Tenth of Tevet! Stop Eating Now!

Today is a fast day, and it's a weird one.

The Tenth of Tevet, according to MyJewishLearning (you can read more here), is the day when the prophet

Yeheskel, together with the Jewish community forced into Babylonian exile, received news of the destruction of Jerusalem: "In the 12th year of our exile, on the fifth day of the 10th month, a fugitive came to me from Jerusalem and reported, 'The city has fallen' " (Yeheskel 33, verse 21). The Babylonian Talmud in Rosh Hashanah tractate 18B even purports that the fast should be held on the fifth of Tevet and not on the 10th: "And they equated receipt of the report of the destruction with that of Jerusalem's burning."

Normally, fast days almost never come on Fridays. I'd actually thought it was a halacha that you couldn't fast right before Shabbat -- and, in some cases, it really is; other minor fast days, like the Fast of Esther, get moved to Thursday or Sunday when they fall out on Friday. But Tevet is an exception, if a rare one (the last time this happened was 14 years ago). The reason is that the Tenth of Tevet is described as "עצם היום הזה ('the very day')," according to Yeheskel himself (who we like to call Ezekiel).

My latest Jewish nightmare came yesterday afternoon, via my father-in-law. At the end of a totally unrelated email, as a sort of throwaway P.S., he wrote: "Have an easy fast and spare a thought for us who have to wait till after 9pm to break it."

Now, he lives in Australia, where (as you might know) it's summer right now -- meaning that the sun sets later. So, where a fast day in America might end at 5 p.m., there it's going to go way into the night. Yesterday, I was sort of upset and totally spazzing, and only the good graces of our good Editorial Fellow Jeremy Moses kept me alive. "Want to go out to lunch?" he said.

We did. To an amazingly luscious, colorful, and totally explode-our-stomachs-huge Indian buffet. Jeremy did two trips; I did three. Whereupon we shlepped back to work, stuffed ourselves into our chairs (I barely fit) and I read the email from my father-in-law.

And I felt my stomach retch. I feared of tasting that delicious lunch all over again. How could I have forgotten a fast day?!

Of course, you already know the moral. Part 1: Yesterday wasn't a fast day, it's today. Part 2: Australia is something like 16 hours ahead of us. My father-in-law emailed me at about 4 a.m. (which, for him, is already mid-morning). And I'm still not perfect, but I'm working on it. We all deserve a second chance. Even if it happens in that Groundhog Day-like way of experiencing the same day twice, courtesy of Australian time.

The Hasidic Numa Numa

If you haven't gotten the flavour of Jeremy Moses's writing, what are you waiting for? Here's the direct link on MyJewishLearning.com to read the entire past year and a half of his blog oeuvre. Study it. Memorize it. You will never again be at a loss for a joke, a witty comeback, or an in-depth analysis of a prime-time reality TV show. Or just watch this incredibly viral video of Jeremy setting the world record for matzah eating:

We're proud like parents that Jeremy has a new weekly column on National Lampoon's site. Each week, he's reviewing a YouTube classic video in exhaustive detail and deciding whether it's one for the ages.

Probably more than any other viral video, “Numa Numa Guy” has infiltrated popular culture the most. Quick word of advice to all Moldovan pop group managers. If you get a call from one of Mr. Brolsma’s people, never call him back. Ever. They owe that guy millions of dollars. Trillions. Basically every cent they’ve ever made since 2005 should go straight to Brolsma.....

First, a hypothetical. Let’s say that Gary Brolsma were to appear in a rap video, dancing along side Ludicrous, or 50 Cent, or whoever the young people are listening to these days. Would the video automatically become cooler? Just think about that for a second. The fact that it doesn’t automatically seem out of the question for a rapper to invite Brolsma to be in a video dancing with hot women with champagne on their breasts (and the fact that you’re probably wondering in your head if Brolsma might actually have already been in such a video) is all the proof you need.

His first review, he told us, was of the Numa Numa video -- one of the most popular videos of the Internet world. Which, of course, I nodded and said I'd seen a million times. Which, of course, I'd never seen.

"What!?" Jeremy exploded. "You've never seen Numa Numa? Seven hundred million people have seen Numa Numa."

"Or," I countered, "One person has seen Numa Numa seven hundred million times."

We all logged onto the National Lampoon site the second it was posted (remember: proud parents, proud parents!). Then we saw the video. Then I realised: I have heard the Numa Numa song. About a million times. It's the exact same song -- with slightly altered lyrics -- that played when I lived in Israel, climbing the mountain to Shimon bar Yochai's grave in Meron, dancing with the Hasidic hippies in Crack Square, or just turning the corner into an unexpected party in the middle of nowhere.

Yep: it's the Na Nach Nachman song.


It's hard to explain exactly what this song signifies to me. A combination of religious ecstasy, triumphant dancing, and the cheap religious books that the caravans of Hasidic rave-boys sell across Israel (neon covers! kabbalistic wisdom! all yours for, what, the Israeli equivalent of $2.50?). Yes, there's definitely a lot of drug use among a minority of Na-Nachers. And yes, it's not a sustainable lifestyle -- that is, jumping around to trance music and going village-to-village selling books all day. But for what it is, I think, more than anything, it's really an expression of bittul, the idea of nullifying your own will before God's. The idea that, even if you look like a total dork when you dance (and I do) (but who doesn't, when you're hopping up and down?), you're fulfilling Rebbe Nachman's entreaty that "it's a huge commandment to be happy."

And -- and this, I think, is the hidden mystical dimension of Jeremy's column -- who exemplifies this total self-nullification better than the Numa Numa kid?

Or, like Rebbe Nachman says, Mai yahi, mai yahoo hoo.

Eat Matzah Fast

Jeremy Moses of MyJewishLearning just took it upon himself to break the world record for matzah eating. (Disclaimer: before he tried, there was no world record for matzah eating.)

Every year at seder, we're supposed to eat the entire 2/3 of a piece of matzah (okay, that's if you're eating shmura matzah -- 1 entire sheet, if you go by the machine-made *ahem* cheating *ahem* kind) in one action, without swallowing. Add that to the fact that you're not supposed to have eaten matzah at all in the past 30 days...Well, if you can get it down in one gulp, you're kind of a hero.

(Jeremy also wants me to add that, when he was practicing, he did it much faster than he did on the video. So there.)

Can anyone break it?