from Habitza.com http://habitza.com/2009/11/06/the-art-of-shabbat-invitation-hinting/  by Vera Resnick

Here it is, freshly squeezed – the world’s very first Primer on The Art of Shabbat Invitation Hinting!

Interested in someone?  Always wanted to hint effectively but never quite got the hang of it?  Try Shabbat Invitation Hinting!  You’ll never look stupid, never put yourself out there, and never have to make any real decisions.  What could be better?

Shabbat Invitations for Singles decoded:

Invite on Shabbat for the next Shabbat: I’m really interested in you – but not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Call at the beginning of the week and invite for a meal: I’m really interested, I even went to the trouble of finding your phone number – but I’m not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Call mid-week and invite for a meal: See, I have your phone number – but I’m not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Call just before Shabbat and invite for a meal: See, I have your number, I’m a spontaneous kind of person – but I’m not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Call and invite, and please prepare most of the food: See, I have your number, I’m a sharing kind of person – but I’m not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Invite for a meal and it’s just the two of us: I might be interested in you, this might be a date, but this way I don’t have to admit it, right?

Multiple Shabbat invitations (with or without food request): I really enjoy your company (and your cooking) – but I probably won’t ever be quite ready to ask you on a date.  I will ask you for advice about my girlfriends/boyfriends though…

Please note:  in the 21st Century, Shabbat Invitation Hinting is an “equal opportunity employer” – the above applies to both guys/girls.

Any further suggestions for this Primer are welcome! 

post them here: http://habitza.com/2009/11/06/the-art-of-shabbat-invitation-hinting/

Curb Your Enthusiasm returns to HBO on September 20, and this seventh season of the critically acclaimed, award-winning comedy series may turn out to be its best yet. That’s because this season will really be a combination of two hit shows in one. 
 
In the alternate showbiz universe of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the cast of Curb creator Larry David’s previous (real life) hit show, Seinfeld, are getting together for a (fictional) cast reunion special. 
 
Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards and other stars of that classic 1990s sitcom will show up to work out the reunion’s logistics with their old colleague Larry, and hilarity will no doubt ensue. 
 
When this plot line leaked out, you could sense the, well, enthusiasm in the media and beyond. Anyone who wondered if the world still cared about some “old” sitcom called Seinfeld got their answer: a resounding yes. Seinfeld marked the beginning of a new golden age of Jewish comedy. It still matters. 
 
I’ll take that one step further, and argue that Curb Your Enthusiasm matters even more. 
 
For comedy buffs like me – after all, I “wrote the book” about modern Jewish humor, called Shtick Shift – these new episodes of Curb will be a fascinating blend of old and new. 
 
Seinfeld aired from 1989 until 1998, and was one of the most popular shows in television history. Its characters, situations and catch phrases (like “yadda yadda yadda”) became part of the cultural currency. 
 
More importantly, Seinfeld was a highpoint in the history of American Jewish humor. All those great comedy pioneers, from Fanny Brice (with her broad Yiddish accent) to Woody Allen (with his neurotic nebbishy character) had paved the way for those hilarious 22-minutes a week with Jerry and his friends. If the previous hundred years of Jewish comedy had been a funny run-on sentence, then Seinfeld was its exclamation point. 
 
Yet ironically, even through Seinfeld is now considered the definitive Jewish sitcom, the first seasons featured few openly Jewish storylines. Sure, characters Jerry, Elaine and Kramer were obviously Jewish, but not explicitly so – more like “Israel-lite.” 
 
After a few successful seasons, Seinfeld’s sensibility gradually became more explicitly Jewish – and ironically, the show became even more popular to a wider audience. 
 
In an episode that seemed like a knowing wink to all the non-Jewish fans of the program, Jerry’s gentile dentist converts to Judaism – “for the jokes”! 
 
Jerry: Elaine, the guy's Jewish two days, he's already making Jewish jokes. 
 
Elaine: So what? When someone turns twenty-one, they usually get drunk the first night. 
 
Jerry: Booze is not a religion. 
 
