JDub Records and Jewcy present MILK & HONEY  – a new monthly party on second Wednesday’s at Bollyhood, one of the coolest low-key spots in the Mission – this time, on the last night of Hanukkah.

OPEN BAR featuring our signature cocktail plus beer, wine and sangria, and a FREE BUFFET provided by Bissap Baobab – all while supplies last, so be sure to arrive early!

Special guests for our kickoff event include all-star vocalist Audio Angel, Honeyknuckles and Mama Feelgood of Sanguine Soul Radio, Israeli percussionist Gavri Friesem and live painter Delvin Kenobe.

Resident DJ Matt Haze spins hip-hop, soul, reggae, funk, dub, gypsy, African, Middle Eastern and other sounds from around the world.

Made possible with support from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. Promotional partnership provided by The Hub of the JCCSF.

The post Milk & Honey appeared first on Jewcy.

Given my role as a parenting pundit and grumpy crank, I knew I’d eventually begin delivering statements that start with “when I was a kid…” Still, I never thought I’d be wistful about a time when we all agreed that humans came from monkeys.

But times have changed. Back then, evolution was as accepted as the Earth’s rotation on its axis. The Scopes Monkey trial was 60 years in the rear-view. Hard Darwinian science had trumped the skeptics and the nincompoops. I doubted evolution no more than I doubted that my heart pumped blood through my body. My son, on the other hand, came down the birth canal into a brave new world, where school boards debate spurious intelligent design curricula, where 66 percent of Americans surveyed by USA Today believe that God created the world in seven days, and where the President of the United States thinks evolution is just one theory. This summer saw the opening of Kentucky’s Creation Museum, a $27 million high-tech “educational” institution determined to teach our children that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark. Now the Scopes Monkey Trial is 90 years in the rear-view, and in some parts of America, it’s like Clarence Darrow never existed. There’s little chance that Elijah, being raised by secular liberals in Southern California, will learn to believe that people walked with dinosaurs. But such questions weren’t even possible when I was in school. Powerful people and institutions are attempting to chip away at rational science. A parent can no longer assume that his children won’t encounter anti-evolutionary propaganda. While I’m skeptical about religion, I’m not opposed to faith and spirituality. Elijah goes to a Jewish preschool, after all. But the other side preaches a dangerous ideology. When faith gets in the way of facts, I get angry. Doesn’t my obstinacy challenge my desire to have my son think for himself? Am I being as ideologically rigid as people who preach intelligent design? Perhaps. But I think the question is a little bit off. I’m not worried about my son becoming a Wall Streeter or, worse, a Republican. The generation gap of Family Ties no longer exists. People who ask me about what I’ll do when my son turns into Alex P. Keaton—a character I revered as a kid—are stuck in an old way of thinking. This isn’t about an ideological struggle between democratic socialism and unfettered free-market economics. And though I’d argue that there’s a deep sexist component to religious fundamentalism, it’s not really about race or gender issues either. It’s about keeping alive the spirit of discovery, and also preserving essential notions of truth and freedom of thought.
I don’t want Elijah to be a jerk about his beliefs, but he should be intolerant toward faith-based reasoning simply because it’s wrong. So I’ve made it a point to provide him with early counter-tools: a bunch of books about dinosaurs, a comic book about the beginnings of life, and the HD-DVD collection of Planet Earth from the BBC. These range from awe-inspiring to irritating. For instance, our planet itself narrates the comic book, which is just a little too Whole Earth Catalog for me. Still, it’s useful. I deploy these tools much as a gentle, patient creationist father would talk to his son about how God created the world in seven days. “You can see here in this book,” I say, “that there was a great rain on Earth that lasted millions of years.” “And then there were bacteria,” he says. “Right.” “And they turned into jellyfish which turned into lizards and fish and insects and then they grew legs and went onto land and some of them became dinosaurs and some of them became mammals and then there were monkeys or primates and they became people! Is that right?” Indoctrination at work. At four years old, Elijah not only knows some basic scientific truths about the world, but he also thinks evolution is cool. It would only be more awesome to him if it somehow involved light sabers. New Yorker contributor George Packer, who unlike myself isn’t prone to hyperbole, wrote about a recent visit to the Creation Museum that he felt like “a dissident surrounded by the lies of a totalitarian state.” This frightened me. I’m trying to teach my son to question authority, even if he starts with me. He needs to recognize “the lies of a totalitarian state” when those lies are being widely propagated to a willing, paid public. If he doesn’t feel like a dissident in the face of such propaganda, then I haven’t done my job.

