This painting was inspired by Matisse's famous painting "Harmony in Red". Like Matisse, I love to use color in my work. So...here is my version..I changed the theme a little, and came up with Shabbat at Matisse's.

It starts with cells--it could be a stem cell or something called a myoblast, a precursor to muscle. You proliferate these cells in a kind of nutritious soup that's filled with vitamins and amino acids and salts and sugar. This is the biochemical equivalent of blood. In order for the cells to grow into tissues, they need this medium. And, it turns out, the most promising approach to producing this medium is to use microalgae, which are photosynthetic organisms even more efficient than plants. We recently funded some research at Oxford University to examine how meat cultured with this medium compares to conventional meat in terms of energy impact, and the study showed that it uses 90 percent less land and water, all while producing 80 percent fewer greenhouse emissions.

It's funny. It's irreverent. It knows its midrash. It casts Barack Obama as Joshua, and a woman as God. It entertains, provokes thought, and undoubtedly offends. And it can be yours for $22. Donate more, and get fancy prizes. Donate less, we'll still name you in the acknowledgments.

A deal like this you won't get from R.Crumb.

Enjoy!

While it’s not uncommon for novels to offer wisdom about life’s absurdities, few manage to do so while being laugh-out-loud funny. That’s what makes two new tales of woe and apocalypse, "Isaac’s Torah: Concerning the Life of Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld Through Two World Wars, Three Concentration Camps, and Five Motherlands" by Angel Wagenstein (Handsel Books) and "The Cabalist’s Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption" by Yori Yanover (Ben Yehuda Press), so much fun to read. My first impulse is to fill this review with quotations from both works to show just how wonderful their dark humor is, but that wouldn’t do justice to the complex and interesting plots they also contain.

While the events of "Isaac’s Torah" are loosely based on history, the same cannot be said for those portrayed in Yanover’s "The Cabalist’s Daughter." This offbeat look at contemporary messianic redemption and the end of the world starts slowly, but gathers steam as Nechama Gutkind leaves her adopted parents’ house in order to facilitate the beginning of the messianic age. On her side is a 130-year-old master kabbalist, Rabbi Lionel Abulafia, who has written "The Cabalist’s Handbook of Practical Messianic Redemption," which offers a humorous, and at times almost-fall-off-your-chair funny, look at how God created and developed the world. Against her is Samael, otherwise known as Satan, who is, as in traditional Jewish lore, an angel doing God’s bidding, even if his actions seem evil to humans. Samael has set in motion a plan to destroy the universe in order to return it to the wholeness that existed before creation. Nechama seeks to redeem humankind before his plan succeeds.

While the plot in the second half moves quickly and creates a great deal of suspense, my favorite parts are the work’s strange and wonderful theological discourses. For example, Abulafia writes that "some scholars suggest Creation is the handiwork of a sadistic celestial child, who delights in pulling the wings off butterflies and babies from their mothers’ bosoms. Soon, they surmise, God’s mother will come into the room and smack him, and thus bring an end to our suffering." (This is one of the milder interpretations of celestial behavior offered.) When explaining Abulafia’s interpretation of Samael’s behavior, Yanover notes that the unfortunate angel is only doing his job: Samael "is in charge of destroying the Jews, and so followed orders like a loyal soldier." Even though Jewish prophesies usually predict his defeat, that doesn’t stop him: "If Samael were to take every blasted prophecy seriously, he might have as well closed up shop and concentrated on his real passion, creating crossword puzzles for the New York Times."

Readers should be wary of the novel’s interpretations of Jewish history and mysticism: these sections are funny, but clearly biased. The branch of Judaism Nachama and Abulafia belong to is the Cosmic Wisdom movement, which is loosely based on the Lubavich Chasidic movement. The similarities between the movements include a rabbi who encourages his followers to open Cosmic Wisdom Houses across the world and the debate among members of both communities over whether their late leader is really the messiah.

The craziness featured in "The Cabalist’s Daughter" is closer to that of such works as "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams than it is to more traditional Jewish novels. However, it was a great pleasure to finally read a novel featuring a Jewish theological approach to the apocalypse.

Although Wagenstein and Yanover offer bleak looks at the world and jaded thoughts about the nature of God, their unflagging humor and enthusiasm prevent their novels from becoming depressing. Trying to compare these works is difficult because they each offer something wonderful. "Isaac’s Torah" is the more successful literary work and Wagenstein the better writer. However, for sheer fun and weirdness, "The Cabalist’s Daughter" excels on a scale with which the other novel cannot compete. Fortunately for me, I don’t really have to choose. Both books are welcome additions to my shelf.

