Comedian Jackie Mason Is Still Really, Really Funny

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

But in an in-depth interview with Tablet Magazine, he also gets serious about Israel, anti-Semitism, and why Italians love him

By David Evanier from a June 2013 interview in Tablet Magazine

I met Jackie Mason for the first time a few months ago at the kosher Great American Health Bar on West 57th Street in Manhattan. My friend Mike Fiorito went up to him and told him a joke. “What kind of a shmuck tells me a joke?” Mason said. I introduced myself and gave him my card. A month later he called me. We’ve been shmoozing together ever since.

Mason looks like his pictures from 20 years ago, with black hair and sad, alert eyes. He is intelligent, youthful, and nimble and strides across the street without looking right or left. Usually, he doesn’t have to. Wherever he goes, he is a conspicuous celebrity. Every time we walk down a Manhattan street together, he is greeted like a rock star by scores of people from all ethnic groups who go crazy at the sight of him. They run up to him and embrace him. Before he was 25, Mason left the hearth in Sheboygan, Wisc., and made his way to the Catskills, where he became an overnight sensation. He has remained a star in a much broader arena ever since.

What does it mean to you to be a Jew?

It means that the chances are you are going to be a more intelligent person, and you’ll have more decency, and you’ll help people whether they deserve it or not. And no matter what crime any person from any denomination commits, somehow you’ll always convince yourself it’s your fault.

Why have you stayed so identifiably Jewish in your accent and your subject matter?

I didn’t emphasize my Jewishness because I wanted to. I just happen to have been raised in a family where everybody happened to talk like this, so why would I talk like somebody else? And it’s not true that my act is about Judaism. It sounds like Judaism, but my act is about all kinds of people, but because I sound so Jewish, people are too stupid to separate the sound from the substance.

How did you become attracted to comedy?

I became attracted to it because I was a rabbi. And I started to tell jokes in my sermons.

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Ruth

Convert to Judaism and Great-Grandmother of King David

By Ariela Pelaia for About.com

According to the biblical Book of Ruth, Ruth was a Moabite woman who married into an Israelite family and eventually converted to Judaism. She is the great-grandmother of King David and hence an ancestor of the Messiah.
Ruth Converts to Judaism

Ruth's story begins when an Israelite woman, named Naomi, and her husband, Elimelech, leave their hometown of Bethlehem. Israel is suffering from famine and they decide to relocate to the nearby nation of Moab. Eventually Naomi's husband dies and Naomi's sons marry Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth.

After ten years of marriage both of Naomi's sons die of unknown causes and she decides that it is time to return to her homeland of Israel. The famine has subsided and she no longer has immediate family in Moab. Naomi tells her daughters-in-law about her plans and both of them say they want to go with her. But they are young women with every chance of remarrying, so Naomi advises them to stay in their homeland, remarry and begin new lives. Orpah eventually agrees, but Ruth insists upon staying with Naomi. "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you," Ruth tells Naomi. "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God." (Ruth 1:16).

Ruth's statement not only proclaims her loyalty to Naomi but her desire to join Naomi's people - the Jewish people. "In the thousands of years since Ruth spoke these words," writes Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, "no one has better defined the combination of peoplehood and religion that characterizes Judaism: 'Your people shall be my people' ('I wish to join the Jewish nation'), 'Your God shall be my God' ('I wish to accept the Jewish religion'). (Telushkin, Rabbi Joseph. "Biblical Literacy." pg. 359).

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For more about Shavuot, check out our    page.

Shavuot 2014

Shavuot begins at sunset on Tuesday, June 3 and will end on the evening of Thursday, June 5 2014.

What is Shavuot?

Shavuot, the feast of weeks, is celebrated seven weeks after the second Passover seder.

Although Shavuot began as an ancient grain harvest festival, the holiday has been identified since biblical times with the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

Read more about the history of Shavuot.

What are some customs and practices for Shavuot?

- To commemorate the giving of the Torah at Sinai there is a tradition of staying up all night studying Jewish texts in what is called a tikun
- On Shavuot the Book of Ruth is read.
- Traditionally dairy foods are eaten on Shavuot.
- In order to mark the agricultural history of Shavuot, some decorate their house and synagogues with a floral theme.

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Dancing in Jerusalem

by Sam Glaser

This was the last song written for my new album, The Promise. I needed a groovy, let's-all-make-aliyah theme song that would describe the various major redemption moments of the past century. The opening line quotes the Ethiopian Crown Prince Ahmad when he finally gave permission for the Jews to leave. My heart is Dancing in Jerusalem. Now I just got to get my whole body there! Enjoy the video! You can buy the album at my site here, and on itunes.

