An Israel-related video approved by viewers across the political spectrum: sounds crazy, no? But Shimon Peres has achieved the (seemingly) impossible with this charming bit about finding a job post-presidency. (He left office in July this year, succeeded by Reuven Rivlin.)

In the five-minute clip, the 91-year-old statesman tries out various gigs—gas-pump attendant, security guard, deliveryman, stand-up comic—all the while delivering sage aphorisms about compromise, tenacity, and overcoming fear. You know, nation-building stuff. (There’s even a joke about the nuclear reactor in Dimona.) It’s Yoda meets your Zaidy meets Saturday Night Live, and it’s pretty delightful.

SPOILER ALERT [look away now, plot-sensitive readers]:

Turns out the Prez has an entire peace foundation to fall back on. He’ll be fine.

See for yourself (maximize screen for English subtitles):

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This summer, 24-year-old filmmaker Meir Kalmanson decided to bring a little joy to the sweaty, stressed-out streets of New York—by high-fiving people as they were attempting to hail cabs. The result is this delightful 86-second video, “High Five New York”:

Kalmanson told the New York Daily News that he loves making videos that “are not just funny but also are heartwarming and have a good feel and message… I love seeing all of the people (in New York) and it just clicked in me. ‘How cool would it be to give someone a high five?'”

Very cool. Joyful, even! Kalmanson heroically resisted the temptation to turn around and see how the unwitting high-fivers were reacting to his unsolicited salutation. After a moment of surprise/shock, they all seem pretty delighted by it. (Except for the dude dressed in black at 1:06, who just carries on with his emphatic cell phone conversation like a stereotypical New Yorker in a B-grade rom-com. Yes, those guys exist IRL!)

Enjoy this little ray of tikkun olam.

(Image: YouTube)

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“You’re allowed to go right up to him, yeah. You just can’t touch him!” So says one yeshiva student, holding a camera pointed to another, about a guard stationed outside one of London’s royal buildings.

The young man pictured moseys—yes, moseys—toward the soldier, then stand next to him. The difference between the two is obvious, palpable, already comic: a yeshiva bochur in black and white with jaunty payos and a big black yarmulka, pictured next to a becloaked, behelmeted guard, the strap under his chin both infantilizing him and preparing him for battle.

While posing for the camera, the young man starts to weave an entire narrative about his relationship with the soldier, docu-drama style. “We went to school together,” he says, gesturing towards the soldier. “He went his own way.”

At first, the guard seems in charge of himself, quite capable of fulfilling his duty to not laugh. The yeshiva student speaks of their days at school together, choosing the guard’s school as the context for their shared past, where they studied martial arts. He starts out with a questioning kind of tone, as though he isn’t sure whether the soldier is the person he is describing, but as the narrative progresses he grows more confident.

“He was never talkative,” the yeshiva student says, and starts to describe the guard as a youth. At this point, it is clear that the guard is listening, and moreover, struggling to maintain his composure. As the student launches deeper into his fiction, things get worse for the guard, until the final epic breakdown. The student interrupts his own narrative as he alights on the perfect weapon: “His mother always picked him up from school. You know, he was that type of guy, until he was twenty, his mother always picked him up from school.” At this point, the guard breaks. And I mean, breaks. He doesn’t just smile, or grin, but breaks into a full-on giggle, halted as quickly as possible by a shake of his head and a blush. The students dance away, ebullient.

What’s amazing is that the thing that finally breaks the guard is a shared experience which totally dissolves the distance between them: they both can relate to making fun of the guy whose mother picks him up from school, “until he was twenty.” While it is possible to find two people more different than these two, they are different enough that their shared experience—and the humor that derives from it—is touching, as well as hilarious.

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Another of Jill Soloway‘s gems has slipped onto the internet with very little fanfare, so we at Jewcy thought we’d bring both the fans and the fare.

Wifey.TV is “a curated video network for women”—sort of like the love child between Jezebel and Upworthy, minus the snark and sentimentality. Soloway and co-creator Rebecca Odes promise to “explore the interweb far and wide to gather video that tickles us pink, makes us think or moves us—then we put it out there for you!”

And no, you don’t have to be married to appreciate the site:

“Wifey isn’t really for wives, or about them. Wifey’s your bestie, your go-to female, the one who gets you. Our audience is anyone who needs content that gets deep inside of women as actual multi-faceted human people. Subjects, not objects…

We’ve been in those meetings where it’s a struggle to get people to invest in portrayals of women that aren’t satisfying to your average male. The powers that be promote their own imaginary idea of wish fulfillment for women…

The audience is out there, but the structure is hanging onto old mores. It’s time for a new paradigm. The female gaze is ready and waiting.”

With a variety of cleverly-named categories like sheroic and—my personal favorite—lolsob, Wifey.tv curates content from other sites and produces some of its own. There are great videos of Jill Soloway getting all up in someone’s grill, like when she interrogates Jenn Tisdale about whether she had an orgasm while filming a porno with James Deen, or when she asks a group of women at a book party whether certain things (like anti-rape underwear) are feminist or misogynist.

