Anyone else received this in their inbox with the subject line “Fwd: To the Egyptian Rioters”?

Dear Egyptians: In the event of any damage or destruction of the pyramids, please note, we will not rebuild.
Sincerely, The Jews

I know, it’s funny. Maybe not in a guffawing, new Wayne’s World-kind of way, but it made me snort.

But a fellow chavurah listserver followed up the laugh with this thoughtful response:

I appreciate that Jews have used humor for decades as a way to cope with difficult situations. We make jokes to ease the tensions in our lives, for it is better to laugh at ourselves than to weep. But, this is not a joke in that tradition. This belittles the importance of the Egyptian struggle – a matter of freedom, of liberty and of life.
…
Pro-democracy demonstrators have been battling against government goons and, in the midst of all this, they put their safety on the line to protect artifacts of world history and heritage. The youth of Egypt linked arms to protect the National Museum from Mubarak’s security forces and thugs, who were ordered to create chaos and anarchy. The regime is trying to silence the people’s human right to peaceful protest and dissent. Pro-democracy activists have been attacked and silenced. They have been arrested and beaten up. They have been murdered.
…
We as Jews should support the rights and dignity of peoples throughout the world. We should not stand behind a dictator who has held on to power for over thirty years. We should not prop up a regime that arrests, imprisons and tortures political dissidents and journalists. We should support the voice of the Egyptian populace, which has come together from all walks of life to demand free and fair elections, a new constitution and regime change to lift the people out of poverty and into a brighter future. Egypt has lit a match out of darkness, will you blow out their light?

The writer, Andrea Guttin, is a Savannah-area lawyer and activist who brings a voice to those who can’t speak for themselves in our own country. She shared a couple of links about folks on the ground: OppressedCairo.com and an ABCNews link about her boyfriend, who rushed halfway around the world from Austin, TX to check on his grandmother hunkered down in her Cairo apartment hiding from the chaos.

I want to thank Andrea and these other writers for reminding me that a cheap laugh is sometimes at the expense of someone else’s dignity, and that as Jews, our support of the Egyptian people risking violence and death for their freedom is no fucking joke. The oppressed people of the world are standing up, toppling dictators and turning their brave faces towards a fairer, more just future. Even though this email isn’t in as poor taste as say, Groupon’s Tibet Superbowl ad, I think we can do better:

What would be more ironic AND socially-responsible is if a Jewish/Israeli task force were at the ready to help Egypt rebuild what has been destroyed in these last few weeks. May I suggest a uniform of t-shirts from JewnionLabel?

While Israel’s officials trying to figure out how to handle the chaos goin’ on next door in the Land of the Pharoahs, it appears that Jerusalem residents might need to prepare for a whole new level of tourist:

Three separately-shot videos last week of a glowball UFO doing a 1am fly-by over The Dome of the Rock, right in the heart of the Old City:

Of course, the cynics experts are already doing their very best to explain it away, but you know me, I’m a believer. Look at this one:

How you gonna fake the surprise of the lady who muses “We seen ’em in Miss-ippi lahk this…”?

Shame the otherworldly visitors didn’t stay for a nice walking tour and a schwarma. Maybe they could do a lil’ touchdown on the Great Pyramid next and distract everyone enough to calm down?

No, that’s not a spam title—I really have discovered the secret to feeling young, sexy and vibrant:

Attend your synagogue’s annual business meeting.

El Yenta Man and I were by far the youngest people on Sunday afternoon at Temple Mickve Israel (which my mother-in-law never wrote or said without also adding “the third oldest congregation in the United States”) in a packed sanctuary of folks listening to the state of this particular union.

There were a few exceptions, including our new Parnas (that’s what we call the President of the congregation; it’s one of the vestigial Sephardic traditions left by its founding members), but mostly I sort of felt like a spring filly amongst the older, wiser horses in the pasture. This was a welcome relief from the fancy dancy magazine party we attended the night before, where I was the only woman in heels less than four inches and had to keep fighting the urge to tuck in the brassiere straps of tipsy 20-somethings.

This year’s meeting couldn’t top the shocking drama of last year when a strange surprise vote deposed the rabbi of 20+ years, but there have certainly been a ton of shake-ups lately at this small Southern synagogue: The outgoing Parnas said that these weren’t the worst two years of his life, but they came pretty darn close. The community has been painfully split over the rabbi’s firing, causing rifts in decades-long friendships. The main administrator announced her resignation last week. And there’s the formidable task of searching for a new rabbi that will meet the needs of a congregation that has twice as many opinions as it does paying members. It’s not as sparky and earth-shattering as what’s going on in, say, Egypt, but it’s rocking this community pretty hard.

