• Matthue Roth debuts a new column at Brooklyn (The Borough) called "Tznius Envy".

• Coming soon: the collected fiction works of Gordon Lish. 

• I swore up and down that after our own interview with Sam Lipsyte went up, that we were gonna give it a rest talking about the writer and his fantastic book The Ask.  Instead, I want to focus on the fact that he told Largehearted Boy that he likes Liars, Suicide, The Feelies, and Jay Reatard.  This makes Lipsyte even cooler than formerly thought, and gives us reason to continue talking about him.

• The return of Rabbi Harvey

• An interesting take on Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"

• Why is this the first I'm hearing of a company named Kafkacotton?

• The Big Shakespearean Lebowski opens this week. 

I was a child of the '80s in name only. I never watched Blossom when it first came out. I was aware of it only as - and, the few times that I did, it both intrigued me and turned me off: some too-cool kid who was two or three years older than me (at the time, a vast gap) who wore wild vintage-store outfits, used unnecessarily long vocabulary, and had a penchant for confessional D.I.Y. films about 2 decades before YouTube was even conceived of....It made me feel more than a little protective. This was my subculture they were stealing. She couldn't possibly be doing it right.

Little did I know, for its time - and even for ours - Blossom was completely transcendent. In the pilot episode, The Cosby Show's Phylicia Rashad, wearing a retro-'50s polka-dot dress, drew a map of the human ovaries on a sheet cake with a tube of icing in order to explain to 14-year-old Blossom Russo how her period worked. Subsequent episodes made pretty profound statements on puberty, body image, premarital sex and divorce and parental responsibility. The endings were always sugar-coated, but the TV show itself (which has just been released on DVD) was meaty and unafraid in ways that make current sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and The Office feel positively sanitized.

As much of a travesty as grouping Blossom together with tepid '80s sitcoms such as Full House might be, mentioning the Mayim Bialik's name together with the name of the television show might be an even more audacious generalization.

In the decades since she stopped playing Blossom Russo, Bialik has not sat still. She's earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience and has undertaken cutting-edge studies at UCLA as one of the top researchers of Prader-Willi Syndrome in the field. (Read more about the disorder here, or sift through Bialik's blog to find out about her work.) She's also testing the waters of going back into acting, with recent appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Bones. And she's also in the middle of another big revival: she's experimenting with being an observant Jew.

What first motivated you to start researching the causes of Prader-Willi Syndrome? Are you still?

I always had an interest in working with kids with special needs, and in the neuroscience department at UCLA, you generally meet a lot of professors and then drop into a project that suits you. There's been a lot of genetic research on Prader-Willi, and there's been a lot of behavioral research, but there isn't a lot of research combining the two..and that's what I thought I could bring to it.

I got my doctorate last year, so my research was my thesis. Since then, I've done some writing for organizations that raise money for Prader-Willi research. In the meantime, I've started acting again, and we just had our second child, so I've had my hands pretty full, taking care of him and doing auditions.

Have you been auditioning a lot?

Yes, actually! Far more than I thought I would be. I'm auditioning for all sorts of things. I'm actually filming an episode of Bones tomorrow. I've auditioned for comedy, drama, movies -- anything they send my way.

Is it mostly one way or the other -- dramatic roles, films, or ironic stuff? Are you being selective about which roles you take?

Not really. I don't think I can afford to be selective. I'm just seeing what's out there, and whatever I do get, like Bones, is great practice to get into the swing of things again.

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Daphne Gottlieb writes poems that are the opposite of what most of us think of when we think of contemporary poetry: wildly readable, deathly powerful, and devilishly funny. Without attempting to make a watered-down mainstream crossover, her voice hasfound reception in the most random and prestigious of venues. Her last book of poems, Final Girl, was named one of the 25 best books of the year (books, not poetry books) by the Village Voice. Her remix of Walt Whitman's poetry into a sestina -- subtitled "killing the father of free verse" by McSweeney's. And she had a cameo alongside Charles Simic and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events.

The thing about Gottlieb, though, is that no explanation can quite manageto contain it. Much like Nine Inch Nails creates violently nihilisticmusic that is somehow palatable for the masses, she writes poems thatmanage to be thoroughly their own creation, and yet be understandable to the rest of us -- like mixing proclamations by Catherine the Great together with quotes from Animal Farm and turning it into something both funny and evil. In the darkly sweet "Everything She Asks of Me," she dates Marilyn Monroe:

Last week, she was obsessed with cantaloupe and Eartha Kitt.  As I gotready for work, she jumped up and down on the bed, singing, I Wanna Be Evil.  When I came home, she'd tried to dye her hair black.   The dye wasspattered on the walls, the couch, the floor, sticking to everythingbut her hair, which shone like a canary in a coal mine.  It didn't work right, huh, she asks.  Do you hate it?  Her face crumples.  I hate it,she says.  I rubbed toothpaste on her hair until it was back to blonde,and we ate cantaloupe in bed, gently scooping the calm flesh into ourmouths.

In some way, everything Gottlieb writes is autobiographical, fromthe giddiness of a new relationship to the death of her mother. Inanother, less ephemeral way, though, it's about all of us. And in thatway, it gets under our skin and shivers our spines until we are bothprofoundly scared and profoundly grateful.

In Final Girl, you dealt with the genre of slasher films, focusing on the "final girl," the last woman standing. It was a powerful statement about feminism - that combination of fierceness and fear, mixed with the sober and depressing reality of being confronted by the immediacy of death. When were you first like, "I'm going to write about being in a horror movie?" How did it play out?

I was reading Carol Clover's Men, Women and Chain Saws, a deconstructive reading of slasher movies, at the same time as I was TA-ing a class in American Literature. I realized that one of the oldest forms our country has - the captivity narrative - is the same form as the horror movie. It sort of went from there.

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Jennifer Blowdryer revels in those truths about ourselvesthat we'd rather not hear. While that is ostensibly the job of every writer, few do it with such grace, aplomb, and lack of restraint. Part Emily Post andpart Morton Downey, Jr., Blowdryer's subjects are punk-rock Artful Dodgers andMalcom MacLaren-worthy bastards, lovable and loathable in equal doses, peoplewho take a free drink when they're given one and scam one when they're not.

The protagonist of her latest book, The Laziest Secretaryin the World, is named Latoya (she's white). She's alternately pathetic andbrilliant, a powerhouse at drinking, social analysis, and anything thatinvolves the bottom-most echelon of pop culture. Latoya could write for McSweeney'sbut instead makes fun of tabloid celebrities. She daydreams of the limitlessvariety of frozen dinners, having an unlimited cash flow, and of beinginterviewed on a daytime talk show, answering difficult questions with, "Merv,even if I had a million dollars, I would still buy Butterfingers and M&Ms.I mean, what could possibly replace them?"