* * *

We asked David Klinghoffer of the anti-evolution Discovery Institute "What does DI want to teach Jewish-American children about Intelligent Design?"

* UPDATE: Jason Rosenhouse, host of Evolution Blog, weighs in with The Chutzpah of Intelligent Design.

* UPDATE: Computer scientist and civil liberties advocate Jeffrey Shallit of the University of Waterloo blogs this exchange, here.

Want to blog this exchange between an urban hipster parent and the Discovery Institute? Submit a blog post to Jewcy here.

ALSO IN JEWCY:

On Faithhacker, Tamar Fox reported on politicians in Georgia and Texas who tried to discredit evolution by claiming it was dreamed up by the Pharisees. Laurel Snyder looked at why Orthodox Jews, unlike many equally observant Christians, have made peace with evolution. As part of his year living according to the rules of the Bible, A.J. Jacobs visited Kentucky’s Creation Museum.

On the Daily Shvitz, Josh Strawn reported on an NYC businessman who is suing a Seed writer for $15 million for calling him a “crackpot” in two reviews of his book challenging the theory of evolution, and Francois Blumenfeld-Kouchner panned the Darwin exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum.

The post How to Raise an Ideological Warrior appeared first on Jewcy.

So before you get overwhelmed by all the things that feel insurmountable, try getting your mind and machine in shape to deal with all the tasks on your plate. You’re not on your own: There are countless books, essays and Web sites devoted to your success. And if your job still sucks after all your self-improvement, you can always quit—just do it with class.

Increase your productivity by reading blogs (yes, blogs) You’re going to do it anyway, so why not have your procrastinating Web surfing time work for you? No, not by joining a pyramid scheme. Web sites like 43 Folders and Lifehacker are full of pointers and freeware to make your work life more efficient. Folder’s Inbox Zero helps you get your e-mail stream squeaky clean in under 20 minutes, and devise strategies for keeping it that way. (Hint: “delete, delete, delete.”) Lifehacker points you to haiku productivity, and if that Zen path doesn’t prove fruitful, there’s always a crude Microsoft timer to get your ass in gear. Lastly, don’t underestimate how having the perfect iTunes equalizer setting can help your projects practically finish themselves.

Join the cult of David Allen If the blogs don’t make you a super-employee, David Allen will. Twenty pages into Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, you might be inspired to put down the book and make all those calls you’ve been putting off. If it only takes a couple minutes, then it falls under his Two-Minute Rule: If it takes less than 120 seconds to handle (phone call, e-mail, bill paying), do it now so your brain can be freed to deal with more important tasks later on. Might was well just buy the book now. It only takes two minutes.

Charm the jorts off your office’s IT team The IT guys claim they’re busy, but when you walk into their office, they’re playing World of Warcraft and inhaling Cool Ranch Doritos. Lazy bastards? Yes. Permission to throw a fit? No. Making enemies in the IT department will only get you grief. Fortunately, IT guys are usually pretty easy to please. First, read this article in the Wall Street Journal, which gives tons of tips about how to improve your relations with the office geek. Next, print it out and tape it to your cubicle—not just so that you can follow all the instructions, but also so they know you’re trying. Third, if you really want to charm them, learn their language; the Family Guy Wikiquote page is an excellent place to start.

Throw your Blackberry in the fountain, Devil-Wears-Prada–style Sometimes it’s not your bad attitude, or your passive-aggressive asides, or your impatience with the IT department that’s ruining your life. Sometimes you’re in the wrong job. It’s happened to all of us, and when it does, it’s OK to move on. Make your search for a new job less grueling with a meta-search engine—Indeed and PageBites are two of the best—that will trawl the job boards for you, bringing together the best listings from Monster, CareerBuilder, and a gazillion other sites. And when you do leave, make sure you do it with class. WetFeet.com has lots of advice for finding yourself a brand-spanking new job this year without making an office full of enemies in the process.

