MY URBAN KVETCH

Pop Goes the Sukkah: A pop culture mini-guide to Sukkot

Less famous than Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur, or even Purim, Sukkot sometimes gets short shrift in pop culture: while soap operas and primetime shows usually acknowledge the "December Dilemma" by having their Jewish character retort to "Merry Christmas" with "Hey! Hanukkah! I'm Jewish, remember?" you'll seldom see a joke on 30 Rock about building a temporary hut in the backyard and shaking a palm branch and a citrus fruit. (Although it is pretty funny, proving that G-d is probably an Emmy-caliber sitcom writer.)

So without these pop culture cues, how can you know it's Sukkot-time again? Here are a few helpful hints:

Events with Funny Names

If it's Sukkot-time, you'll probably start getting invited to events with names that invoke the rituals and themes of Sukkot: temporary housing with open roofs, the words "booth," "hut," and "sukkah," plus myriad other puns and wordplay:

• Sukkahpalooza
• Pizza in the Hut
• Sukkah Hop
• Sushi in the Sukkah
• Hookah in the Sukkah
• Magical Mystery Sukkah Tour
• Dinner Under the Stars
• Up on the Roof
• Sukkah in the City (possibly in the "Sex and the City" font)
• I'm Gonna Git You Sukkah

(Did I miss any? Leave your crazy Sukkot event's name in the comments section.)

Mascots, Movies and Music

Traditionally, Sukkot is a holiday of great joy. We also have a tradition to invoke the memories of ancestors or inspirational figures as guests (or, if you prefer, mascots) for the holiday. So, to help anyone who lives at the intersection of Jewish life and pop culture, here are some suggested mascots and musical accompaniments to make sure your hut holiday is one to remember.

• Official "Buffy" character of Sukkot: Willow
• Official "Bones" character of Sukkot: Booth
• Official women's organization of the holiday: Hadas(sah)
• Official bad pickup line of the holiday: "Can I get some fronds with that shake?"
• Official TV show about a Sukkot-inspired cheerleading team: "Shake It Or Break It"
• Official songs that may be parodied for Sukkot: "Milkshake," by Kelis ("My shake, shake brings all the fronds to the yard..."), "Can I Get a Hut Hut?" by Jay-Z
• Official song: "Shake Your Booty" (but please substitute "lulav" for "booty")
• Official song by an American Idol: "My Life Would Sukkah Without You"
• Official singer/songwriter: Michal Etrog
• Official movie poster tagline: "Lulav means never having to say you're sorry."

What other pop culture tips do you have? How do you know it's Sukkot?

And chag sameach (happy holiday) to all!

Tashlikh on the Pacific, with IKAR

Last year, I walked all over the beach looking for the group from IKAR, that had gathered together for tashlikh, the rite in which we toss bread into the ocean to symbolize our desire to cast sin out of our hearts. But I couldn't find them. This year, I found them, eventually. 

Some people tossed bread, and a few - apparently - tossed waffles (which, admittedly, sounds like a euphemism for what you might do after drinking too much). And if you pay attention to the "film" in its final frames, you'll see that while IKARites played guitars, drums and something resembling a banjo, one guy opted for the simplicity of "playing his feet." You really have to admire that.

G-dcast Presents: Yom Kippur (by the Josh Nelson Project)

Yom Kippur from G-dcast.com

More Torah cartoons at www.g-dcast.com

Yom Kippur in Fast Forward (2003)

"The Elements Song" With Google Instant

Google Instant launched over the last week, which searches for the things you're looking for as you type them. That's right. Google knows what you're looking for before your fingers complete communicating it.

This is leading to new creativity from the interwebs people; check out Tom Lehrer's "Elements" song, as visualized through Google Instant. Watch it if you dare and don't get dizzy easily - the thing is fast...

(via BoingBoing)

 

Casting Call: A Tashlich Meditation

For those of you who didn't see it "last year" (before Rosh Hashanah), I'm pleased to present my latest piece - for this week's Jewish Journal, about the ritual of Tashlich...

Casting Call: A Tashlich Meditation (The Jewish Journal, September 8, 2010)

My shoes slip off, my feet sink into soft sand and then approach the sea, where they submerge and are washed. But even freshly emerged from water, they remind me that just because you’ve washed something doesn’t mean it’s truly clean.

Rosh Hashanah marks the world’s birth — a new year, a new circle of Jewish holidays about to begin. The 10 days of repentance, which create the structure for apologies to self, neighbor and to God. Tashlich, the ritual in which bread is cast as sin and then cast out of us and into the water, is part of the preparation for Yom Kippur. It is Tashlich, this opportunity to make physical the act of rejecting iniquity, that draws me to the edge of the Pacific Ocean, steps away from the frivolity and fun of the Santa Monica Pier.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Wishing all my friends and readers a wonderful new Jewish year.

Mighty Morphin' Jewish Journalism: The Forward

Those of you staying tuned to the conversation about the changing field of Jewish journalism might be interested in this latest development: the Forward is taking steps to become what they describe as "a full-fledged citizen of the digital world."

