Not long ago I posted on Jewlicious about New York's hottest Jewish web video scenester Ilana Donna. This week, the Amaldo.com vlogger steps it up a notch this week with her pop culture round-up, once again giving us All the news that's fit to capture on video including talk of Spice Girls reunion, Nicole Ritchie's fertility, and Lindsay Lohan&

I first discovered artist/satirist Miriam Libicki when I read a profile of the former IDF soldier on Zeek. Miriam 's now famous comic serial Jobnik documents her experiences in detail as a young American/Canadian women in the Israeli army. Additionally her illustrated short Towards A Hot Jew grapples with traditional cultural/ethnic Jewish stereotypes. Not only does Miriam's work tackle her own sexual coming-of-age and cultural immersion in a foreign land, but its backdrop, Israel in the early 2000s, lends itself to an equally charged and tumultuous environment.

Given all this fodder, I couldn't help but immediately drawn to Miriam Libicki which is why I had to contact her personally. The result, which can be seen below, was an email exchange which drew upon all of the subjects I mentioned above and more.

Misogynism in the Israeli Army: How prevalent in your experience?

No matter how individual soldiers treat each other, it is a misogynistic system. Women end up being seen as spoiled, less valuable, and there for their sexual uses, just because the IDF paints them into these roles.

I don’t think women who are unfit should be in combat, but when no woman is in combat unless she can rigorously and determinedly prove she is fit, and all men are in combat unless they can rigorously and determinedly prove they are unfit, I think it’s clear there is discrimination occurring. Misogyny isn’t a bad word for it, though it hurts both male and female soldiers.

Women are seen to have an “easier” time of it, their basic training being shorter, almost irrespective of what their eventual role will be. They have more choice in their hairstyles and footwear, and often have more relaxed relationships with their chain of command. But I think these facts lead to women looking like lesser soldiers than the men, and any achievements can be explained away by having fewer obstacles to overcome (allegedly) than a man.

 

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What is worth a king’s ransom?

According to the musical, "Oliver!," it’s food, glorious food! ... Gulped, swallowed or chewed..

Throw in a Vermont cheese company and two New Yorkers, and you have “Food, Glorious Kosher food.”

At the World Championship Cheese Contest held in Wisconsin, Cabot Creamery’s Cheddar Cheese earned the title of “World’s Best Cheddar.” Now, the “World’s Best Cheddar” has the OU-D kosher for Passover stamp. Cabot’s sharp cheddar, which is aged for five-months, has already received rave reviews.

In a December 2006 press release, Cabot estimated 6 to 8 million Americans eat Kosher products. This prompted the Vermont Cheese Company to seek Kosher certification. “Our Kosher products are in keeping with our commitment to provide our consumers with dairy products that fit their desires and lifestyles,” commented Dr. Rich Stammer, President of Cabot Creamery.

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Was there hemp in the Garden of Eden? Courtesy JPost:

Hemp has increasingly been spotted on the list of kitniyot, or legumes, that Ashkenazi Jews abstain from eating during Pessah, according to several influential rabbinical Web sites, including kashrut.com. But not everyone agrees that hemp qualifies for the ban, and the debate has led many to question the definition of kitniyot

 

The ban on kitniyot during Pessah began because rabbis were concerned that certain legumes would come into contact with the grains forbidden during the holiday. Farmers often grew wheat and rice in adjacent fields, and families frequently stored all of their grains and legumes in the same containers. The kitniyot tradition only applies to Jews of Ashkenazi descent, since Sephardic Jewry never adopted the practice.

Of the dozen rabbis whom The Jerusalem Post questioned on this issue, none offered a conclusive statement about how hemp should be classified for Pessah. As Rabbi Daniel Kohn of Bat Ayin explained, the issue ultimately boils down to an individual decision by each rabbi about whether hemp seeds themselves could be considered edible. If a rabbi decides that the seeds are edible, then hemp - and, by extension, marijuana - would not be considered permissible for Pessah.

Well, at least here's some news that might make this year's Seder more palatable, but this also raises the stakes of eating way more matzah than is good for one sitting. 

The ever-popular "Jewish" political satirist vlogger Atlas tackles Ann Coulter. Can someone please explain this woman's appeal? Aside from doing a really bad Fran Drescher impersonation?

