Nice use of video by a non-profit. I’m sure it was­n’t cheap to pro­duce, but prob­a­bly did­n’t cost as much as you’d think.

Spotted in the ele­va­tor on June 9
(Taken with Instagram)

Today, a new orga­ni­za­tion called B’nai Mitzvah Revolution announced itself to the world.

I’ve been priv­i­leged to serve as the web­mas­ter/tech-guru on the project. Working with the team behind BMR — notably the co-direc­tors and their col­leagues at HUC-JIR/RHSOE/ECE and the URJ — has been an amaz­ingly ful­fill­ing and insight­ful expe­ri­ence. I’m thank­ful to Isa for giv­ing me the opportunity.

Check the site out. I’m incred­i­bly proud of it (though, truth be told, a lot of the con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion and tweak­ing came from the entire team).

Viva la revolution!

Just thought I’d help get the mes­sage out there… (Taken with Instagram)

Sinbad on March 16. Who’s in?
(Taken with Instagram)

Remember when you used to read MAD Magazine?

Beverly Hills Purim Ball
(Taken with Instagram at Beverly Wilshire Beverly Hills — A Four Seasons Hotel)

Seth Godin:

Steve devoted his pro­fes­sional life to giv­ing us (you, me and a bil­lion other peo­ple) the most pow­er­ful device ever avail­able to an ordi­nary per­son. Everything in our world is dif­fer­ent because of the device you’re read­ing this on.

What are we going to do with it?

For the past sev­eral days, there’s been a lot of chat­ter on the inter­webs about a sug­ges­tion (which seems to have really taken off with this HuffPost arti­cle by Rabbi Jason Miller) that peo­ple boy­cott put pres­sure on Delta because “Delta will add Saudi Arabian Airlines to its SkyTeam Alliance of part­ner­ing com­pa­nies and would require Delta to ban Jews and hold­ers of Israeli pass­ports from board­ing flights to Saudi Arabia.” My col­leagues on UPGRD​.com, Matthew and Hunter, have offered thought­ful and thor­ough responses, as have pod­cast con­trib­u­tors Ben and Gary. Normally, I’d stay out of this to avoid the redun­dancy. But since I’m in the unique posi­tion of being an occa­sional UPGRD con­trib­u­tor and also some­one who works pro­fes­sion­ally in the Jewish com­mu­nity, I felt like I should jump in. Below is the sec­ond of two posts on the topic, both of which are cross-posted on my UPGRD​.com blog and on my per­sonal blog.

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Arash Markazi sums up how a lot of us feel:

I know the ter­ri­ble thing that hap­pened to Brian Stow on open­ing day, I know what’s hap­pen­ing on the field, I know what’s not hap­pen­ing in the stands. And I know what’s hap­pen­ing in the court­room. I know all this but I still go to the games because real­ity has always found a way of sus­pend­ing itself when I’m at the sta­dium. I still have the same feel­ing enter­ing the park­ing lot off Sunset Boulevard I did when I was a child with my father…

…Feelings such as that are deep-rooted. I’ve loved the Dodgers for as long as I can remem­ber. It’s a fan­dom that was passed on to me by my father, and I’m not about to throw it away now over a time period I hope to tell my kids about when I take them to Dodger Stadium some day. That’s why I can’t allow McCourt to change my feel­ings about the Dodgers and why I refuse to let him chase me away from a place that has given me so much joy over the years.

There is noth­ing com­pli­cated or con­flicted about my feel­ings for McCourt. I don’t like him, what he’s done. It doesn’t take me very long to come to this con­clu­sion and move on with my life. The truth is I don’t even think about him when I’m at Dodger Stadium. Even when I’m sit­ting in an almost-empty sec­tion of the sta­dium. He is the fur­thest thing from my mind as I watch the game with a Dodger Dog in my hands and Vin Scully in my ears. Maybe I’m cling­ing to mem­o­ries that will never be recap­tured and set­ting myself up for more heart­break but I can’t help it.

The Dodgers and Dodger Stadium still rep­re­sent some­thing spe­cial to me, some­thing more impor­tant than court cases, divorce set­tle­ments and los­ing streaks. Judging from the empty seats around me, this puts me in the minor­ity. But I can live with that. I’ve lived with this team all my life.

Amen.

