• The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has already found upwards of 15,000 volumes in Chaim Grade’s old apartment. [Arts Beat]

• Forward cartoonist Eli Valley discusses his life and work. [The Comics Journal]

• Christopher Hitchens further elaborates on the topic of praying (and not praying) for him. [VF]

• Reza Aslan and Bernard Avishai call on President Obama to do all in his power to prevent Israel from taking military action against Iran. [IHT]

• Buzz Bissinger asks: Who are the two Jewish pitchers who won the Cy Young Award? Peruse his whole feed to find the answer. [@buzzbissinger]

The Times reports:

Ms. Seibel made no secret of her admiration for the pioneering comic work of Mr. Pekar, whom she described as “a 70-year-old hipster who loved listening to the Beastie Boys in the car.” In turn he provided her with stories that she illustrated for publications like Chicago Newcity, The Austin Chronicle and The Jewish Review of Books.

Ms. Seibel was also one of four artists whom Mr. Pekar invited to work on the Pekar Project, which starting in 2009 was an effort to translate his work and persona to the Internet. …

As the Pekar Project continued, it became apparent that Ms. Brabner was displeased with one contributor in particular: Ms. Seibel, the only female artist involved, and the only one who worked face to face with Mr. Pekar.

Ms. Seibel, whose husband and three children also became acquainted with Mr. Pekar, said that Ms. Brabner would abruptly pull Mr. Pekar out of their telephone conversations, and that she tried to interfere with a Brooklyn book-signing event at which Ms. Seibel appeared with Mr. Pekar in November. Ms. Seibel said Mr. Pekar told her these conflicts were “for him to worry about,” not her. “He put it under his business,” she said. (Ms. Brabner declined to comment on these matters.)

No one in their artistic circle believes the relationship between Mr. Pekar and Ms. Seibel crossed professional boundaries, but some could see how it strained Mr. Pekar’s marriage.

“A part of him was enjoying the attention he was getting from this very good-looking young woman,” said Mr. Parker, one of the Pekar Project artists. “And, naturally, Joyce, how could she enjoy that? You don’t have to be a psychologist to see that one’s not going to be good.”

Not even Mr. Pekar’s death quelled the tensions between Ms. Seibel, who has said she spent part of his last day alive with him, and Ms. Brabner.

Among her husband’s work with Ms. Seibel that Ms. Brabner has objected to is an illustration created for the catalog of “Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women,” an exhibition opening Oct. 1 at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. (Ms. Brabner said she was embarrassed that the show, ostensibly about Jewish women, is “being hyped by way of saying we’ve got an old dead Jewish guy.”)

Mr. Parker said he was contacted by Ms. Brabner, who wanted to “cut Tara out of the equation” of the Pekar Project’s work. Other people with direct knowledge of the project’s operations, but who did not want to speak for attribution for fear of offending Ms. Brabner, said she would not allow a book to be published if it included Ms. Seibel’s contributions.

The Unfinished Tale of an Unlikely Hero [NYT]
Related: Gut Shabbes [Jewish Review of Books]
Splendor [Tablet Magazine]
Earlier: Harvey Pekar Dies

You can also come see the band in concert (and say hi to me! I’ll be introducing them!) on September 26th, at 11 am, at the Tablet Magazine/JDub/Congregation Beth Elohim Sukkot street fair in Park Slope, Brooklyn (on Garfield Place between 8th Avenue and Prospect Park West).

Though the rebooted version of the series, which airs on the CW, does include an Iranian character, Navid Shirazi (pictured!), back in the old days the Tribe was represented solely by Andrea Zuckerman, who, naturally, was smart, nerdy, and had curly hair and glasses. She was the editor of the school newspaper and came from “wrong” (read: Lower-middle-class) side of the tracks, and was played by the Jewish actress Gabrielle Carteris, who though tasked with playing a high school sophomore was actually old enough to lie about her age on JDate (had it existed).

Also Jewish in real life but less obviously so on the show were Ian Ziering, who played the superficial ladies’ man Steve Sanders, and, of course, Tori Spelling, who played the virginal Donna Martin. Spelling earned the role based on talent alone; it had nothing to do with her father, the show’s producer, Aaron Spelling.

But last week, as I heard of Hapoel Tel Aviv’s advancement to the prestigious group stage of the UEFA Champions League—the annual tournament that pits Europe’s 32 greatest clubs against each other—I was delighted to discover that the silly prejudices of my youth have faded away. I was thrilled for Hapoel, and proud to see an Israeli soccer club enjoy such a sensational achievement.

Philosophically speaking, there have been Jewish teams in the tournament before: Amsterdam’s Ajax and London’s Tottenham Hotspur are, for reasons too complicated to consider here, known to fans as the Jews and the Yids, respectively. But Hapoel is a real Jewish team (with mostly Israeli players; Israeli clubs are allowed only up to five non-nationals), and it has already given Europe a taste of its convictions: As the Reds from Tel Aviv defeated Austria’s FC Red Bull Salzburg, Hapoel’s Itay Schechter, having scored a goal, pulled a yarmulke out of his sock and defiantly placed it on his head. On September 14, as Hapoel faces Benfica Lisbon for its first game in the arduous tournament, I’ll be rooting for the home team, its colors be damned.

Another Jewish Twist To UEFA Champions League [JTA]

Wrong! “There’s one more challenge in D.C., before the finale,” someone says. Wait, what? They’re leaving D.C.? Have they really run out of gimmicky political and indelibly local things to do? (Realizes they’ve done The Palm, the C.I.A., Capitol Hill, Ethiopian food, the Chesapeake Bay, Nationals Stadium, and even Bethesda.) Okay, fair enough. You have to watch a bit more to find out where they are headed after this episode, though. Or you could just keep reading.

Ooh, but first, we learn a little more about Angelo’s mysterious marital situation, which appears to consist of a Russian bride whom he talks to more than the rest of us talk to girls (five hours most nights!), only he does it by phone and has only met her “a few times.” Apparently he was divorced last year; apparently his passion for cooking was part of the problem. It got in the way of the relationship!

Only Host Padma Lakshmi read the black-tie fineprint at the bottom of the invitation to this episode.

She is joined by Dana Cowin, the editor-in-chief of the elegantly ampersanded Food & Wine magazine. Ed is friends with her on Facebook! Such an insider! He is also friends with Sam Sifton: Not Sam Sifton, the Times restaurant critic, but Sam Sifton, this guy he went to high school with.

The Elimination Challenge features the pairing of food and & wine. Winner gets a trip to London. Kevin is making pork belly. Kelly is making boar. Angelo is going with foie gras (nice). Ed is mixing grape juice and beer, he calls it Sparkling Beer-Wine; no, he’s doing Wagyu beef. Tiffany’s doing rib eye. They are spending a lot of time showing them cooking, probably because the loud Jews are gone and the producers have no more content.

Kevin’s pressure-cooker didn’t do his pork belly properly, and now as a consequence he must, yes, cook under pressure! This is a very dialectically useful pressure-cooker. With the pork belly out of the question, Kevin’s gambit is to grab a pigeon from the windowsill and start defeathering grill quail. Cause when you hear “I have seven minutes to cook and I must pair what I cook with red wine,” you think quail. What, you don’t?

Time to eat and judge. Kevin’s on the bottom, obviously. So is Kelly, whose blue cheese foam took her otherwise-good dish “off the chart,” according to Cowin—“off the chart,” you see, is bad, as opposed to “off the charts,” which is good. Dana Cowin is a lover of food, wine, & linguistic nuance.

On the top are Angelo and Tiffany. And the winner is Angelo! “I haven’t won in three challenges,” Angelo says. Which is like eight challenges for normal people, and 72 in dog years.

Now it’s time for the big reveal. Which place-that-isn’t-D.C. will the four cheftesants remaining after this episode travel to? It’s …

… Singapore? Wait. Okay. They’re going to Singapore? In fairness, I have heard Singapore referred to as the “D.C. of Southeast Asia.” Or maybe that was Phuket. Anyway, at least Angelo is happy: “I feel Asian inside, 100 percent. I tingle inside just to think about it.” Maybe you should get that checked out by a doctor! (Sorry, I feel obliged to insert what little Jewiness I can.)