When Laziest Secretary begins,Latoya is a secretary for a has-been manager who produces a slowly decayingbrass band and the world's worst production of Annie. She would be afixture at the local bar, except that all the barflies are terminally hittingher up for a drink, and vice versa. Before long, Latoya trades one form ofservitude for another, and she's on a plane to Seoul,bound to marry a man she's never met, with the prospect of being richer thanshe's ever been.

It doesn't take long for the scheme to blow up in Latoya'sface, of course, and Blowdryer does a credible job of playing with tension anddanger and intrigue, although, like everything else in Latoya's life, thethreat of being arrested pales next to the greater threat of breaking her cool.We caught up with Ms. Blowdryer at her improbable, tiny-but-certifiably owned EastVillage walk-up.

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Yoshie Fruchter gets around. Besides being a member of half a dozen bands, from the children's parody band Shlock Rock to guesting with Pharaoh's Daughter, he's made a name for himself in the few short years since he moved to Brooklyn from his hometown of Silver Spring, MD.

It's easy to chalk Yoshie's existence until that point up to the classic story of small-town-boy-makes-it-big. But between the lines, Fruchter has a lot of stories--his mother is a full-time arts educator in the yeshiva system, and his father is a versatile musician who, among his own accolades, was babysat by Elvis as a child.

One of my rabbis used to say that lineage is nothing but a bunch of zeroes, and you're either the one in front of it, or you're just another zero--and the younger Fruchter is carving out his own niche in music. His debut album, Pitom, was recently released by the venerable experimental jazz label Tzadik Records, and he has a veritable bunch of talent that's all his own numeral. Jewcy spoke to Yoshie about his record, his band, and technical klezmer terms that will get you punched out in a bar.

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In recent years, Thea Hillman's spoken-word career (she was a multiple-time National Poetry Slam competitor, toured with Sister Spit and launched the ForWord Girls authors' festival) has taken a backseat to her other passion: intersex activism. A board member and former chair of the Intersex Society of North America, and born intersex herself, Hillman recently released her second book, Intersex: For Lack of a Better Word--part childhood memoir, part adult memoir, and part essay on intersexuality and the world--on San Francisco's estimable Manic D Press. It's both a departure (her previous book came out of her work in performance poetry) and not a departure at all: Hillman is no stranger to writing deeply confessional memoir prose, stirring controversy just by existing, and finding connections through simple truths. She spoke with Jewcy about choosing family over art, her issues with Jeffrey Eugenides, and, well, Judaism.

Name: Thea Hillman
Birthday: January 17, 1971
Hometown: Oakland, CA
Marital status: That's an odd question because I'm not sure what it tells you about me. I'd prefer to tell you my opinions about marriage than my marital status.

Upcoming appearances: I've got a bunch of events over the next few weeks and into the new year. I'm still booking dates, so invitations are welcome!

Links: www.theahillman.com (website); myspace.com/theahillman (video clips of performances)

First section you turn to in the Sunday paper: I love the advice and gossip columns.
Favorite song to dance to: Anything by Erasure.
Guilty pleasure: US Magazine.
Last book read: Mary Mackey's book of poetry, Breaking the Fever. When I was in 7th grade, I found a book of her poetry in my mom's books. It was called "One Night Stand" and she used the word "fuck" in a poem. Reading that gave me a sense of artistic permission...because a published poet used the word and because it was my mom's book!

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To: Matthue Roth
From: Marty Beckerman
Subject: Allow me to Freudian slip inside you

Matthue, 

Writers are not exactly well-adjusted people. Posters of Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson used to hang over my desk, but one day I realized with sudden discomfort that two suicides constantly looked down at me as I worked. I've never read anything by David Foster Wallace -- the Internet and Jack Daniel's have ruined me for any book longer than three hundred pages, let alone a thousand -- but he's another writer who bailed on existence.

And yet, even though we're writers, neither one of us will commit suicide anytime soon. We have different reasons for this -- you're an Orthodox Jew who believes that suicide is murder, and I'm an egomaniac who would never selfishly deprive the human race of his boundless and necessary wisdom, roguish good looks, etc. -- but even well-adjusted writers need to analyze ourselves sometimes. We can't afford psychologists to guide us on our reflective journeys, of course, but at least we have each other.

Despite our aversion to self-destruction, we are pretty goddamned fascinating people. (At least I am; what's your name again?) Nobody understands an author quite like another author, and the public deserves to know the motivations and psychologies of its most gifted citizens. Therefore, Matthue (oh yes, that's your name), it's time for us to explore each other, probe each other... I just want to get inside of you and dig.

You are a self-described religious zealot, although quite different than most. You seem non-judgmental, and lacking in palpable sexual neuroses. Call me a snide coastal elitist, but I immediately associate religious extremism with sexual perversion; it seems as if every week another conservative preacher or politician gets in trouble for allegedly being a totally creepy pervert. I would make a list of all the prominent "people of faith" who have recently landed in hot water -- or, as the case may be, lukewarm lubricant -- for their peculiar interpretations of family values, but we only have a few hundred words per day for this discussion, not a few (hundred) thousand.

Sen. Larry Craig: A fine example of religious devotionIt seems like common sense that if you repress and vilify normal human sexuality, it's going to emerge in a warped or self-loathing form. Are ferocious gay-bashers who happen to love peen (Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, etc.) aware of their own hypocrisy, or is it a purely unconscious phenomenon? Are they sucked (get it?) into religious fundamentalism because they fear their true selves, or do they become fascinated by the "forbidden fruit" (get it?) after demonizing the behavior? In other words, which came first: the chicken, the egg or the giant heathen cock, which might or might not refer to the aforementioned chicken?

Am I oversimplifying? Am I wrong to presume a direct link between the degree of a person's religiosity -- especially the condemnatory, "shame on everyone but me" variety -- and the degree of his or her (but probably his) sexual weirdness? You are a passionate believer -- you base your entire life around religion -- and yet you strike me as a shockingly well-adjusted person... I mean, I've visited your house and didn't find a hidden dungeon or anything... so are you the exception or the rule? Or did I simply forget to look underneath the rug?

Full disclosure: I probably have a reputation as a "totally creepy pervert" who loves to say "shame on everyone but me" thanks to my past writings, but A) my girlfriend has completely domesticated me -- I'm less edgy these days than a Gillette Venus Vibrance Soothing Vibrations Razor for Women -- and B) I'm a humorist, not a moralist, and I'm obviously not a cleric or spiritual advisor. God help anyone who asks me for advice about... uh... God.

Marty Beckerman, author of Dumbocracy, and Matthue Roth, author of Losers, are blogging together on Jewcy, and they'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

Diwon is the newest in the litany of identities of Erez Safar, the producer/drummer/promoter/DJ/occasional backup vocalist. Perhaps best known for being one-half of the touring band for Orthodox hip-hop M.C. Y-Love, Safar, who’s always alluded to his Yemenite Jewish ancestry, is now openly embracing it with a new wardrobe, a new sound, and a new series of concerts. At his upcoming weeklong residency at the Jewish Museum, expect to hear a lot of traditional music, a lot of untraditional music, a guest appearance or two...and a straight guy in a shiny dress.

