A long while back I almost wrote for Aish Hatorah’s website, don’t call me a sellout just yet, I’ll have you know that they pay quite well, I would make more in one article there than I would make here in one month of advertising. I remember being hooked up with someone who ran what they call Jewlarious on Aish.com’s website and having a look around and wondering if I was in the right place, but after fruitless attempts to extract an ounce of humor out of the site I came to the fateful conclusion that Jewlarious sucks!
The other night someone sent me a link to a video featured on their site, the video was about the black hole of greed, not one iota of funniness to it, it was interesting and I get the point, but it wasn’t funny. In fact the only thing funny about it was the fact that Aish stole the original video from You Tube which has 8 million views and pawned it off as their own, kind of weird considering honesty is one of those great pillars of Judaism – although it’s doubtful that kiruv would ever work if honesty were entered into the picture.
So I looked around Jewlarious and was seriously offended at what they call humor. Articles about humorists is not humor, videos about giving away your lottery winnings are not funny, a book review of Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance had me scratching my head wondering if anyone who had ever seen Jewlarious could find anything funny on their site and the site has been around for some time so they had their chance. In fact I even googled “Jewlarious Sucks” to find out if I was just being pretentious and alone in my findings, but someone agrees with me and he was much harsher with them than I am going to be.
Found this gem of an article on Jewlicious titled Lenny Bruce is Spinning in his grave where the author goes on a very nicely written attack of Aish Hatorah (it’s a love and hate relationship for me – I have dear friends who have worked for and are connected to them, but the quotas and business models of kiruv I seriously disagree with) and then focuses in on how bad Jewlarious really is:
But let’s put aside for a moment their cultish modus operandi, or their drive to transform promising young Western Jews into destitute American or Israeli Charedim supporting large families with the tax shekel of the filthy chilonim. Believe it or not, a much more appalling desecration of the history, religion and culture of the Jews is being perpetrated by Aish ha-Torah.
That desecration has a name. And it is Jewlarious.
It’s hard to avoid that cringe-worthy portmanteau lately, as its ads have seemingly popped up on every single major Jewish website, including this one. Jewlarious, you see, is the newest arrow in Aish’s quiver of kiruv tactics – if you can’t reel in the kids with Shabbat dinners and subsidized tours of Israel, might as well try with that most Jewish of attributes, a sense of humor.
One of the things that reinforces my wavering belief in myself a Jewish humor writer is the fact that orthodox Jews don’t seem to have the ability to create funny pieces on a consistent basis. Mordy Ovitz of The Knish does a great job, but The Knish takes a long time to produce and the few funny guest posts I feature on my blog usually take those people a long time to come up with the material. Of course it’s quality over quantity and that’s why half of this blog is not necesarally funny, but when I get to sites like Jewlarious or the humor sections in those frummy advertising rags they give out for free in New York area pizza shops I want to puke and then keep mustering up the brain power to write funny shit to make up for all the crap that frummies can somehow call humor.
It’s hard to offer up curdlingly cynical Yiddish gems like, “If God lived on Earth, people would break his windows” when your organization is investing its energy in promoting the fiction that before the Jews arrived in the trayfeh medina, everybody lived a blissful existence of Charedi piety and child-raising in the Old Country (which is of course what God wants from us all).
I never expected Jewlarious to come up with humorous explanations for debunking the hole the sheet sex myth, but I seriously couldn’t find one funny thing on the entire site and I have tried in vain multiple times, this is a years long venture and finally tonight I had enough. I felt the need to tell the world to tell Aish that their sense of humor is terrible, they could never hire someone like me and quite frankly I’m satisfied with my site (I rarely even think of writing articles for anyone else besides maybe My Jewish Learning – Aish.com’s chief and much more interesting competition, The Forward, Esquire, The New Yorker or Tablet) I can have high aspirations can’t I.
I would probably be a kick ass kiruv artist, I would lure those unsuspecting secular Jews in with bawdy humor making fun of frummies and then convince them to let me kosher their kitchens and start keeping the laws of family purity. I could never convince them through philosophy, I would lure those college kids in with food, free trips to Israel and tales about how important it is for women to light shabbos candles (of course I would withhold the knowledge that this mitzvah is required of men too, because then these post-free trip to Israel or snorkel trip to Florida girls wouldn’t be so excited about lighting shabbos candles if it wasn’t a mitzvah to call their own.) and men to learn about oxen goring each other and falling into pits that may or may not be on public property, I would also fail to mention that women couldn’t learn gemara because only the men needed to know what Rav Kahuna said to wife when they made love.
