• The 2010 edition of the Nice Jewish Guys calender is now available. And here you were wondering what to get your girlfriends for Chanukkah. [via Jewcy]
• A 700 year old Torah scroll from pre-Inquisition Spain - the oldest complete scroll in existence - was sold by Sotheby's to a private collector for $398,500. [via Tablet]
• The White House has appointed a new "U.S. State Department special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism." [via Forward]
• Dozens of Zionist rabbis are praising Israeli soldiers who refuse to obey military orders to evacuate settlements. [via Haaretz]
• Artist Richard Kamler was barred from displaying a collage made of cut out portions of the Torah and the Koran at an exhibition in New Haven, Connecticut. Said one of the exhibition organizers: "You're not going to cry 'fire' in a crowded movie theater, even if you have free speech." [via Tablet via NH Independent]
• Negotiations for a prisoner swap that would free Gilad Shalit have stalled over the list of top militants who would be handed over in the exchange. [via AP]
• The airline easyJet  is withdrawing all copies of its in-flight magazine, easyJet Traveller, after a fashion spread was published depicting models at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. The photo shoot took place without permission. [via NewStatesman]

Photo via Nice Jewish Guys

Over the past few days there is one question that has appeared in my inbox several times and that I've also heard discussed among friends and colleagues: Is turkey kosher? The general consensus seemed to be that no, turkey was not kosher. Being a vegetarian myself, I was hard pressed to weigh in on these conversations. Our Thanksgiving dinner consists of things like butternut squash lasagne, mashed potatoes, salads and freshly baked breads. Turkey? Not so much.

But today I decided to do some digging on the topic and discovered that, contrary to apparent popular belief, turkeys are indeed kosher. At one point their status was uncertain because turkeys were unfamiliar to the ancient rabbis and hence, they were not specifically identified as kosher animals. As a result, some people asked: sure, turkeys are birds but are they a kind of bird that is kosher?

There was much discussion on both sides of the debate, as Kahrut.com recounts. Some rabbis pondered whether turkeys could cross breed with chickens, and if so, what implications that might have in terms of its kosher status. Others pointed out that the wild turkey has three characteristics of a kosher bird: it "has a crop... it has an 'extra' toe, and its eggs have the indicators of kosher eggs." In the end many rabbinic authorities, including Rabbi Soloveitchik, attested to the acceptability of the turkey. One of the primary reasons behind their rulings (though by no means the only) was that the majority of the Jewish community had accepted turkey as a kosher species. As Kashrut.com concludes:

The turkey is no longer new and its kosher status has been addressed by both the great and not-so-great Jewish minds over 250 years and has received near-universal endorsement. To call it into question now is to impugn the dozens of responsa, and more so, the millions of honorable Jews, who have eaten turkey for almost half a millennium. That is not the Jewish way.

So that solves the mystery. Turkey is kosher and there is no reason you can't enjoy it as the centerpiece of your Thanksgiving table. (Also, here's an interesting side note: did you know that "at a whopping 26.9 pounds per capita in 1996, Israelis consumed about 45% more [turkeys] than Americans?" Who would have guessed!)

Related About.com articles:

• Should Jews Celebrate Thanksgiving?
• Why Is Kosher Turkey So Tasty?

Last week I wrote about an incident in Israel where a woman was arrested for wearing a prayer shawl. Many of you responded to the post (thank you) so I thought you might be interested in reading a letter from Nofrat Frenkel, the woman who was arrested, which appeared in The Forward today.

It begins: "Every morning, since I was 15, I have worn a tallit for morning prayer in my home. During my army service, I was forced to swallow many negative comments by other soldiers who prayed in the army synagogues, some of which did not even have a women's gallery, because female soldiers never set foot in them. After leaving the army, I began to visit the Kotel every Rosh Hodesh. The atmosphere at the Kotel, the feeling that all those women praying around me were also turning to God and pouring out their hearts to him, inspires me with the joy of Jewish fraternity. Here is one place in which, shoulder to shoulder, all the hearts are calling to God..."

The rest of Nofrat's letter can be read here. Responses from readers in the comments section are fascinating in and of themselves, ranging from "Kol HaKavod. You do us proud." to comments that accuse Frenkel of insecurity and throwing her beliefs in the face of other worshipers.

