Oh no! The financial sector exploded! The market is, uh, failing! "What do we do" is the response of, like, economists. Politicians know the important question is "WHO DO WE BLAME." So liberals jumped on deregulating Conservatives and President Bush and evil Wall Street fatcats and so on. Conservatives, oddly, also blamed most of those people, except for a small but vocal subset who blamed this collapse of everything on... poor black people?

Several days ago, Neil Cavuto, host of Fox News' Your World, proclaimed, "Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster."

On WorldNetDaily, a compendium of loopy half-truths, pundit Drew Zahn declared that "when federal regulators demanded parity between racial groups in lending, the only way to achieve a quota would be to begin making intentionally bad lending decisions."

The conservative National Review Online trotted out a favorite whipping boy, the Community Reinvestment Act, claiming that the legislation was the result of "racially inflammatory campaigns" that forced banks to "make mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets or credit."

The CRA option has the bonus of pinning blame on black people and Bill Clinton!

But, hah, none of this is true, at all. The CRA just affected banks and thrifts, which are regulated. "The heart of the crisis was caused by unregulated and lightly regulated mortgage brokers and independent mortgage bankers and affiliates that are not subject to the CRA," says law professor Michael Barr. Tyler Cowen puts it thus: "Did policies such as the Community Reinvestment Act significantly worsen the housing bubble and the subsequent collapse? Basically not, although in my view these were bad policies for other reasons." There's your talking point, and he provides some supporting evidence.

Our favorite debunking comes from Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I know very little about economics, but I know quite a bit about people. 1.) Folks who use single cause logic to explain gigantic complicated phenomena are almost always lying, ignorant or children. 2.) Folks who peddle victimology for giants ("the banks were forced to do it") while decrying the victimology of individual humans ("the white man forced me to do it") are also usually just lying. The Blame The Negroes (BTN) theory satisfies both criteria.

He goes on from there on the "ugly history" of the sort of argument the CRA thing represents. As always, he's worth reading.

But, of course, through the fault primarily of greedy lenders, many of the worst subrime loans went to minorities. ("The Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research group, examined 50,000 subprime loans nationwide and found that blacks and Hispanics were 30 percent more likely than whites to be charged higher interest rates, even among borrowers with similar credit ratings.") So the crisis hits homeowning minorities disproportionately (culture of ownership!). A good, serious, liberal 'bailout' bill would renegotiate the terms of those mortgages and keep those homeowners out of foreclosure. The Paulson bill didn't have that, but the Dodd-Frank-Paulson bill had some (arguably mostly cosmetic) provisions to protect homeowners.

Still, the bill was largely seen as more helpful to Wall Street than, in the memorable words of last week's Weekend Update, Martin Luther King Boulevard. Black members of Congress felt pressure to oppose the bill from Black talk show hosts and their constituencies, because the bill was seen as, you know, welfare for rich whites while they get nothing. And, hilariously, the white right-wing voters who called on their GOP Members to vote against the bill presumably now think the money was needed to bail out the blacks who got us in this mess. And the Jews who own the banks!

So the Congressional Black Caucus voted 18 pro, 21 against the bailout bill. Which is not quite decisive but it's still telling.

And did work on the Bailout bill really need to stop completely during the Jewish holy days? Even leaving aside the important work of Banking Committee chairman Barney Frank, Jewish congress members voted 20 in favor and 9 against, so presumably their absence would've made the final vote even more decisively against.

(Remember, of course: Black and Jewish congressmen are more likely to be Democrats, and thus more likely to support the bill to begin with. And keep in mind also regional differences!)

SO to sum up, a Democratic bill needs more Black support to win without Republicans, who we should probably just give up on because they think Black people are to blame for this.

It is, honestly, a bizarre and inexplicable story. "We grow good people in our small towns," Palin said, quoting someone identified only as a writer, "with honesty and sincerity and dignity." That "writer," Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank notes, is a man named Westbrook Pegler. You have probably never heard of him, but he was a very popular and very right-wing columnist from the first half of the 20th century. How right-wing? He openly wished for the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt, for one.

And for two, he was quite the anti-Semite! He hated Jews so much, the far-right anti-Semitic John Birch Society banned him from their journal. And all Pegler did was claim that American Jews were "instinctively sympathetic to Communism"! And also claim lots of other crazy stuff!

