The Most Awesome Events of Jewish 2007

You can find countdown lists all over the place this time of year; this morning I watched numbers 25 through 19 of E!'s 25 Most Memorable Swimsuit Moments of 2007. Jewcy's list has a lot less Lindsay Lohan, but only here will you find our contributers plus other assorted machers listing their favorite Jewish moments of the past non-Jewish calendar year.

1.) Andy Bachman becoming the rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn. I know this might not seem like a big deal, but it is—having a visionary taking up the reins at a very traditional institution in the heart of the Jewish world, and then turning that institution on its head. Big, big deal, at least when we think about which rabbis will be running the next generation of Jewish communities.—Jordie Gerson

2.) Encounter—the best thing to happen to the american jewish community in years.—Jordie Gerson

3.) Encounter, an "educational organization dedicated to providing Jewish diaspora leaders from across the religious and political spectrum with exposure to Palestinian life," brought close to 120 Jewish leaders to Bethlehem and Hebron this year, including many "unusual suspects" from Orthodox and centrist to right-wing backgrounds. Encounter groups remain the only significant Jewish presence in Palestinian areas of the West Bank since before the second intifada, other than military personnel.—Elisa Albert 4.) I'm Not There. Bobby Zimmerman is a Jew for the ages: as an artist he remains intensely committed, un-pin-down-able, and honest; as an inspiration to other artists he is a gift that keeps on giving.—Elisa Albert 5.) Shalom Auslander (sort of) thumbs his nose at God's wrath, and gives us all a peek into his religion-warped head in the process.—Elisa Albert

6) Peter Cole received a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2007. Cole's many great projects include arranging a reading tour that brought the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali and the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai, together, to a bunch of places in the US. Cole is a truly brilliant artist, a translator, publisher (Ibis Editions), poet, and all around incredible force for good. Or, in the words of the MacArthur folks: "In a region mired in conflict, Cole's dedication to the literature of the Levant offers a unique and inspiring vision of the cultural, religious, and linguistic interactions that were and are possible among the peoples of the Middle East."—Edward Schwarzchild 7.) Spending New Year's Eve in Jerusalem.—Maya Wainhaus

8.) Becoming Facebook friends with my 17-year-old Orthodox cousin.—Maya Wainhaus

9.) This season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.—Maya Wainhaus

10.) Traveling in Israel with Livnot U'Lehibanot.—Maya Wainhaus

11.) In 2007 we launched VeryHotJews and learned there were a lot of kindred spirits out there who shared our love of sexy Hebes, flowery prose, succulently un-Kosher bacon, singing classic rock as loudly as possible and sticking it to Hitler. To our awesome community of smokin’-hot M.O.T.s and Jew-loving gentiles: We love you and fully expect 2008 to be a massive kvell-a-thon.—Simon Glickman

12.) Taylor Mays, #2, University of Southern California free safety. This second team All-American has the concentration of a Talmudic scholar and takes people out like a Mossad hitman (not bad, eh?). He is an incredible football player who credits his maturity to when he was bar mitzvahed. I was at this game in the freezing rain.—Pat Sauer 13.) Philip Roth, for Exit Ghost and the metaphorical death of Nathan Zuckerman, but also for Roth's literal life. Give the man the Nobel Prize and let him die in peace.—Pat Sauer

14.) Norman Mailer, for dying with pugnacity, if not dignity, winning the Bad Sex in Fiction award for his final novel The Castle in the Forest, where Adolph is born of incest, gets his rocks off watching bodies burn and is fascinated by poop. In The New Republic, Ruth Franklin said, "The reader strong-stomached enough to make it to the end of Norman Mailer's new novel, which comprises nearly five hundred of the most revolting pages in recent American fiction, will discover a refreshing oasis of reason."—Pat Sauer 15.) The Coen brothers are awesome for returning to form after the stylized nonsense of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. Cormac McCarthy wouldn't have seemed like their milieu, but they took his stark hard-rain's-gonna'-fall ethos and made a grim poem on the whether violence will always win out in the end—it will, even if decent men like Tommy Lee Jones try and believe otherwise. No Country for Old Men has a bit of the Coens' black comedy, but it's deeper and angrier, and other than Javier Bardem's ridiculous Prince Valiant haircut, it's got few of their old prankster impulses.—Pat Sauer

16.) Benny Shassburger, the office everyman whom the audience was meant to identify with in Joshua Ferris' great debut novel Then We Came to the End. Ferris took a big literary chance by writing it in a royal "we" narrator that made everyone part of the downsizing. Thus, Benny with his "corkscrew curls" and "quick laugh" is our stand-in, the amiable fellow who deserves to be the keeper of the totem pole…plus he's got a MySpace page.—Pat Sauer

17.) A couple of entries who would make my Best and Worst list: Noah Feldman and Shalom Auslander, The Bad Boys whose public criticism of various aspects of Orthodox life was embarrassing, annoying, mean-spirited and worth pondering (at least privately).—Gary Rosenblatt

18.) Harvey Weinstein married Georgina Chapman. I'm not sure if that falls under awesome or disaster.—Amy Odell

SEE ALSO: The Biggest Disasters of Jewish 2007

This is, of course, a pretty subjective list, not to mention highly personal (I bet you haven't Facebook-friended Maya's Orthodox cousin.) Add your own best moments of 2007 in the comments section.