Ladies and gentleman, stars have collided. Lena Dunham has interviewed Judy Blume, and it’s being published as an 80-page mini-book in The Believer. Two of the greatest women in the world sat down together, admiring each other’s work, and chatting about “writing, celebrity, sex, censorship, and favorite breakfasts,” according to McSweeney’s. I wonder what their favorite breakfasts are? Mine is the one where I’ll have that interview in my hands, and I read it as I devour my muesli.

The generation gap doesn’t stand a chance—perhaps because Dunham and Blume have reading in common. “When we, as young women, are given the space to read, the act becomes a happy, private corner we can return to for the rest of our lives,” Dunham explains in her introduction. “We develop this love of reading by turning to stories that speak to the most special, secret parts of us. And here comes Judy Blume.”

Here she comes! McSweeney’s offered us a little preview at what we would be getting, and it’s pretty amazing stuff.

JB: My first favorite books were the ones in the Betsy-Tacy series. But they weren’t popular in school. I didn’t know anyone else who was reading them. I liked Nancy Drew, used my allowance to buy one every week at the Ritz Bookstore. In sixth grade I made up books to give book reports on.
LD: You invented them?
JB: I did.
LD: You would report on a book that had never existed?
JB: I did.
LD: Were you ever caught?
JB: Nope. I always got an A on those.
LD: That’s incredible.

Oh, LD and JB. You guys are the best. Who said Friday the 13th was bad luck?

(Photo by Janette Beckman/Getty)

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Ari Folman, director and star of the Academy Award nominated Waltz with Bashir, is at it again, but this time, he’s writing and directing an animated film about the life of Anne Frank. Frank’s father Otto has given Folman full access to the archives at Anne Frank Fonds Basel, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“Bringing the Anne Frank Diary to all screens is a fantastic opportunity and challenge,” Folman said. “There is a real need for new artistic material to keep the memory alive for younger generations.”

Folman’s new film will be family-oriented, unlike his past films and television shows. It begins production in 2014.

The exploration of memory, trauma and history is nothing new for Folman, who excavated his own memories of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to make Waltz With Bashir. He also created the En terapia, the Israeli TV series about psychoanalysis adapted by HBO as In Therapy. But the move to more family-oriented material will be a new one for the Israeli writer/director.

Let’s hope that Ron Ben-Yishai can get a role in this film, too. That deep, deep voice should play a prominent part of every film from here on out. Hear, hear!

If you don’t remember, or haven’t seen, Waltz with Bashir, watch a trailer here and get reacquainted with Folman’s unique cinematic style.

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard that Tila Tequila, the MySpace sensation turned reality star (remember A Shot at Love?), who announced she had converted to Judaism in 2012, has a new alias: Hitila. That’s right. As Liel Liebowitz reported on our sister site, Tablet Magazine, earlier this week, Tequila declared on her blog that having been rejected by the Jews, she is now a Hitler sympathizer.

To drive the point home, Tequila posted an elaborate illustration of herself as sexy Hitler, practically straddling the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on her Facebook page. It has since been removed, but not before being circulated throughout the World Wide Web.

Tequila even wrote a song reflecting on her new alter ego and worldview, drawing from those old school, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

A few key lyrics:

Every time you hear my name it’s going down, goin down X 4
Feeding yo mind with GMOs
while givin yo babies flo flo
not flo rida but flo ride
that shit that burns yo third eye
Jewluminati motherfuckers hate me
Oh no they don’t wanna date me
Nor you nor you nor you too
Worldwide Genocide blame it on the jews

So now they call me a nazi
no bitch I’m just good at yhatzee
Espionage is my middle name HA!
I got you good while rolling through yo hood
Hitler no Hi Tila
Hitler no Hit Tila
Hitler No Hi Tila

Well, Tony Ortega at Raw Story decided to check in with the peeps at the white supremacist forum Stormfront, many of whom are apparently quite pleased to win Tequila as an ally. Other reactions ranged from confused to suspicious of the Vietnamese-Jew-turned-Hitler (shocker: Nazis are not too keen on Asian American’s either!). Ortega kindly compiled a list of responses for us, so that we don’t give those hateful bastards any more web traffic than they already have. It’s worth a read:

“It’s insulting to Adolf Hitler to have that promiscuous, degenerate, mongrel defending him. She makes me want to vomit.”

“The sad part is this no one will listen to her.”

“I congratulate her for finding the truth.”

“Brave woman to throw her career away for truth. Jew Hollywood and media will never hire her again.”

“Very, very strange. Her entry almost seems copied and pasted from this website. I wonder if she wasn’t somehow ‘encouraged’ — either overtly or covertly — to promulgate this information in an attempt to discredit it. I, for one, am quite skeptical.”

“She sounds perfectly lucid to me.”

“She’s not a truther, she’s a plant.”

“We need more people like her spreading this type of message. As long she does not preach racial mixing, has no kids, and eventually commits suicide, it is all good.”