• Future rabbi Yuri Foreman has become Israel's first boxing world champion. [via Forward]
• Hundreds of people peacefully protested outside Sen. Joe Lieberman's Stamford, Connecticut home last Sunday to show their support for universal health care. "When we heard not only would he vote against it, but he'd use his power, his position as a swing vote ... to block it from coming to a vote, we had to send a message so he knows people who vote overwhelmingly favor the public option," said Rabbi Stephen Fuchs, of Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford. [via ConnPost]
• The White House has cut the guest list for its annual Hanukkah party and candle-lighting in half this year. Financial reasons were cited as the cause, but some rabbis think the cut might fuel "feelings in some quarters of the American Jewish community that the White House is giving them the cold shoulder." [via JPost]
• A Baptist congregation known for its anti-gay views has turned its attention to the Jewish community, protesting speeches by President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Jewish Federations of North America conference. Protesters carried signs that read "God Hates Jews" (among other things) and warned passersby that Jews would soon be in hell. [via USA Today]
• This November Costco plans to begin selling "The Illustrated Torah" at stores near significant Jewish populations. [via Forward]
• Apparently some folks are trying to turn dreidel spinning into a major league sport. [via Tablet]

Photo via Getty Images / Al Bello

A Polish historian named Piotr Buzek is using Facebook to increase Holocaust awareness. Buzek works for the Brama Grodzka Cultural Center in Lublin and created a profile for Henio Zytomirski, a young boy who died in a concentration camp. "Here at the center we have collected a lot of information about Henio's life, said Buzek, "and then I tried to imagine how this young boy experienced the world around him."

The resulting Facebook profile, which Buzek updates as if he were Henio, has touched the hearts of many and Henio's virtual self already has over 1,700 friends. "My name is Henio Zytomirski. I am seven-years-old. I live on 3 Szewska Street in Lublin," reads his profile information. A September 29, 2009 wall post reads:

"Winter has arrived. Every Jew must wear the Star of David with his last name. A lot has changed. German troops walk the streets. Mama says that I shouldn't be frightened, and always that everything is just fine. Always?"

An October 5, 2009 post later reads: "Grandpa says that the war will soon be over. He says that soldiers also have families. How is that possible? They have a family, but they kill families."

The Facebook page is a new way for people to learn about the Holocaust, making Henio more than just a name or a photograph. Commenters responding to his posts are simultaneously responding to Henio's experiences and coming to terms with the reality of the Holocaust.

"We wanted to use this new technology to help meet the goal of our center: to keep the memory of Jews in Lublin alive. We wanted an innovative way to share history. And with Henio's story, we wanted to reach out to a new audience," said Buzek.

[via Tablet]

Letters to a Dead Jewish Child [Ha'aretz]
Young Holocaust victim has over 1,700 friends on Facebook [Deutsche-Welle]

An Israeli woman was arrested for wearing a prayer shawl while worshiping at the Kotel. Nofrat Frenkel, a 4th year medical student at Ben Gurion University, was attending a prayer service with other members of Women of the Wall, a woman-led group that advocates for gender equality. On this particular morning the group had gathered to celebrate Rosh Chodesh Kislev and a new Sefer Torah donated to them by Temple Sinai, a Reform congregation in Pittsburgh. After singing Hallel the group of more than 40 women - sixteen of whom were wearing prayer shawls - decided to unveil the Torah. Soon afterward Frenkel, who was holding the Torah, was arrested by the police, who "threatened that she might not get a medical license because [now] she would have a felony on her record." Eventually she was released but is banned from visiting the wall for 15 days.

The arrest is the latest development in a disagreement between Women of the Wall and Orthodox rabbis who have called the women "deviants who serve equality." Although WoW has been holding prayer services at the Kotel to commemorate Rosh Hodesh for the past 21 years, as women they are not allowed to wear prayer shawls or read from the Torah. According to Ha'aretz, people are noticing the increasingly fundamentalist practices being enforced at the Kotel, with the end result being that many visitors leave the wall with negative memories of one of Judaism's most important sites.

Gawker posted an interesting YouTube video about Women of the Wall, which recounts how female worshipers have had chairs and feces thrown at them while praying. The video can be seen here. "Israel markets the wall as a place of national unity," says Anat Hoffman, founder of WoW, in the video. "How can there be unity when half the population is silenced?"

Image via Women of the Wall / Photo by Rahel Jaskow

Fredric Aranda has photographed the likes of HRH Prince Philip and Bill Clinton, but his most recent exhibition breaks away from GQ and Vanity Fair, where his photos so often appear. Titled "Kosherface," the collection of unexpected images focuses on Lubavitcher Jews and gives people a glimpse into the often insular world of Lubavitcher communities. The exhibition opens today at at Theprintspace Gallery in London and will run through Dec. 2nd.

