Yup, still disturbed by the news from and about Israel. And the frightening worldwide trend of hating all Jews and setting synagogues on fire if one doesn’t agree with Israeli politics. Not to mention the Facebook updates.
I believe in the right to stop the friggin’ rockets and protect Israeli children, and that if Hamas cared about its citizens it wouldn’t use its women and children as human shields. So why are the Israelis being accused of war crimes? And what does it say when if the only non-Jewish sources I can find to corroborate my beliefs are FoxNews and Christian web sites enthusiastically touting the coming of Armageddon?
I’m unmoveably down with the Holy Land as a Jewish homeland and would like to see every last Hamas rocket shoved up Iran’s a**. If that means I’ve got to stand next to douchebag Sean Hannity and a bunch of Jesus-loving grannies, so be it. But look, if the only leader in the whole world preaching unilateral support for Operation Cast Lead is GEORGE Freakin’ BUSH, perhaps some strategies need to be rethunked.
I know it’s unusual for a professional loudmouth like myself to be so quiet about the war in Gaza, and I have to admit I’ve been avoiding discussing the subject. It’s just too insane, and I just don’t have anything to add except for my confusion and frusturation and sadness and wishes that everyone could just get along. Naive, yes. But I’m not the only one:
Thank you to Cathy S-H for linking me to Bradley Burston’s A Jew’s Prayer for the Children of Gaza. It made me cry to be reminded that this conflict goes as far back as the origin of our people, and that as God alone saved Hagar and Ishmail, divine intervention is probably our best bet.
A peaceful, rocketless Shabbat to all.
*Bruce David’s “City of Peace”; click here for more of the artist’s work.
The Yenta’s got her tootsies in the freelance fire this week, so here’s a photo from Saturday’s shmooze with Richard Lewis for you to ogle, courtesy of sassy Savannah photographer Becky Smith. Check out her coverage of the whole shebang here!
An old boyfriend once told me I made a beautiful depressed person. I took this as a compliment since at the time I was sort of cultivating a tortured writer-Betty Blue thing that required smoking constantly, crying a lot about the hopeless state of the world and quoting Dorothy Parker’s Resume. Looking back, it was definitely one of my more obnoxious phases. Fortunately, after a few months I was able to climb my way out of that suckhole of a relationship and start hanging out with people who thought I looked a lot prettier when I was happy.
But still, then as now, I value people who can appreciate a good trudge through the cesspools of the soul. Someone who understands that it’s possible to be grateful for life and its myriad blessings and still recognize that it freakin’ sucks, it hurts, that it’s messy and confusing. Certainly most of my favorite writers, from Balzac to Bukowski to Rumi to Roth, have all been ecstatically depressed.
But there’s one hot mess in particular who’s psycho shtick always made me feel better about myself because I know I’ll never be quite as crazy as he is – comedian Richard Lewis. I remember being 14 and watching the illicit HBO while my parents were asleep (yes, as well as being a head case, I’m also a lifelong insomniac) and watching this guy hem and haw his way through a monologue that took me out of my own teenaged, chubby, pimply Braceface angst.
The constant pacing, the head-slapping, the groaning “Ohmygawd, I’m so depressed” – I realized that this crazy cat from Brooklyn who even I in my suburban innocence pegged as a cokehead and myself shared a neurotic wavelength that was actually sort of funny, possibly even hilarious, and undeniably Jewish. I began entertaining my friends at school with Richard Lewis impressions – using his “from hell” to the max. “Ohmygawd, I can’t believe it, did you take the biology test? Mr. Olsen is the teacher from hell!“”Mom, spaghetti again? This dinner is, like, from hell!” (that one got me grounded, of course.)
I’ve been navigating the narrow road between trying to make people chuckle and obsessing over my ego ever since, which eventually – along with too much red wine and prententious poetry – led me into the above-mentioned “beautiful depressed person” persona. Not too many laughs there. So, like I said, I moved away from that planet, but I still end up visiting once in a while. Between the (IMHO, biased) coverage on Israel and the departure of my parents back to Scottsdale (meaning the another long absence of stellar Scrabble partners, free babysitters and two of my favorite people), it seemed I was going to be taking a visit to the abyss for a bit.
But amazingly, an antidote came swooping into town just in time: The Savannah Jewish Federation sponsored a one-night stand with my favorite batsh*t Jew last night at the JEA.
