Bow To His Supreme Sultry Swarthiness

odedThe first time I saw Oded Fehr was in The Mummy, when he sweeps in from the desert swathed in black, with smoldering eyes and facial tattoos. I can’t remember anything else about the movie, but I stuck around for the credits to learn his name. I thought “Now that is a movie star.”

He’s been muddling around these past years with supporting roles in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (in which he displays some true comic timing and appears in nothing but a towel in several scenes) and Resident Evil, and I’ve been waiting for him to hit it.

Looks like I’ll have to keep waiting. He’ll be starring in “Sleeper Cell” on Showtime, as an Arab terrorist posing as a Jew.

He told Charmed magazine:

I am the bad guy, but the way the show is written he’s a guy you almost love to hate, or hate to love. He’s a regular Joe. He’s friendly and nice, but he does these awful things. It’s probably the hardest role I could have chosen to play, to try to understand, to try to portray that. I’m Israeli-Jewish. It’s a very powerful show.”

Yeah, but unless he’s building weapons naked I’m not likely to watch a show about suicide bombers. Somebody get this guy a leading role!

Keep Your Pants On, Tony

monican lewinskyMonica Lewinsky, whose blow-job launched a Republican intifada back when we didn’t know how good we had it with ol’ Bill (you know he would’ve been in New Orleans right after Katrina wading through the water passing out cookies and juice), is moving across the pond to study for her Master’s degree in Psychology at the London School of Economics. If she thinks the British are going to go easy on her, poor thing.

They may even be harsher than Jon Stewart, but it’d be tough. His reference last week:
“Hurricane Katrina is George Bush’s Monica Lewinsky. The only difference is that tens of thousands of people weren’t stranded in Monica Lewinsky’s vagina.”

The Jews of Appalachia

Do any of you remember the Lost Colony of Roanoke from elementary school? American history— as it was taught in public school in a red state— was never my bag, but the tale of an early settlement whose population vanished without a trace save one creepy word carved into a pole has stuck with me since third grade. The accompanying illustration to the lesson was particularly spooky: a group of frightened Puritan settlers dressed like Thanksgiving pilgrims before they were presumably kidnapped by the savages of the New World and forced to breed non-white, wild children.

melungeonBut what if those lost souls weren’t Mayflower WASPy-types bent on settling the New World in the name of Her Majesty, but a band of “religious castaways” who figured facing a wilderness and attacks by the natives was way better than pogroms and “ethnic cleansing” going on across the Atlantic?

Yep. The first American settlers were Jews. Continue reading

Who You Callin’ Whitey?

Carlton WatsonFrom PRNewswire: “Of the nation’s 6 million Jews, roughly 1.2 million, or 20 percent,
consist of African-American, Asian-American, Latino, Sephardic (of Spanish and
Portuguese descent), Middle Eastern, and mixed-race Jews.”

These statistics should help dissolve the Ashkenazic-centric notion that all American Jews have Yiddish-speaking grandparents from Minsk.

The findings are excerpted from The Institute for Jewish & Community Research’s new book, In Every Tongue, and include the following “forgotten” groups:

* Latinos now reclaiming their Jewish roots after their ancestors were forced into hiding during the Spanish Inquisition. Once known as “conversos,” they have recently coined the term “reversos.”
* Long-established communities of African-American Jews in many cities,
such as Chicago and New York, with their own synagogues and adjunct communities.
* Nearly 1 million spouses, children, parents, siblings of “official Jews”, many of whom, according to the research, “practice some Jewish customs and identify with Jewish issues.

This, of course, supports our conspiracy theory that everyone will eventually be Jewish, even by association, even if they don’t know it.

Photo c/o Black and Jewish Online Store

The Bouncing Baby Spears

brit and kevThe birth of Britney Spears’ baby boy is all over the place today, and My Urban Kvetch reports that his name will either be “London Preston Federline” or “Preston Michael Spears Federline.” Wha’s up, Kabbalah Girl, no Mordecai, no Moshe, no Zev?

