Just to recap: On Monday night, in a debate with Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza, Lou Dobbs accused the ADL of being an “absolute advocate group for open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.” Then he took another shot:

Well, on Thursday night, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann fired back, giving his daily “Worst Person in the World” award to Dobbs.

Sarah Gerke/Creative Commons

As Ami mentioned a couple of weeks back, Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman recently celebrated the brit milah of their son Max Liron. Now the SF Gate brings us the juicier and more hilarious details of the event:

Christina Aguilera insisted on turning her baby son’s bris into a big celebration and decorated her home with penis balloons.

Aguilera, a Catholic, has adopted all the customs and holidays of her husband Jordan Bratman’s religion, and admits she now knows how to celebrate the rite of male circumcision.

The pop star refused to allow the sacred ceremony to become a somber affair and turned the bris into a big party.

She says, “I’m not Jewish, my husband’s Jewish … I never really knew a lot of Jewish people growing up either, so I really had no idea about the bris and all the Jewish holidays. It’s all a learning process for me.

“It was a very sweet experience; we had a lot of close friends come over and experience the bris with us.

“We’re such a non-conventional couple, we had a lot of penis balloons everywhere.”

In the midst of an on-air debate Monday night with Janet Murguia, an immigrants’ rights activist from the National Council of La Raza (which recently launched a campaign to combat hate speech against immigrants), CNN’s Lou Dobbs called the Anti-Defamation League “a joke” and an “absolute advocate group for open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.”

The ADL, which was cited by Murguia as “an outstanding organization,” has previously chided Dobbs for “spread[ing] false propaganda about how immigrants are harming the United States.”

The ADL has yet to comment on Dobbs’ remarks.

Video here. Transcript here.

(Hat tip to Greg Siskind.)

Newsweek reports that rabbis are adopting a new strategy to prevent intermarriage: JDate.

For the first time in its 10-year history, the site is offering a bulk rate to rabbis who want to buy membership accounts for their congregants. According to Gail Laguna, JDate’s vice president of communications, singles who sign up through their congregation get a slight discount on the site’s $149 six-month subscription fee. “This is a way for us to break down the walls of the synagogue,” said Rabbi Michael Cahana, who leads the Congregation Beth Israel in Portland, Ore. “We should use all the technological tools that are available to us.”

Rabbi Kenneth Emert, of Temple Beth Rishon in Wyckoff, N.J., turned to his synagogue’s discretionary budget to purchase a dozen three-month memberships for single congregants. Only one rule: “No mothers, no grandmothers.”

Singles, in other words, have to sign up themselves. The financial aid is appreciated. If not for Emert, says 29-year-old public-interest lawyer Noah Mamber, “I would have had to choose between JDate and food.”

Clever fund-raising video from the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley. Wonder if it will work.

JTA staff writer Ben Harris looking dapper in his winter gear.

For the second year in a row, JTA’s Ben Harris and Jacob Berkman spent Christmas Eve hitting a bunch of Jewish-themed parties throughout Manhattan. Here’’s their take on this year’s festivities:

Click the ‘play’ button below to listen.

To subscribe to JTA’s Behind the News podcast, click here.

No Mike Huckabee-Chinese restaurant sightings, but we stand by our claim earlier this week that the self-described “Christian Leader” is a Marrano.

And while we’re on the topic of Chinese Food on Christmas:

A few final tidbits on the G.A. (unless I think of some more)…

* All those people busting on Sarah Chasin need to get off of their high horse. Several G.A. attendees told me they found her honesty refreshing.

* Suddenly I don’t feel so bad for not knowing the names of all of the country singers that we saw down in Tennessee (Jimmy Dickens — a country singin’ dirty-joke-tellin’ version of Henny Youngman — Hal Ketchum, The Grascals, T Graham Brown, Mandy Barnett, Jason D Williams?????). The guest MC at the G.A.’s night out to the Grand Ole Opry — Andy Groveman, the former chairman of the Memphis federation — made reference to hip hop artist Caine West (I think he met Kanye).

* As I milled around the airport waiting to go home, a man comes up and asks what I thought of the food at the G.A. Turns out it was the mashgiach, Dovid Lapin, from Baltimore. I asked him if he knew about the “Wasabi” at the Sushi bar during the big Monday night bash (it was actually Jewish-style horseradish dyed green with food coloring). He says: “Not only do I know about it — it was my idea!” Lapin, a former caterer, came up with the plan after the caterers told him at the last minute that they didn’t have any Wasabi.

Condi and me at the Opryland! (Her idea, I swear!)

Click the play button below to listen (or read the transcript).

To subscribe to JTA’s Behind the News podcast, click here.

The UJC made something of a daring move Monday morning, opening up its only plenary of the day to seven young Jewish innovators and activists — leaders that stray from the typical mold of the federation “leader,” who is much older and much wealthier than those on display this morning.

They included a young up and coming film producer, Ari Sandel, who won an Academy Award for his short film, “West Bank Story,” a farsical musical about a love that springs between the scions of two warring fast food joints — one kosher and one Hallal — in Israel. There was also our own Dan Sieradski, a Jewish Web-maven who in his other life outside JTA is known as Mobius, the Orthodox Anarchist, and is prone to post-Zionist outbursts.

Despite Sandel’s admission to JTA after his speaking engagement that he knew little to nothing about the federation system, and despite Sieradski giving the UJC elders on hand some serious mussar — generally that the federation system needs to drop more cash into helping the young develop their own initiatives — the plenary was well received by the federation stalwarts on hand.

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