What's In A Name?

In the August 7 issue of The Week, there was an article in the “Best Columns: The U.S.” section entitled, “Why should Jews pretend to be WASPS?” by Ron Rosenbaum of slate.com who argues that it is time for “one of our most wildly successful Jewish Americans,” Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, “to change his name back to the one his parents gave him – Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz." The author argues that Stewart’s popularity is due to “his genius for exposing the “pretentious masks” worn by politicians, media figures, and other big shots” and as such, he should change his name and remove the “faint but unnecessary relic of anti-Semitism.” As a mother of a young boy with a “Jewish” first and last name, it makes me think. Knowing we would raise our son Jewish, I wanted him to have a Jewish first name, although since it is in the Old Testament, it is also a Christian name. My husband just liked the name for a number of reasons. Unintentionally, his name reflects both his parents religious backgrounds. Funny how things turn out.

Super Jew T-Shirts

Where once the word Jew or Jewish would have no more significance than any other word, being part of a Jewish family I now stop to read anything that contains the word Jew or anything Jewish. One example:

The “You saw It? You liked it? Here’s how to get it!” column in the August 14 issue of Entertainment Weekly where a reader asked where they could find the Star of David/Superman t-shirt that Seth Rogen wore in the movie “Funny People.” The shirt was originally designed for a school play, but is now available to all at http://www.verymeri.com. What is not mentioned in the article, but is on the website, is that a portion of the sales will benefit the Jewish World Watch and Temple Israel Day School of Hollywood. When doing a web search for the image, I came across another design in what might be considered the original “Super Jew” t-shirt, available at http://www.superjudaicaheaven.com. They also sell the image as a magnet and mention the likeness of it to Mel Brooks character in the movie “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” I like the idea of the T-shirts, and the bold statement in makes. It also lends itself to the question, is Superman Jewish? There are books written on the subject with some compelling evidence. But that’s a topic for another day…

The "Importance" of Lighting the Candles on Shabbat

This is one Jewish tradition that I try to make happen each week, although with a hectic summer that included a lot of time away from home, it was not easy to do. I welcome the more routine schedule of the fall which will permit us to celebrate Shabbat more regularly. My son’s first Hebrew word was challah, so this time of the week has special meaning and reminds me of how quickly he is developing.

If that was not reason enough, last week when we lit the Shabbat candles after a long absence, my son starting singing Happy Birthday…his birthday is in June, so obviously this was a more recent memory than Shabbat, although he had no trouble saying challah as he grabbed for the loaf! Still, it might be time to get back to this…