You’ve got a million aliases already—DJ Handler, DJ E, and, for a long time, the Prince-like mononome “Erez.” Why all the secret identities? Why the need to break this one out, and why now?

Saul Williams said that “words create worlds.” Different companies and different events I run, each one’s like a different conception, like the Beastie Boys, making a million aliases for every project. Each name represents the world I’m trying to create within the project.

DJ Handler I started before I became a DJ, and I never felt like it was me—it never really fit. I always knew I wanted a one-word handle, I just didn’t know what it was yet. Making Yemenite music under the name “Handler” sounded kind of absurd…and not in a good way.

For the folks out there without too much other Yemenite music to compare yours with, can you give us a cheat sheet on what Yemenite music is exactly?

I draw influences from a lot of cultures. Simply put, it’s music that Yemenites made. A lot of it’s influenced by the Muslims and Arabs that lived with them in Yemen—it has a Middle Eastern scaling similar to Sephardic music. Yemenite music might be a little more mantra-like, very repetitive.

They use the same melody throughout the whole service, don’t they?

The Kabbalat Shabbat part is. The evening service is different melodies, but yeah. To me, it’s really holy because the Yemenites didn’t move around a bunch. They just left Israel, and they stayed in one place. Even Moshe Feinstein says that the Yemenite pronunciation is the most accurate, because they never moved. To me, they seem like they’re the most in touch with the way it was in the beginning.

Actually, most people probably don’t know what Jews were doing in Yemen in the first place -- can you give us a thirty-second history lesson?

I have no idea how they got there. Locationally, it’s a lot closer to what was going on in the Bible than, say, Eastern Europe…

When you remix, what factors go into your musical reimagining?

Usually, I try to strip a song bare. I’ll take just vocals, and grab a keyboard line from somewhere. For instance, the woman who sold me my Yemenite clothing – it’s called Galdiya – she gave me a CD of her and her daughter singing. There was one song for the henna ceremony, just their voices and a darbouka [hand drum]. When I remixed that, I cut up the darbouka parts and laid out a 70s-style disco beat and layered on bass and snare drum parts, and textures, so it sounds electronic, and now it sounds really cool. It’s open. There aren’t too many instruments, so it plays as its own rhythm.

Do you ever pick artists or songs that you don’t like, or do you ever try to subvert or go against the original idea of a song?

Not really. Unless there’s insanely huge sums of money, but I haven’t really gotten there yet.

In your work with Y-Love, you’ve really straddled the boundary between the secular and the religious—using Spank Rock’s “Bump” song with pretty religious lyrics, for instance. Do you ever get complaints? Do Haredi people ever recognize the music or go “hey, what’s going on?”

I can never tell who knows it—I can’t tell whether people like the beat or whether people actually recognize it. On Martin Luther King Day in D.C., a bunch of people came up to me afterwards and complimented me on a Slick Rick beat I’d played, and none of them looked like someone who’d even know who Slick Rick was.

I don’t think that frum people who have an issue with secular beats would ever come to the show. Sometimes Charedi people come out to it, but they’re not Charedi Charedi, they’re Charedi-minus-one. They wouldn’t mind being at a hip-hop show, so they wouldn’t mind being at a Y-Love show.

This upcoming gig at the Jewish Museum is your first official show as Diwon. Do you have any special stuff planned?

I bought the clothing, so that’s going to be a surprise for a lot of people. I’m probably going to bring Miriam Zafri up. There’ll be some special guest vocalists, maybe Smadar—who’ll also be dressed in traditional vocals, maybe. My residency goes all week, so we can have lots of stuff planned. The live parts are Sunday evening and Thursday evening. Thursday is the closing ceremony—we’re expecting over a thousand people.

Why do you think 1980s-style synth-pop has this huge, undying love in Israel?

I thought all Israelis love Gwen Stefani and that was it. Israelis are the new Harajuku girls, and Diwon is the new Gwen.

Remix contests, when done right, can be the coolest things in the world (ultra-hipster warning: refer to the Dismemberment Plan's fan-remixed best-of album that was their final release) or can, of course, be hackneyed cliches.

In honor of Y-Love's impending debut album, Shemspeed is throwing open the master-tape vaults and offering open access to the sounds and vocals, and hoping you come up with something better than they did. (Well, not better than -- it's a pretty incredible album, okay, let's hype it and say it's the best hip-hop album put out by a Bostoner Hasid EVER.)

So do your best -- if you're not sure how to make a remix, download Ableton to get started -- and we'll see what happens. Word is, next they're going to let you kids run wild with Pharaoh's Daughter, the Sephardic/world-music phenomenon who sounds really amazing without the use of blips and beeps. See if you can change my opinion about that.

From the Izhbitzer Rebbe, this little bit of excerptage comes to us by way of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, by way of my old yeshiva Simchat Shlomo. I edited it a bit, solely for purposes of cutting out the Hebrewese and the "you know"s, but for the most part, it's Shlomo's words. It's about how what we can learn from the way trees and seeds and vegetables pray.

 

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I've never been that big a fan of Good for the Jews. Super nice guys, catchy songs, and they're great at thinking on their feet (and, if Rob was here, I'm sure he'd insert a snappy line here about what they are off their feet) -- but, you know, I'm of the opinion that you can only hear a certain number of circumcision-joke songs a certain number of times before the humor, much like the Manischewitz, wears off. And I'm sad to say I probably exhausted that number listening to 2 Live Jews as an impressionable and easily-amused 11-year-old.

And I guess this all mirrors my fears and expectations in my last month of pre-fatherhood -- of my writing career, and of not making enough to pay for our next-of-kin's extravagant lifestyle. And I have to say, I was super jealous of the amazing-sounding Heeb Magazine/Good for the Jews tour, blogged about right here. But last night, I dreamed that I was standing ouside one of their concerts like a protester, hatin' on them, and on life itself, because Heeb didn't offer me to sponsor my tour (my spoken-word poetry tour or something, I guess -- I don't know, it's a dream, dude).

And then, like a weird angel manifesting in American Pie or Can't Hardly Wait, Rob appears beside me. (In real life, by the way, I have never had a spontaneous manifestation. I've barely spoken to the guy. We were at a conference together once, but that's it, I swear.) He sits down on the curb next to me, channeling Jerry O'Connell, reaches his arm around my shoulder and gives me a pep talk: "This life -- this whole damn Jewish art thing -- it isn't sustainable. Things like this," he says, pointing to my stomach, which isn't pregnant like my wife's but we both know what it means -- "This is sustainable. You can write till you die, man, and they'll keep reading even longer than that. But kids -- the remarkable thing about kids is that they live."

And then he proceeded to jam out in a band with Mike, my dead best friend and favorite guitarist, and Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney, my other favorite guitarist. But I wasn't even listening. I was just blown away.