Elaine: Tell that to my father. 
 
The nation had “converted” to Jewish humor. 
 
Eventually, Jerry’s Upper West Side neighborhood took over from the legendary Lower East Side to become New York City's (and the world's) unofficial Jewish capital. 
 
The breathtaking success of the Seinfeld “experiment” gave the show’s executive producer, Larry David, the creative freedom he needed to follow up with the most openly Jewish comedy series ever: Curb Your Enthusiasm. 
 
Which means that when the Seinfeld gang enters Larry David’s upscale Brentwood domain -- a fairyland-shtetl of posh boutiques, exclusive restaurants, therapists and acupuncturists -- they will finally become authentically Jewish, no longer just “Jew-ish.” 
 
From its very start seven seasons ago, Curb Your Enthusiasm took the famous Seinfeld sensibility to a radical extreme. The 21st century had just begun, and Curb Your Enthusiasm reflected changing times. America had assimilated Jewishness, Jewishness had assimilated America, and Curb Your Enthusiasm would exploit those realities. 
 
Curb Your Enthusiasm concerns the actual (more or less) off-screen life of Larry David. Post-Seinfeld, the wealthy, successful (and mostly miserable) David is now semi-retired, having left the good old Upper West Side for glamorous Brentwood, Los Angeles. 
 
He hangs out with his manager Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin) and Jeff’s wife Susie (Susie Essman) and lives with his wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines). 
 
At least, he did, until that unfortunate Season Six incident with the TiVo repairman... Curb Your Enthusiasm fans have been waiting impatiently to find out if the couple will reconcile in season seven. 
 
Soon they’ll have their answer. With another example of impeccable comic timing, Larry David’s all-new offerings will start airing on September 20, right after Rosh Hashanah. (Which would be the perfect time for Kramer actor Michael Richards to repent of his racist rant a few years back...) 
 
As a rabbi, I can’t think of anything better after two days of giving a bunch of sermons to kvetching congregants than watching the King of Kvetchers himself, Larry David, unveil a new season of this modern TV classic. 
 
Simcha Weinstein is an award-winning author, whose latest book is Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in the 21st century (Barricade Books: 2008) is out now.

“What’s up?” you ask. For one thing, the new movie, Bruno. 

The swishy, semi-fascist fashionista Bruno is the imaginary Austrian TV personality created by the very real British comedian Sasha Barron Cohen. 

In 2006, Barron Cohen broke box office records (and probably a couple of laws) with his movie Borat, about another foreign fictional reporter’s adventures in America. 

With their microphones in hand and their cameramen at their heels, both characters give Barron Cohen the unique ability, in our media-crazed age, to access people and places few “real” people could get close to. The results are hilarious or offensive – sometimes both – depending on your point of view. 

As with Borat, the “plot” of Bruno is non-existent. Bruno flies to Hollywood, hoping to become “the most famous Austrian star since Adolph Hitler” and "the biggest gay movie star since Schwarzenegger." 

Besides being a “take no prisoners” iconoclast and equal opportunity offender, Sasha Barron Cohen is Jewish. So not surprising, there are cringe making “Jewish” gags throughout the new film. 

It’s a carry over from Barron Cohen’s old TV program, where the character Bruno originated, and among other things, liked to rate red carpet looks as either “in the ghetto” (thumbs up) or “train to Auschwitz” (thumbs down). 

At one point in the new movie, the staggeringly tactless Bruno decides to become a Middle East peacemaker of all things. 

But he confuses the words “hummus” with “Hamas” in a high stakes dialogue between an real life ex-Mossad chief and an equally authentic Arab leader. 

Like everyone Bruno encounters, the two men were baffled by his bizarre behavior. Some of Bruno’s unfortunate subjects end up making fools of themselves, like the stage mothers and fathers who’ll do anything to get their children a part in Bruno’s movie. 

Would a mother consent to liposuction for her preschooler? Bruno asks them with a straight face. Will their babies be comfortable working with bees, Komodo dragons or snakes? What about being “thrown from a building”? 

