Speed Shrinking

New York   You’re 25 and still live with your parents?,’ she asked, aware of the ticking clock and all the other potentials she’d meet in the next two hours. ‘Just for now, until I get my organic cream cheese business running,’ he rushed to finish. ‘I-’ ‘They’re holding you back,’ she interrupted, as the buzzer went. ‘You need to overcome your ambivalence. It masks your fear of success.’

This isn’t the kind of conversation you’d normally have while speed dating — even in Jewish neurotic New York — but this is not speed dating but the next best (or arguably first best) thing: speed shrinking. Read more

Dispatches

The Big Cheese

The wild, top-hat-and-jeans-clad compére jumped onto the stage to announce the 20 semi-finalists of the second annual New York Cheesemonger Invitational. The crowd roared approval at those über-mongers who could detect age, nationality, name and bloom. For this, the third of four rounds, each contestant was to cut two 1/4 pound chunks of cheese and wrap each in cheese paper in under a minute. To mad applause, the first woman cheesemonger took to the stage. The clock began to tick. She estimated and sliced cheese amounts, posed triumphantly for the audience when her scale read 0.27lbs and began to wrap vigorously.

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Sarah Gliddens’ How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

Vertigo/DC Comics, 2010 Read more

Notes From A Bimah

*severe spoiler alerts

Ruthie, in her gold dress, mumbles a line of her speech about Judith and then is silent. Her hands tremble. We see her cue cards. But she’s not reading what’s on them.
Cut to congregation members who are shouting at her: Louder / Can’t hear you / Speak up / What’s wrong with her / Is she a mute?
Finally, cut back to Ruthie. She responds:
You ask me to be louder, when I’m normally told to be quiet
You ask me to smile, eat more but diet
You tell me today I’m special, when I’ve never been before.
I’ll give you louder… (music begins, voice changes, new scene) hear me roar!

When we decided to make a film that reflected a key moment in Jewish women’s experience, the Knish Collective decided to focus on the moment just before delivering the bat mitzvah address on the bimah. This hyper-important moment, emblematic of the transition into adulthood, is a staple scene for all bar mitzvah films; it’s a sign of the trope. The ‘Bimah moment’ might be said to characterize the genre. Read more

Seeing Shlock: Jewish Humour and Visual Art

A Jewish couple visits the Sistine Chapel. The guide points up and says: ‘It took Michaelangelo five years to paint this ceiling!’ The husband turns to his wife and says:  ‘Wow. He must have had the same landlord as us.’ (Old Jewish Joke)

It is well known that Jewish humour is a not a common cultural fixture in Britain so imagine my surprise, while walking around the fashionable Hayward Gallery, when I heard ‘Two wise men of Chelm went out for a walk…’ relayed in a loud ‘New York’ accent. A string of Jewish jokes was emerging from a plastic yellow joke box adorned with a clown face, attached to the wall, and named Joke Master Jr. On closer inspection I learned that this was, in fact, ‘art’ by the American-born London-based artist Doug Fishbone. Granted, it was an exhibition — and one of the first of its kind — about laughter, humour and visual art. But still, among the cool works of Finnish photographers and fictitious Korean performance troupes, the hot hyper-vowelization, and volume of the Jewish comedy stood out. Read more