Favourite latke/Chanukaf recipe?

Preferably gluten-free if it can be so.

Merci, and Chag Sameach!

Current Location: Manchester, England

I'm looking to do some cooking and want to try a new preparation.

Your best brisket recipe. Share?

NYTIMES: Gift to the Jews - Nonreturnable

:blink:?

And here's the video, over on Tablet magazine.

Catchy...

As of 20 minutes ago, the 1st day of Hanukkah has begun in Israel!

So, happy Hanukkah for all of you Jews out there, eat alot of sufganiyot and light the menorah, and pray for a miracle. (praying for the returning of our kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit would be great)

חנוכה שמח!

I think the soul is my conscious mind- my I- my [sense of] self- my ego.

I don't think it's any mysterious thing.

If you ask me who am I- or where am I- I would say I feel like a cloud hovering over my forehead.

Interestingly, this is where God was in the Tabernacle/Temple. He was above the Ark cover between the Cherubim.

This Tabernacle/Temple could be schematized as a face, with the brain being the Ark(inside was the essence of the "Torah") and the mind being the God who hovers over the Ark; the eyes would be the Menora and the face-bread table(that which is illuminated); the nose would be the Golden insence altar; the mouth would be the altar of burnt offerings(God's "food").

God is saying to us, you want to know where I am? I am in the same place you are: a mind hovering above the brain, on a face.

By hovering above the Ark, God is saying that- just like the your mind- He doesn't inhabit time and space either.

So the Tora teaches us how to think of/locate our souls: the soul is another name for the mind that hovers above the brain.

There are brain studies which corroborate this- I mean, the transcendence of the mind in brain studies.

What do you think about this?

From http://state-of-exile.blogspot.com/2009/08/list-of-potential-jewish-heresies.html

On the desolate ruins wrought by heresy, the sublime knowledge of God will build her temple.
- Abraham Isaac Kook

Elders of Zion:
Reading the works of anti-Semites as divine writ.

Evangelical Judaism:
Promoting missionary work in Africa to replenish the fold.

Gnostic Judaism:
Cultivating hidden manna in the desert of the real.

Hebrew Orthodox Church:
Practicing Eastern Orthodoxy as it was before Byzantium.

Islamojudaism:
Acknowledging Mohammad as apostle to the Arabs and crypto-warrior Jew.

Jews for Gentiles:
Chosen to serve the nations as priests and financial advisors.

Neo-Essenes:
Regrouping to await the end of the world at Qumran.

Semitic Nations:
Preaching Arab-Jewish holy war against the Aryan-Iranian hellspawn.

Temple of Latter Day Prophets:
Affirming the ancient Hebrew presence in America and renewing it as divine mission.

Yahweh's Witnesses:
Going door to door to spread His word.

Zevianity:
Spreading the good news that Sabbatai Zevi converted for our sins.

For those of you who read Hebrew, want to practice your Hebrew, or just enjoy a bit of Hebrew humor, I saw this on a community mailing list and wanted to pass it along.

Too long to translate in one sitting, and it might lose some of the humor by doing so, but great read! Anyone wanting to translate, be my guest.

( Observant vs Secular Perspective on Chanukah )

There are currently several bone marrow drives going around in the Chicagoland for GIFT OF LIFE, a bone marrow registry that focuses on Jewish registers.

Donating DNA to go in a bone marrow registry is easy and painless. It is a swab on the inside of your cheek.

It is very important - because they are currently looking for a match for a 26-year-old woman who will not make it many more weeks without a match. You can read more about her story here:

http://www.juf.org/news/local.aspx?id=51320&source=home

On that website is also a list of drives that are going on this week and this weekend.

Please consider doing this if you would be comfortable donating if you are a match. If you would not be comfortable with that. . . . don't put yourself in the registry. (70% of donations are just done with an I.V. blood donation - they do something with the blood to get plasma. These days they don't have to actually get the marrow that often.)

