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In ‘Jew,’ comic Ari Shaffir delivers a raunchy love letter to the religion he says he left behind
(New York Jewish Week) — “You never know how people are going to respond,” says Jewish comedian Ari Shaffir, referring to his new standup special, “Jew,” which has more than 3 million views (and counting) on YouTube.
The self-released, 90-minute showcase of stories and jokes goes deep into his life story, including his studies at a Jerusalem yeshiva. Shaffir, who eventually left Orthodoxy behind, balances Talmud lessons with the neuroticism of Jewish culture.
The show gives the entire backstory of Judaism, starting with Adam and Eve, interweaving tales about Hanukkah and Passover, going through customs and traditions. It’s an oral history of Judaism, told through a brutally honest comedic lens.
After it was released two weeks ago, the special has been praised by numerous comics in the podcast world, including Tim Dillon, Shane Gillis, Chris Destafano and Joe Rogan, whom Shaffir calls a longtime friend.
There are also over 25,000 comments on the special, most of them positive. One goes as far to say that it is “the best special of the century so far.”
Shaffir, who lives in the East Village, said he has not received much negative feedback for the special, which is rare for a comedian who once received death threats and had to cancel shows for joking about NBA player Kobe Bryant’s death in 2020.
“Jew,” which was shot and performed in Brooklyn, was released Nov. 2. The date, Shaffir told the New York Jewish Week, was set far in advance — but it arrived at a moment when antisemitism became a national conversation topic, thanks to recent tweets from rapper Kanye West and Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving.
“I was worried for a minute — I thought for a second it was going to derail it,” he said of the timing, adding that he “wasn’t looking for this kind of press” in regards to his special.
The conversation only grew more intense last week, after Dave Chapelle delivered a monologue on “Saturday Night Live” abut the West and Irving controversies that critics, including the Anti-Defamation League and Simon Wiesenthal Center, called antisemitic.
“They’re ready to say that, regardless,” Shaffir said. “The complaints were already written. Most people think it’s funny.” Jewish organizations, he said, are “not known as great comedy critiquers.”
“People don’t understand that we enjoy that,” Shaffir added, referring to the criticism. “I can speak for Chapelle on this. We’re only here to make people laugh, but we also enjoy when dorks get mad.”
Shaffir, 48, has made a career off of making dorks mad, weaving tales about drugs, sex and Judaism into world tours, a podcast, spots at the Comedy Cellar in New York and the Comedy Store in Los Angeles.
While he’s known for his edgy humor, Shaffir appears more introspective and personal in “Jew” when compared to his previous work. On his Comedy Central show “This Is Not Happening,” which ran for four seasons between 2015 and 2019, he talks about planting weed for strangers and fans at sports arenas and shopping malls (the police weren’t amused). He also appeared in a sketch called “The Amazing Racist,” where he spoofs “The Amazing Race” by playing a character who constantly brings up offensive stereotypes.
With “Jew,” by contrast, Shaffir has channeled his persona into a hyper-focused, cohesive take on all aspects of Judaism, including mikvahs, Yom Kippur chicken rituals and the minutiae of when certain foods can be considered kosher. At the same time, he keeps the material palatable for a non-Jewish audience.
“You can make anything accessible,” Shaffir said. “It’s the same thing as saying, ‘My dad does this weird thing, or my country does this weird thing.’ You just explain it and you’re fine.”
Ari Shaffir holds the crown as my favorite j-w. He’s Moshiach in my eyes. pic.twitter.com/8kLFSaqgqp
— Adam Green – Know More News (@Know_More_News) November 14, 2022
While Shaffir may have turned away from religion as a young man, he said he has since found “a love for how interesting and cool it was.”
“I now see that Judaism leaves your kids with intelligence, where they value education and family,” Shaffir said. “It’s great stuff and I wanted to show that.”
When the special was released, Shaffir left a note on his web site saying that it is his “love letter to the culture and religion that raised me.”
He tells a story in the special about meeting with his rabbi from the Jerusalem yeshiva and telling him he was a standup comedian. “All he wanted to know was, ‘do you still use the teaching?’” Shaffir says in the special.
Shaffir then talks about how the rabbi gave him a lesson about Noah’s Ark, which he then turns into a bit about anal sex — all while leaving the audience with a positive spin on Judaism.
“Not all religion is stupid,” Shaffir says in the special. “It’s a good lesson, especially in this day and age.”