The post Like a Virgin: Work appeared first on Jewcy.

Rent until you die The three biggest lies you’ll hear this week: “the surge is working,” “just the tip, just for a second,” and “renting is throwing away your money.” Somewhere along the line, buying a house became the most important purchase you’ll ever make and damn those of you who are too busy enjoying their limited cash to see the forest for the manicured lawn. But is home still where your heart is when it turns out to be the "worst investment ever”? Sure, the housing market is slumping, but that doesn’t mean renting is a waste. This New York Times calculator allows you to plug in your current rent, the cost of your dream home, down payment, mortgage, and taxes, and work out for yourself whether renting is better than buying,

Quit driving like a jackass to save a couple hundred bucks According to the Department of Energy, your gas mileage can drop as much as 33% from aggressive highway driving. Stick to the speed limit and that’s a few hundred ducats a year. This list of ten ways to prevent road rage will save you money and possibly keep you from misguided attempts to show that jerkoff in the Hummer a lesson. (If you’re feeling extra generous, take a page from the Yom Kippur book and keep a “sorry” sign in your car at all times to help everyone else save, too.)

Chock Full o’Nuts your way to the Caribbean Come back from the strip club with nothing but a pocket full of crumpled ones? Your significant other probably appreciates your honesty about where you were, but what she’d prefer is a romantic battery-charging getaway to make everything better. The solution? An empty coffee can. Stuffing the money left over from the night before into a grown-up piggy bank ensures it won’t be spent on a hangover breakfast or an ironic tee shirt. Mock the geriatric simplicity if you want, but my wife and I did this in the year-and-change before our wedding and socked away over $1,000 for the Grecian honeymoon. Granted, it takes more than singles, and you need the discipline to leave it be, but you’d be surprised how those random bills add up. I recommend going with a Chock full o’Nuts can for that robust coffee scent.

Make money just by being patriotic You may feel like less of American for not joining the Armed Forces, but collecting all of the commemorative quarters of these here United States will at least make you feel like you’re supporting the troops somehow. 2008 wraps up with Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii, the last five states admitted to the Union and to our lovely custom coin folder. (Not to be a homer, but my native Montana’s the quarter to beat.) As any seasoned numismatic will tell you, once coins are out of circulation, they become more valuable, so get in before the price of these rises to .38 or so. As an investor, you’ll want to keep your completed quarter set in a safety deposit box to pass down to your great-grandchildren, or until you decide to take $12.50 on a nostalgic trip to the arcade.

The post Like a Virgin: Money appeared first on Jewcy.

Apologies are all well and good, but even better was turning my guilt (did I really have to bring up dog food?) into action. As soon as my sister started speaking to me again, I became the most supportive aunt-to-be in the history of auntdom. I read pregnancy books. I helped her think up names. I even bought a Bugaboo stroller, just to make sure my nephew rode the mean streets of Hoboken in style. And now that he’s here, an absolutely gorgeous one-year old, I am, of course, the kid’s biggest fan.

It’s so easy to screw up your relationship with your family—an accidental insult, a skipped holiday—but luckily, it’s almost as easy to make things right. The river of love that connects most families runs deep: an honest apology and some heartfelt reparations, and soon enough that river is once again flowing smooth.

Stop battling the stepkid’s other parent over breakfasts, bedtimes, and everything in between. Come up with a job description that you, your partner, and the other parent agree on. This way, all the adults will know what is expected and not expected of you—and you will understand what your role and goals are vis a vis the child(ren). (The clearinghouse Stepfamily inFormation offers a good example.) In the beginning of the relationship, try not to be the sole party responsible for the kid for long periods of time. Finally, accept what you can’t change: If the custody battle was acrimonious, do not try to make anything better, and do your honest best not to take sides.

