12 Feb 2012 | 19 Shevat 5772
Edmon J. Rodman
WorldPublished: 10 February 2012
LOS ANGELES – Ask Dr. David Ribner what he thinks about Jewish couples using sex toys and you get an answer you may not have expected.
The chairman of the sex therapy training program at the School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and himself a certified sex therapist, Ribner answers questions about the acceptability of the devices at http://www.koshersextoys.net, a website that sells the devices and is geared to Orthodox Jews.
“While Jewish law and tradition have long recognized the centrality of sexual satisfaction to a successful marriage,” he said in a response to a question for this article, “only recently have we been witness to more public efforts to promote this goal. Kosher Sex Toys [which runs the website and sells the items] is a step in this direction.”
MusicPublished: 30 December 2011
It does not get more “only in America” than this. A Christian president with an African-born Muslim father and a rabbi on his wife’s side of the family throws a Chanukah party at the White House. The featured act is the West Point Jewish Chapel Cadet Choir — a group that serves as a beacon of Jewish pride and identity at one of the nation’s top military academies, while also boasting a non-Jewish conductor and plenty of non-Jewish members.
And one more twist.
When the Jewish choir performed at the White House Chanukah party earlier this month, it chose to serenade the commander in chief with a song of peace.
“We were invited there for the party, a big honor,” said Cadet Evan Szablowski, 20, the choir’s non-Jewish conductor, a junior from Bakersfield, Calif.
Oy Oy Seven returns to bookshelves after 46-year hiatus
LOS ANGELES — Have I got a secret agent for you!
When Hamas is smuggling missiles, and Iranians are building A-bombs deep underground, to whom can Israel turn? 007? No way. He is much too busy playing baccarat, or keeping the world from being fried by space lasers. He has no time for the Middle East.
On the other hand, there is Israel Bond, the Israeli secret agent code named Oy-Oy 7. Now he is the man to call — or, at least. he was when author Sol Weinstein created him in the 1960s.
With the recent reissue of Weinstein's four novels parodying the works of Ian Fleming, we can discover if Bond —Israel Bond — can again rise to the occasion and save the day.
Published: 02 October 2011
Football can offer strategies for the personal struggle of repenting
LOS ANGELES — Yom Kippur, the fourth quarter of the High Holy Days, is coming and time is running out. Our seats are waiting, the gates are closing.
Each year we look for a new way to prep for the day: Could football offer a strategy?
Though Yom Kippur certainly is no day for sports, like football it does have a time limit, sundown, and a playbook: the machzor. There is even a halftime and cheerleaders — liturgical cheerleaders, that is.
It’s a day when the liturgy seems to ask: Are you going to run, pass, or pray?
Published: 02 October 2011
LOS ANGELES — You didn’t let Maimonides catch you napping on Rosh Hashanah, did you?
His famous quote, “Awake, awake, you slumberers from your sleep, inspect your actions and return” — usually found in the High Holy Days prayer book before the sounding of the shofar — is meant as the ultimate shluf alarm, his righteous tap on your shoulder.
But what if while sitting in the much longer services this Yom Kippur you should “accidentally” hit the snooze button and head off into the realm of somnambulant psalms?
Published: 10 February 2011
LOS ANGELES – On President’s Day, while remembering Washington and Lincoln, perhaps take a minute as well for Stern.
Little known outside of bibliophiles and Civil War buffs, one of the greatest private collectors of works about Abraham Lincoln was a Jewish clothing manufacturer executive from Chicago named Alfred Whital Stern.
About three score and one year ago, in 1950, a world of time before shows such as “Antique Road Show” brought collecting to the public’s attention, and films such as “National Treasure,” put Americana in vogue, Stern donated his world-class collection of rare Lincoln books, papers and memorabilia to the Library of Congress.
WorldPublished: 04 February 2011
On Super Sunday, the alefs and bets in Green Bay and Pittsburgh will be thinking about X’s and O’s.
They’ll even be up for a little friendly wager.
On the morning of Feb. 6, many hours before the NFC champion Green Bay Packers battle the AFC champion Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV, Rabbi Shaina Bacharach of the Conservative Congregation Cnesses Israel in Green Bay says her religious school will square off against the school at the Or L’Simcha, Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh.
LOS ANGELES – Better polish up a trophy, Jewish football fans.
Across the country, there are enough Jewish high school football teams currently playing 11-man full-tackle football to hold a playoff and a bowl game.
Back in September, JTA ran a story about one such team: the Jewish Academy Lions at the San Diego Jewish Academy High School in California. Since then, JTA has learned of two additional teams that play in an independent Florida league: the Ben Lipson Hillel Community High School of North Miami Beach and the high school of the David Posnack Hebrew Day School in Plantation.
