White House Sends Chanukah Card With Christmas Tree On It

Brett Singer — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The Bush family really can't win these days.

Not only is the sitting President receiving blame for Republican losses on Election Day, but first lady Laura is getting flak for a farkakteh (pronounced "fuh-kahk-tuh") Chanukah card that had a picture of a Christmas tree on it.

While its fun to make fun of this kind of thing, I have to admit that I don't really care. It certainly is a mistake and shows certain cluelessness on the part of the First Lady's staff, or at least a lack of organizing skills (shouldn't someone have looked at the card first?). But this isn't exactly Hunter Gibson (Mel's dad) denying that the Holocaust actually happened. Also, the card didn't have a picture of the Baby Jesus on it. It was just a tree. (For the record, apologies were quickly offered. Faces, already covered with egg, were red. Feet were in mouths.)

So was it a bit dense for the White House to send a Chanukah card that didn't have a Chanukah image on it? Sure. But is it really that offensive? I don't think so. I'm Jewish, and I happen to like Christmas trees. That's a topic for another post, but for now, I'm not ready to add CardGate to the list of Bush Administration screw-ups.

Source: NY Post via HuffPo

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Happy Rosh Hashanah, here's a Shofar video

Brett Singer — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

In March someone commented that we were doing tons of posts on Easter but none on Purim. One reason for this is that Easter has, you know, CANDY; that is, I don't celebrate Easter as a religious holiday but I do enjoy the trappings (meaning THE CANDY).

That said, in the interest of being fair and balanced, here is a post about Rosh Hashanah, complete with video of a Shofar. The post is a day later than it should have been because I was busy going to Temple and eating brisket. (Mmmm...brisket...)

For the uninitiated, Rosh Hashanah is the celebration of the Jewish New Year. (The traditional greeting is not "Happy Jew Year", but "Shana Tova", which is Hebrew for "good year".) It is also the first of the two times each year that not-very-observant Jews, such as myself, go to Temple. The second time is next week, for Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is "The Day of Atonement," kind of the one-day version of Lent. (As Jon Stewart once said, "Even in sin you people pay retail!" Ba-dum-bum.) There is a one-day fast, and then at sundown we eat, usually lox and bagels. (Any excuse to eat salty fish. Mmmmm…salty fish…)

One of the key elements of the Rosh Hashanah service is the blowing of the Shofar, which is a kind of trumpet made out of a Ram's horn. Since YouTube has a video of absolutely everything, here is a clip of the traditional Shofar blasts. It's not easy to do, as you can see; this year at the service I attended, I was slightly concerned that the Shofar blower was going to pass out, although he didn't.

By the way, one reason that not much happened in Congress yesterday was because some folks took the day off for Rosh Hashanah. If anyone was annoyed by that, try to imagine the government working on Christmas. Yeah. Didn't think so.

So Shana Tova everyone! Next week – Yom Kippur.

Strollerderby : jews

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