Top Purim Videos for 2014

Purim is here! In preparing for my annual rundown of the top videos for Purim this year a few thoughts emerged: First, nothing really impressed me this year. Second, there wasn't a lot of creativity (did a memo go out limiting people to only use Pharrell Williams' song "Happy" and "Let It Go" -- the theme from the movie Frozen?). Third, where's this year's contribution from the Maccabeats? Maybe they're too busy touring around the world and appearing on TV with Katie Couric?

I'm hopeful that the creative geniuses out there will get working on next year's Purim spoofs and parodies and come up with some fun videos that are more creative than the t-shirt above. It's actually easier for me to choose the best Purim videos when there's more to choose from. While it was slim pickens this year, there are some fun ones below. So Happy Purim... and here are 2014's top Purim videos:

HAPPY Purim (by Pharrell)



The Haman Remembrance - Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan



Megillas Lester Official Trailer



Kinderlach - Purim Chagiga



Miracle - Gad Elbaz and Naftali Kalfa featuring Ari Lesser



"What Does Haman Say" by A.K.A. Pella



Star Wars Lego Movie Purim Trailer



Let it Go Frozen - It's a Purim Song



Michelle Citrin - Shake Your Grogger (A Purim Song)



Bob Dylan Purim Shpiel (Robert Zimmerman)



What Does Purim Say? (What Does the Fox Say?)



Everything Is Purim (from the Lego Movie)

Jason Bateman Schools Jon Stewart in Yiddish

The great Yiddishist Leo Rosten was hopefully rolling (with laughter) in his grave last night. The late author of the book "The Joy of Yiddish" worked very hard during his lifetime to bring the dying Yiddish language into the mainstream.

Last night's five minute dialogue between actor Jason Bateman and Jon Stewart included more Yiddish words than we typically hear on television. It was as if Bateman wanted to drop some of his well-rehearsed Yiddishisms during his interview on The Daily Show. As soon as Jason Bateman sat down he told Jon Stewart that his "It's nice when nice happens to nice" opening comment sounded very Yiddish. And from there it became a Yiddish word competition between the two men.

Jason Bateman explained that he recently learned the Yiddish word "chazerai" which seemed to confuse the Jewish host of The Daily Show (the former Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz) who mistakenly said the word means a guy who's a bit of a chazer (pig). Bateman correctly defined chazerai as garbage, but Stewart disagreed. At the end of the show Stewart actually returned to publicly apologize to Bateman for correcting his Yiddish since chazerai indeed does mean garbage.

Bateman then threw out mishegas and Stewart responded with meshugena. The conversation then turned to Bateman's self-identification as a goy (gentile) and his experience at a friend's Passover seder. Here's the video of them shmoozing on the show last night:

Zei gezunt to Jason Bateman and Jon Stewart... and thanks for the early freilich Purim gift! 

Did Shabbat Save a Life from the Malaysia Airlines Flight?

Purim begins this Saturday night and once again the Jewish people will tell the story of our salvation. We will listen to the words of Megillat Esther, the story of how our ancestors were miraculously saved from their tragic death.

Indeed that story is one that celebrates life. The Jewish people were saved from death in ancient Shushan (Persia), as the story goes, because the heroes Mordechai and Esther rose up and saved their people from destruction.

As we are preparing for the Purim holiday we are also glued to the TV waiting for any news of the fate of those aboard the Malaysia Airlines Flight #370 which disappeared somewhere between Kuala Lumpur and its destination of Beijing. Oftentimes when a tragedy such as a plane crash or a terrorist event occurs there are those who claim that by some miraculous turn of events they evaded the tragedy. Sometimes these stories are accurate and other times they are debunked by websites like Snopes.com.

I learned this morning of a story that has been circulated on the Web about a Jewish man who tried to book a flight on that Malasia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, however the travel agent being an ultra-Orthodox Jew refused to book him on that flight since it would require traveling on Shabbat. (According to Jewish law even arranging for another Jew to travel on the Sabbath is in violation of Jewish law.) The story, as reported in a blog by Daniel Eleff, the CEO of online travel agency DansDeals.com, claims that his friend was the Sabbath observant travel agent who refused to book the man, whom we only know as Andrew, on that flight.

WhatsApp's Jan Koum and the Kiev Protests

With the ongoing political uprising and violent demonstrations in Kiev, my heart breaks for the people of Ukraine. I first visited Ukraine in 2005, but only spent a short time in the capital city of Kiev as my group's main purpose was meeting with Jewish students in Kharkov (Kharkiv) and the surrounding areas like Konotop and Sumy. I returned to Ukraine a year ago in February 2013 on an American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)/United Jewish Communities (UJC) Rabbinic Cabinet Mission and spent much more time in Kiev, where I was able to feel the tension in the air.

