I have some news for you. Curb Your Enthusiasm may not be the most Jewish show out there. That title has to go to Adult Swim’s Delocated.

For those of you who don’t know what Delocated is, I’ll fill you in quickly on one of the weirdest comedies in history. “Jon” played by Jon Glaser, is being hunted down by the Russian mafia, so he enters his family into the witness protection program. The catch is that he is also a bit of a fame whore and hires a camera crew to follow around his family to create a reality show about life in the witness protection program.  Then the guy who is trying to kill him gets his own reality show.

I didn’t say it wasn’t weird.

But beyond weird, as I said, this show is incredibly Jewish. Just take this past sunday’s episode for instance. “Jon,” out of fear that his ex-wife will convince his son to convert to Catholicism, asks his new girlfriend to convert to Judaism to show his son that Judaism is cool. In turn, she starts wearing a sheitl, makes Jewish food and speaks with a yiddish accent.

Or, if you want to go back to last season, here is a clip from “Jon’s” son’s bar mitzvah and subsequent bar mitzvah party. After you watch this, you’ll wonder as much as I did as to why the ska mitzvah hasn’t caught on yet.

Oh, and don’t let your kids watch this.

This is the first-place winner of MyJewishLearning.com and Shemspeed.com’s High Holiday Poetry Contest. Read our other winners, Wet Toes and Dragon Tefillin.

Caregiver’s Rosh Hashanah
by Rita Janice Traub

The only shofar sounds we hear
are beep of horn and screech of brakes.
Shul is off-limits to us now.
Each cluttered room a temple makes.
No reader chants the liturgy
anywhere close enough to hear.
Far from the well-groomed congregants
we greet the dawning of the year.

Murmuring platitudes, I nurse,
powerless to effect a cure,
seeking, as I atone, the strength
to cope with crises and endure.
I work through all High Holy Days.
All days are sacred to me now.
Even as I repent, I sin.
Please, God, forgive me, anyhow.

I used to pray for all the world
another time, another place.
The cares of all humanity
once I was eager to embrace.
This whirling twirling swirling globe
of peace and beauty, fear and hate,
that rested lightly in my palm
now suffocates me with its weight.

So this New Year, I pray for three:
my mother’s life; my sister’s; mine.
Restore their health, renew our hope,
the dust beseeches the Divine.
My father from the mirror stares,
and I avert my eyes to weep.
Inscribe us, God, for life and love.
Our sins forgive; our secrets keep.

Our winner, Rita Janice Traub, writes: “I’m pretty much sequestered, am still a caregiver, have no car, don’t want to lose contact with my Jewish heritage although ours has always been a somewhat atypical Jewish family.

“You didn’t ask about biographies, but I’ll volunteer that I’ve been writing both prose and poetry since early childhood; writing is my joy. I was born in New York City, and my hometown is Baltimore.  My career was mostly in California litigation law firms (I have a law degree), where I did lots of writing of briefs and motions.  It was pressure work; and, to avoid burn-out, I’d turn to poetry.  I am now a Georgia resident.  I operate a small part-time business (transcription, editing and writing) from my home in Fulton County.”

I have a confession to make: I don’t like apples and honey. I mean, I don’t dislike them, but I don’t look forward to them, and I rarely even finish the one piece of apple that I take. I just find them to be thoroughly blah. I like my sweetness in different textures, I guess.

As a result of my non-standard preferences I decided that this year for Rosh Hashanah I’m going to throw away the rule book completely. I’m not serving any of the traditional or symbolic dishes (even though all of the new recipes we have sound delicious). Instead, for the first night of Rosh Hashanah I’m going to be serving breakfast for dinner. Blintzes, pancakes, frittata, Israeli salad, mimosas, and coffee cake for dessert. Rosh Hashanah is supposed to set the tone for the year, so why not celebrate with the meal that sets the tone for the day? I’m planning my meal to be hardy, nutritious, and sweet. I’ve invited some of my favorite people, and together I hope we’ll have a rowdy and fun meal that will begin a rowdy and fun year.

And hey, even if my year is crappy, at least I’ll have started it with some really good pancakes.

Earlier today, we announced Dragon Tefillin, the third-place winner in our High Holiday Poetry Contest, sponsored by MJL and Shemspeed. Here’s#2.

Wet toes
by Monica Goldberg

Under the humidity of
falling light
we talk about creation
and shoe sales
head for the beach
with apples
and honey
three bottles
of premise
and a new age cd

Check back later today to find out the #1 winner!

On Monday, Stacey Ballis wrote about Rosh Hashanah cooking. Her newest book, Good Enough to Eat, will be available September 7th.

As I mentioned before, my Judaism, while deeply rooted and very important to me, is something that falls more on the side of culture and tradition and less specifically on the side of religion or spirituality. But there are certain aspects of every holiday that resonate for me, and one of the things I appreciate about being Jewish, is that I can feel free to cherry pick the pieces I like and leave the rest behind.

As we look towards the High Holidays, I thought I would share some of my traditions with you, and some of my traditional recipes.