Bruno suggests to one mother that her 30-pound baby lose 10 pounds within seven days -- and she eagerly agrees! 

When Bruno tells one father that his child would be expected to wear a Nazi uniform and push a wheelbarrow carrying a Jewish baby into an oven, the father calmly responds, "That's fine, as long as he gets the gig." 

Remember: these are real people, and they’re not reading from scripts. 

For better or worse, Borat helped make the nation of Kazakhstan a household name (and international punch line). Cohen's new alter ego might not have the same effect on Austria, though – in promotional interviews, Bruno says he wants to “live the Austrian dream of finding a partner, buying a dungeon and starting a family” (a reference to Austrian madman Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar for years and even fathered children with her.) 

Austria may not be a fascist nation, but right now it is experiencing a growth in nationalistic, anti-immigration movements. Bruno is probably the last thing it needs right now. 

Which brings us to the eternal question: 

Forget the Austrians. Is Bruno good for the Jews? 

Context and narrative point of view are everything. They’re what separate an insightful gag that is in borderline taste from a tasteless joke that falls flat. 

Jewish performers like Baron Cohen, Larry David and Sarah Silverman all share offensive-yet-naïve stage personas. These seemingly oblivious characters charge through life, offending everyone in their path, but not always intentionally. 

Their carefully crafted personae escort the audience through edgy routines that reveal a larger point of view within a specific context. 

Along with Sasha Barron Cohen, Larry David’s show Curb Your Enthusiasm satirizes the way we overvalue (fake) celebrity and undervalue real history. Meanwhile, Sarah Silverman uses utter absurdity to remind us of the gravity of the Holocaust, not make fun of it. 

By playing a fascist, not to mention a loudly “out” homosexual, Cohen forces audiences to confront their own prejudices. 

His rationale seems to be: If you beat your enemy to the punch line by getting in the first and last word, even if you lose, you still win. 

It’s a dangerous game, though. How can Cohen be sure that audiences “get” his meta-humor? (All in the Family creator Norman Lear was appalled to discover that millions of viewers embraced Archie Bunker, a character he’d meant the audience to despise. Comedians Chris Rock and David Chappelle dropped certain routines about racial differences that some audiences liked too much, for the wrong reasons.) 

In an interview with Rolling Stone when Borat first came out, Baron Cohen explained the "minstrelsy" he employs in his anarchic humor: 

“When I was in university, there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, who said, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.” 

It's telling that so many Jewish comedians (and their audiences) have declared the Holocaust "on limits" for comedy at this particular moment in time, because as its horrors recede into the past, the macabre phenomenon of Holocaust denial is growing, a trend I chronicle in my latest book, Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in the 21st Century (Barricade Book).

It goes without saying that this sort of gallows humor offends Holocaust survivors and their families. “Nazi” has become the Jewish “N” word-- whether or not it’s an acceptable punch line depends upon who’s using it, and how. 

I’m a fan of Sasha Barron Cohen, and respect the fact that we could all use a good laugh or two these days. 

But I’m also a rabbi; so much of his raunchy humor makes me deeply uncomfortable, too. It certainly isn’t material for a Shabbat sermon. 

That said, watching Bruno declare that fashion is more important than Darfur reminds us of the dangers of material excess, at a time when we need to practice and praise restraint. 

There are more real-life, shallow, dimwitted “Brunos” out there in the media world -- deciding on a whim what the rest of us should wear, watch, read and think -- than many of us care to believe. 

In that respect, Bruno may serve as a lesson to us all. 

About the Author

Simcha Weinstein is an award-winning author, whose latest book is Shtick Shift: Jewish Humor in the 21st century (Barricade Books) is out now.

• Does the girl wear her seatbelt over her chest or does she put the seatbelt strap behind her? (obviously, if the girl dies in the process, she can no longer be a possible match, but at least she's tznius)
• Does she stack dirty dishes at the Shabbos table or does she take each dish to the kitchen individually? (do wives = maids without pay?)
• Is her Shabbos tablecloth white silk fabric or does her family use clear plastic? (again, modern convenience is a sign of laziness)
• What is her waist size? (why not ask her mother's waist size? actually, ask for the mother's picture while you're at it! might as well come to terms now with what a girl will end up looking like 9 months after the chasuna!)

