Just For Fun

Hillel vs. Shamai or When is it OK to Tell Your Wife’s Friend She Looks Fabulous?

November 17, 2014

The sign on my front door read, “Men, please announce yourself.” It was a Friday around 1:00 PM and my arms were filled with pre-Shabbat shopping: challah from Pe’er, still moist chocolate rugalach from Marzipan, eggplant dip in Thailandi sauce from Tzidkiyahu. The Jerusalem Post, of course. I walked right in.“Don’t come up!” my wife Jody called down immediately from the living […]

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Game of Thrones meets HaTikvah in video mashup

April 29, 2014

I’m not a fan of Game of Thrones. That doesn’t mean I have anything against the popular TV show based on the book series of the same name; I just haven’t found time to fit it into my already too busy TV watching schedule. But Jerusalem virtuoso rock violinist Michael Greilsammer’s new mashup of the […]

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Isaac Asimov’s Jewish/Israeli Predictions…for 2014

January 6, 2014

Every New Year’s, I like to roll out some predictions of what I think might happen in the 12 months to come. For 2014, though, I want to take a look back, at a set of predictions made on the occasion of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, by the science fiction master Isaac Asimov. […]

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Top zingers from this year’s Comedy for Koby

December 13, 2013

Comedy for Koby rolled into Jerusalem this week and my wife and I were there, along with our three kids, who we treated to their first live comedy show as a Hanukah gift. (Think of it as guffaws instead of gelt.) After what I’d done last year, though, I wasn’t sure if the comedians would be […]

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Hair No More

November 26, 2013

The queue (well, more of an amorphous, fast talking crowd) was already 30 girls long when my daughter Merav arrived at the Malcha shopping mall in Jerusalem. The girls – teenagers and young adults mostly – were from all kinds of different backgrounds, from completely secular to haredi. But they all had one thing in […]

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Watching The Clock at the Wine Festival

August 7, 2013

One of the highlights of the local summer scene, the Israel Wine Festival, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. My wife and I – along with many thousands of visitors from around the country – anxiously watch the clock waiting for the week when we can descend upon the Israel Museum in Jerusalem to sample some of Israel’s best […]

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“Nice Jewish boy” Launches Playboy in Israel

March 8, 2013

When I was growing up, my father always kept a stack of Playboy magazines in the living room, next to the stereo. They were there for anyone to read, and despite the public potential for teenage titillation, I’m sure that my father really did intend that we read them. But just in case there were other reasons they were […]

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The Fattest Holiday of Them All? Purim, Pesach, Shavuot or Hanukah?

February 28, 2013

Purim may now be behind us, but some of the sweets still remain. The holiday, which is officially about retelling the story of how the Jews were almost annihilated in ancient Persia, is perhaps best remembered going forward by one’s increased belly size after partaking of one too many hamentaschen – the classic triangular-shaped Purim cookie Ah, […]

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Israeli Spotting at the Super Bowl

February 4, 2013

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday and, as always, the commercials were often as unforgettable as some of the bolder plays on the field. For Israelis, the spot to watch was GoDaddy’s promotion of its web hosting service featuring Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli. The video is all over the Internet and has racked up a stunning […]

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Comedy for Koby Mea Culpa

December 7, 2012

My post earlier this week about the Comedy for Koby show that recently toured Israel set off a storm of criticism. I was pilloried by readers who were shocked by my denunciation of two of the original comics on the program who backed out when Operation Pillar of Defense began. “I don’t expect people to risk their […]

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