There was an earthquake in California tonight...

Which, despite what Sylvie says proves that everything ISN'T my fault.

Boston won, four games to...

Boston won, four games to...

Mr. Norman Podhoretz, you can kiss my tuchas.

Norman Podhoretz is a macher. The long-time editor of Commentary, and the "Godfather of Neo-Conservativism," has just published a book called "World War IV," which is what he calls the war he as pushing for--the war against Iraq, Iran and "Islamo-fascism."

Norman "the Pud," I call him or putz.

Personally, I am no fan of the Iraqis or Iranis or Hamas or Hezbollah or any other of the radical groups that seem to be dominating the Middle East. But, Mr. Pud, unless you're will to unleash a torrent of nuclear bombs on these people, you will not defeat them. There are too many of them and they are too fanatical. So, there's your choice, Pud. Kill a billion. Or find an alternative.

I happen to be on the side of Mr. Thomas Friedman in this matter. Friedman believes that Islamic extremism is the result of Islamic poverty and the extreme oil wealth concentrated in the coffers of a few shieks in bathrobes. You want to make the Islamics crawl back in their tents? Stop buying oil and build for them a bissel infrastructure.

At handball, my father was good.

Yesterday was warm in New York and all our windows were opened and you'd think we'd get a little cross (or Magen David) ventilation. But no, there was none. It was as hot inside as a chafing dish at the Weinstein Bar Mitzvah, so out I went for a little walk around the neighborhood, looking for a breeze.

Minutes after leaving our building I found myself in John Jay Park, which abuts the FDR Drive and a charming little block called Cherokee Place, which sits between York Avenue (Avenue A with a nose job!) and the drive. Once in the park, which I seldom visit because Carl Schurz Park is closer, I came upon some Puerto Rican boys playing handball against a wall that was erected for that purpose. These boychiks were whacking at the ball and running around like chickens, all of them, on their returns. Seeing them, lithe and athletic, made me think of my father, Schmuel (Samuel), who was neither, may be rest in peace.

Schmuel was one of the great handball players of the Lower East Side, dominating the territory between Orchard and Houston, all the way up to the Asher Levy baths. And you know what, he could have beat these kids in a wheel chair. Schmuel knew every angle and how his shot would set up his opponent's. Therefore, he could stay virtually still, stationary while forcing his adversary to run around like a dervish or my mother on Passover serving the Seder meal.

I'd play the old man now and again, when I was young and fit and he was old and heart-attacked. My initial impulse in playing him was to take it a bit easy--he was old and had had a coronary. After two minutes and invariably finding myself down nine to nothing, I'd try to rally but by then it was too late.

There's a lesson here somewhere. When you know the angles, you shouldn't have to schvitz so much. Hear that Puerto Rican kids?

I couldn't resist.

A bakery had all its egg flour stolen from their warehouse. So they had to use regular bleached flour to make their challah. That's what you call a White Challah crime.

David Beckham is Jewish.

So maybe "Bend it Like Beckham" was referring to braiding a challah? In any event, you should pardon the expression, look him up on Wikipedia and you'll see.

Epstein versus Shapiro.

Theo Epstein is the Executive Vice President, General Manager of the Boston Red Sox. Mark Shapiro is General Manager of the Cleveland Indians. Two teams fighting for supremacy of the AL (Ashkenazi League) headed by Jewish men. One of those men's teams will face the Colorado Rockies in the World Series.

In contrast, recently, I read this about the Rockies as reported in the Nation: "In a remarkable article from Wednesday's USA Today, the Colorado Rockies went public with the news that the organization has been explicitly looking for players with "character." And according to the Tribe of Coors, "character" means accepting Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior."

Shapiro or Epstein, it hardly matters to me. So long as one of them beats the Colorado Schlockies.

Joey Bishop. February 3, 1918 – October 17, 2007.

Joey Bishop, born Joseph Abraham Gottlieb almost 90 years ago in what is the Morrisania section of the Bronx, died late last Thursday. I must admit, I was never a very big fan of Joey's, but his passing brings to mind a comedy team I did admire, a pair of unlikely vaudevillians, Bacon and Eggs, that is, Joey Bacon and Sammy Eggs. Both members of my congregation in the early days of Beth Yuiz Miwom Annow. They'd come on with their famous theme song:

"We're Bacon and Eggs,
We're pals and we're chums,
When one of us is singing,
The other one hums!

We're Bacon and Eggs,
We're Bacon and Eggs,
When one of us is broke,
The other one begs."