Then today at a family BBQ, my single cousins shared some more treasures that they've recently heard:

• A question actually asked to a female reference: Does he wear boxers or briefs? (first of all, if she knew the answer, I'd be a little creeped out. And II, why don't they just outright ask for a sperm count? or maybe I speak too soon - that may actually one day be a real q)
• Does she sleep in a nightgown or pj pants? (personally, I could never understand how a long t-shirt that rides up while you're sleeping could possibly be tznius, never mind more tznius than pants)
• What kind of bed do the parents sleep on? Is it one big bed? (oy vey) Is it two separate beds? Are they pushed together? (oy vey)

It always surprises me to hear those crazy questions asked by today's yentas (aka Shadchans). Personally, the craziest question I ever got was whether I wore pantyhose or not (ok, crazy where I'm coming from). But still, all those stories I hear from my friends have me wondering what some people are smoking today.

First - because those questions are mamush crazy. ( I know, I wrote 'mamush'. But I live in Brooklyn - I guess the peer pressure has finally gotten to me. But don't worry. I haven't started wearing headbands on the back of my head with a major poof in front. And Grey's Anatomy is on summer hiatus, so I stopped using 'seriously'... well not seriously, but kinda)

Ok back to crazy.  So crazy. The questions are simply nuts. What normal (non-retarded) person would ask such a question?

Second - because aren't these people supposed to be 'frum' (whatever that means). Shadchans pretend that they ask these questions because they 'need to know' how 'frum' a single is. And yet, rather ironically, the questions posed are so incredibly UN-frum, UN-tznius, horribly indecent, morally-debasing and degrading. I would even add 'dehumanizing' to my list of complaints. That's right. Treating men and women as though they are pieces of meat, up for inspection to be sold at market is dehumanizing.

What does this demonstrate of the values and morals of today's society? How does this reflect on the ideals of the so-called 'frum' community?

Concerns about someone's lineage, wealth, appearance, job - aren't those extremely gashmius, un-holy, un-frum concerns?

You see an Israeli/American lapel pin - take a shot 

Someone wearing Israeli/American flag kippa (split half down the middle) - take a shot 

Someone starts an argument with "Historically speaking, the Palestinians never... - take a shot 

Someone tells you how important boycotting the New York Times is - take a shot 

Someone asks a 2 part question with a followup question during a panel session - take a shot 

Someone asks a question to the panel that has no question and is just a 4 minute rant/comment - take a shot 

Some guy is on cellphone shmoozing/hocking in the hallway about his ride home - take a shot

2 state solution mentioned followed by a muuuhahahaha laugh - take 2 shots 

People looking for where J-Street is in Washington - take a shot

Thought AIPAC is the most important acronym in the world - take a shot

Cellphone goes off during keynote speech as soon as that person sits back down - take a shot 

Given sense that Iran will be bombing the building any minute now - take a shot 

Durbin Part III joke made - take a shot

Realize the bars in DC close at midnight - take a shot

Introduce yourself to a Congressman by saying you loved the series West Wing - take a shot

Someone tries to pick you up by asking you how many conferences you\'ve been at - take a shot 

1967 borders mentioned as a joke - take a shot 

Free food! - take a shot! 

Someone wearing a very obvious ugly blue and white tie that is trying way too hard - take a shot 

Asked to sign up for an email list that has the word Kahane in it - take a shot 

Contemplating making Aliya tomorrow - take a shot 

1. I love that even though I may not have spoken with someone since the Ben-Gurion Administration, he will call me to check that I have somewhere to go for Passover Seder.

2. I love how you can bring your dog into any café to walk around and no one bats an eyelash.

3. I love that the social norm that allows us to double-dip in peace without neurotic fear of contracting the West Nile virus. Take your Purel bottle and stick it somewhere.