AsterixAt a Paris book fair this weekend, two versions of the beloved Asterix comic hero in 1001 Arabian Nights (one in Hebrew, one in Arabic) were released. As the translators explain below, both camps had to make certain concessions in the name of art, specifically by heeding close attention to wild beasts (so as not to offend Islamic fundamentalists) and unkosher boars.

Both translators said they had had to adapt the text to reality, but had decided to keep the wild boars that people the albums despite religious objections to pork.

"We left the boars in though they're not kosher," said the Israeli translator.

Syrian Shehayeb said an earlier Asterix album translated into Arabic had used "wild beasts" rather than "boars" to avoid offending fundamentalists. "I kept the original because you have to face reality as it is," he said.

Ironic as it sounds, Asterix might have found a ripe audience for its socio-political values lesson after all.

In the books, the diminutive Gallic warrior's friends "live in peace and friendship with all other people as long as nobody bothers them", said Israeli Dorith Daliot Rubinovitz.

I like The Onion, but I'm not so sure about their brand spanking new vlog network. With all the political satire/mockumentary stylized shows out there these days, it just doesn't stand out too much.

Neo-Nazi crimes rates in Germany are at an all-time high according to a Reuters report. The last time they were this bad was in 1990, the year of Germany's reunification. There were 18,000 reported acts this year, 1100 of which stemmed from violence. The pinnacle of anti-Semitic activity being the July burning of Anne Frank's diary. Additionally, this past Fall, the National Democratic Party (NDP), a far Right extremist political faction, gained a foothold in Eastern Germany, with the election of a few new members to Parliament.

So asserts Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly:

So this is yet more fodder for the fire: is 24 an inherently conservative show because of its message that torture is necessary, torture works, and only weak-kneed liberals object to it? Jane Mayer reignited the debate last month with a piece in the New Yorker that investigated 24's conservative roots.

At a broad level it's hard to argue with this, though not, I think, specifically because of 24's routine dramatization of torture -- which has become more a crutch for weary writers than anything else in recent seasons. It's more general: 24 is a tough-guy cop show, and tough-guy cop shows have appealed to conservatives for decades. Jack Bauer is basically an updated version of Dirty Harry, the poster boy for conservative backlash against urban crime in the early 70s.

So sure: 24 is a conservative Disneyland. But there's another side to the 24 story that's surprisingly liberal: its politics. There are, after all, really two stars in 24: Jack Bauer (when the action is on the ground) and the president of the United States (when the action shifts to politics). In Jack's world, being a tough guy works. In the president's world, it's exactly the opposite.

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Dame Edna's alter ego emerged from a different kind of closet in the latest edition or Heat magazine. Barry Humphries aka Dame Edna admitted that he is "partly Jewish." While Damn Edna could be the bastard child of Julia Child and Mike Myer's mother-in-law and frequent SNLer Linda Richman (Child contributing the Y chromosome in this scenario), who would have guessed Humphries was a canasta player?

With my background it was not spoken of, but I could play canaster without anyone teaching me, so I thought ‘well I must be Jewish!’ And I get on very well with North London people. I like the mix of scepticism and humour, and the intelligence of the average Red Sea pedestrian.

Outside of character Humphries, who is also well known for the larger-than-life Les Patterson, has been involved with cultural Jewish events.

For a number of years, he has been a patron of the Jewish Music Institute’s Suppressed Music Project, which focuses on composers who suffered under the Nazi regime.

The LA Times Editorial Staff Is One Big Grinch!Just last week I posted of Hollywood producer Brian Grazer's upcoming editorial gig at the LA Times. Now comes news that Grazer is out, sacked due to the revelation of incestuous ties between Grazer's PR camp and and a Times editor.

The whole backstory is chronicled by David Carr in today's NYT, spun juicily ("The Los Angeles Times last week brings to mind a scene in which you come upon a sinking vessel and see people scrambling everywhere. And then you realize they are not looking for buckets, but guns"). This was in reference to Andrés Martinez's belligerent and defensive post on LA Observed as well as the rather tart response from Baquet-replacing editor James O'Shea ("It is true that we have journalists in the newsroom who don't agree with Andres' views on the ethical problems that led to his resignation. I count myself among them"); meanwhile, business had to go on as usual, which left the op-ed editor Nicholas Goldberg and deputy Current editor Gary Spieckerop and their staffers with the task of putting out a brand-new Current from scratch (per Gawker Weekend's Leon Neyfakh: "With a Friday night press deadline, the Current staff had two days to do something that usually takes over a week"). They did it though! Hooray for unsolicited articles!*

The upshot? Guest editors are a bad idea unless they're Bono.