So. Quoting an old anti-Semite is obviously proof of nothing—people still say nice things about Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, and Richard Nixon—but the larger question here is who put those words in her nice speech, where did they find them, and what the hell were they thinking. Like... did they think no one would notice? Who even reads Pegler anymore?

Answer: Pat Buchanan! Buchanan, that lovable old coot, used that same line in a 1990 book. Buchanan, of course, did not mind being associated with a crazy old anti-Semite, and the passage was quoted in a section quite complimentary to the reactionary columnist.

It really does boggle the mind, doesn't it, that they could not find another passage by another writer talking about how nice small towns are, right? Of course the line is question is also about Harry Truman, who was, of course, a Vice President who eventually became president when the guy before him died in office of old age, so really there are a lot of questions we have for the people who composed that terrible speech.

Palin's Source [Ben Smith/Politico]

Koch's written statmeent says Barack Obama will protect us from terror, and help the poor people, but to really understand why he endorsed Obama we turn to his statement to Politico's Ben Smith: "Any time someone goes to the library and says, 'I want to ban books,' and the librarian says 'no,' and she threatens to fire them — that's scary."

She's speaking of Sarah Palin, of course. But it might not be just the book-banning that turned ol' Ed off! See, Sarah Palin is a super-Christian self-described "pitbull" whose church is maybe trying to convert all the Jews. Also Ed Koch just proved us 100% correct. She terrifies the old Jews who might otherwise be wary of that Obama kid. Time to invest in more Florida air time, Axelrod!

Even more awesome: according to Radar, Koch had the best critique of Giulinai's Republican National Convention speech ever:

Koch said he had noticed a "verbal tic intruding" into Giuliani's speech at the Republican convention last week: "a kind of maniacal laugh appearing before or simultaneously surfacing as he delivered his slashing attack" on Obama. Suddenly, Koch realized where he had heard that laugh before: it was from Richard Widmark, "carrying out his role in the movie Kiss of Death. I saw once again the scene in which Widmark, playing Tommy Udo, a killer, pushed a wheelchair in which an old woman was sitting and, laughing maniacally, shoved it off the top of the stairs with its occupant still in it."

Hah! Koch '08!

The disclosure that last month Governor Palin's church hosted the executive director of Jews for Jesus, who told congregants that violence against Israeli Jews is God's punishment for their failure to accept Jesus, is going to be the next club that Mrs. Palin's leftist critics pick up against her. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency quotes Mrs. Palin's pastor at Wasilla Bible Church, Larry Kroon, as saying that he doesn't believe Jews for Jesus are deceptive. "Look at Paul and Peter and the others — they were Jews and believed in Jesus as the messiah," he told JTA. "There's gentile believers and there's Jewish believers that acknowledge Jesus as messiah. There's Swedish believers."

They go on to half-assedly defend Palin by mentioning Jeremiah Wright and how there's no "religious test" for the presidency, but the Jews For Jesus are far outside the mainstream even for practicing evangelicals. Jewish Defense League Anti-Defamation League [I do know the difference! Whoops!] head Abe Foxman is pretending it's not a big deal by invoking the Spanish Inquisition (done by Catholics, not Protestants!) but his own organization has a longer, richer history of warning people about the deceptive and offensive tactics of the Jews for Jesus.

Sarah Palin's Jews for Jesus setting up shop in Wasilla, Alaska almost reminds us of Michael Chabon's charming The Yiddish Policeman's Union, his detective novel set in an alternate universe in which Americans settled Jewish WWII refugees in Alaska and Israel died before it was born. The incongruous idea of a Jewish settlement in far-off Sitka gives the book much of its uneasy atmosphere, especially in the mentions of the current fictional President of the US, an evangelical Christian promising to finally kick those Jews out of the pristine frontier, "pledging to restore Alaska for Alaskans, wild and clean."

The Democrats more or less handed Florida over to the Republicans when they selected (sorry, we'll say it) a black man without a rich history of pro-Israel hawkishness (even though he saw the light and came around pretty damn quick). This, though, might actually put it back in play.

Hey, here's Ben "Sure, God made the world in 7 days, where's that paycheck" Stein:

One commenter on a knitting website called the book “ludicrious and repulsive,” cutely worrying that Matthews has sullied the good name of knitters everywhere: “We knitters need to tell the world that she does not represent us and that the majority of us are kind, charitable, concerned, caring people.”