But we still have this episode, and surely there’s one more gimmicky-government-D.C. button they haven’t pushed yet? “We’re sending you,” says Padma, “to NASA.” Yup, there it is.

Now the chefs are receiving instructions from astronauts aboard the International Space Station. This is actually kind of cool. Apparently their favorite meal up there is chicken fajita, which is extra handy, as you can see, as a flotation device, should you ever find yourself drowning in outer space.

The challenge? “Design a dish that’s truly out of this world.” Oh, I get it! The Top Chef writers were really proud of that one, I bet. Winner’s dish gets prepped and freeze-dried for space travel down in Houston, and then gets sent up for the astronauts, the aliens, and all the other denizens of outer space, like Larry King. “Shoot for the stars!” the cheftestants are advised. The writer who came up with that one didn’t have to pay for pizza that day.

Oh, and one more thing: Buzz Aldrin is a guest! This is also cool, although he is going to have to work extra-hard to top his next most recent TV appearance.

The guidelines for the dish include not using too much sugar (doesn’t freeze-dry well) or large pieces of ingredients (ditto); and, spicy is good, as is comfort food. Angelo is horrified that his sugar use will be limited. He was planning on making candy canes, with extra sugar!

Back at the kitchen. “You guys missed it,” Kevin says after Tiffany slips. “Tiff did the moonwalk.” Get it?? Kevin, no matter what happens, know that you just made a place for yourself on the Top Chef writing staff. Angelo says it would be “extremely embarassing” not to go to Singapore, what with him having recently beaten the Chinese premier in a who’s-more-Asian gameshow, and so he has carefully drawn up instructions, adopted from Alex Reznik’s recipe, for how to steal Ed’s pea purée. (Actually, I don’t believe Angelo ends up making pea purée after all. So much waste of a perfectly good Sharpie!)

Angelo tells Tom he’s doing glazed short ribs, and Tom gives him a look, and then Angelo wants to know what that look was all about, and Tom says, Nothing and mutters something about what Angelo is factoring in from what the NASA person told them, and Angelo says, Look, I am consciously using less sugar, and Tom is like, Well but I was hoping, and then Angelo is like, Why do you always have to undermine me in front of the cameras, and Tom goes like, You are just acting insecure because your father never showed his love for you but I am not your father, and then Angelo screams, GOD you ALWAYS DO THIS, ugh.

Kevin says he has to think “outside the box,” and then announces he is making New York strip with bacon-jalapeño marmalade and corn purée, which sounds fairly standard to me, but I don’t eat pork so what do I know? I didn’t even know that jalapeño is a fruit!

Uh-oh. Tiffany’s mussels have frozen, and are therefore unusable. Who would have thought they would freeze in the freezer?

Now we’re at the Ronald Reagan building downtown. It’s a small kitchen—Ed says they’re having … no just wait for it … “spacing issues.” Spacing issues! Tiffany is dealing with the mussels conundrum by just sorta working around it, I guess? Oh sure, Top Chef producers, pour on the inspirational syrup: Have Tiffany tell us how she started as an IHOP hostess (see what I did there with syrup?), and she was told women couldn’t work in the kitchen, and that just made her work harder, and look where she is now. Oh jeeze.

Meanwhile, Buzz Aldrin is just cooler than you. He looks great at 80, he helps Padma Lakshmi into her chair, and—and here is where he beats even Salman Rushdie—he walked on the moon! “How was that feeling,” Tom asks Aldrin. “You know, it’s funny,” Aldrin replies. “No one’s ever asked me that before.” Kidding! His response is, “Magnificent.” Hey Russia, remind me, which of our countries got to the moon first? It was you guys, right? Or maybe it was us who beat you there? I can’t remember.

Kelly is having plating issues, but here her dish comes. She’s talking, and the camera pans over the judges, who include several astronauts. Padma, yeah, there’s Padma … Buzz Aldrin—Buzz frickin’ Aldrin!—giving the thumb’s up … Eric Ripert, he’s here for this one … Anthony Bourdain, that’s nice … Tom … Wait. Hold on. OMG. No, OMFG.

It’s Anthony Bourdain! Okay, sorry but I love Anthony Bourdain, and if you don’t, you probably just haven’t seen his show yet (much less read the excellent Kitchen Confidential). Anyway, anyone who’s job description is “Chef/Author/World Traveler” is going to be the one with the coolest job description at the table, or rather at any table where someone else’s job description isn’t “astronaut.”

Kelly serves pan-roasted halibut with artichoke and fennel barigoule (barigoule? don’t mind if I do!) and salsa verde salad. Aldrin likes it, but they wonder how they could ever freeze-dry something with so much excess liquid.

“Well,” Tom quips—get ready for this one—“if they can put a man on the moon, they can probably figure it out.”

Such a quip! Here, let me try: I mean, I’m sure they can manage to freeze-dry it, it isn’t rocket science! The quipping is contagious! I have the hic-quips! Okay I’ll stop now.

Next is Ed. “I took us on a trip to Morocco,” he announces. Didn’t you hear them, Ed? You’re going to need to take Buzz Aldrin to Saturn to impress him. But your yogurt-marinated rack of lamb with eggplant purée and couscous croquette, plus some hummus (why not?), looks alright. Tom likes it; Ripert doesn’t. Anthony Bourdain, entertain us!

“I just want to express my disappointment with my comrade the Ripper over here,” Bourdain says. “I’ve been to Morocco, and I think Ed nailed it.” Eric Ripert, Chef; Anthony Bourdain, Chef/Author/World Traveler. Guess who wins? (By the way, there is an awesome No Reservations where Bourdain and Ripert cook on the line at Les Halles, Bourdain’s kinda-crappy Park Avenue South bistro, and Bourdain can barely keep up with his lowly cooks, while Ripert, naturally, is a genius at it. Anyway.)

Meanwhile, the diners are kibbitzing like pros. Aldrin says he still has his spoon from Apollo 11. One astronaut says she was up in space with a cosmonaut who was there for a year, he went up when it was the Soviet Union and came back when it was Russia. “Sounds like a sitcom to me,” Bourdain says. Can you do wrong, Bourdain? (Although, technically, this was a movie.)

“If I would have done something different,” Tiffany says, “I would’ve had my mussels on the plate.” Yes, well, that we knew. What do you have? Pan-seared Alaskan halibut with coconut curry, snow pea shoots, and jasmine rice. Ripert is not loving it. But Bourdain likes the fish sauce.

And now comes Angelo, with ginger-lacquered short ribs and horseradish crème fraiche. Tom thinks it is too sweet, although he likes it. Ripert likes the pickled mushrooms, but they are just a tiny too acidic. Monsieur Bourdain? “Well I’m shocked by Ripert’s dark, cynical, snarky, and negative worldview,” he replies. “It’s all about love and optimism for me now, because I thought this dish was very sophisticated, and might actually be adoptable to an extraterrestrial situation.” Never leave us.

Back in the kitchen, Angelo feels “like I just put my heart on the plate.” Which would explain the extra acidity.

Judges’ Table! “The difference between the winner and loser is really small,” Tom says. How small, Tom and Padma, who seem to know the precise length?

Thank you.

They go through them all, and they like them all, but maybe Tiffany’s is a little less than perfect—even Bourdain wanted a stronger taste from the fish. Kelly’s turn is kind of great: Tom says her artichokes were cooked “as nicely as I’ve ever seen an artichoke cooked,” and then Ripert asks if she’s ever been to Provence and learned its technique—turns out, she has—and Ripert, one of the world’s greatest French cuisine chefs, concludes, “It shows.”

Now, Angelo’s turn. “I felt like I made love to [the short ribs],” Angelo says, talking about how he just kept glazing and re-glazing them, over and over, just really getting exhausted and sweaty and glazing them all night long and then again in the morning, twice. The antidote to Angelo is, obviously, Bourdain. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. “Really, I just know that I loved it.”

Bourdain thinks Kevin played it a little safe with the sirloin. I mean, it is just sirloin. Kevin replies that he was going for comfort food for the astronauts, which is the most compelling back-against-the-wall rationalization in the history of the show.