Shaffir was born in New York and spent most of his childhood in North Carolina and Maryland. He was “a Modern Orthodox Jewish kid” who attended the Hebrew Academy of Greater Washington (now the Berman Hebrew Academy). After high school, Shaffir went to Bris Medrash L’Torah, an Orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem, which he said was the “standard track” for a Jewish kid at his age, but eventually he had “a crisis of faith.”
“I just came home and really thought about it and I was like, ‘I’m out,’” Shaffir said. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Since then, Shaffir said he does not believe in God, but believes in the “shared history” of Judaism.
And while he’s had moments of Jewish jokes and stories in his previous specials, this is his full show on the topic, going deep within himself to find the humor within the religion, even in the darkest of places.
Shaffir’s father is a Holocaust survivor from Romania, who moved to Israel following the war. Shaffir said his story of survival was “a major part of our upbringing.”
“Their village got taken later in the war,” Shaffir said of his father’s family. “Most of the family was wiped out. I don’t know all the details exactly.”
He now has a good relationship with his parents and said they saw him perform the special live. “They liked it,” Shaffir said. “They probably liked it more than my other specials, where I was talking about [having sex with] chicks with herpes.”
While working on the special, Shaffir workshopped his material at the Fat Black Pussycat, the “sister showroom” of the Comedy Cellar in New York’s Greenwich Village. There, an audience member once asked him a question about “the pillow” that Jews carry.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’” Shaffir said. “But then it hit me: It’s tallis and tefillin,” the velvet bags containing prayer shawls and phylacteries that Jews carry to synagogue. “It looks like a pillowcase. You can look at it from an outside perspective, their point of view: It looks like a pillow. Their questions would get me to riff.”
He later took his special abroad, including Israel, where “it did not work,” he said. “They knew too much about it. All the exposition, they were like, ‘We know.’”
In contrast, he performed the material in places where there were few or possibly no Jews, such as Perth, Australia and Reykjavik, Iceland, where it went well. “Places where they are like, ‘I’ve never heard of [Jews],” Shaffir said. “I had to make sure it went well there because it’s gotta be accessible.”
He also performed a version of the show as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, which he said greatly inspired the special.
Another aspect of the Shaffir’s special is countering the narrative of Orthodox Jews as outsiders. “They work regular jobs,” Shaffir said. “There are ambulance drivers with yarmulkes. There’s just some weird stuff that they do. We would play basketball and we would have tzitzit [ritual fringes] and a yarmulke on, but we were on the courts with everybody.”
Shaffir has a joke in the special about using a yarmulke as a move to distract a defender during a basketball game.
This year, Ryan Turell became the first Orthodox player drafted into the NBA’s developmental G League
“I love it,” Shaffir said. “Hopefully it goes well for him and he loses his religion. That would be cool.”
—
The post In ‘Jew,’ comic Ari Shaffir delivers a raunchy love letter to the religion he says he left behind appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Comparing European, American, and French Roulette at Canadian online casinos
Roulette is the most popular table game at online and land-based casinos alike. You can easily find a seat at the table, place your bets, and hope that the wheel turns in your favour. But you have surely noticed that the roulette section is quite rich, featuring at least a dozen different tables. Most of them come with a different design and different rules. The most popular roulette variants are American Roulette, European, and French Roulette. In this article, we will try to explain the main differences between each one.
French VS European Roulette
We’ll first compare the French versus the European version of roulette since they are the most similar. The layout of the bets and the wheel is basically the same. Even the table layout is pretty much the same at most online casinos. Depending on the provider some differences can be found, like the layout of the table or the order of the numbers of the wheel. But as far as the odds and gameplay are concerned, European and French Roulette are basically the same.
Both roulette variants have a single 0 on the board and the same number of slots on the wheel and numbers on the table. There are 36 additional numbers you can bet on, along with the standard Red or Black and Odd or Even bets. This means both games come with a house edge of 2.7%. So, the only difference comes from the introduction of two basic rules in French Roulette.
- La Partage
- En Prison
La Partage
This rule applies to even money bets, and in case the ball lands on the 0 slot. The term comes from the French word which means to divide. All even money bets are divided into half, and the player gets one half, while the other half goes to the house. This rule works greatly in your favour, especially if you’re playing on higher bets.
En Prison
The En Prison bet is also applied to even money bets and only when the ball lands on 0. Instead of counting as a loss, the bets are held on the table for the following spin, and if you win, you get your bet back. Even though you don’t actually win anything extra, the En Prison rule gives you a chance to get your money back without a loss.
The introduction of these rules lowers the house edge on French Roulette down to 1.35%. This is why many players prefer the French version, as the odds are better for the player.
