaos to the far side of the stage, where we stepped into the semi-darkness and stopped again. My first scene was over.

While we waited offstage again, a spotlight came up on a palace, where the Sanhedrin, the council of Jewish priests, was holding an urgent discussion.

“What are we to do? This man does many miracles.” The priests waved their arms for attention as their lines played through the loudspeakers.

“If we do not intervene, all men will believe in him!” Considering that the dialogue needed to be recorded only once, you’d think it would have been done by professional actors. This did not seem to be the case.

In the next scene, Danny and I stepped out through a stone arch and were confronted by two teenage centurions in red cloaks and crested helmets. “Halt!” boomed a voice over the loudspeaker. The unamplified soldiers pawed at our satchels. “What do you got in there, drugs?” one asked. We ambled over toward Herod’s palace where we pantomimed a sales pitch for earthenware pots until the king and queen threw oversized wooden shekels at us. “I want a receipt,” the queen joked.

The greatest story ever acted out via loudspeaker: The stage at the Great Passion Play The main action, of course, was taking place elsewhere. But it was difficult to hear the speakers from where we were, so I had very little idea what was going on until Jesus rode in on an ass and everybody ran over to him, just as we had been instructed not to do.

He began grasping outstretched hands like a politician working a rope line. “Did you touch him?” Danny asked me. From his gestures, I gathered this was meant to be in character.

"I couldn’t get close enough.”

Danny nodded. “He’s our best Jesus. We’ve got three, but he’s the one who really looks the part.” The crowd dispersed as Jesus began healing lepers. “That’s a good role,” Danny continued. “He gets a lot of lines.”

As the action moved back to the temple we stayed off to the side, populating the stage. Danny asked me, “So, do you go to church up there in New York?”

“Uh… Yeah, sure.” It’s not exactly a lie, I told myself. We just call it “synagogue.”

“What kind?”

“Nondenominational.” OK, that was a lie, but at least it would end this line of questioning.

“Church of Christ?”

Fuck. I mentally riffled through the books I’d been reading about evangelicalism. If he asked, does it mean he’s Church of Christ? “No… Uh…” Danny smiled kindly waiting for me to go on. And then, just at that moment, Jesus saved me. Not in his usual manner, but by causing a distraction — kicking over tables on the temple steps.

Hey, that lamp-thing in the corner looks familiar: The Sanhedrin, via the Great Passion Play website By my next scene, the tide had turned against Jesus. “Shake your fist or something,” Danny advised. Jesus was paraded past us in chains, and it fell to Danny’s character to turn to a neighbor and deliver the line that would express our growing antipathy toward this false prophet. Raising his arms, Danny caught a buddy’s eye. “I just realized,” he mock shouted, as the loudspeaker blared his actual dialogue. “With the new schedule, not working Monday nights, we’re going to get to see every single NFL game!”

Off stage again, Danny and I watched a guilt-ridden Judas hurl his blood money to the floor. “He’s a pilot for Wal-Mart,” Danny said. “Whenever one of the executives wants to fly somewhere, he’s the guy that takes them. He makes good money doing that.”

“Well he’s making good money here tonight.”

Perhaps for the best, Danny missed my lame thirty-pieces-of-silver joke. “Nah, not so much,” he replied. “He makes maybe twenty, thirty dollars a night. The Christ figures, they make a hundred and twenty.”

“Why do you do it?” I asked.

“Ministry,” he said quickly and earnestly. We looked back at the stage. “And put a little extra money in my pocket,” he added. “Plus we get free tickets to all the shows in Branson.”

Danny stood. “Big scene coming up,” he told me. We navigated toward the alley where we would make our next entrance, avoiding the audience’s sight lines. Along the way, we passed three women in their early 20s gossiping happily. “These girls are from Texas,” Danny said as we stopped to say hello. “Daniel here is from New York.”

“New York?” gasped one, laughing. “Get a rope!” From her hasty, “Only joking” I gathered that she was indeed proposing a lynching, and that she thought this was something to joke about. Much later, a non-New Yorker informed me that she was probably parroting a catch phrase from a regional salsa commercial. That might have made a difference.

A palace in Jerusalem, two thousand years ago. Outside, a crowd has gathered. Pontius Pilate steps forward as his soldiers drag a beaten Jesus behind him. “As you can all see, this poor man has been punished severely,” he tells the onlookers. “Therefore it is my desire, in expression of the goodness of Rome, to release him.”

The crowd explodes. “No! No! He must be crucified!”

