JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

A Jewish festival where there are no Jews

By Uriel Heilman · October 16, 2008

From “Studio 360:” For 18 years, the historic Jewish quarter of Krakow, Poland has been home to a Jewish cultural festival – nine days of dancing, lectures, and concerts. 25,000 people attend, most of them Poles with no Jewish family. Stephanie Rowden wondered what Jewish culture can mean in a place where it has been absent for 60 years.

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The Bobovers’ pub

By Uriel Heilman · September 15, 2008

Regular drinkers in London’s East End have their knickers all in a bunch over the possible sale of a historic local watering hole, the 250-year-old Swan, to a group of Bobover Chasidim who plan to turn it into a shul, the U.K. Evening Standard reports.

The pub’s landlady said the prospect of the pub’s closure would hit the elderly (!) especially hard.

Ellen McLean, the landlady for seven years, said: “People are aggravated. It’s hard for some, especially the elderly customers who have been coming here for years. It’s all very sad.”

The pub’s owners, Punch Taverns, who run more than 8,000 other establishments, confirmed they had received an offer to buy The Swan.

“No deal has been completed, and we are listening to the concerns regarding the closure of the pub,” a spokesman said.

Solomon Goldman, from the Bobov community, said: “We are willing to negotiate.”

Maybe Goldman can invite the pub crawlers for a little l’chaim?

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My God can kick your God’s butt

By Daniel Sieradski · January 31, 2008

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.

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Entering the Covenant: Aguilera baby gets bris

By Ami Eden · January 23, 2008

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.

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