Here are a few "bits" I remember.

BACON: My friend has been elected mayor.
EGGS: Honestly?
BACON: What does that matter?

Or:

BACON: My father killed a hundred men in the war.
EGGS: What was he? A Gunner?
BACON: Nope, a cook.

Or:

BACON: I want to ask for the hand of your daughter in marriage.
EGGS: You’re an idiot!
BACON: I know it. But I didn’t suppose you’d object to another one in the family.

Now, that's when comedy was king.

Genocide.

Our representatives, in their infinite pusillanimity, have decided not to chastise Turkey for the genocide perpetrated in 1915 against millions of Armenians, 1.5 million of whom were killed.

Such a censure would interfere with our usage of Turkey as a staging area for our aggressive wars in the Middle East. 70% of our war materiel in Iraq gets to Iraq via Turkey.

Cowardice kills. Silence is a sin. Perhaps we'll close today's sermon with a poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller.

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.


PS. I wouldn't expect my fellow religious leaders to speak out about this issue. After all, it concerns humanity. Not some arcana.

My hip hurts.

I must have sprained my hip and it hurt to get up and sit down. Not a hurt like you want to die, but a hurt like you don't want to move. So I called my Dr. Richard P. Cohen, not Richard T. Cohen, the podiatrist.

"Dr. Cohen," I say, "should I come in? My hip hurts."
So he says, "if you come in, it won't hurt?"
"You know what I'll do if you come in," he asks? "I'll squeeze your hip and ask if it hurts. Squeeze and ask by yourself and save yourself a visit."

This was three days ago. I've stayed off it since then and already feel better. A good doctor, Richard P. Cohen is.

If you're hungry after lunch.

Sylvie brought me lunch in my study. Very nice and good. But I like something sweet after a meal, a sour ball or a Brach's. We had none in the house,so she brought me a nice Macoun apple we got at the grocer. Delicious, a little sweet, a little tart. A bit like a sour ball.

Barbie, I hardly knew Ye.

I suppose this means that Barbie, for all her bosom and blonde hair isn't a shiksa after all. My nephew, Benjamin, just sent me an email letter with this picture. He is a regular Henny Youngman.

Guess who's in the kitchen?

Monday is the day Sylvie volunteers at the Jewish Center, so I usually cook the dinner and tonight was no different. I made spaghetti and meatballs, only I made the meatballs with ground turkey meat, the 7%, because of cholesterol. Because she was on her feet all day, I even washed the pots and pans and put the dishes in the machine.So, let me ask you this, I have been sitting here for twenty minutes and she is still in the kitchen banging things and running water.

There are many things a man does not understand no matter how learned, wise or old. What Sylvie does in the kitchen AFTER all the cleaning up is done, is one of them.

It hurts.

One of the worst things that can happen to you when you're old is to get a hurt on your foot. Last night it was stuffy in the apartment so I went to the spare bedroom which is in the back where there is no street noise and I went to open the window a crack. Unfortunately I was barefoot having left my slippers by my chair and I stubbed my pinkie toe against the radiator. Who would think that a little toe could cause such hurt. Almost immediately the toe has turned black and is throbbing with pain. I can't even get a good look at it to see what the trouble is--it's too far away from my head. I can't bend over to look at it or lift even my foot up to the sink to meet my foot halfway. Sylvie says I should put a soak on it or an ice-pack. She's probably right. Meanwhile I limp.

I think I'm sprouting feathers.

If it were up to Sylvie, we would eat chicken every night. Which reminds me of the old saying: when a poor Jew eats a chicken, one of them is sick.

I think it's me. Sick of chicken.

Is it getting warm in here?

Global warming reminds me a bit of a Jewish joke. The one where the wife says to the husband "Close the window, it's cold outside." And the husband says, "So, if I close the window, it will be warm outside?"

Obviously, global warming is a global predicament, perhaps the culmination of Mankind's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Yes? We have given in to all kinds of evil and temptation--the temptations of cheap fuel and excess, which have lead, perhaps, to a potential post-diluvian disaster.

All that being said, I happy to think Al Gore is a menschalok. Oscar. Nobel Prize. But Americans do not like intelligent leaders. After all, we twice rejected (handily) perhaps the smartest and most able man ever to run for president, Adlai E. Stevenson and, for whatever reason, Mr. Gore didn't make it. Since Abraham, mankind has looked for antipodes--that is good and its absolute opposite, evil.

