The Associated Press reports on the challenge facing Jonah Pesner, a Reform rabbi: This year’s Boston Marathon is on the second day of Passover, which means running on a full stomach of Matzah (to say nothing of yontif) …

Jonah Pesner is looking ahead to his crucial carb-loading, fuel-up meal on the night before running his first Boston Marathon. On the menu: matzoh.

It’s not the usual choice for marathoners loading up on carbohydrates to drive their run, but Pesner, a rabbi, has limited options.

Passover begins just two days before the April 21 marathon, and the holiday’s strict dietary rules mean Jewish runners can’t eat bread and pasta, the normal staples in the days before the big race.

Besides matzoh, which is unleavened bread, Pesner plans to pound down foods such as potatoes during a rare “carb-load seder” the night before the race.

Pesner never considered breaking the dietary rules for the sake of the race, which he is running with his wife for an autism charity.

“For me, running the marathon is a very spiritual quest,” he said.

The marathon is always held on Patriots Day, a state holiday that falls the third Monday in April, and often comes within the weeklong Passover holiday.

At around the 15th mile, his stomach will probably be grumbling: If only you had gone to JTS or Y.U., we could be in shul right now.

But, really, we shouldn’t joke. Especially since the rabbi finds religious meaning in his running on Matzah:

Pesner never considered breaking the dietary rules for the sake of the race, which he is running with his wife for an autism charity.

“For me, running the marathon is a very spiritual quest,” he said.

The story also looks at the challenges facing a Conservative couple:

Sandy Karpen, a real estate agent from Scottsdale, Ariz., said he and his wife, Sharon, are changing their tradition of attending seders the first two nights of Passover to accommodate their training. The second seder is the day before the race, and Karpen and his wife wanted to rest, rather than attend a seder on what is typically a long night.

Their rabbi from the Conservative Jewish tradition advised them that Jews may fulfill their obligation by observing only the first day, and said they could do the same.

The 17-time marathoner admits to some guilt about straying from his lifelong tradition, but has no regrets.

“I guess sometimes you’re looking for justification for what you’re doing,” he said. “My rabbi said it was acceptable to do, and that was good enough for us.”

Maybe I was too hard on Pesner (after all, the Reform generally don’t believe in second-day yontif) … It’s the Karpens’ Conservative rabbi who’s got some explaining to do.

UPDATE: Judging from the first comment, I should make it clear … I was just teasing.

Apparently, the Jewish media isn’t the only one interested in reflecting on Israel at 60. A 10-part series in the British weekly The Economist takes a look at Israel from multiple angles and comes to the inevitable conclusion — after six decades the Jewish state is a mass of conflict and contradiction, at one secure and prosperous, a modern state in a backward neighborhood, the product of years of triumph over adversity and yet with its most vexing existential challenges still to come.

Like all the stuff coming out for Israel’s 60th, this series doesn’t shy away from some frightening stuff. Take this passage from a piece examining the decline of Israel’s vaunted “people’s army”:

“More and more people are finding ways to evade tough duty, or duty altogether. Medical, psychological and religious exemptions are on the rise. Army sources estimate that around half of those who obtain a medical certificate to avoid or cut short their service are actually shirkers. The statistics for the 2006 Lebanon war show that religious Zionists and soldiers from kibbutzim, the crucibles of secular socialist Zionism, were over-represented among the dead. It has always been these, the most ideological, who were the readiest to die for their country. But with the ultra-Orthodox (who get religious exemptions) and Arab populations swelling, and qualms growing among the secular centre, the institution that has traditionally been Israel’s melting pot is slowly becoming less and less so.”

Or take this deconstruction of Israel’s supposed high-tech muscle:

“And beneath its gleaming high-tech skin, the body of Israel’s economy is slightly worn. True, the country has some successful industrial giants and does well in a few export niches such as generic drugs, weapons systems and agricultural and water-treatment technology. Water scarcity has already led Israel to build the world’s biggest desalination plant, and around ten more are planned. However, much of the country’s traditional industry (eg, machinery, chemicals, clothing and food), which accounts for more than half of its jobs, is lacklustre. Average industrial productivity is around half that in America. One reason: Israel leads the world in R&D spending as a proportion of GDP, but this is heavily concentrated in high-tech. In more traditional industries the rate is just a quarter of America’s.”

Or this account of Israel’s frustrating attempts to write a constitution:

“Arabs are boycotting the discussions because they reject the starting assumption of Israel as a Jewish state, but are not numerous enough to challenge it. Ultra-Orthodox Jews want more power for rabbinical courts. The “Russians”, as post-Soviet immigrants are known, want it to include the right to civil marriage, to cater for the 300,000-odd non-Jews among them, which would break the rabbis’ monopoly. Moreover, not everyone agrees that the time is ripe. “It’s no accident that we haven’t had a constitution for 60 years. It’s not that we forgot,” remarks Ami Ayalon, the ex-head of the Shin Bet, now a Labour minister without portfolio. “A constitution is an expression of agreements that don’t exist yet.”

JTA’s Ron Kampeas had an exclusive phone interview with Barack Obama earlier today. Among other things, Obama said that it was important for both Israelis and Palestinians to live up to their agreements.

Full interview (sorry, the quality isn’t perfect):

For those interested in the Jewciest moment of the discussion, here’s a clip of Obama telling us why Passover is one of his favorite holidays (and Ron getting into the holiday mood):

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

Ynet headlines it a Haredi-style “West Side Story” — but it sounds more like Shrek:

The bride’s parents objected, rabbis protested and the public took to the streets – but the young couple refused to give up. Against all odds and despite violent demonstrations outside the wedding hall, a young ultra-Orthodox woman from overseas and her Jerusalemite fiancé were married in the capital Tuesday evening.