I've been asked to suffix all of my comments that address Limmud as "Limmud UK," which is a giddy curse-turned-blessing-in-disguise -- Limmud NY starts in just about two weeks, and Limmud LA comes right after that. I'm going to be otherwise occupied with being on the verge of giving birth, G*d willing, but oceans cannot contain the amount of jealousy I have for everyone who gets to carry on in the grand tradition of Limmud.

Before I went, I asked what Limmud is, exactly, and this is what I've discovered: it's the Hebrew word learning. There's a whole universe of stuff that falls under the arbitrary umbrella we've decided to call the Jewish nation, and

I wish I could be more specific. I wish I could nail down everything that I've learned. I wish I could even give you the highlights. Man -- maybe next year, Jewcy'll sponsor me and buy me a PDA to do instant updates from each session. I started to make a list, and here's what I got:

• Former Speaker of the Knesset Avrum Berg's assertion, while reading I.B. Singer's Nobel address, that Yiddish is a language without words for violence. That, he says, should be our model for building a Jewish state and a model for its future -- with all the corollaries that come with that. (After our session, I pointed out to him that one of the first Yiddish phrases I learned was potch in the tuchus. He said it didn't count.)
• Raz Hartman teaching a room full of young/old/middle-aged hippies/punks/investment-banker-lookin' people how to sing wordless Chasidic dirges. (We came late, and met someone leaving the room, jaw dropped open, who told us, "I just sang for ten minutes straight. And I didn't even know the words.") In between, he taught slices of Rebbe Nachman, who said that the prophets weren't able to give over their prophecy unless there was music playing.
• Shalva Weil's intense sessions on Ethiopian Jewish refugees, and the halachic battle that determined where, ultimately, they landed in Israel's diaspora. The final word came, in the early 1970s, from a young Sephardic rabbi named Ovadia Yosef, who ruled that, based on a 14th-century precedent, they were not Jews -- because Jew implies from the tribe of Judah -- but Israelites; they were the lost children of Dan. (This probably could and will get its own article, if not its own book; but here is a very brief answer.)
• Daniel Boyarin. The most controversial straight queer commentator on the Talmud today. I think I can say that unabashedly: he gave over a three-part lecture charting the course of Chapter 7 of Baba Metzia that started
  with the laws of hiring bricklayers and then proceeded into a discussion of how the size of a man's member corresponds to the size of his desire, and how all the rabbis with the biggest stomachs managed to impregnate their wives (Rav Papa, according to the Gemara, was the size of - if anyone has this in front of them, please correct me - five half-barrels of wine, and some say it was seven.)

This seems like the perfect opportunity to say that, if you don't learn this at Limmud, you will probably have to enroll in a yeshiva for multiple years of your life in order to find out. One more reason to make it to LA or NY (or one of several other Limmuds around the world, from Turkey to South Africa)....and one more reason for me to be jealous of you.

This morning's sessions: when the messiah's coming, and what it means to believe - fave quote: ''Why wasn't the Rambam just, like, I KNOW the messiah's coming?'' -- and a veritable feast of the Danish gay poet Jacob Israel van Haas, whose brother became a hasid and sister became a nun. Issues always sound better in dutch. Seriously: it's like Italian seduced German and had a kid who never stops french kissing.

There are SO many different lanugages here. I'm getting lost in them and I love it.

And I stand by what I said, that there's nothing like this anywhere. At least, not that I've seen. Yes, I know we have lots of Jews stateside -- I'm a yank myself, I live in Brooklyn and I'm representing NYC over here, whoo, but the feeling I get here is that of jews of nearly every different band coming together -- can't wait for NY Limmud and the amazingness that will come with it, but Tamar, you've gotta get yourself over here. England is a very different place than New York - know, though, us New Yorkers think there's nothing else out there, certainly nothing better - but the very smallness of the UK is what makes it so fascinating that all these little demographics interact in a way that I've never seen in america.....that is, actually interacting. and without those petty labels like ''conservative'' or ''reform'' or ''breslov hasid who would never ordinarily go to the shiur of a conservative rabbi, but hell, we're at Limmud and boundaries are sooo last decade.''

Today at Limmud, nothing has happened yet -- well, it's 7:30 in the morning and my rabbi from yeshiva just pounded on my door to wake me up, but I asked him to, and now I'm iChatting to my wife and her big expectant belly. It kicks when I talk to it -- and I am feeling uncomfortably like our friend George Weinberg (of John Saffran vs. God fame, if you're Australian -- but, if you're Australian, you probably know George Weinberg anyway), who travels a lot and, when he is home, his daughter runs to the computer video camera to talk to him.

Last night, I hopped between two events -- one of the difficulties of an event like this, where at any given moment you could be having six completely different life-changing experiences. At 11pm was the Y-Love show, featuring guest M.C. Daniel Silverstein (of the band Emunah, until 2 nights ago) and about a zillion screaming girls, and upstairs, as far removed as you could get, was a crowd of people sitting in a nearly-dark room, surrounding Rabbi Raz Hartmann, who was teaching nigguns, wordless Chasidic melodies, and then, between them, giving over tidbits of Rebbe Nachman teachings. Like, for instance, did you know that it was traditional for prophets to not give over prophecies without accompaniment? There's one part of Prophets where someone is literally, like, "Fetch my backing band -- I need to prophecize." And then, like Sarah Silverman, they pop up, ready for a jingle-perfect tune about....well, no, probably not about *that.*

Dateline, Limmud UK: All the way here, I saw signs for Stratford-Upon-Avon. Banking on my last post, about the merits of visiting the graves of tzaddikim, I am trying to convince people here to come with me to hang out with me at Shakespeare's final resting place. (If ''hang out with me'' means ''give me a ride,'' that is.)

Meanwhile, I have a new favorite writer: Bernard Kops. An 81-year-old British dude whose play about Anne Frank is going up in LA next week and soon in NYC, he did some amazing poetry -- just sat down and started reading, his voice against the loud air conditioner. He has a singuar talent for the one-line zinger:

People always tell you

everything will be

alright.

 

You thank them

and shut the door

and lie awake all night.

 

 

About this, he said: ''I've suffered more from reassurance than I have from criticism.'' He also told us that, if politics changed anything, it would have been abolished years ago.

Hello from Sunny Old England, where today's sky is grey, but bright grey, which might be the closest it's come to sunlight in, well, years. (Don't listen to me -- I just landed at 7:oo last night, 12 hours later than I was supposed to. We sat in the airport for practically forEVER -- which gave me a chance to meet Judith Hauptman, who has some pretty amazing ideas for getting twentysomethings involved in Jewish party life, I mean, holiday life....and really, there is such a fine line between the two).