S'ok. We know, we know.

Matthews' blog.

[Ynet]
[Nextbook]

When The Jewish Week paid him a visit at his cramped shop on Tuesday afternoon, the long-haired, fast-talking [b.d.] claimed to have summoned the police to his store twice the day the story hit the streets, to deal with berating visitors. His mother has urged him to return home to Israel, after some have called for his head, literally.

Not surprising, what with his edgy, cutting-edge, edge-moving political fashion:

[B.d.], who left the Holy Land for New York in the summer of 2001, is no stranger to controversy. One of his fashion shows featured a gay wedding between two models, one with a mask of President George W. Bush, the other wearing an Osama bin Laden mask. He doesn’t seem to be a fan of any politicians, stating he is no fan of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and that Sen. John McCain “is not the answer” for America. His line of anti-Obama shirts has been on sale since March, sporting slogans like “Jews Against Obama,” “Obama = Hitler,” and “Who Killed Obama?” the latter of which the designer claims has sold 1,200. They sell for anywhere from $69 to $250.

Some people can handle it. Some people can't.

Web sites like Gawker believe it’s all a stunt to get people into his store, and the designer isn’t helping matters. As this Jewish Week reporter was leaving, he attempted to sell her a copy of his self-published book of poetry, “America, My Whore.”

[Jewish Week. The story also gives credence to what we heard about the firing of the Metro editor who oversaw the front-page story.]

• Jared Kushner owns the New York Observer. He also helps run his father Charles' real estate company. Charles Kushner is a convicted felon following schemes to funnel campaign donations throuh the names of real estate partners, and also because he hired a prostitute to seduce, and thus help Kushner get revenge against, his brother-in-law.
• In March 2007, Jared paraded Ivanka, daughter of famed loudmouth and Rosie O'Donnell hater Donald Trump, through the Observer offices in a suspicious way.
• In April 2007, Kushner's spokesman said the couple were just buddies, but this was irrefutably proven false when word leaked about the Observer trip, which for some reason Observer staffers had kept to themselves.
• Almost exactly one year later, Ivanka is spotted going to parties by herself. Speculation about the breakup centers on the religious issue, and also on speculation that maybe Charles wants to seem more independent and mogul-ish.
• A depressed Ivanka lost a very important online catfight.
• Now they're back together, with Ivanka pledged to maybe convert some day. No word on how the Donald took all this.

They even got back together in time to catch Dark Knight together. Something tells me that, against all odds, these two kids might make it. It's the feel-good heir-love story of the summer!

[Post]

You might also remember “The Israel Lobby” from its expanded version as an eponymous book with the aesthetics of the Israeli and American flags interwoven and which drew universally hostile reviews on both the left and the right (when’s the last time you can remember the Nation sort of agreeing with Commentary?), as well from both the neoconservative and “realist” schools of foreign policy. Those who didn’t speculate as to Mearsheimer and Walt’s tenebrous motives concluded that their scholarship was mostly fifth-rate, and that their reasoning was just as good.

The loud and angry chorus quietened to a murmuring panel discussion after Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations came to the cool-headed determination: “Their use of evidence is uneven. At the level of geopolitics, their handling of the complex realities and crosscurrents of the Middle East fails to establish either the incontestable definition of the national interest that their argument requires or the superiority they claim for the policies they propose.”

But Mearsheimer and Walt’s biggest problem was a category one: They depicted the “lobby” as encompassing every strain of opinion with respect to Israel, thus nullifying its definition as an undifferentiated, monomaniacal force. Had they written a book entitled Jews Argue, they’d have sold fewer copies but made much the same underlying point. As Mead put it: “Since virtually every possible policy position is supported by some element of this lobby, the lobby never loses no matter what happens in Washington — like the man who always ‘wins’ at roulette because he puts a chip on every square.”

Of course, the only real “lobby” the pair wound up calling attention to was the self-martyrdom one run by simpering intellectuals. Dare criticize the Jewish state, goes a certain kind of reverse messianic logic, and you’ll never work in this town again. Not many reviewers denounced Mearsheimer and Walt as anti-Semites, at least not in public; Mead said they stupidly trafficked in all the wrong tropes, but probably out of illiteracy and ignorance—they certainly weren’t aware of much Middle Eastern and American history, so this rationale didn’t seem willfully naive. Yet those who did denounce them as Jew-haters were held up as proof of one part of their shoddy grievance; namely, that a contingent of powerful and influential Jews and Christians are always standing guard to protect not only the sanctity of the American-Israeli special relationship, but to deny that such a protection even exists.

