Mike A. Kelly/Creative Commons

Pop songstress/tabloid fixture Amy Winehouse is contemplating recording a Chanukah album. Her producer, Mark Ronson, recently told Rolling Stone:

“We’re talking about making a holiday record, with Christmas songs on one side and Hanukkah songs on the other,” Ronson explained. “She’s got songs called, like, ‘Kosher Kisses’ and ‘Alone Under the Mistletoe.’ She was kind of f–king around, but I was like, ‘You have all these amazing records to play for Christmas, like Motown and Carla Thomas and the Charlie Brown Christmas, and unfortunately, us Jews have nothing that cool to listen to. So we should do something.”

Yet despite the buzz around the project and around Winehouse’s Jewish identity in-and-of-itself, according to Paul Lester, a contributor to London’s Jewish Chronicle, the singer refuses to grant the Chronicle an interview because she wishes to remain disassociated from the Jewish community.

(more…)

Ever wonder who’d win in a fight between Moses and Jesus? With Bible Fight, the new online Street Fighter-style video game from Adult Swim, you need wonder no more.

Courtesy of cracked.com…

Hillel got a shoutout on last night’s episode of the Simpsons, which had some sort of weird flashback thing going with Marge attending college in the ’90s.

The following image appears as she mentions “fraternity pledges in their beanies”:

At times, the most challenging (or lamest, depending on your take) aspects of my job is trying to find the Jewish angle in the story that everyone is talking about. So, for example, for the past few days, Heath Ledger’s death has been a huge story.

Maybe it’s because my brain is too wrapped up in election coverage, but I’ve come up with nothing.

But then I received the following press release, and a news brief was born:

Heath Ledger’s Funeral Is No Place For Bigots

New York, NY, January 24, 2008 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), responding to the Westboro Baptist Church’s plan to turn Heath Ledger’s death into a homophobic spectacle, said the actor’s funeral “should be no place for haters, and especially a gay basher like Fred Phelps.”

Phelps and his virulently homophobic church have vowed to picket the actor’s funeral, objecting to what they view as the actor’s support of homosexuality through his starring role in the film “Brokeback Mountain.” It is a time-honored strategy for Phelps, a notorious hater who uses high-profile funerals as a means to promote his unique brand of bigotry to the masses.

“It is time to say to Fred Phelps and his ilk, enough is enough,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “Heath Ledger’s funeral should be no place for haters, and especially a gay basher like Fred Phelps. It is outrageous that the Westboro Baptist Church would attempt to turn the untimely and sad death of a Hollywood celebrity into a homophobic spectacle.”

Since the summer of 2005, the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church has picketed the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with placards reading “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” Phelps believes that the soldiers represent a nation tolerant of homosexuality, and their deaths are God’s punishment for their sins. The group also routinely rails against Jews, Catholics and other minority faiths.

In October 2007, a federal court ordered the group to pay $11 million to the father of a slain Marine after it was found guilty of violating a right to privacy and inflicting intentional emotional distress.

Members of the WBC first gained national notoriety when they appeared at the funeral of gay murder victim Matthew Shepard bearing signs reading “No Fags in Heaven” and “God Hates Fags.”

Enough with the bad news from Amy Winehouse and the Spears sisters. Finally a Mazal Tov in celebrity world:

E! News has learned exclusively that new parents Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman held a bris, the Hebrew baby naming and circumcision ritual ceremony, at their Beverly Hills home Sunday.

More than a dozen family and friends attended the gathering. Jewish rituals aren’t new to the Bratman family. In 2005, the couple wed in a Jewish ceremony in Napa Valley, California.

A bris is typically done on a baby’s eighth day of life, and sure enough, son Max Liron was born Jan. 12. He came home from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center earlier this week.

The ceremony formalizes the child’s name; his middle name, Liron, means “my song” in Hebrew. Fittingly, Christina is “already singing to Max,” we’re told.

Here are two keepers: a preview of Adam Sandler’s upcoming flick about a top Israeli commando who wants to become a hairdresser and British pop singer Lauren Rose performing her version of Hava Nagila, which is climbing to the top of the charts in England:

UPDATE: JTA’s resident music buff, Jacob Berkman (that’ll get fellow writer Ben Harris steamed), says Rosen is simply ripping off this guy’s holiday-timed Hava Nagila from two years ago.

Biblical verses most likely to be recited by Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction II (Hat tip: Jewschool)…

Here’s a message and video link from Y-Love, the self-described Hiphop activist:

I wanted to give you a heads up on a breakthrough Jewish music video which hit YouTube last night. DJ Handler and Shemspeed.com arranged a musical mashup in front of 1,200 fans at Irving Plaza last night never before seen - the Idan Raichel Project with special guests, Matisyahu and Y-Love.

What is Shemspeed? Mordy Shinefield, the Forward’s music columnist, explains. Here’s the Web site’s account of the big night:

Idan Raichel and dj handler are all set to perform at Irving Plaza when Shemspeed’s good friends Matisyahu and Y-Love let us know they are coming through. We suggest that all of them do a song together. Everyone is psyched and the second they hit the stage it is like a bomb of excitement went off with the sold out thousand+ crowd! Here is what went down!

A month or so back, JTA’s Jacob Berkman reported on one Jewish organization’s plan (later dropped) to auction off a subscription to Playboy and a trip to the mansion. What we missed (yes, I know this is old) was the bigger scandal: the magazine’s anti-Israel bias.

Just when you thought it was safe to read the articles, Heff’s mag runs a piece by Jonathan Tasini slamming Israel. Among other things, he insisted that Jimmy Carter was right to describe “the control over Palestinians’ movements as similar to South Africa’s apartheid system” and criticized politicians for pandering to Jewish voters.

(Hat tip: CAMERA)