There isn’t a clear loser. “It’s so close that it’s all subjectivity at this point,” Angelo philosophizes. Deep. Ripert’s favorite dish was Kelly’s—“I think she cooked without safety net.” But Tom and Bourdain point out that it wasn’t a particularly original dish. Ripert’s response? “It’s a classic.” Meanwhile, Tom and Ripert love Kevin’s sirloin, while Bourdain thinks it’s boring. Tiffany is in trouble: Cooking the pea shoots killed the freshness. Clearly they’re nitpicking, or “splitting hairs” if you prefer Tom’s simile, but someone’s gotta go home.

Bourdain—can I call you Tony?—announces the winner. It’s Angelo! Tony clearly pulled rank (rank of awesomeness) on this one. Angelo also gets a copy of Tony’s new book, Medium Raw, which, I mean, go buy a copy, it’s by Anthony Bourdain, it’s gonna be good.

And the loser is … Tiffany.

Kevin thanks Jesus (boy we really are the past the Jews, eh?). Tiffany is crying. The others are pretty ecstatic, except Ed is also sad, cause he and Tiffany were besties. “She just knew how to cook,” is his Hemingway-esque epitaph. On to Singapore! Wait, Singapore? Why Singapore? D.C., D.C., how we shall miss thee.

Earlier: Episode 11: Tartarrific?
Episode 10: Blown Cover
Episode 9: War Comes to Bethesda
Episode 8: Ethiopian Cabbage
Episode 7: The Purloined Purée
Episode 6: Of Tragedy and Testicles
Episode 5: You’re Tearing Me Apart, Maryland!
Episode 4: Babies Making Baby Food
Episode 3: Booze Jokes, Not Funny Anymore
Episode 2: Giving Booze to Kids
Episode 1: Cheftestant Cooks His Mother’s Borscht

• Obama, meanwhile, pledged his “full weight” behind the peace effort while asserting that the United States “cannot impose a solution.” [Politico]

• The figure driving much of the optimism and short timeframe is actually Netanyahu, who believes that he—with his hawkish bona fides back home—is the one who can actually get peace done. Columnist Aluf Benn compared him to Mikhail Gorbachev. [NYT]

• As the Palestinian Authority exerted great effort to find and arrest those behind the murder of four Israeli settlers, two Israelis were wounded in a shooting in Ramallah, in an attack also claimed by Hamas (which has accused the P.A. of overly harsh raids). [NYT]

• Former negotiators Hussein Agha and Robert Malley argue that Palestinian leadership is in an unfairly weaker position vis-à-vis Israel. [WP]

• Tom Segev’s new biography shows, with documents from his estate, that famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal was a Mossad agent. [Haaretz]

• The U.S. government is funding an ad campaign in Israel touting moderate Palestinians as partners for peace. It seems fine, and then you stop to think about it, and it actually seems kind of weird, and worse. No? [UPI]

• Just how Jewish is Michael Bloomberg? [WSJ via Just ASC]

• The Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America will investigate Rabbi Marc Schneier’s reputed dalliances with many, many women, only several of them his wives. [New York Jewish Week]

• Berlin: A capital of Israeli music. History is, like, ironic, y’know? [PRI’s The World]

• Today, contributing editor Joan Nathan wrote about food and Rosh Hashanah for a daily magazine of Jewish life and culture. Plus, she wrote that great piece for us! [NYT]

Jewcy’s Jason Diamond found he doesn’t like: Jennifer Grey’s. Here she is, gloriously and gloriously pre-nose job, opposite the ultimate sheygets himself, in Dirty Dancing’s best scene (that’s right I said it).

Especially since Israel did not qualify, I think it’s safe to say that Tablet Magazine’s official 2010 FIBA World Championships team just cruised to a 4-0 record and will play (and defeat) Tunisia tomorrow in the final game of the preliminary round. Make Kevin Love, not war!

The e-mail came from pastor Lou Engle, a prominent right-wing activist who identifies himself as a prayer warrior and is a central figure in dominionist theology. (Dominionists believe that, until Jesus Christ returns to earth, society should be governed exclusively by God’s law as revealed through a literal reading of Scripture.) In the e-mail, Engle compared Palin to the biblical Queen Esther. “This is an Esther moment in your life,” he wrote. “Esther hid her identity until Mordecai challenged her to risk everything for such a time as this. Your identity is ‘Sarah Barracuda.’ Esther removed corruption from the Persian government and Haman fell. She didn’t have experience, she had grace and favor. Sarah, don’t hide your identity tonight.”

(In case you’re wondering, this makes John McCain Ahasuerus and William Kristol Mordecai. Haman is obviously Obama. Oh and Vashti is Joe Lieberman, clearly. Except Obama won, right? Now I’m confused.)

More broadly, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate has been reaching out to Jews by hosting Jews for Sarah Shabbat dinners. “Meeting Sarah Palin turns out to be not the kind of celebrity thrill one experiences by meeting, say, a member of the Rolling Stones,” Benyamin Korn writes. “My wife and I found her unpretentious and gracious both, with an un-politician-like sincerity.” Me, I just want to know how you kept your dinner down! Ah, I’m just playing. (No I’m not.)

“Maybe it’s not just Palin’s right-wing politics that gets secular Jews so riled up,” wonders John Podhoretz. “Maybe it’s also that Palin, that idiot [his word, not mine!], may actually know more about Judaism and feel no discomfort about emulating Jewish traditions and Jewish particularism in the way that they seem to.” Or maybe it is that she tried to become the vice president despite being as qualified for the job as you or I? Or maybe it is that her right-wing politics differ markedly from the left-wing politics of secular Jews who are left-wing, as opposed to the secular Jews who are right-wing whom Podhoretz seems to think don’t exist? Anything is possible!

Sarah Palin the Sound and the Fury [VF]
Sarah Palin Celebrates Shabbat and Offers Echoes of Esther [NY Sun]

Who is the senator? It’s Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), last seen in these digital pages singing about Hannukah. In addition to his respect for private property, Muslims, the Constitution, and everything else, Hatch cited past instances in which his Mormon faith has been threatened with similar discrimination.

Because it’s been nine months since it was last in your head … here’s “Eight Days of Hannukah”!

Eight Days of Hanukkah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Republican Orrin Hatch Stands Up For Cordoba House [TPM]
Related: Eight Days of Hannukah [Tablet Magazine]

David Sanger’s analysis of how risky this is for Obama is must-read. And experienced negotiator Aaron David Miller tells Politico’s Laura Rozen, “These talks aren’t quite ready for prime time yet, and everyone should be slow-walking the process. If they get more ambitious now, it will collapse.”

He adds,

What counts are only three things this round. One, that the Israelis and Americans work out (or toward) an agreement on a moratorium on settlements; two, that Benjamin Netanyahu, even while he pushes security, shows some movement in the Palestinian direction on one other issue—borders; three, that the Palestinians hang in there and not bolt the talks because they believe they’re the key to an empty room.

(Remember that settling the question of the settlement moratorium, or freeze—which is currently scheduled to expire in September—must somehow be resolved before further progress can be made on other issues.)

Complicating matters further, of course, was Hamas’s killing yesterday of four Israeli settlers in the West Bank. There is no mistaking the message it sent: Hamas—backed by Iran—does not want to see these talks happen. The Palestinian Authority fears Hamas’s gambit could work, which helps to explain the hundreds of arrests carried out earlier today.

But all that is back in the Mideast. Today, in D.C., everyone will be making nice.

W.H. Kick-Starts Middle East Talks [Politico]
Trying To Buck Odds, Obama Takes On 3 Big Mideast Tasks [NYT]
Analysis: An Attempt to Torpedo Peace Talks [JPost]
Related: Religion of Yes [Tablet Magazine]
Earlier: Direct Peace Talk

Now is also a good time to mention that Tablet Magazine (and The Scroll) will not be publishing new content during Rosh Hashanah—or during Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah.