Though there are few details of the blessed event, Britney (c)opted out of the planned mystical water birth and went for, in my humble opinion, the lamest birth option available:

In the October issue of Elle magazine, Spears said she’d prefer to have a C-section, and if that wasn’t an option, “I’ll be like, ‘Epidural, please!’ … I don’t want to go through the pain.”

Certainly, Cesarean sections are an option as an emergency measure to save a baby’s or mother’s life, but using it to avoid the divine pain of childbirth seems to go directly against the teachings of Kabbalah Britney claims to follow. Then again, she might’ve been holding the Zohar upside-down all this time, anyway.

Snippy, self-righteous judgments aside, a hearty mazel tov to the new parents. Hopefully, there’ll be news of a brit milah next week.
If not, this topic is no longer bloggable by our by-laws.

The Circumstantial Logic Of The Jewish Mother

Posted at ChronWatch.com:

A Jewish Mother by Anonymous

Hi, Mom. Can I leave the kids with you tonight?

You’re going out?

Yes.

With whom?

With a friend.

I don’t know why you left your husband. He is such a good man.

I didn’t leave him. He left me!

You let him leave you, and now you go out with anybody and nobody.

I do not go out with anybody. Can I bring over the kids?

I never left you to go out with anybody except your father.

There are lots of things that you did and I don’t.

What are you hinting at?

Nothing. I just want to know if I can bring the kids over tonight.

You’re going to stay the night with him? What will your husband say if he finds out?

My EX husband. I don’t think he would be bothered. From the day he left me, he probably never slept alone!

So you’re going to sleep over at this loser’s place?

He’s not a loser.

A man who goes out with a divorced woman with children is a loser and a parasite.

I don’t want to argue. Should I bring over the kids or not?

Poor children with such a mother.

Such as what?

With no stability. No wonder your husband left you.

ENOUGH!

Don’t scream at me. You probably scream at this loser too!

Now you’re worried about the loser?

Ah, so you see that he’s a loser. I spotted him immediately.

Goodbye, mother.

Wait! Don’t hang up! When are you bringing them over?

I’m not bringing them over! I’m not going out!

If you never go out, how do you expect to meet anyone?

Shofar, So Good

paul shafferThe Great Shofar Sound-Off has Late Night cred: Paul Shaffer (Dave Letterman’s groovy little sunglass-wearin’ musical director/mascot) will judge the finals of the nationwide search for the best ram’s horn playa’ in the land September 22 in NYC. Blowers best not be breaking out the beer bongs at this event, or they’ll take a bleating.
Ba-dump-bump.
Thanks, folks, I’ll be here all week.

Husband For Rent

polygamyEgyptian journalist Hayam Dorbek has rocked the Islamic world by suggesting that a man who takes multiple wives promotes women’s rights. She calls polygamy “a license from God to stabilize society and solve its problems.”

Islam allows men to marry up to four women, though such practice is less common Egypt than in other countries like Saudi Arabia.

Of course, Judaism makes no such allowances. When us Jewish women find our Jewish princes, we tend to be quite possessive of them. But I’ve been married seven years now, and frankly, the thought of sharing the husband with another woman seems a small price to pay for more free time, shared chores, a live-in babysitter…listen, I’m a working mother. I wake up at 6am and am on my feet tending to kids, picking up Husband’s towels and cooking three meals a day until I sit down at my desk and work until midnight. As Number One Wife, I could leave all the crap details like laundry and making p.b.&j.’s to Second Wife (or maybe Third!?) and reserve the prime Saturday date night slot. What modern Jewish mother wouldn’t at least consider it in the name of “stabilizing the home and solving its problems”?

Any takers, single women? We live in an 800 square-foot house, you could have a cot in the mud room. Husband is cute but talks too much. You must be fairly unattractive so as not to threaten Number One Wife’s fragile self-esteem and be impeturbable to whining.

(Illustration c/o The Curt Jester.)