Ever since the first Hanukkah stamp was issued by the U.S. Post Office in 1996, this has been my favorite Hanukkah joke to tell: A woman goes to the post office to buy stamps for her Hanukkah cards.She says to the clerk, “May I have 50 Hanukkah stamps?”The clerk says, “What denomination?” “Oh my goodness,”…
When it comes to Hanukkah there’s really only been one traditional way to play Dreidel. The four sided spinning top has four Hebrew letters on it. Each letter tells you what to do if it lands on that letter — you win, you get half, etc. It might be fun the first time you play,…
I had no idea how many Jewish attorneys I know. In the past week I received no less than twenty forwarded email messages from lawyers about US District Judge Kimba Wood’s decision to grant a recess in an ongoing court case if Bennett Epstein, one of the lawyers in the trial, becomes a grandfather to…
Here is my most recent post on the Jewish Techs blog (The NY Jewish Week) Jews aren’t sarcastic at all! Okay, that was me being sarcastic, but the problem with the Jewish tradition of sarcasm is that it doesn’t translate well in Cyberspace where tone of speech doesn’t come through in text. That’s why it…
Here’s my latest post on the “Rabbi J in the D” blog at Community Next One of my favorite movies as a kid was 1987′s “Stakeout” starring Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez. Watching the movie on VHS (remember those?) years later as a college student at around the same time I was discovering the writings…
Here’s my latest post on the Jewish Techs blog (The NY Jewish Week) An article in All Facebook, the unofficial Facebook blog, reports that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been using the social networking site to nab female Israelis who claim to be religious enough to be exempted from army service. Apparently, their activity…
Xtranormal has helped users create close to 10 million projects by turning their words into funny animated movies. User “krumbagel” has created a hilarious Xtranormal animation that successfully (and humorously) critiques the ultra-Orthodox notion that the Avot (patriarchs) in the Torah not only followed the Halachah (Jewish law) as outlined in the Torah, but even…
According to the JTA.org, former boxing champion Mike Tyson is in talks to open a chain of high-end kosher restaurants. Supposedly, Tyson has been in negotiations with the Jewish businessman Moshe Malamud, owner of the Franklin Mint and chairman of the Asian technology service provider emaimai. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency picked up the story from last…
In my second year of rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I took a year-long seminar that focused on Jewish life-cycle observances. Of course, we covered all the basics like the bris, the Jewish wedding and the Jewish funeral. But we spent more time discussing life-cycle events that traditionally had been given short shrift….
Cross-posted to the Jewish Techs blog at The New York Jewish Week Why shlepp your kid to the synagogue for her bat mitzvah lessons when she can dial in virtually? A recent article in the New York Times shows how the tech savvy bar mitzvah tutors have taken to the Web to make the process…