Personally, I’m a fan of that policy, and not (only) for the time off/saved vacation days it gives me: I think it is a compelling and potent statement about the magazine’s editorial priorities. Which is why, even though this event is “part ritual,” I question whether the magazine’s sponsorship is undercutting that statement. But maybe folks think I am being nitpicky? Or maybe people think we should be publishing during Jewish holidays? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

• Thomas Friedman predicts that extremist efforts to thwart peace, from Rabbi Yosef’s comments about Palestinians to yesterday’s attack, are only going to get worse. [NYT]

• U.S. envoy George Mitchell spoke cryptically about the peace process last night but maintained the administration’s one-year goal. [Laura Rozen]

• President Obama is trying to deal with Iran, Iraq, and Israel-Palestine all at once, under the theory and hope that winning one will beget winning in the others. [NYT]

• Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who will be at the Washington, D.C., banquet tonight, laid out a vision of strong Egyptian participation in the upcoming series of talks. [NYT]

• Jeff Greene, the Jewish Florida Senate candidate who lost last week, is suing two local papers for libel relating to stories about his his wild life in L.A. [NYT]

• Mayor Bloomberg opposed a state investigation into Park51’s funding: “I think it’s a terrible precedent. You don’t want them investigating donations to religious organizations.” [City Room]

• There’s a lot of tension between the Israeli government and private companies/investors over the new natural gas fields. [WSJ]

• The Emergency Committee for Israel-J Street spat continues. Only in August, folks. [Ben Smith/Ben Smith]

• Despite Jewish QB Sage Rosenfels’s awesome preseason play, Coach Brad Childress insists that mediocre Tarvaris Jackson will be the Minnesota Vikings’s second-string snap-taker. (#4 is starting.) [AP/NYT]

• Popular indie band LCD Soundsystem is getting Facebook wall-spammed because of its plans to play a Tel Aviv gig. [Negev Rock City]

Here’s my favorite LCD Soundsystem song, “North American Scum.”

New Photo Shows Fidel Castro With Jewish Leaders of Cuba [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

Though the IDF is unsure about the attack’s specifics—how organized it was, whether the murderers were roadside or in another car—it’s obviously impossible not to see it in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian direct talks scheduled to kick off tomorrow night in Washington, D.C.

An Israeli Embassy spokesperson there told reporters, “The timing of this is deliberate—to try and derail the Palestinians and all those who seek peace in the region from coming and sitting down at the negotiating table with Israel.” He also pointed to the incident as evidence that Israel would require considerable security guarantees before acceding to a Palestinian state.

Four Killed as Terrorists Open Fire Near Kiryat Arba [JPost]
Four Israelis Killed in Shooting Attack Near Hebron [Haaretz]
Before Talks, An Attack [Ben Smith]

To further get you into the holiday spirit, the guys behind God & Co. put together an advice-rap. Enjoy.

Rosh Hashana Rap from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Lapin, who has notoriously been tied to Jack Abramoff, echoed the larger themes of the night: “When you sever a flower from its roots, it dies,” he reportedly told the crowd. “I think what is happening in America is we’re being severed from our Biblical roots.” According to one of the event’s hosts, he urged the crowd to “study the Bible, make more money and say extra prayers for America.”

Of course, it was Shabbat, and so a microphone was a no-no. The audience, however, could apparently hear him fine, and even greeted him with a “Shabbat Shalom.”

The rally, Lapin told Tablet Magazine yesterday, demonstrated that “America is a country that is rooted in Christianity, and that this is one of the factors that have made America one of the most tranquil and prosperous homes that Jews have enjoyed for 2000 years.” He added, “I think of the Bible Belt as Judaism’s safety belt.”

At Lincoln Memorial, a Call for Religious Rebirth [NYT]
Glenn Beck Goes Messianic at America’s Divine Destiny Event Before 2500 Screaming Fans [Alternet]
Glenn Beck’s ‘Divine Destiny’ Event Focuses on Faith [Daily Caller]

If Córdoba symbolizes anything in the context of architecture and religion, it is how all religions use power, when they have it, to promote their concept of their own grandeur and importance in architectural terms. The proposed construction of Cordoba House on a site two blocks from the area razed by Muslim jihadists is no exception to this rule. It is no worse than what has been done countless other times in the course of history, but it is not much better, either.

Philologos should definitely take a look at Nextbook Press’s Yehuda Halevi, by Hillel Halkin, which expertly examines the same time and place. The columnist would find much to agree with.

A Cordoban Chord [Forward]
Related: Why Cordoba?
Yehuda Halevi [Nextbook Press]

This strategy has a name: The Fayyad Plan. Fayyad has repudiated it, except he seems to have taken a renewed liking to it. Under it, Fayyad, a Westernized technocrat who is not a member of Fatah, builds the infrastructure essential to statehood in the West Bank so that unilateral Palestinian independence seems credible, if only as a bargaining chip. In fact, columnist Yossi Alpher notices that the original timeline of the Fayyad Plan—Fayyad had said a Palestinian state would be viable by August 2011—seems to coincide immaculately with the one-year goal set by the Obama administration for this round of direct talks.

And the problem with the Fayyad Plan—in addition to the fact that unilateral statehood would probably not be recognized by the United States or Israel and therefore isn’t really credible anyway; that it does nothing to address Gaza; and that it could give Hamas an opening in the West Bank—is that, according to a comprehensive and neutral report, Fayyad’s nascent “state-building” is mostly not all it is cracked up to be; and even where it has been all it is cracked up to be, it has been imposed via a toxic mixture of corruption, favoritism, and authoritarianism. “He’s honest, he’s competent,” writes Ben Smith, channeling Secretary of State Clinton, “he’s really getting things done and the situation on the ground in the West Bank—security, economy—is better than it’s been in memory.” It is hardly clear that all of that is actually true, although this morning the Times’s Ethan Bronner did report that the West Bank has experienced increased security and prosperity of late. (Fayyad has probably been most effective organizing boycotts of settlement-produced products, which nonviolently and moderately oppose the settlements as well as help forge national identity.)

So as (if?) direct talks continue beyond this week, it is worth keeping the Fayyad Plan (and the problems with it) in the back of your mind. It’s a fair bet the main players will be.

Fayyad: Netanyahu Must Explain His Definition of Palestinian State [Reuters/Haaretz]
Fayyad: PA Will Be Prepared To Establish a State in a Year [Ynet]
Where The Negotiations Could Be Useful [JPost]
Related: Decoding the Mideast Peace Rhetoric [Politico]
Are Palestinians Building a State? [Carnegie Endowment for International Peace]

• By contrast, Prime Minister Netanyahu reassured party members that he knows where the redlines are and he won’t cross them. [JPost]

• Abbas and Defense Minister Barak met secretly in Amman over the weekend concerning the talks. [JTA]

• The New York Times editorializes for peace, among other things calling on Netanyahu to continue to halt settlement-building. [NYT]

• With its basic security and services, the West Bank is beginning to feel like an actual state—and that may be the one advantage compared to past talks. [NYT]

• Richard Cohen argues that we are in many ways stuck in the long-settled debate of whether Israel should exist. [WP]

• Don’t be silly says, the U.S. State Department, we don’t think we’ll achieve peace in one meeting. Just in one year. [Haaretz]

• The Emergency Committee for Israel and J Street have another spat. [J Street]

• The Times highlights contributing editor Rachel Shukert’s Everything’s Coming Up Moses, a Tablet Magazine production. [Paper Cuts]

• I’ve tried really hard to avoid the whole Silly Bandz thing, but now that there’s Biblical Bandz … . [ModernTribe]

• Jew’s Ear Juice? I’ll take two! [New Atlas Beverage]

It’s hot out, go get some gelato!

A few notes that did not make it into the final podcast, which was edited for time:

• Though I did not count them as being Jewish-owned, the Green Bay Packers almost certainly have Jewish owners: They are owned by the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, which has at least one synagogue.

• New York Jets owner Woody Johnson (as in Johnson & Johnson) is not Jewish, but was a great friend to the Jews last season, when he successfully complained after the NFL scheduled his team’s first two home games during the High Holidays. Indeed, though the Giants are 50-percent Jewish-owned, I think you have to consider the Jets (whose prior owners were Jews, who come from the scrappy and heavily Jewish AFL, and whose current general manager is Jewish) the more Jewish New York-area franchise.

• The owner of the Detroit Lions is William Clay Ford. Ford is not Jewish, but is descended from one of history’s most influential anti-Semites.

• You should follow Ray’s Twitter feed, @VeryFakeAlDavis.

• Finally, Julian Edelman is not Jewish. Taylor Mays, however, is.