Strange, then, that even the putative “victims” of AIPAC don’t seem all that victimized. Mearsheimer and Walt are both still gainfully employed academics, and the fact that the present documentary isn't airing on U.S. television owes to how irrelevant and old the controversy has become, which fact hasn't stopped the inevitable whispers about a backroom censorship campaign. Was it censorship when the essay and book were being blogged and written about ad nauseum in every magazine and newspaper in the country, and eliciting puzzled laughter from Israelis, who could never quite see what all the fuss was about?

Tony Judt, one of Mearsheimer and Walt's more mainstream boosters, who whether by accident or design looks more and more like Isaac Babel, parlayed his defense of them into an occasion for a good headline-grabbing whine. An invitation issued to him to speak at the Polish consulate in New York was rescinded after Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League placed a hectoring phone call to the little sliver of Warsaw on the Hudson and reminded whoever was in charge that Judt had some provocative ideas about the future of Israel. Yet that same Polish government, as Judt indicates in this documentary, is “not very attractive” and therefore prone to take decisions he would not agree with—like informing Tony Judt that his speaking services are no longer required. He now discloses that when the New York Times commissioned him to write an op-ed on the original London Review article, the paper forced him to acknowledge in print that he was Jewish. Judt might have declined to do that on principle and instead shopped his piece around elsewhere, but he didn't. Is his point that no one gets away clean from the tentacular reaches of the lobby, which is still not a "conspiracy," as his editorial plangently announced in its title?

As for Foxman, his campaign to stifle the introduction of a House resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide –- because he was afraid it’d piss off Turkey, Israel’s only military ally in the Levant –- failed. They don’t make Zionist praetorians like they used to, I guess. (I should probably add here that, in my capacity as associate editor of Jewcy magazine, I helped coordinate two Manhattan rallies against Foxman and the ADL for their shameful agitation. It still wasn’t enough to take me off their fucking mailing list.)

Then there is the more recent case of Joe Klein. On Time’s Swampland blog last week, he composed a post entitled “Surge Protection,” which made some mundane observations about the state of security in Iraq (it’s better), but then ended with this hiccup:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives—people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary—plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

The little diddums. Klein must have known that would call down the Hebraic thunder, and it did. As best I can tell, he was doing what he’s been doing since he learned how to blog and read virulent comments, many of which routinely brand him a neocon warmonger — he was pandering. Not that there aren’t prominent Jewish neoconservatives who plumped for war, mind you. But it was the crankish types who keep track of such tribal affiliations that “raised the question of divided loyalties," whereas Richard Perle would no doubt have preferred the question remain recumbent.

The curious thing about Klein, though is, as Mickey Kaus noted, “It's now a week later, and as far as I can tell [he] still has his job. He's still blogging (wondering ‘why Lieberman is so fixated on Iran’). He hasn't been publically rebuked by his employer. He hasn't been forced to issue a groveling apology.”

Mary McCarthy once wrote an eloquent and vigorous defense of Hannah Arendt, and described the effect of being one of the few Gentiles in conversation with Jews where the topic was Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt's molten treatment of the "banality of evil" that burned its way through the salons of the Upper West Side in the early 60’s. McCarthy said it was “like [being] a child with a reading defect in a class of normal readers.”

You can be Jewish and sometimes feel that way, too.

"It is a combination of speed dating and the gong show or "JDate and a camel auction", as Rachel Donadio wrote in The New York Times last year. You have two minutes (and they will stand up and pull you off if you exceed that) to charm them. They get a book with your picture and bio in it. (It really is like JDate! One woman even asked me if I were single).

Seriously, Jews are one of the most important demographics for this book, I told them in my two minute spiel (which I rehearsed and rehearsed to get down to under 1:50). Why?

1. They love Chinese food.
2. They buy books (supposedly 23% of all commercial hardcover in the United States)
3. They have social groups like JCCs and synagogues where they can bring authors in."

Go to Katz's: "Because Mr. Obama is relatively new on the national stage, his résumé of Senate votes in support of Israel is short, as is his list of high-profile visits to synagogues and delis."