Looking out in to the sea of gray (and sorry, balding) heads in front me among the pews, I felt humbled and grateful. These are people who have given significant portions of their incomes and spare time to this congregation throughout their lifetimes—some of them go back several generations. My in-laws and their wonderful friends are included in this group, as well as Mr. David Byck, who was honored in Savannah’s Business Hall of Fame (watch the video to find out what a “person of quality” really is.) I may not agree with many of them on their politics or what makes an exciting Saturday service, but Mickve Israel has survived 275 years as a place where Jews of all flavors are welcome because they—and those who came before—took the effort to make it so. And also, as one congregant pointed out in a moving speech, it is important to come together and honor Rabbi Belzer’s contribution to that legacy.

It’s not a secret that I do not love going to synagogue. Any synagogue. Many of my generation feel the same. If it were only more…spiritual, we say. If it were more meaningful, more relevant, more child-friendly. But at the same time, we still want a traditional Jewish place. We want what we grew up with, the V’havta and the Sh’ma, the songs and Purim megillah reading and a place to cry happy tears when our children read from the Torah at their b’nai mitzvot. As American Jews or Jewish Americans or whatever we want to call ourselves, we need a place to pray, study and learn from our elders about how this elastic, hard-to-pin-down thing called our religion/heritage/culture works.

So in addition to making me feel cute and young, the annual meeting served to help me understand how important it is to make a little effort. Experiencing a sense of belonging might be about putting in before you get exactly what you want back out. If you want a place to worship Jewishly and your children to grow up knowing who they are, you’ve got to show up. And pay your dues, of course. Even if they’re reduced and you’re on a payment plan. (Look, I’ve been out of work for the better part of a year and half, but one day, one of these days, I’mma gonna write a fat check in the name of my mother-in-law for some brand new prayer books that read left to right.)

What I’ve found is that no matter how staid or dusty any synagogue leadership might be, everyone knows that it’s time to bring in some fresh air and new ideas, even the wacky ones. My Facebook profile lists “Hippie Jew” as my religion, yet at the reception after the meeting, I was approached to be on the public worship committee by the patriarch of one Savannah’s oldest Jewish families.

I was thinking I’d like to start with tambourines for everyone.

So much rawr-ing in the last few weeks about Amy Chua’s shocking mothering memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother!

The explosion began with Chua’s piece in the Washington Post called “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” where she proudly announced her strict parenting regimen of three-hour violin and piano practice sessions, shame-inducing insults and a no-sleepovers-or-anything-fun-EVER policy for her two daughters. Chua insists that the kind of cruel discipline present in first and second generation Chinese (and other immigrant) families is necessary to produce skilled, responsible adults—or at least avoid raising the kind of bratty, entitled shmucks who seem to be overtaking our country.

Folks, especially Jewish mothers, are pissed. The New York Times reports Chua has been called a “monster” and received death threats for her provocative support of a parenting style that’s put many into therapy for life.

Personally, I’m impressed Chua has enough confidence in her parenting skills to share them as if they’re actually working. I mean, how do you know? When they get into a good college—but then binge drink and screw the debate team? When they score a fat job after graduation but develop a secret heroin problem? I want my kids to be happy, productive citizens, and all I know is that they absolutely cannot be trusted to figure how do this on their own.

While I worry terribly over their self-esteems, and El Yenta Man cannot seem to give up his penchant for getting a little too involved in science fair projects, I kind of believe in Chua’s philosophy of demanding they do their homework, respect their elders and work their little tushies off to excel:

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up.

Fundamental stuff, no? Not that anyone would ever accuse us of being Tiger parents: Last night at 10pm, one kid had literally have his iPod pried away from him because he said he wouldn’t go to sleep until he surpassed Level 16 on “Angry Birds” while the other one was riding a broom around the house in her underwear pretending to be Witchy Lady Gaga.

You’d think we could count ourselves as doing something right since Yenta Boy practices piano for hours a day without being asked. Yet this does this not puff my pride up like a mother peacock whose progeny has scored with every hen in the yard. Why? Because instead of tackling the simple arrangement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” that his teacher assigned him months ago, he gleefully bangs out the same damn jaunty three chords of Cee Lo Green’s “F*ck You.”

At least he sings the clean lyrics?

