We believe this firmly...

Thank you to Josh Fleet for your wonderful piece about Phish and Judaism in yesterday's Huffington Post. We couldn't agree more!

Well worth your time.

Let this serve as a reminder to make sure you get in your ticket requests for the 1st leg of Summer Tour!




While you're at it, you can yank on your tunic and dangle your stash.

Jews can be organ donors

Just when you thought it wasn't a Jewish thing to donate your organs, think again.

Freiheit is the Birthright of Our People

Freiheit. Freedom in Dutch, German and other Germanic languages.

And there ain't much of it these days in Europe, according to the testimony of Geert Wilders of The Netherlands.

The Shoah is way behind us, folks.

The Shah (and similar militant Islamists of today) is not.

This is important stuff for peace-loving, world-unity and freedom loving Whole Phamily-niks.

That's right, the women are smarter

We have talked about Rosh Chodesh once so far on this blog.  What we didn't mention there was the reason for why women were given the holiday of the Jewish New Moon as a gift of their own.  The Jews were getting antsy and had the shpilkas.  Familiar story?  We are so anxious and nervous and chatty and just don't know how to wait and listen.  See Woody Allen for more on that.  Anyway, yeah so we just couldn't wait any more when Moses was up on Mount Sinai getting the holy words of the Torah from God.  Believe it or not, but the story goes that they decide to build an edifice of their own.  Forget you, God, essentially is what they were saying, and they built the Golden Calf.  All the gold they had was thrown in to the bubbling pot.  They danced and sang around their very own creation.  Better than waiting, right?

Umm...wait a second, throw in your precious jewelry?  To build an idol?  A God-like symbol?

No, no, said the women.  We will not part with our adornments!  What foolish women would do such a thing?  Not us Jewesses.  No way!  We keep our jewels, God or not.

So the women kept their gold and their mirrors.  They had patience.  They knew that God would eventually deliver.  Just take a deep breath and rely on your intuition.  And, indeed, Moses eventually appears with the written words.  The women are gifted the holiday of the New Moon.

The Independent Prayer Group aka Minyan

Ritually speaking, perhaps the biggest grassroots occurrance within the Jewish community in the past ten years is the Independent Minyan. Folks wanting traditional Hebrew liturgy without the structure of the large synagogue have formed their own prayer groups throughout the States and in Israel.

We are big fans.

We love the Hadar Shavout Retreat.

We'll avert any further writing responsibilities on the topic (since our Journalism degree didn't help us much with our writing skills) and leave it for you to check out this recent blog post on Jewschool about the trend.

And for some more fun, check out Kehillat Hadar's recent move:

And You Should be a Blessing

Two weeks ago, the Jewish world lost one of its most prominent musicians of our generation:  Debbie Friedman.  We didn't grow up with her songs, but it has become apparent to us over the past days that many others have, especially those who grew up in the Reform movement. We had the privilege of attending one of her women's seders in Manhattan in 1999.

Here is one of her more familiar songs:




She didn't just sing Jewish-themed songs. Here is her Thanksgiving Song:




May Debbie Friedman's memory be a blessing.

Plain White T's: Rhythm of Love

We don't listen to much new music, but we simply love this tune that went live last July.

Plain White T's is the band.
No, we don't think they're Jewish.

And yet there are many reasons why this song earns its spot on the Whole Phamily:

• The tune itself is feel-good, positive, heart-warming.
• The band's name evokes minimalism as well as Hanes and Fruit of the Loom.  Simplicity + 100% cotton = A good thing.
• The video features a vintage Mercedez-Benz:  our dream car (we prefer a '79-'82 300 series, whereas the model in the video looks more early to mid '70s).
• The tune is featured at the end of the newly-released No Strings Attached, starring the lovely and soon-to-be Yiddeshe mammeh  Natalie Portman (who we saw in 1997 in The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway).  We were psyched to learn that Ivan Reitman is still pals with our cousin Joe Medjuck who was a co-producer (no, we've never met Joe, have been told he's a great guy, and yes, Grandpa Archie loved kippered snacks and telling stories of his growing up;  affect a Cape Breton accent:  "When I was a little boy in Caledonia....]
• The length of the video itself is 3:29 minutes, which is a significant number for us as it is the 3 digit telephone exchange we grew up with.  Remember, we like numerical synchronicity?

Now just watch and listen, it's good stuff!

Falafel Chips by Flamous Organics and a man named Sam

At our local greengrocer we came across a delicious snack (although they are not raw like we were touting in yesterday's post) called falafel chips.  They are a corn tortilla chip base with falafel flavor.  The high quality of this product us struck us immediately:  No hidden ingredients (like MSG masked as the word spices, torula yeast or Autolyzed Yeast Extract), lots of certifications (they're kosher, USDA Organic certified, and even tout the Kid Kritics stamp of approval to name just a few), and offered in both spicy and original flavors.  They are the perfect chip paired with hummus.

 Remember when we wrote about why hummus should be found in every town in America? 

The company's CEO, Sam Shehayeb, appears to be quite a nice man and we wish the company much success.  We know nothing about the name Shehayeb except that obviously it is not Ashkenazic in origin.  We doubt he is Jewish, although it certainly is possible.  We venture to guess he is Lebanese-born. 

Either way, we think that if we all share in some of these healthy falafel chips with a bowl of hummus  (while listening to Michael Franti), the world will move towards a happier, more unified place.  We are, indeed, the Whole Phamily, after all!