Oh, nice work, Jodi Kantor. High-profile visits to delis. Obama's also neglected to make a high-profile visit to his psychiatrist, his popular music producer, or his jeweler. And it would kill him to make one high-profile call to his mother once in a while?

Anyway, the takeaway here is that old Jewish people are terrified of the Blacks, so they will all vote for John McCain, who will nuke anyone who is mean to Israel.

The thing is, Florida is full of these old Jewish people and also Latinos, so Obama has already crossed it off his map. He knows he stands no chance there (especially if McCain selects Governor Crist as his running mate), and he will make up for it in western states (theoretically). This is the year we probably don't need give a shit about Florida, thank god.

Many Florida Jews Express Doubts on Obama [NYT]

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg (hello, Jeff!) asked Barack Obama whether "Israel is a drag on America's reputation overseas." The thing is, the answer to that question is "yes," but you're not allowed to say that. Obama didn't.

No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.

Naturally, this was distilled into "Barack Obama thinks Israel is a sore." Thankfully it was just GOP hack John Boehner who said it, this time, and not a Clinton surrogate. So maybe she has given up!

At HuffPo, Sam Stein ponders whether Obama even needs to pander to the Jews. It's worth noting that McCain is the kind of terrible hawk who more conservative Jewish people might support. Also they contribute lots of money!

Basically the campaign continues to give all of us reasons to look America square in the eye and feel terrible about everything.

[Times]

A synagogue in Westhampton Beach asked permission to put up an eruv. An eruv is a symbolic boundary that allows observant Jews to do stuff during Shabbos. It is literally a tiny wire that can go up along telephone poles or other failry unobtrusive places. Naturally, the residents of Westhampton want no part of this terrible Jewish plot.

Some Westhampton Beach gentile residents oppose the eruv because they fear it will attract more Orthodox Jews to the area.

Now the Post doesn't like "name" or "quote" anyone, and there's no evidence that they did any "reporting," but we're still more tha willing to buy the story. Because everyone hates the Jews again!

Like Cal State Long Beach psych professor Kevin MacDonald, who wrote a three-volume "critique of Judaism as a 'group evolutionary strategy'" that threatens "Europeans." MacDonald has a plan: ban Jews from college and up their taxes. Certain others have taken MacDonald's views to heart and recommended more efficient options of dealing with The Jewish Question. These political mavericks have a crazy plan to "exterminate" all the Jewish people! Though MacDonald is pretty sure the Jews just made up the Nazis to get people to be nice to them.

God it sucks when professors prove frothing anti-academia nutcases right.

"There are religious differences," one [source] points out. "Would he expect her to convert to Judaism?"

Lauren's mother, Sharon, is a devout Christian.

The Daily News did find one Bush insider to dispute George and Barbara Bush's disapproval of Lauren, and to point out that even the elder George Bush didn't get to invite siblings.

NB to David: If you do get invited, don't bring up Grandpa Prescott. So awkward.

[Rush & Molloy]

If non-Christians have heard of Bibleman at all, it's probably because for the first seven years he was played by Willie Aames. In the 1970s and 80s, Aames was the shaggy-haired co-star of Eight is Enough and Charles in Charge, and his only superpower was snorting three grams of coke a day. Eventually he cleaned up, was born again and took a new job as Bibleman. His episodes are now in perpetual reruns on TBN, and I sat down to watch one.

The show opens with the backstory of our hero, Miles Peterson, "a man who had it all: wealth, status, success. Still, something was missing." That's putting it mildly. I don't know about you, but when I feel that something is missing I usually mope around the house or browse YouTube for videos of cats falling off stuff. Miles, however, goes tearing out into a rainstorm and collapses into a sobbing heap. "Then, in his darkest hour," Miles finds something half buried in the mud: a Bible. Not just any Bible — a radioactive Bible. No, actually it is just any Bible. But apparently that's enough to turn him into Bibleman.

In this episode, Bibleman and his sidekicks, Cypher (the black guy) and Biblegirl (the girl) go up against a villain called Primordius Drool, a mincing green-skinned fop with a lisp and a fondness for show tunes. Subtlety is not Bibleman's strong suit. The same actor also plays a talk show host named Sammy Davey, who is a classic stereotype of a New York Jew, complete with nerdy glasses and a giant Jew-fro. Slouching and cringing, Sammy Davey needles and browbeats poor Bibleman in an accent so thick that he actually pronounces Bibleman as if it were a surname like Silverman or Lieberman.