There’s a heartrending video of Maya Angelou in Richard Pryor’s short lived comedy—LOLSOB!!—and an utterly hilarious cartoon about why there are no strong female characters (just watch it. Right now. Trust me.) And the Women of Wall Street is a magnificent, gender-reversal satire of the Wolf of Wall Street trailer.

In “Woody’s Daughters,” Soloway meditates on the experience of watching Manhattan at the age of 14, and her conflict over the presciently creepy final scene:

“Today this scene reads like there is a gun to her head, just off camera… But the truth is, we are all his children. We inherited his rules and took them as emotional gospel. One was that a sad sack Jewish man can re-imagine himself as the object of desire for the impossibly young, impossibly beautiful Mariel Hemingway – as long as he is brilliantly funny. For a post-Holocaust generation, that math was a life raft in the face of humiliations like old, Jewish, short, ugly. His voice gave me something to hold on to, a way to win again.”

LOLSOB!!

But my favorite one of all is the video that makes people in relationships wish they were single, and single people feel like they have more purchase on that secret, quiet thing that we’re all searching for.

When asked by Forbes about why they created Wifey.TV, the duo answered as follows:

Odes: “We want to be the go-to source for women who want something to watch, whether that’s on their phone or their television. We want to produce the kind of media we want to see.”

Soloway: “To topple the patriarchy. Create a worldwide feminist revolution. To silence anonymous misogynist trolls. Emmys, Oscars, house on the beach, renovated farmhouse studio in Amagansett, private jets, quiet minds, thicker eyelashes, a friendship with Fran Lebowitz.”

Indeed. Keep it coming. We’re watching with bated breath.

RELATED: Must-watch: Jill Soloway’s New Amazon Original Pilot, “Transparent”
Jennifer Aniston Interviews Gloria Steinem At Feminist Makers Conference

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Purim is upon us, and as with any Jewish holiday these days, that means viral videos. This year’s bunch has everything: stars, snacks, and the return of the foul-mouthed Bubala Please guys. Also a lot of old-timey Jewish background music.

Here are the poppy seed season’s most noteworthy videos:

The Family-Friendly: Maya Rudolph stopped by the set of Shalom Sesame with a riddle—what has three corners, three sides, and a sweet middle?

As Cookie Monster eloquently puts it, “Hamentaschen is one of me favorite cookies! (Om nom nom.)”

The Master Class: Joan Nathan shows you how to make the ‘ultimate hamentaschen‘ in a Food 52 and Tablet collaboration.

Feeling inspired? Try her recipe.

The Delightfully Festive: In what feels like a Woody Allen movie, the Aish Center set up a booth outside of Zabar’s and traded hamentaschen for jokes.

The highlight is probably the one about Levi moving to Israel and getting stuck at customs with five sets of dentures.

The Hamentaschen How-To: Chavie Lieber and Beryl Shereshewsky bring some DIY flair—and dancing hamentaschen—to JTA’s easy-to-follow video recipe.

The bright-colored bowls are, sadly, sold separately.

The very, very NSFW: Bubala Please is back with another bizarre rap, this time about “homies noshing hamentaschen.” Here’s hoping the word ‘Jewgina’ doesn’t catch on.

Which is your favorite?

Previously: The Top Five Jewish Viral Videos of the Year

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2012 was quite a year for viral videos. From the wacky to the touching to the downright graphic, here are the most memorable Jewish contributions:

1. The Meme-Ender

Olympic gold medalist and Jewish golden girl Aly Raisman went Gangnam Style, and it was a little confusing.

2. The School of Rock Remix

Israeli kids cover Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and it is all sorts of awesome.

3. The Dancing Jews

“Is it the look in your eyes, or is it these dancing Jews?” Isaac Lamb asked girlfriend Amy Frankel in this elaborate song-and-dance proposal. Yes, a million times yes.

4. The JDate Proposal

Not to be outdone, Eric LaBarre tangoed his way through an even more elaborate musical proposal for girlfriend Nina Sturtz, who he met on JDate. The highlights:

He’s filmed taking the train to her parents house in White Plains to ask for permission—while she’s in Israel on a Birthright trip. Then he tells his mom and brother, two of her friends, and even her ex-boyfriend, and dances in the street with some of his friends.

5. The Sarah Silverman Proposition

The Jewish comedian got graphic—for a cause. She memorably offered to scissor gazillionaire Sheldon Adelson if he donated the $100 million he pledged to Romney to Obama instead. We all know how that turned out.

(Art by Margarita Korol)

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Have you heard the one about the nice lady who sat next to Jay-Z on the subway and asked who he was?

Well, her name is Ellen Grossman, and she talked to The Scroll’s Adam Chandler about her brush with viral video fame—her inadvertent cameo, filmed on the way to Hov’s final (of eight!) concert at the Barclays Center, is part of a documentary about Jay-Z released this week.

The 67-year-old Brooklyn-born artist says that after meeting Hov, she “went to Wikipedia to read about him.”

Adopt us, Ellen?

On Meeting Jay-Z on the Subway [The Scroll] Previously on Jewcy: Jay-Z Lit A Menorah Backstage All Eight Nights of His NYC Concert Series
Is Jay-Z the Most Powerful Jew in the Music Industry?

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