In Kiev, political protests calling for the downfall of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych took a violent turn at the end of last month and dozens have died in the fighting. Yanukovych, ousted from power in the coup, has fled Kiev. The fact that Kiev has exploded in violence over the past month really wasn't surprising to me. In the almost 25 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has never really felt completely independent. On both of my visits to Ukraine I heard members of the local Jewish community as well as professionals with the JDC ("The Joint") explain how Ukraine was actually ruled by several oligarchs, including some Jewish oligarchs (Vladimir Putin recently slammed these wealthy, influential Jewish families).

I spent an hour at this sick, elderly woman's apartment in Kiev listening to her (through a translator) explain how she survives on very little assistance from the government and the JDC.

Extreme poverty has plagued the Jewish community of Ukraine, which has been estimated to be around 300,000 members (some argue it is closer to 100,000). There are tens of thousands of at-risk elderly and families with young children who are struggling each day. Today, the JDC works with the local community to help save Ukraine’s poorest Jews by providing for their basic daily needs, revitalizing Jewish life by supporting synagogues, Jewish camps and Jewish community centers, and through developing Jewish leaders among Ukraine's Jewish youth.

Ukraine is deeply divided between eastern regions that are largely pro-Russian and western areas that seek closer ties with the European Union. The ongoing political protests were set off by Yanukovych’s shelving of an agreement with the EU in November. Demonstrators have cited political corruption and human rights abuses in their calls for Yanukovych's resignation.

If there can be a kernel of optimism in Ukraine's struggles during its independence from the Soviet Union in the past two decades its the success stories of some of the entrepreneurs who have emerged from Ukraine to form flourishing publicly traded companies.

At the end of last month the world quickly learned of the rags-to-riches story of Jan Koum. The 38-year-old Jewish founder of WhatsApp grew up in Ukraine in poor conditions. (As an aside, I'm the same age as Koum, meaning that while I was celebrating my bar mitzvah in Michigan in 1989, he was still a Soviet Refusenik in the USSR unable to observe this Jewish rite.) Koum's messaging company was bought by Facebook for $19 billion in a deal announced by Mark Zuckerberg in February. WhatsApp's 450 million customers use the app as an easy way to send messages across borders and between different mobile devices. As the crisis in Ukraine escalated, Koum posted photos of revolutionaries and tweeted "praying for peace and quick resolution to the crisis #ukraine #freedom."

Koum grew up in a village near Kiev and immigrated to Mountain View, California as a teen along with thousands of other Soviet Jews as part of the exodus from the former Soviet Union after its collapse. According to Forbes, Koum was "the only child of a housewife and a construction manager who built hospitals and schools. His house [outside of Kiev] had no hot water, and his parents rarely talked on the phone in case it was tapped by the State."

With government assistance, Koum and his mother first settled in a small two-bedroom apartment in Mountain View, Calif., when he was 16 (his father, who died in 1997, never made it to the U.S.). To make ends meet, his mother (who brought pens and notebooks from the former Soviet Union so she wouldn't have to buy school supplies in the U.S.) babysat while Jan swept a grocery store.

In an interview with Wired's editor David Rowan (video), Jan Koum said his interest in WhatsApp was partially inspired by his memories of how difficult and costly it had been as a new immigrant to stay in touch with relatives back in Ukraine.

While Jan Koum's story from Jewish Refusenik growing up outside of Kiev to a billionaire tech icon is inspirational, it's not the first of its kind. Other Silicon Valley success stories that began in the Jewish community of the former Soviet Union include Google's Russian-born Jewish co-founder Sergey Brin and Max Levchin, the Jewish Kiev-born co-founder of Paypal and chairman of Yelp.

Sergey Brin's early childhood in communist Russia contributed to Google's famous "Don’t Be Evil" motto. In Mark Malseed's insightful biography of Google's Brin in a 2007 article in Moment Magazine, we see how the anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union played a major role in Brin's upbringing. Sergey's father Michael Brin explained how he was forced to abandon his dream of becoming an astronomer even before he reached college because the Communist Party heads barred Jews from upper professional ranks by denying them entry to universities. "Jews were excluded from the physics department, in particular, at the prestigious Moscow State University, because Soviet leaders did not trust them with nuclear rocket research. Unfortunately for Michael, astronomy fell under the rubric of physics."