“But why? Clearly this man has done nothing to deserve death. Therefore, I propose to let him off with a flogging.” Two soldiers tie Jesus to a post and begin lashing him as the crowd screams for blood. When it is over, Pilate stands above him. “Behold your king. He has been flogged, beaten, ridiculed, spit upon. What more can you want?” “He must be crucified!” The crowd shrieks as one. “Crucify him! Still, the compassionate Pilate can not believe his ears. “Crucify him?” “Crucify him!” Pilate calls for a bowl of water. “My hands are clean of this innocent man’s blood. I ask you one last and final time, what would you have me do with him?” “Crucify him!”

Another Great Passion Play attraction: Christ of the Ozarks I don’t know how this scene played in the audience. No doubt the hammy acting, the stiff dialogue, the church-pageant costumes and cornball music all worked mightily against any emotional engagement. But as I stood in the jostling crowd on that dusty set, some strange alchemy took place. There were spectators out there somewhere, but all I could see was inky darkness. The sky, far from any city, was black and dizzy with stars, exactly as it must have been two thousand years ago. All around me, dozens of presumably well-meaning Christians were representing themselves as Jews and acting out a scene that for centuries has been used to justify hatred and oppression.

Not only was I feeling sick about being along for the ride, but I started to have this mad hallucination that I had fallen into some eternal retelling of this story — that I was back at the actual moment of Jesus’s ordeal; or rather, at the moment when whatever in fact happened on that day was first re-experienced as a story of persecution by a Jewish mob. I was under the gaze not merely of a few hundred contemporary Americans but of all past and future generations. I was at a lynchpin of history, and I had choice: be complicit in this grotesque distortion of events — or try to change it.

“Maybe we should reconsider this!” I shouted desperately. “Maybe a flogging is enough!”

Danny laughed. He hadn’t heard that one before. The audience couldn’t hear me, of course, but they could see me. The rest of the cast shouted and shook their fists. From behind me, four Jews emerged with masks over their faces and cudgels in their hands, pushing through the crowd to get in a few more shots at the fallen Jesus.

I waved my arms for them to stop. I turned away, burying my face in my hands. I exaggerated every movement so that even from 400 feet away the audience might see something that they had never witnessed before, never considered: a compassionate Jew who was not willing to accept Jesus as the messiah, but who didn’t want him tortured to death either.

The jeering crowd followed Jesus offstage as he dragged his heavy cross and set off up the hillside to Golgotha of the Ozarks, and I genuinely felt like I’d failed. Danny put a hand out to stop me. “It’s pretty steep up there, and we don’t have insurance for volunteers.”

Watching the end of the drama unfold, I felt glum. My silly gestures hadn’t made the Passion play any less offensive, and as for dispelling the stereotype of cunning, manipulative Jews — I fiddled with the digital recorder I’d hidden in my pocket and tried to count the lies and half-truths that had brought me here. I imagined the look of disappointment on Danny’s face.

But I don’t think I deserved to be lynched.

Excerpted from Rapture Ready! by Daniel Radosh, published by Scribner.

Guess who's coming to dinner: David Lauren and Lauren BushLauren Bush, niece of George, has been dating David Lauren, son of Ralph, for three years. On the surface, that’s a match made in madras-print heaven. But according to the New York Daily News, Jenna Bush invited her cousin to her upcoming wedding without a date. Why was David Lauren excluded? It could be because the family’s upset that the couple has been together for three years without getting engaged, says one source. Or it could be because, as Radar helpfully explains:

David's actual surname is Lipshitz; his father famously changed it to Lauren when he realized that "Ralph Lipshitz" didn't quite fit the profile of a company whose logo features an aristocrat playing an aristocratic game on a horse.

The wedding is on the small side—only 200 people—and some of George H.W. Bush’s siblings aren’t invited. But this quote, from another anonymous source, doesn't paint the Bushes in the most tolerant light:

"There are religious differences," one points out. "Would he expect her to convert to Judaism?"

Latinos are the fastest growing demographic group in the nation and will play an increasingly decisive role in elections for the foreseeable future. George Bush got re-elected in 2004 by pulling off an eighteen point swing in the Latino vote versus 2000. Hence Republicans should get down on their star-spangled knees to give thanks that their party stumbled, with one hilarious pratfall after another, into nominating John McCain. He's not just the only Republican candidate with even an outside shot of winning this year's election. He's the only one not emphatically determined to reduce the GOP to a rump Anglo regional party of the old Confederacy.

Juan McCain's Shocking Plan Revealed: ¡Aztlán o muerte! ¡No a la rendición! So while the eyes of the nation were fixed on the North Carolina and Indiana Democratic primaries, McCain used the occasion of Cinco de Mayo to quietly step up his outreach to Latino voters, launching a Spanish-language version of his website featuring endorsement spots en español (naturalmente) from several prominent Mas Canosistas, and agreeing to speak at the upcoming La Raza conference. That's the right thing to do on the merits, bodes well for McCain administration immigration policy (i.e., being for it), and strikes a blow against racism and xenophobia. Also, it's the smart thing to do politically, not just for this election and for McCain personally, but for the long-term viability of his party.

