By Adam Wilson
Picture yourself on a Tel Aviv beach: A parade of tanned, toned Israelis marching past like some alternative half-nude army, flashing butt cheeks in string bikinis as you revel in a paradise of sand, surf and Semitic good looks.
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By Adam Wilson
Who were the first Jewish potheads? The Old Testament seems filled with early precursors: Daniel, the interpreter of colorful dreams; Ezekiel, with his visions of flying chariots; perhaps even David, whose tunes of ethereal majesty were conceivably inspired by some seriously bitter herbs. Other scholars might go back to Genesis — Adam and Eve in that ripe, green pleasure-palace, hungry enough to eat forbidden apples. And then there’s slightly more recent history: Allen Ginsberg extolled the virtues of marijuana in pulsing, desperate verse, and Leonard Michaels wrote short stories about Jews on New York City’s Lower East Side getting stoned with sweet-smiling shiksas and then devouring leftover kugel sent over by their own mothers.
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By Adam Wilson
Jewish burlesque seems, in a way, only natural. Sex and humor are inextricably bound in Jewish culture (or at least in certain precincts of it); potty-mouthed, voluptuous women are celebrated. The burlesque tradition took root in the Yiddish theater nearly a century ago when Jewish thespians, not content to be restrained by a single medium, decided that their plays would include a bit of everything: song and dance, sentimentality and comedy, romance and raunchiness. This is precisely the logic employed by the burlesque troupe Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad, which performed a three-week run this month at The Zipper Factory, a funky off-Broadway theater in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen.
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Tapping Into Growing Lure of Hidden Jewish Heritage
Montreal's First Jewish Mayor Michael Applebaum Hit With Corruption Charges
Getting In Face of Ultra-Orthodox on Need for Real World Education
Barbra Streisand Is Butt of Anti-Semitic Joke
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