This year, the process has resulted in a party so sublime in its improbable Israeliness that it can never be equaled.

JTA reports:

Perhaps the most unusual alliance in this year's election is between the Green Leaf Party, which has no seats in the Knesset, and the Pensioners' Party, which has six. Renamed the Holocaust Survivors' and Grown-Up Green Leaf Party, the party's prime issues are legalizing marijuana and pensioners' rights, especially...  Read More those of Holocaust survivors. One of the party's TV ads shows party head Gil Kopatch smoking a joint at the grave of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.

Not such a long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, specifically in the downtown Manhattan of 1980 with its punk clubs and squeegee men and loose-joint dealers and $150-a-month sublets, a moment of literary and journalistic kismet was occurring in a factory loft halfway between the East Village and Chelsea.

The loft held the mismatched desks, layout tables and glaring overhead lights that constituted the office of New Jewish Times, a new and precarious monthly magazine. As for the staff, it was a miscellany of gifted malcontents and sundry outsiders — Soviet émigrés, children of survivors, yeshiva rebels, CBGB regulars, “a bunch of slobs with overheated opinions,” in the recollection of one alumnus.

With their very first issue, those opinionated slobs declared their independence from the norms of Jewish journalism, whether sober journals like Commentary and Dissent or the boosterish newspapers sponsored by local Jewish federations. The entire cover consisted of an illustration of a mushroom cloud with the deadpan headline asking, “Next Year in Jerusalem?”

The editorial, “Another Day Of Infamy“, linked the Mumbai killings to Kishinev and Babi Yar. It begins:

And so Mumbai joins Kishinev, Hebron, Berlin, Babi Yar, Maalot, Sbarro’s, Sderot (we could easily mention 150 other sites) to the annals of sudden infamy. Another “wake-up call,” we’re told, for a somnambulant world. It is somehow perverse, even cruel, however, to speak of a wake-up call when the six Jews killed in Mumbai by Islamic terrorists were preceded by more than 2,000 Jews killed (and 5,000 wounded, some horrifically) by Islamic terrorists in the last decade alone.

You wouldn’t know from this paragraph — or the eight that follow — that nearly two hundred non-Jews were killed in the coordinated terror attacks whose primary targets were foreigners in Mumbai. The official paper of the UJA-Federation of Greater New York treats them as unpersons. Has the paper officially bought into the Chabad doctrine that gentiles are less human than Jews?

Shame on Jonathan Mark for writing this editorial, Gary Rosenblatt for publishing it, and the UJA-Federation for not noticing that something has gone very rotten in their newspaper.

Even Obama acknowledges his "spooky good fortune."

It certainly looks as if God is guiding Mr. Obama straight to the White House. But if God is guiding his history, and ours, aren't we mere spectators forced to watch passively -- some might say helplessly --as it unfolds? Several of my coreligionists think so, fatalistically pointing to the fact that the secular date of Obama's breakthrough keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention -- July 27 -- coincided with Tisha B'Av, a fast day commemorating the many seismic tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people.[...]

It looks as if the smooth-talking Haman, whose ambitions have been fulfilled at every turn, who has been blessed with "spooky good fortune," is destined to succeed. It looks as if God is guiding his
history so that he will have his way. But Mordechai knows that, at this juncture, fatalism would be fatal. He beseeches Esther to intervene, to help halt history in its tracks. And when she demurs, Mordechai upbraids her (Esther 4:14): "Who knows whether it was for just such an opportunity as this that you attained your royal position?"

In the absence of full disclosure, Esther has to resist her temptation to follow protocol, to be politically correct. But she accedes to Mordechai's demand only after he agrees to accede to hers (Esther 4:16): "Go and gather all the Jews in Shushan, and fast on my behalf for the three days...My maidens and I will also fast."

We have no Esther today. But over 2,400 years after she left the  world's stage, her example remains. We must emulate her two-pronged strategy: politics and prayer.

Leaders that arise from nowhere worry me. Ahashveirosh once used to be a stable boy (Megilla 12b) and Hitler was an unemployed painter. When Hashem brings someone out of nowhere to rule geat empires, I grow concerned about what He has in mind. These are messianic times and messianic times also bring forth false messiahs.

Gittel this may not be Germany, but America is going to be the first country to go before Moshiach comes. Do you really intend to stay here for it's downfall?