After the jump: The 11.5 (maybe 10.5) Jewish-owned NFL franchises, along with Ray’s and my pick for Tablet Magazine’s official team. (But really, listen to the podcast!)

Jewish franchises:
Atlanta Falcons
Cleveland Browns
Denver Broncos (maybe)
Miami Dolphins
Minnesota Vikings
New England Patriots
New York Giants (.5)
Oakland Raiders
Philadelphia Eagles
St. Louis Rams
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Washington Redskins

As for official team. It should be the Vikings, who are owned by the son of two Holocaust survivors; surely have a significant Jewish fanbase (The Land of 10,000 Lakes gave us Bob Dylan, the Coen Brothers, and Thomas Friedman, and are represented in the Senate by Al Franken); and have Jewish QB Sage Rosenfels on their roster. However, Brett Favre’s return has likely doomed Rosenfels to another year of no snaps, which if anything counts against them. While Ray’s and my honorable mention was the New England Patriots, and we would certainly fault no Jew for rooting for them, ultimately the spot went to … the Washington Redskins. Mazel tov!

Kosher Pigskin [Tablet Magazine]
Earlier: Patriots Receiver Edelman To Start in Playoffs

The Zionist movement sought to achieve by human means what Jews for two millenniums considered to be God’s work alone: the gathering of the diaspora in the land of Israel. Most rabbis therefore shunned Herzl, but not all. Some joined the movement, even formed a party within it, based on a separation of religion and politics. For them, secular Zionism was primarily a solution to the earthly predicament of the Jews; it was not so theologically laden.

(Raise your hand if you remember being surprised when, in The Chosen, the ultra-Orthodox rabbi is a vehement opponent of Zionism.)

Two weeks ago, Tablet Magazine books critic Adam Kirsch praised Taub’s new book:

The philosophical danger of the Occupation—to say nothing of the diplomatic and military and economic dangers—is that its illiberalism will make Zionism itself look illiberal in retrospect. This is, as Taub points out, the view of the “post-Zionists” in Israel and of much of the left in Europe and America: that “Zionism was never democratic, and the very idea of a Jewish democratic state is a mere contradiction in terms.” Ironically, Taub argues, this is the same thing that the settler movement believes. The difference is that, while anti-Zionists want to resolve the contradiction by making Israel cease to be Jewish (the so-called “one-state solution”), the settlers want to resolve it by making Israel cease to be democratic.

In Israel, Settling for Less [NYT]
Related: Unsettling [Tablet Magazine]

• The best overview of what Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas might be hoping to get out of the talks comes courtesy Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz. If you read one article on the talks, read this one. [JPost]

• President Obama is yoking some of his prestige and credibility to the mother of all impossible conflicts. Why? [LAT]

• And how is he going to keep the American pro-Israel community onboard? [Politico]

• But he is getting praise for including Egypt and Jordan, whose heads of states will also be in Washington, D.C., this week. [Politico]

• Back to Israel, where the head of the main settlers’ organization vociferously opposes an extension of the settlement freeze, which is being requested of Netanyahu. The head of the main settlers’ organization’s previous job? Chief-of-staff to Netanyahu. [LAT]

• If you’re the Palestinian Authority, here is one way to keep Hamas from accusing you of selling out the cause by talking to the Israelis: Ban their clerics from preaching. No way that’ll backfire. [JPost]

• The European Union wants in on the talks. [AP/JPost]

• Egypt also wants the EU in on the talks. [Haaretz]

• The U.S. wants Syria to stay far, far away from the talks. [JPost]

• Last and least, a group of retired IDF generals enacted an amusing but probably altogether worthless negotiation simulation (say that ten times fast). [JPost]

Seriously, this one is not to be missed. (And nor, presumably, is the gefilte fish prepared by one subject’s mother, “seasoned with Jamaican peppers and spices.” Recipe, anyone?)

Black and Jewish, and Seeing No Contradiction [NYT]

• That soon-to-expire settlement freeze really is the only issue worth trying to solve for now (but you already knew that). [NYT]

• The spiritual leader of Israel’s ultra-religious, co-governing Shas Party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, said Abbas and the Palestinians should “perish from the world,” earning the United States’s condemnation. [Politico]

• One report has the Obama administration presenting a final resolution outline to the two sides, and President Obama himself visiting the region over the next year. [Ynet]

• Another report has it that Israel will bomb Hezbollah facilities in Syria soon. [Arutz Sheva]

• Israel’s offshore natural gas fields have provoked conflict not only between Israel and Lebanon but between the state of Israel, which wants to reap most of the rents, and private Israeli and U.S. investors. [WP]

• Hezbollah head advocates a nuclear reactor in Lebanon. Sure, why not? [Now Lebanon]

• Ron Kampeas takes Paul Krugman to task for demagoguing the ADL/Park51 issue. [Capital J]

• Joseph O’Neil has a great essay on novelist Muriel Spark, who—who knew?—had a Jewish father. [The Atlantic]

• Iranian Jews: They live in America! And are ambivalent about Things! [The Atlantic]

• Wanna meet another Jew? Start singing. [JTA]

Hizzonner went on The Daily Show last night to stand up for the Islamic center … and for the sliced-bagel tax?

Below: Tracy parses the Jewishness (or lack thereof) of Jim Irsay, the owner of Peyton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts.

Related: The Colts’ Jewish Roots [Ynet]

His argument is premised on the notion that, between the unattractiveness of a military attack on Iran and the general inevitability of the Islamic Republic’s becoming a nuclear power, we ought to accept this and go about increasing Israel’s own nuclear deterrence by arming it with more sophisticated weapons and placing it under our nuclear umbrella.

Writes Riedel:

The era of Israel’s monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East is probably coming to an end. Israel will still have a larger arsenal than any of its neighbors, including Iran, for years if not decades. It will face threats of terror and conventional attack, but it already faces those. With American help it can enhance its deterrence capabilities considerably. It has no reason to lose its self-confidence. But to avoid the potential for all-out war not only between Israel and Iran but also between the United States and the Islamic Republic, Washington needs to act now. Only by enhancing Israel’s nuclear capability will America be able to strongly and credibly deter an Israeli attack on Tehran’s facilities.

Because such an attack, Riedel adds, “is a disaster in the making”: For Israel, which would face a combination of direct Iranian retaliation and indirect retaliation via proxies Hezbollah and Hamas; and for America, which would see an uptick in Shia insurgency in Iraq and the need for vastly more troops to pacify a suddenly restive western Afghanistan.

You should truly read the whole article. Below, a quick cheat sheet for whether or not you should agree with Riedel.

YOU SHOULD AGREE WITH RIEDEL IF …

You believe the status quo is acceptable pending some sort of major regional shift (like a Palestinian deal or regime change in Tehran). With enhanced deterrence, Riedel argues, the status quo would continue even should Iran go nuclear: Not even during the first Gulf War did even Saddam Hussein launch chemical weapons at Israel, due to American threats; and Iran has only used them when attacked by them first. The fact is, Israel has never been attacked by WMD, and it is highly likely that, with the right deterrence in place, that track record should continue.

You believe that an Israeli military attack on Iran would be extremely difficult (Riedel goes to great lengths to demonstrate this) and on top of that would merely postpone, not decisively eliminate, Iran’s nuclear program.

You believe the blowback to a military attack would be massive and disastrous, for both Israel and the United States (which even most supporters of an attack concede).

You believe Iran is ultimately a rational, non-suicidal actor (“Contrary to Netanyahu’s cries, Iran is not a crazy state”). Riedel purports to demonstrate that this historically has been the case.

You believe more broadly in the concept of nuclear deterrence as an ultimately stabilizing force—and let’s recall that there have been no hot world wars in the atomic age and that no two countries have ever engaged in nuclear warfare against each other.

You are okay with providing Israel with yet more sophisticated (and expensive) military assistance.

YOU SHOULD DISAGREE WITH RIEDEL IF …

You believe a nuclear Iran is likely to launch a first strike against Israel.

You believe a nuclear Iran is likely to be a proliferator that could allow nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists who would use them against Israel or other Western targets.

You believe a nuclear Iran is likely, pace Lee Smith, to provoke the widespread nuclearization of the region, and moreover that this will create undue instability.