My groovy, let's-all-make-aliyah theme song that describes the various major redemption moments of the past century.

In honor of Yom Yerushalayim/Jerusalem Day on May 28th, enjoy this video from Sam Glazer

If unable to view this video, check it out on aish.com













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Top 10 Rolling Stones Shavuot songs

The good news? The Rolling Stones will play Tel Aviv in June. The bad news? A large portion of Israelis won’t be able to go.

The concert, scheduled for June 4, falls at the end of Shavuot — making it near impossible for holiday-observant Israelis to go see Mick, Keith and Co. prove they’ve still got the magic at age 70. Jewish Home MK Nissan Slomiansky petitioned the Stones to move the concert, but in case they don’t acquiesce, we’ve got the next best thing: The top 10 Rolling Stones Shavuot songs.

(Props to the Jerusalem Post’s Lahav Harkov for this idea.)

1. Sympathy for the Devil’s Food Cake — We can’t have meat, but at least we can have great dessert.
2. (Don’t) Gimme Shellfish — The laws of kashrut, put to hard rock.
3. Wild Moses — Check out Charlton Heston’s beard in “The Ten Commandments.” Now tell me Moses wasn’t wild.
4. Dairy Tuesday — This one really only works this year.
5. 19th Nervous Breakdown — The song title is the same, but this time it’s about a Jewish mother.
6. Let’s Spend the Night Together… Learning Torah — Probably not what you expected from a Stones song.
7. Holy Talk Woman — Shavuot night at Yeshivat Maharat.
8. It’s Only Lox and Rolls But I Like It — Nothing like a good bagel.
9. Write with Fire – According to legend, God wrote the Ten Commandments with black fire on white fire. Don’t try this at home.
10. Hey, Jew, Get Off of My Cow – Moses gets angry about the Golden Calf

Kabbalah and Lag B'Omer

by Yair Danielsohn for aish.com

Lag B'Omer is celebrated May 18, 2014

Lag B'Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, is celebrated as a commemoration of the memory of Rabi Shimon bar Yochai. A prominent sage of the Mishna, Rabbi Shimon is best known as the author of the chief mystical work, the Zohar, or “Luminescence”. Accordingly, this day has come to be associated with the Kabbalah, the mystical tradition that deals with the concealed aspects of Torah.

If genuine Kabbalah is decidedly not a quick-fix derivative of Judaism ― a jar of blessed water, an amulet or a red string can bring blessing into your life and solve all of your problems – what is it exactly? Does Kabbalah have something to offer the uninitiated layman in terms of opportunities for growth and enlightenment?

The Torah has two general levels of meaning. One, called “pshat”, is the plain meaning of the text, without resorting to concepts that need to be learned from other sources. This term is somewhat deceiving, since even the basic meaning of the Torah’s texts requires ceaseless study and yields an inexhaustible fountain of inspiration and enlightenment.

The second level is that of “sod”, which means “secrets”. At this level, everything within the Torah can be seen as just the tip of the iceberg, and actually hints at esoteric levels of existence we do not ordinarily come into contact with. Generally speaking, the focus of attention at this level of Torah study is the ways in which God relates to this world. It describes the spiritual DNA of the universe.

The study of sod is also called Kabbalah. This is because the word Kabbalah means the reception of a tradition, and due to the extremely sensitive nature of Kabbalah, it can only be understood properly when received as a transmission from a knowledgeable scholar. The discipline of Kabbalah was given at Sinai as one of the levels of interpretation of the Torah. It was always studied as a part of Torah, and its existence is alluded to throughout the Mishna and Talmud, although its investigation was usually reserved for the most spiritually gifted of each generation.

Just as one cannot study calculus without being fluent in arithmetic or study quantum physics without a background in the basics of science, so too is it impossible to comprehend the esoteric secrets of sod without first having thoroughly studied pshat, the first level of Torah understanding.

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Yom HaZikaron & Yom HaAtzmaut - Israeli Memorial Day & Independence Day

In 2014, these holidays are celebrated on May 4th and May 5th

From ReformJudaism.org

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, four new holidays have been added to the Jewish calendar - Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day), Yom HaAatzmaut (Independence Day), and Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day). In Israel, these holidays are observed as national holidays.

The Israeli Knesset established the day before Yom HaAtzmaut as Yom HaZikaron, a Memorial Day for soldiers who lost their lives fighting in the War of Independence and in other subsequent battles.

Yom HaAtzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, marks the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. It is observed on or near the 5th of Iyar in the Hebrew calendar, which usually falls in April.

For more information, check out Jvillage Network's Holiday Spotlight Kits.  You'll find ways to celebrate, commemorate, videos and the history of all the holidays.

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