• Did you hear the one about the two identical brothers who were raised separately, one as a Nazi and one as a Jew?

• Zosia Mamet says her Girls character, Shoshanna, isn’t a hipster because she cares too much.

• Bar Refaeli is rumored to be playing Cinderella in Tel Aviv’s Hanukkah musical.

• In a development that should shock no one, Drake and Chris Brown have been offered $1 million to fight each other (for charity).

Judd Apatow really, really prefers Emma Stone as a blonde:

The post Daily Jewce: Volkswagen Sausages, Shoshanna’s So Not a Hipster, and more appeared first on Jewcy.

Some would say I actually drink this scent; while I ensure I never smell intoxicatingly over-scented (I hope!) by limiting my application to two sprays at a time, I do tend to go through bottles of it quite quickly. The mention of my having to throw out my bottled security blanket had me in a pre-coffee tizzy, in which I may or may not have proceeded to nearest airport restaurant where I attempted to spritz perfume into a salad dressing container like a raging psychopath. Once I realized that this endeavor still meant I’d have to dump the remaining three quarters of a bottle into the trash, I returned to the Hassidic rave that was the check-in area to check my luggage, my fragrance and my dignity. I recently discovered a product that could save me from undergoing a similar embarrassment in the future, and thus feel the need to share it with all of you. The Sen7 Fragrance Atomizer will not only ensure you do not find yourself spritzing your scent into to-go containers at five in the morning, but it may just enable you to take your fragrance on the go with you on a daily basis. 

Here’s how it works: Sen7’s Atomizer comes with a funnel piece, allowing you to spritz into something far more chic than an airport take-out container. Once you fill ‘er up, the Sen7 operates on the push of a button and is certainly far more sleek than my supposedly chic airplane luggage. Available online and starting just under $40.00, the Atomizer is equally ideal for men who also prefer to not smell like anything other than their scent when they leave the gym or head into a business meeting. Pick your favorite color in the Sen7 (it even comes in metallics!) and you can carry your scent in your purse for a meeting, dinner date or – to San Francisco. 

The post The Jewish Mother’s Guide to Style : Sen7 Fragrance Atomizer appeared first on Jewcy.

Carl Paladino just can’t catch a break.

Yesterday Rabbi Yehuda Levin basically told a crowd of reporters that Paladino almost caused his death:

“I was in the middle of eating a kosher pastrami sandwich. While I was eating it, they come running and they say, ‘Paladino became gay!’ I said, ‘What?’ And then they showed me the statement. I almost choked on the kosher salami.”

Levin emphasised the fact that the salami was indeed kosher, but also took a minute to wish Paladino mazel tov for finding out he had a gay nephew. At this point, Paladino has pissed off the gays and the Jews.  Now all we need to find is that he went down to the Texas/Mexico border to be a Minuteman for vacation, held a hose up against a bunch of striking Union workers, and that he hates black people, and he have successfully have alienated everybody. Aim for the stars Carl.

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Laurie Gwen Shapiro is one such Lower East Side native whose films and novels draw from that cacophony and examine secular Jews making peace with their dysfunctional families and spiritual selves. She is nominated for a 2010 News and Documentary Emmy for coproducing with her brother David HBO’s Finishing Heaven about a Jewish filmmaker struggling to finish his film for thirty seven years, from back when Martin Scorsese was his T.A. at NYU. She is currently at work on a new novel, The O’Leary Bat Mitzvah.

Shapiro and I chatted up the secular High Holiday season experience at the nexus of New York and Jew, Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop in the city’s Flatiron District. Best known for her chick lit bestseller, The Matzo Ball Heiress, Shapiro’s work convincingly reasons that cultural Judaism is a valid form of Judaism.

