Congregation Beth Stoner to Offer Baked Sales
Ivana Spliff| JE STAFF
Very Reform Congregation Beth Stoner, which opened in Center City in 2019, plans weekly “baked sales” to raise money for the struggling congregation.
“We, uh, kind of forgot to charge membership dues, man, so, like, it’s hard to keep the lights on,” Rabbi Tommy Chongstein said. “We need some bread to pay the bills, so we thought it would sort of be far out and solid to, like, make bread and munchies for the dudes in the neighborhood.”
Chongstein said Friday morning “wake and bake” sessions are planned that will be led by former Le Bec-Fin pastry chef Mary Juana.
“We’re going to be making brownies, some groovy cake and even some challah,” she said, adding that the baked sales would begin each Friday at 4:20 p.m., just in time for Shabbat.
In addition, the synagogue is planning its first film fest, with the inaugural edition featuring the works of Jewish film star and reefer connoisseur Seth Rogen. Other offerings will include “Half Baked,” “Super Troopers,” “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” “Reefer Madness” and the collected works of The Trailer Park Boys.
And Cantor Snoop Doggberg will sing the collected works of Barbra Streisand at the Kimmel Center on March 32.
Stretch and Kvetch Debuts for Jewish Gym Enthusiasts
Jim Nasium | JE STAFF
Seymour Goldstein was in the midst of his daily workout on an elliptical machine at the Kaiserman JCC when he had a revelation — a revelation that’s been a hit for older Jewish exercisers.
“I looked around at my fellow alter kockers and just started listening to the conversations,” he said. “One woman was saying, ‘This machine hurts my tucchis.’ Another said, ‘I can’t concentrate with this fakakta music playing. Who is this meshugener Lizzo? Whatever happened to Neil Diamond?’ And some old guy said, “Feh, the farshtunken locker room smells like herring left in the sun for a week!’”
“So I had an idea.”
Enter Stretch and Kvetch.
The oh-so-spry Goldstein, 79, and a former Central High School gym teacher, developed a group exercise class for people who like to complain.
For about an hour, Goldstein tries to get his faithful followers to exercise, but he mostly fields complaints as people pretend to exercise.
“Seymour’s a mensch, but he’s a nudnik, too,” said one participant, looking up from the novel she was reading as she pedaled a stationary bike at .02 MPH. “I’ve already burned 3 calories in 28 minutes.
A nice Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda might calm Seymour down.”
‘We Complete Each Other’: Local Man with Coronavirus Meets Match in Cabo San Lucas, Finds His Beach
Phil Adelphia | JE STAFF
Local personal injury attorney Jared Crinklestein was feeling pretty down when he learned recently that he’d contracted coronavirus. Friends and family urged the 32-year-old Center City resident to stay put, lay low and take it easy, fearing that the “work hard, play hard” lifestyle he so vociferously espoused to anyone forced by circumstance into listening would hasten the virus’ advance.
“But I’m not about that life,” said Crinkelstein, whose Bumble profile lists him as “active” with hobbies including belittling opposing counsel via email, activities calling for board shorts, CrossFit and his chest-waxing club. “Look, I’ve been in this situation hundreds, if not thousands of times before; I’m a professional, with lots of experience winning at pretty much everything. And if that experience has taught me anything, it’s this: When life hands you a Corona, you find a f—ing lime.”
“Jared Crinkelstein may be many things,” said Sol Goldfarb, managing partner at Goldfarb Injury Law, where Crinkelstein is employed, “but, above all, he’s mission-driven.”
Less than 24 hours after his diagnosis, Crinkelstein boarded a flight for Cabo San Lucas, inspired he said by common sense and a television beer commercial imploring him to find his beach.
“To me, coronavirus isn’t about what I have,” he wrote cryptically on Facebook before leaving the country. “It’s about what I’m missing. Follow me on IG, lol.”
Upon arrival at the famed resort town on Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, Crinkelstein checked into the beach-side, adults-only resort, Lvst.
“This place is lit,” Crinkelstein announced to no one in particular upon arrival. “Definitely NSFW.”
It’s around this time, in retrospect, that Crinkelstein said he first became symptomatic.
“I got into my room and changed into my boardies right away,” he recalled. “I kinda panicked for a second when I couldn’t find my shades; they allow me to satisfy my leering eye with impunity, so, suffice it to say, I was about to be SOL in Cabo without them. But when I found that they were still attached to my Croakies, relief swept over me in an awesome wave. But then so did nausea and chills and a spot of vertigo.”
Undeterred, Crinkelstein hit a dockside beach bar near the pier just steps from his thatched-roof bungalow.
“I didn’t really think much of it at the time,” he said of his symptoms’ acute onset. “I pretty much just chalked it up to those shots of Patron I did with the dudes outside the baggage claim trying to sell me that time-share. That was so dope.”
Watching a cruise ship enter the nearby harbor from his barstool, Crinkelstein felt a strange confluence of something he now steadfastly believes to be emotions.
“It seemed like I had everything I needed; I should’ve felt like I was living my best life, but I sensed something was missing, something fundamental to becoming the best version of myself.”
It was then that he spotted Rebecca Sarah Schulson-Brownstein; it was only then, he said, that he finally understood what had truly compelled him as a man newly diagnosed with coronavirus to travel all the way to Mexico.
Schulson-Brownstein, who quickly met Crinkelstein’s gaze, said that she, too, felt an almost instantaneous magnetism.
“I nearly cried when he revealed his condition to me to me; I’ve been looking for a serious relationship ever since I broke up with a coconut last year,” she said, revealing that for the longest time she’d sourced love-life advice from old Harry Nilsson records. “Jared was just fine the way he was, a plain old coronavirus of a man. But we could all use a little garnish that makes us nominally more palatable.”