As we did not, nor do not, belong to a temple, the High Holidays were always spent with family and friends. Actually, the friends in question are basically family. I’m blessed with several families, extra parents abound (all of the love and advice and support but none of the discipline or college tuition), and I’ve got enough siblings-by-choice to sort of feel fundamentalist Mormon (without the polygamy or prairie clothes). Not to mention a truly ridiculous number of bonus nieces and nephews. Some of my earliest memories are of spending the High Holidays with different configurations of these special friends. Often we gather at my family’s weekend place in the country, a place away from the hustle
and bustle, with plenty of trees and green, wide open sky and fresh air. A place where, if one is inclined to commune with a higher power, it seems like the kind of place the deity of your choice just might be hanging out.

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This year’s High Holiday Poetry Contest–sponsored by MJL and Shemspeed–was a bit of a whopper, as my Australian family would say. The Jewish New Year coming so close to summer vacation might have surprised us, but not you. We demanded that you all produce works of sheer genius in just two weeks. And you came through.

We’ll be running the contest winners all day — so keep coming back throughout the day for more awesome poems. And keep visiting MJL for more great Rosh Hashanah content (like these cool videos) throughout the New Year and beyond.

Our third-place entry comes from Eliyahu Enriquez, who’s no stranger to MJL. (Just a note: All entries were read blind, and we have no idea who the first two winners are!) His poem “Dragon Tefillin” mystified most of us, but also inspired some pretty strong feelings. As one MJL employee wrote: “I don’t really know poetry, and I have no idea what it’s about, but I think it’s amazing.”

Dragon Tefillin

This is what it feels like to drown:

Festivities end.
The angels were never there
To begin with
Your incomplete

Silencer.

So. You return from whence you came.
Skinnydip through unchartered names.
An island Eden, draped in seaweed
That feel like serpents tickling your toes.

Convince yourself
Of Eternity
Embedded in a Cainine stroke
After desperate stroke.

Imbued with perplexity
Dim-witted
And gasping for breathalyzer

You realize
Serendipity
Reincarnated into a pair of anonymous

Dolphins.

T-minus eight days until Rosh Hashanah. In that time, I have to pack up all my things, get them in a moving truck, unpack my things, set up my new apartment and sleep. Then, I’ll still have about seven days until Rosh Hashanah. What ever will I do with my time once I’m done moving?

I’ll probably go for a walk or something. Maybe watch some TV, call some old friends. Go home for the holidays. You know, the norm.

But I’ll also find some time to watch some of MJL’s best viral videos.

First, we have an episode from The Adventures of Todd & God. I remember the first time I ever heard of this series. I didn’t even work for MJL. I was sitting in my Jewish Studies class in college and my professor was going on and on about how great this video was. He literally assigned homework to a bunch of 20 somethings students to watch this video on YouTube. I aced that class, if you were wondering.

Next, we have a video from our ongoing comedy series. Jon Friedman, a writer and blogger at Late Night With Jimmy Fallon sat down to tell us the story of his Rosh Hashanah experiences when he was 17 years old. I won’t give it away but let’s just say that Friedman is a more common last name than he thought it was.

Okay — maybe you look at more email forwards and cheesy Facebook photos than I do. (It’s not that hard to achieve, I assure you. Between getting Jewniverse ready, re-watching the awesome new G-dcast video, and keeping on top of office gossip, I barely have time to read my own email.)

So — yeah — maybe you are cooler than I am.

But my grandmother-in-law is cooler than you are.

Check out this Rosh Hashanah card that she emailed us. Yes, my grandmother-in-law uses email. She escaped the Holocaust by walking barefoot through Siberia and she has an email account. And she has an iPhone. An iPhone! My cell phone can barely still be held together with a rubber band and some chewing gum.

Happy New Year, everyone. And may all your computational devices taste as good as hers.

My ears are delicious. I have that on good authority because I was told it this very weekend (sorry, TMI?). So when I read an article in ynet about a Chinese product called Jew’s Ear Juice, I thought to myself, “Who has been stealing my ear juice and smuggling it to China?” But it turns out the drink is made from a black mushroom that looks like an ear. And in China, Judaism is seen as a synonym for success. So ear juice from a Jew really means successful mushroom sauce. And that makes perfect sense.

A mere 0.5% of Israel’s energy comes from renewables. Why? (Ha’aretz)

It is argued that Israel faces a looming electricity shortage crisis, because of failure to build the necessary production facilities. Despite a 2001 goal of 20% production from private hands by 2009, by 2009, it was only 3%. (Ha’aretz)

Preventing the further collapse of seaside cliffs in Israel requires remedial action over large sections of the coast in Netanya, Herzliya and Ashkelon —and a lot of money. (Ha’aretz)

An environmental group urged the Israeli government to close down a baptism site at the lower Jordan River visited by 100,000 tourists annually, until water quality standards for tourists and pilgrims bathing at the holy site can be met. (Ha’aretz)

The past five years “has been the worst uninterrupted period of aridity for 80 years.” But steps to cope, such as abolishing the water subsidy for farmers, are stalled. (Ha’aretz)