Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This The Holiness of Little Daily Dramas by Robert A. Alper Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This: The Holiness of Little Daily Dramas by Robert A. Alper. Advertising for Love. By Rabbi Bob Alper. "G-D DOES NOT PUNISH the shadchan (matchmaker) for telling lies," the Yiddish proverb tells us, and so, I suppose, the writers of some personals ads might also be forgiven their slight exaggerations. Just a few years ago, personals ads were considered the bastion of true losers, those folks with no social skills, unable to find love in the traditional ways. Nowadays, the classifieds of Jewish weeklies and other papers have become the "meet markets" of the millenium, festooned with cleverly worded messages. And the happy fact is, they often work. I read these postings every chance I get. There's a little bit of shadchan in me, too; I'm always on the lookout for someone who'd be a perfect match for a few of my single friends. Plus, I'm fascinated by the ways people describe themselves and articulate their desires. Nearly everyone is either pretty or handsome, intelligent but with a great sense of humor, a homebody who enjoys all sports. And it's enlightening to realize that seven out of ten people apparently spend a good part of their waking moments "taking long walks on the beach." I've been saving favorite personals ads for several years. Everyone's looking for a soulmate; a couple of older women got down to specifics: "Widow with perfect figure desires one-woman man in 60s who has concern for Israel's survival." "European widowed Jewish professional, attractive, bright, humorous, seeks tall male counterpart, under 65, with own hair and teeth. " A "physically active, world-traveled semi-retired physician" was equally direct, stipulating that his heart would only be melted by an "attractive, natural, unburdened, minimal shopper." Minimal shopper? One of my favorites appeared in The Forward, obviously placed by a woman with a great comic sense: "Striking, sophisticated slender redhead, former model from the Midwest. Looking to meet charming, intelligent, fun loving, self-sufficient gentleman, 50-65, for mature relationship. Must have positive cash flow, a substantial amount of stocks and bonds, and have a terminal disease with no known heirs." And years ago, this appeared in Boston's alternative paper, The Phoenix: "Single Jewish woman seeks single Jewish man with dead mother." Recently, while checking the "People Connector" in The Baltimore Jewish Times, I discerned a peculiar theme running through many of the ads. "Attractive blonde with lovely figure, in 60s. " one notice read, and others were similarly descriptive. "Beautiful blonde, petite, warm, giving, 50. " "I'm blonde, fit, smart, funny, impulsive. " "Pretty, green-eyed blonde, professional. " "Ravishing blonde. Let's make dreams come true together." I'm still wondering why all these Norwegian women are advertising in The Baltimore Jewish Times. JWR contributor Rabbi Bob Alper, the world's only practicing clergyman doing stand-up comedy . intentionally, is the author of Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This : The Holiness of Little Daily Dramas and A rabbi confesses. To visit his web site, click here. To send your comments click here. 12/13/99: The Secret Messages of "Spell Check" 11/19/99: Name that Jew 12/31/98: Toward rabbinic survival 12/07/98: Naming names 11/23/98:The Wedding Announcement 11/10/98: What the mail-man brought. R E V I E W S. "Robert Alper's method is conversational, his strength is the turn of phrase, his secret ingredient is humor. Anyone reading him will smile a lot and think of some other great writers: Robert Fulghum, Garrison Keillor, and Sam Levenson." -- Msgr. Thomas Hartman , author of Just a Moment and co-host of TV's "The God Squad" ". . . will send you on a journey of discovery and will provide much-needed spiritual sustenance along the way." -- Gerda Weissmann Klein , Oscar and Emmy winner for One Survivor Remembers and author of All But My Life. "It's too bad Rabbi Bob Alper does not have a congregation in New York City. If he did, I'd join in a flash! Where else can you get such gentle wisdom and such terrific humor?" -- Ari L. Goldman , author of The Search for God at Harvard and former religion writer for the The New York Times. ". . . a wise book of personal reflection . . . a superb guide." -- Beverly Coyle , author of The Kneeling Bus and In Troubled Waters. "By discovering holiness in humble places so often overlooked by others, Rabbi Alper shows us how the stuff of daily life can become an unfolding triumph of the spirit." -- Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette , author of Twelve Months of Monastery Soups and From a Monastery Kitchen. ". . . a heart-grabber and a head-grabber, too. What a treasure!" -- Rabbi Jack Riemer , editor, Wrestling with the Angel. Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This: The Holiness of Little Daily Dramas by Robert A. Alper. Standard Comedy Night. 65-110 minutes of stand-up comedy. No need for an opening act. Can be arranged in a variety of ways, either with straight advance sale/at the door ticket prices, or with reserved seats, sponsors, benefactors pre-show receptions, raffle drawings, etc. In most cities, the secular paper will definitely do a feature article with photo, as will the Jewish paper. A unique, spirit-raising, community-building event. Includes comedy night plus one or two Shabbat programs. Presentation based on the deeply inspirational, partly humorous Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This: The Holiness of Little Daily Dramas, which the Detroit Free Press called 'a volume of spiritual gems' in a four-star review. The Miami Bureau of Jewish Education developed a study guide for this book, and uses it in family life education. Sermon 'The Spirituality of Laughter'. The Spirituality of Laughter. A Jewish Look at the Holiness of Humor. This program, particularly appropriate for Shabbat, is a condensed version of the Scholar-in Residence Weekend. Part informal sermon (with plenty of laughs) exploring how Judaism values the spiritual, psychological, and physiological benefits of laughter, followed by 30 minutes of pure stand-up comedy! Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This: The Holiness of Little Daily Dramas by Robert A. Alper. Densie Well, Ph.D., R.D. Open your eyes to yellow vegetables. The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon With its colorful cache of purples and oranges and reds, COLLARD GREEN SLAW is a marvelous mood booster --- not to mention just downright delish. Rabbi Yonason Goldson : Clarifying one of the greatest philosophical conundrums in theology. The Kosher Gourmet by Julie Rothman Almondy, flourless torta del re (Italian king's cake), has royal roots, is simple to make, . . . but devour it because it's simply delicious. Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer : Passover frees us from the tyranny of time. Rabbi Hillel Goldberg : Silence is much more than golden. Jonathan Tobin : Why Did Kerry Lie About Israeli Blame? Jewish World Review May 19, 2004 / 28 Iyar, 5764. It's ain't easy being a Reform rabbi and a comic. Meet the world's only practicing clergyman doing stand-up comedy. intentionally. http://www.jewishworldreview.com | The funeral director asked me to officiate, and since I didn't know the deceased, I compiled information for the eulogy through long distance calls. I added the final details just before the service, during a brief meeting with people who'd only minutes earlier emerged from planes and long automobile rides. The survivors had assembled from far away locations, and although the family room where we sat was filled with sadness, it was impossible to miss the undercurrent of joy and love. They had come together to celebrate a long life and a gentle death. "Be honest in the eulogy," one daughter instructed me. "Nothing maudlin. You can see what kind of people we are." And so, looking at the hundreds who had gathered for the funeral, I described Rose as she had been portrayed by the people who cherished her: "Rose was a loving wife. A devoted mother. An adoring grandmother. She was not a very good cook." The congregation responded with a collective laugh. And why not? They knew Rose well. And as I spoke, they remembered the comical pride she always took in what she swore was her congenital inability to cook. That was the Rose they treasured. Other times the humor in a funeral home has been more internal and private, when I've heard words that had me guffawing under an appropriately serious outer- expression. Like the time a close friend of the deceased was asked to speak in tribute. I introduced him, then sat just off to the side of the pulpit. The man walked slowly up the three stairs, opened a sheaf of notes and placed them on the lectern, and solemnly began, "We have gathered together to utilize Phil�" Rabbis are not immune from fumbling a word or two. Especially when reciting