The Vicious Babushka

Israeli Artist Designed Olympic Medals

VANCOUVER – Many months before any athletic competition was held at the 2010 winter games, another contest was held to determine which artist would design the 882 medals give to the victors. The winner was Jerusalem-born designer Omer Arbel.

“It’s a great honor,” Arbel told The Jerusalem Post. “It’s something I don’t think will even happen again in my life.”

Arbel, an architect and industrial designer, sought to convey the great honor of winning an Olympic medal through his design proposal, submitted nearly two years ago.

His work generally focuses on making large-scale compositions and even mass-produced objects unique so that they are valued rather than seen as uniform and disposable. While Olympic medals hardly suffer for not being valued, it was important to Arbel that each one be individual and original in the context of a cohesive theme.

“Each athlete’s story is unique but each athlete is connected to each through a larger Olympic ideal,” he explained.

He also wanted the medals to evoke the emotional and personal aspects of the Olympic journey for each owner, and have a distinctive shape. He initially proposed a “locket” concept in which a two-pieced medal, held together by magnets, could be designed to hold a lucky charm or memento that the athlete connected with his victory.

“It speaks to the profound emotions associated with winning an Olympic medal,” he explained, pointing to the years of sacrifice, need for belief in one’s self and support from family and friends. “Often winning the Olympic medal is the culmination of that chapter of their life.”

Read more at Jerusalem Post.

 

Hasidic Rabbis Harrassed by Fans and Papparazzi Who Think They're Brad Pitt

Chabad of Conejo wishes everyone a Happy Purim!

Egyptian Cleric: "Jews are Hated in Sports and by Animals"

 

Following are excerpts from an address by Egyptian cleric Amin Al-Ansari, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on October 12, 2009.
 
Amin Al-Ansari: God has filled people’s hearts with loathing for these [Jews]. Let’s take a look at the field of sports. Forget about politics, military issues, and so on. Let’s look at sports on the international level. How come there are no successful Israeli sportsmen, like in any other people? They are abhorred. God does not let people be friendly with them.
 
[...]
 
Let’s see how the Jews are hated in the field of sports. They are abhorred. Let’s take a look.
 
Footage of soccer game, showing Chelsea player kicking the Israeli Yossi Benayoun, playing for Liverpool
 
Amin Al-Ansari: This is a Jewish soccer player, who behaved unjustly even on the field. But Allah be praised... Let’s take another look.
 
Replay of footage
 
Amin Al-Ansari: Look at this Jew being kicked. People hate them. They don’t like them.
 
[...]
 
We are not talking only about people. [The same goes] even for trees and animals. You know, there is rather peculiar footage, in which an Arab man who has a camel loves it and kisses it, and the camel kisses him back. Along comes a Jew and wants to kiss the camel, just like the Arab. What do you think the camel did? Let’s watch.
 
Footage showing Arab kissing camel and camel trying to bite Jewish man
 
Amin Al-Ansari: Look what happens when the Jew tries to kiss it... He’s fled the scene, of course. He’s fled from this “lion.”

View the video at MEMRITV.

This is the same whackjob who showed Holocaust scenes and practically orgasmed over it.

Gaza Hunks Compete For Bodybuilding Title

Palestinian men compete during a bodybuilding contest in Gaza City, Friday, Oct. 23, 2009. Approximately 20 men competed in the contest, and over 500 people attended the event. Although not the first of its kind to be held in the Gaza Strip, bodybuilding contests are rare in the Hamas controlled territory. The Arabic on the poster reads "Under the supervision of the Palestine University - The Gaza Strip Bodybuilding Hero Contest". AP Photo.

Don't they look emaciated and starving. The smuggling tunnels must be providing plenty of protein shakes and steroids.

World's Largest Matzah Ball Cooked in NYC

Oy vey! This is a matzo ball to make you kvell.

Weighing 267 pounds and measuring 29.2 inches in diameter, the biggest matzo ball in the world was unveiled Thursday and served up to hungry lower East Siders.

The giant kosher creation was schlepped across the city with a police escort after spending 19.5 hours on a slow boil in a custom-made 100-gallon New Jersey kettle.

It was created to raise awareness and money for a charity basketball game at Madison Square Garden between the New York Knicks and Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv.

Profits from the Oct. 18 game will benefit the Migdal Ohr, an orphanage in northern Israel.

"What's better than this in New York City?" said Noam Sokolow, owner of Noah's Ark Original Deli on Grand St., who helped organize the event.

"Big Apple, big matzo ball, big basketball game."

The massive orb was lifted out of its kettle by two dozen workers with a special soup sling.

They heaved it into a large protective crate for the trip from Teaneck, N.J., to Manhattan in a 24-foot freight truck.

Five men unloaded the ball and walked it up a red carpet to the front of the deli, where it was unveiled in a giant bowl.

Read more at NY Daily News

Introducing the "Frumkini," when the "Burkini" is just too much

 

JERUSALEM — Devora, an Orthodox Jewish woman, never felt comfortable in the sleek, revealing bathing suits sold at the stores she frequented in her native France or in her adopted Israel.

While she ordinarily wears fashionable skirts that fall below the knee and blouses that extend to her wrists, Devora, 31, was unable to find a swimsuit consistent with her Orthodox lifestyle.

Her standards of religious modesty extend not only to her wardrobe but also to sharing her full name, lest it draw attention to her and her family.

When the dress she typically wore over her bathing suit got wet, "it became heavy, unwieldy, clingy and transparent. I felt incredibly self-conscious, even while swimming during women-only hours," she said of the segregated swimming that's available at some Israeli pools and beaches.

A year ago, Devora heard about a modest-swimwear line called Sea Secret. Designed in Israel by two French-born Orthodox Jews in consultation with a respected rabbi, the company's below-the-arm, below-the-knee swim-dresses adhere to the strict Orthodox Jewish dress code.

Read more at USA Today

The "burkini" for Muslim women:

Gone Dead Wings!

 

We are about to sign off for the Shabbat, so, GO RED WINGS!

Well. That sucked.

Doofus of the Day: "Running For Love" Through Gaza

 

Long distance Italian runner Max Calderan was looking for love in all the wrong places when officials from the Defense Ministry banned him on Saturday from entering northern Gaza through the Erez crossing.

Wearing a red running suit and cap, Calderan told reporters in Jerusalem on Sunday how he had arrived at Erez after completing 100 km. of his 540-km. personal marathon event, named "Running for Love."

Calderan, who is known for doing extreme marathons in deserts around the world, started in Ramallah on Friday, went through Jerusalem and was on his way to Mount Sinai.

He had hoped to travel through Gaza. But as he arrived in Erez on Saturday morning and held up his Italian passport, he was told that he could not enter.

"I was on foot. [I said], 'I am Italian. I am here for the run for love. I only ask to cross," Calderan said.

But his amore was not reciprocated.

"The military stopped me with weapons," he said.

As an Italian in Israel, a week after a visit by Pope Benedict XVI, Calderan said he saw himself as following in the pontiff's footsteps by promoting a message of spiritual love, albeit with a different instrument, his feet.

His message of love, he said, "is the same message [as that] of the pope," and added that that had he managed to shake the pope's hand in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

In his press kit for the event he said, "My run aims at filing this soul emptiness with the love for God, because God has always stated: In my name, in the name of God, we have to love, not kill."

Calderan added by that by crossing the border into Gaza, where he had hoped he would be joined by Palestinian children runners, he had wanted to underscore the point that "we should not stop the love just because there is a border."

Read more at Jerusalem Post

Superbowl star becomes Chabad Hasid