Oops, didn’t get around to posting one yesterday, so here’s a two-fer for today.

Courtesy of the Chabad Jewish Center in Bellingham:

About 8 o’clock one cold February morning David was in bed sound asleep.
His mother came into the room.
“Son, it’s time to get up. You’ve got to get ready for shul.” she implored.
“I’m too tired. Leave me alone,” he said.
“Son, you’ve got to get up and get ready for shul.”
I"m not going to shul. Give me one good reason why I have to go to shul,” he protested.
“I’ll give you two good reasons: One, it’s Shabbos and two, you’re the Rabbi!”

Courtesy of some boy I kind of dated for a while:

Q: How do you know when a Jewish American Princess has an orgasm?
A: She drops her nail file.

Last year, in honor of Israel’s 60th birthday, I interviewed a whole bunch of local Jews about their most memorable experiences in Israel. And I like to think these reflections are still as relevant on this Yom Haatzamaut as they were on the last Yom Haatzamaut.

A few of my favorites snippets:

The first time I ever got alcohol poisoning in my life was in Jerusalem. My friend was visiting and we got a bottle of something and I just figured I’d drink a little and then take the rest home with me. But I sat down with my friend at one of those shouks that sells hookahs, by Ben-Yehuda sort of off one of those side alleys, and we just sat there and for some reason we drank the whole bottle. It was stupid. And I felt fine, until the next day, which I spent throwing up.

And

There was another couple on our trip who were also kissing with tongue, so we felt we needed to kiss with tongue as well. The other couple, they were like the groundbreakers and we would just follow suit. So we kissed with tongue and it was really wet and I think I had to wipe the slobber off my mouth. And it probably wasn’t that enjoyable at all.

And

For some reason, I thought there would be lions in Israel. You know, out in the desert. I don’t know why. Anyway, there were a lot of cats, so I guess that’s close enough.

Read the whole thing here.

If someone would please explain to me what this sign means, that would be my favorite Israel memory. Thanks.

Last night at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, I joined a rowdy delegation from the Ravenna Kibbutz to watch a documentary about some other Jews (about 2,000, as it happened) building a cooperative vision of their ideal community, back in the ‘30s. At Home In Utopia followed one of the numerous Jewish housing co-ops that appeared in the Bronx during the American Communist Party’s heyday—this one, known as “The Coops,” possibly the most devoutly Communist of them all—from the far-fetched, spunky imaginings of Lower East Side garment workers, to a triumphal and pioneering start, through many trials and tribulations, to the eventual exodus of Jewish families from The Coops (and the Bronx in general) to the burbs.

What moved me most was the Q&A session afterward with the film’s producer, during which many audience members emotionally recounted their childhoods in Bronx Jewish housing co-ops. I thought to myself, as an elderly gentleman with the microphone fought back tears: these elders’ parents and grandparents who built those co-ops must have been braver than we, the Ravenna Kibbutzniks. They had cops and mobs, anti-Communists and antisemites, standing in their way. Our greatest obstacle is that property isn’t cheap like it used to be.

But perhaps we’re just as crazy. That’s got to count for something.

So what if we’re coming full circle now? What if the Ravenna Kibbutz is actually laying groundwork for some documentary to screen at the Jewish Film Festival in Rio or Beijing in the year 2090, depicting the birth from passion and thin air of an intentional Jewish community in Seattle where kids grew up together in a ferment so compelling and formative that they will cry and regale a filmmaker and some young upstarts with stories of That Place in Those Days?

If you want to take a swing at that possible future, you should try applying to join the Ravenna Kibbutz this summer when we’re opening our third house. (Applications are on our web site now.) I just returned from a visit to Vancouver, BC, where I met some folks who want to start a kibbutz there too. It ain’t Communism, but it could be a movement!

My takeaway from the film was that passionately believing in what you’re building is the key. We don’t have political ideology like The Coops did. But that passion, I’m thinking (as I listen to a fellow kibbutznik scrape a shovel where we’re building a new garden outside)—yeah, we just might have that.

If you want me to read your lengthy article about some Austrian author I have never heard of, please include the word “pornography,” “pornographer,” or “porn-o-rama” somewhere in the headline or subhead. This is the secret to gaining my attention…and respect.

Nextbook gets it spot-on with this one:

King of the Forest: The Viennese pornographer turned critic who dreamed up Bambi.

And you know what? It’s actually a pretty interesting piece, pornographer aside.

This one is a Passover joke…better late than never!

Courtesy of the Chabad Jewish Center in Bellingham:

A British Jew is waiting in line to be knighted by the Queen.
He is to kneel in front of her and recite a sentence in Latin when she taps him on the shoulders with her sword.
However, when his turn comes, he panics in the excitement of the moment and forgets the Latin.
Then, thinking fast, he recites the only other sentence he knows in a foreign language, which he remembers from the Passover seder: “Ma nishtana ha layla ha zeh mi kol ha laylot.”
Puzzled, Her Majesty turns to her advisor and whispers, “Why is this knight different from all other knights?”