"One tradition we do keep is, you know, food," she laughed. With her father, Australian husband, and their daughter, family congregates over Katz’s pastrami, Dr. Brown’s cream soda, and Russ and Daughters’ nova lox. The very act of eating delicious food together as family exudes the time-honored core of cultural Judaism. When she was a child, the Shapiro family fasted during the season and attended services on Rosh Hashanah with an underlying respect for her grandmother who preferred it. After she passed, emphasis was placed on tradition by her mother. And today, her agnostic father Julius would suggest, "You eat a honeycake and call it a day."

When no loved one’s happiness depends on it, what reason is there to force tradition? Now that Shapiro, surprised to find herself in the position, is the family’s matriarch, she is reticent to let the years of Jewish tradition stop at her stoop. "I completely guilted my daughter into going to Hebrew school and I’m proud of that." Plus, as Julius has theorized, if you want to raise Jewish kids who are non-religious, send them to Hebrew school.

"I figure if I’m going to make my daughter go to Hebrew school I might as well set foot inside a temple once a year." An urge for a regular schlep is trumped by circumstances like her wheelchair-bound father and her eight-year-old daughter Violet’s insistence that she prefers Christmas upon entering the holy house. Shapiro’s short piece "Oy, Christmas Tree, Oy Christmas Tree" in A Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt explores the complexity of goy desires in a Jewish mother’s household.

Funny happenings well known to the High Holiday frequenter, as painful as the experience is for a Santa-embracing girl, would fluster even further non-Jewish mates. Shapiro found a keeper in her husband Paul O’Leary when he passed the high-holiday test equivalent of the gefilte fish taste test-if they can make it through these marathon services, you know you’ve got a survivor. Tithe talks persuading the purchase of Israel bonds that conclude all services are clutch, and even better is the classic climax of some services, a list of forbidden relationships in case anyone forgets themselves while wearing their wine-goggles. When studying at Syracuse University, Shapiro encountered an enthusiastic Californian babe who was a virgin to Jewish traditions. Insistent on attending, when told to "dress nice" for service, her interpretation involved a sweater dress tight enough to force the eyeballs from the Hillel rabbi’s cranium. "It gets dicey when you’re getting sexy on the High Holidays," an unspoken understanding among most cultural Jews outside of Brighton Beach.  

Life goes on post-service and honeycake. "I took the Rosh-Hashanah appointment at the eye doctor," boasted Shapiro. Temple in the morning and doctor in the afternoon, who’s looking?

When there was still judgment to avoid, Shapiro’s mother would forbid her from going to the laundry room on the High Holidays in their Lower East Side former ladies’ garment worker co-op building that was teeming with watchful Orthodox neighbors. Now, as one half of an intermarriage and if in the face of the sanctimonious, Shapiro remarks, "There’s a loophole in Judaism for people like me, which is that I’m a mother. My husband doesn’t need to do anything but show up the day of our daughter’s bat mitzvah. It’s in the religion."

Independent women doing their thing with Judaism in the arts were also vividly portrayed on PBS this week in the re-airing of the strange 2003 documentary, A Cantor’s Tale. It featured, among the various zealous characters, several female cantors who broke through traditional restrictions to offer a higher spirituality for the community with their craft. On loyalty to tradition versus standing by the people she serves, Cantor Debbie Friedman said, "We need to turn to the people to see what the people want and what the people need. I think god would have wanted it that way." Another cantor argued, "It can’t be something that’s esoteric-it has to be something that’s visceral and germane to their lives." Meanwhile, some rabbis analyzing floundering temple service on the holy interface of YouTube conclude, "We’re losing Jews by the second." Like a second wind of the Enlightenment Period among Eastern European Jews in the late 18^th century who opened up to outside society, these cantors along with the culturally Jewish like Shapiro chose instead of abandoning a system that could not gel with their contemporary needs to adapt it in the name of familial, spiritual, and communal harmony.

Regardless of the fight against stifling traditions, the experience of the cultural Jew does not necessarily exist outside of traditions. "My husband went to Catholic school and doesn’t call himself a Christian," observed Shapiro, "but after Hebrew school, I don’t not call myself a Jew."