Getting off the bus, they wouldn't give me my room key because there was a note that I had to see E.J. immediately. I'd just been in airports for 24 hours and Virgin Atlantic is nowhere near as space-age and spiffy as everyone says -- after a flight, you're still tired and gross. But I ran to meet her and to fight for my right to shower. A girl said she knew where E.J. was, and the led me through corridors and then through this door that spilled out right onto a stage. EJ was the MC. They were having the Opening Gala, and wanted to know if I'd perform.

 So -- tired, plane-dirty, and deprived of sleep for the past 24 hours, I ripped of my coat and my Doctor Who scarf and let loose a poem.

My actual show was an hour later. By that time, I'd managed to clean myself up, both body and language, and managed to meet some of the most amazing and insightful personalities that I'll tell you about in my next post, because afterwards we went to this concert that I need to tell you about now.

The amazing and rave-worthy mostly-Jewish-but-with-a-Palestinian-M.C.-and-a-kickass-violinist band Emunah played last night. Imagine a howling jungle beat with fat heavy bass and a Russian diva wailing Shlomo Carlebach melodies over it. A bunch of people took pictures, but I think they're all still too hung over to post them. This was the band's final show with their other M.C., a brilliant lyricist named Daniel Silverstein. "Five years of my life," he kept saying again and again after the show. (Honestly, I don't know how he could talk at *all* after that -- I really think he spoke faster than I can type on that last song, a drum&bass beat that sounded like a stopwatch being fast-forwarded.) He also said that he's leaving the band but he's never leaving music, and then alluded to the possibility that he might be moving to New York......!?!?!?!? People in New York -- if he does, you have to hunt him down and stand outside his house and listen to every word he says. It'll be worth it.

Nosson Zand, more popularly known by his hip-hop and Internet handle Niz, is a bona fide Orthodox hip-hop phenomenon -- you know, along with Ta-Shma and Y-Love and (me, I guess?). Besides the questionable and debated Jewish appropriation of hip-hop culture, we can argue that Eminem and one of the Fat Boys did the same thing and save that for another blog post. The fact remains, some of these young gentlemen (and I wish I didn't have to say "gentlemen"; the only Orthodox female M.C. I know is the Bay Area's fabulous Rebbitzin Queen Esther, who has been working on her album for, what, 11 years?!) are on top of their game, both lyrically and deliverically -- they're dropping some pretty impressive stuff.

But Niz has Eminemed (or Fiddy'd?) his game once again, and not in a half-assed way: he's playing the starring role in Song of David, a movie about a yeshiva boy who, after being turned off from yeshiva, immerses himself in hip-hop culture. That's about all I've gleaned so far from the summary and preview, which you can find on the movie's website.

I have to be honest -- I'm skeptical. These things often don't get made in the Orthodox world unless you've cleaned the emotion right out of it. But I've also heard great things from Niz, and I trust his talent, and I'm pretty excited to see this movie. And you know I'm gonna let you know about it.

From my Chasidic mother-in-law comes this slightly inflammatory, slightly funny mockup of the KosherPhone -- this, mind you, coming from a country where 95% of the entire Jewish population lives within two very specific neighborhoods of two cities. In other words, their image of Orthodox Jews is informed more by "Gray's Anatomy" than by ever seeing an actual Orthodox Jew....then again, I suppose that's true for most of America, too. (Nonetheless: ozzie ozzie ozzie!)

"Chasers" is Oz's equivalent to the Daily Show and the State, rolled into one. For kicks, they dress up like Bin Laden and try to get served in military base cafeterias. If you'd like to skip the uncomfortably inherent anti-Semitism in the beginning ("cost for calling Palestinians: death!") and get straight to the rabbis with strap-ons, skip to about 0:51.

And as you do, remember this: I got this from my mother-in-law.

Just got back from the swanky new Jewcy office where I happened to mention that I'm going to the Limmud convention in England over Xmas break. Tahl The Editor got excited and asked if I could blog it, upon which *I* got excited, because I'm supposed to speak at a dozen or so sessions and haven't actually thought of anything to say at any of them.

As a point of fact, I'm not entirely clear on what Limmud is. This is what I do know: Limmud is the Hebrew word for learning, and the weeklong conference has featured sessions with Nobel-contending authors, the director of Tiny Ninja Theater, my rabbi from yeshiva who teaches mysticism in the Talmud, and the odd Hasidic performance poet who writes about supermodels and kung-fu (me).

I've heard the raves from past participants. Y-Love, who'll be there, has warned me to prepare to have my mind blown. Right now, I'm mostly scared -- scared that I won't finish my collaborative play about Rebbe Levi Yitzchok of Berdichev, scared that I'll stuff up talking about sacred porn in the Song of Songs. But I'm excited.

What I'm most looking forward to, I need to tell you, is the conversations. Insomniac walks through the dorms at night, bumping into holy heretics and brilliant nuts, thinkers who could change the world (and who are). A.B. Yehoshua never replied when I asked if he wanted to do storytelling together. But even he's got to sit next to somebody at dinner every night.

For some reason this year has produced a bumper crop of Hanukkah-themed CDs. Why? And are any of them any good? We got young adult novelist Matthue Roth to investigate. Check back all week for more reviews.

Hooked on Chanukah: My menorah is more fabulous than your menorah.Under consideration today:
Various artists, Hooked on Chanukah

Last night we had a Chanukah party. We didn’t plan on it being this way, but it turned into a marathon—from the family-first moments where my sister and cousin were there and we were setting up, to the first shift (parents with little kids), the second (the party kids—you know who you are), all the way till the end of the night, when it was just a few of us sitting around, drinking up the last of the mulled wine (Manischewitz, of course). My wife Itta put on the new CD we’d just gotten—Hooked on Chanukah, Sameach Music’s holiday comp and possibly the most true-to-Scriptures compilation, featuring songs like “Al Hanisim” and “Lichtalach” alongside standards like “Macabee” and, of course, the ubiquitous “Maoz Tzur.”

At first, it was oddly appropriate for the end of the night mood—jazzed, sort of bouncy, but mellow, just the right combination of laid-back harmonies, acoustic guitars and keyboards that you’d expect a CD with a neon yellow menorah on it to offer.

The real surprise came when Daniel, our downstairs neighbor—who, by the way, is half Filipino and half Chinese—began to belt out the generations-old Yiddish-tinged melodies. In Yiddish.

Daniel, it turns out, speaks more Yiddish than anyone else here (including, I would like to point out reproachfully, my Yiddish-educated wife, whose parents spoke in Yiddish when they didn’t want her to understand what they were saying. Yeah, way to pass on our people’s traditions). He started studying the language with a friend, half as a dare, half a way to fill up free time constructively. As a matter of fact, our first conversation was predicated on us comparing our apartments’ gas hookups and me seeing the Yiddish word “pripetchik” written out on it….