In light of the Weiner scan­dal, Jeffrey Goldberg com­ments on Jewish women:

I’m not going near the ques­tion of what Jewish women do or don’t do in bed, but suf­fice it to say that Jewish women are ter­ri­bly, and con­tra­dic­to­rily, stereo­typed by soci­ety, and, often, by Jewish men them­selves. Either they’re dark, hot-blooded sluts (a com­mon Wasps fan­tasy, by the way — some of my best friends are Wasps with Jewish women-fix­a­tions) or they are, as Weiner would have it, the frozen cho­sen. The truth, of course, is that all women are dif­fer­ent, but I’ve noticed a cou­ple of things over the years: 1) A great num­ber of Jewish women pos­sess an irre­sistible com­bi­na­tion of sex­i­ness, intel­li­gence, ambi­tion, and a deep capac­ity for love; and 2) Many Jewish men, the less manly-men, in par­tic­u­lar, are intim­i­dated by these super­star Jewish women…

…I know this sounds as if I’m adver­tis­ing for a Jewish woman, but, thanks to the great philo-Semite Malcolm Gladwell, I found the best one, thank you very much.

Jeez.

Seeing as he and I both man­aged to over­come our eth­nic pre­dis­po­si­tion to being intim­i­dated by strong Jewesses (in other words, I get where he’s com­ing from, I guess), it sounds to me like he’s brag­ging. (“Congressman Weiner rep­re­sents a cliché stereo­type, but check me out. I can han­dle the Jewish ladies.”)

People seem to get all up-in-arms when they per­ceive that peace-lov­ing, mod­er­ate Muslims don’t do enough to con­demn the acts of vio­lent extrem­ists with whom they hap­pen to share (kind-of) a reli­gion. When any­one tries to point out that the vast major­ity of Muslims abhor of vio­lence, and that vio­lent rad­i­cals are choos­ing to empha­size only those parts of the Quran which jus­tify their hatred (and that extrem­ists com­mit heinous acts in the name of other reli­gions, too), the response is that if Muslim mod­er­ates want peo­ple to see them as peace­ful, then they should stand up and con­demn their vio­lent co-reli­gion­ists. The prob­lem is, peace-lov­ing Muslims con­demn vio­lence all the time. Maybe we’re not lis­ten­ing. Or maybe we just bury their state­ments ten para­graphs down.

From the AP’s story about Farooque Ahmed, the guy who tried to help some under­cover FBI agents plant a “bomb” in the DC subway:

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Ahmed arrived in the U.S. in 1993 and became a cit­i­zen in 2005, offi­cials said. He wor­shipped at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, which is known for its main­stream Islamic con­gre­ga­tion. Leaders there have decried vio­lence and were quick to call for Ahmed’s pros­e­cu­tion. He was not a mem­ber of the soci­ety, said board mem­ber Robert Marro.

He wor­shiped at the mosque. He never stuck around long enough for the reg­u­lars to get to know him. And when they found out that he’d been arrested for plot­ting vio­lence, the mem­bers of the mosque said he was­n’t a mem­ber, spoke out against vio­lence and called for him to be pun­ished. In other words, they said, “He’s not one of us, and we despise what he stands for.”

That’s con­dem­na­tion if I’ve ever heard it.

1. I’ve flown over 200,000 miles (domes­tic) on air­planes in the last two years. Not once have I been scared because of “peo­ple who are in Muslim garb” or peo­ple who “are iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves first and fore­most as Muslims.” The only peo­ple who scare me on air­planes are the ones who are overly ner­vous, overtly anx­ious, or rude and obnox­ious. It seems to me, based on my expe­ri­ence, that none of these behav­iors are exclu­sive to a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion, eth­nic­ity, race, or creed.

2. It’s clear that the most of the peo­ple who loudly bashed NPR in the wake of Williams’ fir­ing weren’t par­tic­u­larly fond of pub­lic radio (that bas­tion of the elit­ist lib­eral media) to begin with. What’s ironic is that NPR (and the rest of pub­lic radio) is actu­ally the only main­stream media out­let that seems to have refused to be over­taken by blow-hard pun­ditry, sen­sa­tion­al­ism, or both.

3. NPR was right to fire Williams, and they should­n’t hes­i­tate to tell it like it is: He was­n’t fired because the rules of “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” deemed his com­ments on O’Reilly’s show to be offen­sive. He got fired because real jour­nal­ists (and “news-ana­lysts”) have to be fair and unbi­ased. That means they can’t behave like loud­mouth pun­dits. End of story. Williams can spout off say­ing that he got fired for “telling the truth” or “speak­ing his mind.” But that’s only half the story. He got fired because he wanted to get paid for being a jour­nal­ist, but then he also wanted to go on O’Reilly and spew what­ever “truth” he wanted. You can’t have both, buddy.

4. This week, I made a dona­tion to my local pub­lic radio sta­tion. You should too.