verses that have become, perhaps, too familiar. On this occasion I was sitting in the pew while a colleague officiated. I quietly decided that the fellow had spent just a little too much time in Philadelphia when I heard him recite these words while reading the Twenty-third Psalm: "Yo though I walk�er�yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death�" But my self-control meet its most formidable challenge not in a funeral home but of all places, in a supermarket. This was a trying moment. I was in the midst of pondering that critical choice, smooth or crunchy peanut butter, when an earnest looking gentleman passed by, then deftly turned his shopping cart 180 degrees and rolled up to mine, head to head. "You're Rabbi Alper, aren't you?" he said, and continued, "I'm not a member of a synagogue, but I wonder if you could help me with a small problem." I nodded in the affirmative. And here was where my ability to keep a straight face should have won me an Oscar. "You see, Rabbi, my brother died last week, and I want to say Kaddish for him. So, Rabbi, could you do me a favor, and write it out for me fanatically?" Jewish Sketch Comedy & Stand-Up. A trend beginning in the early ’70s was the gentrification of standup comedy. Once the province of sleazy nightclubs and strip joints, standup found a new home and a mainstream audience in comedy clubs such as Catch A Rising Star in New York and The Comedy Store in L.A. Comedian Lewis Black ( The Daily Show with Jon Stewart ) recalls how, since 1971, “the number of clubs doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled–then there were a ton of them.” Many of the young standup comedians working the comedy club circuit were Jewish, among them Richard Belzer, David Steinberg, David Brenner, Jerry Seinfeld, Elayne Boosler, Rita Rudner, and Paul Reiser. Why was this brand of comedy so attractive to Jewish entertainers? “One of the reasons,” says Rabbi Bob Alper, a standup comic and author of Life Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This: The Holiness of Little Daily Dramas, “is that we Jews love language. Comedy is an art built on love of language.” Several successful standup Jewish comedians credit their Jewish upbringing. Lewis Black, known for his comical rants on sociopolitical matters, says the ranting comes from “my Russian Jewish family as much as anything else. After five minutes of yelling and screaming, my grandfather would announce, ‘It’s a great life; I was born in Russia, and they’re going to bury me in Jersey!'” Susie Essman attributes the boldness of her sexually candid comic monologues to her Jewish roots. “Jews in general are less ambivalent about sex,” she says. “In Judaism, sex is life-affirming.” It was in the ’70s that female comedy writers rose to prominence, among them Nora Ephron ( Crazy Salad, Heartburn ), her sister Amy ( National Lampoon ), Fran Lebowitz ( Social Studies ), Elaine May ( A New Leaf ), and Treva Silverman ( The Mary Tyler Moore Show ). A generation earlier, Jewish men had broken into comedy writing on the strength of the postwar economy; in the early ’70s, the catalyst for women was the feminist movement. Uncle Andy’s Nuthouse. Andy Kaufman. “It wasn’t an act; it was a happening.” –Carl Reiner, about Andy Kaufman. Andy Kaufman was one of the first comedy stars whose genesis was wholly the comedy club circuit. Considered by some as the father of modern performance art, Kaufman both amazed and baffled audiences with his defiantly postmodern routines, which often consisted of singing corny children’s songs or reading aloud from The Great Gatsby for 15 minutes straight in a snooty British accent, then scolding the audience for booing. “People like Andy Kaufman took comedy in a different direction in the ’70s,” says Robert Smigel, whose children’s show parody TV Funhouse was inspired by Kaufman’s Uncle Andy’s Funhouse (both spoofing Eisenhower-era programs such as Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and Howdy Doody ). Carl Reiner discovered Andy Kaufman in 1971 at Catch A Rising Star. “He was doing Elvis, he was doing the Foreign Man, he was reading The Great Gatsby, he was doing it all,” Reiner recalls. “And then he got mad at the audience. And you couldn’t tell if he was really mad or not, because he told bad jokes, and they booed him and he ran off. I told Dick Van Dyke about Kaufman. Dick was doing a special at the time. He put Andy on the show, and that was his first paid job, 1,500 bucks!” Through Kaufman’s constant riffs on identity–the just-off-the-boat