It started off a little shaky – Richard seemed more than a little scattered at first – actually, I don’t think he finished a thought for the first 20 minutes even though he’s been sober for 15 years. Once he warmed up though, he was in true form, spewing neuroses about sex, his sidekick role on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Bush’s last days and the Rolling Stones. He’s still stupendously mulleted and wore an asymmetrically-zippered suit that in his words, made him look like a moron.
El Yenta Man, his brother (heretofore known as BIL, as in Yenta brother-in-law) and I were sitting with the “Young Jewish Savannah” crowd (they had seats reserved for us and everything, plus we got to meet-and-greet with Richard before the show – photos to come! I may have to lie to keep up such VIP status when El Yenta Man turns 40 this year) – but the average age in the room was probably 65. Everyone who’d donated to the Federation was there, and let’s face it; there are more Jewish philanthropists on Lipitor than not.
Now if you know Richard Lewis, you already know this is not a chaste type of humor. And not much into subtlety, either – in fact, once he got juiced, the obscenities flew fast and furious about stuff you might not want to hear while sitting next to your bubbe. I’m just sayin’ some of the old kosher folks from the Jewish retirement home may have followed him for a while, but I think he lost half the room at “masturbation puppet.”
Me, my sides ached by the time it was over, which was a whole lot better than the tension headache from hell I had when I got there. I don’t know if Richard Lewis appreciate a comparison to lamb’s blood on the door, but this guy sure staved off the Angel of Depression at my house.
Here’s some vintage Richard from my BraceFace days:
Hearkening the return of asterisks to represent the Yenta’s affinity for blue language, here’s a clip about that clever lady with a strong stomach from The Jewish Channel’s Holy Dazed series. Let this crackling clip mix of interviews with hilarious Jews like my homegirl Judy Gold and Nice Jewish Girl Gone Bad Susanna Perlman extend the Chanukah ruach just a little longer…if only because I don’t feel like scraping off 44 candles worth wax off the menorah yet.
(Accurate and funny as it is, you can find a more complete version of the Book of Judith at here at Jewish Encyclopedia, but honestly, I found the wiki version more readable.)
The Jewish Channel seems to be going strong, but not surprisingly, doesn’t apprear to be available in Georgia (GPB couldn’t even manage to schedule its two showings of the the Lights Chanukah special at anything other than the most inconvenient times: Shabbat and midnight on a Monday, sheeesh.)
As the planet spins like a lopsided blue dreidel towards the darkest day of the year this Sunday, I must admit I feel like I’m taking a bath in the blackness. When you’ve got crazy assholes with guns and bombs attacking cities and shitbags like Bernie still on the loose and, oh – the astonishing ridonkulousness that people actually name their children Adolf Hitler and then cry First Amendment rights when a shopkeeper refuses to decorate the kid’s birthday cake with swastikas (the retard parents did finally get their Nazi cake – courtesy of Wal-Mart, who else?) – plus your usual mass rapings and killings in Africa and child sex slaves in Asia, well, humanity just sorta adds up to a really fucked-up mess.
And yet somehow, we power on, with our hope and our love and our creativity that it might just get better tomorrow. The faithful folks at Aish.com have posted a sweet, one-minute movie to remind us that this season celebrates actual living proof that the weak can overcome the mighty and that miracles do happen.
Some sage once said it was better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, so here we go now, Jews and Christians and pagans alike, lighting up millions of candles and burning miles of flourescent light bulbs as a sparkling paean to hope. All those menorahs in windows and pretty blinking trees and yes, even the freakishly life-sized manger scene in Habersham Woods (I almost took baby Jesus out for a joyride last night, but the cow scared me away) are better than Prozac-laced eggnog, and I plan on drinking in a big dose.
Thank you, dear readers, for continuing to patronize this blog with your eyes and comments. Hearty Chanukah (do not deny the back-of-the-throat pronunciation of the almighty Chet!) greetings from the Yenta, and for the goyishe among ye, wonderful wishes for whatever the Solstice-based, banishing-the-darkness celebration of your choice.
I’ll be picking up my mother-in-law in a few minutes for our regular weekly lunch at the JEA. Yes, her dementia continues to unravel her memory and self-identity, thanks for asking. But she still remembers that every Thursday I pick her up at 12:15 and that lunch costs five dollars a person. (She insists on paying. Call me a schnorrer all you want – you try arguing with her.)