So, that was the end of our party. I’m cleaning up dishes, my wife’s moving chairs back into place, and Daniel is belting out “Lichtalach” in a voice usually reserved for particularly intense rounds of Rock Band. The salsa horns of “Yevanim” simmer in the background, fading into the Billy Joel-like piano of “There’s a Light”—except, not the version from Rocky Horror. Yes, as someone raised on secular music, I still find it slightly creepy that prepubescent boys are used to hit the high notes in songs—the “women’s parts,” if you will. But the music and the general air of party-ness on this compilation are good-natured and convivial. It almost makes you want to get hooked on Chanukah. Almost.

For some reason this year has produced a bumper crop of Hanukkah-themed CDs. Why? And are any of them any good? We got young adult novelist Matthue Roth to investigate. Check back all week for more reviews.

Dude, your mom likes Chanukah carols: No, really, she probably doesUnder consideration today:
Sid Wayne and Stanley Adams, Chanukah Carols

Chanuka carols. Is there any greater cultural need, do you think, than the drive to adapt the Christmas season to our own devices, to prove to ourselves that our minor holiday is as meaningful and significant as their major one? Is it an inferiority complex, a constant and renewing drive to shirk the label of underdog? Or do we just like making fun of goyim?

Either way: as we are on the fifth day of Chanukah and I am on my third concept album of holiday parody songs (well, second and a half, to be fair—Sam Glaser’s Rockin’ Chanukah Revue was so much more), I begin to ask myself these grand existential questions. I guess it’s inevitable.

Sid Wayne and Stanley Adams’ Chanuka Carols was originally minted in 1962, and Jewish Music Group has seen fit to bless is with its presence (or is it presents?) once again. The album bathes—no, it mikvah-dips—in puns such as these, both groaningly obvious and yet not without its own quaint, old-world charm. This is a record made when our bubbas’ flat grey hair was vibrant and black, teased into a foot-tall beehive. It presses all the buttons of questionable taste that have, in the long years since, been worn flat by the likes of 2 Live Jews, Good for the Jews, the film Hebrew Hammer and every other piece of kitsch in the New Jew Revolution.

The opening track, “’Twas the Night Before Chanukah,” is a poem that exemplifies this kitsch, clever and in pleasantly bad taste, frolicking in raucousness, but not without its charm. My grandmother would be offended, I would be turned off, but my mother? It’s probably about right. “With a OO! And an AAGH! and an OIY GUTENYOO! [sic] He flew up the shaft, like fegeles do.” (Of course, in the Yiddish glossary mandated by these sorts of albums, fegele is translated as bird…) “Matzoh Balls” is “Jingle Bells” redone for the Jews, although I don’t think that “Jingle Bells” was very Christmas-oriented to begin with. “Let’s Put the CH Back in Chanukah” is, effectively, a retelling (or pretelling) of the 2 Live Jews song (more on them later) “Shake Your Tuchus,” in which each speaker dishes out—both songs in different contexts, both with morally questionable setups—a beginner’s guide to speaking Yiddish.

Stanley Adams is a bit actor with some pretty big bits, having appeared in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Gilligan’s Island (he was the cannibal headhunter). Sid Wayne is likewise a Hollywood talent, here flexing his oft-unused Jewish muscles. Together, they craft a clichéd and cheeky but ultimately inoffensive tribute to Christmas albums in their own tradition. Oh, well.

For some reason this year has produced a bumper crop of Hanukkah-themed CDs. Why? And are any of them any good? We got young adult novelist Matthue Roth to investigate. Check back all week for more reviews.

Absolutely terrifying: Seriously, there are no words that can do this justice.Under consideration today:
Guns 'n Charoses, Gimme Some Latkes

I loved 2 Live Jews. The spur-of-the-moment nature of the project, the way they grabbed the first Jewish cliché they could think of whenever anything came to mind—to my 8-year-old self, it was pure genius. Why not set Fiddler on the Roof songs to a hip-hop beat? Why not rhyme “what exactly is a shikseh” with “a non-Jewish girl who stands out at the bar mitzvah?” You know, I memorized every word on that album. I could probably recite entire songs, still, today.

I really wanted to start talking about Gimme Some Latkes, the first (and probably only) release by the unlikely-monikered Guns ’N Charoses, by discussing the cover—a huge close-up of a latke with a bald, middle-aged, bespectacled, disembodied face floating above it. It’s embarrassing and dorky and actually kind of endearing. The latke, once you know it’s a latke, looks pretty good, but until you realize what it is, it looks….well, sort of gross, almost dog-excrement-like. Which, if you want to know a frightening thought, might be how goyim see disembodied, context-less pictures of latkes.

I shoved the CD in my discman quickly, sensing a desperate need for a change of subject.

You wouldn’t think a song by Steve Winwood would be up for parody, save by some
But a quick search will show how far the phrase “Gimme Some Lovin’” has endeared itself to our language: Ludakris and the book about John Lennon’s FBI files both sample it, and there’s the odd web site Gimme Some Candy. But G&C’s song is the only mention I can find of latkes being demanded in this exact style, and that’s what we’ve got.

The music here is uneven. We’re spoiled, of course: “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parodies usually have the original music note-perfect, and even two-bit fakers will hunt down an original instrumental track. But self-proclaimed “Doris’s son” Mark Edelman, along with collaborator Jeremy Beltzer (“his folks are kvelling”), plays shaky, note-imperfect versions of songs by R.E.M. (“Using My Religion”), Kenny Rogers (“The Mohel”) and former members of Latin American boy-bands (“Trying to Date D’vorah”). But there’s an easygoing charm and an earnest groove going, as well as Edelman’s likeable, talk-singing vocals. They work best on songs like “The Mohel” (it’s “The Gambler,” if you couldn’t tell) in which he’s launching punchlines and telling little stories, and least effectively on songs like “Don’t Worry, Keep Kosher.” If the title doesn’t tell you why, you can use your imagination.

For some reason this year has produced a bumper crop of Hanukkah-themed CDs. Why? And are any of them any good? We got young adult novelist Matthue Roth to investigate. Check back all week for more reviews.

Under Consideration:
The Klezmatics, Woody Guthrie's Happy Joyous Hanukkah

My new novel, Candy in Action (out this week!), is an attempt to create a non-Jewish Jewish story—a story where the main character is Jewish and the plot has elements of the Jewish experience (trying to hold onto your individuality while climbing to the top of a culture that’s trying to crush it)—but there’s nothing explicitly Jewish about the story. It’s about supermodels who know kung-fu.

Woody Guthrie, on the other hand, was trying to accomplish the exact opposite with his Chanukah songs. A genius songwriter and American musical pioneer, he wasn’t Jewish himself, but his wife was, and his kids were. Captivated by his immigrant mother-in-law’s Jewish rituals and by her stories, Guthrie wanted to pass them on to her grandchildren, and these lyrics are what came out of it.

A few years ago, Billy Bragg and Wilco wrote new music to accompany some of the 400 song lyrics left behind by Guthrie. The project was attempted a few more times, both by the original collaborators and others—but nothing was able to capture the original joy and chaos quite so perfectly as the original Mermaid Avenue.

