I saw these flash-frozen latkes advertised in a pop-up ad yesterday and my feelings are, *ahem*, mixed:

On one blistered hand, it sounds like a fantastic idea to save the greasy mess and let the nice mensches at SchmaltzOnline.com do the shredding and the frying. (It’s also an expensive one: $17 for a dozen potato pancakes with the toppings PLUS $22 for FedEx shipping, though you are worth it.)

On the other, think of the generations of Jewish mothers who have grated off half their fingers for the screaming Chanukah masses. They would tell you latkes aren’t kosher unless there is a little blood in those potatoes!

I suppose if you don’t want to get dirty at all (and don’t care about diminishing all the work of the bubbies of yore, you ungrateful shmo), these look like a tasty option.

That said, I’m Streit’s mix girl, myself. But I promise I suffer a lot of pin-sized burns all over my entire body from the sizzling spatter. (I don’t know how it gets inside the apron but it does.)

So I do love a nice shortcut, especially when combined with Jewish kitsch.

Speaking of yiddishe hilarity, who wants a Jewish toaster for Chanukah?

Those Maccabeats mensches, so clever and musical! And totally a cappella — not even a shofar to accompany them!

But I’ve heard they’re a revolving group whose members must be of a certain age. Once they get old, they’re out, like the halachic equivalent of Menudo.

HOWEVER, even though these four adorable punims graduated from yeshiva last year, they still made us a Chanukah song — or rather a mash-up of a few:

Cute, nu? But surely these nice boys didn’t listen to Ke$ha over and over again?! That girl couldn’t get kosher if she steeped in the mikveh and moved in with Mayim.

So I wrote this fantastic little story for y’all last Friday about El Yenta Man’s and my adventures in scary shopping.

It was one of those perfect holiday posts, just the right balance of jokesy folksy fun, sentimental musings on gratitude and a small anecdote about how I almost decked someone in the head with my purse.

I also updated you on my dear mother-in-law,  who we enjoyed having at the Thanksgiving table and likely won’t be there next year. I also revealed my secrets on how I make an entire bottle of bourbon disappear with very little assistance. It was a colorful, nuanced piece of writing. You might have enjoyed it, or at least, possibly finished it.

Except that just as I went to post it, my WordPress platform ate it.

Yes, I tried hitting the back button, thanks. It was, I promise, suddenly and finally GONE.

I did, I cried. A little. But I am proud to say that I did not trash my desk like I was Charlie Sheen at the Plaza over this state of affairs, nor did I disappear another bottle of bourbon. But nightfall approached, and though I am the world’s most creative Jew when it comes to the the rules of the Torah, I do NOT write on Shabbos. Rest is rest. So I basically flushed those four hours of work, gathered my family around the table and ate some gawdamuthafarkin leftovers.

On Sunday, when I was racing the deadline for the day job, I stole out to my favorite coffeeshop owned by a WordPress giant. My main WP lady Jane Wells (and also kickass gluten-free baker) sez there must’ve been a glitch in the Internet that prevented the automatic draft-saving feature. Jane said Post Loss has happened to her plenty, and copying and saving writing somewhere on one’s desktop is never a bad idea. She gave her condolences on the death of my post and also advised against trying to rewrite it, as it never comes out as good.

I try to listen to experts. So instead of trying to gather up the lost words like so many grains of sand, I give you something far better: The first Chanukah parody of the year:

http://youtu.be/rn2lzrnE5G0

Thanks to Jewlicious for spreading the word about the Borenstein Boys from Fairfax, VA. Like these B-Boyz? They have more….

I looked at the calendar this morning and saw that Chanukah is in less than four weeks WHA’?! I’ve barely finished picking wax out of the carpet from last year!

Actually, I loooove it when the Festival of Lights falls early (as in, before Christmas) because we get our holiday season all to ourselves — and then we get to schnorr everyone else’s. (Who’s a sucker for candy canes? This girl.)

I’m already singing holiday songs–especially this lil’ ditty, the Great Dreidel Tournament by menschy children’s entertainer Groovy David Brownstein. Listen here and hum along with me!

Dude is based in L.A., which is a bummer ’cause he’d be an a-MAZE-ing DJ for Yenta Boy’s bar mitzvah. Riddle me this, peeps: WHY ARE MEN WITH PUPPETS SO SEXY? El Yenta Man’s getting a marionette this year, for sure.

Even though I will probably still be running around town for menorah candles on Dec. 8, I had the wherewithal to order this super spectacular dreidel cardigan from Modern Tribe as my gift to myself. (Spoiler for the goyim: The eight presents thing only applies to kids.)

I plan to wear it EVERY SINGLE DAY of Chanukah as payback for the hideous red and green snowman attire I will be accosted by the minute Thanksgiving is over.

How cute is folk moppet Michelle Citron when she’s political?! Check her plea to the Jewish grandparents of our great country:

Sheesh, there’s a lot covered there, right?

Of course, our Bubbe and Zayde (aka Boma and Bopa) voted early, ’cause they’re like that.