As she put the bread of her tuna fish sandwich to the side for the sake of the Emmy dress, she examined, "So what am I now? I’ve got an agnostic-scientist 90-year-old father, a lapsed Catholic Australian husband, and a daughter who prefers Christmas to Hannukah. This is my Jewish family, and we’re gonna eat honeycake."

The post You Eat a Honeycake and Call It a Day: Culturally Jewish on Rosh Hashanah is A-okay appeared first on Jewcy.

As a Jew and a stylist in the recession, I am consistently asked how to achieve expensive looking trends and classics on a budget. These challenges are often close to impossible. Over the past year, I have been forced to tell clients the seemingly obvious, i.e. finding top designers for under $100 is not an option and dressing oneself for a wedding requires a small monetary investment. However, it is my opinion that a woman should have the right to own any or all of fashion’s bare necessities, regardless of her budget. I set out to find what have been dubbed the basics of Fall 2010 – a great fitting pair of pants, a fantastic skirt, leopard print done well, the perfect coat and fur – all across the financial spectrum. After a great deal of research, here is what I discovered in the field. My test results proved that much to my surprise, affordable shops like GAP and Zara are designing pieces that are certainly worthy of praise, and a very lofty mazal.

I recently decided that I would start wearing big girl pants. I convinced myself that both the fashion writer and stylist aspects of me would be more fulfilled in trousers, and I was right. In search of the perfect lady pants, I came across GAP’s Black Pant Collection in every single September issue of every fashion publication. Then, after the media slapped me in the face with the message “you need to own these pants,” I gave in. I headed to the nearest GAP on a lunchbreak and sampled each and every pant option from The Boyfit to Super Straight to the Modern Boot to the supposed Perfect Trouser. After many a trial and tribulation in the dressing room, I am now the proud owner of a navy (yes, a navy pant in the Black Pant Collection) and black pair of their Modern Boot cut trousers. 70’s inspired and elongating to no end, these bottoms make me feel a way I rarely do- sexy and sophisticated. Who knew it would only take a pair of pants to make me feel like a grown up?! If you are looking to expand your corporate attire or if your closet’s in need of a sartorial infusion, hit the GAP and pick up a couple pairs of these. You can afford it, they’re all under $70.00.

I then popped into Zara, a Spanish import that at times can be the solution to any and all of your fashion
quandries. Zara tailors its looks to each country its located in and focuses on catering to the core trends of that locale’s customer. Naturally, this season meant tailoring, luxurious fabrics, leopard, fur, puff skirts and ladylike silhouettes for the U.S. of A. I rarely drool, especially not outside of Barneys or Bergdorf Goodman, but went positively gaga over the reversible shearling asymmetrical vest, the leather blouson skirts and the generous amounts of camel and taupe on the Zara floor. Perfect coats are also on their menu for September and there are luxuriously tailored options for everyone from the bohemian to the siren. For those who email and text me with questions regarding trends and classics on a budget, this season Zara could just be the answer. When I complained to Amaya Maurie, friend and editor of The Cool Kid List about my desire to invest in designer pieces with a simultaneous budgetary concern that there would not be enough to work with in my closet for Fall 2010, her response was simple – “that’s why Zara was invented.”

And so, this week’s Guide to Style will serve as my official Mazal to GAP and Zara for their affordable contributions to my (and hopefully soon, your) Autumn wardrobe. Visit GAP and Zara (who just opened their online shop this week!) online if you prefer to do your bargain hunting in the comfort of your own home.

The post The Jewish Mother’s Guide to Style: Mazal to the Mainstream appeared first on Jewcy.