“She’s got 2 million followers. People will listen to her. The Zionist veneer is finally crumbling.”

“I posted a supportive comment on the page. I think we all should to show her that she is not alone in her beliefs.”

And perhaps inevitably…

“Is she of Jewish racial ancestry?”

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God put cannabis on our planet, so it must have a greater meaning and a higher purpose, right? So says Yosef Glassman, a Boston geriatrician who has spent several years researching the relationship between the not-so-bitter herb and Jewish history.

According to a recent article in Haaretz, after reading a passage from the Shulchan Aruch, the Code of Jewish Law (“Also, one will beautify [Shabbat candle lighting] when the wick is made from cotton, flax or cannabis…”), Glassman became interested in the topic, specifically wondering if cannabis was used medicinally way back when. That was nearly two decades ago when medical marijuana was still pretty much taboo, enough so that it was even hard to conduct research on the banned drug.

But more recently, with medical marijuana now legal in 20 states plus D.C., it’s been much easier for Glassman to dig in and start the research. In October, he gave his first lecture on his findings.

Glassman’s research revealed that cannabis may have been used as an anesthetic during childbirth in ancient Israel; he described an archaeological discovery of hashish in the stomach of the 1,623-year-old remains of a 14-year-old girl in Beit Shemesh. Maimonides was also an advocate of using cannabis oil for ailments such as colds and ear problems. “There are complex laws of plant mixing and hybridizing from the Talmud, which Maimonides comments on,” said Glassman. “Cannabis specifically was taken especially seriously in terms of mixing … and could, in fact, incur the death penalty. This shows me that apparently, cannabis was treated quite seriously.”

He’s not the first Jew to study Mary Jane. Much of the international cannabis research today is based on the 1960s research of Jerusalem-based professors Raphael Mechoulam and Yechiel Gaoni, and in the past decade, Israeli scientists have developed a strain of marijuana without THC, its psychoactive component.

According to Glassman, the Israeli government funds the research on medical marijuana, which benefits about 12,000 Israeli patients and is grown on eight farms for a state-run medical cannabis distribution center.

“Science aside, the greatest of medications allow the Infinite to penetrate the inner workings of the body and soul,” Glassman said. “This is likely the overriding benefit that cannabis provides, and probably why it has so many different healing properties.”

The drug is spiritual, man. Don’t take it for granted.

(Photo by Nikita Starichenko/Shutterstock)

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Last week, in a radio interview, Kanye West made some stereotypical comments about Jewish power.

“Man, let me tell you something about George Bush and oil money and Obama and no money. People want to say Obama can’t make these moves or he’s not executing. That’s because he ain’t got those connections. Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people. Black people don’t have the same connection as oil people.”

This week, the Anti-Defamation League is calling on Kanye to apologize, XXL reports.

Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL National Director then responded to Kanye’s opinion with some thoughts of his own. “If the comments are true as reported, this is classic anti-Semitism,” said Foxman.” There it goes again, the age-old canard that Jews are all-powerful and control the levers of power in government. As a celebrity with a wide following, Kanye West should know better. We hope that he will take responsibility for his words, understand why they are so offensive, and apologize to those he has offended.”

Ah, right— totally forgot that Kanye is renowned for saying all the right things. Because he never said, “I’m sorry, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time,” or “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” or “I walk through the hotel and I walk down the street, and people look at me like I’m … insane, like I’m Hitler.”

The ADL might want to stay off any lyric website, lest they find many more hip-hop references to Jewish connections and money, that aren’t automatically anti-Semitic, but rather, need context. (Royce Da 5’9: “While these rappers kill each other, them Jews they stick together like glue / and generate more money than FUBU”; Jay-Z: “See I was born in sewage, born to make bomb music / Flow tight like I was born Jewish”; Nas: “The Jewish stick together, friends in high places / We on some low level shit.”)

We’ll see if and how Kanye responds to Foxman. It should be interesting.

(Photo by Gabriel Olsen/Getty)

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“There’s a story told in the book of Maccabees about a heroic warrior named Eleazar. Eleazar valiantly plunged his sword into the belly of the enemy elephant, guaranteeing his own death under the crushing weight of the fallen beast and winning an eternal emotional victory. There is a story told in the scroll of Antiochus about a warrior named Eleazar. Eleazar fought the elephant, and yes, he fell in battle, but no, there was no glory. His body was found hours later drowned in elephant poop. My friends, the story of Eleazar is Hanukkah. Hanukkah is the story of Eleazar. They are one and the same. They both look nice at first, but when you look again, you see they’re full of shit.”

So began Josh Cooper’s sermon on November 22 in a small cafe in Philadelphia.

It was the first SermonSlam event, and Cooper, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of eight slammers. Their instructions? Speak about anything that is loosely connected to Hanukkah for five minutes or less.