Will the Meditteranean Diet save the world?

At least it will get our hearts and brains healthier, which is a very good place to start.

Getting Raw. Getting Back to the Land in a Final Frontier of our Good Ole U.S. of A.

Getting back to our roots as at least partially a blog about Jewish names, we are currently interested in the last name Safron.

We have mentioned one Safran who has hit popular culture big time.  But we didn't get terribly into its meaning.

We have now come across a Jeremy with the last name Safron, and we venture to think that the names are related and they are simply different spellings. 

(side note:  How can we really trust what we can grab on the Internet?  We need an Onomast.  We also should read this article about Jewish names.  Dr. Aaron Demsky is the person who could make sense of any of this.  Safran and Safron the same thing?  Does the Jewish version really lead to the yellow spice  (this site states the "Jewish name is mainly ornamental," leading us to believe no connection there for the Jews)?   Umm.. can folks with this family name in the Jewish world lay claim to the Safran family crest?  Nah...that last part doesn't sound terribly kosher.  It's not like we come from Sheffield, Shetland or Stuart stock.  Those are all Other S's.)

Our humble guess is that Safran and Safron are connected to the Jewish name root Shapiro, which comes from the word "sofer," meaning scribe (our trustworthy torah, mezuzah and tefillin writers of yesteryear...add in another item writable on parchment and you get the whole megillah).


The Magilla Gorilla Show
Uploaded by AH3RD. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

(side note:  No, neither Hanna nor Barbera were Jewish, but Barbera was born on the Lower East Side and presumably grew up around many Jews, having been exposed to the word megillah possibly while frolicking the halls of Erasmus Hall High School .  Just our guess....)

Back to Safran-Safron-Sofer connection:

You get variations such as Schapiro (as in the wine), Sapir, Safer (as in Morley), Shufro, Shaefer (as in the beer, but highly unlikely those were Jews), Shaffer (as in Paul)...have you caught on to our groove yet?

Now back to Jeremy Safron.

He's a raw foodist, a pioneer in the raw food world.  He is an inventor.  He is youthful.  He is into video games and martial arts, in a peaceful way, if you can imagine that.  He bottles Living Clay  (reminds us of Dead Sea mud, no?).   He created the most delicious snack food, PowerWraps (he sold his idea), which we are trying to get more New Yorkers to enjoy.  Would you believe you can only get them in one spot in NYC?   Jeremy lives in one of the most beautiful places in our country on the island of Maui.   Like all good hippies, we were there in 2002.  We have visited the town of Paia, picked up necessities for our week, saw the road to Haiku up on the right before the infamous Road to Hana begins, spent time at the Tradewinds Cottages, hiked into the Bamboo Forest, and even ate a fresh meat coconut cut by Mike with a machete (for $5...we were ok with that).  How can we forget the vintage bubble letter name mugs produced by Carmel-by-the-Sea that were hanging at Grandma's Coffee (they aren't for sale, just for use by locals...good thing we still have our own from 1980)

Perhaps we could have simplified the above-written paragraph into a haiku of our own.

Or not.
Amazing stuff way out there. 

And a whole lotta Jews, too.



Further to our point:  we are all linked and and if we seek out the goodness on the earth (as you might know, Ram Dass is doing much better than he had and is running his retreats), the earth will be a better place.  So glad to learn that, indeed, the former Richard Alpert has met with Reb Zalman.

At long last, we present Jeremy Safron, author of The Raw Truth:  The Art of Preparing Living Foods.  We believe very much in illumination, however we do believe that Everything truly is connected.

Seedlings Turn Overnight to Sunflowers, Blossoming Even As We Gaze

No, that's not Zeppelin.

Perhaps the above-mentioned quotation doesn't ring as quick a bell as the title of the song in which it appears:  "Sunrise, Sunset."  Seedlings and sunflowers don't right out there scream "Jewish."  And yet, a simple utterance of the two words sunrise and sunset together in one sentence will get most American Jews (and even many non Jews) above a certain age swooning and swaying all at the same time.  Yuck.





We must admit, Fiddler on the Roof was never a big draw for us.  We had little desire to pay attention during a screening in a social studies class at Spanish River High School while visiting a teen tour boyfriend in Boca, instead dreaming up what crazy stuff his fellow Louis Vuitton wallet-carrying-buddies would do at their poker game and BBYO scavenger hunt later that night.  We missed its 2nd and 3rd Broadway revivals, in 1981 and 1990 respectively.  We have seen clips of the film, but never the whole thing.  We figured that gazing down from the balcony on high holidays at the film's lead actor, Chaim Topol, who attended our family's synagogue in the '80s, was enough.

Honestly, the music never really grabbed us (yes, we know it received some Academy Awards.  With music by John Williams.  Yes, we know he's big.  Still, no grab).

Until today.


Driving home from the pharmacy this afternoon, we were listening to our children's Jewish 'till You're Satisfied  CD by the Funkey Monkeys. The CD has a lot of classics you may have heard at camp, Hebrew school, or youth groups, but these versions are updated, funked up, and totally raging.

So, check out this two-year-old soul version (complete with a horns section) of the classic song your grandparents cried to at the silver screen in 1971.  And feel free to tell your Grandma Beverly about it in West Palm.  It will get her rockin'.  Maybe she'll even share it with her Mah Jongg group.

Here's the Zeppelin you were thought you might get.  And it is from just 2 years after Fiddler, no less!