A few years later she resurfaced on a network television show that I fail to recall now, but I decided for old times sake, I’d tune in.  I watched and watched but couldn’t figure out where she was.  There was some WASPy looking woman with a tiny nose…and…oh…my…god.  Jennifer Grey got her nose done!  I became disillusioned fast.  That feelings I had for her were quickly squashed, because clearly, Jennifer had sold her soul to her plastic surgeon.  Maybe she didn’t want to be pigeonholed as an “ethnic” actress, or maybe she had the same hangups that a dozen girls I’d grown up around had about their noses.

Fast forward to yesterday: it was announced that Jennifer Grey will be a contestant–along with Bristol Palin, “The Situation,” and David Hasselhoff– on Dancing With the Stars.  It all came full circle.  Jennifer Grey, 20 or so years past her glory, and sans Jewish nose, on a show with a bunch of has beens, hacks, and a douchebag from The Jersey Shore.  How far she’d fallen from being Baby, the girl at a Catskills resort who got all excited that she carried a watermelon and had the chutzpah to stick up to her father.

The post Jennifer Grey: When Jewish Nose Jobs go Wrong appeared first on Jewcy.

Please note that I, now as a shopper not a stylist, do not understand these women. I tend to spend my money on shoes and use them as an inspiration to work my way up. When trying to cut financial corners when dressing yourself, well-made shoes, handbags and a manicure are the fastest ways to come off looking "expensive," providing that you show an appropriate amount of skin and do not sport polyester or tube tops. That being said, throwing a great pair of cheapy shoes into the mix can’t hurt in the constant argument of quality versus quantity. For those who understandably lack the self-control to only buy a couple of pieces or for those who are stressed by having to continuously reinvent a small amount of closet contents, don’t fret – Payless has got your back, or your feet for that matter.

Taking a major cue from Target, Payless has recently introduced collections designed by fashion insiders to their customers who may or may not be so fashion savvy. The two collections as of late, Christian Siriano and Isabel Toledo have much and nothing in common. While designed for two completely different women, each have stylish and not-as stylish offerings for the Payless customer. Taking risks with both lines is the way to go – opt for their highest heels and the pairs that tend to exude a confident simplicity. When it comes to buying cheap shoes, choose wisely. Steer clear of oversized detailing and fabrics with too much of a sheen. Opt for interesting, more risky items that still emulate your personal style. Being that this is my column, I figured I’d feature the one’s that could land themselves on my feet this coming season. After all, stomping the fashion week tents in discounted duds worn in the right ways can give one a victorious sense of sticking it to the fashionable man. If it were up to me, I’d swipe my credit card for the bargain price of Isabel Toledo’s Sliver Bootie or Siriano’s Empress Dress boot in a New York minute.

The post The Jewish Mother’s Guide To Style: Designer Lines for Payless appeared first on Jewcy.

"The video, shot by amateur YouTube videographer "lefthandedart," opens with chants of "No Mosque Here!" as it traces a black man wearing a white cap walking through the crowd. It’s not clear where he’s coming from or why the videographer had decided to film him, but the man seems to be trailed by a cameraman, a thin man who wanders behind him in a blue sweatshirt and what seems to be a woman hectoring him. He shoos her away angrily. There is a call of "coward!" "I’m not even Muslim!" he exclaims. Suddenly a big guy in a blue construction helmet is in his face. The chant of "No Mosque Here!" flares up again." (Via Mediaite)

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"We deal with mystery; there is no halachic response," Weil said. "We’re dealing with homophobia within the Orthodox society that is not even based in a real halachic reason, but is based in hatred and fear. … We haven’t even gotten to the point where our rabbis [the group has a number of rabbinic advisers] have even been able to address the halachic issue."

This doesn’t strike me as hyperbole; it seems pretty much in step with comments I’ve heard other gay members of the Orhodox community.

But it is strange that a culture which has spent thousands of years living in societies that force us to hide our faith can also condone forcing people within the faith to hide their personal feelings from the world.  

For what it’s worth, I’m neither Orthodox nor gay, but I imagine a religion and culture that prides itself on being progressive should be able to move past this fairly easily. 

I applaud Bat-Kol for doing what they do.  

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