A Lighter Side of Yom Kippur - "Desperate to Eat-oh": a Despacito Parody from the San Diego JCC

Last month we posted a Hebrew and English version of the Spanish hit song Despacito by the Maccabeats. The original song, which has been seen more than three billion times on YouTube, has inspired many other versions and parodies.

One of the most recent parodies was filmed by the San Diego JCC at Congregation Beth Israel. It's a lighthearted commentary on the challenges of fasting on Yom Kippur.

Wishing you an easy fast and a G'mar Chatimah Tovah. We'll be back Sunday with more Jewish humor.


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Throwback Thursday Yom Kippur Special: Final Scene of "The Jazz Singer" with Neil Diamond

With this Throwback Thursday coming one day before the Yom Kippur Kol Nidrei service, we're going back 37 years, not for the usual comedy skit, but for the emotional scene toward the end of the 1980 film The Jazz Singer.

In this clip, Neil Diamond as young cantor Yussel Rabinovich who has taken the stage name of Jess Robin, returns to the synagogue of his ailing cantor father (played by Sir Laurence Olivier) and sings Kol Nidrei, leading to a reconciliation.

Enjoy!

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Comedian Elon Gold on the Uniqueness of the Jewish Calendar

 

Elon Gold is an American comedian, television actor, writer and producer. He starred in the television series Stacked.  He also starred in the short-lived sitcom In-Laws. 

 

Known for his impressions, including those of Jeff Goldblum, Howard Stern and Jay Leno, Gold was a judge on the ABC celebrity impersonation competition series The Next Best Thing. Gold was also in the movie Cheaper by the Dozen as a cameraman from the Oprah Winfrey show.

Gold attended the Westchester Day School in Mamaroneck, NY and the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy (MTA)/Yeshiva University High School for Boys in Manhattan, NY. He is a practicing Orthodox Jew.

In this clip Elon gives his take on why the Jewish New Year is different from the secular New Year, and the Jewish obsession with time. 

Enjoy! 

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Jewish Traces in Unexpected Places: New Year Greetings from Children in the Former Soviet Union

Did you know? The Jewish Agency's activities in the former Soviet Union make a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of students and young Jews through schools, Hebrew classes, summer camps, Israel travel programs and more. 

A few participants in these programs wanted to wish you a happy, healthy sweet new year!

These children are from Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

From the children and from the staff of The Jewish Agency for Israel, Shana Tova!

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A Joke to Start the Week - "Fishing Trip"

We're in the middle of the High Holiday season, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It's hard to find suitable jokes during this introspective period, so we'll do the best we can with a fishing joke. 

Why fishing? Well, gefilte fish is a popular item this month, and yesterday we posted a video of US Embassy employees in Tel Aviv getting their first taste of it.

Today's joke doesn't involve gefilte fish, but it does include a fishing trip. It's from the archives of Old Jews Telling Jokes, and we're thankful to Sam Hoffman and the Old Jews team for making these priceless gems available to us on YouTube.

The joke teller is paper businessman Ed Pressman. Here's the setup: Sammy and Moishe are on their first fishing trip. They're on a lake and they're catching fish after fish after fish. And then...

Enjoy!

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U.S. Diplomats at Tel Aviv Embassy Taste Rosh Hashanah Foods for the First Time

Every year new American diplomats arrive in Israel to serve at the American Embassy. This year the embassy staff decided to test their "guts" with a couple of dishes that are most closely associated with Rosh Hashanah. 

These reactions you don't want to miss. US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman makes an appearance at the end of the tasting.

Enjoy!

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Wishing All of Our Readers a Shanah Tovah - Happy New Year 5778

Thanks to our thousands of loyal subscribers and casual readers worldwide who have joined us during the year.

We started this blog on October 5, 2009 and it's been going strong with more than 2300 blog entries over the last eight years.  

We appreciate your loyalty and we hope to keep bringing you a daily mix of Jewish humor in all of its forms -- traditional, eclectic, musical, unbelievable but true, and just funny, tempered with touches of nostalgia and Yiddishe nachas. 

5777 has been an amazing year for us -- a year of wonderful friendship, a year in which our nine books on Jewish humor have been selling on Amazon.com, and in which we performed 20 comedy shows and lectures in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Montreal.

We'll be attending services for Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat, and we'll be back posting again on Sunday.  Here's wishing a happy, healthy, joyous, prosperous and funny New Year from our family to yours!