Naturally, paranoid psychopaths on right alternate between thinking McCain is an unwitting dupe of a nefarious plot to reverse the outcome of the Mexican war, and thinking he's personally scheming to force-teach Wetback speech to every American, the better to understand landscaping and fruit-picking orders from our new greasy mustachioed overlords.

Can I give a word of advice to my Republican friends? The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is quite secure, I promise. If somebody somewhere on the internet says otherwise, this is one of those rare cases where somebody somewhere on the internet is wrong. What's more, however impeccable Michelle Malkin's credentials on the urgent need to deport all Arabs and put the Mexicans in concentration camps (or is that the other way around?), she doesn't have any actual proof that John McCain is the Manchurian candidate of the conspiracy to restore the Aztec empire, just a lot of craziness and projection. As McCain might put it, if we've been occupying Aztlan for a hundred years with no American casualties, why stop now?

Far from being a Mexican secret agent, McCain is the best thing that could have happened to you. True, he may not really care about your domestic agenda one way or the other. But as long as you're willing to keep supporting his vision of an enduring peace built on a character-building Hobbesian war of all against all freedom, he'll give you young, healthy, virile supreme court justices who'll snip whichever rights you don't approve of out of the Constitution (unlike those liberal pussies Scalia and Thomas); he'll mortgage your great-grandchildren's houses to  sustain the Bush administration's explosion of government size and scope; hell, he'll even torture some evil-doers. All you have to put up with is just a little salsa caliente rhythm in the step of strawberry-pickers 2000 miles from your house.

The surprising, spectacular, and deeply encouraging failure of populism to move Democratic primary voters is only part of the story of the long overdue demise of the Clinton dynasty in North Carolina and Indiana Tuesday night. Just as decisive, if not moreso, was the near-total collapse of Hillary Clinton's support among African-Americans.

I'm not talking about the familiar collapse of Clinton's black support after Barack Obama proved himself to be a viable mainstream presidential candidate by winning the lily-white Iowa caucuses. A second mass exodus of black voters away from Hillary Clinton made Indiana a statistical push, fattened Obama's margins enough to completely wipe-out Clinton's pyrrhic, pointless victory in Pennsylvania, and broke down the wall of bullshit sustaining the idea that the Democratic primary didn't end in February.

After Obama's win in Iowa, her surrogates' public musings about Obama's possible history of crack dealing, and Bill Clinton's now infamous trashing of the Palmetto State as a consolation prize for the you-know-whats, Hillary Clinton still managed to pull in about one fifth of the black vote in South Carolina. Yet from one Carolina primary to the other, roughly two thirds of Clinton's remaining black support dissolved, only slightly less steep a drop, proportionally, than her fall from this October poll in which she actually led Obama in black support, to the South Carolina exit poll. If she had maintained her South Carolina performance among blacks on Super Tuesday, Potomac Tuesday, Super Tuesday II, and this past tuesday, the net shift would have been more than 500,000 popular votes --- enough to shrink Obama's popular vote lead to near parity, and perhaps take the lead on not terribly extravagant assumptions about non-black liberals who were turned off by the Clinton tactics.

The African-American Vote: Between the CarolinasThe handy chart to the right tells the story graphically. (I've explained my methodology below.) Clinton's share of the black vote declined by about one sixth between South Carolina and Super Tuesday --- a period when national polling showed Obama's support rising across all demographics, and Clinton's falling --- and declined a bit more than another fifth between Super Tuesday and the Potomac primaries at the peak of Obamamania, when (again) all his numbers were improving and hers were going in the other direction. When either economic and demographic factors or Plagiarismgate, Goolsbeegate, and various other pseudo-scandals broke Obama's winning streak in Ohio and Texas, Clinton's black support rose slightly (by about one sixth) --- just like her white and brown support.

Then the Wrightmare struck, a thousand innumerate pundits were launched on a quest to prove that Obama's candidacy was undone before the slightest credible evidence emerged to support their case (they were stunningly wrong, as we now know), and Clinton was only too happy to embrace a wild long-shot electoral strategy of trying to stoke white resentment against a strange, dark, foreign, religiously suspect crypto-Communist who hangs out with sundry terrorists when not spewing elitist contempt for good, decent, ordinary folk. And what happened to Clinton's black support? It plummeted by a catastrophic 44.6 percent between the bookends of the Wrightmare (and nearly a full fifth just between Pennsylvania and Indy/NC), to the point where Hillary Clinton can barely attract half the level of black support of George Allen in his 2006 senate campaign (8.2 percent versus 15). Repeat: barely half the black support of George "Let's welcome 'Macaca' here to the real world of Virginia" Allen. All the while Obama's black support rose.