Start visiting a family member suffering from dementia This won’t be easy, but keep in mind that the visit will be harder on you than on your loved one, and that it can do no harm. Try to learn all you can about the disease so that you understand what your loved one is going through—the National Institute on Aging has some good information. During the visit, look for quiet, simple, repetitive activities to do together: fold the laundry, water the plants, or take a short walk together. Remember, the person might only be able to concentrate on one activity for twenty minutes or so, so stop if he or she becomes unsettled. And remember that even though your relative might not remember who you are, your kind attention and support will be an incredible comfort.

Break up with your family—gently You’re a grown-up, even if you don’t always feel like one, so it’s time to stop schlepping to Scarsdale every Sunday for family day and start building your own social network. The simplest and most effective thing you can do to cut the cord is to turn off the phone. It’s easy to forget that the phone is an intrusion into your life — one that you are under no obligation to respond to. So, if your family calls every night at dinnertime, turn off the phone during dinner. (Those of us who still use landlines can benefit from a sophisticated call-screener.) Set limits on how often you will call them back. If you currently talk every day, cut down communication to twice a week. If your family gives you static about your sudden unavailability, just explain that you’ve been surprisingly busy. Soon, the more measured level of communication will become a habit—and begin filtering through the rest of your relationship with them.

Pay back your parents for paying off your Visa Even if you think you’re broke, you can afford twenty-five bucks a month; set up a monthly autopayment into your parents’ account immediately. Next, get a copy of The Complete Tightwad Gazette, which offers literally hundreds of tips for ways to start saving right now—not at your next raise, not when you finally make that big sale. As your income increases, increase repayment incrementally.

On the other hand, if your parents want to turn their loan into gift— but it’s important for your own self-esteem to pay them back— first, explain to them that it’s a sign of your respect for them that you repay them. If they refuse to take your money, give it to a cause that’s important to them (find a good non-profit here) and have the charity send them a letter notifying them of the gift.

The post Like a Virgin: Family appeared first on Jewcy.

Make Every Other Tuesday Cocktail and Cake Night You and your college roommate/high school bff/work friend from your last job have been e-mailing for months with the same subject line: “Let’s hang out soon.” Yet somehow it never happens. To put an end to the empty promises, try making a regular get-together. Use Time to Meet—a free online scheduling tool—to find times when you’re both free. Then set up a regular date: Watching Heroes together every Monday, or getting dollar margaritas at the dive bar around the corner every other Wednesday. Once you build it into your schedule you’re less likely to skip it, and even if you do have to beg off every once in a while, you won’t have to worry that you’ll end up going six months without seeing your Primetime Partner.

Use Up All Your Forever Stamps Want to reconnect with a friend who’s been out of touch for years? Buy a bunch of postcards, stamp them, and address them all to your friend. Keep one or two in your purse/laptop bag/briefcase to whip out the next time you get stuck in line at Starbucks or in gridlocked traffic. You don’t need a fancy message, just a “hey! What’s up? Thinking of you…” Drop the card in the mail the next time you pass a mailbox. After receiving a few cute cards, your friend is sure to respond with a sweet email at the very least. Find awesome sassy postcards here and here

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Whip Cream. Whip It Good. Having some communication issues with your friend? Check out My Fresh Start, a website with a plan that’ll get things flowing more smoothly between the two of you, and will sharpen your cooking skills at the same time. Each friend receives a recipe with a different half covered. Using cell phones and IM in their kitchens, each friend talks the other through their half of the recipe. At the end of cooking, the friends remove the sticker to reveal the complete recipe. The service is really designed to teach you and your friends to cook healthier meals, but it can also be great at getting you to talk to each other in a helpful, fun way. And since you aren’t actually in the same kitchen, you won’t have to suffer through any backseat cooking—one of my major pet peeves. (Thrifty types, take note: You could really improvise the whole program without signing up or paying for anything.)

Sign off MySpace If your best friend acknowledged your birthday this year by posting something on your Facebook wall, the two of you are relying too much on technology. As Kathy Sierra points out on her metacognition blog Creating Passionate users, neuroscientists have found that the brain needs and expects body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice during communication. When they don't come, the brain suffers (and so does the communication). For a few weeks cut out IM, Gchat, Facebook, Skype, MySpace and text messaging—even phone calls if possible. It will force you to actually pay attention to each other in a non multi-tasking way, and that will help get things going again.

