How Israel Trained and Equipped Georgia's Army   Noah Shachtman, editor of Wired's blog on national security, and in my mind one of the best reporters on that beat, has a great post on how Israel's military connection to Georgia is fueling increasing discord between Israel ... [Read more]

Sammy Harkham: GeniusIt was after thirty years of thinking of myself a semi-scholarly critic of Jewish American comic art, and fifty-plus years since I discovered Mad Comics to be the soul of my childish literary pleasures, that I came across the work and world of ... [Read more]

Surprised by GodOne Tuesday night , I sat at a local cafe with a cappuccino and my just-purchased copy of Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath; all of my reading for pleasure seemed to be about Judaism at this point. I had already begun to understand why, on ... [Read more]

Think Globally, Act: Wind Energy is a Total REC A wind turbine and an oil rig walk into a bar. The oil rig turns to the turbine and says, “Dude, I think I’m running out. I don’t know what I’m going to do… do you have a plan?” The turbine looks at the oil rig and shrugs, ... [Read more]

A Half-Hearted Defense of AgriProcessors Since the raid on the Agriprocessors plant on May 12th, bashing the kosher meat giant has become something of a sport. Everyone from the New York Times to failed messiah to yours truly has taken a few shots (some cheap, some well-deserved) at the ... [Read more]

The New Jew Canon: The Selected Poetry of Yehuda AmichaiThe New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or ... [Read more]

Eligible Jewish Bachelors Wear Jewcy Thongs on Their Heads Jewcy LA stepped out at the JConnect Tu b'Av event last night, and this picture pretty much sums up the evening.   This morning, a Jewcy friend e-mailed: "Dude, I felt like a piece of meat at this event! Never seen ... [Read more]

Are "Minority Discounts" for Israeli Arabs Reverse Discrimination? Home Center, an Israeli home wares chain, has been offering  a secret discount to Arabs. When customer Eli Chai discovered and reported this last week, a Home Center spokesperson explained, “Home Center offers a wide range of attractive ... [Read more]

Must Have: Obamica Yarmulkes from Vanity Kippah Shmuly Tennenhaus’ life moto goes something like this: “If God gives you lemons, make Kippahs out of them.” The outcome? Introducing Vanity Kippahs, a new line of politically-inspired Kippot that encourages Jews and non-Jews ... [Read more]

Ehud Olmert: The Failure of Style Over Substance Ehud Olmert's announcement that he would step down from office caught no one by surprise. The drama surrounding the announcement was typical of Olmert, a Prime Minister who has always been much more style than substance. Israel treats ... [Read more]

Gay Black Jewish Klansmen: Picture of the Day, Aug. 14 2008 Another quick one, as requested by David Choe. The picture of the day. Anything I say will be extraneous. Except: this makes me feel warm inside.  [Read more]

Izzy Grinspan Chooses to Besmirch Joyous Occasion Izzy Grinspan, previously in charge of Jewcy's editorial operations, has surfaced in another Yiddishly-inflected publication, recently. Jewcy spies (in the form of Jewcy's original art director, Dave Choe) sent word -- and a scanned ... [Read more]

The Heretic: Exploiting Undocumented Workers Exploits Judaism Undocumented workers, always one phone call away from deportation and a moment away from being summarily fired, are afraid to object to abusive working conditions. This makes them ripe for exploitation, as has been amply documented, and ... [Read more]

The Protocols: Are Jews to Aquatics what African-Americans are to Basketball? I’m sorry. I really am. I had an entirely different column outlined for this week, all about interpreting the book and recent film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited through the lens of the twentieth century American Jewish experience ... [Read more]

Halakhic Striptease: Avi Nesher's The Secrets During the 1980s, Israeli filmmakers were preoccupied with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the 1990s, they explored the dynamic between Israel's urban centers and the country's periphery. The past decade has witnessed a rise in ... [Read more]

The New Jew Canon: The Plot Against AmericaThe New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or ... [Read more]

How to Avert Future Jewish Catastrophes in One Easy Step! We Jews just love to beat ourselves up. We can't even get depressed without feeling guilty about it. This weekend is Tisha b'Av, the one time of year when Jews get to have a good old-fashioned bitching session. We weep and wail and ... [Read more]

Must Have: Onili's Phat Trax Rising music sensation and Israeli-born artist Onili has come a long way since her days as a teenager recording songs on a four-track. With her combined singing, writing, DJ-ing, producing, promoting, and performing talents, Onili is now a ... [Read more]

Is Israel Cultivating A Neglectful Society? Lately there have been a number of high profile neglect cases in Israel. We’ve learned that many Holocaust survivors live in abject poverty. A woman revered as a spiritual authority was found to have abused and neglected many of her children. ... [Read more]

What Tisha B’Av Can Teach Us About AgriProcessors Tisha B’Av begins tomorrow night, and Jews all over the world will be fasting, reading the book of Lamentations, and thinking about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem that took place almost two thousand years ago. But Tisha B’Av ... [Read more]