I’m not quite sure how it breaks down, but I figure five bucks a plate for thirty seniors doesn’t cover the food, the staff and the facility costs. But that’s the beauty of the Jewish Federation – it plugs the holes in the services the community needs most – like providing its warm, hilarious, heritage-carrying seniors a nice meal a few times a week. Some of us give a little, some of us give a lot, some smart people invest those shekels and all of us enjoy the safety net.
And now the biggest Jewish douchebag of all time has fucked it up. The JPost reports that Bernie Madoff’s greed has delivered a “major massive shock” to the Jewish philanthropic system, with $600 million in losses estimated before anyone’s really done any complex math – some are expecting a 20% reduction for the Federation in 2009. But hopefully we won’t be eating sock soup on Thursdays just yet:
“People who are starving are going to have to continue to be fed,” Avraham Infeld, president of the collapsed Chais Family Foundation, told the Post on Monday. “That means every other kind of Jewish expenditure is going to have to move aside in order to allow welfare to take place for the aged and the poor.”
I’m just so depressed and disgusted that someone even has the power to dupe people this way and have such a far-reaching effect. Worse yet, the motherfucker has his bail restrictions loosened to the equivalent of tying a piece of licorice around his ankle and continues to waltz around Manhattan and as far as his property in Connecticut during daylight hours.
How are we supposed to defend ourselves when anti-Semites sneer that Jews DO in fact cheat the world and get away with it? How can we explain to our children that one of our own screwed us worse than our enemies ever could?
I guess that just as we take pride in Jewish Nobel prize winners, we have to include thieves like Madoff in our recognition that Jewish life is multifaceted. Along with our successes, we have failures, people who disappoint and also those who commit crimes.
And it’s going to be a long time before our tribe recovers from this one.
Yup, it’s that time of year again when the neighborhood starts to look like a cross between the Vatican gift shop and Madame Tussaud’s, but this time folks are getting protective: The AP reports an increase in people employing techie gadgets like GPS and video surveillance to keep watch over the baby Jesusi in their yards.
Aw, shucks. Looks like the Yenta’s favorite holiday activity just got a whole lot more challenging.
(Fine, a disclaimer: Though I have fantasized madly about say, replacing the Christian savior in a particularly obnoxious manger scene – really? There were blinking reindeer and a 12-foot Santa present that silent night in Bethelem? – with a giant Claxton fruitcake, I swear I have never actually stolen a baby Jesus. But that’s to say I won’t.)
Judging from this article, I am obviously not the only one who thinks sneaking the holy child out of his paper mache crib hilarious. However, if I chose to put a giant inflated dreidel bear or other Chanukah decoration in my front yard and someone drew a Hitler moustache on it, I’d call on my homeboy Abe Foxman and his ADL minions to slap ’em. Why is this, ya think?
Deborah Lauter, the national civil rights director for the Anti-Defamation League, says this:
“If Baby Jesus is removed, it tends to be seen as a prank. Vandalism or theft of a menorah is just more sensitive. You feel like you’re really being targeted for your religion.”
Hmm, yes, that’s true. The idea of the self-righteous waking up to a loaf of challah in the creche on Christmas morning is screamingly funny, and finding a swastika on your 100-bulb mogen David is not. I feel I must give consideration to the double standard: Stealing a baby Jesus is disrespectful, and some Christians truly find a holiness by recreating the manger scene next to to their driveways. It’s not fair to belittle the traditions of one group while protecting another; this is America, and we’re all free to express our the religious beliefs as we see fit, even if it’s with plastic things made in China.
What this means is that I am no longer going to limit the scope of my holiday vandalism to the goyim. Jews with tacky lawn ornaments: You have been warned.
Yo, Georgians! Don’t forget that tonight’s the night GPB airs 
As the planet spins like a lopsided blue dreidel towards the darkest day of the year this Sunday, I must admit I feel like I’m taking a bath in the blackness. When you’ve got crazy assholes with guns and bombs attacking cities and shitbags like Bernie still on the loose and, oh – the astonishing ridonkulousness that people actually name their children Adolf Hitler and then cry First Amendment rights when a shopkeeper 
