This week’s G-dcast is written, narrated, voiced and so forth by the multitalented Marcus Freed. He’s in LA right now so watch out for his fro, his wicked warrior 2, and of course, his aura…
Parshat Vayechi from G-dcast.com.
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This week is parshat Miketz…and Tobin Belzer, the spunky sociologist from Los Angeles, graces us with her telling of the tales within the tale in this week’s G-dcast cartoon. I love her narration – it’s fun to listen to.
Parshat Miketz from G-dcast.com.
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Okay, I’m not denying they hired a nice artist to do this (no doubt for $50) but for crying out loud, my shirt was BEDAZZLED at least.
Seriously, these people apparently can’t ever come up with their own ideas.
The Jewish Fashion Conspiracy original, from 2005:
And damn, I looked good blonde.
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Parshat Vayetze from g-dcast.com, this week starring blogger-about-town(s) Esther Kustanowitz.
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Self promotion alert (and no – it does not involve the selling of anything apart from Torah). As some of you already know, I launched g-dcast.com two weeks ago for Simchat Torah. Sadly this website was down and I couldn’t let ya’ll know. I hope you’ll go check out our cartoons for parshas Bereshit and Noah while you’re foolin around, I mean, learning on the innertubes.
Each episode is wildly different and this week’s is a music video sung through Sarah’s point of view, courtesy of the wonderful duo Stereo Sinai of Chicago. They wrote this Lech Lecha song on a G-dcast commission, and we can’t get it out of our heads!
If you like this, I hope you’ll pass it along to a teacher, Hillel rabbi, or teen near you. We have teacher’s guides up on the website, thanks to Matthue Roth, and all the animation is done by the amazing Nick Fox-Gieg.
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Ben Brown and Ari Y Kelman are up to something fun over at their new (RE)VELATION project:
There are 613 mitzvot (commandments from God) that all Jews are supposed to follow. Some of them are easy to understand and apply to modern day life, while others seem antiquated and irrelevant. We invite you to ponder the 613 rules and to submit your own (re)interpretation of what they mean to us today.
Just as a sampling, here are a few of the site’s most recent submissions:
Don’t shit in your own backyard.
a remix of Mitzvah 609 by Reamworks SKG
Do not commit incest with one’s wife’s sister, unless you want to end up as a character in a Star Wars movie
a remix of Mitzvah 100 by Anonymous
Do not repeat the mistakes of history.
a remix of Mitzvah 356 by Anonymous
Pick a day to hang out and do nothing but play Grand Theft Auto and get stoned.
a remix of Mitzvah 111 by Nathan “The HIGHrophant”
All this stuff is going to get rolled into an art project to debut at the annual DAWN project in San Francisco on June 7.
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I am not blogging this New York Times piece so that you will read the article, although the shortage of Tam Tam crackers is certainly a crisis that will destroy us all. I’m blogging it because the comments are totally hilarious and worthwhile! My personal highlight was posted by one Dan Stackhouse:
Look, if you’re one of the folk who have softened their ideology a bit, putting an orange on the Bima platter and all that, then here’s your solution.
Eat triscuits instead. The new flavors are really quite good, I particularly like the rosemary & oil and roasted garlic flavors.
Yes they’re not kosher, but since YHWH is all-knowing and all-understanding, it will know that tam tams are off the shelves and understand that it’s not really a slap in its face for you to eat triscuits.
Get in there!!
It’s ‘Hide the Matzo,’ for Real: Where Are the Tam Tams?
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On April 6, the OU is putting on an event at the Grand Hyatt in New York – the Emerging Jewish Communities Showcase.
Your next community is coming to visit you!
Pursue your dream of a professionally enriching, religiously and personally rewarding life in a community with affordable homes in a friendly, supportive neighborhood, where you can be a key person, helping to bolster the Torah environment.
The cities involved are Indianapolis, New Orleans, Edmonton, Charleston, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Memphis, Oakland, San Francisco, Omaha, San Diego, Seattle, and Vancouver. This looks like a fascinating study in what it takes to build community – for any little population – as well as how small communities market themselves. I know that our local OU rabbi is busting his butt trying to revive his old shul and this sort of event is a great chance for him to make his case to young couples who are tired of paying New York rents. (Not that they’ll do much better in San Francisco…)
Of course price-fueled moves don’t just happen on the big, inter-city level. It happens all the time on the intracity level when communities send off little offshoots of folks who can’t or won’t choose to afford overpriced homes in traditional neighborhoods. I have watched in the last five years as a new observant community has sprung up on the edges of the Mission in San Francisco – previously it was the western neighborhoods or bust.