When I was a boy it was the Nazis. Then the Soviets. Now Islam.

This is easier, more understandable for the electorate to understand. Ban gumball machines because terrorists can put poison in them. Fight the GLOBAL war on terror.

There is a global war we should be fighting. The one Al Gore reminded the earth of.

Tossing my yarmulke into the ring.

Dear Mr. Hotsy-totsy Steinbrenner:

So, you've finally decided to get rid of Joe Torre. Might then I be permitted to suggest a suitable replacement. No, not the Italianishe-koph, Tony LaRussa. How about yours truly, Moshe Fishbein, aka "The Rabbi of Swat."

I was quite a ball player in my day and today, now that I have some time on my hands,I study the game like a scholar. Starting Wang on three days rest. Meshuggeneh. Not when you've got both Pettite and Mussina big-game tested and ready to hurl.

And here's another thing. Not a single Jew on your roster. Even your 40-man roster. Even the Mets had Shaun Green, and the Yankees should have a Jew as well, if not a dozen. Sure, they might not have the muscles of some of your Latins, but for clutch hitting and heads up play, Jews will show your A-Rod a thing or two.

What would the British Empire have been without Disraeli? The Roosevelt Supreme Court with Felix Frankfurter? The mid-30s Tigers, the mid-60s Dodgers without Greenberg and Koufax?

It's time, Mr. Steinbrenner. It's time.

What hath G-d wrought.

The Bar Mitzvah, the late 20th Century invention of affluent American Jews, reached its apotheosis last night in a din of bad taste, bad food, bad noise masquerading as music and the bad over-indulgence of youth and youth culture.

The service itself was of the assembly-line variety, with two boys being Bar Mitzvahd as once with not a dose of reflection or spirituality to be seen. The "ordeal" of this rite, which was meant to impart a rigor to a young man but which for the sake of synangogue finances has been democratized to include young girls, has been dumbed down to rote memorization of the liturgy, a glib rabbi that calls the ancient Jewish Torah by its Christian name (the Bible is a Christian book, ladies and gentlemen. If the Christians in their imperiousness wish to attempt to co-opt the Torah for their own liturgy, if they wish to rename the Torah for their own fascistic purposes, let them. But don't play along)and "speeches" by the Bar Mitzvah victim that are so short and meaningless and canned as to be nothing more than an exercise in reading aloud in public.

The party is a masturbatory melange of noise and excess, with screaming children, jungle music and evidence a culture that has been mangled and mutilated by cliche and conformity that it embarrasses me to be a Jew and an American. "Holla back" white affluent Jewish kids are beckoned to yell by the over-miked, over-bassed, under-brained "d.j." There's a cliche for every well-choreographed slice of over-scripted nonsense. An over-long video tribute set to over-loud lousy music of the Bar Mitzvah victim at every stage of his life from diapers to present pampering. A disgusting display of 13-year-old short-skirted incipient sluts showing off their 13-year-old putative cleavage and rolling on the floor with boys who shed their expensive suit jackets and untuck their shirts and undo their ties and the first blare of "music" composed by "african-american" ex-convicts with a synthesizer and a drum machine that constructs a cacophony of back beat not dissimilar to Zulus banging on Banyan trees before they eat their foes.

The food an underflavored, over-salted indulgence that gets slapped in front of you by latex-glove-wearing (presumably to stop the transmission of food-borne diseases) illegal immigrants making minimum wage and "serving" guests so late that no one can actually eat and 2/3rds of the inedibles were probably thrown out, which is fine, the food being good for nothing but rat poison.

The noise, the excess, the hubris, the lack of spirituality, the marzipan glow of fat entitlement, this is a Bar Mitzvah today.

A knish went down the wrong pipe.

The girl came by with the appetizers during cocktail hour and she had mini-knishes. I took one and down the wrong pipe it went. I coughed for a good fifteen minutes and tried to wash it down with a Canada Dry, but no dice. Finally I had a piece of challah and that did the trick.

Be careful you shouldn't eat too fast or while you're talking. Things can go down the wrong way. Especially at a Bar Mitzvah when you eat so late it's time for the next meal already. Dinner at 10 PM.

We made it on the Amtrak.

Sylvie and I made it on the Amtrak which was delayed and arrived in Union Station in Washington, DC just before midnight. We looked for a bus to Silver Spring but had to take a taxi instead. We checked into a very nice hotel, the Silver Spring Ramada where most of the other guests also are staying and found a goodie bag with a big Hersheys and some mineral water in our room. Very thoughtful and generous both.

