The Book of Jonah

Parshat Ha'azinu

L'Shana Tova & Shabbat Shalom

Parshat Ki Tavo

When a gangstuh talks about, "going Old Testament on his ass," she probably means something like the stuff in Parshat Ki Tavo. As Moses final speech continues, he follows through with his theme of, "obey and be happy, disobey and suffer BIG TIME!" The threats in this parsha makes Guantanamo seem like Club Med. It makes water boarding seem a shower massage. The good news is that, like so many of YHWH's threats, She didn't go through with it... yet

Jewish Family Converts to Islam

Secrets of the Star

All 24 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are found in the Magen David. There is no such thing in any other language. - Thanks to Cindy Cossid Stern and her mom.

Ki Tetze - More food fun

This week's parsha included the rules for rape, and this week's garden included the last rape harvest, and such a confluence was almost too easy.

Also in this week's parsha we found the instructions for taking eggs from a mother bird: you must first shoo away the mom so she won't see you taking her eggs.

The eggs were served sunny side up, cooked on top of the rape in a paella pan. The roasted chicken was kept from seeing this by a cleverly improvised divider (silk wrapped box of dishwasher detergent).

Garden discoveries included MEL, Aaron's first watermelon, a moon and stars variety he'd photographed with his new Iphone and shows to anyone who'll look, and now about 9 siblings and cousins of the Golden Midget clan. Rhonda had put plates under them to keep them from the worms.

Also a trove of overly mature lemon cucumbers and many heirloom tomatoes originally from Carla's starts. These, with some beauties from the garden at 61, led to my first gazpacho, all hand cut ito tiny bits.

We returned from our annual canoe trip in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, wet and tired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the shower water blacken in the rinse. It was a wonderful trip, especially in retrospect, where you can be warm and dry while you remember the heroic and amazing acts of, for instance, Diana, who left her leaky tent in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm to improvise an extra layer of tent over the heads of Shani and Dina who were being dripped on. And Leona, camping for the first time in 80 years, who proved it is possible to start and maintain fires in the rain.

Wednesday morning was all about washing and drying. Around noon I decided it would be ok to send out last year's comic without improvements, and there was much rejoicing.

Parsha Chukat

Zeus, king of the Greek gods, was not mentioned in this week's parsha, though the Greeks did, for a time, occupy Palestine. His appearance as YHWH's confessor is a device to let us put words in her mouth about how she might have felt about this week's shocking turnaround in her relationship with Moses.

Zeus is also our way of emphasizing one of the things we notice most in this year's parsha reading, the VERY polytheistic nature of our Torah. But that is for another discussion and perhaps another god.

Shabbat Shalom,

a & s

Sharon Goes Native

Sharon shops for Islamic clothes in Ramallah, the capital of Palestine.

Parsha Ba'alotecha

What's Israel's favorite wineEgypt!" Now that we've finally left Sinai and are on our way to Canaan it's complain, complain, complain. The Hebrews demanded dietary diversity! Though for us it's hard to figure why they needed the extra foods since manna tasted like whatever the eater wanted. We're not sure why YHWH believes that Moses needs prophetic help, especially since, as far as we can tell, he doesn't do much prophesizing himself. The lesson of this parsha is clearly, "Be careful what you wish for."

- SHABBAT SHALOM! - a & s

Parsha Naso

YHWH demands that women suspected of adultery be brought before Her. It's surprising, since last week's parsha condemned any non-priest approaching YHWH to death. We have a theory of what was up. Practically speaking, we imagine the woman standing in the courtyard before the curtain of the Tent of the meeting. YHWH would dwell behind the curtain and pass judgment from there. This is also the Rastafarian parsha. It describes the rules for Nazirs, people vowing to dedicate themselves to YHWH for a specific period of time. The bible's most famous Nazir was probably Samson, who was also the world's first suicide terrorist.

Also in this parsha (but not our comic) is the priestly blessing, the finger arrangement of which was popularized by intergalactically famous Heeb, Leonard Nimoy.

- SHABBAT SHALOM! - a & s

Secret plan to "destabilize" Iran

The Blotter

I think we're all Karaites on this bus

I thought cholent was just the Yiddish word for "leftovers." I didn't realize it was a religious fault line.

According to an article in today's JPost the Shulchan Aruch instructs us to eat cholent on Shabbat lest we be taken for Karaites, who apparently don't believe in ... cholent.

But my best takeaway was that Karaites reject the divinity of the oral law and, most interestingly, believe we should read the Torah and decide for ourselves what it means. Karaites are apparently encouraged to "consult with as many people as possible where there is a question of uncertainty. One can take the advice of a hacham (an especially learned member of the community), but that advice is not binding and the hacham has to be able to prove his view from the Torah."

Isn't this what Jews mostly do anyway? When rabbis (to our stunned amazement) disagree on interpretation, don't we just go with whom/whatever makes most sense to us?

The article quotes one learned Karaite as saying: "Rabbinic Judaism has taken the responsibility away from the individual and given it to the rabbis. But you can't say on Judgment Day that the rabbi told me this or that - the responsibility is on the individual. Every person's decisions are on his head and that's why each person should read and try to understand the Torah."

Isn't this what all Jews are supposed to do? We all live, more than less, by the Karaite motto "search well in the scripture and do not rely on anyone else's opinion."

To me the Karaites are just another bunch of Jews proving Rabbi Friedheim's adage, 'There is only one kind of Judaism, Orthodox. There's only one kind of Jew, Reform."

A Female Nazir?

This week's parsha, Naso, includes instructions for dedicating oneself to YHWH as a Nazir. And just to show you how good that can look, straight outa Kingston comes Zahra Redwood, the new, dreadlocked, Rastafarian Miss Jamaica! Betcha Haile Selassie is rising in his grave!

MORE ABOUT MOLECH THE GOD THAT THE WORLD RULING ELETE WORSHIP

We spend a lot of religious energy opposing old Molech. Here's one version of what his followers are up to today.

Making modern midrash | The Shalom Center

OK, I am obsessed with defending our little comic from charges of blasphemy. This little essay on the Shalom Center site, about making modern midrash is one of my favorites.

Bamidbar sketches

Hellooo Honey!

Meet YHWH's "friend" Honey Milkand. She's arguably the Torah's most desirable character. We'd be thrilled to plow her fields any day.

Mammatus cloud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mammatus cloud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shilpa Shetty

We know/knew nothing about Shilpa Shetty but decided to be inspired by her image for our latest CT character, Honey Milkand aks "The Land." But now we've fallen in love/lust with her, as does Moses in our comic. She's a great character to draw since she is so ridiculously beautiful she's practically a cartoon herself. We've now watched a lot of her stuff on youtube and increase our fanhood with each viewing

Shilpa Shetty Online

Shilpa Shetty Online