Well, this certainly was fun to see on Saturday night—but really, do American TV audiences get references to sitting shivah, Mishnah and Cee Lo Green spitting Yiddish?

According to a recent Gallup poll, American Jews are the happiest people out of any religious group:

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is based on a survey of more than 550,000 people who were scored on a number of categories, including emotional and physical health, work environment and healthy behaviors. Jews were placed in the No. 1 spot, with an overall “well-being” score of 69.8, followed by nonreligious or atheists/agnostics, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims and other religions. Protestants scored the lowest, at 64.8.

I guess this means all the therapy is finally paying off.

(Thanks to Amanda ZR for reminding me of this post!)

Growing up with a feminist mother who also happened to own a modeling agency, I am no stranger to the paradox of the Miss America pageant. Yes, for 90 years it’s been about pretty girls with stupendous orthodontia parading around in nude pantyhose and bathing suits and high heels. But it’s also about talent, presence and community service and scholarship—the winner gets her post-graduate college education fully funded. Yeah, I know—you’re rolling your eyes. No one watches it ’cause these girls are smart, right?

In the early 80s, with a mouthful of dental hardware and the slumped shoulders of one whose chest entered puberty before the rest of her, I was in no danger of being swept up into the sparkly sequined world of teenage pageantry. Though my mother’s agency occasionally brushed into this realm when a stage mother pushed headshots of her pancake-make-up’ed little princess into Scottsdale’s small fashion industry, I remained far on the fringe of rhinestone tiaras and Vaseline smiles. I thought it was all so weird and false, especially at the local levels it seemed like only the snottiest, super holier-than-thou girls entered beauty contests. No one had to tell me that that pageants were not a place for nearsighted Jewish girls with big boobs.

But when the BIG show from Atlantic City aired, I was always in front of the TV, making fun of the opera singers and ballet dancers (unoriginal, IHMO) and being awed by the pianists and harpists (is there anything more captivating than a gorgeous woman playing a giant wall of strings?) I never felt much of a kinship with the inevitably vanilla contestant from my home state of Arizona and I definitely had an unreasonable prejudice against the Texans (something about combo of the drawl, the big hair and obviously false dental veneers offended me.) I usually rooted for the African-American women and practically choked on my retainer when Vanessa Williams won in 1984.

Come to think of it, that may have been the last time I watched the Miss American pageant. After they dethroned VWill when her (admittedly racy) nudey pictures surfaced in Penthouse, the whole phony-innocence ideal of the “perfect American woman” seemed ridiculous. I decided whomever it is wearing the sparkly crown and waving her hand like she’s got the palsy, she probably ain’t representin’ me or mine.

But it’s 2011, and whaddya know—we got ourselves a nice Jewish girl to cheer on come Saturday night. I can’t claim to have a whole lot in common with Lauren Galler Rabinowitz, the current Miss Massachusetts: She’s a former champion ice dancer, a Harvard graduate whose been recognized for her poetry and will attend any medical school she likes in pediatrics. She’s a world-class pianist related to Leonard Bernstein, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and has already raised tens of thousands of dollars for charities that benefit sick and hungry children.

She’s adorable, her teeth are fabulous, and she’s a genuine mensch (too bad Yiddish doesn’t have a feminist version of that word, but let’s say in this era is just means “good human being.) And a fine reason to break my pageant boycott. Listen to some of Lauren’s cute Dr. Suess-y poetry here (I’m positive her Harvard poetry thesis was much more complex) as well as vote for her as your favorite.

You may already know that if Lauren wins, she wouldn’t be the first Jewish Miss America: Bess Myerson shocked the world when she won the crown in 1945, becoming a “modern day Queen Esther” as she stood up to anti-Semitism and bigotry throughout her reign and after. She went on to work for the Anti-Defamation League, served as Ed Koch’s mayorial campaign chair, ran for Senate in 1977, raised over a million dollars for Israel and worked for the state of New York. She survived ovarian cancer and scandal in the 80’s, and by all accounts, is living out her golden years in Florida. I’ve give anything to be able to watch Saturday’s pageant with her.

So the chances of another Jewish Miss American are obviously one out of fifty, which isn’t too bad, and they’re even higher if the judges are as sick of Celine Dion covers as I am. You know El Yenta Man will have no patience for this and my kids will be out of town with their grandpa, so it’ll just be me and my adolescent judgements on the couch. Let me know if you want to come over; I’ll make Jiffypop and we can try on each other’s headgears and braid each other’s hair.