It’s always a fashion conundrum deciding what shoes to wear on Yom Kippur, since Jewish law forbids us to don our leather Fluevogs for synagogue. Our rabbi always favors a pair of fugly, canvas, no-name sneakers, which we would decry as a style shanda except that even we consider it bad form to criticize bima fashion mistakes. But since sneakers seem to be the obvious choice for the “no-cow” rule on the Day of Repentance, we need to take a look at the alternatives:
Obviously, Nikes, Pumas and Adidas are out for their global slavery issues. We’ve always geared towards boring, oh-so-unstylish New Balance trainers because supposedly their made in America by happy, well-paid union workers, but Ha’aretz debunks that myth by reporting that most of their product is made in Taiwanese sweatshops just like the big boys’. Even our beloved Chuck Taylor All-Stars, an excellent choice for the Yom Kippur stye-conscious, have been co-opted by corporate schlockmesiters (Ha’aretz reports in the same article that Converse was bought by Nike last year.)
Searching out on the fringe, Adbusters’ Black Spot Sneakers could fill the void for Jewish anti-globalization, counter-couture fashionistas, except that Michael I. Niman has revealed that Adbuster’s founder and publisher, Kalle Lasn, is a raging anti-Semite. Bummer. So as far as our Yom Kippur ensemble goes, we guess we’ll follow in the rabbi’s footsteps and head out to Wal-Mart for a pair of Keds. Perhaps next High Holidays season Jmerica will come out with our own sneakers, manufactured by Oompa-Loompas with a dental plan, right here in the good ‘ol U.S. of A.

Our bubbe never cooked much because of her arthritic hands, so the few times she made us blintzes became a family legend. We can still recall what we affectionately called “the mixture,” a creamy concoction of cottage cheese, sugar and blueberries, wrapped in thin pancakes and fried. We treasure that scrap of our childhood, the taste of warm food in a dark kitchen, safe with our grandma. What we wouldn’t give for a batch of those blintzes now, and we promise to attempt it sometime this New Year. If you don’t have any comfort food memories of your own, check out SF Gate’s Rent A Grandma series, Jewish edition.

Everyone has at least one insane person in their romantic past. Someone who looked so hot you just had to get in his or her pants, but once you did, it unleashed a tsunami of emotional drama so huge it could wipe out the entire eastern seaboard. You know what we’re talking about; the fifteen messages in one night, the drive-bys, the dead squirrel on the doorstep…some of us get sucked into these tornadoes of dysfunction for a time, then get the f* out, even if it means leaving all our stuff behind, changing our idenity and moving to Madagascar. If we all only adhered to what Sam Shmikler calls “The Mickey Rule” in this week’s Jewish Journal, we’d avoid the sexy blondes with a gleam in their eyes who always seem to wind up stealing our underwear.

We normally find these kind of lists a hackneyed form of entertainment, but some of them made us snicker:
*You had at least one female relative who penciled on eyebrows which were always asymmetrical.
*You were as tall as your grandmother by the age of seven.
*You were as tall as your grandfather by the age seven and a half.
*You were surprised to discover that wine doesn’t always taste like cranberry sauce.
*Your mother took personal pride when a Jew was noted for some accomplishment (showbiz, medicine, politics, etc.) and was ashamed and embarrassed when a Jew was accused of a crime .. as if they were relatives.

You can read the whole list here.
And even better, you can insert another region or ethnicity and find out about everyone else’s inside jokes.

Something Jewish UK reports that London’s Metropolitan Police is out recruiting Jews, which sounds kind of suspicious to us. But apparently they’re just trying to serve and protect:
“Through employing a diverse workforce we are also able to bring understanding and knowledge to the communities we serve. To achieve this it is imperative that we are truly representative.”
That’s cool. It might be fun to be a cop, right? Car chases, Krispy Kremes, the occasional hit in the bulletproof vest? Since no one in their right mind wants their kid to be a doctor anymore, will the next great Jewish career be law enforcement?

Finally, a story about a former childhood star who wasn’t arrested for holding up a convenience store while high on E. Fred Savage played Kevin on one of our favorite late-80’s TV series, The Wonder Years. As mini-adults trapped by the ravages of puberty ourselves at that time, we completely identified with his suburban angst. Those of you who remember Kevin’s beautiful unrequited neighbor, Winnie, will appreciate the fact that Fred married a girl from his old block in Chicago, the city he left to pursue life as a child actor in L.A. We don’t know if his new wife, Jennifer Stone, is Jewish, but according to Jewhoo, Fred’s a good bar mitzvah’d boy and we wish him all the best.

We’ll use any excuse to put up a photo of Hugh Jackman (in this case, reporting that he and his wife will accompany Madonna on her Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to Israel next week, otherwise known as Kabbalahpalooza.)
We recently glimpsed Jackman drinking hefeweizen at the Ross Valley Brewing Company while he was in NoCal promoting the tanker Van Helsing, and for someone who’s been playing a little light in the loafers on Broadway for the past year, he’s quite the manly specimen. Yum.

Al Pacino has started receiving raves for his role as Shylock, Shakespeare’s beleagured moneylender, in Michael Radford‘s Merchant of Venice. (Those of us who majored in English but slept through Shakespeare had to remind ourselves of the plotline.) Shylock, an old, greedy Jew created out of existing stereotypes of the day, demands a “pound of flesh” from a Venetian merchant for an unpaid debt. The merchant cleverly wins in court, and Venice gets a good laugh about tricking the tricky Jew. This leaves us to wonder whether ol’ Will was a bigot like the rest of ’em or if he was shining a light on the ugliness of his society’s anti-Semitism. Radford has chosen the latter; his film, set in 16th century Venice, explores specifically the terrible treatment of Shylock as a reason for his sneakiness– he had to survive. This brings a much more complex, human element to a character perceived as a caricature, and we can’t think of anyone more suited to playing complicated, tragic men than Pacino. Usually we adhere to the adage that “the movie is never as good as the book” but in this case we’re pretty sure The Merchant of Venice will be better than listening to sophomore high school students read it aloud.

Though most Jewish blogs despise the marketing meshugganahs of the Kabbalah Center for their watered-down, milquetoast-y version of Jewish mysticism with a venom that could give you an ulcer, we just can’t get worked up about it, it being a free country and all. The Bergs have twisted their version of Judaism into a tidy revenue source for themselves, how can you begrudge that? (Besides, we’ll admit it. We love the celebrity trash factor.) Jay Michaelson takes a sage look at what the Kabbalah Center actually teaches in this week’s Forward, giving it an attempt at a fair shake: “at least the Kabbalah Centre is selling superficial spirituality; sometimes I feel like the mainstream Jewish community is just pushing bagels.”
In other news of concern to shallow fame whores, uber-skank Paris Hilton has returned to the fold since dumping Plastic Ken Doll Nick Carter (or maybe it was him who called her a psycho nympho) saying that she coped by going straight to the Kabbalah Center in L.A., gabbing with everyone about the break-up and buying herself a dandy new red string bracelet.
It’s pretty obvious from the people who frequent the Kabbalah Center that there is no threat to actual Jewish life. Why all the hatred?