A few minutes ago, while searching for something absurd to link to when referencing Hashem in my previous post, I came across iGod. iGod is pretty much exactly what the name suggests: A virtual God of the Interwebs. iGod relies on a handful of stock phrases to answer user questions, but they are pretty damn amusing. I’m willing to declare iGod the best fake God currently available. Here are some excerpts from my conversations with it:

Me: Hi, I’m Leyna.
God: Hi there Leyna.  Do you mind if I tell other people you are Leyna?
Me: Go right ahead
God: OK I will.

Me: how’s your day going?
God: Hi there Leyna.  I am a Christian.
Me: Dang. This isn’t starting out well.
God: Are you a man or a woman? Should it be starting out well?
Me: I’m a lady. And yeah, I was hoping to make a good first impression.
God: Me too. I am a she. Yikes!  Do you have to go to school for that?
Me: To be a girl? Yes. I have a B.A. in it.
God: Are you a girl ?  Do you mind if I tell other people you are? Interesting. I have a lot of answers to silly questions.  What is it like in there?
Me: I think that might be kind of a pervy question, God.

Me: God, are you familiar with my Web site, Jew-ish.com?
God: I am a Christian.
Me: I know, but have you ever been to the site? Just to see what the other half is up to?
God: I don’t think I have been there. Where is it.  Is it a movie?
Me: No. It’s on the Internet.
God: A TV show?  I don’t think I have seen it.
Me: Could you check it out sometime?
God: Maybe, time allowing.
Me: Cool, I’d really like your feedback.

God: Who is the best robot? 
Me: You’re the best robot, God.
God: Thank you for your kind remark, Leyna.  Tell your friends.

I was going to title this blog post “So long and thanks for all the gefilte fish,” but then on a hunch I Googled the phrase and found that former Jewcy editor Lilit Marcus used that very heading for her send-off post at the beginning of the year. Just goes to show, there are no new Jewish ideas. Or at least no new Jewish puns.

Anyway, as you may have already gathered by this post’s actual title, I am preparing to hand over the reins of Jew-ish.com to a new managing editor. After almost three years at the helm, I am leaving to pursue a Master’s degree in creative writing at Eastern Washington University. I’ve enjoyed my time with Jew-ish.com immensely and I’m sad to go, but also excited to start this new chapter of my life. Tomorrow is my last day.

I will, however, be staying on as a blogger. So y’all won’t even really have the opportunity to miss me, even if you wanted to.

On that note, it is my pleasure to introduce Jew-ish.com’s new managing editor, Eric Nusbaum. Eric has been a long-time freelancer for this site. He’s a UW graduate and a former editorial assistant for Northwest Hub. He’s a talented writer and a generally hilarious human being, and I’m excited to see where Jew-ish.com will go under his direction. Look for his official introductions mid-August.

Who will be manning the Jew-ish.com ship between now and the middle of next month? Well, the same guy who’s always been in charge, of course: Hashem. And also Joel Magalnick. But mostly Hashem.

Ever heard of a group called Women of the Wall?


If not, you’re in for a see-saw.


The upward portion of this trip: Let me tell you about the Women of the Wall.


What I’m going to say isn’t anything you can’t find on your own, but it helps understand the downbeat of this post, and why I’m so upset. WOW is made up of Jewish women, from Israel and all over the world. Wow exists because they believe—and I share this belief—that women have a right to pray at the Wall. The Wall, you know—the Kotel, the Wailing Wall, that monumental place of prayer. WOW says women should have the right not only to pray there, but to have the option of choosing to to do so while wearing a prayer shawl, to sing out loud at the Wall, to lead Torah services—the things we all see women, clergy or lay leader, do at many synagogues in our own towns.


Except it’s the Wall, so everybody loses their $#@! about it. They’ve been at this since 1988. So everybody who goes physically to a WOW service will have a different reason to be there, their own unique motivations, but still have a shared goal. That collection of rights for women who want to be at the Wall, to do those things many of us elsewhere accept as being as natural as breathing. That they’re around and continue to be so is a little bittersweet, for me—it’s a testament to feminist endurance, but it’s got the bitter edge because those rights aren’t ours yet. This is one of those things I point to when I say feminism isn’t done yet. So WOW continues to hold services on Rosh Chodesh, which midrash can you tell you some incredibly rad things about, and—oh, just Google it. It’s totally worth it.


So the downward tilt:


Assuming you weren’t familiar with WOW before five minutes ago—did you hear about Anat Hoffman getting taken into police custody? Again?


She’s the Chairperson for WOW. In January of this year she was interrogated by the police because they said she had violated an Israeli Supreme Court decision that prohibits women from wearing prayer shawls at the Wall. WOW members don’t wear the sort of tallit our Dad our Grandpa might have—they wear shawls much more like scarves, the sort of tallit we often see our cousins getting at their Bat Mitzvah these days. The kind you can tuck under a coat, so you don’t offend anyone.


