Listen, I love the idea of free Jewish education. (What, you think I wanted to teach Sunday school out of the goodness of my heart? I’ve since found out that free tuition isn’t even part of the deal, but I’ve already signed the contract. So the goodness of my heart it is.)

Anyhoo, every parent knows how the kvetch goes about the cost of private day school, but is a Jewish public school such a good idea? Some families in South Florida have gotten together to make it a reality, and the first day of classes at band new Ben Gamla is next week.

But wait, it’s not much like religious day school at all: Students will learn Hebrew, Jewish history and Jewish-related topics for two hours a day and eat kosher lunches (will the cafeteria lades wear shaygels and hairnets?) and but no Torah, no Talmud. Oh, and no Jewish symbolism like mogen davids or menorahs. But the charter school (a tax-funded, privately-managed educational institution) caters to a community with a large Israeli population, so a secular education is just what these families want.

I suppose if this was made available to my family, I’d give it a chance, but not without major reservations. Oy, it’s giving me a headache: How do you teach “Judaism” without religion, or at least a picture of a darn shofar? And if you do, why bother? And is it really possible to keep the lines of synagogue and state clear? As part of the public school system, won’t it have to give everyone Good Friday off? And don’t you agree that if a group of Christians wanted to open their own public school, we’d be storming around with our lawyers?

I guess I don’t how to feel about “culturally identified” schools that will obviously have so much fuzzy religious crossover. Blogger bud Schvach tipped me off to the Arab-themed charter school in NYC (hey, can’t wait to see their cheerleading uniforms!), and gosh, what a surprise, they’re having kind of hard time keeping the jihad out of the classroom. Does anyone really believe you can have an Arab- or a Jewish-themed school that teaches anything about the other objectively?

I admit to wishing there was free Jewish school here that will teach my kids Hebrew, but I have enough problems with a public Montessori that has mandated tests. It all just strikes me a baaad idea.

Tell me why you disagree.

Some well-traveled reader sent this photo of John Lennon’s Memorial, but I’ve somehow misplaced the translation of the Hebrew sentence underneath (my email inbox is even more disorganized than my sock drawer.) Anyone?

I don’t watch much TV and would rather watch amateur squirrel golf than drivel like the humans-as-zoo animals wannabe social experiment Big Brother, and reader Johnny is right that I try to keep things positive around here and leave the anti-Semites for my man Abe Foxman to deal with, but Amber Tomcavage’s “reality TV” rant about how her mama taught her that Jews are bad, bad people is kind of enlightening. Or maybe not so much “enlightening” as “shockingly disturbing that people this dumb actually bathe and dress themselves”:

I’ve always assumed anyone who wanted to be on TV so badly that they would lock themselves up with strangers and be filmed 24/7 had to have problems that couldn’t be that much fun to watch. In this case, it’s excruciating.

If you didn’t make it too the end (I didn’t expect you to), her chaise-mate Jameka finally says timidly that Amber probably shouldn’t let other people hear her talk like that, because they might think she’s, y’know, rude or something. Although FOXNews says that Jameka had “no reaction” to Amber’s anti-Semitic tirade, I thought she did pretty well. She actually seemed scared and shocked at what was being said and was trying to lay low, lest Amber start going off on what her mother has to say about black people. What did FOX expect her to do, jump off of that giant chair and start pointing and shrieking “Bigot! Bigot!”?

After Jameka’s soft reprimimanding, Amber starts backpedaling, “Well maybe it’s just the Jews I know, which isn’t that many…” and then delivers this bimbo bomb: “Like there’s so much to think about, I can’t keep up with it all, girl!” Then she admits she’s done so many drugs that she has memory loss and stutters sometimes, and can’t remember more than 20 words at a time.

Am I the last of my generation that remembers when TV was Lawrence Welk and his bubbles, The Muppet Show and Charlie Brown specials? If the Jews are really running the media, how could prime time have gone so quickly from Kermit to anti-Semitic methheads?

and the Cohns, Coens, Kohyens, Kahns, Kahans and however else Ellis Island spelled it for your ancestors, this vid is Billy Ray Sheet‘s (remember last Passover when he had us wastin’ away in Manischewitzville?) tribute to the descendants of Moses’ brother Aaron, otherwise known as the priestly Kohanim.

I’ve been working on the “Goddess” issue at skirt! this month and musing on the lack of sacred female imagery in Judaism. L.A. artist Barbara Mendes reminds us that even is she is hidden in these modern times, the Shekhina, our very own Jewish Earth Mother, keeps her arms open to us.

Click here for the larger version of “Shekhina Comes I,” then delve even further into the details.

May your Shabbos be graced with such beauty!

MSNBC can wax Christian over Harry Potter all it likes, but Rabbi Natan Slifkin contends that the magical creatures popping up all over the seven books have Jewish origins.

In his new book Sacred Monsters – a follow-up to his first book, Mysterious Creatures – Reb Slifkin mines the Mishnah and Midrash for references to a veritable zoo of mythical beasts, including mermaids, fire-breathing dragons, fire-proof salamanders, born-from-fire phoenixes, werewolves, giants, dwarves and a mouse that grows from dirt.

Sages from Rambam to Rashi weigh in about the existence of flying serpents, and if you’re the type to take the word of the ancient rabbis literally, this could cause a crisis of faith. But all the kids in my circle know Harry Potter a heckuva lot better than they know the Gemara, and after they’ve finished The DeathlyHallows, Sacred Monsters seems like a kosher way to prolong the magic. I can’t think of a better book to add to the required reading list at the Shalom School!

