After a two-year pregnancy and a dramatic 10-hour birth process, transplanted Thai elephant Tamar has given birth to a son Saturday at the Jerusalem Tisch Family Zoological Gardens. (Someone get that woman a bathtub-sized cocktail!)

Tamar’s handlers opted for artificial insemination to ensure conception, and the result is the first of its kind for Israel and on the 10th worldwide. Apparently Tamar had fertility issues in captivity, like so many Jewish women who put off motherhood to advance their careers.

The very adorable baby pachyderm has not yet been named, though quite a few Israeli companies would like to “sponsor” him in exchange for long-term wrinkly gray advertising.

A bris seems unlikely — not that there’s a mohel brave enough.

Photo: Alex Kolomoisky/Pool

Let me know if your week is going better than mine:

Last weekend, my 5 year-old (he’d say, no, Mom! I’m 5 and three quarters!) went to the mall with his friend and his friend’s father. The father, a very nice man who repeatedly disregards my requests that he not bring my son to the mall, brought my son to sit on Santa’s lap.

My dear son came home, hyped up on whatever sugary spaz juice the other kid’s dad gave him, yelling “Guess what, Mom? You were sooo wrong! There is such thing as Santa and he’s going to bring me a snake!”

Like any Jewish mother, I was tempted to quash the boy’s budding crush on Christmas by informing that not only is there no such person as Santa, but the crusty guy whose lap he sat on probably has cooties from all the snotty kids who were there before.

But I didn’t. I let it go, figuring Santa ain’t bringing no snake, no how, to my house, so I’m going to just breathe through this moment, one of many in which I will have help my son process being Jewish in this crazy Christian world.

Two days later, my husband came home from work with a shoe box. “Guess what I found in the bathroom at the gym?”

Oh no he di’int, you say. But, oh, he did. Scooped up some grass and sticks from the yard, dusted off the fishbowl from last year’s ill-fated tadpole farm and made the little snake a g*ddamn nest right on the kitchen table.

And my kid, who knows all five books of Moses and the aleph-bet, came home from the park, looked at the snake, rolled his sweet brown eyes towards heaven and whispered “Thank you, Santa!”

Now just what the f*n hell is a Jewish mother supposed to do?

And as if that weren’t enough: That very same night, someone left the plastic wrap off the top of the fishbowl and now the Santa snake is loose in the house.

Anybody have extra Valium out there?

*Illustration by Petra Matthews; it’s the cover of one of my kid’s favorite books, I Need A Snake by Lynne Jonell.

The relevance here being that his new wife, Luciana Bozan, was at Jmerica Eve Party last year. Check it out; second row, fourth from the left. Yep, the one with the boobs falling out of her shirt. Double click for full midriff glory.

Wish Jmerica could take the credit for introducing the two, but according to reports, they were already dating.

But you never know who you might meet at Eve Party 2005…

Photo: Evan Agostini, Getty Images

In an ironic turn of the Krakow real estate market, the house where Pope John Paul II grew up may turn quite a profit for its American Jewish owners. (The irony being that most Jewish property was “repossessed” by the Nazis in WWII.)

The GuardianUK reports:

The two rooms and a kitchen in southern Poland where Karol Wojtyla was born in 1920 is now a shrine to the memory of the late Pope John Paul II, visited by up to 5,000 pilgrims every day. The property, owned by the heirs of a local Jewish family living in the US, is also now the target of a discreet bidding war pitting the Archbishop of Krakow, the pontiff’s former confidante, against Polish and American Jewish organisations.

(Full story.)

More irony: It turns out the Catholic Church is balking at what they call and “exhorbitant price” — $1 million. (Feh. It’s almost the same price for a two-bedroom in my neighborhood, and no popes slept there.) The Jews of Krakow, who want to buy the house to commemorate the pontiff’s compassionate work on behalf of the Jews, are fundraising like crazy.

Wow, I am so flattered; one of you has seen fit to nominate this blog in the “Best Jewish Culture Blog” and the “Best Humor Blog” categories of the Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards, hosted by IsraellyCool.

Thanks, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous. I’d be suspicious that you were my mother, except I know she’d never be able to navigate the exact formatting required to make it a valid nomination. In fact, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, I went ahead and re-submitted the nomination, just to make sure it was “all good.”

Now that the Yenta has been nominated once y’all can sit back and wait for voting to start (sometime next month?), but if any of you other darling readers out there would like to nominate your favorite post, go on ahead. Just be sure to follow the directions or it won’t count.

Be sure to nominate your other fave Jewish blogs, too!

Oy. Just when it looked like the week might end without anything activating my ulcer, here comes the news that Mel Gibson wants to produce mini-series about the Holocaust.

Hoping everyone has a wonderful, relaxing, acid-reflux-free Shabbos anyway.