MY URBAN KVETCH

And Now, a Jewlicious Festivals Announcement

This is a Jewlicious Festivals announcement from Grand Pooh-Bah Rabbi Yonah Bookstein:

Local Jews always wait til the last minute to buy tickets to the Jewlicious Festival. Its so close, they put it off and off and off, and then show up last minute and want to get in...

Well....This year that is a bad idea. You could miss out entirely. PLEASE tell your friends to buy tickets tonight. I mean it. Tonight, before the weekend.

We are going to sell out and I mean sell out.
Bouncers will keep out people without tickets.
We have to limit the numbers to 500 at a time because of codes.
Tickets for students are still only $48. Community at large: $72

Matisyahu and tons of other amazing speakers, musicians, and programs. A live comedy show with famous comedians. Food. And fun. Check it out today: http://jewliciousfestivals.com
If there are any tickets left they will cost more at the door.

BUY TICKETS NOW and get your FRIENDS TO BUY TICKETS TODAY TOO. We will be sad if they miss it, and so will you!

The Week in Clips

Because I'm going to be busy most of Wednesday, I wanted to take this chance to post links to some other places where I've been writing these days--enjoy, and leave comments!

Looking for the Perfect...Shul (Jewish Week--new column!)

The Moment It Dawned On Me That Being Jewish Is Important (The Jewish Journal, L.A.)

Battle of the Beneficent Beverages (Jewlicious)

Amy Winehouse's Mom's Plea to Daughter (Beliefnet)

Your Season's Greetings: Too Generic? Or Too Personal? (Beliefnet)

You're An Old One, Mr. Grinch (Beliefnet)

Italian Priest Bans Red Bull Commercial (Beliefnet)

Could "Vacation" Be a Best Foreign Oscar Contender? (Beliefnet)

Follow the Brick Road to Central City: "TinMan" Revisits the Classic (Beliefnet)

New Jewlicious Festival Video Online: Plus, Highlights!

Now that Jewlicious has been named to Slingshot's list (see related post), it seems like the time is ripe for a walk down Jewlicious Festival Memory Lane. Because I'm constantly on Facebook, I noticed that one of my friends from Jewlicious Festival 3.0 had posted a video on the wall of another friend from all three JFs (1, 2.0 and 3.0). One click later, and I'm watching a 36 minute recap of what those three days were like in Long Beach.

So if you're interested in seeing a clip that illustrates the breadth of what's done at the festival--and that's even without all the programming, socializing and eating that goes on on Shabbat, when no filming was done--click the below. Or, if you want, my handy-dandy, minute-and-second-coded breakdown of some highlights (mostly the ones with my friends in them) appears after the jump.

Ethical Kashrut: Welcome to the Next Level

People who think that buying kosher meat is more ethical than buying non-kosher meat...well, welcome to the next level.

The Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement (the professional association of Conservative and Masorti rabbis, which represents 1600 rabbis worldwide) is embracing a brand-new ethical/kosher "Good Housekeeping Seal" of sorts-- called Hechsher Tzedek, which means Justice (Kosher) Certification.

Rabbi Morris Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, MN is taking the lead in promoting use of the new hechsher. "We need to be certain that the food we are obligated to eat is produced in a way that demonstrates concern for those who produce it," he states on his blog-in-progress.

According to the press release:

While the effort began with establishing standards for the ethical treatment of workers at the Agri-Processors facility in Postville, Iowa, the Rabbinical Assembly is going well beyond the area of meat processing to encompass the entire food industury. Currently, Rabbi Allen is researching the social responsibility statements of other companies in order to design the guidelines for Hechsher Tzedek.

At its annual convention, held in Cambridge, MA, this past spring, the Rabbinical Assembly passed a resolution supporting Hechsher Tzedek.

Sun, Fun and Blogging

Well, when it comes to weather, LA certainly has NYC beat. I almost burned my coat in celebration of this kinder, gentler, warmer, sunnier clime, but then decided it was better to save it for the return trip. So it's sitting in the trunk of my car. Oh yeah, I have a car out here. That's the way LA people roll. You try to take the bus or the Metro or people look at you funny. And I don't need any more of that.

I've been trying to keep up with my freelance work, and am working on a few things that have the potential to provide me with more exciting travel plans to various places over the next few months. And of course, taking time to spend with friends enjoying the weather and the wonder of LA, which has so far included two live installments of "Celebrities Are Just Like Us!!" (Drea DeMatteo eats pasta! Donal Logue orders breakfast!) and enjoying Venice's beach and canals (since I'm clearly never getting to Venice, Italy, to see their canals).

And in other news, inspired by the recent AP ban on "news" regarding Paris Hilton, I posted the following question over at the JTA earlier this week. Which Jewish story would you ban from news/media coverage? Your comments are always welcome.

And tomorrow, we festival.

Team Groggerforce, Activate!

Form of…a noisemaker…shape of…an online petition campaign against nuclear attack.

Love Hillel? Love Purim? Hate the threat of an imminent nuclear attack by Iran? (Yeah, me too.)