4. I love that you could take a homeless person with no marketable skills, put them behind the counter of Aroma, and they'd immediately be qualified to make a little foam heart in your cafe hafuch [cappuccino].

5. Mirpeseot. They're cool.

6. I love that I visited Dracula's castle in Transylvania, ran into an Israeli, and within 2 minutes realized we know someone in common. That could only be cooler if she were in fact a vampire and her name was Count Shawarmula.

7. I love tsofim, the Israeli scouts. I swear, these little MacGyvers can take wheat, some duct tape, and a falafel ball and make a nuclear reactor.

8. I love the magical phrase "yiyeh b'seder," the Economica [bleach] of the Hebrew language. What can't it handle? Flat tire? Failed test? Take two "yiyeh b'seder's and call me in the morning.

9. I love the peacefulness of Shabbat in Jerusalem. So quiet and relaxing. I can sit on my tuchus all day and not feel guilty.

10. I love how the smallest, least professional-looking chumusiot [hummus restaurants] serve the best tasting stuff. Within 7.2 seconds of your placing an order, they've scooped, spread, sprinkled and created what I like to call "beautiful goodness."

11. I love the impossible-to-predict playlist of Galgalatz. "Ok, Galgalatz, I dare you to play 'Yerushalayim shel Zahav' followed by 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'...............what do you mean you just played it?

12. I love how when it rains, people celebrate like we just won the gold medal in basketball.

13. I love that when we win a gold medal, we celebrate like a people who take pride in every individual award won by our tiny country.

14. I love the effectiveness of El Al security. All together now: if El Al doesn't do it, NO ONE SHOULD DO IT. Sorry, Delta, I'm not taking my pants off.

15. I love that while in America, Esti Ginzburg would be an 80-year-old grandmother in South Florida, here she's a hottie patottie Sports Illustrated model who also lights the Chanukkah candles.

16. I love the chassid who protested the sale of chametz by wearing only a strategically placed sock. Apparently the Red Hot Chili Peppers are huge in Mea Shearim. (And, no, you're not getting a picture.)

17. I love the number of people who hit the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to defend Israel when it's being blasted in the international media.

18. I love that the popular kids game Simon Says is not in fact called Shimon Omer as Americans think but rather Herzl Amar (Herzl Said).

19. I love Friday in Tel Aviv and the incredible energy on the streets, in coffee shops, and oh yes....at the beach.

20. I love hanging out at Chof Bograshov in Tel Aviv and then seeing the same beach hours later in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan."

21. I love not so much that my friends visit from the States and get so excited to be in Israel that practically lose control of their bowels, but that I can secretly smile and and think to myself, "Yeah, I live here."

22. I love Rosh Hashana dinner with my friends and their family when they feed me enough to nourish a small army.

23. I love when this unathletic North American Jew meets massive wood-chopping Israeli gevers [man's man]. This dude's arms were so big, they required arnona payments.

24. I love that drinking tea with only nana in it. Teabag? Who needs it?

25. I love that Israeli tour guides know everything about every square inch of this country. If Moshe Rabeinu went #2 on this rock, you can be sure that your guide learned it.

26. I love the uniqueness of the Israeli job search. Even if you don't get the position you've applied for, there is roughly a 57% chance that you’ll be offered a date with the CEO's daughter.

27. I love that there's free wireless internet everywhere, especially in Ben-Gurion Airport. Eat your heart out, Starbucks.

 28. I love that we put Shimon Peres on a wedding dress.

29. I love that my friend overheard his bus driver telling Talmudic stories with morals and relating them to current events. Only in Israel. 30. I love how lifeguards on the beach turn into Jewish/Polish mothers when they freak out and yell in Hebrew "please please please, I urge you to come closer to the beach!"

31. I love that my cab driver offered me a peach and that I accepted it. That will happen in America when falafel balls fly.

32. I love the Israelis who take such pride in their country that they ask tourists, "You like Israel? Why you not live here???" When you've got Zionism, who needs linking verbs?

