I think it’s time to scrap this blog and move over to Tumblr. At least that way I can guarantee more consistent updates…
Today is the one year anniversary of my resignation from Jewschool and the start of my employment at JTA.
I have a lot of thoughts to share but my laptop is in the shop and I don’t have the time to write from work. But I’ll do my best to get something together over the weekend.
I hate to give this batshit crazy publicity whore any more attention than he’s already received, but the shirt above is my response to NYC-based Israeli designer Apollo Braun’s latest abomination (covered here in Metro).
I would never say that exchanging land for peace is capitulation to terrorism. That’s chiefly because I think that Palestinians have as legitimate a claim to Palestine as we Jews do Israel. Likewise, I think the Southern Lebanese have a legitimate claim to the Golan Shebaa Farms.
But trading Hezbollah a child killer for dead soldiers?
Look, I want Israel to do everything in its power to make peace with its neighbors. And I want Regev and Goldwasser’s families to have peace as well. But this is just obscene.
Handing over Samir Kuntar says quite explicitly, “Keep killing us and we’ll give you everything you want.”
That’s no bargain at all. And that’s certainly not what I call the Road to Peace.
Congratulations to James & Kat on the occasion of their wedding today in Havelock, NC.
Love you brother…
FYI–For all the friends who couldn’t make it down, the requisite playing of “Wish You Were Here” transpired in your honor. That means you Joey, Ed, and everyone else in our NMHS yearbook ad. 
More photos from an admittedly groomcentric perspective here.
The bulletin board in Trinity Presbyterian Church in Havelock, NC
it’s my birthday.
my mom is out of the hospital and back at home on meds and a liquid diet.
i’m leaving tonight for north carolina to be the best man in the wedding of a friend from high school i’ve seen once in the last 10 years. he just got back from a tour of duty in iraq. (why, in fact yes, many of my best friends from high school joined the marines: james, jay, chris, vaughn, wayne… i almost did as well. surprised?)
incidentally, that means no birthday plans — i’ll be at work and then on a train by myself for the evening. laaaaaaaaame.
after the wedding i’ll be truckin’ back up to d.c. where i’ll be at the american jewish press association conference, monday-wednesday. i’ll be speaking wednesday on how jewish newspapers can modernize their websites on the cheap.
there’s so much going through my head these days i think my blog hiatus (even tho i’ve still been blogging here on o.a. and over at the telegraph infrequently) will soon be over.
anyway, shmeh. i have to go to work now.
So my dad’s back at home, learning how to walk again, getting it together, feeling a lot better. But then today, my mom has some stomach pains, goes in for a CAT scan and finds out she has some sort of bowel infection! Tasty, I know, but nonetheless, she’s now strapped to a gurney and hooked up to an I.V.. So if you could put in a word with the [wo]man upstairs, it’s Ita Zeisel bas Peska.
Thanks.
Mazel tov to April Rosenblum and Josef Kardos who tied the knot yesterday in Philly!
More photos here.
Check out JTA’s new blog on Jewish philanthropy, authored by staff writer Jacob Berkman, which I named, conceptualized, and art directed. It’s called The Fundermentalist, a riff on 1920s magic motifs, and it’s hilarious.
Cruller hu akbar!
The rightwingosphere piled on Rachel Ray this week for sporting a keffiyeh (well, actually a paisley scarf that only kinda looks like a keffiyeh) in a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial, accusing the homemaking TV star and her glazed with sprinkles benefactors of shilling for terrorists.
Little Green Football’s Charles Johnson, who led the charge, complained today that he was still receiving angry responses to his post from “progressives,” he wrote in scare quotes, whom “refuse to see anything wrong with the mainstreaming of the kaffiyeh.” Johnson went on to cite a New York Times article in which a “progressive” — me! — sets the oppositional zeitgeist.
