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Jewcy Book Club

Welcome Authors
Brian Frazer
&
Mike Edison
who are posting all week.
Coming up:
  • 10/13:
    Rabbi Levi Brackman and Sam Jaffe
  • 10/20:
    Jonathan Garfinkel
  • 10/20:
    Rabbi Robert Levine
  • 10/27:
    Danit Brown
  • 10/27:
    Joshua Henkin
  • 11/03:
    Craig Glazer
  • 11/10:
    Max Gross
  • 11/17:
    Seth Greenland

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DAILY SHVITZ
Invitation-Only Judaism: A New Religious Primer

Here is one more reason that excommunication is one of my goals: Once front-row tickets to shul are more expensive than court-side seats at a Laker's game, it's time to check out.

I am not sure what it would take to get excommunicated, but I am pretty sure my buddy Eli deserves it for the the time he molested Anne Frank's statue in a stoned stupor in the streets of Amsterdam. As disturbing as that was, lucky for Eli, it didn't garner much media coverage, so he is still official.

If you want to get kicked out of a religion like Judaism, you gotta make an ass of yourself in public.

So here I am.

As my first step toward excommunication, I will lay out in black and white, for the first time, what I consider to be the future of Judaism. I call it the "Doctrine of the Invitation Only Jews".

I thought of the concepts several years ago when I was working out with my good friend, Dr. Dani Cohen. It was just before Rosh Hashanah, and he told me he would not be going to services.

"Are you crazy?" I asked, still clinging to the superstition, not the strong belief, that compelled me to be just another High Holiday Jew.

He told me that he stopped going years ago. He just didn't believe.

"But don't you want to hedge your bets?" I asked. "What if the after-life is nothing but a big bureaucracy, and when you get there, they just have a checklist of things that you did or didn't do. And lets face it, you probably didn't swing a rooster around your head three times before Yom Kippur and chant, 'This is my substitute, this is my exchange. This is my atonement. This fowl will go to death, and I will enter upon a good and long life.', but at least you can get credit for putting on a tie and sitting through services. And that's something."

Dani said something akin to,"You're an idiot." And then he told me he had actually become a happier person since he stopped pretending that going to shul twice a year was important to him.

So I gave it a try. I skipped Rosh Hashanah services for the first time in my life. I waited for the lightning to strike. I was sure that I would hear the Book of Life slam shut. I imagined sadly looking into heaven from outside the gates while my dad realized his version of paradise at an all-you-can-eat chult and potato kugel buffet in return for the at least several hours he had spent in Kol Nidre services over the course of his life.

Didn't happen.

Instead, I felt free.

When Yom Kippur rolled around, I took things a step further. I didn't fast. I didn't apologize for any of the crap I had done the year before. And I anticipated doing many of them again.

Plus I didn't have to go to work. Pretty sweet deal really.

After that, I realized that there was a sense of liberation with every rule, custom or superstition that I dropped. Why not eat pork? It is cheap and healthy and I am poor.

Who needs a Mezuzzah? My grandfather warned me that the Jehovah's Witnesses would be at my doorstep in droves if I didn't hang one, but so far...nothing.

And don't even get me started on the scam the Manischewitz people run on us every Passover. A Milky Way isn't cool, but somehow their corn-syrup free chocolate is? The bread didn't have time to rise. That's it. End of story. All of the ingredients were still in it though. Jesus.

In short, I have come up with my own sect of Judaism that will end all the lies and hypocrisy. If the only time you go to shul is during the holidays, you should really consider joining up. We are the Invitation-Only Jews. The only time we hit shul is when we get an invitation in the mail for an event like a Bar Mitzvah or wedding.

So far I don't have too many converts, but I haven't released any propaganda videos yet. I am going to wait and see what does and doesn't work in Osama's conversion drive before I do.

My best friend told me that the whole concept was stupid. He is still convinced going to a 45 minute reformed service on Yom Kippur makes him much more respectful than a I.O. Jew like me.

I say, for Christ's sake, if you're going to make the effort to go, can't you at least slap on a kippa?

"You don't even have enough people to form a minyon," my buddy told me.

"That's not really a problem seeing as we don't go to shul, shmuck," I said. "At this point, I'm not even sure we endorse believing in god."

"You're an idiot," he said.

I bet L. Ron Hubbard got that a lot too.

So you people go get dressed up in your nicest suits, sway back and forth and pretend you know what the hell the prayers mean. I'll be hosting at the Laff Stop.

I can't afford tickets to pray anyways.

Happy New Year!