Get yourself a nemesis. If things are going sour with a friend, consider the possibility that he’s your nemesis. In one of my all-time favorite essays, Chuck Klosterman argues that the key to being great is having a nemesis and an archenemy. “We measure ourselves against our nemeses, and we long to destroy our archenemies. Nemeses and archenemies are the catalysts for everything.” Nemeses can only nudge you toward glory, albeit in an obnoxiously competitive way.

The post Like a Virgin: Friendship appeared first on Jewcy.

Unleash Your Inner Pervert Persona Often people are reluctant to share their kinkiest fantasies, even to their lovers—the risk of rejection is too high. Not so online, where anonymity reduces the sting and makes it more likely that you’ll find someone into the same things you are. By creating a new temporary persona, you can try on genders, behaviors and kinks that in real life might freak you out. Find a chat room or use Second Life. Slap on a username, channel your sluttiest self, and go wild. You can be the bitch goddess you’ve always dreamed about, attend an orgy, or have sex in public…all from the safety and comfort of your laptop screen. It’s a chance to see how the other half lives and discover hidden desires within you.

Spend money on sex When it comes to sex, we’re notoriously cheap. Somehow, there’s the idea still floating around that good sex is “natural” and that paying for it can only mean prostitution. But by investing, literally, in sex—taking a class, buying a sex toy or a hot outfit, or some lube (guys, it’s way, way better than lotion or Vaseline or whatever else you may be using)— you’re saying that your sexual pleasure is worth a little cash. Check out Babeland, Blowfish, or Good Vibrations for a New Year’s shopping spree.

Get tested now Now that it only takes 20 minutes to find out your HIV status, there’s no excuse not to know. Worrying about whether or not you might be positive is not only bad for your health, it’s sure to impede your libido. If you’ve had unprotected sex, finding out will either ease your mind or allow you to start getting treatment. (The FDA has even approved a home test HIV kit.) Take it from me, having to tell a new partner it’s been a while and hearing them reply with a huffy “Great” makes you feel like the slut to end all sluts. Talk about a buzz kill.

Say “Yep, I’m kinky” The yes/no/maybe list is a staple of the BDSM community, but it’s just as useful for the most vanilla among us. Basically, you make a list of things you like or would like to do, things you’d never want to do, and things you might be into. For me, spanking would be a yes, fire play a no, and bondage a maybe. Writing them down will help you next time you’re in one of those iffy situations; I’ve sworn I won’t have sex on the first date, but actually following through is trickier. The list helps remind you of your values, and stick with what you know is a no.

The post Like a Virgin: Sex, Love, and Dating appeared first on Jewcy.

1. Do yoga (I’m a runner) 2. Eat more vegetables (I’m a carnivore) 3. Take a daily multi-vitamin (See #2) 4. Eat less cheese (I’m lactose intolerant) 5. Be nicer to my sister (I’m insufferable) 6. Stop taking myself so seriously (I’m going to be a rabbi.)

But when I got to rabbinical school, my list of resolutions started to seem a bit too superficial for Rosh Hashanah. Instead of pious spiritual aspirations, I was trying to frequent the produce section. I tried to make my Rosh Hashanah resolutions more metaphysical, but I missed my seasonal yoga classes and greens. I missed them a lot.

So I was thrilled when I discovered that Rav Kook, a hero of most contemporary rabbis, once wrote that the beginning of any attempt at Teshuva (repentance) is eating well. Kook claimed that human beings are born naturally good and only become corrupted over time. Repenting, he said, means getting back to who we really are, which starts on a physical level. So in the spirit of Rav Kook, here are a few ways to get your Teshuva on.

Make Rosh Hashanah dinner a part of your day-to-day life by eating more tzimmes and cholent. Cooked carrots are 34% higher in antioxidants than raw carrots and the antioxidants continue to increase if the carrots are kept at high temperature for a long time—up to a week. (Published in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry by Luke Howard PhD, Professor of Food Science at the University of Arkansas). Check out this tzimmes recipe, or try Pickled’s less-sweet version. For an extra health boost, vegetarian cholent packs a hearty punch. And thank your grandma—she knew what was good for you.

