Rabbi Daniel Brenner

Taking a break from the hectic pre-bar mitzvah planning checklist for my sons I checked in on my JTA feed and found the following story making today’s news: NEW YORK (JTA) — The Anti-Defamation League slammed retired football player and former NBC broadcaster Tiki Barber for jokingly comparing himself to Anne Frank. In a recent Sports Illustrated profile, the former New York Giants’ running back discussed living with his girlfriend in the attic of his Jewish agent, Mark Lepselter, to…

Read More Read More

I remember hearing, in seventh grade, that there was going to be music television. I was so excited to see it because for some strange reason I thought that the music would be visualized — it would come to life through color and shape and we would all enjoy it all the more. It turned out to be lots of folks with long hair in tight pants. But now, thanks to the interwebs, we are coming close to such visions….

Read More Read More

…in the Jewish Week. Graphic novels etc. in this new piece in The Jewish Week But as Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, nears this year, observers are debating the uses of irreverence to memorialize the event, especially when it comes to passing the lessons of the Shoah on to a younger, Facebook generation. After years of Holocaust farces like Mel Brooks’ hit Broadway play “The Producers,” Holocaust comedy films like Roberto Benigni’s “Life is Beautiful,” after Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi”…

Read More Read More

Seder for Sderot by Justin Bieber It’s a Zenga Zenga Pesach by Muhamar Qadaffi Four More Cups by Snooki Search for the Afikomen- Hawaiian Edition by Donald Trump The Prison Tweet Haggadah by Lindsay Lohan The Moosemeat Seder by Sarah Palin Ten New Plagues by British Petroleum The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies Seder by Julianne Assange Rock Star Seder From Mars by Charlie Sheen

Hot off the press! Check this out — a great article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the program for teen boys that I am working on.

PANDER WITH DIGNITY IN A KARZAI TALLIS! Forgive my cultural insensitivities here, but as I was daydreaming the other day in synagogue I started to look at the many colorful tallisim around the room and I had the thought that Hamid Karzai could walk into this place and not a single person would look twice at his shawl. In fact, the only thing that people would say would be “nice tallis.” I google searched and found that the vision I…

Read More Read More

And now, a moment of zen…. “Devise a solution to Jerusalem that will bring lasting peace and does not slice the city in half as if it were a pizza” – Jennifer Laszlo Mirachi   writing in an op-ed on the JTA.  http://www.jta.org/trackback/2742935

Jew-fro? Yes. Jew? Not-so-much. Last night I thought that I would have a much needed break from the Jewish world that occupies my thoughts on a daily basis. No Jewish football players on either team, I thought. No Jewish coaches or prominent owners. The game is in Dallas. How Jewish could it be? But the gods of televised sports had other ideas. First up, Glee starlet Lea Michele sings America the Beautiful. Then Joan Rivers is in a Go Daddy spot,…

Read More Read More