Joy of Kosher Magazine Giveaway!

NO MORE COPIES LEFT! THANKS EVERYONE!

I have EIGHT copies of Jamie Geller's new Joy of Kosher magazine to send to eight lucky readers! Will you be one of them?

The new Joy of Kosher website launched recently, and if you haven't visited it, you're really missing out (and not just because I guest posted on being gluten-free on Passover). It's chock full of recipes, food goodies, and more.

The magazine that I have is 64 pages of recipes and seder plate ideas, and it's the quantity of recipes that has me kvelling. I know Passover is right around the corner, so these Yom Tov recipes might not make it into your already-planned meals, but these recipes are year-round friendly. I'm particularly stoked about the desserts, which look amazing, including a Chocolate Mousse recipe, a Vacherin recipe, a Chocolate Crackle recipe and ... nom nom nom ... a yummy looking Chocolate Macaroon recipe. The magazine has simple recipes for sauces and dips, and it also lays out menu ideas for the main meals and some light sides and breakfast goods.

So you want a copy of this amazing magazine? All you have to do is be one of the FIRST EIGHT people to comment with a way for me to reach you via email to get your mailing address.

I can't wait to see you guys put some of these delicious recipes to the test!

Chavi's Digging on New Voices, You Should Too!

I recently discovered an AWESOME publication -- New Voices , a national Jewish student magazine -- and thanks to some emailing and the wonders of the internet in building connections, I might be hooking up with New Voices in the future to do fun things. The magazine has been publishing since 1991, and that's news to me because I never happ'd upon it during my undergraduate education, but I'm lucky to have come across it now, I think.

The new issue -- available online by clicking here -- is the Lubavitch Issue. I think it's a pretty damn good reading, especially coming from the perspective of a college student on a campus where Hillel and Chabad seem to be not at all working as a whole. Case in point: Chabad throws up posters over at the Kosher dining facility for their events, just steps away from where Hillel meets, even as rumors float around campus that Hillel is "closed" for the year.  The two don't appear to work together well, and I think the issue probably addresses this all-encompassing issue on campuses in an interesting way . I won't give any of the little morsels away, but here's what the magazine says about the issue:

On college campuses across the country, a Shabbat dinner at the Chabad House is as much a ritual of Jewish student life as an ice cream social at the Hillel. As of this fall, emissaries of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement have set up Chabad Houses at nearly 100 colleges and universities. In this issue, we take a long, hard look at these shluchim, and at the ultra-Orthodox movement that has become central to the Jewish lives of thousands of college students.

If you want to check-out a reliable and praiseworthy spiel on New Voices, check out Jew School's very, very recent post on the magazine!

It just doesn't cut it.

I've tried really, really hard to like it, but I just can't bring myself to. I've read the stories, read the recipes, attempted to get past the WASPy nature of the the cover on the March/April issue. I really did, I mean, I want to love this magazine. But, folks, I just can't.

I mean, I understand that Jews come in all shapes, styles and colors, but the plastic barbie and ken stylings of this cover are nauseating. I mean, could that woman look any more uncomfortable? Like she'd ever seen a Haggadah before? Sigh.

Then I got all excited to see the "kvell: personal shoppers" section, because it featured Passover goods, right? Well, they list some handmade matzo and some chocolate-dipped macaroons, but are they kosher? Hell no. Not kosher. Matzo that isn't kosher!? The one thing on the page that *is* kosher (and for Passover) is some 5 Spoke Creamery cheese. The featured recipes are tres fancy, and I say that in an ironic fashion. Then there's the section on Jewish museums that, of course, highlights the big ones -- LA, DC, Chicago. But what about smaller operations? There are Jewish museums everywhere. We know about the big dogs. What about the small ones? The ones we *don't* know about? Everything just seems like it's trying to be so WASPy! Yargh!

Now, I will give credit to the magazine for using a lot of Jewish/Hebrew/Traditional terminology. I also will say mad props for the Pesach desserts -- this is a big issue with lots of folks because there aren't loads of delicious kosher-for-Passover stylings of desserts!

But I just. I don't know. I probably won't pick up this magazine again, simply because it isn't who I am. Maybe it's the upper crust NYC Jews or something, but it sure isn't what I'm familiar with.

Peshat: The literal (as opposed to figurative) meaning, as discussed by Rashi.

We see comments like she “always knew he was a fiction, but believed in him anyway” (15) and “This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?” (121) and “It was not the Jew, of course, who invented the love poem, but the other way around” (197). It seems like all the characters are searching desperately for this thing they neither understand nor know where to find. It’s as if going through the motions is enough.

--Me, March 7, Response paper on "Everything is Illuminated" for Jewish-American Fiction

I miss school. I miss it a lot. Reading through old papers and simple responses I wrote on small stories and entire books makes me miss my literature course -- the only literature class I took and enjoyed. I'm trying really hard to get through the spaces I'm in so I can turn the other way and work on getting back to school. I really am most pleasant with my head in a book or when I'm working on a 10-page paper on the Catholic Church's "fatherland" approach to Jews in the Holocaust. I. Love. to. Learn.

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I've recently developed a 24/7 sour stomach and jaw pains. The jaw pains are a result of what has been said is TMJ by a doctor I visited up in Westminster. She suggested a dentist, and everyone I've told that to has suggested a chiropractor or sports physical therapist. I finally bought a mouthguard, which seems to have helped last night. The anti-inflammatories don't seem to be doing much, unfortunately. The earplugs I bought to drown out my roommates are sort of working. I'll get down on my knees in the morning and thank G-d when I live someplace that is devoid of creaky floors above my slumbering noggin.

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I recently realized my newspaper gets copies of MOMENT magazine (which I love, though wish they cared more about the editing that they fail to pay attention to), so I scooped up a copy and am stoked to read the new issue. And in other news, I found this stellar site: http://www.algemeiner.com/