immigrant Foreign Man, the washed-up showbiz hedonist Tony Clifton, and the “Uncle Miltie”-style TV host Uncle Andy–he toyed with the masks Jews often wear in everyday life. It’s no coincidence that Tony Clifton resembled Borscht Belt insult comics such as Don Rickles and Jack E. Leonard, and that Foreign Man–a variation of which appeared in his character Latka (named after the Jewish potato pancake) on the hit TV series Taxi –mimicked the kind of European immigrants Kaufman no doubt knew as a child growing up in Great Neck, New York. When Kaufman died of cancer in 1984, his fans thought he had faked his own demise as the ultimate performance piece, a variation on the “Elvis lives” theme. Considered the king of ’70s comedy, he influenced a generation of comedians, including Bill Murray, Robin Williams, Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Reubens, and David Letterman. Live From New York. “I think the first show was over-thought. There were six months leading up to that show and six days leading up to the second show…. until you do it, you have no idea what it is you’re doing.” –Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live: The First Twenty Years (1994), edited by Michael Cader. In 1973, Jewish producer Bob Tischler joined forces with National Lampoon writer/editor Michael O’Donoghue to create the National Lampoon Radio Hour. The show featured several then-unknown Jewish writers/performers, including Tom Leopold, Christopher Guest ( This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride ), Richard Belzer ( Law & Order ), and Second City alumni Gilda Radner and Harold Ramis. The series lasted just over a year, even with the added firepower of John Belushi, Doug Kenney, Chevy Chase, and Bill Murray, among others. Luckily, however, just before its cancellation, a young producer named Lorne Michaels recruited Radner, Belushi, and others for his new sketch comedy show NBC’s Saturday Night, later changed to Saturday Night and then to Saturday Night Live. Premiering on October 11, 1975, the show became an instant hit. Not since Sid Caesar’s heyday in the 1950s did people in large numbers stay home on Saturday night to watch sketch comedy. The Caesar connection was no coincidence; Lorne Michaels used Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour as templates for the new show. But there was a difference, as SNL writer Robert Smigel explains: “Sid Caesar’s sketch comedy came out of vaudeville and had more of a straightforwardness to it. Caesar is more about wacky people in normal situations; the newer writing was more about normal people in strange situations.” Jon Lovitz as “Hanukkah Harry” SNL combined the often-risqué shock comedy of National Lampoon with a more sophisticated Jewish style of humor, an approach fostered by producer/writer Lorne Michaels and by the show’s Jewish writers–Rosie Shuster ( The Larry Sanders Show, Square Pegs ), Bob Tischler, Al Franken ( Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot ), and Alan Zweibel ( It’s Garry Shandling’s Show ), among others. Clearly, SNL did not fear the Anti-Defamation League. One of Saturday Night Live ‘s more controversial sketches was “Jewess Jeans” (1980), a faux ad for jeans with Jewish stars emblazoned on the posterior, modeled by Gilda Radner’s gum-chewing Jewish shopaholic. In the 1970s and ’80s, SNL launched the careers of a rainbow coalition of young comedians, including Jews who were not afraid to affirm their roots on TV. In 1989, actor Jon Lovitz created Hanukkah Harry, a bearded Jew in a black Santa’s cap. In his sketch “The Night Hanukkah Harry Saved Christmas,” Lovitz parodied TV Christmas specials that linked materialism and gift-giving with happiness. “Hanukkah Harry,” “Jewess Jeans,” and other SNL sketches of the period (such as 1988’s game-show parody “Jew, Not a Jew,” which satirized the assimilation of Jews in showbiz) enabled SNL writers/performers of the ’90s such as Adam Sandler to be even more open about their Jewish identities. Arie Kaplan is a freelance writer who has written for MAD magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and Time Out New York, among other publications. He has also written jokes for MTV’s Total Request Live. More of his work can be found on his website, www.ariekaplan.com. Pronounced: KHAH-nuh-kah, also ha-new-KAH, an eight-day festival commemorating the Maccabees’ victory over the Greeks and subsequent rededication of the temple. Falls in the Hebrew month of Kislev, which usually corresponds with December.