Last week I posted my own small-world problems about where to send my son to school. I know compared to war, it’s fairly petty, but damn, y’all had nothing to offer as far as suggestions or support. I know there are other parents who read this blog, and I thought someone could help me out, or at least share the misery of deciding between public vs. private school, secular vs. Jewish education … but I got bupkiss.

Maybe that’s why today was the first day of school and the kid spent it watching “Arthur” on PBS and eating Taco Bell in the backseat of our minivan while I ran errands. Hell, if I’m going for bad parenting, I’m going all the way.

Though we’ve ruled out the homeschooling as an option (Me: Hey, if a space doesn’t open in the good public school in the first week, I’ll homeschool the boy. El Yenta Man: You start tearing your hair out when both kids whine for apple juice at the same time. You think you’re going to teach one math while the other eats crayons? Me: Oy, I need wine.) there’s still the matter of choosing between a mediocre district school and paying the astronomical Jewish day school tuition.

It’s not just the money, either, since we probably qualify for some type of scholarship. But having my child at a Jewish institution all day, every day in these times feels … vulnerable. As much as I want him to know who he is and know more about Judaism than I do, it feels scary to send him to a school where he will meet only other Jews, rather than have the experience that his father and I had of being one out of a hundred or more. Also, it will surely aggravate the inferiority complex I have about not being observant enough — frankly, I don’t need more self-created guilt.

*sigh* Either way, the kid’s got to go to school. Within the next few days, a decision will be made and no matter what it is, I’ll worry it was the wrong one. I guess that’s the occupational hazard of Jewish motherhood.

… the Iranian president and world class psycho has launched his own blog.

It’s not unlike everyone else’s blog: Windbag political opinions, meandering childhood memories, promises to make it “simpler and shorter.” Ynet reports that his motivation may be to seek support from abroad — ’cause you know how hard out there it can be for a Holocaust-denying fascist midget with nuclear aspirations.

Perhaps working out his issues in the same medium as Jews, less fanatical Muslims, pornographers, people who like puppies and — gosh, everyone else — will temper his global destruction tendencies. Maybe he’ll join a blog ring and become so consumed with blog life that he’ll forget all about being such an a-hole.

Wishful thinking, yo. Giyus.org warns that Ahmadinejad’s blog is a digital trap that infects computers coming from Israeli and possibly American IPs with a virus. I don’t know enough about such things to know if that’s even possible, but I’m not willing to risk it. Tempting as it is to leave nasty things in the comments section.

Thought you’d heard the last of photo fraud by major news media? Check out Aish.com‘s latest movie on the recent “artistic” flourishes used to enhance “Israeli heavy-handedness” by AP, the New York Times and of course, Reuters.

Zombietime.com discusses these photos and more, while laying out a few theories about how such things slide by supposedly eagle-eyed editors (Hint: the eagles are blind.)

What I want to know is, with all the ‘puter-savvy Jews out there, can’t someone put those Photoshop skills to work to make more inappropriate movies starring Nasrallah? (c/o Jewish Mayhem Magazine.)

…the MSNBC host has taken his bad taste to new heights: The host of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” saluted “Seig Heil”-style while wearing mask of his nemesis, FOXnews commentator Bill O’Reilly, in a clumsy attempt to illustrate his rival’s lack of intelligence.

Um, yeah … so that didn’t work out too well for you, did it, Olbermann? You know O’Reilly is dancing around in his underwear right now squealing “Ha, ha, I’m glue, whatever I say sticks to you!”

Naturally, the superstars of the Anti-Defamation League were on it, releasing a letter within seconds of the offense:

“While we understand that your aim is to entertain your audience by taking pot shots at Mr. O’Reilly, your repeated use of the Nazi salute has resulted in many complaints from our constituents, including Holocaust survivors and their families who find the use of this gesture offensive and repugnant in any context…We believe that the use of gestures and imagery associated with the Nazis – even in jest – only serves to trivialize the Holocaust and denigrate the memory of the six million Jews and others who died as a result of Hitler’s Final Solution.”

Thank you, ADL. It’s their rabid tracking of even the most minor of anti-Semitic offenses that helps us all sleep at night.

Update: As a reader pointed out in the comments section, this speech did come from Olmert’s mouth, but rather from the pen of Ma’ariv journalist Ben Caspit in his piece “Suggested Speech for Prime Minister Olmert.”

*Several of you have sent in copies of Ehud Olmert’s July 31 speech to the Knesset, a piece of oratory that brings tears to my eyes every time I read it — I can only imagine what it must have been like to be in the room. It is surely a tonic for the sickening feeling that the world is quickly turning against Israel. Here it is in entirety.

Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world.

I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel.

We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere. The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time you understood: The Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you. Continue reading →

Other Jewish blogs might be full of news about the (badly) doctored Reuters photo of a Beirut suburb that makes the damage look worse than it is, not to mention the terrible but strangely compelling shanda of cats that look like Hitler, but here at temporary Yenta headquarters the crisis is much closer.

I am, of course, talking about the beginning of the school year, which starts next week. After doing extensive research all spring about the Savannah public school system, I was all ready to enroll our 6 year-old in the public Montessori academy. I made the phone calls, I was told he was in. Yet somehow when I went to register him, he was at the end of a very long waiting list.

So now our choices are thus:
1. Send him to another local school, which is bound to suck, because that’s what public schools do in the South, with a few exceptions in expensive neighborhoods.
2. Homeschool, which would not only mean two kids all day every day with no relief, but also make me as the sole purveyor of my son’s education — and I shouldn’t have to tell you how dangerous that could be
3. Send him to the private Jewish day school, which holds a yearly price tag worth more than my car. Also, the first grade class is comprised of five boys — a notion that had my Barbie-loving boy in tears.

So, action must be either
1. rent a hideous apartment immediately in suburbs
2. give up this blog and my sanity, or
3. take handouts from relatives and the Jewish community for tuition and worry that the child will be irrevocably undersocialized.

Oy, I’m practically getting an ulcer over first grade. I’m taking all suggestions and support, so please, leave some…

Rob Schneider, self-proclaimed “half Jew,” took out an ad in the entertainment trade Variety announcing that he would never work with Mel Gibson.

A dutiful sacrifice for the tribe, Deuce, though I don’t Mel’s dramas have need for male gigolos — unless “The Passion: Part 2” decides to explore the seedy underworld of Mary Magadalene.

Mel hasn’t repulsed all the Jews in H-Town, however: “Patriot” producer Dean Devlin defends Gibson’s filthy mouth and blames the strong drink. He says, “If Mel is an anti-Semite, then he spends a lot of time with us, which makes no sense.”

Right, because no one’s ever hung out with people they privately detest in order to further their careers…

Non-Jewish actors Patrick Swayze and Jodie Foster have released statements supporting Gibson, swearing up and down that he’s a great guy, not anti-Semitic in the least.

Bitchy as it is to point out, isn’t this the first time you’ve heard from Patrick Swayze since “Ghost”? And thought Jodie Foster is a fine actress, she hasn’t made a movie where she hastn’t been trapped in a penthouse/plane/underground chamber trying to save her sick daughter in a decade.

CNN notes that the Spielbergs and Katzenbergs and the other “big Kahunas” of Jewish Hollywood have had nothing to say about the firestorm that is Mel Gibson’s mouth. But maybe they’re the only ones who don’t anything to gain from all the publicity…