Malseed writes, "The Brins' story provides me with a clue to the origins of Sergey's entrepreneurial instincts. His parents, academics through and through, deny any role in forming their son's considerable business acumen -- 'He did not learn it from us, absolutely not our area,' Michael says. Yet Sergey's willingness to take risks, his sense of whom to trust and ask for help, his vision to see something better and the conviction to go after it—these traits are evident in much of what Michael Brin did in circumventing the system and working twice as hard as others to earn his doctorate, then leave the Soviet Union."

Max Levchin grew up as a Soviet Refusenik in Kiev

Like Sergey Brin and Jan Koum, the Kiev-born Max Levchin's story of emigration from the former Soviet Union has contributed to his vast success as a tech titan and hugely successful entrepreneur. Life in Kiev for the Levchin family was difficult and they endured virulent anti-Semitism. Levchin's grandfather was a prominent physics professor in Kiev, but was very uncomfortable with Ukraine’s anti-Semitism, so he encouraged the family to emigrate. Since Levchin's mother had an uncle in the Chicago area, his family moved there where he spent his last two years of high school.

Living in Chicago in 1991, the 16-year-old Levchin completed high school and went on to study computer science at the University of Illinois, earning his bachelor degree. While studying there he was involved in the establishment of two Internet orientated companies, NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media. Following graduation, Levchin founded his third online enterprise in partnership with another fellow graduate Peter Thiel. The company was originally named Fieldlink, but later changed to Confinity. It was at Confinity, that Levchin, Thiel and Elon Musk developed PayPal. Levchin founded Slide in 2004, which was sold to Google in August 2010 for $182 million. He also helped start Yelp.com and is the largest shareholder today. In 2011, Levchin founded HVF (standing for Hard, Valuable, and Fun) that was intended to explore and fund projects and companies in the area of leveraging data, such as data from analog sensors. The following year Affirm was spun out of HVF, with the goal of building the next generation credit network. In May 2013, HVF helped launched Glow, a company with an eponymous app to help parents conceive babies.

Today the Kiev-born Jan Koum has a net worth of $6.8 billion, the Russian-born Sergey Brin is worth about $27.7 billion and the Kiev-born Max Levchin has a net worth of about $300 million. These three young tycoons are not members of any Russian or Ukrainian oligarchs; each man has his own impressive story of growing up as a Jewish Refusenik in the former Soviet Union and, despite that childhood, becoming a tech superstar.

While these three Jewish entrepreneurs with roots in the former Soviet Union have become immensely successful and astronomically wealthy, there are thousands of other young businessmen with similar stories who have become very successful, albeit on a smaller level. In the Metro Detroit Jewish community, there are several young entrepreneurs who cite their upbringing behind the wall of Soviet communism as their motivation for business success today.

Vladimir Gendelman (far right) with other young former Soviet Jews who have built profitable companies in Metro Detroit.

Vladimir Gendelman, 39, of West Bloomfield, a suburb of Detroit, founded Company Folders, Inc., which produces custom made folders and other promotional print items using the latest printing technology. Gendelman was raised in the former Soviet Union. He explains that "growing up in Kharkov, Ukraine my family experienced poor living conditions and seeing the opportunities that America had to offer made me believe that I can make a difference one day." In Ukraine, Gendelman points out that his family wasn't considered "customers" because they were Jewish. Instead, he remembers waiting in long, uncomfortable lines to receive basic goods. "For that reason, I make a point to always provide my clients with the highest standards of customer service and print quality."

Gendelman says he's happy the Ukrainian people have risen up against the corrupted government and are seeing the importance of moving toward the European Union rather than Russia. He hopes that one day things will quiet down and Ukraine will move forward in a more Westernized manner. Regarding the rags-to-riches story of Jan Koum, Gendelman remarks, "that is a great story similar to others such as Sergey Brin, but the fact that Koum's parents both died (Koum's mother died in 2000) while he was young and before he achieved success makes it much more dramatic. I can't even imagine how much he would want his mom to know that he is a billionaire now."

As the world continues to watch the escalating political uprising and violent protests in Kiev, it's important to understand that there have been some remarkable success stories to emerge from behind the Iron Curtain. Although Ukraine has been free from the grip of Moscow for almost 25 years, it is still struggling to find its true independence from Russia. The wealthy, controlling oligarchs of Ukraine will not be a positive influence for young Ukrainians in the Jewish community, but hopefully these successful entrepreneurs who emerged as wealthy victors in the technology age despite their challenging upbringing as Soviet Refuseniks will provide the inspiration to the next generation of Russian and Ukrainian Jews.