You believe a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, period (which is different from thinking it would be a really bad development). While Riedel is certainly not against sabotage, sanctions, and the like—he would certainly prefer that Israel retain its nuclear monopoly in the region—his argument is very much one for allowing Iran to go nuclear, not because we want it to but because the alternatives are worse.

If Israel Attacks [The National Interest]
Related: Prolific [Tablet Magazine]

That is a very real drop, to be sure. But it is also one entirely in keeping with how everyone else feels: The “All Americans” approval rating has gone from 63 percent to 53 percent to, now, 48 percent, according to Gallup. “President Obama’s job approval ratings have fallen significantly between his first six months in office and this year so far, and his ratings among major religious groups have fallen in rough lock step,” the poll finds. Which is to say: I think it is entirely too easy to say that he is facing a much steeper drop in support among Jews than he is among other groups (and it’s downright dumb to say that Israel is to blame). If there is one bone to throw to those who think Obama has significantly damaged his standing among American Jews, more than he has other groups, it is to argue that his numbers among them were once so high that their drop must reflect something more than just the broader trend. Ultimatately, though, to borrow from a past syllogism: Americans approve of the president less than they once did; Jews are Americans; therefore, Jews approve of the president less than they once did.

Muslims Give Obama Highest Job Approval; Mormons, Lowest [Gallup]
Earlier: Obama and the Jews

טײַגער װוּדס האָט לעצטנס פֿאַרלאָרן אַ שפּיל און איצט אַ װײַב. שװער צו זאָגן וואָס איז וויכטיקער פֿאַר אים.

Transliteration: Tayger Vuds hot letstns farlorn a shpil un itst a vayb. Shver tsu zogn vos iz vikhtiker far im.

Meaning: Tiger Woods recently lost a game and now a wife. Hard to say which is more important to him.

זיך פֿאַרדרײט מיט אַ פֿאַרהײראַטן מאַן און איצט האָט זי טענות?

Transliteration: Zikh fardreyt mit a farheyratn man un itst hot zi taynes?

Meaning: She messed around with a married man and now SHE has complaints?

פֿאַרדאַמפּט. סוף-כל-סוף רעזיגנירט צוליב אַ געװאַלדיקן פֿלעק. באַשמוצט אַנדערע פֿיל מאָל…קומט עס איר!

Transliteration: Fardampt. Sof-kol-sof rezignirt tsulib a gevaldikn flek. Bashmutst andere fil mol…kumt es ir!

Meaning: Indicted. Finally she resigns after a major misstep. She insulted so many so often…she deserves it.

מען געדענקט אים אויף דער פּאָדלאָגע מיט אַ צעפֿאַלענעם קעז-בוּרגער׃ איצט קען ער לאַכן פֿוּן זיך אַלײן.

Transliteration: Men gedenkt im oyf der podloge mit a tsefalenem kez-burger: itst ken er lakhn fun zikh aleyn.

Meaning: We remember him and his cheeseburger strewn on the ground; now he can laugh at himself.

פֿאַרװאָס אַזאַ שלעגער? פֿרעגט מען אים. "װײַל כ׳בין ניט קײן טענצער אָדער זינגער." זײַן פֿאָלגרײַכער סעקרעט.

Transliteration: Farvos aza shleger? fregt men im. “Vayl kh’bin nit keyn tentser oder zinger.” Zayn folgraykher sekret.

Meaning: Why a fighter? he was asked. “Because I am not a dancer or singer.” His secret to success.

Articles, Nouns and Adjectives אַרטיקלען, סובסטאַנטיװן און אַדיעקטיװן

Singular אײנצאָל
In Yiddish, singular articles and adjective endings correspond with the gender of each noun. So “the” is either דער (masculine), די (feminine) or דאָס (neuter). Adjective endings are either ער- (masculine), ע- (feminine), or ע- (neuter).

With our newsmakers in mind:

דער גיכער גט The quick divorce
די משוּגענע פֿרוי The crazy lady
דאָס לעצטע װאָרט The last word

Other declensions apply in other cases (Yiddish has nominative, accusative and dative cases).

Plural מערצאָל
To form the plural with all nouns (masculine, feminine and neuter) use די.

.מיר געזעגענען זיך פֿון די שײנע פּערזענלעכקײַטן אָבער ניט פֿון אונדזערע לײענערס
We are bidding farewell to these lovely characters but not our readers.

And for an extra bit of Yiddish wisdom as we approach the New Year:

.אחר המעשה העלפֿט קײן חרטה ניט
Regret after the fact is no help.

.קײנער קען קײן הינדל ניט שטעכן אַז ס׳זאָל ניט גײן קײן בלוט
No one can prick a hen without drawing blood.

We want you to experience the thrills of being a Yiddish columnist! Give us your caption to this photo and you could win a limited edition “A Yidisher Pop” mug. Send us your caption by next Wednesday and we will announce the winner on Friday. Email us at ayp@tabletmag.com.

• And the best bit of optimism you’ll read concerning them, courtesy former U.N. Ambassador Martin Indyk. [NYT]

• Expect to see a “quiet freeze”: The construction moratorium would be permitted to expire in September, on schedule, but Bibi and Defense Minister Barak will not sign building permits. [Haaretz]

• Israel is asking Russia to halt its sale of anti-shipping missiles to Syria. [Haaretz]

• Mohamed ElBaradei, the onetime head of the U.N. nuclear inspectors, has teemed up in his native Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood in a signature drive to try to effect constitutional change. [WSJ]

• Martin Earnest Dannenberg, a Jewish U.S. counterintelligence special agent during World War II who discovered (along with a Jewish Army translator) an original copy of the Nuremberg Laws in a small German town, died at 94. [LAT]

• Start-up nation’s entrepreneurial track record is not nearly as good once the start-up phase is completed. [WSJ]

• Egypt has begun building its first nuclear power plant, pretty much exactly as Mideast columnist Lee Smith foresaw. [AP/JPost]

• The strongly pro-Israel American group Z Street sued the IRS, alleging it was denied tax-exempt status out of political motivations. [Laura Rozen]

• Steve Stern, author of The Frozen Rabbi (first serialized in these virtual pages), talks about his novel. [The Jewish Star]

• There’s a new, Bizarro Version of the Walt/Mearsheimer book called The Arab Lobby coming out. [Dave Weigel]

I’m aware this is a Jewish magazine (yes I got that memo), but in the spirit of ecumenicism, here is Lyle Lovett and his Large Band singing “Church.”

Fishbeyn –> Matthew Fishbane, deputy politics editor

Hoffmann –> Allison Hoffman, senior writer

Urich* –> Wayne Hoffman, deputy editor of Nextbook Press

Ivry –> Sara Ivry (ivrit, anyone?), senior editor

Mueller –> Abigail Miller, assistant art director/Webmaster

Neuhaus –> Alana Newhouse, editor-in-chief

Oxfeld –> Jesse Oxfeld, executive editor (okay so not everyone had name-changes)

Schmutz (!) –> Gabe Sanders, deputy editor

Smallwood –> Len Small, art director/Webmaster

Zubrine/Rosenfeld** –> Julie Subrin, audio producer

Tracovutski –> Marc Tracy, staff writer

* “Apparently some other family in Russia named Hoffman had visas to emigrate, and their visas came in before my family’s (Urich) did. But when their visa came up, one of the Hoffman children was ill and they’d have been turned away from the boat. They told the Urichs that they could use the Hoffman visa—all they had to do was switch family names. Simple. We’ve been Hoffman ever since.”

**There is apparently much controversy on the subject!

New Life in U.S. No Longer Means New Name [NYT]

Other key findings:

• 52 percent believe U.S. support for Israel is “about right”; 39 percent believe it is too weak; nine percent believe it is too strong. I’m surprised that final number isn’t higher, especially since …

• President Obama’s approval/disapproval rating concerning his handling of the special relationship is 25-37; Prime Minister Netanyahu’s is 25-31.

• Younger American Jews still consider Israel important to their identities, they just feel less connected to the Jewish state than older Jews (which, again, is attributable to their being young rather than to their specific generation).

• “Political differences on the liberal-to-conservative continuum were unrelated to measures of attachment to Israel.” (Interesting!)