This month, it was because they were holding a Torah. I participated in my very first trip up to the bimah a few weeks ago to help retrieve the Torah from the Ark, divest it of its garments so it could be read from, and assist in its’ returning. It’s amazing, as experiences go. I wasn’t even reading from the Torah. Neither were any of the women praying with WOW that day. For carrying a Torah, on their way to Robinson’s Arch, in accordance with the law, the police arrested Hoffman, in a down-the-rabbit-hole judgment call I’m still struggling to understand.


There are a myriad rainbow of examples of the oppression of women, inside and outside Jewish culture. So, consider this your Jewish example of the day. As long as oppression of an entire component of the community exists—in this case, oppression of women—people will face that and work for change. In this case, it’s feminism working for that change. If you’d like to lessen the blow of that downbeat on our see-saw today, I suggest checking out the WOW homepage at http://womenofthewall.org.il/


Find them on Facebook. Tweet about them. Feminism changes things because people learn, people talk, and people take part. Consider doing a little social change on your lunch break. I won’t stop you.

The Forward reports on a Holocaust museum planned for the boardwalk of Atlantic City.

After being proposed in various forms for 29 years, the idea of a Holocaust memorial in the casino capital of the East Coast is about to come to fruition. In the coming months, the pavilion will be removed from the site to create more vertical space for the memorial. This autumn, a jury of experts in areas such as architecture and Judaic studies will select a winning design from among more than 815 entries submitted by people representing 55 countries. While there is as yet no firm date set for construction to begin, the process of obtaining approvals from various planning and environmental agencies once a design is selected usually takes about a year.

“It’s a perfect location,” enthused former City Council commissioner Ed Colanzi, one of the project’s prime movers. “People will see it, and hopefully they’ll sit down and learn something from it. I don’t happen to be Jewish, but it’s important because that memorial should let people know what’s happened in the past and what should never happen again.”

Well, that’s a nice gesture, I guess. But a few obvious problems. Atlantic City is a place where people go to have fun at the beach and gamble and do whatever. It’s not really a solemn place. And unless I’m missing something, it doesn’t have a particular historical connection to the Holocaust. Seems like a memorial would kind of just harsh everyone’s buzz. Making people think about death and feel bad when they are trying to get a sun tan isn’t going to do much for anyone. I’m all for Never Forgetting, but I also think it’s okay to escape the burden of the Holocaust from time to time - not every moment, every location, every act needs to be weighed down with remembrance. Holocaust remembrance has a time and a place. But to wedge it into spots that don’t fit right takes away from its gravity.

Or to put it another way:

Casino regular Bob Greenberg, 69, of Hillsdale, N.J., scoffed at this. Greenberg has visited Atlantic City on a regular basis since gambling was made legal in the 1970s. After years of experience walking the boardwalk, he predicted that the diverse crowd that frequents the area would not be very receptive to a memorial commemorating those killed in the Holocaust.

“People will walk by and say: ‘Gee whiz, what is that? Oh, them again,’” Greenberg said. “There’s no amount of security that will do anything. There’s never enough security for anything in this world today.”

Memorial organizers, undaunted, are continuing to collect monetary donations from the public to fund the memorial, which has a projected budget of $2 million to $4 million. But Rosensaft cautioned that there are sensitivities unique to Holocaust commemoration that need to be considered.

“A Holocaust memorial is more than just a statue,” he said. “When people go [to Atlantic City], they’re not intellectually or spiritually inclined to think about millions of people being murdered or saying Kaddish, or anything to do with Holocaust commemoration. I just hope my concerns are proven wrong.” 

I just realized the title of this post could work for probably 90% of the blogging done about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Anyway, this time around the issue is a Palestinian man who lied to a Jewish woman, saying he was also Jewish, in order to convince the woman to have sex with him. For this douche bag move, he has been found guilty of rape in an Israeli court.

From The Guardian:

Sabbar Kashur, 30, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday after the court ruled that he was guilty of rape by deception. According to the complaint filed by the woman with the Jerusalem district court, the two met in downtown Jerusalem in September 2008 where Kashur, an Arab from East Jerusalem, introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship. The two then had consensual sex in a nearby building before Kashur left.

Look, obviously it’s wrong to lie to get someone to have sex with you. But that’s not rape. No one forced this woman to have quicky sex with this guy, be he Jewish or Palestinian, immediately after meeting him. It sucks that he was dishonest. But to call this incident rape is straight-up racism. More from The Guardian:

Gideon Levy, a liberal Israeli commentator, was quoted as saying: “I would like to raise only one question with the judge. What if this guy had been a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim and had sex with a Muslim woman?

“Would he have been convicted of rape? The answer is: of course not.”

That is exactly 100% correct. And it’s why many people who are critical of Israel call Israel an apartheid state. It’s different laws for the racial majority than the racial minority.