33. I love that this country is roughly the size of a parking spot yet is one of the most innovative producers of technology on the planet. Boycott us if you'd like, world. Just please return your cell phones, thanks. (And I'd like an iPhone while you’re at it.)

34. I love that the cable companies are named for English words, causing the inevitable awkward statement, "I'm waiting at home for the HOT guy to come." 35. I love sachlab in the winter.

36. I love that the vendors at the shuk sell their product as if their lives depend on it and like they just downed four cups of coffee. "AGVANIOOOOOOOOT! SHTAY SHEKEL!!!!!!!!" Do they know they're selling tomatoes? You bet they do.

37. I love that a two year old can wet the bed but still sing "Avadim hayinu" for Pessach. Goooooo, Jewish education!

38. I love the brave 18 year olds who serve to defend this country. Do I even need to tell you what I was doing at that age? Let’s just say it rhymes with "Meroxing body parts." Apologies to the administrative staff at Texas Hillel.

39. I love how the fruit shakes here contain the most obscure fruits in the history of the world. "Watch this....hey, can I get a shake with Abraham's desert star citrus fruit, but the one without the seeds that only grows in the Western Negev? (pause) YOU HAVE IT????

40. I love how the street names aren't Main, Elm, and MLK, but Hillel, Shamai, and Herzl. (Do you think Theodore had any idea that 100 years after his death, Tel Avivim would be selling furniture on his street? Hey, Ben-Yehudah, thanks for reviving our language. To show our gratitude, we've decided to give you a pedestrian mall where teenagers frolic and buy their name on a grain of rice.)

 41. I love how Hebrew makes so much sense. A store with everything you need? Kol-bo. Delicious treat with cream in it? Crem-bo. We need more words like this. Bat Yam? The ars-bo! (Just kidding, Bat Yam, you know I love you.)

42. I love how Israelis will drink coffee even when it's 80,000 degrees outside. "We ahr five meen-utes from deh sun? B'sedeeeer! Hafuch gadol!"

43. I love words like "teetchadesh" that neither exist nor make sense in the English language. "Wow, cool shirt! Enjoy using your new thing!" Nice try.

44. I love the distant cousin of the shuk vendor, the guy outside the Arlozorov train station selling "baigeles." Apparently he gets paid to say baigele 568 times per minute without taking a breath. "BAIGELE BAIGELE BAIGELE!!!"

45. I love laughing when an Israeli turns to his friend and asks the question "mah ata dafuk?" (are you crazy?) The answer to that question is absolutely, positively, always yes. Whatever the guy just did, it was definitely dafuk.

 46. I love that Agadir Burger Bar not only allows you to order a burger with just about anything on it but also publishes a calendar showcasing their waitresses.

47. I love that I just saw someone tell their pet "shev" [sit] which he of course did. He's a dog and he knows Hebrew. Between this and the two-year old singing Passover songs, does it get any better?

48. I love that you can pay for everything in tashlumim, monthly installments. One of these days, I'm going to try this with an Egged bus driver just to watch his head spin.

49. I love that I went to a Guns N' Roses tribute concert in Jerusalem and not only did the singer speak to the crowd in Hebrew, when he sang he actually sounded just like Axl Rose. "Oh oh oh oooooooh, sweet child of miiiine! Bruchim habaim [welcome]!"

50. I love that Israel got its first Apple store this past year. Yeah, baby.

51. I love how people have no qualms about giving you a ride to the airport even if it's three in the morning and their wife is in labor.

52. I love the support that experienced olim (immigrants) give to prospective olim, answering questions and emails even if they've never met before.

53. I love flying into Israel and going through the "Israeli passport" line. (On a related note, I also derive some guilty pleasure watching the tourists lining up in the very lengthy "Foreign Passport" line as I quickly waltz on through. Does that make me a bad person?)

54. I love how on Rosh Hashana, the car radio display wished me a "shana tovah." I don't care what planet you're from, that's awesome.

