The New York Post had a package on Sunday taking aim at the Kabbalah Centre.

Allan Nadler, director of the Jewish studies program at Drew University, wrote an piece slamming the take on Jewish mysticism being sold to and sold by celebrities:

It is a vulgar distortion and shamelessly self-promoting abuse, by Hollywood’s Kabbalah Centre, of an ancient, noble and highly esoteric canon of Jewish mystical teachings.

Real kabbalah followers quietly devote themselves to the study of the sacred Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the Torah and rabbinical literature, and their profound teachings about the nature of God.

The two most prominent principles of real kabbalah, shared by all devotees, is a strong reticence, bordering on secrecy, and a stoically unforgiving denial of the basest yearnings of their egos, to say nothing of their loins.

Hollywood kabbalah is directed to our basest and most narcissistic impulses - its barely literate books and Web site are filled with breathless promises of eternal bliss and every imaginable form of personal gratification.

However well reasoned and written, Nadler’s piece will probably do little to slow the Kabbalah Centre. But the other main article — shining a light on the center’s 10 free parking passes — could prove to be quite a nuisance:

There are about 400 permits given annually to clergy and houses of worship, but religious groups usually get just one or two such passes - not 10. So far, the city has no plans to cut the number of placards given to private groups as prescribed by city law, a City Hall spokesman said.

But with the city slashing the number of placards given to its workers, it’s time to take a hard look at other groups who get the benefit, said Wiley Norvell of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group critical of placard abuse.

“There really can’t be any rationale for giving parking perks to private citizens,” Norvell said. “It doesn’t make sense. These sorts of permits should be at the top of the chopping block.”

City officials initially denied that religious institutions, including the Kabbalah Centre, got the plum passes.

“They have to be fakes,” a spokesman insisted.

The following day - after The Post provided photos of the parking permits in cars left outside the center - officials admitted that the center was given the permits.

Several of the cars sat outside the center for nearly six hours, violating the permits’ three-hour limit.

Michelle Citrin and William Levin

Dina Kraft, JTA’s Israel Correspondent met up in Jerusalem with singer Michelle Citrin aka Rosh Hashana Girl and her creative partner and friend William Levin. They are the team who brought the world the two YouTube hits “Twenty Things to do with Matzah” and “I Gotta Love You Rosh Hashana” — part of their attempt to bring a touch of the young, hip, and artistic to being Jewish today.

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Israel has been engaged in heated debate in recent days about the efficacy of trading Arab prisoners with blood on their hands for the remains of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah in July 2006.

The Jerusalem Post’s Matthew Wagner weighs in with a piece on what the Jewish sages might have said about this swap.

Perhaps feeling besieged by the overwhelmingly negative media coverage of Israel’s 60th birthday — which seemed to be more an opportunity to question the Jewish state’s future than celebrate its past — the founding president of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, Yehezkel Dror, argues in an essay in the Forward that Israel shouldn’t worry too much about morals when it comes to securing Israel’s survival.

Here is his justification of the use of Israeli nuclear weapons:

…if the threat is sufficiently grave, the use of weapons of mass destruction by Israel would be justified if likely to be necessary for assuring the state’s survival, the bitter price of large number of killed innocent civilians notwithstanding.

But Dror is a bit disingenuous to write an entire piece about the need for realpolitik to supersede Jewish morality and not once mention the Palestinians. In doing so, he ignores the most pressing moral dilemma Israelis face today.

Most Israelis don’t need to decide whether or not Jerusalem’s Defense Ministry should expand trade ties with Beijing or Ankara, but what they should do when facing an angry Palestinian woman at a West Bank checkpoint who could be either pregnant or hiding a bomb, how to feel after reading a Peace Now report that 40 percent of Jewish homes in the West Bank were built on private Palestinian land, or what to tell their children when they see a soldier pull aside Arabs on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem and subject them to tough questioning about where they’re going and why.

Are these measures necessary to secure Israel’s existence? It’s a tough call Dror doesn’t address.

Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight who is in Israel for the state’s 60th anniversary festivities. While here, Voight joined Chabad-Lubavitch in welcoming children evacuated from the devastated Chernobyl region of the Former Soviet Union to Israel. I spoke to Mr. Voight about his relationship to the Jewish community, his involvement with Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl campaign, and his affinity for the state of Israel.

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[Update] Here’s video of Jon Voight dancing on the Chabad telethon:

The Free-Lance Star in Fredericksburg, Va., published an ode to good old fashioned fried matzah:

In a holiday filled with ritual foods, matzo is the oldest symbol of salvation in the Passover Seder. In fact, the Seder can’t end until the last piece of matzo has been recovered from its ceremonial hiding place and eaten.

My memories of matzo are long and fond. My dad’s mother, Nanny Ann, used to make matzo brei for us whenever she visited.

She was stout and matronly, given to much fretting and hand-wringing unless she was busy in the kitchen.

But for those looking for something more avant-guarde, check out Gothamist’s roundup of New York eateries offering creative matzah-based dishes.

You think cleaning a kitchen for Passover is tough? The Associated Press reports on the removal of thousands of notes from the Western Wall:

Poking into crevices between the ancient stones of the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, a senior rabbi and his helpers on Tuesday removed thousands of handwritten notes placed there by visitors who believe their requests will find a shortcut to God by being deposited at Judaism’s holiest site.

The operation is carried out twice each year: before the Passover festival which begins this weekend and at the Jewish New Year in the fall. …

“Millions of people place notes here at the Western Wall with their requests, we take them out in order that more people can place these notes,” said the site’s rabbi, Shmuele Rabinowitz. “So that these notes are not defiled and don’t fall out, we collect then in a seemly and respectful way and bury them on the Mount of Olives,” just across a valley from the Old City.

Huffington Post columnist Leora Tannenbaum attends a pre-Shabbat lecture at the local mosque and concludes that “devout Muslims and Jews are not altogether that different, particularly in the worship department.”

Just as when I attend my own Orthodox synagogue, located a half-mile away from the mosque, I was separated from the men. After we placed our shoes in cubbyholes, we women filed up the staircase to the cramped balcony above while the men found places in the majestic sanctuary downstairs. There appeared to be nearly a thousand men and perhaps sixty women in attendance for the congregational prayer.

Imam Ali delivered his khutba (sermon). He told the worshippers that Muslims need to reach out and live harmoniously with other people because all people are servants of Allah. If someone chooses another path, he said, Muslims have a responsibility to show them the right way. However, one may not force others to follow the Islamic way. “We must show respect and dignity to all children of Adam,” he said. “Everyone is dignified by Allah.” It is human nature, he continued, that different people have different opinions, and Allah knows this. “But this difference of opinions does not make us hate each other. This diversity is seen in Islam as good,” Imam Ali declared, and all of us must “make an effort to get to know one another.”

Although I tried, I could not see the imam at all during his sermon. He spoke from a platform that was obscured from all but a few choice seats in the women’s section. So I ran my gaze across the women listening to him. Their hijabs reminded me of the tichels common in Borough Park and other Hasidic neighborhoods. I craned my head to check out the men below. The several men from JTS blended in with the crowd, the kippot on their heads closely resembling the kufis. After the sermon, it was time to pray. The bowing and prostrating was not altogether different from the shuckling (rhythmic swaying) commonly done during Jewish prayer.