Oh and another fun LAT bombshell, per Nikki Finke: The next Current guest editor was supposed to have been — wait for it — Donald Rumsfeld. Oy.

Leni: A Freakish Force Of NatureWaiting 2.5 hours in line at the RMV has its advantages. One of these is that it forces me to get through an entire New Yorker and learn more about Phil Collins or Leni Riefenstahl than I'd ever want to know. Riefenstahl is more alluring in a historical context, but the ambiguity of Collins' sexuality makes him intirguing in an Elton John I was married before so I'm most likely bi way.

So what's the big hoopla about Steven Bach's new 400-page expose of Leni? For one, its subject. Without a doubt, Riefenstahl is one of the most compelling figures of the 20th Century. Her influential dalliances with Hitler, fascism, film, art, and Aryan perfection played against a relatively humble upbringing and partly Jewish genetic pool (her mother was half Jewish) allow for a more serious psychological exploration of Riefenstahl and her motives.

Either way, Leni is presented as calculated, cold, and manipulative. But her ambition, misguided as it was and unsurpassed even by the aggressive male circles she found herself in, inspires. Above all, Bach envisions Leni as the ultimate survivor. Even in the several decades following WWII, Riefenstahl claimed that she knew nothing of Jewish atrocities during the Holocaust. She was never an apologist. And she had, as it so happened, a whole lot of time on her side.

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Thoughts on the symbiotic rapport between yoga and guns courtesy Patton Oswalt, The New York Times Magazine:

You shoot better when you realize that your soul is a leaf falling through time, and that work shouldn’t equal struggle. And yoga never aligns you with the universe better than when your forearm is still tingling from the buck and recoil of a .357 bullpup.

Someone needs to open a combination shooting range and yoga studio. I’m serious. Maybe I should do it. Hose off a few clips of Glaser safety slugs, then see how deep you can go into Warrior II. The murder rate would go down. No, wait — it would stay the same, but people would realize it’s all part of a bigger plan. Or, no, it would go up, because people would realize the transitory nature of existence, and that everything that has happened or is going to happen is always happening someplace forever, so why not put a slug in that dude’s head who won’t stop talking during “300”?

• What Jew crawled up "American Dad"/"Family Guy" creator Seth McFarlane's butt? An entire "American Dad" episode dedicated to the desperation of single Jewish women over 35? Maybe he's just pissed his new show is weird. [Deseret News]
• Well at least some people still notice the intrinsic value of Jewish babes. [Fanpop!]
• Much like aficionados of Beavis & Butthead, Calvin & Hobbes fans have no life. [FanTent]
• Speaking of bracketology...[Gawker]
• Will Ben Stiller Make Sammy Run? [The Forward]
• I have to keep reminding myself that people watch "Battlestar Galactica" and those that watch are fanatics. [Salon]

Green Refuse?Toilets have been on my mind a lot lately. Last week I temped a job at Harvard University and noticed that the toilet had two levers for the flush, one for the big jobs and the other for smaller, more discreet ones. Unfortunately, I flushed multiple times defeating its purpose because I had no idea what the symbols actually meant. I had seen this type of contraption in Israel (where water is scarce), but never before in the U.S. so I made note of it.

Then the other night, I heard Jay Leno poke fun at the use of compost toilets, the energy-saving, environmentally green alternative to toilet paper. And suddenly these toilets are turning up everywhere. There's even an entire site dedicated to it. Friday, as I waited 2.5 hours at the DMV to renew my driver's license, I then read an article about celebrities practicing green living solutions (Earth Day is next month already after all). About the time I read about Pierce Brosnan and his wife owning one of these composters, I thought back to Leno's apropos joke about a hose and a hair dryer being equally as effective as one of these $1600 machines. Moreover, can't celebrities afford to hire people to wipe their own asses?

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Madness, Courtesy DeviantART.com.There is a new book out called The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything. It's co-written by a sports journalist and a literary agent. The former makes sense since Bracketology, a method for sports fans to keep track of which teams they are betting on to win, is traditionally associated with basketball, March Madness, and determining which collegiate teams will make it into the NCAA Finals.

Authors Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir were recently interviewed on "The Today Show" where they talked about applying their Final 4 methodology to pop culture and most specifically illustrated one of the studies from their book in which they determined which bald-headed figure in modern culture was the most popular. No, it was not Homer Simpson, but he was a finalist. Other studies found in the book include "A Jew/Not A Jew" and "Women's Magazines Sex Cliches." If you're shaking your head about now, you get where I'm coming from with my frustration with this ridiculous study.

