Pope John Paul II passed away Saturday, which should make Guy Ritchie feel really bad about his Purim lampooning last week. Israeli PM Ariel Sharon called the papal father of the Christian world “a man of peace, a friend of the Jewish people,” considering he didn’t order any inquisitions or pogroms in his 26-year reign. He did do his best to reconcile Jewish/Catholic relations, and we hope he gets to keep his tall white hat up in heaven.
The church’s top position needs to be filled as soon as possible, lest the pious world dissolve into anarchy, and it looks like the next in line could be Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, a Holocaust survivor who converted to Catholicism as a young man. Described as charismatic with a gift for paradox, Lustiger “has become a living bridge over the river of bad blood, mischief and mistrust that has divided the relationship between Catholicism and Judaism for 2,000 years.”
Not to get all New Testament symbol-y on y’all, but isn’t a Jewish Pope one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse or something?
(Hat tips to Jewschool and Jewlicious.)

There’ll be no more falling asleep at the seder when you bring your set of Ten Plagues finger puppets to the table! Lighten up the mood as you recite each horrible fate that befell the Pharoah, but remember not to revel in the misery of other people. And after that fourth class of wine, better hide them from Cousin Shai in case he tries to recreate his gall bladder surgery.

If you think you have family issues, you’ll feel positively Stepford-like after watching My Architect. The documentary begins as the momzer son of architect Louis I. Kahn seeks to understand how his famous father could have died penniless and anonymous in Penn Station in 1974, but he soon finds that Kahn’s life befits such a mysterious end. Kahn, who only saw a handful of building to their completion (notably The Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA and the Parliament Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh), was nevertheless recognized for his genius and spiritual understanding of concrete, space and light. Dubbed the “Jewish mystic” by his colleagues, Kahn had a secret life away from the office (not to mention his wife and family), siring two children by two different (brilliant in their own right) women. His only son, Nathaniel, grew up wondering why his father didn’t live with him and and why he scratched out his name and address on his passport before he died: Was it because he was leaving his wife or an attempt to escape the emotional web that lacked all the clarity and integrity of his architectural designs? So many decades later as Nathaniel visits his half-siblings and his father’s monumental, graceful buildings to reconcile the great man with the lousy father, his posthumous digging comes up with the hard, precious nuggets of what it means to be human.

MSNBC reports that test audiences were so irked that Kabbalah boy Ashton Kutcher wore a red string in Guess Who that the producers spent “something like” $100,000 to digitally remove it. It was Ashton’s idea to make his character Jewish to add some laughs, but director Kevin Sullivan nixed all tribal references at the last minute because bringing racism and religious issues to the table was just too darn complicated for said test audiences. The movie, a modern reversal on the racially provocative 60’s film Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner starring Sidney Poitier, casts Ashton as a white (religiously ambiguous) dude courting the daughter of Bernie Mac. Sounds funny enough, but we’ll wait for the DVD release, but cinemaphiles can post their reviews here.

Kosher wines have always enjoyed a healthy cottage industry, but true wine snobs have considered them subpar until now: A little Jewish winery called Covenant in the Napa Valley wants to run with the big dogs with their 2003 kosher Cabernet. Covenant owner Jeff Morgan discusses the challenge of producing a wine that adheres to the mevushal process but doesn’t taste like old socks; a noted wine critic calls the finished product “rich, opulent, medium to full-bodied, concentrated and tasty.”
Covenant Cabernet is “200% kosher,” according to Morgan, but at $85 a bottle—and count four glasses a bottle, four glasses for each person at the seder—we’ll have to stick to the Manischewitz this Passover.

Courtesy of Bangitout.com‘s Celebrity Kippa photo gallery. If he had a thought bubble above his head, what would it say?

The latest issue of J. profiles Matt Sosnick, a big league ball agent with a heart of gold. Ladies, he’s single with a penchant for Jewish internet dating sites—better brush up on your baseball stats!

Whew! We sure missed y’all last week, though we appreciated the extra time to put into our Purim costumes. Speaking of Queen Esther, Madonna chose to celebrate the salvation of the Jews by dressing as a nun for a London Kabbalah party next to her hubbie Guy Ritchie, who partied as the (pre-stroke, presumably) Pope. When Catholic groups protested (you know they’ve reserved a special circle of hell for their former anti-morality poster girl,) Madonna, never one to appreciate irony, replied that “she was happy that the pictures of her are out there because her father would be so proud. She said that when she was a girl she wanted to be a nun and she guesses that she’s still a nun at heart.”
Stay tuned as she finances the very first Kabbalah convent.

Just in time for Passover, Appleseed Records has released “Let My People Go! A Jewish & African American Celebration of Freedom,” a collection of Hebrew Haggadah prayers, traditional gospel, spoken word, snatches of speeches from the Civil Rights movement and a bit of klezmer. The theme of freedom and overcoming adversity ties it all together as African American folk team Kim and Reggie Harris and Rabbi Jonathan Kligler welcome a host of famous socially-active musicians on the CD. A modern, relevant choice for pre-seder musical entertainment. Available at Appleseed.

A small article in London’s Jewish Chronicle (registration required) reports that a teacher was fired after conducting a lesson about Judaism at Carlisle’s Trinity School. Why? She assigned a class of 12 year-olds to draw a picture of a circumcised penis. Headmaster Robert Birtwell said that the lesson was not “within the scheme of work set out for religious studies,” and the teacher faces a lifetime classroom ban. However, she might consider buying a Sharpie to conduct her curriculum of doodling dicks, snipped or not, in the boys’ bathroom.