In today's announcement,  while "continuing to push their print editions" (the 114-year old Yiddish Forverts and the 20-year-old Forward), they will also be expanding their digital offerings:

Today, the cutting edge has moved away from websites to the broader universe of digital media: mobile apps, iTunes podcasts, YouTube channels, Tweets and whatever will follow. Each offers a different functionality, a different value proposition for users. We’re already active in most of these channels, providing users with reporting, opinions and cultural criticism on all things Jewish. If you want to connect with issues and ideas about Yiddishkeit, Israel, re-emergent Eastern European Jewish culture and a 21st-century Jewish take on world affairs — plus get directions and reviews to some great happening in the East Village on a smartphone — the Forward is here to provide it.

Sunday Gun-Day at Pico & Robertson

Rejected titles for this post include: Welcome to the Gun Show; Decaf Mocha Rifle Latte; No Foam, No Whip; and others...

If you ever watched 24, you know that Jack Bauer was always setting up perimeters. I personally loved it when he barked at the young CTU agents that they needed to set up a perimeter and wait for his orders. It was his way of cordoning off an area as a danger zone (cue the Kenny Loggins). But did you ever wonder what it felt like to be inside the perimeter? Well, welcome to the gun show.

All I wanted was a change of scenery and a latte on a Sunday morning. And I ended up inside the perimeter, as our friendly neighborhood Starbucks was nearly surrounded by "black-and-whites" (slang for police cars, if "Law & Order" and every other crime procedural on TV is to be believed). The cars pulled up to the curb on Robertson, just north of Pico, and I watched (along with about 25 other caffeinated customers) as the cops got out, dashed around the sides of the car to the trunk, pulled out rifles or shotguns or some other artillery, donned Kevlar vests and crouched, ready for their orders.

The two baristas, two Israeli students who had been sitting at the same table with me, and I ran to the back of the store, away from the windows that cover the entire corner arc of Pico to Robertson. Everyone else seemed to think it was a better idea to run TOWARD the windows. You know, to see what's happening, but also to potentially see how bulletproof the glass is. I tweeted at the back of the store and updated my Facebook status: 

Guns in pico robertson in daylight; am safe inside starbucks, but the cops keep pulling up and unloading shotguns. I am guessing zombies.

I give myself points for using a semi-colon and keeping my sense of humor, but deduct points for not capping "Starbucks" or "Pico-Robertson." Also, if I'd had time to self-edit, I would have gone with "My guess? Zombies." 

The baristas locked us in, as much to keep us safe from any potential gunfire as to keep out the hot-coffee-seeking people who were still steadily streaming into the store as if there weren't cops with guns drawn surrounding us. But there was something very claustrophobic about being locked inside a Starbucks. Eventually the baristas realized they couldn't lock us in - that it was a smarter idea to close the store entirely until the situation had subsided. So that's what they did - basically telling us to leave.  

I walked out the side door with about five other bewildered people. We squinted at the sunlight and tried to figure out where we could go, because we couldn't go home and we couldn't stay here. I was on foot, so I hoofed it north, quickly, as a helicopter hovered overhead like a giant mosquito that I wouldn't try to swat.

But as I left the corner, I tweeted, which became the central piece of information in a report on LAist, to date the only publication online to mention it (mostly because the editor follows me on Twitter). I walked fast in the opposite direction - stopping for frozen yogurt at Toppings and then continuing north and east to the Old Navy at Beverly and La Cienega. So much for journalistic instincts about getting the story and finding out what happened. Christiane Amanpour...your job is safe. I fled the scene - when the going got tough, the tough went shopping.

As I continued to check in via social media, I learned different pieces of information - unverified, of course. It might have been a break-in gone bad; the perp might have been heavily armed; there might have been a hostage situation. All "might," because no one had any real information - it was all hearsay.

Several days later, there's still no report of it in any official news medium. It's almost like the whole thing was a dream. Some of my friends are still convinced it was a film - I maintain that you can't do that to the population of a neighborhood on a Sunday unless you warn them: posting signs, specifically getting permission from local business owners, etc. Los Angeles must have rules about such things.

Another disturbing moment: apparently Entertainment Weekly writer Michael Ausiello (@michaelausiello on Twitter) was across the street from me and we didn't get a chance to schmooze about how jealous I am of his work for EW. 

But I found myself shaking my head in wonder - I lived in New York for a decade, and have been to Israel myriad times (I'm convinced that the US State Department has the warning against visiting Israel laminated and hanging on a wall). I've walked through some sketchy neighborhoods at night, worked on the edge of Harlem, and been on the NYC subways during hours when no one should be awake, let alone underground. But it turned out that the least safe place to be was at the busiest intersection in my largely Jewish neighborhood, around 12:15 pm on a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon. The words "who knew?" don't even begin to cover it.

But I guess that's the human variable at work - it's not really the neighborhood, and not inherently the night time that's dangerous. A felon can just as easily leave his or her "bad neighborhood" and perpetrate crimes elsewhere, during the day, in broad daylight. Or as one of our IT people used to say at MTV Networks, "there's only one problem with computers: they're made by humans."

You can read my briefly tweeted reports (yes, that means me as human, using smartphone as computer, and then being the sole source of information from the scene) here. Were you there? Do you know what happened? Feel free to share your reports.