*Hugs to Amy Zohlman Bergman for the tip!

Weddings! Bar mitvahs! Chopped liver!

‘Tis a season of most joy in Yentaland these days as we recover from yesterday’s Shalom Y’all Jewish Food Festival and prepare for my Brother the Doctor’s wedding this week, along with the continued and possibly never-ending planning of Yenta Boy’s impending ritual of manhood.

Yes, simchas are all about GOOD TIMES. But as most grown-ups know, fun TAKES WORK, which no one ever tells you when you’re a free and easy single. Or maybe someone did, but you weren’t listening because you were too busy smoking weed in the back alley and snarfing all the free canapes. So let me tell you: Every party or event you ever enjoy was made possible by a committee of tired and delirious people who excreted blood, sweat and tears into it. Literally. Especially when it comes to the latkes you ate at the Jewish Food Festival, so let’s pass out the Tums all around.

As for the Food Fest, I did my part in advance by pumping up the event at the day job (read about the epic baking efforts of Savannah’s Challah Back Girls here) but it was El Yenta Man who dragged his tushie out of bed at dawn Sunday morning to load all the trucks. And what a turnout! Thousands of strudel-lovin’, egg cream-downing, lox-licking goyim packed Forsyth Park, reinforcing the well-known axiom that Jews don’t need to proselytize when we’ve got blintzes.

Then there’s Bro da Doc’s wedding taking place this weekend, and though he and his betrothed planned the entire shebang themselves, there’s is the issue of packing fancy clothes for the entire family as well as selecting a wedding gift for people far more fashionable than you. Thank the Lord for Modern Tribe.com, where I found a classy seder plate and Jonathan Adler bird bowls for next Passover, when we will descend upon their clean and childless home and probably break them. (Yes, they already opened them so I’m not spoiling the surprise, AS IF they have time to read this blog a week before their entire families arrive for their wedding.)

I think they’re pretty nice, considering my brother makes it a practice to buy the most obnoxious Chanukah gifts he can find for his niece and nephew and I could’ve paid him and his bride back by sending them this.

Then there’s the monkey on my back, the albatross around my neck, the gremlin that wakes me up at 4am to whisper “You haven’t found a caterer yet. Did you invite ALL the second cousins? Band or DJ? What about a tallis? Should you pay extra for the fancy chairs?”

I’m telling you, the bar mitzvah planning IS GETTING TO ME. It’s a lot of details I’ve never considered before and I’m very grateful event planner Mindy Nash has stepped in to save me from becoming a Jehovah’s Witness just to avoid this mishegoss. I think I’ve finally addressed all the invitations, even though deciding to forego the lined envelopes sent me into an tailspin.

There’s a lot of work still to be done, but I’mma gonna do my best to keep my bodily excretions out of it.

The interwebs have ‘sploded with this “open letter” to pottymouth princess Sarah Silverman by haredi rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt in which he accuses her of not being Jewish enough to quote the Torah and calls getting married “the most basic desire of the feminine soul.”

He is a douche.

I might like to think of myself as edgy (Sister Sarah has boo-ya all tied up, hence her HEEB magazine cover posing with the proverbial hole-in-the-sheet) but I don’t enjoy calling rabbis nasty names. Respect for the position dies hard. HOWEVER, when a dude with six kids who slaughters cows for a living gets all judgey about how a woman chooses to live her life, the gloves are OFF. Seriously, he wrote this:

Nothing you say or stand for, Sarah, from your sickening sexual proposal to a Republican donor to your equally vulgar tweet to Mitt Romney, has the slightest thing to do with the most basic of tenets which Judaism has taught the world – that the monogamous relationship is the most meaningful one and that a happy marriage is the key to wholesomeness.

Really. That’s what Judaism has taught the world? Well, sheee-it. I’d better rework my Shalom School lesson for next week ’cause I was gonna focus on something totally stupid, like ethics.

The Jewish Press, the website that published this letter, sure must be enjoying their 15 minutes of Internet flushing fame for posting this narrow-minded, misogynistic, backasswards nonsense. Their response to the hullaballoo is defensive and equally divisive, again accusing those who are not rigidly observant as “not Jewish enough.”

Just not buying it. Yes, it’s highlighted the gap between the extreme Orthodox and “cultural” Jews, but I’m not sure it’s a different gap than the one that exists between all fundamentalists and the rest of us.

Interestingly enough, the Jewish Journal had the opportunity to publish this first yet chose to pass because, as editor Rob Eshman points out, while it was sure to incite lots of hits, it was just plain sucky writing:

You can’t write about things you have no knowledge of—in this case a young woman’s personal life and beliefs. And you can’t  spread damaging conjecture and perhaps lies about someone.  And just because you disagree with someone’s politics doesn’t mean you know their character, or have the right to demean it.

None of that is good journalism.  And I’m no rabbi, but it doesn’t strike me as Judaism, either.

Oh, and if you haven’t read the epic response posted by Sarah’s dad about who’s who on the list of influential Jews, it’s quite a read.