My man Pepe Pringos tipped me off to Uni Avnery’s column about financier James Wolfensohn, the guy who was special envoy to the EU and UN before Tony Blair took on the job, and the much-maligned Jewish former Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz.

What Wolfensohn and Wolfowitz have in common is that both are Jews and have the same name: Son of Wolf, one in the German version and the other in the Russian one. Also, both are past chiefs of the World Bank. But that’s where the similarity ends. …. They personify the two opposite extremes of contemporary Jewish reality. Wolfensohn belongs to the humanist, universal, optimistic, world-embracing trend in Judaism, a man of peace and compromise, an heir to the wisdom of generations. Wolfowitz, at the other end, belongs to the fanatical Judaism that has grown up in the State of Israel and the communities connected with it, a man of overbearing arrogance, hatred and intoxication of power.

Here’s the whole shebang; it’s an interesting read if you have the time. But weirdly, this next bit appeared a few minutes later in my inbox as part of a mass email from a non-Jewish friend:

Two Wolves
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment,
inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Now tell me, that’s some crazy synchronistic sh*t, dontcha think?

S’sorry friends, the site was down all weekend and I couldn’t blog yesterday, so you’re getting it fast and furious before the morning hurricane of children and lunchmaking and figuring out which shoes hurt my feet the least.

On my monkey mind is David Suissa’s column in this week’s Jewish Journal, titled “Dumbing Down Judaism.” It’s definitely a rail at the watery collection of mindless rituals that American Judaism has become in many communities — you gotta love this line:

We are nurturing a generation of Jewish noshers who only want to lick the icing off the Jewish cake.

But Suissa’s directing his criticism towards Jewish philanthropy, of all things.

It’s almost as if American Judaism, in its desperate struggle to keep Jews from vanishing into the gentile mainstream, has become a marketing carnival. And Jewish philanthropy — driven by a Holocaust-level fear of losing Jews – has helped fund this carnival.

I can’t say I disagree. Suissa’s admonition that there needs to be less “outreach” to unaffiliated Jewish adults and more “inreach” to those of us already committed to the faith who are ostensibly standing around with our fingers in our noses waiting for someone to teach us a little Torah and Pirkei Avot hits a nerve. Read the article, discuss, let me know whatcha think.

I do confess that I wish the Jewish marketing carnival was a little better around here — sometimes it feels like I have no idea what any other Jews are doing unless we’re all in the JEA pool on Sunday afternoons. (Maybe I should try going to synagogue more often, fool!) I’ve recently had the honor of consulting on the serious makeover of the monthly Savannah Jewish News, which should help this denomination-obsessed community know itself a little better. I keep telling anyone who will listen that gentiles don’t care about Reform, Conservative or Orthodox divisiveness, and can’t we all just get along? But what do I know, dumb Jew…

I ordered this cute iPod dock from Amazon.com so I could share all my fabulous music with my new coworkers, but it’s been over three weeks and I still haven’t received it. So I checked back with the Amazonians, who in spite of being a huge conglomerate that sucks the life out of independent bookstores usually manages to be very efficient; my pre-ordered copy of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows was on my doorstep yesterday morning before I’d even brushed my teeth.

Turns out this is one of those instances when Amazon partners up with other businesses to sell shtuff; my stereo’s fate was actually in the hands of a company called Adorama Camera, so I sent off a polite email to their customer service department at the beginning of last week. I received an impersonal, unapologetic response three days later with a UPS a tracking number. I figured that due to the lame hourly wage, not everyone who works in customer service actually understands the concept, so I checked with UPS myself. I found out my little iPod dock had traveled more than I have this summer: Starting out in New York, it flew all the way to San Carlos, CA, then stopped in Oklahoma, then found its way into the correct state to Atlanta, then, inexplicably, was sent back to New York. Poor thing. Two more emails to Adorama later I received the news, delivered by someone who couldn’t be bothered to write my name at the top of the note, that they had the wrong address. Did I send the correct one immediately and ask kindly that they now overnight the package? You know I did. Did they comply? I wouldn’t be writing this if they had, nu? And this does have a Jewish twist, so bear with me.

Pissy and very tired of listening to the same freakin’ Three Doors Down CD while on deadline, I decide it’s time to take it to the next level: I pick up the phone, which I only do when the written word ain’t workin’ its charms. (You may or may not be surprised to know that I am not such the balabusta in person.) A phone call placed at 3:47pm on Thursday EST informed me that Adorama’s offices were closed for the day; another call first thing Friday morning let me know that they were closed Fridays and Saturdays.

So then the little yiddishe bell in my head starts to ring: Adorama is owned and run by frum Jews. I remember reading about them in this NY Times article about religious Jews and the Internet awhile back, and how they close up shop early Friday afternoons and reopen on Sundays.

This is no problem, but when did the Sabbath begin drawing its veil on Thursday after lunch? Tisha B’Av isn’t until Monday night and while I understand we are in the midst of the semi-mourning period of the Three Weeks, is there some other level of observance I’m not aware of that is preventing this company from doing its business and delivering me from trying to work to Beyoncé? And what part of the Torah admonishes merchants to be total schmucks when dealing with customers?

I’m not trying to commit any lashon hora here, and I’m sure the people at Adorama are fine people and pious Jews, but my experience with this company has really crawled under my skin. I’ve canceled my order and am heading out to Best Buy, where some courteous, pimply teenager will fall all over himself to get my business.

Update: Great. In my research for this post, I find out that “buying items that will bring us joy” is forbidden during the fist Nine Days of Av. So, fine, I’ll wait until Wednesday, because sometimes even a bad Jew has to be respectful of the traditions. But there’s no way I’m putting off bathing or doing laundry.