French VS American Roulette
The main and pretty much only crucial difference between American and French roulette is the 00 and the layout of the slots on the wheel. The added 00 on the American version means that the house edge is higher. It climbs up to 5.26%, which is almost double the house edge on European Roulette and a massive difference from the 1.35% on the French version.
Since there is an added 00 number, the layout of the slots on the wheel is different. On the table, the 00 is next to the 0, so it doesn’t make a big difference to the layout of the table. But the rules in American roulette are quite simple. If your number doesn’t come up, you lose the bet. There are no extra rules like in the French version.
Conclusion
If you go by the odds alone, it turns out that the best roulette variant to play at Canadian online casinos is French roulette. But this doesn’t mean you will lose more when you play American or European Roulette. Many players prefer to play the American wheel as it’s faster and more exciting. With the right strategy and some luck on your side, you can easily make a profit on any type of roulette game.
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Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism
University of California, Santa Barbara student body president Tessa Veksler on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Instagram
JNS.org – “Never would I have imagined that I’d need to fight for my right to exist on campus,” laments Shabbos Kestenbaum, a student at Harvard University who is suing the school because “antisemitism is out of control.”
Jewish students have suffered an unrelenting explosion of hate on American higher education campuses—so far with little relief. They have endured antisemitic rhetoric, intimidation, cancellation and violence. But those charged with keeping campuses safe—whether administrators who govern student and faculty behavior or federal agencies responsible for ensuring that schools adhere to civil rights protections—are failing in their jobs.
Many Jewish students have complained to their colleges’ administrators about the injustices. But instead of responding with measures to ensure Jewish students’ safety—like stopping pro-Hamas protestors from hijacking campuses or expelling militants who incite Jew-hatred— administrators have largely shown indifference. In some cases, college authorities have made things worse for Jewish students by appeasing the riotous, pro-Hamas mobs who have been primary perpetrators of Jew-hatred on campus.
Snubbed by college administrators, Jewish students and their supporters have appealed for federal protection, filing Title VI complaints with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the body tasked with enforcing protections under the Civil Rights Act. Unfortunately, the OCR, which has the power to levy severe financial punishments against colleges that neglect students’ Title VI rights, has so far rewarded negligent universities with little more than slaps on the wrist.
Until college and university boards of trustees begin hiring administrators committed to Jewish students’ safety—and until the OCR begins seriously punishing antisemitic perpetrators—we can expect no respite. Safe to say, colleges and universities run by arrogant, apathetic administrators will not change until their jobs and schools’ survival are threatened.
College/university administrators don’t take antisemitism seriously. Their reactions to Jewish students raising concerns about Jew-hatred range from indifference to outright hostility. For example, when Mohammed Al-Kurd, who the Anti-Defamation League says has a record of “unvarnished, vicious antisemitism,” came to speak at Harvard, Shabbos Kestenbaum and other Jewish students complained to administrators.
Rather than cancel Al-Kurd’s appearance, which would have been the appropriate action, the administrators ignored the students’ complaints. “Harvard’s silence was deafening,” Kestenbaum wrote in Newsweek. Kestenbaum said he “repeatedly” expressed concerns to administrators about the antisemitism he experienced, but as his lawsuit alleges, “evidence of uncontrolled discrimination and harassment fell on deaf ears.”
Administrators at Columbia University reacted to Jewish students’ complaints about antisemitism even more cynically. In fact, during an alumni event, several administrators exchanged text messages mocking Jewish students, calling them “privileged” and “difficult to listen to.”
When Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania if calling for genocide against Jews violated their schools’ codes of conduct, none could say “yes.” The presidents of Harvard and UPenn have since resigned. Good riddance.
Some college/university administrators have outrageously granted concessions to pro-Hamas students. For instance, Northwestern University agreed to contact potential employers of students who caused campus disruptions to insist they be hired, create a segregated dormitory hall exclusively for Middle Eastern, North African and Muslim students, and form a new investment committee in which anti-Zionists could wield undue influence. Brown University agreed to hold a referendum on divestment from Israel in October.
Similar appeasements were announced at other colleges and universities, including Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota and the University of California Riverside.
So far, OCR has failed to take concrete action against antisemitism on campus. This is evident in recent decisions involving the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Michigan. CUNY was ordered to conduct more investigations into Title VI complaints and report further developments to Washington, provide more employee and campus security officer training, and issue “climate surveys” to students.
The University of Michigan also committed to a “climate survey,” as well as to reviewing its case files for each report of discrimination covered by Title VI during the 2023-2024 school year and reporting to the OCR on its responses to reports of discrimination for the next two school years.
