We paid a visit to the ‘rents tony new home in Scottsdale last week and we didn’t miss the old neighborhood one bit. But Mom’s behavior was out of place- she kept humming under her breath and tracing symbols in the air with the tip of her finger. Just when we started wondering if she was taking some new baby boomer youth medication and whether we should organize an intervention, we extracted the reason for her mysterious ways: At the age of 60, our mother has begun attending Hebrew school and will stand on the bima for her bat mitzvah next summer.
Technically, she doesn’t have to go through the ceremony to “become” a bat mitzvah since Jewish law states that at the age of 12 (13 for the dudes) we all become responsible for our own actions in the world, whether we like it or not. But many adults who never experienced the torture of learning the Haftorah prayers are drawn to this spiritual rite of passage to reaffirm their commitment to Judaism. There is something momentous about standing up in front of your community and reading from the Torah, and well, there’s always a party. And no one throws a party like our mother- fuhgeddaboud cheeseball entertainers and bad themes; no one’s dancing to Kool And The Gang at this bash. Those Scottsdale mavens ain’t seen nothin’ like this bat mitzvah girl! We’re just super proud of her.

Via Jewschool: An organization called Strap-On Veterans For Truth claims leggy conservative pundit Ann Coulter was once Jeremy Levinsohn, the son of liberal Jewish parents and a former Brandeis student. According to the Strap-On Vets, Jeremy dropped out of college sometime in the 70’s, only to resurface in Key West as drag goddess Pudenda Shenanigans. Apparently donning high heels and a beehive ‘do wasn’t enough of a rebellion, so Jeremy Pudenda did the only thing that could make liberal Jewish parents sit figurative shivah: become a Republican.
We’d do anything to throw a pie in the face of the most misogynistic woman we’ve ever heard, but this smacks of urban mythdom, since The Smirking Chimp posted the same story last March, except that Coulter was born Nigel Cruthers III to a New England Wasp family and attended Bob Jones University.
But as any tranny will attest, Adam’s apples don’t lie. Wonder if the Ann Coulter Talking Doll sings “Dude Looks Like A Lady?”

The Hebrew Hammer arrived from Netflix yesterday, starring the surprisingly studly Adam Goldberg (who delivered our favorite line from Dazed and Confused: “I’m just trying to be honest about being a misanthrope”) as a tough rebel heeb saddled with the task of saving Chanukah from a sadistic Santa (played as a coke-snorting psycho by the ever-disturbing Andy Dick- not exactly a stretch.) All in all, it’s a hilarious piece of satire that’s already a cult classic, so any self-respecting Jewish hipster ought to view it a few times for the quotables.
Also on the DVD is the original short by director Jonathan Kesselman, not to be missed.

Since we personally know a couple of badass Jewboy fighters, our hearts swelled with pride to learn that Jewish boxing had a “golden age” between 1910-1940, boasting 26 Jewish champions with names like Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom and Daniel Peltz.

They tell this story about Benny Leonard, fighting Irish Eddie Finnegan in a dusty coal-mining town, early part of the last century. The crowd, fueled by booze and bigotry, screamed for Finnegan to ‘kill the k*ke.’ Leonard, furious, lashed at Finnegan, staggering him repeatedly. Grappling into a clinch, Finnegan pleaded for mercy, gasping in Yiddish that his real name was Seymour Rosenbaum.

Read the whole article or better yet, check out the exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.
Photo by Charles Miller of jewishboxers.com.

We’ve been praying for an affordable, less drafty home here in our corner of the Bay Area for quite awhile now, but the forces above have yet to manifest a cozy 3 bedroom with a dishwasher. In a place where a half a million barely gets one a patch of pavement in the trailer park by the freeway, a pretty clean yellow house with a porch is our Jerusalem. As we burn another chair leg and toss back shots of chocolate vodka to keep warm, we’ve been inspired today by not one, but two stories about the divine Jewish presence in the cutthroat California real estate market:
J.’s Mikal Lev-Ramm knows she’s found her dream flat when she sees a style-y 70’s mezzuzah outside a fourth-floor walk-up in the Haight, then peels back the mailbox labels to discover two Jewish names underneath.
And even though we don’t live in the city, we interpret this article by UC Berkeley journalism grad student Jonathan Mooallem about a former synagogue that’s been broken up into lofts as a sign that we’ve just got to keep the faith. We never know; a sweet cottage with a kosher kitchen could open up just around the corner.

Recommended for children ages 3-7, Kosherland will challenge anyone’s knowledge on the laws of kashrut. And rather than mocking the spinsters among us, Jewish Old Maid features the yetzer hara as the card without a match. We’re just delighted that we don’t have to pretend we don’t notice Bubbie cheating her way through yet another Monopoly session.

JTA‘s Joel F. Glazier gives us eight good reasons to use the new “Hanukkah” (their spelling) stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.

Update: The link to the article seems to be broken for now, which is frusturating because we can’t come up with more than three reasons:
1. It makes us feel truly part of the chosen people when we pay the electric bill.
2. We’re just not revolutionary enough for the Kwanzaa stamp.
3. We don’t like to touch anything related to Christmas, let alone lick it.

MSNBC’s Jeanette Walls scoops the latest Kabbalah celeb as Sarah Ferguson, aka “Fergie”. For the children in the room, we’re not discussing the hottie singer from Black-Eyed Peas, but the woman who was married to Britain’s Prince Albert long enough for him to prove to the world that he’s not gay. We’re glad to have the Duchess of York in our sphere and look forward to blogging Fergie’s Kabbalistic exploits alongside her pals Madge and Demi, even if she’s not really Jewish. If ya wanna get technical, she’s not really royalty either.

Following up on our umpteenth visit to the dentist in the past 25 years to correct our smile, we’re wondering if any of you have any mouth adventures to share.
We started visiting the orthodondist at age 8 (our parents liked to joke a wing on the Curtis home is named after us), the beginning of a journey that transformed us from a snaggletoothed pre-pubescent to a head-geared junior high nerd to the dazzling-grinned young adult with porcelain caps that would put the Cheshire cat to shame. We thought drooling in a vinyl recliner was behing us, but our gums are still aching from yesterday’s removal of said porcelain veneers with a drill (God bless nitrous oxide), to be replaced in two weeks with brand new, extra white models. (We insisted on a glimpse of the real teeth hiding under the veneers all these years; let’s just say if the temporary plate falls off this week we’re going to be scaring children with werewolf fangs.)
We’d like to thank our parents for sacrificing our tuition to an Ivy League college so we can bare our uppers with confidence, but we’ve always wondered if they were overzealous or if Jewish kids actually have worse teeth than our counterparts.
It turns out we do.