As Super Tuesday approaches, three prominent Jewish writers get political in their personal essays. In The Washington Post, Michael Chabon and Erica Jong set out a point-counterpoint of sorts, with each one trying to out-hyperbole the other.

First, Michael Chabon chides us all on being a nation full of fear:

The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.

Then Erica Jong justifies Hillary Clinton’s centrism with an appeal to baby boomer women who identify with her struggle:

As a senator she has learned compromise and negotiation. She has gotten to know red America as well as blue. If she could win over the rednecks in upstate New York, she can win over any American. She knows this country is full of "security" moms as well as soccer moms. Since she is a woman, she has to show she's ready to be commander in chief. Hence her "triangulation" on Iraq and her signing the absurd Lieberman-Kyl resolution, which calls on our government to use "military instruments" to "combat, contain and [stop]" Iran's meddling in Iraq.

By the time it came up she must have known the Cheney-Bush war profiteers would never embrace even partial peace. She had to win over her America and theirs.

Shalom Auslander, our third prominent Jewish author, forgoes these emotional pleas for votes and instead talks about politics the way they’re lived among news-cycle junkies in the days before the primary. He admits that he’s never voted before, but now that he’s “downloaded pretty much all the pornography on the internet,” obsessing about the election has become his new favorite way to procrastinate. Also his wife found a lump in her breast, and maybe he needs distractions more that he’s willing to confront head-on. His essay won’t convince anyone to vote for Obama, his candidate of choice, or to vote at all for that matter, but it’s the most realistic evocation of the 2008 race I’ve seen so far.

You can find countdown lists all over the place this time of year; this morning I watched numbers 25 through 19 of E!'s 25 Most Memorable Swimsuit Moments of 2007. Jewcy's list has a lot less Lindsay Lohan, but only here will you find our contributers plus other assorted machers listing their favorite Jewish moments of the past non-Jewish calendar year.

1.) Andy Bachman becoming the rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn. I know this might not seem like a big deal, but it is—having a visionary taking up the reins at a very traditional institution in the heart of the Jewish world, and then turning that institution on its head. Big, big deal, at least when we think about which rabbis will be running the next generation of Jewish communities.—Jordie Gerson

2.) Encounter—the best thing to happen to the american jewish community in years.—Jordie Gerson

3.) Encounter, an "educational organization dedicated to providing Jewish diaspora leaders from across the religious and political spectrum with exposure to Palestinian life," brought close to 120 Jewish leaders to Bethlehem and Hebron this year, including many "unusual suspects" from Orthodox and centrist to right-wing backgrounds. Encounter groups remain the only significant Jewish presence in Palestinian areas of the West Bank since before the second intifada, other than military personnel.—Elisa Albert

4.) I'm Not There. Bobby Zimmerman is a Jew for the ages: as an artist he remains intensely committed, un-pin-down-able, and honest; as an inspiration to other artists he is a gift that keeps on giving.—Elisa Albert

5.) Shalom Auslander (sort of) thumbs his nose at God's wrath, and gives us all a peek into his religion-warped head in the process.—Elisa Albert

6) Peter Cole received a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2007. Cole's many great projects include arranging a reading tour that brought the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali and the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai, together, to a bunch of places in the US. Cole is a truly brilliant artist, a translator, publisher (Ibis Editions), poet, and all around incredible force for good. Or, in the words of the MacArthur folks: "In a region mired in conflict, Cole's dedication to the literature of the Levant offers a unique and inspiring vision of the cultural, religious, and linguistic interactions that were and are possible among the peoples of the Middle East."—Edward Schwarzchild

7.) Spending New Year's Eve in Jerusalem.—Maya Wainhaus

8.) Becoming Facebook friends with my 17-year-old Orthodox cousin.—Maya Wainhaus

9.) This season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.—Maya Wainhaus