• The under-30 set are more likely to actually have been to Israel (thanks, Birthright!), which is an important positive correlative with attachment to Israel.

• 61 percent of American Jews blamed “pro-Palestinian activists” for the flotilla tragedy, while 10 percent blamed Israel; 72 percent agreed with the Israeli narrative, while nine percent agreed with the Turkish one. Conservatives and older Jews were more likely to believe the Israeli narrative.

Why Young Jews Are More Alienated From Israel [Rosner’s Domain]
Still Connected [Brandeis]
Related: Wrong Numbers [Tablet Magazine]
The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment [NYRB]

“We believe that in a world in which Jewish periodicals outdo themselves in attempting to highlight just how endangered Jews are,” writes editor and publisher Joshua Neuman, “there should be one Jewish media outlet that actually makes its readers smile. So whether online, or in print, we like to think that we can all still have a little fun—and don’t worry, Ahmadinejad will still be waiting when we’re done.”

So, Heeb, welcome to the world of online-only Jewish journalism. We think you’ll enjoy it.

So Much for Controlling the Media [Heeb]
Earlier: Is ‘Heeb’ On Its Way Out?

Headline implying this can all mostly be chalked up to the narcissism of small differences: Check.

Opening anecdote involving peaceful practice of benign religious ritual: Check.

“Then the bulldozers arrived at dawn”: Check.

Justify article by noting that this small conflict is in fact microcosmic of the larger one: Check.

Note that yet at the same time this one conflict is unique and idiosyncratic (in this case, the Arabs in question are Israeli Bedouins, not Palestinians): Check.

Quote Israeli spokesperson to the effect that Israel is acting within the law: Check.

Quote esteemed left-wing Israeli professor begrudgingly agreeing but nonetheless disagreeing with Israeli policy: Check.

Buttress that with prominent left-wing Israeli novelist (in this case, Amos Oz): Check.

Close on Jews and Muslims protesting Israeli policy together: Check.

A Test of Wills Over a Patch of Desert [NYT]
Earlier: A Settled Schtick

Kelly says she is gunning for Amanda Baumgarten, our only remaining Jewish cheftestant, now that Alex “Creepball Weirdo” Reznik has left the building.

Oh, also, Angelo, generally Joe Cool, has been freaking out. “Angelo’s been really weird some times,” Amanda relates. “He talks to himself, and says mantras, like, ‘You’re gonna win,’ stuff like that,” but you can’t hear the rest, because Amanda is collapsing with laughter. The notion that any chef thinks he is going to win is understandably very, very funny to Amanda.

Quickfire Challenge! The guest judge is former Top Chef Masters winner Rick Moonen. And the challenge: Cook a food idiom—like take a saying involving food but make it an actual thing—and the winner’s dish will be made into a Schwan’s frozen meal. Choose among the following idioms: Bring Home the Bacon; Hide the Salami; Sour Grapes; Go Nuts; Big Cheese; Hot Potato; Spill the Beans; Bigger Fish to Fry; and Hung Like a Horse. Okay I made the last one up.

“I choose The Big Cheese,” says Amanda. “I don’t immediately know what I want to do with cheese, but I like cheese.” She likes the kind that gets all stringy. What’s it called? Oh right, String Cheese. That’s another food idiom. She quickly decides on macaroni and tomato sauce. Sorry, I meant macaroni and cheese. Cheese.

Oh look, Alex’s replacement.

“I think my dish might make a good Schwan’s frozen meal,” says Amanda, “because the mac and cheese out there—it’s a little lackluster.” Do anyone but Jews use the word “lackluster”? “I’m a macaroni and cheese aficionado,” she continues, “because before I was the age of 15, that was all I ate.” At 15, she switched to French bread pizza; 16 was the year of Sloppy Joe; and at 17, it was whatever she could find in the Dumpster outside her studio on the outskirts of Buffalo.

“I’m not a big fan of Amanda,” says Ed. “She’s annoying. She’s a slob.” Better than a snob, am I right? Say, Ed, how did Sam Sifton review your restaurant again? “There’s just no technique,” he continues. “I think she’s just been lucky the whole time she’s been here.” Jews don’t have luck, Ed—they have seichel. Unless their name is Amanda Baumgarten, in which case, yes, they have been quite lucky.

“A lot of people talk a lot of trash about Amanda, but I think she’s a dark horse,” Angelo rebuts. He has been singing this tune for awhile. “She’s actually very smart. And she just sleeks by everybody.”

Amanda is acting like a crazy person, but so is everyone else (except for even-keeled Kelly). It’s like they’ve all caught up with her? Or regressed back toward her? What’s the word you use when a bunch of people all start taking drugs? “Angelo’s a little crazy, right?” observes Amanda, clearly very appreciative. “Ed looks like he’s about to die. He’s making gnocchi in an hour. I look across the kitchen and all I see is sweat and a red face.” Ed, red-faced? Probably because of that review! OKAY I’LL STOP NOW.

“I made my favorite way to make macaroni and cheese,” Amanda tells the judges. It’s with bacon and jalapenos and … a massive pork chop on the side?

Um, really? Didn’t someone else get the “I’m Carrying So Much Pork, I’ve Got Trichinosis” food idiom? (Yes, it was Phil Gramm.) “So you kept it nice and light,” Rick Moonen says in a deadpan (I think he’s joking though).

“With mac and cheese, you either go big or go home,” Amanda responds. Do you really want to give me an opening like that? More to the point, do you really want to give the judges an opening like that?

Kelly’s is Moonen’s least favorite. Apparently brussels sprouts and concord grape purée don’t go well together. Who could have guessed? Oh and he also didn’t like Amanda’s! “It was kind of a like a sledgehammer to the gut.” But in a bad way, you see.

Amanda would like to take issue with that assessment! “For the first time, I disagree with them,” she tells the camera of the judges. Which means that all the myriad other times this season that the judges have told her something of hers sucks, she has assented.

Moonen loves Kevin’s Bring Home the Bacon, which is super-unfair, because bacon is really delicious (I’m told). He also loves Ed’s gnocchi. Who’s red-faced now? And Ed wins! Vindication! Gnocchi with mushrooms and some herbs is now going to be flash-frozen and distributed to thousands of supermarkets throughout the land, courtesy of Schwan’s. Angelo notes that this is appropriate because Ed’s face looks like a potato. See?

Oops, wrong photo. Gimme one more try.

There.

“For your Elimination Challenge,” says Padma Lakshmi, “you’ll be cooking for one of the oldest sports institutions in the country. We’re taking you out to the ballgame!” Yes, the Washington Nationals, a truly old and venerable franchise (Website here: www.montrealexpos.com) founded in 1969. That’s so old! Like Madonna-old!

They’ll be serving high-end concession stand food, as a single team, making at least six dishes. Which is nuts, because if you’re at Nats Stadium, you’re going up against Ben’s. You’re screwed. They make amazing chili, and the half-smoke dog—half beef, half pork—is delicious (I’m told).

Amanda is scared of the team-y nature of the challenge. It positively teams with peril! “The last team challenge did not go well,” she recalls. Cue sepia-toned flashback: I see dead people! Spooooooooon!

Is Alex Reznik the Ghost of Top Chef Future, or Past? At first, the remaining cheftestants seem to be getting along better, maybe because one of the alpha dogs (Kenny) is gone and the other (Angelo) has gotten a lobotomy off-camera. Kelly seems to be the one in control now.

“I would love to do something cold, using crab,” Amanda says. If only there were some typical dish that used cold crabmeat.

“I’m thinking some sort of crabcake,” Kelly replies. Right, that’s it. Then she adds, “Can you go fish instead of shellfish?” Kelly, we’re trying to plan a meal, not play a children’s card game! Oh, wait, you meant Amanda should cook fish. Amanda, what say you?

“Yeah … yeah.” Kelly proceeds to make a crabcake instead. Hey, Kelly, you suck!

Walking out, a few folks shout their favorite teams’ names. “Go Red Sox.” “Go Phillies.” “Go Dodgers.” Oh, good, only two out of the three most annoying fanbases are represented—presumably Yankees fans are too busy enjoying their team being good and cheering an anti-Semitic tenor during the seventh inning stretch. (Seriously, though, has everyone else noticed that Phillies fans are the new Red Sox fans? Some teams just aren’t meant to win championships, you know. Really, the Yankees should just win every year so that they can give our lives meaning with the cleansing power of hate.)