Neither institution was penalized financially, even though the Department of Education has the power to withhold federal funds, which most colleges and universities depend on. There are now 149 pending investigations into campus antisemitism at OCR. If these investigations yield toothless results similar to those of CUNY and Michigan, it is highly unlikely that colleges and universities will improve how they deal with antisemitism.
Putting an end to skyrocketing antisemitism on campus involves three things.
First, donors and governments at every level should withhold funds from colleges that fail to hire administrators who will take antisemitism as seriously as they take pronoun offenses or racism directed at people of color.
Second, the OCR must mete out serious consequences to Title VI violators in the form of funding cuts. This may require legislation that specifically mandates withdrawing funding from offending parties. A bill recently introduced by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.)—the University Accountability Act—may be ideal, as it is designed to financially penalize institutions that don’t crack down on antisemitism.
Third, if OCR won’t act, Jewish students and their supporters should turn to the courts. Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the legal director of the Deborah Project, a public-interest Jewish law firm, argues that the CUNY settlement demonstrates the futility of going to OCR and that going to court is more likely to produce “a clearly delineated and productive result,” such as punitive and compensatory fines. As of late May, at least 14 colleges and universities are facing lawsuits over their handling of antisemitism on campus since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
As long as college administrators are allowed to ignore antisemitism on campus and as long as OCR and other government institutions fall short in punishing Jew-hatred, antisemitism will continue to plague Jewish students.
The post Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Candace Owens Claims US ‘Being Held Hostage by Israel,’ Suggests Zionists Killed JFK
Political commentator Candace Owens claimed on Friday that the US is being held “hostage” by Israel and suggested that AIPAC, the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the US, was behind the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy.
“It seems like our country is being held hostage by Israel,” Owens, a right-wing provocateur, said during the opening segment of her YouTube show, where she interviewed far-left commentator Briahna Joy Gray.
“I’m going to get in so much trouble for that. I don’t care,” Owens lamented.
Gray, who was the guest for this episode, was recently fired from The Hill‘s TV show, Rising, after aggressively cutting off and rolling her eyes at the sister of an Israeli hostage who said that Hamas sexually assaulted women during the terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and that people should believe those women. Gray, who claimed her firing was politically motivated, had repeatedly cast doubt on the sexual violence perpetrated against Israeli women during the Hamas-led onslaught.
However, Owens said that part of the reasons she was addressing the subject was that people were being fired because they were “not happy … when an innocent Palestinian kid dies” or for “critiquing a foreign nation.”
Also on Friday’s show, Owens claimed US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was “wading into some dangerous waters” when, during an interview with host Tucker Carlson, he spoke about how effective the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is at lobbying members of Congress and suggested the group should have to register as a foreign agent that is acting on behalf of Israel.
The reason it was dangerous, Owens said, was because “we know there was once a president that wanted to make AIPAC register, and he ended up shot … so Thomas Massie better be careful.”
Owens was referencing the fact that Kennedy wanted the American Zionist Council, a lobby group, to register as a foreign agent. However, there is no evidence the group had anything to do with Kennedy’s assassination.
Owens and The Daily Wire, which was co-founded by conservative and Jewish political commentator Ben Shapiro, parted ways after Owens flirted with antisemitic conspiracy theories for a number of months, especially following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
“In all communities there are gangs. In the black community we’ve got the Bloods, we’ve got the Crips. Well, imagine if the Bloods and the Crips were doing horrific things, murdering people, controlling people with blackmail, and then every time a person spoke out about it, the Bloods and the Crips would call those people racist,” Owens said while still at The Daily Wire. “What if that is what is happening right now in Hollywood if there is just a very small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism. It’s food for thought, right? … this appears to be something that is quite sinister.”
Additionally, after getting into a spat with an outspoken and controversial rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, she said, “Are you going to kill me? Are you going to kill me, because I refuse to kowtow to you, and I think it’s weird that you and your daughter are promoting and selling sex toys, that’s why I deem you an ‘unholy rabbi?’”
“You gross me out. You disgust me. I am a better person than you, and I do not fear you,” Owens continued.
The list of controversial incidents involving Owens continued to grow longer with time. In one case, she “liked” an X/Twitter post that promoted the antisemitic “blood libel.” The post read, in response to Boteach, “Rabbi, are you drunk on Christian blood again?”
The “blood libel” is a medieval anti-Jewish slur which falsely claims that Jews use the blood of non-Jewish children in their religious rituals.
The post Candace Owens Claims US ‘Being Held Hostage by Israel,’ Suggests Zionists Killed JFK first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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