Aranda began taking pictures of Hasidim while he was a student at Oxford and ended up living in the home of a Lubavitcher rabbi. He began taking photos of the rabbi's family, then of family friends, and before he knew it he had photographed some 3,000 rabbis. These images are the foundation of "Kosherface" and you can see some of them on Tablet's website. They include silohuettes, a bride covered for her bedeken ceremony, even a rabbi rowing a boat. The image shown here, of a young hasidic man whose face has been splattered in paint, is from the exhibition announcement on Aranda's website. Of the images that make use of splatter paint, Aranda says: "I always thought it would be fun to experiment with color on what is very monochromatic clothing for the men. It's refreshing to see the hasidic in the context of fashion and beauty photography. I don't want this to be a show just for Jews."

Every week I come across Jewish news stories that are interesting but ultimately don't make it into a full-fledged blog post. This always bothered me, but then this morning I thought: why not do a weekly round-up? Many of the blogs I read create these posts, wherein they highlight news stories from the week. Let me know what you think about this new addition to the Judaism blog.

• PBS will soon air a new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, which portrays her as a boy-crazy teen. "Anne was pretty obsessed with boys, prickly and difficult with her mother, quite manipulative, mad about clothes and very interested in her looks," says Deborah Moggach, who wrote the TV production. [via New York Post]
• Rav Ovadia Yosef, former Chief Sephardic Rabbi and current spiritual leader of Israel's Shas political party, called women who wear prayer shawls to daven at the Western Wall "stupid" and "deviants." He was speaking of Women of the Wall, a group of Jewish women who believe women should be able to read from the Torah.  [via The Forward]
• Rabbi Alysa Stanton has assumed her role as head rabbi at Bayt Shalom. She is history's first female African-American rabbi. [via The Forward]
• A jury convicted Sholom Rubashkin, the former owner of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse, of 86 out of 91 financial fraud charges. His sentence could be over 1,250 years. [via JTA]
• The EveryOne Group has asked the Israeli government to buy the house where Adolf Hitler was born in order to prevent the house from falling into the hands of extremists. [via Jerusalem Post]
• Time magazine reports in its Nov. 16 issue that R. Crumb's recent illustration of Genesis, which came out on Oct. 19, has become a best-seller: No. 1 on the New York Times graphic books list and No. 2 on Amazon.com's Christian books list. You can see images from the comic on the Forward's website by clicking here.
  
• Famed Jazz musician Louis Armstrong was inspired by a Jewish peddler family he worked for as a boy in New Orleans, according to a new article in Commentary. Their warmth made him a lifelong philo-Semite who wore a Star of David around his neck. [via Tablet]

If you're a crafty person and looking for a Hanukkah project, Cheryl, our Needlepoint Guide, has some neat patterns to share with you:

• Hanukkah Menorah Project
• Dreidel Needlepoint Pattern

In the market for something you can do with the kids? Here are a few ideas:

• Make a Hanukkah Gelt Bag (Ages 7 and up)
• Hanukkah coloring pages
• Weave a Thread Star of David
• Cupcake Menorah
• Dreidel Magnets (Ages 5 and up)
• Star of David and Dreidel Hanukkah Cookies

Image via Getty Images / Dana Hoff

Rabbi Joanna Samuels recently wrote a blog post for The Forward that highlighted something unexpected about one of JTS's upcoming events: they are planning an "evening of fashion and passion" that will be hosted by Israeli Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Esti Ginzburg. The event is being advertised as an opportunity for people to "get a sense of the incredible variety of Jewish engagement opportunities in New York -- and to party with hundreds of other professional, active, vibrant, young Jews." Definitely not par for course as far as JTS events are concerned, and Rabbi Samuels asks: Why is a swimsuit model headlining it? If anything, an institution that trains clergy should stay away from swimsuit models.

Esti will not be wearing a swimsuit during the event, which will be part fashion show, part learning session. First, models will walk the runway wearing the clothes of three Israeli fashion designers, and then people will be invited to learn more about the various Jewish organizations in attendance - what they do in the community and how people can get involved.

Commenters on Rabbi Samuels' post have had mixed reactions to this event. Some see nothing wrong with it, pointing out that Esti is a Jewish woman who just happens to model swimsuits for a living. "You are completely defining her by her job," remarked one commenter, "If she wants to get involved in Jewish life and use her celebrity power to attract other Jews to Jewish events then I think that is great." Others remarked that this event illustrates just how desperate Jewish education is to bring people into the fold.

As a JTS alum myself I was surprised by this combination of fashion and learning, but honestly, it doesn't bother me. Educators are always looking for ways to tap into interests people already have, all in the hopes of helping them connect with other Jews and with their heritage as a whole. If an Israeli fashion show sponsored by Jewish organizations brings people together and helps them learn about the great work being done in the community - why not?

What are your thoughts?

Image via Getty Images / Photo by Joe Kohen