The heart of the show is the fight sequences, typically involving a darkened warehouse (all the better to obscure the lackluster choreography) and Bibleman swatting away CGI fireballs with his lightsaber while announcing, "Isaiah 54:17 says 'no weapon forged against me will prosper!'" Every now and then, Bibleman shares a lesson with his sidekicks, as when he laments that people "allow their minds to cover up what God has placed on their hearts" — a near perfect pitch for the common evangelical notion that feelings are to be trusted above rational discernment, a belief that many non-evangelicals would be distressed to hear is being passed on to eight-year-olds.

• Voting: "Young American Jews, aged 18-34, have a 73% voter turn out. Average American non-Jews of the same demographic have a 42% voter turn out."
• National Public Radio: "Not only does NPR feed in to their progressive liberal elitism, it also creates a stronger sense of their progressive liberal elitism."
• Psuedo Indie Media Outlets: " Slate, McSweeney’s, and the New Republic, while independent in spirit, all have massive corporate parent companies."

OK, maybe also? Professional blogging.

[Stuff Jewish Young Adults Like]

Spitzer's education, propensity to argue and dedication to fitness all made him a nice Jewish boy. But he never conflated his moralist streak with his religion the way some Jewish politicians do (cough, cough Joe Lieberman). Instead, like Michael Bloomberg, also a member of the tribe, Spitzer was a crusader. As attorney general, he went after white collar criminals, as well as prostitution rings, and created a reputation as do-gooder fighting evil. (Bloomberg, less didactic, went after smokers and fatties.) And the public loves when anyone self-righteous, regardless of religion, takes a fall.

Prostitution affairs ensnare B-list political goys like Randall Tobias, Ken Calvert and Allan Howe all the time. Eliot Spitzer proves that Jews can violate the codes of marriages just as well as any other religion, and his fall from pious grace makes it more shocking (or entertaining, depending on the observer). But only a Jew would've thought to put a down payment for future services.

The full video is on TMZ (includes Woody Allen reference!).

Alas for Mr. Cohen and for all of us, in the service of his own fear he resorts to employing the time-honored strategies (smear and guilt-by-association) and tactics (a false appearance of reasonableness, assumption of unproven conclusions, selective reference to facts not in evidence) employed by the very demagogues and masters of hate whom he is presumably trying to combat. Why has there been no response from the Obama camp to this deeply troubling message of hate? Well, as it turns out, there has been a response — at least two of them — and Mr. Cohen even quotes them in his column. Since they interfere with his crucial business of frightening himself and the rest of Jewish America (not to mention the quotidian duty of filling one's allotment of column-inches), however, he ignores them. In so doing, Mr. Cohen resorts to a time-honored principle of propagandists of hatred: Every denial is in fact tantamount to a confession.

The youngster says:

You have other places in Manhattan that have good deli cases. But our kitchen—and I say this very confidently—nobody can touch. I won't take away the counters from them, where you can get a good sandwich. But there aren't that many places where you can get good soup. We have chicken fricassée, goulash, all these things that come from the kitchen. There's not a single deli in Manhattan that can compare.

"Kishke, you know, derma!" Actually, "kishke, you know, derma" does nothing in terms of clarification but does everything in terms of building buzz.

You Can Take the Deli Out of Second Avenue [NYM]

Gumina saw nothing in the sequence of letters and the numeral 8 except a sequence of letters and the numeral eight. Others did.

'I would be at a grocery store or the Wal-Mart and people would say 'Hate Jews?' or 'Jew Hater?' and I had no idea what they were talking about,' Gumina said Friday.

'You know how people just say things that don't make any sense.'" [Ga license plate spells antisemitism... almost [AJC via Harper's]

No, that would have to be a feature called "ritual decoder," which in this issue helps readers make sense of the bris, or ritual circumcision, ceremony. "It's not enough that you just brought home a beautiful baby boy—now you have to throw a party?" JL asks.
But not to worry: "Planning a big life-cycle event days just days after coming home from the hospital doesn't have to be daunting." Especially not if you make sure to memorize JL's handy list of 7 essential "questions to ask a mohel," including question #2: "Where do you stand on metzitza, the Talmudic requirement to suck blood from the wound?"

Man, Martha Stewart's blandishments to remember to prune your perennials just don't seem quite as vitally relevant as they used to.