It all began when an international millionaire, a renowned haredi philanthropist, sent his 19-year-old daughter to study in an ultra-Orthodox institution for girls in Jerusalem.

In Israel, the daughter got involved with a young haredi man, but according to sources familiar with the affair, the woman’s father objected to the relationship from the very beginning, claiming that the young man was a “shababnik” (a yeshiva dropout).

Photo by Brian Hendler/JTA

Israeli President Shimon Peres talks with JTA Israel correspondent Dina Kraft about how Israel needs to change to meet the energy needs of the 21st century, why Israel’s battle with Islamic extremists is really the world’s battle, and why he’s still optimistic about Israel’s future after all these years.

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

An interview in The Independent with actor Jeff Goldblum takes a Jewish turn:

I nudge him on to the firmer ground of Adam Resurrected. “It was intense,” he says of his role as Adam Stein, a Jewish former circus performer forced by a concentration-camp guard to pretend to be a German shepherd dog. “Paul [Schrader, the director] likes to describe the film as a man who was once a dog who meets a dog who was once a boy. That’s a little cryptic though. I had a year to prepare for it, thank goodness, and I immersed myself in it, I did as much work as I could. I went to a concentration camp in Poland, the one that’s said to be the most intact – it was a very powerful experience. I went to Israel for the first time a couple of times and talked to some survivors in Los Angeles.”

This is the first time that Goldblum, who is Jewish, has done a part where his Jewishness is part of the character. Is that why he took the part? “Oh, it was a creative project. I’ve never done a movie about this subject, so there were Jewish things about it, you know. Yes. Mmmm.”

Is he observant about his religion? Does he celebrate Passover, for example? “Oooooh, you know,” he says, his giant hands wafting about in the air, eyes rolling in their sockets. “I celebrate it in my own way, nothing traditional or traditionally observant.” Does he believe in God? “Uhhm, not in the way I think people… ssss… uhh, do I believe in a figure outside myself, a being, who lives somewhere… where we can’t see them who, you know, umm, sends you to heaven or hell… I’m not sure I believe in that bit of it. I, I, I, err, ahh you know… I believe in stillness and spaciousness.”

It’s a mesmerising display of stammering and obfuscation. And all the while his head is rolling and his hands are drifting about and his rubbery face is performing acrobatics as he rolls his eyes back into his head, works his jaw and flutters his eyelashes. Then he jerks his chin up and his eyes twinkle. “Do you like Japanese food?”

Pastor John Hagee took 15 minutes today during his trip to Israel to hold a conference call with reporters from JTA, the Jerusalem Post, the Associated Press and the New York Times. Hagee, responding to questions that were submitted ahead of time, defended himself against Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Reform movement and other critics who accuse the mega-church leader of being anti-Catholic and bent on stopping Israeli peace moves.

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

David Harris of the American Jewish Committee writes on his Jerusalem Post blog about the refusal of a New York Times-owned radio station to air a commercial condemning Palestinian rocket attacks against the Israeli town of Sderot.

[According to the station's] logic, the only way to broadcast the plight of Sderot’s residents over the airwaves is to equate Israel’s right of self-defense with Hamas’s and Islamic Jihad’s right to strike Israel at will. …

I can only imagine what would have been the response had we done a spot during the London blitz. Would it have been turned down as well, perhaps on the grounds that we failed to refer to reciprocal British military actions against Nazi Germany?

Listen to the radio ad or read the transcript.

From some place else in the world, JTA globe-trotting correspondent Michael J. Jordan noticed this fun, puzzling piece of news:

Indiana freshman guard Eric Gordon is leaving the Hoosiers for the NBA, according to a report from the Indianapolis Star.

The Big Ten’s leading scorer and conference freshman of the year will become the fifth of Indiana’s regular starters to leave the program, handing new coach Tom Crean a clean slate heading into his inaugural season with the Hoosiers.

Gordon will make the announcement at 4:30 p.m. Monday at the Jewish Community Center in Indianapolis, the school said Friday.

The JCC!?! As Jordan put it: “What, the Marriott was booked?”

We’re on it. For now, here what a Google search turned up …

His mother says: “When he was very young, his dad would take him to the JCC and it was dribble, dribble, dribble.”

And this from a commenter to another article: “You questioned a kid’s heart, which by proxy means his effort, his drive, and his will. Not his ability. I’ve sat in the gym at the Jewish Community Center in Indianapolis and watched him shoot 200 3-pointers while running sprints in between.”

In honor of Israel turning 60, Taglit-Birthright Israel is looking to send someone’s parents to the Jewish state:

The “Let My Parents Go!” contest was open to all North American Taglit-Birthright Israel alumni whose parents have never been to Israel. Over 60 video entries were received, and the 18 finalists have been posted on the Taglit-Birthright Israel website. …

Entrants submitted links to online postings (YouTube, Google Video, etc.) of a short video describing why their parent or parents should visit Israel on a free, first-time, educational trip. The over 60 entries were narrowed down to 18 by a panel of independent judges based on guidelines such as incorporating the “let my parents go” theme, creativity and making a strong case for what they hoped their parents would get out of the Taglit-Birthright Israel experience. Nine winners will be selected by the general public.

What will the old folks be doing?

The winners of the contest will be sent together on an official Taglit-Birthright Israel trip, where they will have the opportunity to share in the experiences that made such an impact on their children. They will visit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; they will hike Masada, swim in the Dead Sea and visit the kotel.

Sounds like a regular Birthright trip. Which makes you wonder: What sort of person would want to send their parents on a Birthright trip? (If you don’t get the question, then read this?)

Anyway… Check out the finalists and click here to see how to vote.