The Amsterdam flat where Anne Frank lived with her family before going into hiding in the famous “attic” across the city will soon house refugee writers from around the world, giving them a safe place to live and work. The Christian Science Monitor reports that various Dutch relief groups have conspired to buy the building and update it to provide asylum to those whose voices may never be heard otherwise. Foundation chairman Maarten Asscher says “It is of rare historical symbolism that writers can finish their work at the exact location where Anne Frank started her diary.”
The article touches on what some consider the exploitive nature of the “Anne Frank industry,” (the reason we opted to explore some of Amsterdam’s more, uh, cheerful offerings on our post-college sojourn rather than join the throng of tourists crawling through her depressing little rooms) but using Anne’s legacy to provide oppressed writers with a clean, well-lighted place seems gracious rather than greedy.

At the risk of skating too close to the line of intellectual pretension, we will admit we read more than comics and trashy celeb mags over the weekend. We were intrigued with Rebecca Dreisinger’s interview with activist/journalist Yossi Klein Halevi in the latest issue of The Sun (perhaps the last advertisement-free magazine on earth- Subscribe! Subscribe! Subscribe!) Halevi, an Orthodox Jew, regularly prays with Christians and Muslims in the hopes of distilling the simple understanding that could lead to peace in the Middle East; his insights are remarkable in that they didn’t make us angry.
The whole interview can be dowloaded in PDF format, if you’re interested. In the meantime, we’ll get back to babes and a little harmless lashon hara.

Online auctioneer house eBay has pulled a series of paintings entitled 101 Views of Jerusalem by Montreal artist John David Margo because they were painted with human blood, a feature which violates eBay’s house rule of “trafficking in human body parts.” (And that’s why you can’t buy a new liver online, holmes.) The pieces are reported to be “unremarkable” save the fact that the pigment was supposedly culled from a blood drive attended by Ontario-area Jews, Muslims and Christians and frankly, we’re unimpressed: it’s been done before.
Image is of Margo’s controversial “Boom Boom Goes to New York,” depicting a plane in the shape of the Arabic word for “God” heading towards collision with a Manhattan skyline created out of Hebrew pictographs. In our humble and uneducated opinion: Tired, pedantic, cheesy.
In other, less bloody eBay Jewish news, ten truly talented artists have created original tzedkah boxes to benefit the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey; get yer bid on now.

We’ve been missing Luke Ford and his dissecting, no-holds-barred take on the Jewish world and beyond, so we stumbled around the ‘Net looking for his new blog home. Cripes. While we found his familiar horny ramblings interdispered with Orthodox references at LukeFord.net, we discovered a whole different world at LukeFord.com. No, we’re not going to link it because we don’t need the tsuris:
Y’all, it takes a lot to make us blush, and Luke’s sister site is scary, hardcore porn (and we mean the freaky, don’t-log-on-at-work-or-in-front-your-spouse type if sh*t.) In our little quest to track who we once thought was a highly respected Jewish blogger, we have found out much more about Luke Ford than we ever wanted to: not only is he a seasoned porn pimp, he only converted to Judaism a few years ago. His stepmother acknowledges he is probably a highly-functioning sufferer of multiple personality disorder but is not surprised that he has achieved much success in both the Jewish world and the porn scene:
“We feel very sorry for the Jewish community whom we know would not approve of what he is doing either. While being a commentator on the industry, he is also fascinated by it, somewhat involved in it, and supported by it.”
Wow. Another idol toppled. But hey, if he can reconcile Orthdoxy with foxxy, it’s his trip. But. Wow.

Oy, look what we found on WeirdJews–luuuv those folks.
Shabbat Shalom!

Lawyers representing Kuwaiti and Yemenite detainees at the military-run prison at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba say American interrogators have been telling the inmates they shouldn’t trust their attorneys “because they’re Jewish.” According the NY Times article, “having an interrogator urge someone to distrust his lawyer would be unconstitutional in the United States, where due process and the right to a lawyer are guaranteed. But whether and to what extent the Constitution applies at Guantanamo and its detention center have always been murky.”
While these prisoners are considered “enemies of the state” and may or may not be subject to the same rights as, say, an American accused of terrorism, such anti-Semitic tactics will surely work against the guys in green. Perhaps they think they’ll scare these guys out of a fair trial, but surely even the craziest Islamic fundamentalist knows that the best American lawyers are Jewish.

Paranormal Jew Uri Geller has offered to help an English village rid itself of a 16th century curse inscribed on a lump of polished granite. The village of Carlisle has been plagued by floods, disease and a crumbling economy since the “Cursing Stone” was installed in a local museum in 2001; city officials have been stonewalled (he he he) in their efforts to destroy it. Geller has no fear that the rock that was intended to deter rapists and pillagers by the Archbishop of Glasgow will retain its destructive influences against his superior powers: “I believe the curse can be exorcised. I will use my pendulum and cleanse the stone of any evil forces. After that I would like to keep it in my garden. It is a work of art,” he said.
After that, he can come and expel the possums from under our house, which we’re positive are responsible for our current financial duress. Or, it might be tax season.

Because there’s been a dearth of hot chicks in this space this week, the powers that be deem it necessary to post Britney Spears’ glowing journal entry regarding her adoration of Kabbalah, written in the first person, with no misspellings!
An excerpt: “There came a point where not even my family or my advisors had the answers I needed. The answers I was looking for were all in my heart. Through Kabbalah, I was able to look within myself, clear all the negative energy and turn my life around.”
That’s nice dear, but as far we can tell, you’re still generating plenty of negative energy, uh press.

The mohel accused of infecting three male infants with herpes after performing the obscure circumcision ritual of metzizah b’peh is NOT a carrier of the herpes virus, according to the esteemed Rabbi Yonah Bookstein of Beachhillel.com, and therefore could not have passed on the disease to the babies. Rabbi Yonah writes in an e-mail received yesterday that his colleague, Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, was tested while under investigation by the DA and given the clean bill of health, but as of yet no media outlets (save our humble operation) have picked up the story. According to Rabbi Yonah, the mohel‘s professional and personal life has been nearly destroyed by the claims that he carries the virus responsible for killing one of the infants and will obviously have a difficult time setting the record straight after such sensational attention.
Says Rabbi Yonah: I have known Rabbi Fischer since 1993. He is one of the most careful, and hygienic mohelim I have ever seen in my life. I trusted him with my son