Harold Ramis and Groundhog Day's Torah Metaphor

Sadly, Harold Ramis passed away yesterday at the early age of 69. Famous for so many great movies including Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Caddyshack, National Lampoon's Animal House, Analyze This, National Lampoon's Vacation and Stripes. Ramis also acted and appeared in such films as Knocked Up, As Good As It Gets, Airheads and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (where he played L'chaim).

Not a religious Jew, Harold Ramis did don a tallit and gave a terrific sermon on Rosh Hashanah at Aitz Hayim Center for Jewish Living a few years ago. Here are the videos of that presentation about Jewish creativity:



For many, Harold Ramis' finest writing contribution was the 1993 classic Groundhog Day. In a talk at the Hudson Union Society in 2009, Ramis explained some of the allure behind Groundhog Day. While Zen Buddhists find it to be very Buddhist, Christians see the Christian metaphors in the film. The psychiatric community told Ramis that they thought the movie was a metaphor for psychoanalysis. At the 2:39 mark of this talk, Harold Ramis shares how there is a connection between Groundhog Day and the Torah. As a Jew, Ramis explains that Jews respond to the movie so well because the Torah is read anew every year and yet we see the same story with different meanings.

Hashtag on a Wedding Kippah

Reform Jewish wedding, Conservative Jewish wedding or Orthodox Jewish wedding... they all have one thing in common -- the personalized yarmulke. It's impossible to go to a Jewish wedding and not receive a keepsake kippah with the bride and groom's names imprinted on the inside along with the wedding date.

Well, these personalized kippot have been fairly standard for a very long time. Some Jewish wedding couples choose to include the Hebrew date of the wedding along with the secular date and some couples have their names printed in Hebrew as well.

For the first time I saw a couple include a hashtag on the inside of their wedding kippahs. Hashtags are used on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Hashtags are a word or phrase preceded by a hash or pound sign (#) that are used to identify messages on a specific topic making it easy to search. Oftentimes at conventions, conferences, events and sports games a hashtag is recommended so users can follow the related posts.

Brian Stelter and Jamie Shupak's wedding kippah with the #thestelters hashtag

Making Jewish Summer Camp More Affordable

Jewish day school parents will soon be sitting in crowded movie theaters able to relate with the family on the big screen. "That's us!" they'll say as they watch Zach Braff and Kate Hudson star in the upcoming movie "Wish I Was Here." In the film, which premiered last month at the Sundance Film Festival and has raised over $3 million of its $2 million goal on Kickstarter, Zach Braff plays Aidan Bloom. Bloom is a struggling actor living in suburban Los Angeles with his wife (Kate Hudson) and their two children. The couple is forced to pull their children from their Jewish day school after his dad, played by Mandy Patinkin, announces he is suffering from cancer and will no longer be able to pay tuition. Rather than send them to the local public school, Braff's character decides to home school the kids.

Zach Braff co-wrote the script with his brother Adam. He told the Hollywood Reporter that it's based on their real life childhood. “It was kind of a combination of both of our lives,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We did have a very strong Conservative/Orthodox upbringing." Many families will be able to commiserate with the challenge of affording day school tuition.

And when parents choose to send the children to Jewish overnight camp in addition to Jewish day school, the bills really start adding up. Just ask any Jewish family that sends their children to private Jewish day school and a Jewish summer camp about the affordability of such endeavors and they’ll use words such as “sacrifice,” “hardship” and “priorities.” With the cost of Jewish day school tuition for one child varying from $10,000 all the way up to $40,000 per year, more Jewish families who desire a day school Jewish education for their children are finding it cost prohibitive even with financial aid.

Add to those rising costs, the additional expense of a month or two at a Jewish summer camp and families are having to just say “no” to their kids. In the new economy, the Jewish middle class has virtually vanished. Many families who once would be considered upper middle class are forking over their tax returns hoping for subsidies to make day school and camp tuition affordable. New organizations like the Affordable Jewish Education Project (AJEP) are sprouting up seeking to imagine alternative solutions to the economic crisis. Plain and simple it’s becoming cost prohibitive to raise a Jewish family according to the values of day school and summer camp.

Campers and staff at Camp Tamarack in Ortonville, Michigan

Bridging the Tech Generation Gap

For the second year Adat Shalom Synagogue brought two generations together for “Tech Connect.” This program, conceived of by Charlotte Dubin and endowed in memory of her late husband Harold, has Jewish teens teaching the older generation about new technology. Tech Connect II took place on two Sundays at the Farmington Hills-based Conservative synagogue.