You also do NOT have to be Jewish, or Jewish-by-Birth to be in registry. I am a convert, and am in the registry. However, it is more statistically likely that someone with a similar background to the person in question will be a match - which is why they do these "background-targeted" drives. (However, they sometimes also do cross-check them with other banks.)

Remember what the Talmud says about saving one life! Thanks, guys.

From BBC News, The Man who Smuggled Himself into Auschwitz

I'm supposed to spend Shabbat somewhere with no eruv, but where we're going to have to go back and forth between several different buildings within a three or four block radius all day. For those of us who don't want to carry, our lives would be made much easier if we had an eruv. We only need it for the day, so it doesn't have to be very durable (the weather should be pretty nice), and the area has telephone lines that we can probably use to some extent, but I'm having trouble finding a how-to guide, as it were. I can find a half-dozen comprehensive guides about how to kasher my kitchen, lay tefillin, and goodness knows what else just by going to Google, but this eludes me. Surely someone has written this. Anybody want to point me in the right direction?

Current Location: the OU chair

What is this, I don't even know.

( Students Punished for 'Kick a Jew' Day )

I'm pretty sure nobody has posted this here yet.



A warning, from one musician to any others reading: you may want to be in another room when the falsetto parts kick in.

Has anyone heard about this film? Thoughts?

I assume this list is way longer, but it's got some interesting programs. I don't have an Iphone, but it would be nice to have some of these.

My favorite?
The Parve-o-meter ;)

http://www.vccafe.com/2008/10/27/made-in-israel-kosher-iphone-apps

So I announced my wedding on LiveJournal, and a friend (angryskul) accused me of trolling and made a rape joke.

Is this normal in the Jewish community? I thought a friend would offer congratulations and offer to help me in my journey to married life.

Is it because I'm a Catholic marrying a Jewish woman?

Any advice on how to deal with this would be much appreciated. Is this a breach of friendship? Does it matter if he's Orthodox or not?

My cousin is on a pilot trip right now to decide where he wants to move his family next year. He is a nice mix of Breslov-frum and backwoods/guitar-playing/Xfiles-watching/baseballcap-wearing secular. Basically, during the week he's Tshirts, jeans and cap, and on Shabbos it's strictly black hat and gartle... he's strict to halacha but incorporates the good of the secular world into his worldview. They're checking out Tzfat, Nahariya, and Ramat Beit Shemesh.

I'm going to see him for Shabbos and he mentioned going to RBS next week for Shabbos to see how it is. No clue what neighborhood, but when I mentioned it to my fiance, he looked at me like this strange cousin may have just lost his mind, and shook his head. There was an article, which I cannot find, about a girl who was stoned (not "to death" but beaten badly) in RBS (Bet I'm guessing) by the Modesty Police.

I found several articles, this being the most recent so far:
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/07/12/1006432/residents-struggle-to-counter-violent-religious-coercion-in-beit-shemesh

Anyone know what the status is in the community as a whole, and if this is something a person making aliyah would consider when looking for a safe, modern-leaning but frum area to live?

Current Mood: contemplative

Just was told about this terrific compilation of Jewish online resources

Sotheby's is auctioning off a 700 year old Sefer Torah.
Info and a link to further information here
http://onthemainline.blogspot.com/2009/11/13th-century-spanish-torah-for-sale.html

All in Hebrew with English subs... click "view clip" link at bottom of page.

"melancholic morbid sketch show"

[Ending has Holocaust imagery]

http://www.matarproductions.tv/content_in.asp?id=171&title=The%20Saddest%20Sketch%20show%20In%20The%20World&cat=comedy#

Are there any popular, general interest Jewish forums in English online? There must be, but I can't for the life of me find any. I'm looking for something like www.lds.net/forums or forums.catholic.com, with Jews of varying levels of observation and interested outsiders discussing doctrine, social issues, politics, etc., but all I can find are forums for Jewish singles in greater Indianapolis or forums that get one post every two weeks. Although the Mormon and Catholic forums are, what I'm looking for needn't be sponsored or hosted by any particular branch of Judaism, of course. Thanks!