• Israeli nationalist organization Lehava is imploring supermodel Bar Rafeli not to marry Leonardo DiCaprio. The organization specializes in helping Jewish women break-up with non-Jewish partners and said in an open letter to Rafeli: "Assimilation has forever been one of the enemies of the Jewish people... Don't marry Leonardo DiCaprio, don't harm  the future generations." [Gawker]
• A British teacher traumatized her 11-year-old students by staging a Holocaust "game" that involved telling students born in Jan-March they had lower IQs than their peers and that they would be taken from their parents.  The students were told they must wear yellow hats, report to the library and that they might end up in an orphanage. [YNet via Tablet]
• A bill in the Knesset would amend the Law of Return, making many converts to Judaism ineligible for full Israeli citizenship. [Forward]
• In an article titled "The Tribe That Bites" Forward writer Allison Gaudet Yarrow explores the "unlikely rise of the Jewish vampire." Did you know some Jewish legends claim Esau was a vampire? [Forward]
• If you watched the Oscars on Sunday then you saw Golda Meir biographer Elinor Burkett pull a "Kanye" when Roger Ross Williams attempted to accept the Oscar for best documentary short. Apparently there is a bit of  a feud between the two, involving party snubs and Williams' mother blocking Burkett with her cane. [Salon via Forward]

While haroset is a required item on your seder plate, there's nothing that says it has to be made of the standard apples, nuts and wine. Check out these haroset ingredients from around the world, courtesy of Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner and JewishFreeware.org:

• Babylon (Saadia Gaon): 1 cup date syrup to 4 cup crushed nuts, 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds, 4  cup wine vinegar.
• Bukhara: walnuts, almonds, dates, raisins, apples, sweet wine.
• Greece: almonds, raisins mashed in vinegar, pepper, good pinch of finely ground brick.
• India: dates cooked into a syrup and sprinkled with ground walnuts.
• Ireland: apples, cinnamon, sweet wine, almonds.
• Italy: bananas, dates, apples, walnuts, orange including peel, sweet Malaga wine, matzah meal.
• Morocco: seven species. Also dates, almonds, other nuts, pomegranate seeds, figs, wine, cinnamon.
• Persia: dates, pistachios, almonds, apples, raisins, orange, banana, pomegranate seeds, sweet wine,  vinegar, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper.
• Syria: dates cooked to a jam consistency.
• Turkey: sweet apples, dates, raisins, juice and grated zest of orange, wine, sugar, walnuts.

You can download the entire list (which is part of a packet containing activities, recipes and history) by clicking here. Enjoy!

In this "Ask the Rabbi" post, Orthodox Rabbi Ari Enkin answers a question about whether tortillas are kosher for Passover (Pesach). Please feel free to respectfully share your thoughts in the comments section.

Q. Dear Rabbi Enkin - My boyfriend and me are having a debate about Passover food that we're hoping you can resolve for us. It has to do with what is kosher, specifically: are corn or flour tortillas kosher for Passover? I know that traditionally they are not because they are not matzah, which is made in a specific way under the supervision of a rabbi. But if the key is that matzah is unleavened bread which the Israelites made quickly before leaving Egypt, why don't tortillas fit the bill?  Especially in the case of flour tortillas, they are essentially flour and water that is quickly baked and does not rise - same as matzah. Besides, the Israelites didn't have time to inspect the matzah before fleeing Egypt - I don't even think there were rabbis at that point right? So please explain to us rabbi. Are tortillas kosher for passover and if not, why not?

A. First of all, one can never judge food products by the ingredients alone. All food must have a hechsher - kosher supervision. This is especially true on Pesach. A company is not even required to declare all the ingredients on their label.

The issue with corn tortillas on Pesach is that of "Kitniot". Kitniot is a category of food which is not technically chametz, though Ashkenazi custom is to not to eat such products. This is because kitniot products either look like chametz or are used in the same manner as chametz. Due to the fear that kitniot might become confused with actual chametz, Ashkenazi rabbis decided to ban kitniot several hundred yers ago.

Therefore, if you are Ashkenazi, you would not be permitted to eat corn tortillas (or corn flour, or rice, or beans, etc) even if you would be able to find such a product with a kosher-for-passover label. Sefardic Jews never accepted upon themselves the ban on kitniot and as such, they are permitted to eat such products during Pesach.

Nevertheless, to my knowledge, there does not exist kosher-for-passover corn tortillas of any form, so the question is only academic. The same holds true for flour tortillas.

I hope this helps!
Rabbi Ari Enkin

The reader who submitted this question also had a follow up query, as to whether flour tortillas could be consider kosher for Passover if they were made from scratch at home. Rabbi Enkin's answer is below:

Any combination of flour and water can be deemed matza if the entire process from the mixing of the flour and water until it is placed in the oven is no more than 18 minutes. Call it matza, tortillas, or bagels --- it's matza. But for reasons beyond the scope of this posting - it really is not possible, at least not practical, to make these tortillas on Pesach.

Image via Getty Images / Christian Science Monitor

• A cartoon poster depicting Israel as a hungry diner carving up Palestinians is drawing fire in Germany, where it was part of a display called the "Wailing Wall." The creator says it is meant as "a sarcastic expression of the Israeli army in Gaza," but Tablet writer Marc Tracy says the poster is a depiction of blood libel. Do you agree?
• This is sad. The Orthodox rabbinical status of Sara Hurwitz is being revoked. [JTA]
• Do you own all of Dalia Carmel's six essential Jewish cookbooks? Carmel has 1,500 cookbooks in her apartment but that's nothing compared to the 10,000 cookbooks she previously owned, about 8,000 of which are now at New York University's Fales Library. [Haaretz]
• "Why are there no works of modern fantasy that are profoundly Jewish in the way that, say, 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe' is Christian? Why no Jewish [C.S.] Lewises, and why no Jewish Narnias?" Read one writer's answer here. [NYT]
• According to this BBC article, the eldest son of a founding member of the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, worked as a spy for Israel for more than ten years. [BBC]
• Soon-to-be bar mitzvah boy Scott Ballan won't be having his bar mitzvah at Yankee stadium any longer because of a boxing match between junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman and former welterweight champion Miguel Cotto. But the "entire family will be guests at the fight, and Foreman and Arum have both agreed to meet with the boy." Lucky kid! [ESPN]
• All the snow we've been getting recently is causing problems for Orthodox Jews. The snow has knocked down portions of a ritual boundary called an "eruv," which extends the boundaries of the home and makes it possible for observant Jews to carry things on Shabbat. Without this boundary, it is prohibited to carry anything outside the home. [NYT]

Image via Tablet