Predicated on the link between Purim (Persia is now Iran, remember) and today’s situation with those ornery folks over in Iran, Hillel (in the wake of last weekend’s Spitzer Forum), has initiated Team Groggerforce, which only sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon or a fictional TV series featured in the Tarantino film “Pulp Fiction” (”Fox Force Five. Fox, as in we’re a bunch of foxy chicks. Force, as in we’re a force to be reckoned with. Five, as in there’s one… two … three… four… five of us.”)

Students at the joint Hillel Spitzer Forum on Social Justice/Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) Plenum learned about the growing threat from Iran, and spent a day lobbying Congressional leaders on Capitol Hill to continue supporting sanctions on Iran until their leaders abandon their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

This petition enables you to stand with them and let your voice be heard. Please share this with your friends. Hillel is proud to do its part to educate students and the broader community about the growing crisis in Iran. Let’s hear your groggers make some noise!

I know a lot of people doubt the efficacy of these online petitions. But at the end of the day, I’d rather have signed it than have not signed it. It takes three seconds. Who knows…couldn’t hurt.

(cross-posted from Jewlicious)

Jewlicious in the JPost

The JPost is souping up its blog-offerings, adding new content from Jewlicious when appropriate. So far, three of my articles from Jewlicious have been imported to the JPost; the latest is "Introspective Intermezzo: Israel, Jerusalem and Aliyah." Check it out, comment here, there, or there and share your thoughts.

Other posts: "Only One Degree Separating Kevin Bacon from Tzedakah" and "At the (Israeli) Movies."

Shabbat shalom!

Rav Shmuel Interviews Random Strangers

Because being a folksinging rabbi who loves the Grateful Dead apparently isn't enough, Rav Shmuel now adds "amateur videographer who abuses special effects" to his resume. At least he's honest about it, and it's all for a good cause: promoting the Jewlicious @ the Beach 3.0 Conference coming up next month in Long Beach, CA.

Have you registered yet? Check out JewliciousFestival.com for more information and to get your tickets...

Young Creatives in NYC

Last night's PresenTense event, PresenText, the Art of New Jewish Media, rocked NYU's Bronfman Center with over 150 people braving the cold to experience bold new art pieces of graphic design, photography and mixed media. If you missed it and want to be on the list for future events, email me at esther at presentensemagazine.org, or stay tuned to this space, where events will appear in the sidebar and as featured posts. (Next event: February 12, 7pm--PresenTense lecture/discussion group led by me on the subject of "Zionism and Me," loosely based on the article I contributed to Issue One and delving into my personal relationship with Zionism.) The Facebook page for this event is here.

On Sunday January 28th, from 11:45 am to 6:00 pm at the Makor Steinhardt Center, young artists will present their work in the 8th Annual Marathon-Metropoly: A One-Day Multimedia Arts Festival; a "marathon" of great art, theater, music, video and dance, including a staged reading of my friend Marc Goldsmith's one-act play, Miami Twilight (at noon and 3:30pm). It's a very funny play (and runs about 45 minutes long), so if you're in NYC and want to check it out, go ahead and tell Marc that you heard about it from me. Tickets are $15 and the day's program runs 11:45am to 6pm. For a full schedule of the day's events, go to www.makor.org and click on Makor Gallery. Tickets available at the door, at  www.makor.org or 212.415.5500.

And just because the Jewish Film Festival is over doesn't mean you're out of luck when it comes to Jewish film. On Monday night, try the JCC with their showing of King of Beggars, an Israeli film (promoted as "one of Israel's biggest and most lucrative film productions in decades") based on a character created by the Yiddish writer Mendele Mocher Sforim and starring Shahar Sorek (famous in Israel from the Melrose Placey-type show Ramat Aviv Gimmel). Shahar's doing a Q&A after the film. Buy tickets here.

And feel free to come to Long Beach and meet him in person--Shahar will be joining us at the Jewlicious at the Beach 3.0 Festival and Conference March 9-11... not sure if he'll be with us for Shabbat, but his participation will definitely allow us to interact with him and ask him all about being a big star in Israel, coming from a both secular and religious family, and what it takes to get a movie made in Israel and exported to the US. Facebook group for Jewlicious is now at over 800 people--get your tickets soon! (Tickets for students are on pre-sale now, with others to follow in February...)

Join us. Golem, Rav Shmuel and his band, Jerusalem indie band Miss Flag, Speakers including the writers of "When Do We Eat?", creators of young magazine empires, Jewish robots, and singles columnists from NYC. Resistance is futile.

Shabbat shalom!

 

Just in Time for Chanukah!

The original Jewlicious t-shirt. Challah hu akbar. I [heart] Hashem. The original Jewlicious t-shirts that were previously unavailable are now suddenly available again, plus the addition of Che Herzl, who adorned our shirts for ROI 120!

Whether you need long sleeves, short sleeves or spaghetti straps, visit the Jewlicious store here and make your Chanukah shopping easy. You can even buy kids' t-shirts and coffee mugs, a messenger bag, or a shirt for your Jewish pooch!