It's sort of incredible that this needs to be said, but future aspiring presidents, observe the ruins of the House of Clinton and take note: If you want to be the Democratic party's nominee, you will need some black votes, and 0 percent is worse than 5, which is worse than 10, which is worse than 20. So avoid basing your campaign on the argument that your party's most loyal constituents are worthless. They will (eventually) notice.

* * *

How I crunched the numbers: South Carolina is taken as a theoretical starting point, representing the performance among black voters Clinton could have managed even after the emergence of an electable black presidential candidate and her campaign's tactical decision to royally piss off a lot of black people. I track Clinton and Obama's subsequent performance on the four multiple-primary nights since South Carolina --- Super Tuesday, the Potomac Primary, Texas and Ohio, and Indiana and North Carolina --- by calculating the total number of votes cast by African-Americans on each election day and the share of the aggregate African-American vote each candidate received (that way, e.g., Obama's 86 percent in Delaware, 66 percent in Massachusetts, and 61 percent in New York, are weighted to reflected the tiny, medium, and huge populations of each state; for similar reasons as well as the distorting effects of political machines in individual states, I treat single-state primary days as statistical noise and ignore them). Figures are generated from the Real Clear Politics state voting totals and CNN's exit poll estimates of black turnout and vote shares. No caucuses were included since primary and caucus voting pools are incommensurate and too few caucuses had data on black voting to allow for a separate graph of black voting trends in caucus states. Likewise, the New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. primaries had no available data on black voters.

You can download the spreadsheet here and double-check me, or if you're curious and industrious, plug in new values in the C, D, and E columns and track the voting trends of any demographic group.

From: Ben Karlin
To: Elizabeth Wurtzel

I’m not sure you are going to get your handbag this way. Go for it! Just put it out there that you want one. Why beat around the bush?

Everything I want is vague and ill-defined. That goes for life goals too. I have no ability whatsoever to look into the future and conjure a picture of what my life will be – or even what I want it to be. Please read this in as un-angsty voice as possible. It does not make me nervous. Just a bitch to shop for.

I am working on a bunch of crap for HBO. Though that is not how I pitched it to them. I presented it in a manner that would make them think it is going to be quite good. I am writing a pilot about the world’s 237th richest man. We have another show, written by someone else, about a UFO alien death cult set in northern Wisconsin, and a third, loosely based on my book, which is a comedy-variety show built around the theme of failed relationships. As much as I loved working on a daily show, there is something about the promise and possibility of developing multiple ideas that thrills me more. Like, even though I ground myself down to a nub running multiple shows, the idea of having multiple shows is still thrilling. This inability to learn from past experience could be labeled either “boundless enthusiasm” or “fatal flaw.”

I really don’t want to get into a New York neighborhood apologia. In the 9 years I have been here I have lived in the West Village, Hell’s Kitchen, Greenpoint, Greenwich Village proper, off the Bowery in Noho, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene. What does that say about me other than settle the fuck down? There were things I loved about each place, though I loved Hell’s Kitchen least. Right now, I do live in Brooklyn, ambivalently. Don’t hate me for it. Hate me for a number of other reasons, which I would be more than happy to elucidate herein.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a birkenstock wearer. Here, however, for the purposes of partial disclosure, are some things I have worn or done that embarrass me in retrospect, though I stop short of regret:

1. Wore an earring briefly in high school, and again in college
   
2. Goatee for about a week, also in college
   
3. Wore a bandana in that hippee-helmet kind of way, though at a summer camp, which makes it slightly less obnoxious.
   
4. Frequently wore white tube socks with sneakers and shorts while not engaging in athletic activity
   
5. Killed a man just to watch him die

One of those things actually does not embarrass me.

Next: What the memoirist and the comedy writer have in common

Efrim Menuck fronts the band currently named Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band—a band whose appellation, along with its sound, changes and grows with each new release. Currently, the band is a seven-piece composed of (among other instruments) violins, guitars, and a cello—and group choral chanting. Their newest release, Thirteen Blues for Thirteen Moons, finds the band in a more aggressive, rock-edged mood than usual, supplanting their experimental punk backgrounds (Menuck, along with the band’s violinist and bassist, also play in the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor). Just landed from their European tour, Menuck graciously filled us in on the band’s philosophy, writing habits, and the Facebook invasion of Canada.