“I told her I had coronavirus,” he said, “and that was all she needed to hear — we spent the entire night together and have been inseparable since.”
“I looked him square in the eye and said, proudly, ‘I have Lyme disease,’ she recalled. “We embraced immediately.”
The couple has since returned to the United States and plans to wed once released from quarantine, which, to their understanding, has been “just a really big misunderstanding.” l
Study: 11 of 10 Jewish Granddaughters Don’t Care Harriet’s Grandson Is Single
Patty O’fernechure | JE STAFF
A groundbreaking study from Temple Beth-Shenanigans University has revealed that 11 out of 10 Jewish granddaughters are not interested in Harriet Hamantaschen’s grandson, Jonah Hamantaschen.
“These results are certainly surprising. Jonah’s such a nice boy. He’s in his law school’s a capella group and plays basketball at the JCC,” said Gladys Goldfarb, the study’s lead researcher and Harriet Hamantaschen’s best friend.
“A lot of these girls aren’t getting any younger, you know,” added Rachel Rosenblatt, research assistant and Harriet’s sister-in-law. “They might feel differently when the clock strikes 3 o’30.”
Of the respondents, 36% were not interested, 26% were too busy juggling school with seven unpaid internships to date right now, 24% were gay, 17% were finding themselves in Bali, and 7% were aspiring Instagram influencers who felt Jonah didn’t fit with their
aesthetic.
Uncontroversial Seder Table Conversation Topics Down to Woodworking, Beige
Danny Da-unknown | JE STAFF
On March 2, the Jewish Federations of North America released its annual list of approved conversation topics for the upcoming Pesach celebrations, and for the 5780th consecutive year, according to the report, the list of acceptable topics has been further winnowed down.
Discouraged topics now include dogs, “Schindler’s List,” hummus, any figure of the Byzantine Empire, Don Rickles, Paleolithic-era tools, the concept of anxiety, Søren Kierkegaard’s “The Concept of Anxiety,” the military, military time, uppers, downers, Upper Dublin, Downingtown, knock-knock jokes, eggs with two yolks, Shakespeare and any intimation that he didn’t really write his plays, ballpoint pens, barnyard hens, the invention of the transition lens, cousin Alan, Post-It notes, New Yorker totes, milk made from oats, castles (those with or without moats), Ireland or any Irish people, lasers, books, cooks, nooks (don’t even think about crannies), well-placed semicolons, economic displacement, meat replacements, The Replacements, unfinished basements, whether something could be had for all the tea in China, puns, nuns, guns, unfounded allegations, slant rhymes, the Hubble Telescope, Hubba Bubba Max bubblegum, any religion, Pope Honorius I, Pope Honorius II, Pope Honorius III, Pope Honorius IV, death, the death of sincerity, the death of God, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” the death of Elvis, Elvis Costello, Abbott & Costello, the upstairs neighbors, the Sunday papers, reminiscing about pagers, content creators, paved roads, deli meat, smelly feet, and whether or not the logo that bounces around a screensaver ever perfectly hits a corner.
AIPAC Tailgate Draws Biggest Crowd Yet
Hugh Cares | JE STAFF
AIPAC officials announced attendance of more than 15,000 at this year’s tailgate, smashing the record set before the 2019 policy conference.
Philadelphia attendee Randy Gotlieb was pleased to see the variety of barbecue meats available for consumption.
“It’s an obvious reflection of AIPAC’s commitment to a bipartisan consensus,” he said. “This can be a space for people of all carnivorous commitments to coalesce around community, cookouts and chicken sandwiches.” Pressed for more, Gotlieb excused himself to go and see about some rumored brisket.
Wearing an Israeli flag tie around his head and slurring his words a bit, Jonathan Dahan, Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, reported that he had “been here since, like 4 a.m., no joke” and that he and his “boys” had done a kegs-and-eggs “tailgate to the tailgate” for those who were willing to get there a little earlier. Dahan wore an old campaign T-shirt, reading: “Bibi’s Fine in ’09,” featuring an edited image of the prime minister shirtless and chugging a 40-ounce Olde English 800.
Conference attendees who had registered early were treated to a VIP tent, where lucky guests could catch a glimpse of Vice President Mike Pence, slated to speak the next day, enjoying an easy Sunday of cornhole and Corona.
Local Parents Release Statement on Acceptable Body Art
Sandi Beachstein | JE STAFF
After weeks of intense negotiations, David and Stephanie Greenwald issued a statement on Feb. 28 with updated policies on their adult children’s body modifications.
“We’ve decided Hannah’s septum piercing is OK as long as she doesn’t wear it to job interviews or in front of the Kagelmanns,” Stephanie Greenwald said.
“And we told Sam stick ’n’ pokes are fine as long as they’re small and we don’t have to see them,” David Greenwald added.
According to the new policies, multiple ear piercings are fine, but spacers that create “those weird, gross holes” are not. Both parents expressed disgust at the concept of belly-button rings.
The couple closed the statement by offering to pay for grad school if Hannah and Sam Greenwald abstained from tattoo sleeves.
“I mean, I wasn’t even really considering a sleeve,” Hannah Greenwald said. “I mentioned that once as a joke?”
The jury is still out for Sam Greenwald in the sleeve department.
“Having them pay for my MFA would be nice,” he admitted. “But I’ll probably do whatever I want anyway, since I’m an adult with a job.”
Purim 2019 – https://www.jewishexponent.com/2019/03/19/jewish-exponent-purim-spiel-fake-news-2019/
Purim 2018 – https://www.jewishexponent.com/2018/02/21/jewish-exponent-purim-spiel-fake-news-2018/
Purim 2017 – https://www.jewishexponent.com/2017/03/08/fake-news-happy-purim/