10.) Traveling in Israel with Livnot U'Lehibanot.—Maya Wainhaus

11.) In 2007 we launched VeryHotJews and learned there were a lot of kindred spirits out there who shared our love of sexy Hebes, flowery prose, succulently un-Kosher bacon, singing classic rock as loudly as possible and sticking it to Hitler. To our awesome community of smokin’-hot M.O.T.s and Jew-loving gentiles: We love you and fully expect 2008 to be a massive kvell-a-thon.—Simon Glickman

12.) Taylor Mays, #2, University of Southern California free safety. This second team All-American has the concentration of a Talmudic scholar and takes people out like a Mossad hitman (not bad, eh?). He is an incredible football player who credits his maturity to when he was bar mitzvahed. I was at this game in the freezing rain.—Pat Sauer

13.) Philip Roth, for Exit Ghost and the metaphorical death of Nathan Zuckerman, but also for Roth's literal life. Give the man the Nobel Prize and let him die in peace.—Pat Sauer

14.) Norman Mailer, for dying with pugnacity, if not dignity, winning the Bad Sex in Fiction award for his final novel The Castle in the Forest, where Adolph is born of incest, gets his rocks off watching bodies burn and is fascinated by poop. In The New Republic, Ruth Franklin said, "The reader strong-stomached enough to make it to the end of Norman Mailer's new novel, which comprises nearly five hundred of the most revolting pages in recent American fiction, will discover a refreshing oasis of reason."—Pat Sauer

15.) The Coen brothers are awesome for returning to form after the stylized nonsense of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. Cormac McCarthy wouldn't have seemed like their milieu, but they took his stark hard-rain's-gonna'-fall ethos and made a grim poem on the whether violence will always win out in the end—it will, even if decent men like Tommy Lee Jones try and believe otherwise. No Country for Old Men has a bit of the Coens' black comedy, but it's deeper and angrier, and other than Javier Bardem's ridiculous Prince Valiant haircut, it's got few of their old prankster impulses.—Pat Sauer

16.) Benny Shassburger, the office everyman whom the audience was meant to identify with in Joshua Ferris' great debut novel Then We Came to the End. Ferris took a big literary chance by writing it in a royal "we" narrator that made everyone part of the downsizing. Thus, Benny with his "corkscrew curls" and "quick laugh" is our stand-in, the amiable fellow who deserves to be the keeper of the totem pole...plus he's got a MySpace page.—Pat Sauer

17.) A couple of entries who would make my Best and Worst list: Noah Feldman and Shalom Auslander, The Bad Boys whose public criticism of various aspects of Orthodox life was embarrassing, annoying, mean-spirited and worth pondering (at least privately).—Gary Rosenblatt

18.) Harvey Weinstein married Georgina Chapman. I'm not sure if that falls under awesome or disaster.—Amy Odell

SEE ALSO: The Biggest Disasters of Jewish 2007

This is, of course, a pretty subjective list, not to mention highly personal (I bet you haven't Facebook-friended Maya's Orthodox cousin.) Add your own best moments of 2007 in the comments section.

Check out this week’s This American Life, which is about different people struggling to keep the ten commandments. It goes from the first to the tenth, with awesome and hilarious stories from people like Shalom Auslander and a military chaplain. Totally worth the download. You can subscribe to the free podcast on iTunes, or listen on the TAL website.

Totally rollicking good time, this column.  Vitriol!  Misanthropy!  Mother-baiting! Righteously Furious!

Gary Shteyngart’s comments in the New York Times a few months back, bemoaning today’s total lack of hot, nasty writer-feud action, jump to mind.   (I immediately tried to pick a fight with Gary after that; told him he was a useless wankrag.  But he didn’t bite.  He just said “Yeah, I know.”  Then I felt bad.)  

But perhaps Auslander -- who seems so deliciously unafraid to take it to the mat -- is the great white hope of future literary backbiting!  I’d like to see him re-direct some of that L.A. hatred onto, say, Marisha Pessl (to whose shite I am purposefully not linking, petty bitch that I am).

At any rate, glad to see not everybody’s committed to the nicety-nice-nice.  Even if the target of Auslander’s ire is about forty feet wide.  (Amen, however: L.A. should burn!)