How Jesus Made Jeremy a Better Jew

Jeremy Greenberg, a stand-up comic, has written an amusing, albeit perplexing, essay on "How Jesus Made Me a Better Jew" for American Jewish Life magazine. "Jesus first came to me in sixth grade through my friend's older sister's breasts," he says.

Breasts aside, I was a prime candidate for receiving a Christendectomy. As a kid, being a Jew meant going to Sunday school instead of playing with my friends. It meant missing football practice and games during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Until I graduated high school, Judaism was a religion based on separating me from my friends — me from who I wanted to be.

Additionally, I was part of a statistical reality only now becoming well known: Meshugener-ass Yid parents are the number-one cause of Christianity among Jews. Forget Tay-Sachs; we should be screened for parents who check your teeth for ham particles after having Christmas dinner at Scott Carlson’s house.

As he grew older, some combination of adolescent rebellion and personal role models who were Christian led him to baptize himself and email his parents, "I am Christian."

But it didn't take. "For months I felt 'off' both personally and professionally," he says. Eventually, for reasons that aren't remotely clear from his essay, he sets aside Jesus and reembraces his Jewish identity. How he does that is also not explained.

Maybe he found some Jewish body parts worth worshipping.

The Perils of Intermarriage--'70s-Style

Let me paint a picture: It's the age of lava lamps and rollerskates. Lynyrd Skynyrd rules the airwaves. America has yet to discover the gritty urban raps of the Sugarhill Gang. It's an innocent time, the '70s, a time before intermarriage was commonplace, a time when a Jewish man and a Catholic woman would have to be crazy to fall in love. Can their passion survive the anti-Semitic glares of their neighbors? The disapproving tweed jackets of their fathers? The confused sideburns of their friends?

Eli Valley, Jewcy.com's talented humorist, has the answer.

In his recent post, "When Jewish David Met Irish Eileen," Eli analyzes a 9-part series from the obscure '70s comic book series "Just Married." The storyline? An Orthodox Jew--who never wears a yarmulke but is partial to turtlenecks--falls in love with a devout Catholic woman. A typically hilarious passage from his analysis:

Although they have already eloped, David and Eileen get remarried, twice, to please their parents – first in a church, and then in a synagogue. In the storyline’s solitary visit to a Jewish house of worship, we glean fascinating insights into Orthodox Jewish customs – the burning incense, the rabbi wearing a circular necklace, the resemblance of the rabbi to Jesus, the prayer book inscribed with a Jewish Star drawn to resemble a Pentagram. It is as if the comic book is asking, are not all religions the same? Especially if they all look like Christianity? Finally, the comic book reveals that in Orthodox Jewish weddings, it is customary for the rabbi to make out with the bride, particularly if she is a Gentile.

Now, if in the wake of the Don Imus affair, you're wondering what is acceptable to joke about and laugh at, and what is not, Peter Moore, a self-described "half-Jewish" ("I always tell people that I'm not really one of the Chosen People, but I am an Alternate.") actor and director, created a list of guidelines for telling jokes in the PC age, in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune.

Encouraging Jewel-ish Choices?

Purim, often called the "Jewish Halloween," is on Sunday. But it's more than that--it's also the Jewish April Fools' Day. It's become a bit of a tradition for some papers to publish fake news for Purim.

The intermarriage debate comes in for some parody by our friend Julie Wiener at The (New York) Jewish Week, as excerpted on the Jewish Outreach Institute's blog, in a post by Kerry Olitzky. For the 25 of us who know all the players parodied in the article, it's pretty amusing.

What Do They Talk About At Those Conferences?

A friend of mine sent me a very funny piece from 2005 mocking the kinds of survivalist discussions that happen at the United Jewish Communities General Assembly, which is held every November. It's a little out-of-date--even some conservatives have now deserted President Bush--but it does a nice job poking fun at how out-of-touch some community leaders are.

Talk Like a Jewish Pirate

As some of you may know, today is "International Talk Like a Pirate Day." I thought this had nothing to do with interfaith families, until I saw this story from the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles on the history of Jewish pirates. Among the nuggets of gold from the article is the fact that a number of pirates were Conversos, Jews who practiced Christianity in public and Judaism in secret to evade the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. So in a way, every married Converso was intermarried. (It's a stretch, admittedly, but so was basing a movie on a Disney ride, and look at how that turned out.)

Here are some Jewish pirate-related jokes I've heard today:

What do you call Jewish pirates?

People of the Hook.

What did the Jewish pirate say when he heard tekiah?

"Thar she blows."

What does a Jewish pirate do on Yom Kippur?

Blows the shof-aarrr.

What happens when a Jewish pirate turns 13?

He has a barrrr mitzvah.

But what does he have to wait until 17 to do?

See an aarrrr-rated movie.