Spend more time at Congregation Beth Elohim and live three years longer In studies published by The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, researchers found that the social interaction and community provided by regular attendance at shul (or church) may add an extra two to three years to your life. Don’t belong to a synagogue? The Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements all have search engines that allow you to research local options. Just attending on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur doesn’t count, though; it’s hard to find community in a group of people you only see twice a year. Instead, start by regularly attending an adult ed class or doing volunteer work. Then, when you come back for Shabbat, you’ll find enough friendly faces to feel instantly at home.

Who needs Lipitor when you can just accept your sister’s apology? Forgive yourself. Forgive your parents. Forgive Joey Hershberger for not inviting you to his Bar Mitzvah in 7th grade. In the spirit of the season, and as your rabbi has been telling you for years, get over it. Frederick Luskin, a psychologist who works at Stanford University’s Forgiveness Project —the largest research project in the country exploring the physical effects of forgiveness—has proven that persistent unresolved anger can lead to higher blood pressure, cholesterol and stress levels, so letting go is good for your health. It’s also mitzvah, of course, and it only takes nine easy steps.

Ward off Alzheimer’s with the Aleph-Bet Dementia occurs later in bilingual folks: a study in the Journal of Neuropsychologia found that Alzheimer’s and other dementias set in four years later in patients who spoke more than one language. No other factor—culture, gender, immigration, education, employment—made nearly as much of a difference, so get your Hebrew on by enrolling in an ulpan or taking adult education classes. (The National Center for the Hebrew Language has a marketplace selling all the tools you need to keep your brain sharp.)

Swap white rice for brown rice in your stir-fry. Brown rice is lower in carbs and higher in fiber than white rice. It also has more vitamin E, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and over a dozen other nutrients. And it’s better for the environment—brown rice is less processed than white rice, so it takes less energy to produce. So go ahead. Buy a rice cooker (you can find a variety here.) Dump in two cups of rice, water, and a pinch of salt. Press the button. Wait 45 minutes. Eat. Feel self-righteous. You’ve now done a mitzvah for your body. And if you’re Sephardic, you’ve just doubled what you can eat on Passover.

The post Like a Virgin: Health appeared first on Jewcy.

Hence Jewcy’s guide to starting over. We’ll tell you how to clean up past messes and prep for future successes in six categories:

Sex, love and dating | Health | Friendships | Family | Money | Work

Consulting myriad websites, books, and experts, we've pulled together 26 separate ways to start the year squeaky clean. Click the links above to get to each section, and remember: If Madonna can reinvent herself every few years, so can you.

The post Like a Virgin appeared first on Jewcy.

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish version of New Year’s Eve, but the festive meal served during the holiday is the Jewish culinary rival to an American Thanksgiving — it also includes slow-cooking a big hunk of meat (brisket) and preparing copious and scrumptuous side dishes. The new year is a time to start anew, and the foods we eat symbolize our wish for happiness, health, and an overall good year to come.

This year, Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown on Wednesday, September 12, so you have about a week and a half to plan your menu. To help, we’ve put together an interactive dinner table with a menu full of symbolic ingredients. The challenge in formulating a Rosh Hashanah menu is similar to that of Thanksgiving—coming up with something that fulfills the tradition but still surprises dinner guests. We’ve assembled a potpourri of old-fashioned and nouveau recipes. Sweet flavors are paramount in this menu to signify the hope for a sweet new year. Since Rosh Hashanaha is observed over two days, there are two special meals to serve, so cook a lot and plan ahead.

Click the dishes you see on the table to reveal their symbolic meaning. Then click the black box below to go to recipes, chef Q&As, leftover ideas, and resources for more information on the holiday.

Here’s to a sweet new year!

And stay tuned to Pickled as our Budget Baleboosteh prepares her first Rosh Hashanah dinner party with selected dishes from this table.

The post Decoded Dinner appeared first on Jewcy.