The closest anyone got was the Klezmatics, whose album Wonder Wheel won a Grammy last year, and whose adaptations of several-hundred-year-old lyrics make adapting Guthrie’s scribbled notes no problem. These songs succeed sometimes because of Guthrie’s lyrics, and sometimes in spite of them. Lead singer Lorin Sklamberg sounds something less than genuine when he sings:

“It’s Honeykie Hanukah,
huggy me tight
It’s Hanukah day
and Hanukah night”

In his defense, though, I don’t know many people over the age of eleven who can sound genuine singing the words “It’s Hanukie Hanukah time.” I do kind of wish they’d gotten Woody’s son Arlo, who has a natural childlike sparkle to his voice, to sing that song….but that’s just me, I guess.

If the songs sound a bit, well, Christmaslike, it’s no accident—Guthrie was a Christian who miscegenated with a Jewess and, after being enthralled by his immigrant mother-in-law’s stories, wanted to instill a bit of cultural pride in his kids. His deft writing and playful lyrics work lend themselves to radical adaptations—hell, his lyrics are so skeletal that it’s basically a new adaptation every time that somebody new plays one of his songs.

The Klezmatics, meanwhile, excel at their craft. They could cover the sound of breaking glass and it would sound like a dance party. That is, a dance party in Galicia, where beats per minute are counted on violin and bass strings instead of keyboards and Pro Tools.

When the two forces work together in harmony, such as they do on the title track—a countdown song whose lyrics run along the lines of “One Little Goat” (“Five for the brothers Maccabee/Six for the tricks the King did play”)—except it swings and rocks and gets merry like…well, you know what. And its Lyle Lovett-like electric guitar chorus is classic. The four instrumental songs interspersed through the album, thrown on to beef up the content and CD length, don’t feel like filler at all, even if that’s what they are.

Other times, though, the lyrics and music don’t mesh quite so jubilantly, as on the draggy “Hanukkah Bell” and the bizarre choice of adapting an Irish accent to sing the history lesson-laden “The Many and the Few,” a six-and-a-half-minute ballad that, with only a drone in the background, retells the story of Chanuka. It’s interesting enough to listen to, once, and it’s prettily done, but I really can’t imagine anyone listening to it more than once. Ever.

And, randomly: it’s really cool that Guthrie makes references, several of them, to Ezra, who is connected in tradition and scholarship to Chanukah, but who hardly ever gets props in contemporary Jewish culture—let alone, in contemporary Jewish folk music.

For some reason this year has produced a bumper crop of Hanukkah-themed CDs. Why? And are any of them any good? We got young adult novelist Matthue Roth to investigate. Check back all week for more reviews.

Like Gossip Girls, pretty much Judaism-free: The third OC Christmas albumUnder consideration today:
Merry Chrismukkah: Music from The OC Mix 3

Chrismukkah—the holiday created by the TV show The OC to merge the paternal and maternal cultures of Seth Cohen, the titular protagonist—fueled a heap of cultural ire and fire when it was first broadcast. Unfortunately, none of that fire comes across on this tepid collection of nine indie-rock Christmas songs, most of them collected for the first time, and all but one straight-up Christmas themed music.

Yes, I said indie-rock Christmas songs. The Ravonettes’ opening “The Christmas Song” is dreamy and evocative, post-drunken in the best half-asleep way imaginable. Their plucked guitar lines sound, if not striagh tout of a 1950s school dance, then at least straight from the 1950s school dance scene in Back to the Future. It’s less a Christmas song than a song about Christmas. The operative difference being, I think, threefold:

1. Joyous/vomitable lyrical themes of trees/Santa/implied kissing under mistletoe
2. A chorus that both explicitly mentions Christmas and gets caught in your head
3. Percussion track featuring something meant to be sleigh bells

Take, for instance, the Eels’ “Christmas Is Going to the Dogs,” which is every bit as jaded and mean-spirited as you’d expect, but still has a sense of humor, a catchy and Christmas-themed chorus, and those damn sleigh bells. Ben Kweller makes his way thorugh a pretty and compelling acoustic guitar version of “Rock of Ages,” the sole Chanukah representative. (It is, by the way, a very straight-up rendition, very thoughtful and sweet and toned-down in that antifolk style that we've all come to know and love. And Ben Kweller is good at what he does, and we do like the earnest singing, which sounds almost as though he wrote the lyrics "Rock of ages, let our soul/praise your saving power" himself.) (I want to point out, though, that Rebbe Soul actually has a blow-away beautiful version of the song, on his album Change the World with a Sound, that’s all tables and ukuleles and it almost warrants a review of its own.)

But, for the most part, this collection feels unnecessary and abridged. If the O.C. folks wanted more Chanuka tracks, they should have looked no further than my track Dreidel Maven. Never mind that the collection's only 28 minutes long. Where's the "ukkhah" part of Chrismukkah?

Sure, as an Orthodox Jew, I'm fundamentally offended by the concept, offended by every minute of the trite, stale, sitting-by-the-fireplace Americanness of it, and ESPECIALLY offended by that stupid freaking Santa Claus-lookin' yarmulke that they sell in upscale trendy boutiques whose popularity outlasted the show.

Nevertheless, I'm open-minded. I’m a patron of the arts. Honestly, I would have completely bought into the idea of this soundtrack if there were any songs that tipped their hats to the concept of Chrismukkah. But, no—it's all straight Yuletide here. You know how, in Judaism, the religion passes through the mother, so if a mother's Jewish, the child will be? Well, Seth Cohen—the most Jewishy-sounding name ever—is the product of a Jewish father and a Christian mother, which, theologically speaking, makes his Jewish identity all hype with no depth.

Which, would also be a succinct review for this collection.

So, listen: if you're gonna commodify my holiday, can't you throw us a few more bones? Even South Park had the rockin' "Lonely Jew on Xmas." Unless Jimmy Eat World covering WHAM!'s "Last Christmas (I Gave You My Heart)" is your thing (hey, it's mine), you might want to just skip straight to A Very Barbra Christmas.

For some reason this year has produced a bumper crop of Hanukkah-themed CDs. Why? And are any of them any good? We got young adult novelist Matthue Roth to investigate. Check back all week for more reviews.

Kirk Douglas's favorite holiday jams: Sam Glaser's albumUnder consideration today:
Sam Glaser's Rockin' Chanukah Revue 

I know that we stick by Hillel's method of lighting the menorah, starting with one small light and working our way up to a full set of eight, but I don't want to start my week off weak, wallowing in short E.P.s or a tepid, barely-cognizant hipster doozy of a Chanukah album, so I'm just going to jump in full-throttle: the 15-track Sam Glaser's Rockin' Chanukah Revue.

