A Christian evangelical group has sunk millions of dollars and a huge ass drill into the Israeli desert near Tel Aviv with the hopes of striking black gold. John Brown, the president of American Christian-backed Zion Oil & Gas Company, believes that there is a hidden cache of oil foretold in a passage from the book of Genesis where Jacob tell his son Joseph that will give the Jews “blessings of the deep that couches beneath.” Brown says that it is his “destiny in life to come to Israel and help the people of Israel become energy dependent.”
And we thought evangelical Christians just wanted to spur on Armageddon.
Having its own store of oil might be good for Israel, even though it would only offset only a few of the 250,000 barrels a day currently consumed. However, in terms of neighbors who might not dig the idea of Israel horning in on the industry, it could be very, very bad. Maybe the evangelicals can have their oil and a big fat world war, too.
(photo c/o titleistassetmanagement.com.)

As if Ashkenazic Jews didn’t have enough tsuris with the ramifications of a study linking genetic diseases to higher intelligence, here comes more worrisome genetic news:
I-Newswire reports that one out of a hundred Jewish women of Ashkenazic descent carry a mutated gene that brings a 65-70% chance of developing breast cancer. The company that “owns” the patent on the gene, US-based Myriad Genetics, has singled out this population for diagnostic purposes, which has the entire European genetic community freaked out.
“This is not the way to go for genetic testing”, said Professor Gert-Jan van Ommen, from the Center of Human and Clinical Genetics, at the Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. “What it means in practice is that genetic centres that do not have licences for this test – or where the healthcare systems cannot afford to pay for it – may be forced to deny it to Ashkenazi Jewish women.”
Jewish women in Europe may face genetic discrimination in access to breast cancer diagnosis if the patent on the BRCA2 gene, which is currently being disputed, is not withheld by the European Patent Office (EPO) on June 29. The European Society for Human Genetics (ESHG) is strongly opposed to the selection of a particular racial group as a diagnostic target in a gene patent claim and is calling on the EPO to take action to prevent this situation.
We’ll keep you and the breasts you love posted. Meanwhile ladies, keep up with regular breast exams and mammograms for early detection.

Okay, so J.’s Dan Pine says we didn’t miss much by skipping Dawn 2005, San Francisco’s hipster Shavuot celebration. But check out Hip Hop Shabbat from Oakland’s “orginal Jewish gangsters”: We’ll be groovin’ to this kickin’ version of “Bim Bomb” all weekend.
Shabbat Shalom, y’all!

*Some folks went to visit their bubbie’s ashes at the mausoleum and all they found was an empty Pringle’s can. (c/o Jewschool)
*The survival of the Yiddish language in the Far East depends on one Chinese linguistics professor who plans to translate Yiddishkeit classics for the Taiwanese people. (Thanks for the article’s author, Dan Bloom for the tip.)

MSNBC’s Jeanette Walls reports that Michael Jackson wore a red string Kabbalah bracelet throughout his trial and was perhaps introduced to Jewish mysticism by none other than his friend Elizabeth Taylor. Seeing as the guy got off without so much as a hand slap for the Jesus Juice, we take back everything we’ve said about celebrities and their red strings and will finally purchase one for our upcoming appearance in traffic court.
Meanwhile, RadarOnline has published the first of a four-part in-depth investigation on the Kabbalah Centre, in which author Mim Udovitch reveals that The Centre solicits freelance ghostwriters on Craigslist to help them write “scholarly” books on Kabbalah, among other questionable practices. We hope the Centre’s got their own load of red strings to deflect the evil eyes reading about them or it’s gonna spell a lot of tsuris for their “take over the world” marketing schemes—maybe Jacko will have to return the favor of by teaming up with Madonna for a “Kabbalah Aid” Concert by Rosh Hashanah.

A handwritten draft of the 1917 Balfour Declaration sold at Sotheby’s for $884,000 yesterday by an unnamed collector bidding via phone. We’re not really into collecting, unless you count lint balls under the bed, and we wonder what would inspire someone to drop such bank on a scribbled piece of paper, historic as it is, just to put it on a shelf next to their Fabergé eggs and such. We reiterate: shouldn’t the note be a Jewish museum, preferably in Israel?

From AP via Ha’aretz:Israeli researchers have germinated a sapling date palm from 2,000-year-old seeds, saying their research could lead to the discovery of new medicines that will benefit future generations.
Nicknamed “Methuseleh” after the Biblical character who lived to be 969, the sapling grew from a seed excavated at Masada, where Jewish rebels chose suicide over dominion by the Romans about…2000 years ago. In the final hours of Masada’s residents, Elazar ben Yair ordered that all the Jews’ possessions except food be destroyed to show that the Jews did not die “for want of necessities; but that, according to our original resolution, we have preferred death before slavery.”
We may be leaping to conclusions here, this seed left behind by those who would not succumb and has been reborn (with the help of science) as a valuable tool for future generations proves quite literally that the Jews will not only survive, but thrive.
(More photos at sfgate.com.)

Out here on the Western edge of the United States, we encounter plenty of anti-circumcision bumper stickers, which we’ve chalked up to a political climate that rejects anything mainstream. According to an article in the Morgan Hill Times, circumcisions performed by pediatricians have dropped 25% between 1980 and 1999 in the Western United States, possibly due to the vocal activism by anti-circ groups.
We can understand the argument that non-Jewish baby boys don’t need to be subjected to an unnecessary medical procedure if their parents object, but the Jewish ritual version, brit milah, performed by a mohel to create a little prince’s covenant with G*d, doesn’t fall into the same category as having a non-Jewish doctor swipe a scalpel down there and call it a day. A clipped penis, for most of us, helps define a Jewish man, and framing this as “genetic mutilation” seems, well, whack. As one rabbi put it,
“extremist groups advocating against circumcision and seeking to change religious traditions to match their personal feelings often fail to recognize this important procedure in Jewish tradition has been performed successfully for over 3,500 years.”
Of course, Jews Against Circumcision have their own set of arguments, none of which are as compelling as Abraham’s sacrifice to the Almighty. The claims that the ritual that has been part of Jewish life since the very beginning is painful, dangerous, outdated and “stupid” doesn’t hold weight for those of us who have witnessed the powerful intensity of a brit milah where the baby is surrounded by loved ones on his eighth day, cries minimally, falls asleep as soon as he’s returned to his mother’s arms and heals within the week. We’re not saying we weren’t freaked by the recent controversy surrounding herpes and brit metzitzah (where the mohel puts his mouth on the wound), but by choosing not to circumcize a baby boy, isn’t a Jewish parent blatantly rejecting a mitzvah on his behalf?

Before we had Club Med, the Jews had the Borscht Belt. Kutsher’s Country Club in the Catskills inspired the movie Dirty Dancing (where the Jewish girl gets the stud—do we need to explain why this movie is an all-time classic?) and is the last of a dying breed. In fact, they’re thinking of joining up with a different tribe and turning the historic site where your bubbe and zayde danced the merengue into a casino.
Better grab a reservation before the goyim show up with their buckets o’ nickels.