Mason Lerner is a stand-up comedian who writes a small business column for The Houston Chronicle. He usually hosts Punchline, a stand-up comedy show, for That Other Paper in Austin,


More...

David Strauss


OK

If you kept Shabbat, we wouldn't have a host for Punchline, would we? The problem I see with your goal of excommunication is that irreverence only makes you that much more hip as a "new Jew." By design, it's an identity that you can't escape because it redefines itself as you change.

But it would be more insidious if it were less sexy.





Anonymous


Sign me up...

I like the heretic.





Mason Lerner


David!

Thanks for signing up my brother from another mother!

In regard to your comment, Motherfucker, say what?





David Strauss


Re: David!

Are the Coldtowne cards at Hillel your doing?





Mason Lerner


Nah...

Nah. I have only been in the Hillel once, and that was to volunteer after the socialists tore down their flyers for some Israeli cultural event and replaced them with similar counterfiets about how Israel abuses human rights, etc... I actually walked alll over campus, tore down the fakes and replaced them with the real ones. I am like a Jewish Captain America. I hate those fucking socialists.

As for Punchline, I don't seem to be the host anymore. But it's all good. I have many irons in the fire.

I didn't even know Coldetowne had cards....I've been hosting at the Laff Stop in Houston all week..it's been kick ass.





David Strauss


Re: Nah...

"I am like a Jewish Captain America."

That's silly. America is a Christian country. 





Mason Lerner


Hmmmmmmmm

Not where I am from. I thought gentiles had horns until I was like 23.




David Strauss


Re: Hmmmmmmmm

"I thought gentiles had horns..."

One of the theatre arts teachers at my high school thought that Jews had died out near the beginning of Christianity, at least until he left the little west Texas town of his birth. The other theatre arts teacher told me this when I remarked that seeing adjacent pro-gun and pro-God billboards was a reliable sign of being in Texas.





Roswell


Many will recall that on

Many will recall that on July 8, 1947, witnesses claimed that an Unidentified object with five aliens aboard crashed onto a sheep and cattle ranch just outside Roswell, New Mexico. This is a Well-known UFO incident that many say has long been covered up by the U.S. Air Force and the Federal Government.

However, what you may NOT know is that in the month of March 1948, exactly nine months after that historic day, the Following people were born:

Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.
Hillary Rodham
John F. Kerry
William Jefferson Clinton
Howard Dean
Nancy Pelosi
Dianne Feinstein
Charles E. Schumer
Barbara Boxer

See what happens when space aliens breed with sheep?

This piece of information may clear up a lot of the things you've been wondering about.





David Strauss


Re: Many will recall that on

Anonymous Jewcy post checklist:
[*] Jewish/Zionist/Israeli
[X] Conspiracy
[X] Covered up by the government
[  ] To get money
[X] To take over the world

*You get partial credit on the first checkbox by having someone named "Feinstein" involved.





Pants Wearer


End the Threadjack!

Also; What's the application process for IOJews? Is it still ritual mutilation? And if so, instead of circumcision, can I just get my infant son a nipple ring?

And if you're going to go L. Ron Hubbard-style, you may want to rethink your gut reaction to excessive high holiday seat costs. Cutting of a potentially lucrative revenue stream is no way to stick it to Vladimir Russkie Communisski. Trust your profit motive!





Mason Lerner


Pants Wearer

You are correct. In my effort to be amusing, I directly contradicted myself. L Ron  would like the money angle...I have thought about it...I am not in it for the money...I am in it for the thought of never going to shul again...plain and simple
The nipple ring passes with flying colors.
But circumcision stays. Whoever worked on me was a complete artist, and I am living proof that it can be a beautiful thing.





Peace Treaty bat mitzvah


Been an IO Jew since I was 14

My bat mitzvah was a peace treaty. Meaning that I would appease my parents and have the ceremony if they agreed that they would not force me to attend services ever again. I have, in the last 16 years, been back to temple 3 times; for my sister's bat mitzvah, and the funerals of my two grandparents. Glad to know there are others like me who don't feel the obligation to be faithful only in certain buildings.





Mason Lerner


Strange

I figured there were others out there.

 





Anonymous


IO Jewry

The problem as I see it is finding a way to maximize throughput.

Perhaps Craig might now a way.





Anonymous


You'll fit in with with your shiksa wife and Gentile children.

I know Goys who are more Jewish than this idiot. You are an ignoramus who doesn't know anything about Judaism. You are basically a Gentile so go away. Keep going to church with your shiksa. You'll be in church a lot in the future for your children's Christianenings, weddings and what else the Christians do. Merry Christian holidays.