First, the artist. Sam Glaser is a Jewish musician, serious and soulful--"I have all his CDs," claims no less than Kirk Douglas in the press kit-whose usual instrument of choice, a keyboard, is tender and maudlin. In his publicity photos, he alternates between a distinguished synagogue stud and the "wacky guy" in the Bar Mitzvah band.

Second, the album artwork. Underneath the title, written in big Broadway-lights letters, is a pixilated photo of Glaser, who has ditched his very mellow and very trademarked keyboard for a rockin' electric guitar. The picture is taken from behind, with Glaser's body obviously reeling from an intense electric-guitar strum. Wow! You'd better buckle your safety belts...this Chanukah revue is going to rock.

And the thing is: from the album's first few notes-a wah-wah electric guitar, slightly tense, slightly warbly, building in the corner-something is definitely about to explode. In the background, slight drumrolls, a sign of the impending madness. Then the drums kick in, the brass picks up, and ....the song breaks out to John Philip Sousa-influenced soft jazz?

Look: I know how you probably feel about soft jazz. I also know how you're probably going to feel about Glaser's voice, which is comfortable and well-trained, yet has an air of self-importance that never totally goes away. It might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that he's channeling Frank Sinatra-or, to be more fair (and more accurate) that he's channeling Dean Martin.

"We Light the Lights" breaks out of this meandering into a pretty solid, fist-pumping Chanukah singalong anthem. It's got just the right amount of cheese: the horn section is straight out of a Jewish wedding band, and I don't know how else to describe it. Lines like "The dark doesn't hold a candle to our prayers" can be either heartwarming or hackneyed, and are quite possibly both. But the song's musical progression, from "More Than a Feeling" to Rat Pack to Diana Ross and the Supremes-like choral arrangements, is almost dizzyingly fascinating. And when Glaser and his backing singers kick into the repeating chorus, "We light!", we really feel a surge of honest joy.

And that, my friends, is just the first track.

From here, I don't know if I can describe the scope, the wackiness, and the sheer unpredictability of Rockin' Chanukah Revue. Can I just tell you, the second song is called "Dreidl Star!" and is a tribute to (I don't even want to call it a parody; it's too honest for that) the Deep Purple song. "Nobody gonna take my dreidel/it'll never hit the ground/Nobody gonna beat my dreidel/It'll break the speed of sound." I don't know if it's all Glaser's work directed at the overcaffeinated 8-to-12-year-old set, but he says the word, and all manner of rawk comes into the room. His oh-so-tasteful voice floats above it, paradoxically, but there's actually a fair amount of unhingedness, especially around the guitar breakdowns.

And then, just when "Dreidel Star!"'s last screaming banshee of a guitar fades to black and you think you can't handle any more adrenaline, soft piano chords come up. You recognize this song. You don't think he's going to do it. And then he does it.

"Maccabee, Maccabee/burning bright, eternally," he croons.

And no matter how bitter, jaded and ironic the outside world might get, Sam Glaser keeps it bright. Bright, shining, and Chanukah fresh: and why was there debate over whether the single flask of oil lasted for eight days, anyway? Let's just sit on our irony, stop biting our tongues, and bite some latkes instead. When Sam Glaser sings, whether it's "Maoz Tsure" or a Jewish version of the Mother Mary panegyric "Let It Be," let's believe him.

Not all of the songs on Rockin' Chanukah Revue are parodies-"We Light the Lights," for example, is pure Glaser innovation. But those in search of the conventional Rock will be treated well: in addition to Deep Purple, Glaser pays homage to Smokey Robinson, Van Halen, and whoever wrote "Maoz Tsur" (a poet only known by the name Mordechai, according to the acrostic, if you're wondering). There's also the bizarrely appropriate "My Sukkah's on Fire," and a musical version of the blessings over the candles. If you're going to only buy one CD for Chanukah, you might not make it this one. But you'd be missing out.

I think Danya Ruttenberg kicks ass for many reasons, but chiefly, today, I think Danya kicks ass because of her response to Matthue Roth's letter to the editor in the latest issue of glorious Bitch Magazine.

See, in last month's issue of Bitch, Ruttenberg wrote briefly about the mechitza in the context of a discussion about "women-only spaces". "A divider separates men and women in Orthodox synagogues because a visible female presence is considered a sexual threat at a time when the (male) Jewish subject should be focusing on his prayers," she says, in part.

In response, this month, an offended Roth opines:

As a rabbinical student, Ruttenberg should be aware that the purpose of a mechitza is not becuase "a visible female presence is considered a sexual threat" as she claims, but, according to the Talmud (tractate Sukkah,page 51b), in order for everyone to focus on the ceremony at hand. There's no mention of anyone, least of all women, being considered a sexual threat -- except, that is, when she writes "the (male) subject should be focusing on his prayers." Visible female presences are all over Orthodox Judaism, from Miriam and Devorah in the Bible to Orthodox women like Blu Greenberg, Tziporah Heller, and the First Belz Rebbetzin. Praying isn't supposed to be a natural experience. It's actually supposed to make you feel unnatural, so that [you] turn away from the world around you and get closer to G-d.

Could I disagree with Roth any more ferociously? (No, I could not.) What kind of bizarre-o, bullshit assertion is "praying isn't supposed to be a natural experience"? What kind of exclusionary, off-putting absurdity is that? It's an adherence to religion utterly devoid of spirituality or organic wisdom, if you ask me. And, uh, hauling out a few random names of women who appear in the Bible alongside a few random names of women who've indeed existed within Orthodox Judaism does not an argument about the role of women in Orthodoxy make, buddy. Also? Way to avoid the real issue.

But Ruttenberg has the rabbinic chops to respond in a more level-headed manner, which she does thusly:

Sukkah 51b refers to a specific event that no longer takes place; Maimondeds, the Meiri, the Rosh, and others suggest that it wasn't indicative of how worship should be in a post-Temple era. There's no mention of gendered partitions for regular prayer until the medieval period, in Seder Eliyahu Raba: "nor should a man stand among the presence of women." Women are the objects/distraction to male experience. Some, including R. Joseph Soloveichik, justify mechitza through Deuteronomy 23:15, "Let (God) not find something unseemly among you." In the Torah, this verse is about ritual impurity. Here women are the unseemly problem to expel from male ritual space. Is the mechitza gender neutral? No. It's offensive to suggest that the mechitza is fine for transfolk. Having to "pick a side" will create and enforce rigid gender binaries like nothing else. As for queers, defenders of mechitza generally presume heterosexuality -- it's about removing sexual temptation during prayer. Learning to become absorbed in coversation with God, regardless of who's around, is a hallmark of spritual maturity. Service to God doesn't come at the expense of anyone else's subjecthood or wholeness.

Pump your fists in the air with me, will you? Beautifully put, Danya.

This issue, from a queer standpoint, was also quite eloquently argued by Aaron Hamburger in Jewcy a few months back, by the way.

(Patriarchal, chauvinistic, misogynistic, knee-jerk Bible-thumpers, start your engines.)