A teen and a senior at Adat Shalom Synagogue's 2nd annual Tech Connect

As I did at the inaugural Tech Connect, I opened the program with some thoughts on how technology has changed our lives. After speaking about how the Internet can be used these days to do everything from purchase an airline ticket to order photo prints of grandchildren to download a new pattern for the sewing machine, I watched as savvy teens assisted computer-challenged boomers with notebook computers and tablets. It struck me that this program should be replicated around the world because there are many Boomers and seniors who do not have young grandchildren around to help learn today’s tech gadgets.

Randi Zuckerberg of Zuckerberg Media with Rabbi Jason Miller at CES 2014

In her book “Dot Complicated,” Randi Zuckerberg writes about something that many of us have recognized. The older generations learn from the younger generations when it comes to computers and technology. I can’t count the number of times an adult has remarked to me how a child taught them to use a new smartphone. Perhaps this is no different than generations ago when adults couldn’t program a VCR or answering machine and relied on their children to do it.

Hasidic Dancing in Interstate Traffic

A group of Hasidic students (bachurim) from Michigan were caught simcha dancing on Interstate I-80 during a four-hour traffic standstill over three years ago. However, the news report with a short video clip is once again making the rounds on the Web.

Most likely this fun video has found new life following the many snow-related traffic issues around the country, most notably the traffic standstill in Atlanta which Jon Stewart dubbed "South Parked" on The Daily Show.

Watching this video reminded me of R.E.M.'s great video for "Everybody Hurts," in which the band is stuck in a traffic jam along the double deck portions of I-10 near the I-35 Interchange in Downtown San Antonio, Texas. The music video shows the people in other cars while subtitles of their thoughts appear on screen. At the end of the video directed by Jake Scott, all the people leave their cars and walk instead; then they vanish. The video was heavily inspired by the traffic jam in the opening dream sequence of Fellini's 8½. Instead of getting out and just walking around, these five young guys turned up the music and started dancing like they were at a freilich (fun) wedding.

I was also reminded of the time as a pre-teen when my family was driving back from Toronto and a two-hour standstill ensued on the highway. My brother and I took our baseball mitts and a baseball out of the car and started playing catch on the side of the highway. The moral of the story is that highway standstills are horrible, but you have to make the best out of the situation.

Here's the video of the I-80 dancing.

Rabbi Arie Hasit - Facebook's 4th Account

I was in Jerusalem in December 2012 with a dozen of my Conservative rabbi colleagues on a mission to support our sister movement in Israel -- the Masorti Movement. At a lovely dinner on the first evening of our stay at the Mamila Hotel in Jerusalem I was seated next to Arie Hasit. The two of us immediately began to talk over appetizers and commenced a game of Jewish geography. Turns out we know countless mutual people. As a high school student Arie was very active in United Synagogue Youth (USY) and knew many of my colleagues who were youth directors or working for USY international headquarters in New York during Arie's high school years. Now, Arie is a student at Machon Schechter (Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies) studying to be a Conservative rabbi and also working as the Acting Rabbi of Naom, Masorti's youth movement, where he's doing wonderful and important work.

Most of my colleagues on that mission traveled back to the United States a few days later before Shabbat, but I chose to extend my stay for a Shabbat in Jerusalem. Rather than visiting friends for Shabbat I took Arie up on his kind invitation to have dinner with him and some friends at his apartment in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Today marks ten years since Mark Zuckerberg founded The Facebook in his Harvard dorm room.

It was over Shabbat dinner at his home that Arie mentioned that, like me, he was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) fraternity. I asked him which chapter of AEPi and he told me that he attended Harvard University. I explained that I had led a Birthright Israel trip for college students at both the University of Michigan as well as Harvard back in 2004 and of course he knew many of the students on my Birthright trip. Knowing that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was also a brother of AEPi at Harvard, I asked him the obvious question: "So, were you friends with Zuck?"

That's when Arie Hasit looked up from his salad and told me that he was Number Four. "Wait a second, you had the fourth Facebook account ever?" I asked him incredulously.

Rabbinical Student Arie Hasit representing the Masorti Movement at the Tel Aviv Pride Parade
(Photo Courtesy of Arie Hasit)

It's a story that Arie no doubt had recounted many times since his time at Harvard. I always enjoyed telling people that I had one of the first Facebook accounts in Michigan since I had known about The Facebook and as soon as the University of Michigan was brought into The Facebook, I used my umich.edu e-mail account (I worked for Michigan Hillel) and signed up. But Arie clearly had me beat. After three of The Facebook's co-founders created their accounts, Arie Hasit became the fourth user on the famous social networking site.