• A popular Israeli TV series titled "Srugim," which is about  Modern Orthodox Jewish singles, is now available in the US on The Jewish Channel. Don't speak Hebrew? No problem. English subtitles have been added. View a YouTube clip here. [via Jewlicious]
• Weighing in on the Women of the Wall situation in Israel, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said the Western Wall should be a national site and not a synagogue. [via JPost]
• Also related to Women of the Wall, Haaretz reports that Jews living in the diaspora are becoming increasingly concerned about Israel's standing as a pluralistic state.
• In this article Slate takes a closer look at the idea that kosher and halal foods are better for the environment. [via Tablet]
• Psychic Uri Geller is suing CNN for reporting that he betrayed Michael Jackson for $200,000. [via YNet]
• More than 40 Nobel Prize winners have added their signatures to an ad denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The ad was created by Elie Wiesel and condemns Iran for human rights violations while also warning that the country's nuclear program is a threat to humanity. [via Haaretz]
• According to this Fox News article, Mel Gibson questioned a Jewish reporter's impartiality when he asked whether Gibson's eight-year absence from film making had anything to do with the anti-Semitic remarks he made to a police officer in 2006.
• This is an interesting LA Times article about how the original script for "The Wolf Man" reflected the writer's experiences as a German Jew who fled Nazi persecution in Europe.
• During a town-hall meeting last week President Obama received a hostile question about Israel and Egypt's relations with Palestinians. The questioner asked: "Why have we not condemned Israel and Egypt's human rights violations against the occupied Palestinian people?" View President Obama's response here.

Last year a London-based Jewish school known as JFS denied admission to a 12-year-old Jewishly observant boy because his mother converted to Judaism through the Reform movement. The school maintained that, although the father is Jewish, the boy is not Jewish according to halakha. According to Orthodox standards, only someone born to a Jewish mother or to a woman who converted to Orthodox Judaism can be considered Jewish.

The family sued JFS for discrimination and though they initially lost, the case eventually reached Britain's Supreme Court. It decided that evaluating prospective students based upon their mother's heritage is "by definition discriminatory and in violation of the 1976 Race Relations Act." The decision overruled the ability of any denomination of Judaism to define Jewishness and also made it possible for non-Jewish students to apply for admission to JFS.

Now British Jews are divided and many of them are asking: should British courts have the right to say who is Jewish? And, what's more, should they be able to interfere with how Jewish schools regulate their admissions policy? According to the JTA, "leaders of the non-Orthodox movements... have praised the stance, but Orthodox leaders remain unsatisfied by the process."

You can read more about the ongoing story here. What are your thoughts? Were the boy's parents justified in suing JFS? Do you agree with the Supreme Court's decision?

Craigslist is one of those places where you can find just about anything and, according to the "wanted" listing submitted to the site yesterday, one family jokingly hopes that a rabbi trained in the dark arts is among the many resources to be found:

Looking for Rabbi Versed in DARK TALMUDIC ARTS to create GOLEM.
Date: 2010-01-30, 6:19PM

WANTED: One Rabbi versed in the Dark Talmudic Arts to create one Golem for household of three. Golem will perform rudimentary household chores such as dishes & sweeping, basic Math Tutoring for our daughter in 3rd grade and basic household security. Golem must be obedient and fairly unobtrusive on our every-day lives.

We will supply all materials needed (clay, twigs, calfskin parchment, etc) needed to create the Golem. All you need to do is use your magical ancient Rabbinic skills to animate said Golem!

Please note! We are looking for a Rabbi to create a Golem: an anthropomorphic being created from intimate matter from Jewish folk-lore, NOT Gollum: a former Hobbit turned into monster and looking for "precious". This is important! We have no interest in living with Gollum. We want a Golem. Please respond, serious inquiry only.

• Strips of paper reading "KILL JEWS" in capital letters were found littering the streets of Brooklyn from Fourth to Ninth streets on Wednesday. [via The Brooklyn Paper]
• An Orthodox woman named Sara Hurwitz has been given the title of "rabbah" - a feminized form of rabbi - to emphasize that she is "a rabbi with the additional quality of a distinct woman's voice." [via JTA]
• An annual report by the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism found that incidents of anti-semitism increased dramatically in 2009, particularly in Western Europe. [via JTA]
• Jewish-American author J.D. Salinger died at age 91.
• El-Al airlines has responded to last week's tefillin incident, in which a Jewish teen was removed from a U.S. Airways flight because the flight attendant thought his phylacteries were a bomb. El-Al's newest poster shows tefillin against the backdrop of a blue sky and reads: "Fly with us!  Our cabin crew will know how to 'defuse' them..." [via IsraelNN via Tablet]
• This week was the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. President Obama recorded a message to commemorate the day.
• The Bnei Akiva religious youth movement in Israel threatened to boycott an IDF memorial ceremony because the choir included female singers. A compromise was eventually reached where women would not be allowed to sing until the event was over and the Bnei Akiva folks had left. [via The Forward]
• Jewish characters in the movies "An Education" and "A Serious Man" are causing some to wonder whether anti-semitism is alive and well in America. Or maybe Jews are just paranoid. [via The Jewish Journal]

Photo by Stephen Brown / The Brooklyn Paper