We’ve finally reached one of the most important parts of the Bible: the part where God shows Moses his butt, and God’s butt breaks Moses’s face. For real. Sure, sure, there’s other stuff about forgiveness and laws and two possible versions of the Ten Commandments, but who cares about that when Shulem Deen, author of “All Who God Not Return,” is reading about the glory of God’s butt?

That’s right, no one.

Tune in now. There’s no other reasonable thing to do.

David Tuchman translated the Tanakh as a comedy and called it OMGWTFBIBLE. Each month on his podcast, he calls up a different guest to read as many chapters of OMGWTFBIBLE as they can while they both make fun of it.

Jewcy is the proud (internet) co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Read more about the project here, and listen to previous episodes here.

David will be reading the next live show in New York at Beauty Bar with on June 22!

(Image: The Internet, Source of All Memes)

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Have you ever read the Bible? OK, but have you ever read the Bible on weed? In episode 31.1, Shulem Deen stops by OMGWTFBIBLE to talk about his new memoir, “All Who Go Do Not Return,” and also to talk about a controversial translation of the Bible that seems to include cannabis as part of the priestly anointing oil. Who knew?

Also in this episode: The whole Golden Calf thing happens and there’s very probably an orgy. Join the fun and listen now!

David Tuchman translated the Tanakh as a comedy and called it OMGWTFBIBLE. Each month on his podcast, he calls up a different guest to read as many chapters of OMGWTFBIBLE as they can while they both make fun of it.

Jewcy is the proud (internet) co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Read more about the project here, and listen to previous episodes here.

David will be reading the next live show in New York at Beauty Bar with on June 22!

(Image: Shutterstock)

The post OMGWTFBIBLE: Have You Ever Read the Bible on Weed? appeared first on Jewcy.

Are you ready to be grossed out? In Episode 30.2 of OMGWTFBIBLE, the narrative of the Bible completely breaks down. We’ll be frank: it just turns into graphic depictions of bloody, bloody sacrifices. Why is this holy or important? We don’t know, but it sure is fun to listen to.

Check out Catie Lazarus, host of “Employee of the Month,” as she reads David Tuchman’s bible translation now! You might learn something about animal sacrifices or at least about Alan Dershowitz.

David Tuchman translated the Tanakh as a comedy and called it OMGWTFBIBLE. Each month on his podcast, he calls up a different guest to read as many chapters of OMGWTFBIBLE as they can while they both make fun of it.

Jewcy is the proud (internet) co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Read more about the project here, and listen to previous episodes here.

Check back here next week for the next installment of OMGWTFBIBLE. David will be reading the next live show in New York at Beauty Bar with Shulem Deen, author of All Who Go Do Not Return, on April 27!

(Image: High Priest Offering a Sacrifice of a Goat; illustration from Henry Davenport Northrop’s 1894 Treasures of the Bible)

The post OMGWTFBIBLE: In Which the Torah Gets All Sacrificial and Bloody, Narrative Be Damned appeared first on Jewcy.

OMGWTFBIBLE with David Tuchman has hit Philadelphia! On February 25, David was joined by Temple professor Mark Leuchter at Raven Lounge in Philly to read “Terumah,” the seventh portion in Exodus—next to a stripper pole. Among other things, they discussed Professor Leuchter’s love of guitars, his approach to the Bible, and why in the world God spent so much time on building directions.

That’s right, building directions. In episode 29.1, with all those pesky laws out of the way, God spends a great deal of time describing some stuff he wants made. Is it interesting? Are there any questions that can be asked about this? Why is it in the Bible in the first place? Listen and find out. Maybe.

David Tuchman translated the Tanakh as a comedy and called it OMGWTFBIBLE. Each month on his podcast, he calls up a different guest to read as many chapters of OMGWTFBIBLE as they can while they both make fun of it.

Jewcy is the proud (internet) co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Read more about the project here, and listen to previous episodes here.

Check back here in a week for the next installment of OMGWTFBIBLE. David will be reading the next live show with in New York at Beauty Bar with Catie Lazarus on March 23!

(Image: Model of the tabernacle, as seen in Timna Park, Israel)

The post OMGWTFBIBLE: In Which God Spends a Great Deal of Time Describing Some Stuff He Wants Made appeared first on Jewcy.

Here it is! The big one! In episode 27.3 of OMGWTFBIBLE, David Tuchman and Rachel Rose Reid read what everyone knows as The Ten Commandments. And it’s… interesting. Sure, the commandments themselves are pretty impressive, but the laws that follow them? Not so much. And are there even really 10 commandments? It all depends on how you break it down. Listen to the third part of “Yitro” and tell us what you think in the comments. (Or tweet your take to OMGWTFBIBLE and Jewcy!)

For more excellent Limmud audio, check out their Soundcloud page.

David Tuchman translated the Tanakh as a comedy and called it OMGWTFBIBLE. Each month on his podcast, he calls up a different guest to read as many chapters of OMGWTFBIBLE as they can while they both make fun of it.