What other cities that you live in have witnessed offshoots recently? How long does it take for one community to splinter into two, into four? And if you’re trying to attract new young families to your smaller city, what kind of lures do you need for them?
The Forward: High Cost of Living Leads Orthodox To Look Beyond Borders of New York
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I produced this event last year but this year am excited to attend as a pure consumer…come with?
The Young Adult Feast of Jewish Learning
Sunday, March 30 – 4:00 – 9:30 pm
at the JCCSF at 3200 California Street in San Francisco
This event is free and incredibly welcoming. It is one of the only times during the year that in the Bay Area, Jews of literally every stripe come together to learn Torah. There are workshops for those with huge Jewish backgrounds as well as for those who are just beginning an exploration. There will be 22 classes on everything from comedy to Yiddish to cooking to prayer to social justice to kabbalah to Maimonides to lust. The food is kosher, there will be free beer and a reggae act.
This is a really, really good way to get a taste of what’s up Jewishly in the Bay Area, and probably to meet some people too. I really can’t recommend it highly enough. Check out the lineup and logistics here
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Indie minyaneers…get your accessories! My minyan (the Mission Minyan in San Francisco) launched this beaut of a bencher this morning. We don’t actually stand to fundraise that much with it, but we wanted to get more Shabbat shwag out there into a community that – let’s be honest – doesn’t see that many weddings in any given year (Yours Truly’s efforts notwithstanding.)
I have a fantasy that other minyans will follow suit, and I can put together a collection of minyan loot from all over the country. Get on it, ya’ll. I want my DC Minyan mousepad and my Hadar frisbee!
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Richard Kaplan, the mystically-inclined world-music hazzan from the East Bay, reports that tomorrow night’s episode of House, MD will feature his rendition of the Niggun of the Alter Rebbe. He writes:
The episode begins with an Hasidic bedeken, to the davvening sounds of yours truly. They have asked for 2 1/2 minutes of the recording from my 2nd CD “Life of the Worlds.” There is a very long chance that in the final editing last Thursday, something may have changed, but in all likelihood the song is “in.”
Tuesday night, February 5th
9pm on FOX
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This just in from Charming Hostess and Kugelplex:
Return to the great Jewish themes of outsider-ness & redemption with “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”— in Yiddish! Performed by Kugelplex with vocals by Jewlia Eisenberg.
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Ah, a website after my own heart. The title alone puts it into my RSS reader.
Designist Dream (say it slowly, y’all) is a fun new blog watching Israeli design, architecture and fashion. It’s also got a totally worthwhile Chanukah gift guide. Time is short, so if you’re in Tel Aviv, run-don’t-walk to pick up a ridiculously cool underwater lamp or Israeli phone token cuff links today!
Seriously, though, there is so much great design around every corner in Tel Aviv (and beyond) that it’s great to see people starting to promote it on English websites. I look forward to watching this site grow.
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Thanks to MAKE for the tip about this open source LED menorah kit from EvilMadScientist.com. This looks easy and reasonably impressive, although I’m not sure whether the current would flow perceptibly in either a Shammai (oldest to newest “candle”) OR a Hillel (newest to oldest) direction. Engineers, you check it out and let us know. I’ll get my soldering kit ready to go.
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San Francisco’s Rabbi Gedalia Potash, our own Matthue Roth and his amazing wife Itta gave me and Bill a fascinating tour of Crown Heights yesterday on my unannouced one day drive-by of Brooklyn.
Luckily for me, ChabadCon (aka the shluchim weekend) was going on and there was lots of action in the streets, chaos in the shul and plenty of deals to be had on Judaica. I got a tour of 770, met shlichim from Sao Paolo and Chicago, and tried out the new and holy local juice bar on Kingston. (Very, very shuk.) Thanks, Bill for some awesome shots (headed to my Flickr space) as well as this one, of a chartered bus taking Chabad youth on a tour of the city.
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