55. I love the beautiful hills of Haifa which nevertheless caused me extreme confusion upon entering an elevator from ground level. "What do you mean we're on the 9th floor?"

56. I love watching the Super Bowl until 5 AM with the guys. When you work that hard for it, you enjoy it that much more.

57. I love the superhuman Israeli hearing which allows them to pick up the "beep beep beep" of the news even while someone is using a jackhammer three feet away.

58. I love how Google redirects you to the Israeli version of the site. The first time it happened, I looked behind me and thought, "WHOA!!! How do they know???"

59. I love the powerful emotion I feel during the Yom Hazikaron [Remembrance Day] siren which you can only experience in Israel. Was anyone else caught off guard the first time they heard the siren? Seriously, I thought aliens were coming to eat my brain.

60. I love Yom Ha'atzmaut which is apparently Hebrew for "go to the park and eat a cow."

61. I love that I've had this once-in-a-lifetime experience and that it's not over yet. Benji Lovitt is a stand-up comic and writer. You can read about his immigrant perspective at http://www.whatwarzone.com and see his stand-up comedy http://at www.benjilovitt.com.

(From www.IsraelNN.com) A new Online Mikvah Calendar created especially for the internet-savvy Jewish woman-of-today is making it easier to observe the complex Jewish laws of family purity.

The website, which was rolled out this week, is the brainchild of Rebbetzin Rivkah Bloom, who grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was the only Jewish child in her grade, forced at age 14 to leave home for a Jewish school in Pennsylvania, and from there to seminary in Israel. What followed led to software that has the potential to change the lives of millions of women: her years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she earned Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. 

Bloom came up with the idea for the new website in response to requests for help from women learning about mikvah observance – the laws of purity, which include immersion in a ritual pool.

"They asked me to develop a program to calculate their important dates," said Bloom. It took her four years to develop the Mikvah Calendar program, together with a colleague from MIT who "would like to remain anonymous." She told Israel National News in an exclusive email interview that she personally would "continually add new features to the site."

Although the website hasn't even been up for a week yet, "it's been swamped with log-ins," she added, noting that the service provided is free until July 15. After that, it will cost users $18 per year to log in and use the high-tech service, a fee which Bloom said will "just cover the cost of maintenance."

Users will be able to tap into an "Ask the Rabbi" feature and receive SMS/Text message and/or email reminder the day before any important dates and times. Bloom cited works by Rabbi Fishel Jacobs, author of Chochmot HaTaharah and Family Purity, as being special inspiration in her formation of the service.

Although the observance of mikvah is primarily relevant to married women, Bloom said that she believes single women, men and even people of other faiths would also enjoy the new website.

"I think they would find it interesting because they can understand in a tangible way how every aspect of a Jewish life can be holy," Bloom said, even down to the barest details.

THE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER TEQUILA

99% proof. So Long Shlivovitz!

http://star-indust.com/index1.html

Feast your eyes on this sucker....

THE MAGIC ELIJAH CUP  from ElijahDrinks.com

Here is how it works:

You put it on the seder table...

Fill it up with wine...

Then  you open the door for Elijah (and mumble shfoch chamuscha under your liberal breath)...

You gather the kids around...

and VOILA - the wine start disappearing instantly!   Elijah Drinking LIVE!

You will be the coolest person at your seder and you will convince all kids under 8 years old that there is a G-d, or at least a Ghost of Passover past. What could be better????

Watch it in action here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0BbxU67K8A

if you want one, just go to www.elijahdrinks.com and put in Bangitout in the coupon code for 10% off instantly. That's right, we just hooked you up with an early Afikomen present... our pleasure.

STAY TUNED for the ANNUAL BANGITOUT.com SEDER SIDEKICK! greatest seder jokes eva.

http://jewsdoit.blogspot.com/ 

a great complimentary site to this is Ian's Shoelace site which teaches you how to easily Jewify your sneaker via Shoelaces!

http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/hexagramlacing.htm

(hat tip to J. Gersch for the tip on this soular story)