Oh, yes,much mazel to Courtney Cox Arquette and her Jewish husband David Arquette (who, to our vast cinematic knowledge, has never been in a movie without a lot of fake blood or an animal co-star,) who welcomed their daughter, Coco Cox, into the world on Sunday. According to a post on the Israeli blog An Unsealed Room, Courtney (whose mother is also named Courtney) wanted to pass on a matriarchal Southern tradition, but Davey nixed that one. But the rumor is that the kid would’ve been Sarsparilla if it was a boy. We like unusual names for the kids, but that’s crossing some kind of line, giving a kid a name like that (anything that rhymes with “gorilla” is asking for trouble.
What if Jerry Seinfeld named his next kid Milk? Then he and Coco Cox and Apple Paltrow attend Children of Rich Stars High School together someday and have a kosher breakfast.

This review of Neale Donald Walsch’s (Conversations with God) latest chat with the Almighty was brought to our attention by one of Jmerica’s Boy Genius programmers. The theme of Tomorrow’s God is that humanity’s best chance for survival is to reform our idea of religion; that every person, whether they’re Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Unitarian or one of those people who dances with snakes, is part of the same family, that “no person or living thing in the universe stands outside the community of God.”
The Boy Genius, who was wearing a crucifix the size of an ostrich egg with another cross tied to it the first time we first met him (he said he needed the extra power to get Jmerica’s wings aloft that night before the launch party,) says about Tommorow’s God: “this movement could have me hanging out at temple and you chillin’ at church.”
We’re down, brother. You teach us how to genuflect and we’ll teach you the vehavta and we’ll get the planet peaceful in no time.

Our favorite pissed-off Jew, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, turns his sharp tongue on the nasty Jewish dating scene in the latest issue of Jewsweek. As many as 72% of Jews between 18 and 39 marry gentiles, which could mean a Jewish culture a watery as bad coffee. Every Jew wants to marry another Jew, but dating is a whole different story, right? We at Jmerica like to call the goyishe hotties “the forbidden fruit,” like the blue-eyed babe working at the coffeeshop who wouldn’t know a chicken liver from a pipik.
Shmuley says: “The real issue is that no one is attracted to their sisters, or even their cousins; and the Jewish men, who grow up and go to school and summer camp with Jewish girls, perceive them as relations while the non-Jewish women, by comparison, are exciting and exotic.” Marry your sister? Ecch.
He goes on: “But perhaps what has destroyed Jewish marriage more than anything else is the modern culture of available, casual, and commitment-free sex.”
Maybe, but you can’t get more available than married sex, and you don’t even have to pretend you’re really 5’9″ when your wife knows damn well you top out at 5’6″. We think Shmuley isn’t giving Jews enough credit; we may drool over forbidden fruit, and maybe take it out for a cocktail, but once we find the perfect kosher meal, we’ll always eat at home.

All this talk about faux mitzvahs has got us rankled, but we stopped griping when surfed upon Bar Mitzvah Disco, a site dedicated to the best (dancing with the cute girl wearing the ruffled taffeta dress, stealing wine from the grown-ups) and worst (obnoxious relatives, your eighth-grade hairstyle) of becoming a man or woman in the Jewish American tradition.
We remember the DJ mispronouncing our name and our curls failing in spite of being imprisoned by an entire can of Aqua-Net. Post your own bar/bat mitzvah memories; extra points if you can recall the subject of your Torah portion, double if you remember the song you slow-danced to with your eighth-grade crush.

The L.A. Daily News documents the trend of lavish parties for non-Jewish junior high school players. No Torah portion, no hora, no Sundays spent slaving over tones with a cantor who never heard of Certs. Also known as a “Permitzvah,” such celebrations allow the rich gentile kids all the carbs with none of the calories, so to speak. But the word mitzvah means “commandment” in Hebrew, and commanding one’s parents to throw you a party is a bit of a bastardization.
Not all Jews agree. “I think it’s beautiful — only in America. Only in America do we have this wonderful appreciation for cultural things,” said Rabbi Gershon Johnson of Beth Haverim in Agoura Hills. “I certainly don’t object to anyone borrowing our traditions.”
So in the end, we guess it really is just about the party. Such a shanda.

Whew! The end of another week and we’re exhausted. We love doing this whole information clearinghouse thang, but we’re relieved when Shabbat rolls around every week and we can unchain ourselves from the Mac. If it wasn’t for the Almighty’s mandate, our brains would implode. Before we replace the blue screen for the candle glow, let us turn you on to this story about a computer scientist at the University of Washington’s Information School who champions the need to turn off the box and stop surfing already.
“Information-polluted people need to organize and protect psychic space and quiet time,” David M. Levy believes, “much as environmentalists organized in the 1960s to protect wetlands and old-growth forests.”
Think of your heart and mind as precious resources, to be conserved and cared for. You don’t have to be religious to observe the gift of Shabbat; it can just be a simple way to nurture those relationships that don’t require electricity and DSL lines. Pet your cat, hang with friends, visit a neighbor and we’ll see y’all on Monday.
Good Shabbos to all!

Jay Levitt posted a fake JDate profile full of the most boring, typical, lame-ass personal information he could muster and called himself Cliche Boy. Hilarious stuff. The rest of his homepage, Parapoetica, reveals him to be an interesting guy with a nice house and lovely blogging skills, though he takes a lot of pictures of his cats. Ladies, he seems like a real mensch. Shouldn’t he be a Jmerican? Where’s your photo, Jay?

The 19th century German nun who inspired Mel Gibson to make “The Passion of the Christ” as gory as possible has moved up a notch on the ladder to sainthood. The writings of Anne Catherine Emmerich, “a sickly mystic” who lived from 1774 to 1824 recording her bloody visions that depicted Jews as Christ-killers, have been condemned by critics as medieval and anti-Semitic. But apparently the Catholic Church thinks she’s the bomb and should be shellacked and lit candles for and whatever else it means to be a saint. Thoughts, anyone?

Aaak! Jewschool posted this picture of The Reigning Princess of Skank, Christina Aguilera, from the latest issue of Elle magazine. It sure looks like the Hebrew letters “yud” and “bet” tattooed there on her forearm, but there’s nothing on the wires explaining their significance. Maybe she’s keeping her Kabbalistic tendencies quiet, perhaps afraid of a sh*tstorm similar to the reaction of Britney’s farchadat attempts to be a tattooed Jew. Maybe she was partying in bad neighborhood in Brooklyn, passed out and woke up with it on her arm, a la the urban legend about the tourist who wakes up without a kidney.
We’ll keep our ears open.