Oh, and guys, OUR FEAR IS NOT UNFOUNDED! Yes, Kol Ma DiAvid Rachmanah L'Tav Avid, that's first and foremost, but that doesn't mean we have to walk blindly into a trap, Hashem gave us saichel for a
reason!If you want to know exactly why so many people are freaking out, well, I'll give you my reason. If you open up Sefer Yechezkel, the posuk that talks about Milchemes Gog U MaGog, if you take every seventh letter in that posuk, it spells out the name O-B-A-M-A.

Coincidents? I think not.

Moshiach is on his way here, we're standing at the precipice of the third world war.

Guys, I think we should all start being makpid on Seudas Melaveh Malkah, and start keeping a cheshbon hanefesh.

In 1984 when the Bobover Rabbi zt"l Rabbi Shlomo when he made a kinus
for the the holochust. He said we should not think that in America we
are secured we will have one day a BLACK president. His neveus became a
reality

this is an email I received from someone in NYC. It is disappointing to read this after such a historical night...

Tonite , I travelled to Yale University where I give my once a semester Torah class to Maimonides students. BH the class went well.. I then left the building with the Maimonides.Rabbis..

We saw and heard the revelry of the students celebrating the Obama victory. with their generous cups of beer in hand... We looked at one another.. and shrugged..

I proceeded to the New Haven train station to go back to NYC.. taking the 1130 P..M train.. tired and trying to discern what the victory meant for the Jewish people, the country.,and. the world..I heard the conductor, passengers and crew laughing celebrating the victory...none of which surprised me... and then 4 exuberant young people said to me ":you must be upset?"

" I asked why? "'

'they responded ," because Obama has won.".

again I asked why should I be upset?"

" because you are Jewish"..they answered..

I answered , "did u know that polls have said aprox 80 % of Jews most likely voted for Obama"

they replied.. "but you are religious!".

I replied with disbelief..,"what .??

They responded " the majority of religious JEWS were supporting McCain.".

I asked.."how do u know that?

"everyone knows that" they said."." Religious Jews know that the day of their power and their ruination of WALL STREET IS OVER.,. CHANGE IS COMING.,. OBAMA HAS PROMISED THIS."

They walked away..

I felt sick,.. and thought.. wow so maybe this is how the chapter for American Jews is.ending..

I was waiting to cross Broadway on 42nd street when I was approached by a rather large, smelly,  toothless, homeless guy (who happened to be a black man).  When I shook my head "no" in response to  his request for money he responded that Jews never give him money (how he can  know that I'm not sure as less than 10% of the Jewish population actually wear Kippot).  He then started saying that, now that there's a Black President,  things are going to be different and how "we're gonna bomb Israel" (he said this  twice).  Now I am sure that this guy is crazy and his anti-semitic views  don't reflect the feelings of the vast majority of Obama supporters  (heck, I'm sure  that they don't even represent the views of the vast majority of large,  smelly, toothless, homeless people)  but I can't help  but be upset by his words.   I've always felt that the future of the Jewish
people does not lie in Teaneck, Brooklyn or the Five Towns.  I don't feel "at home" here.  I think that we are in for a rough stretch.

There is a hypothesis that says that the purpose of sleep is to reinforce certain memories, or rather, neural connections, that were created during the previous day. Sleep does this not in a way that one might expect — by actually strengthening the connections — but rather by subtly washing away the neural connections created during the day that are deemed trivial or unimportant. Leaving only the most important ones remaining. A bit like waves washing gently on a rocky beach over thousands of years — eventually most of the rocks are turned to sand and only the largest rocks remain.

When it comes to the preservation of culture, time, I think, works quite similarly. Take literature, for instance. Of the many millions of bodies of text that have been created over the thousands of years since man first invented writing, only a very few have been continually preserved and set aside as “classics.” The rest were beaten into sand and washed away by the ocean of time.

This
isn’t a random process either. The Iliad or the Old Testament or Beowulf or Hamlet aren’t available to us today by mere fortunate happenstance. Society made great efforts to keep them in circulation and preserve them. If culture is like a brain distributed across a certain population, and time is its sleep, then these cultural works are the synapses that matter. Somehow. Even though when you read them in high school it doesn’t seem that way.

Will the Internet and digital storage media do away with this form of cultural sleep? If everything can be preserved, whether or not it is of significant cultural value, will it? Where then will classics come from? Or will culture break down into nervous chaos — where everything is of equal importance and so nothing is of importance at all — perhaps like the mind of a chronic insomniac?

Even in a digital world, preservation of information still requires time, money and resources, albeit small. Websites come and go. So do blogs. They are more ephemeral even than books. So, perhaps the reverse will be the case — that because we can preserve anything, we don’t produce anything worth preserving, and thus preserve nothing at all. Either way, in the future, the mechanisms by which culture evolves will almost surely be different.