Jewcy is the proud (internet) co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Read more about the project here, and listen to previous episodes here.

Check back here in a week for the next installment of OMGWTFBIBLE. David will be reading the next live show with Sha James in New York on January 26!

Previously: OMGWTFBIBLE: Live From Limmud UK With Rabbi Leah Jordan!

(Image: lucaswxyz.com)

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I recently sat down for an interview with Shane Baker: actor, translator, Executive Director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, bon vivant and all around most unusual Yiddishist I know. The pretext was my writing about the current production of the New Yiddish Rep’s Yiddish-language version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, “Vartn af Godo” (translated by Shane, beautifully directed by Moshe Yassur). The lure was the taco truck parked outside my building at lunchtime.

Shane and I hadn’t seen each other since the middle of the summer, when he and the other members of the New Yiddish Rep (actors Rafael Goldwaser, Allen Lewis Rickman, and NYR artistic director/actor David Mandelbaum) left for Ireland with Vartn af Godo and I was heading to Klezkanada, the Jewish arts retreat near Montreal.

After playing Vartn af Godo at the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, Shane stayed on in Ireland for a kind of heritage trip (a rare reminder that he isn’t actually Jewish). He came back to North America for Toronto’s Ashkenaz festival, where he performed his riotous neo-vaudeville tribute, “The Big Bupkis!  A Complete Gentile’s Guide to Yiddish Vaudeville,” then returned to New York for the current run of Vartn af Godo at Barrow Street Theatre as part of Origin Theater’s 1st Irish Festival.

Shane had been touring the world to great acclaim. I had just premiered a new English-Yiddish play to a crowd of 30 at Klezkanada, in a room whose most prominent acoustic feature was a deafening ventilation hum. We had a lot to catch up on.

Our conversation ranged from deliciously vulgar to intimidatingly erudite within a few bites of taco. When I asked him whether he got in touch with his roots in Ireland, I was treated to a story far too filthy for Jewcy. With great regret, I steered him away from vaudeville and back to the avant-garde Waiting for Godot. Why translate it to Yiddish? I asked. When I had gone to see it a few nights before, it was clear how many Yiddish speakers were in the house just from where the laughs were.

“I wanted to translate Waiting for Godot, and we staged the play, all in line with the great Yiddishist dream—I think first set out ‘shvarts af vays’ [in black and white] by Ber Borochov—that the world’s greatest works must be translated into Yiddish in order to nurture the language, just as works in Yiddish must be translated into the world languages in order to show people what we have,” he said.

A task like translating Beckett brings up the deepest existential questions for new Yiddish art. For whom is this new translation? Is it for translator, audience, or both? There’s no question that there were a handful of folks in the audience (for example, some Hasidic friends of mine) who were introduced to Beckett via the Yiddish translation. But it goes without saying that the task of translating world literature to bring it to the Yiddish ‘masses’ no longer burns with the same urgency as it did for Borochov and his early-twentieth century colleagues.

On the other hand, Shane tells me that in Ireland—where one would expect even fewer Yiddish speakers—he overheard people after the show saying that they had never understood Waiting for Godot as they had in Yiddish. And this was NOT a Yiddish speaking audience.

I asked Shane if he’d found anything new in the text with this new production. “A yid lebt mit bitokhn (a Jew lives with hope),” he replied. “For me, Beckett is all about hope.” In the optimism of Godot’s Vladimir Shane sees one of the things he fell in love with about Yiddish, “the insistence of the older generation of Yiddishists; the joy and purpose in what they were doing… Vladimir has his questioning moments, but he’s the driving force that keeps them waiting. It’s a purposeful waiting, a Jewish waiting.”

I have to agree. Though on the surface it seems like nothing happens in Godot, what keeps you on the edge of your seat is the development of the relationships between these four brutalized humans. How will they choose? Between life and death? Between hope and despair? These are questions with the most vitality when done with the deepest specificity, which is why I think Godot in Yiddish holds such power for audiences, whether or not they speak Yiddish. Great art needs no further justification.

Waiting for Godot shows through September 21 at Barrow Street Theater in New York. Purchase tickets here. (Use discount code “WAIT35” for 20% off.)

Rokhl Kafrissen writes about Jewish life and culture from a distant corner of New York City. Her new play is a Yiddish-English gangster ghost romance called “A Brokhe” (A Blessing).

(Image by Ron Glassman, via New Yiddish Rep)

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Yom Ha’atzmaut begins tonight and ends Tuesday evening—what better way to celebrate than by listening to the entire Frozen soundtrack in Hebrew? OK, OK, there are definitely better ways ways to celebrate. But this is a fun one to add to your morning commute.

Here’s “La’azov” (Let It Go) with English subtitles—it’s really interesting to see how the act of translating changes the song. (Click the ‘about’ section on the YouTube page for transliterated Hebrew lyrics so you can sing along.)

Big hat-tip to the good folks at Kveller for unearthing these wondrous clips. Full soundtrack here.

Bonus! Meet the cast of Israeli dubbers:

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