Keep Calm and Be Jewish

Someone had to do it, and that someone was me, evidently. I think I used the wrong font after the Keep Calm and Cholent On ... I should fix that!

Chabad on the Moon!?

While perusing Etsy.com, as I do sometimes when I'm bored, need to refresh my brain, and don't have a graphic novel laying around, I came across some funny comics up for sale. This one gave me a happy giggle. If you'd like to purchase one, just visit this Etsy Shop! (I also like the Rashi on a date one, tee hee.) After all, we have to be able to laugh at ourselves, right?

Shabbat Shalom!

Shabbos approaches, are you ready to kindle the lights and rest? Shabbat Shalom!

Paintings by Elena Flerova.

Parshah B'halotecha on Chabad.

A Bit of the Old, A Bit of the New!

During lunch yesterday I was graced by the presence of the New York Times at my table, so I picked it up and browsed (something I haven't done since I worked at a newspaper), and was lucky enough to happen upon a pretty exciting and possibly groundbreakingly awesome news story: "Find of Ancient City Could Alter Notions of Biblical David." The find?

"Overlooking the verdant Valley of Elah, where the Bible says David toppled Goliath, archeologists are unearthing a 3,000-year-old fortified city ..."

The site is five acres, and only a tiny portion of the area has been unearthed, meaning that there's still boatloads of research and digging to do. So far, there are some olive pits that have been found that have been carbon dated to between 1050 and 970 BCE -- a very controversial period in history during the supposed reign of David. Likewise, the writing on pottery appears in "so-called proto-Canaanite script and appears to be a letter or document in Hebrew." But we can't get too excited, I suppose. There's still a lot of the area that needs to be uncovered, and I'm tempted to book a ticket to go hop on that dig. The fascinating things about these digs is that they're used to sort of "validate" the "historical" evidence that we see in the Hebrew Bible. Can you imagine the potential for history-making finds in this dig?

------------------------------------------------------

On a completely and entirely unrelated note, I just wanted to mention that my favorite new artist -- Shoshannah Brombacher -- has a show opening at The Tea Lounge of her work, and it will run through the month of November. Her work has appeared on A Simple Jew 's blog, Chabad.org, and so many other places on the web. She has a flavor of Chagall, with a very ethereal, dreamy quality to her paintings ranging from music to the great Chassidic masters to modern Jewish celebrations. Can you guess what this painting is alluding to? I'll give you a hint: It's a classic parable involving Hillel and Shammai!

It is with that that I wish all a Shabbat Shalom -- may you have rest, peace, and good times with Torah, friends, family and G-d!

Seder plates inside the wall.

Philadelphi's Magic Garden is probably the most beautiful place I've been -- ever. I can't exactly describe it, but you can see all of my photos on my flickr. There's this beautiful mash-up that struck me, of course. It's a broken seder plate, more or less rearranged with other, colorful pieces of porcelain.

And there's a series of self-portraits through the glass fragments, as well.

But I hope you go look at all the photos -- it's a most beautiful, magical place.

Interesting. Very very intersting.

Now this is interactive art: http://wafaabilal.com/