Rabbi Ari Emkin reminds Jewish pet owners in this week’s Cleveland Jewish News that halachic law applies to your dog. That’s right, Rex: No mixing cheeseballs with Alpo, no fetching the paper on Shabbos, no chametz-kibble on Passover (in Israel, even the zoo animals kept to a matzoh diet last week!) But don’t fret the details; at least you don’t have to book a banquet room for a “bark mitzvah.” (Not our joke. But funny, nu?)
The Talmud also forbids owning a dog or any other pet that “instills fear or harm, whether bark or bite.” Does this mean there can be no such thing as a Jewish Rottweiler?

The cranky chef who inspired Seinfeld‘s infamous “Soup Nazi” episode is making up in business acumen what he lacks in social grace: Al Yeganeh has already sold 123 take-out franchises from Princeton to Toronto of “The Orginal Soup Man,” with an eventual goal of thousands of outlets in mall food courts and airports, as well as a line of frozen soups.
Even though store owners will be “strongly discouraged” from shouting “No soup for you!” at their customers if they fail to meet the Yeganech’s rigorous requirements of having their money ready and standing “to the extreme left” after ordering, the chef will be enforcing his special brand of culinary psychosis on employees and customers via WebCam.
This guy appears to be a meglomaniac of the highest order (he claims he made Jerry Seinfeld famous) but those who have tasted the holy broth claim that he’s a genius. We’ll be sure to search out gourmet soup next time we’re at the mall food court (but only if Cinnabon is closed.)

Humble hat tip to IsraellyCool for story and links!

Last seen hawking bagels after his fall from wealthy porn pioneer to homeless pervert, Al Goldstein is back to his old ways. He’ll be peddling smut as the new marketing director for XonDemand, an Internet porn site based on the old-time peep shows. As a Jew who embraced Christianity on the way down, he will probably thank the Lord of Viagra for his good fortune.
c/o TheYadaBlog.

At a fund-raising dinner for a women’s philanthropy group last week, Vanity Fair journalist Marie Brenner warned that France is fast becoming the world’s most dangerous place for Jews. She cited statistics that show a 90% rise in physical attacks in recent years and 40% of polled Jews would like to leave the land that gave us champagne, stinky cheese and that cute Audrey Tautou. As a result of this “virulent new strain” of anti-Semitism, Brenner is calling for American Jews to help French Jewish youth obtain visas and to open their “doors and hearts” to these latest refugees of the Diaspora. “We helped the Soviet Jews,” says Brenner. “Now there’s a need again.”
Scary. Since the French government seems more preoccupied with important issues like copywriting and forbidding the publication of all nighttime images of the Eiffel Tower than enforcing laws to combat hate crimes, does this mean we should give the Statue of Liberty back?

As long as we’re on the subject of European anti-Semitism (see post below), here’s an excellent essay by Times of London columnist Julie Burchill about the British boycott of Israeli universities.
She shames British academics for getting sucked into “herd-mentality” cruelty while Britain currently plays host “to the biggest ever annual number of violent anti-Semitic attacks, both on people and on property, since the 1930s.” For a country that flaunted their superior civility after the Allies defeated Hitler and “showed the cultured Krauts the true meaning of civilization, we are going through our own dark night of the anti-Semitic soul.”
But, our British brethren ain’t backing down. The Jewish Chronicle reports that both Jewish and Palestinian groups are fighting back against the boycott, believing it is everyone’s best interest to “build bridges, not walls.”
So we’re not crossing England off our “no travel” list yet. But even as we get back to reporting on happier things this Monday morning, we’re keeping our eye on Europe—as should all Jews.

Thank you, JewZoo, for solving the mystery.

So by now you’re looking at the four extra boxes of matzoh on the counter and wondering if there might not be some other use for them, since eating even one more slab will stop you up ’til Sukkot. If you’re remodeling, you could stack them inside the drywall for insulation, å la straw bale methods. Or tile the bathroom. Or, you could break out the paint and glue and make art.
That’s what 250 New York artists did as part of an innovative, interactive project dubbed The Matzoh Files, originally located in the Streit’s Matzah factory on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and relocated to a larger gallery for the month of April (one assumes that the factory is extra busy this time of year.) Rather than displayed on the walls, much of the artwork is stored in flat file drawers to be perused hands-on by visitors. Sounds a little crumby.
We’re looking forward to going back to our chametz-lovin’ ways Sunday night, but aside from commemorating our freedom from the Pharoah, this carb-deprived holiday has an upside: we’ve lost weight. Who knew escaping the Egyptians would evolve into the Jewish Atkins Diet?

From Stupid.com: Chewish Dog Toys. “Lox The Fish” and “Trayf The Pig” also available, but “Schmutz The Octopus” is currently out of stock. (We’ve never heard of an cephalopod dog toy either, but we guess it’s funny ’cause it’s unkosher and unlikely.)
Even if you don’t have a canine, the homepage’s corny joke is worth the visit.
c/o Weird Jews.

“I am not at all tired of matzos though they seem tired of me for they feel just now as if they were all sticking in a lump in my throat.”
That’s a quote from Amelia Allen, a middle-class Jewish girl writing about Passover—in 1876. The quality of matzah hasn’t improved much over the past century and a half, and neither have the challenges of being a Jewish teenage girl in America, according to Melissa Klapper, who has compiled journal entries, scrapbooks and photo albums of into a book called “Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920”.
Even back then, Jewish girls obsessed about boys, pestered their parents about attending the school play on a Friday night and tackled biggies like “What is women’s role in Judaism? How important is formal religious education to the development of strong Jewish identity? How do we balance commitment to tradition with interest in modernization?”
Klapper writes: As the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America continues, it is worth pausing to take note of how even previously ignored groups of historical figures contributed to the encounter between “Jewishness” and “Americanness.”
Definitely. And in another hundred years, Gd willing, scholars will contemplate the paradox of pink iPods containing haftorah portions and Gwen Stefani tracks,

We came across a couple (1, 2) of articles about Joshua Nelson last week and were duly impressed. As a member of New Jersey’s small but strong African-American Jewish community, a Hebrew school teacher and a musical prodigy, Nelson has branded what he calls “kosher gospel,” a “rollicking hybrid of church tunes, Motown and Jewish-themed lyrics.” While this may seem incongruous with the Ashkenazic-centric image of American Judaism, Nelson proves that soul music has a valid place in Jewish history and practice.
We’ve always been attracted to the heart-rich, hand-clapping dynamic of gospel, but couldn’t get over the Jesus part of it enough to actually participate in our neighborhood church services. Now that we know there’s a Jewish answer to our hankering for revival music, we hope to catch Joshua on tour. Sing low, sweet chariot!