MSNBC reports that Madonna, her husband, their two children and 4000 of her closest Kabbalist friends will celebrate Rosh Hashanah in Jerusalem this September, taking up three hotels and diverting the press corps from other, more serious news items. We’ll be enjoying apples and honey somewhere less holy, but we hope they’ll broadcast live if she performs her tefillin dance next to the Wall.

It’s our turn to cook tonight, so we unearthed these Kosher Cuban recipes from Something Jewish UK. Now we can’t decide between the Ropa Vieja or the Tilapia in Coconut Sauce…maybe our bros in Little Havana could help us out?

Came across Frum Dating Theory in the Jewish blogosphere, run by a guy named Mike who, “having experienced many failed relationships,” feels “fully qualified to provide critical analysis of the frum dating world, both shidduch and otherwise.”
We’re sorry the man can’t get a date, but sexual frusturation has made him damn funny. Some jewels:
“Make sure you choose your date locations and activities wisely. If the girl doesnt appreciate eating corn chips and slurpie in the 7-11 parking lot she’s probably a lesbian anyway.”
And:
“Determining ones own level of “hotness” is almost impossible for guys. For one, because most girls do not ask guys out, and, more importantly, girls are really only interested in money, so you never know what really draws them to the guy.”

We became entranced with Maroon 5 and their sexy, rail-thin singer after watching “This Love” in heavy rotation on MTV. J‘s celebrity watcher Nate Bloom reports that “movie star-handsome” Adam Levine’s home will be profiled on “Cribs” later this summer- we’ll watch and see if we can glimpse a mezzuzah on his door.

People magazine published a story on the Paskowitz Family Surf Camps this week (you won’t find it on their site since we swiped the print version from the doctor’s office.) Izzy Paskowitz, son of Israel’s first surfer “Doc” Paskowitz, runs surf camps for autistic kids in Malibu, which really warmed our sad little beaten-down hearts (we’re still licking our wounds from yesterday’s Jewschool flamefest.) The Paskowitz site radiates a sense of “kosher aloha” we wish there was more of on the Web.
And while we’re on the subject, we’ve always found the old “surfing the Net” metaphor so odd. What does clickety-clicking through screens while hunched in a chair have to do with surfing? Only thing we’ve found is that the locals are just as nasty.

The city of Hollywood, Florida has filed a suit against the Chabad Lubavitch for operating without a permit in a residential neighborhood. Granted, the Lubavitchers bought the homes in 1999 and hid their plans turn them into a synagogue, then applied for an exemption. But the South Florida Sun-Sentinel found “that the city had granted permits to other religious organizations in similar neighborhoods, or simply allowed them to operate without permits.” This should be interesting. We hope Hollywood City Hall is prepared.

How flattering to log on this morning and find Jmerica’s name in one of Jewschool‘s headlines! Sure, it’s paired with an obscenity, but we won’t let the bastards get us down.
This began when we (maybe too) gleefully pointed out a mistake on Jewsweek‘s Yada blog. For some reason, Mobius, Jewschool’s creator, took this personally and accused us of stealing news items (um, hello, this is the Internet; it’s all there for the taking and we always give props when someone else gets there first.) We take full responsibility for the comment spam incident, but homie didn’t have to post a Jmerica staffer’s freaking phone number so all the other irate blog nerds could– what?– crank call him? Not exactly mensch-like behavior. We know Mobius’ phone number but we’d never be petty enough to post it; besides, his mom would probably answer anyway.
Jmerica aspires to bring us all together; it bums us out greatly that a fellow Jewish blogger would flame another Jewish site. We’d been looking to Jewschool as an older, smarter, more political brother, but now we feel like an eighty-pound sixth grader in a junior high full of bullies with moustaches. Then again, site traffic is up 400% today, so even bad publicity is good publicity. Many thanks to all those Jmericans who defended us in Jewschool’s comments.

Most of the time we’d like to follow Jack Black around with a salt shaker full of Ritalin. But we like him because he seems like that spazzy kid from Hebrew school who couldn’t sit still long enough to remember the Sh’ma but hit the big time anyway, in spite of having few social skills and what we suspect is a mild case of Tourette’s.
He’s in the news ’cause he’ll soon be starring in the remake (of the remake) King Kong (not as the gorilla- an obvious case of miscasting) and has a reality show in the works. However, we find his quote in the Perspectives section of this week’s Newsweek the most entertaining news yet.
When asked with what woman he’d want to be stranded on a desert island, Jack replied:
“I’d have to go with Hillary Clinton. Forever could be, like, 50 years, so if I’m stranded with one person she better be kick-ass both upstairs and downstairs.”
Yeah, but how long would Hillary put up with his freak-self before she bashed him over the head with a coconut?

We love stories like this: The UK’s Telegraph tells of an unwed mother who gave up her baby boy to a Jewish adoption agency in Florida in 1968. Years later, she and her daughter try to find him via detectives and poring over old records to no avail. But bashert knows no bounds, especially in San Francisco…

There’s a world record for wife-carrying, so why not shofar-blowing?
JVibe reports that August 17, Jews will gather for the “The Great Shofar Blowout” in Massachusetts to set a world record for “most number of shofars sounded in unison.” Guinness World Records of London has determined there must be at least 100 shofars bleating to set a record, which could interrupt sheep mating in surrounding states.