Cooper decided to talk about his ambivalent relationship with Hanukkah, stemming from the numerous lies that led up to the traditions. Elan Kiderman interpreted the theme a bit more loosely than the other speakers, speaking of a time when he experienced his own miracle. Akiva Sanders discussed the hidden power of the dreidel, and Marley Weiner shared what it was like to celebrate Hanukkah in an interfaith home.

Mirrored after poetry slams and The Moth podcast, SermonSlam is a new project from OpenQuorum, a Jewish public media platform devoted to curating, creating, and distributing content. SermonSlam is meant to be an outlet for creative Jewish expression, one that is accessible to Jews around the world.

“The idea was just a way to allow people who care about Jewish ideas to express that in a way that’s fun and also allows for variety,” said David Zvi Kalman, one of the founders of SermonSlam and OpenQuorum. “The idea is that divrei Torah, sermons, very often are given in the context of some other service. You never go somewhere just to hear a sermon, but you go somewhere to go to shul and in the process a sermon is given. The idea was to highlight all of the wonderful things about giving over pieces of Torah by letting people be as creative as possible, giving people a wide array of formats.”

After holding the first SermonSlam in Philadelphia, Kalman posted a few of the sermons online and created an iTunes podcast. Within a week, SermonSlam was the No.1 Jewish podcast on iTunes, and Jews from around the world have emailed Kalman asking for SermonSlam to come their city.

The next SermonSlam is set for January 22 in New York City, and there are talks of even hosting one in Jerusalem, too.

Kalman finds that compelling Jewish thought can often be bound to certain locations and take on an almost exclusive aura.

“I think right now it’s often difficult to find inspiring Torah that is compelling to listen to online,” Kalman said. “You have to kind of be there, in a yeshiva, in some setting. The idea of SermonSlam and OpenQuorum, in general, is to create content online that serves to bring to people Torah that they would not have otherwise, to make it interesting and entertaining all at the same time.

“So bringing it online, we’re trying to say look at all this amazing stuff out there to change the perspective of the way that Torah is being developed today. There’s a great wealth of it, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

(Photo by David Zvi Kalman)

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Have you ever faked Hebrew at synagogue? C’mon, we’ve all done it. You’re always nervous that the wannabe rebbetzin in the wide-brimmed hat will call you out during the Amidah, but she won’t—because she’s probably faking it, too.

If you’ve faked it, or you know someone else who has faked it (sorry, orgasms, your terminology has officially been reappropriated for matters of prayer), you should watch “Fake Hebrew” by Ariana Seigel and Emma Tattenbaum-Fine of Comediva.

Pray on playas.

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Last month, Bob Dylan was in the news for a new interactive music video for “Like a Rolling Stone” (brought to you by Israeli director Vania Heymann). This month, he’s in the news for alleged racism. The Council of Croats in France has sued Dylan over a comment he made analogizing Croats to Nazis in a 2012 Rolling Stone interview with Mikal Gilmore.

“This country is just too fucked up about color. It’s a distraction. People at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighborhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”

The Guardian reports that after the comments were made, many Croatian radio stations decided to stop playing Dylan’s songs.

According to CRICCF secretary general Vlatko Maric, Parisian courts have accepted to hear their case and asked Dylan to appear as part of the hearing. “[Dylan’s comments were] an incitement to hatred,” Marić said in a statement. Although France has strict hate speech laws, CRICCF stated that all they are seeking is an apology.

And, just a few weeks ago, Dylan was awarded France’s Legion of Honour. We’ll see what happens next.

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Thanksgivukkah turned me into a grinch. No more parody videos, I thought. No more recipes, I cried. I couldn’t wait for the mash-up holiday madness to pass…until it did. On Friday morning, I was left with a full belly and an empty heart. There are still leftovers in the fridge, but what about the parodies? Could we have just one more? One more serving of hackneyed pop songs rewritten with holiday lyrics. What if it’s by Jimmy Fallon and Rashida Jones? Yes, we can.

Here they are, singing about Hanukkah to the tune of Lorde’s “Royals.” Fast forward to the good stuff at 1:56:

Thankfully there’s still a few nights left of Hanukkah to soften the post-Thanksgivukkah blow.

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Walt Disney Animation Studios has bought the rights to the beautiful Israeli documentary Dolphin Boy—the story of Morad, an Israeli Arab teenager, who was beaten so viciously he lost his ability to communicate. Morad’s recovery was slow, and doctors wanted to put him in a mental institution. But instead, Morad’s father took him to Eilat where he could swim with dolphins, a process that taught him how to communicate again. The Times of Israel reports:

The purchase is the first that Burbank, California studio has made in Israel. It intends to turn the story into a feature film.

The award-winning documentary was produced by Dani Menkin, Yonatan Nir and Judith Manassen Ramon, who worked on it for four years after hearing Morad’s story.

It’ll be interesting to see what Disney does with the film. Watch a trailer for the original:

(Photo by dolphinboyfilm.com)

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