So far as I can discern, there is not much in Silver Springs outside of parking lots and Volvos, I suppose in that order and no place for a newspaper early in the morning which is when I wake up.

Today, my nephew Adam, becomes a man. Momentous. But next time, perhaps he should do so in Manhattan.

Off to the Bar Mitzvah.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, if you were paying attention and not multi-tasking as so many people do today--no wonder the world is in the shape it's in, no one focuses on anything, we are all so busy getting and spending we lay waste our powers, this evening Sylvie and I are off to the Amtrak to Silver Spring, Maryland for nephew Adam's Bar Mitzvah. Sylvie last night throws this out, "it's black tie." May you hang like a tuxedo in a closet and be eaten by moths. My tuxedo I haven't worn since the B'nai fundraiser at which I was honored I think in 1995, when I turned 65. So today while Sylvie is potchkying around I am holding my breath in and trying to button. I am trying to find my tuxedo bow tie, and my good black shoes and a cumberbund.

Many Bar Mitvahs I have presided over and, as a Rabbi, you do your best and your best not to pass judgment. But black tie schmack tie. Black tie is for the parents not the Bar Mitzvah boy. I think comfortable is how you should dress, but neat.

.tfel ot thgir morf gnidaer

No, I'm not going crazy. But sometimes I wish English were read from right to left because I'm used to reading that way.

Lunch I just had and a nap.

Now I don't know about you but after a nice lunch and a schluffie, there's nothing in the world I want more than a Bungalow Bar. A Good Humor won't do and Mister Softee is dreck. It's got no flavor, no body, no nothing. The only thing Mister Softee has going for it is the company is owned by Bill Gates and somehow it made him the richest man in the world. This, I don't understand. But it proves my point. If you can sell a lousy cone with sprinkles for $1.87--when it's cold outside yet--you too can be a billionaire.

A joke I just made up.

How do you celebrate lingerie that is 13-years-old?
With a Bra Mitzvah.

Mr. big shot Philip Roth is at it again.

That masturbation-monger Philip Roth, the schiksa-schtupping, perversion-promoting putz has written another of his Zuckerman novels. This I will say for him though. Obviously, I'm not a fan. But the man is prolific. He should just keep his schvanz in his trousers and we'd all be better off.

Sylvie just came in.

From off the phone and she tells me that her friend Eve's daughter, Sheryl slammed the door in her home office on the hand of her six-year-old Chelsea and it looks like Chelsea will have to get stitches and there's blood all over the carpet and even in the Epson inkjet. She said the blood spritzed all the way up to ceiling like a circumcision gone awry. The Epson they can clean, the ceiling they can repaint, but even seltzer right away and Resolve Extra Strength won't do with the blood on the carpet. I think a sprinkle of salt sometimes lifts blood out of carpet. Meanwhile Chelsea is screaming like a chicken and the piano recital is off for the 19th. Thank G-d.

My nephew's bar mitzvah.

My nephew Adam is a nice boy and he's about to become a man. So this Friday night, Sylvie and I are off to the Amtrak to Silver Spring, Maryland to attend the festivities.

It's Sylvie's side of the family, and never did I much care for most of them. But after fifty-five years of marriage, you shut up and go. That's marital advice, my friends. Shut up and do what your wife wants. You'll live longer and be happier. You need a fancy-schmancy marriage counselor like you need a hole in the head. Button your pisk and go.

Adam's father, Bobby is a bit of a schmendrick. A fifty-two year old who calls himself Bobby? What? Is he on the Howdy Doody Show or some such? You're 52 years old with a big house in the suburbs already, be Robert or Bob or Rob. But Bobby? What are you, a mouseketeer?

This will be my first Bar Mitzvah since I stepped down from the Bima. A little sad. A little nostalgic. A little laughter. A few tears.

But Adam is a good boy and handsome too. So you go. You eat a frank in a blanket. You do a little Hora, Cotton Eyed Joe or Electric Slide and you say goodnight.

It's a mitzvah after all.

Mindy Haubenslag.

I grew up with a girl named Mindy Haubenslag. For sixty-five years or so I've had a thing for her. In fact, every year when she would return to Beth Yuiz Miwom Annow, I would espy Mindy from the pulpit. This is not a violation of any commandment. I was not coveting, just noticing. Like me, Mindy Haubenslag is pushing 80. She still has a well-turned ankle.