“Mordy Ovitz of the Knish does a great job, but The Knish takes a long time to produce”
Thanks! It takes so long because the two people who do all of it, Martin Bodek and me, both have families and full-time day jobs. We do our best, and will try to get new content out more frequently.
Love your site, Mordy.
there a a few good videos
why do all jewish comedians have so much anger? and btw, you have quite a sense of jewmur
I guess the thousands of years of persecutions could do it – I think some people perceive humor as anger sometimes.
Maybe that’s why Chassidic music sometimes sounds Keltic
All humor has a goat. It’s axiomatic. But good comedy has something else. It shows through on the Aish site because they don’t have much that’s funny. So all you see is the hostility.
No. I think the Jewlicious guy put it better. They’re trying to paint a perfect picture of frum life. So most of the good stuff to make fun of is out.
What follows then is what you’re getting at. The only thing left as kosher to make fun of is secular culture, so of course the humor will seem one-sided and agenda driven.
But that goes for any organization using humor to push an agenda. That’s why I can’t stand Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert or Fox’s douchey equivalent. I can’t be at ease to laugh when I know you’re just using the humor as a way to shove your opinions down my throat. I think that’s why I can only enjoy comedy from a total nihilist (a default, haphazard nihilist, not one pushing nihilism), like South Park. You know, just a totally amoral person, focused on knocking everything. Not that I’ll agree with everything they have to say, but so I know I’m being mind-raped.
I think Heshy tries to do that too. He’s said a few times that he only shows 20% of himself on this blog. His main focus is to promote readership of this blog. So, yeah, everyone has probably pigeon-holed him personally (in their minds), but part of that definition is inevitably going to be ‘entertainment above all’.
Meant to say, “so I know I’m not being mind-raped”.
If it’s so bad and you were given the opportunity to write for them, then why don’t you write some good articles and make it better? The stuff you post here is great.
Also, why would you want to write for a socialist rag like The Forward or Tablet?
Because the Tablet and Forward are good and interesting reads regardless of whether or not you agree with their politics.
Maybe it’s just my ulcer talking, but for me a socialist rag can never be interesting! I live in Portland, Oregon, home of more socialists than 1910s Russia. If it makes me crazy, it is never good!
it is goy-larious how many americans have no idea what socialism means! i bet those teapartiers put milk in first. 🙂 🙁
Absolutely. What we call “Socialist” these days is what passed for middle-of-the-road moderate Republican thirty or forty years ago. What we call “Conservative” now was wing nut fringe beyond the Birchers.
The Forward was a big supporter of Eugene V. Debs. If that doesn’t make them socialist then I don’t know what does.
Heshy, remember what Steven Colbert says. “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Aish blows (and I don’t mean shofars–HA HA, I’M JEWLARIOUS!) except for the Kotel webcam.
You sound like a lot of Lubavs I know…
“I would probably be a kick ass kiruv artist, I would lure those unsuspecting secular Jews in with bawdy humor making fun of frummies and then convince them to let me kosher their kitchens and start keeping the laws of family purity. I could never convince them through philosophy, I would lure those college kids in with food, free trips to Israel and tales about how important it is for women to light shabbos candles (of course I would withhold the knowledge that this mitzvah is required of men too, because then these post-free trip to Israel or snorkel trip to Florida girls wouldn’t be so excited about lighting shabbos candles if it wasn’t a mitzvah to call their own.) and men to learn about oxen goring each other and falling into pits that may or may not be on public property, I would also fail to mention that women couldn’t learn gemara because only the men needed to know what Rav Kahuna said to wife when they made love.”
except lubavs think girls today need to learn gemara.
They do considering how little the guys know about things like mikvah, shabbos and bishul
What’s this about a snorkel trip in Florida?
Just another free trip in the name of kiruv
Haven’t heard of it. But I’ve lived in Florida my whole life so they probably don’t advertise it here.
Funny article. Maybe cause aish is so nerdy.
maybe I should market my Baile Rochels to them
http://me-ander.blogspot.com/p/baila-rochel.html
I think of Aish HaTorah as a 40-something-year-old white male office employee who tries to “rap” to relate to his teenage son.