“I wanna make a statement, so I’m going to make a tuna tartare,” Amanda announces. Fine. But then she tells us that she is tartaring—yes, it’s suddenly a verb, too—the day before rather than the day of; seasoned Top Chef viewers (no pun intended), confronted with the producers’ revealing this otherwise-random detail, should be able to sense nascent catastrophe. “I don’t want to have a temperature-sensitive mise en place project when I walk into a kitchen that I’ve never seen before,” is how Amanda justifies her tartarrible decision. Pride and the gratuitous use of pretentious French phrases cometh before a fall.

Meanwhile, Ed is going crazy! Angelo calls him the Tasmanian devil. “He’s yelling at Tiffany,” recounts Amanda, “he’s out of control. You fall victim to the pressure, then you’re not going to make good decisions, and you can be sent home for that.” Oh, the expert! Wait, she actually is the expert on this subject.

Back at the Kalorama manse, the chefs suddenly realize that they may have to take orders in addition to cooking. This could pose problems. Hilarious problems! Sexy problems! Actually, probably just hilarious ones. And then Angelo steps up and says he’s going to do it. Dunh-dunh-dunnnnnnh.

Woo, go Nats! “The Nationals Park is amazing,” says Kevin (it’s alright, it’s no Camden Yards), “you can tell that it’s brand-new” (it’s three years old).

Hey, why is Mr. Clean on the show and dressed like a hipster?

And we have a few players to join us before the game. Ladies and gentlemen, playing first base, and second in the National League in home runs, Adam Dunn! And pitcher Matt Capps, our one All-Star whom we traded shortly thereafter ☹, and pitcher John Lannan, who once wrote a great song called “Imagine.” (Unfortunately, Jason Marquis, the Nats’ Jewish pitcher, doesn’t show. Marquis’s ERA this season is 8.79. That’s not one of my exaggerated-y jokes. Jason Marquis is in fact giving up one earned run per inning.)

Kelly thinks the ballplayers are cute—apparently she doesn’t care about atrocious facial hair. “They are the largest men I think I’ve seen,” says Amanda, straining to remember them all. (That was a little mean. Bad Marc.) “All I can think of,” she adds, “is, ‘You, get the hell out of here.’ You and your tree trunks.” I just transcribe it, folks.

Back to the food. “As time is ticking down,” says Amanda, “I notice my tuna’s not red, it’s a little gray.” Dear catastrophe!

“She should’ve put oil on it so it doesn’t oxidize,” Angelo tells us, like it’s something any basic professional chef would know. Which it probably is.

The ballplayers come by and order one of each—Lannan and Capps, because I assume they’re not pitching that day; and Dunn, because he is old-school and awesome (he sticks his finger into the tartare and chomps it off: Sweet). Dunn says he wants a second of Tiffany’s meatball sandwiches to eat around the sixth inning. God I love ballplayers.

Kelly has crab cake, and used Old Bay, which gets points in my book; Tiffany has an Italian meatball sub; Angelo has sweet glazed pork on lobster roll (sort of like a Momofuku bun); Kevin is offering chicken kabob with shoestring fries; Ed’s got shrimp and corn fritters. Amanda? Yellowfin tuna tartare with fennel, meyer lemon and fava bean purée. One of these things is not like the other … .

Amanda further acknowledges that it is slightly risky to serve gray tuna tartare to Eric freakin’ Ripert. “But I actually really like the flavor,” she adds. Which means that if the judges don’t like the flavor, she will yet again be forced to take the bold step of registering her profound disagreement with the panelists behind their backs. “Hopefully, the judges are going to be judging first and foremost on the taste,” emphasis hers. Judges, take it away!

“I’m going to tell you something, man,” Moonen tells Padma (who is technically not a man, but we’ll let it slide). “Raw fish at a stadium: That takes some baseballs.”

Eric Ripert, how do you like it? “I really don’t want to eat a tartare with the color of the tuna being so gray.” He is judging by the color of its skin, not the content of its character, and we know what that means. Tom has some praise for her vegetables, though. The judges seem to be liking all the dishes. Except some people have some minor schtick with Kevin’s kabob. And they hate Angelo’s use of a hot dog roll.

Interlude! Angelo is talking to his fiancée, who lives in Russia! They have only met a few times! But they talk every night for “like five, six hours”! This is not at all creepy! Here is a picture of her!

Then they show Adam Dunn hitting a home run later that night. Go Nats!

Back to Judges’ Table. Ed is the winner! Sam Sifton, what say you now? Whoa, and he gets a trip to Australia? I want to win an Elimination Challenge.

Now it’s time for the fails, and for the judges to decide who is the epic-est of them. “When you put too much air with the fish, it oxidizes and becomes black,” Ripert explains to Amanda after Tom is done praising her vegetables. She knows, she knows. Tom says she should have tartared (there’s that verb again) on the day of. Kevin’s kabob was hard to eat, and the fries became soggy. Oops. They nitpick on Kelly’s crabcake, but she’s clearly not going home. Angelo’s problem was the bread. “The proportion of bread to everything that’s inside it is so important,” Tom insists. It’s math.

Now the chefs have returned to the pantry, and Ripert is still complaining about Kevin’s kabob. “The skewer for me was too long, and it was touching the bottom of my mouth,” he says. (Good thing this is a family blog!) Plus the fries were stupid. Kevin’s in trouble.

But then there is Amanda. “I was offended by the color of the product,” says Ripert. This is what he looks like when he’s offended.

Yet Tom is still standing up for the vegetables! And he likes the concept.

Finally, Angelo. That spongy, soggy bread!

The chefs are back. “Unfortunately, you made a few errors,” Tom tells them, and I’m actually not positive the pun is intended. Whom is going to be pinch-hit for? Whom is the manager going to yank from the mound? Some third baseball metaphor?

Wow. I mean, opposite of “wow,” but also, wow. 1, 2. Two weeks, two Jews go, and suddenly none are left. “Thank you guys so much, this has been an awesome opportunity,” is Amanda’s sign-off.

And it’s mine too.

Aww, just kidding. There may not be any more Jews, but we still have a blog to fill. See you next week!

Earlier: Episode 10: Blown Cover
Episode 9: War Comes to Bethesda
Episode 8: Ethiopian Cabbage
Episode 7: The Purloined Purée
Episode 6: Of Tragedy and Testicles
Episode 5: You’re Tearing Me Apart, Maryland!
Episode 4: Babies Making Baby Food
Episode 3: Booze Jokes, Not Funny Anymore
Episode 2: Giving Booze to Kids
Episode 1: Cheftestant Cooks His Mother’s Borscht

• Meanwhile, several allies of Prime Minister Netanyahu, including from his own Likud Party, have urged him not to extend the freeze—set to expire September 26—anywhere. [WSJ]

• The previous two points are part of why George F. Will sees no hope for anything to come out of this latest round of direct talks. [WP]

• A U.N. probe concluded that Israeli soldiers remained in Israeli territory during last month’s skirmish with Lebanese troops; the tree they were pruning, in other words, was theirs to prune. [JPost]

• The papers outlining the Nuremberg Laws were turned over to the U.S. National Archives. They had originally been spirited out of Germany by none other than General Patton. [AP/NYT]

• The Park51 debate has confirmed everyone else’s opinions of America, no matter what those opinions happen to be. [NYT]

• Rabbi Avraham Bronstein, of the Hampton Synagogue, has a nuanced take on the new, unavoidable relationship between Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists. [… VaAni B’Sof HaMizrach]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu will be roughing it to some extent when he arrives in Washington, D.C., next week: Foreign Ministry workers are on strike. [JPost]

• Meet the newly announced Six Points Fellows: Nine emerging Jewish artists to watch. [Jewcy]

• Why the Park51 affair is important, no matter whether it ever actually gets built. [Jonathan Chait]

• Advocacy group Women of the Wall collected photographs of women around the world reading from the Torah. [Sisterhood]

Colbert v. Goldberg, on Iran.