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Ayaan Hirsi AliAJC Executive Director David Harris had a letter published in this week's New York Times Book Review regarding his disdain for Times' book critic Ian Buruma's review of Infidel. In the letter, Harris ardently defends Ali and criticizes Buruma for his derision of her values.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her new book, “Infidel,” deserved better than Ian Buruma’s review (March 4). While expressing admiration for her “courage,” he rejects her “descriptions of life in the West” as “idealized,” with an “almost comic-book quality.” Elsewhere, he derides her view of the West as “a caricature of sweetness and light.” Meanwhile, he challenges the notion, presumably Hirsi Ali’s, that “Europeans who argue ... that Muslims might feel more at home in the West if we offered a modicum of respect for their religion, instead of insulting them at every turn, are ‘stupid’ or worse.”

As to Buruma’s claim that Europe must show greater respect for Islam, the reality is that many European nations have done just that, in some cases bending over backward to accommodate religious beliefs and needs. And where there have been lapses, many have rushed to protest. But Hirsi Ali’s key point is that this must be a two-way street. Newcomers must respect and adapt to their host societies’ defining principles. If not, she contends, Europe will wake up one day and no longer recognize itself as a bastion of Enlightenment values.

Oui Oui Oui Shimon...French actress Juliette Binoche is rumored to be romantically involved with Shimon Peres, well at least onscreen. In a rather witty take on events, Ynet insists that the Peres should table his career as politician, focus on photo opps with beautiful Hollywood stars, and leave the heavy political lifting to Labor Party candidate Colette Avital.

Colette Avital does not rush to be photographed with every movie star that comes to Israel. Still, she is among our best cultural representatives, and I'm not biased as she represented me very little. Yet she did a wonderful job in Paris and Portugal.

She is a young-mature woman, with a pleasant appearance: in plain Hebrew we can say she's got the "look." Avital is an erudite person.

She won't make an effort to be well liked, but rather, will attempt to do something so that our poor country will have a little more honor. She's someone the Labor party should be proud of, and the country should be proud to see her as a president with something to say, as opposed to Peres.

dustin

New York-based Dustin Glick, creator of Dustinland and Birdy cartoons has a funny strip up this week on other people's babies and why we love to hate them. I interviewed Dustin a few years back and enjoy his stuff just as much now as ever.

Wake me up when women aren't assessed first and foremost for their outward appearance. I caught a clip of "Regis & Kelly" while watching the late night news. The pregnant-by-Tom Brady (it's so trendy, there's a whole genre of them now) actress Bridget Moynahan has been interviewed that morning on the talk show and was bragging about how she could still fit into her favorite pair of jeans even after X months of being pregnant. She was there to plug that awful ABC melodrama she's on that's been renewed after ratings fell so low this Fall that they were forced to go on hiatus. Will ABC ever be able to repay the debt of shelving "Twin Peaks" after only one season?

Back to Moynahan and her pregnancy glow. I couldn't help but be concerned that I didn't even know why the actress was on the show since all the only thing being discussed in the short clip provided by the news station was how beautiful she was. Of course, the news anchors smiling with their vaseline coated teeth was distracting as well, but then, they too were gushing with pride about Bridget's appearance. Local hometown girl pride aside (Bridget was born in Western, MA), even I felt a bit like gagging.

And then I read this piece produced by the IJWC (International Jewish Women's Council) about putting a stop to low female self-esteem and how young girls have such idealized notions of beauty that low self esteem is inevitable. The jargon is nothing new, mind you. It was simply ironic that I came across the piece just after the Brady-Moynahan gag reflex set in. And because seeing a picture these days of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Ritchie, or Paris Hilton for that matter, doesn't exactly equate with "idealized." More like, run from stardom/"fake beauty" as fast as you can so that you never end up like them. If anything then, the paparazzi has helped bring these stars down to a level that not only humanizes them, but actually makes them less appealing.

I'm not encouraging the paparazzi to stalk stars. Simply stating that the need to celebrate Dove's Real Beauty campaign, as ICJW is doing, is just as superficial in its own way. It's simply emulating a different cult of beauty and one that falls more in line with the women who promote it. We shouldn't have to look to beauty campaigns to find "real" beauty.