That is exactly correct – they are stuck in the early 90’s
Every shot in the 10-ring!
Maybe you didn’t notice but the Jewlarious site is not just a humor site. As it says in its banner : Jewish humor, arts and entertainment. The video you complain about is part of its jtube section (not its humor section). And since over 33,000 youtube users liked it apparently many think that it is a good movie. Aish just added a twist to add an educational message to it with a thought provoking question – Why is greed compared to a black hole?
Man you got to chill out a bit.
I am chilled, I’m drinking tea and listening to the Duke
“I would lure those unsuspecting secular Jews in with bawdy humor making fun of frummies and then convince them to let me kosher their kitchens and start keeping the laws of family purity.”
1. Why do need a secular Jew to give you permission to keep the laws of family purity?
2. Even if you needed permission from a secular Jew to observe thwe Torah, you need to get married (or at least have a girlfriend) in order to keep that particular mitzvah.
I’ll keep that in mind (and tell my kids) the next time Aish comes calling. If they can’t keep the laws of family purity without our permission, then perhpas we secular Jews have a weapon in the demographic struggle! 🙂
I think you misread his comment.
He meant that he’ll get THEM to start keeping family purity.
“I think you misread his comment.
He meant that he’ll get THEM to start keeping family purity.”
I’m sure that’s what he meant, but that’s not what he wrote.
That is what I wrote, but I am known to be a screwball when it comes to sentence structure, my editors don’t want credit and therefore there’s no point in editing – unless they like the super hero route.
Just to correct one part of your article in regard to the black hole video being claimed as their own. All JTube videos have the credits of where the clip is from and/or who made it at the start of the video. There is no attempt to make it seem like it is theirs. In fact, that entire section is about presenting popular video clips to spark questions.
Anytime as good your shi… videos of late sorry but Im just trying to stay honest
Hey everyone’s entitled to their opinions, but most of the folks who watch my videos don;t even know I blog and visa versa.
I would probably be a kick ass kiruv artist, I would lure those unsuspecting secular Jews in with bawdy humor making fun of frummies and then convince them to let me kosher their kitchens and start keeping the laws of family purity. I could never convince them through philosophy,
As I’ve said before Heshy that is following in the footsteps of some of the most effective spiritual teachers in history. Stories, especially stories which use humor effectively, are some of the most powerful tools in the rabbi or shakyh or priest or boddhisatva’s box.
You have already done more kiruv work than you know. I mean, look at what goes on here. You have gawdless heathens, atheists, frummies, reform, christians and more talking seriously about important Jewish issues. If it were a sermon you’d have half a dozen of the faithful showing up. As it is, you’ve got a large audience who came for the icing and stay for the cake. The humor brings them in and breaks down resistance. The fact that you cross the boundaries of good taste once in a while lets people know you’re being honest and genuine with what you say.
I’m using that comment – making me blush man
Well put.
Actually the articles on Aish that aren’t intended to be funny are the funniest. Example the dating advice ones.
Hesh,
Rabbi Krustovsky does not fall into the fail category at all. Shame on you for using his image here!
How long ago have you checked Aish? Because they’ve recently added a couple of funnier writers — people who said yes because even though they’re humorists, they’d rather fix things than complain about them. Mordechai Schmutter, for example http://www.aish.com/authors/86161922.html puts out surprisingly funny articles every week in Hamodia, and then runs some of them again on Aish. There’s also a new writer named Mark Papers (probably not his real name) http://www.aish.com/authors/107174663.html who uses humor to try to find morals in movies.
It’s funny you mentioned Mordechai Schmutter. I just read his column in the Nov 17th Hamodia (listing random questions from readers) and it was really funny.
It’s funny you mentioned Mordechai Schmutter. I just read his column in the Nov 17th Hamodia magazine (listing random questions from readers) and it was really funny.
Jewlarious used to feature a writer named Newton Hoffer, his stuff was hysterical. I have not seen him featured lately, maybe he was too funny for them. They might have him archived though.
I discovered an amazng Jewish Comedy site called funnyandjewish.com. It’s,new,it’s clever, it’s biting, and political.
Up there with Frum Satire.
So glad you don’t write for Aish, I would stop reading their great stuff. Get over yourself.
I was asked to at one point to – but I didn’t want to tarnish my career
Israeli robots wish you a Happy Rosh Hashanah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VSj-PdDuYI
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Please let me know where you got your theme. Cheers
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