Happy Shushan Purim to All!
All is well in YUTOPIA, some quick updates:

• In a nice case of v’nahafoch hu, I recovered the previously lost comments
• Moving back to the heights soonish, likely spawning many interesting happenings.
• Had se’udah at future apartment with a bunch of YCT folk.
• Digital camera came in today
• Withheld a Purim posting because in the process of writing it, I realized I lost my sense of humor. Note that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I have standards to uphold.
• Sunday I will be officiating my first wedding. More on this at some point.

As some of you may or may not know one of my first cousins is Deena Grant, married to Chaim Davis with whom I attended Gush so many years ago. Anyway, last week Deena gave birth to a really cute baby boy. At the bris this morning, the baby was named Akiva Eliezer, which as Chaim explained is partially after the baby’s 10th generation ancestor (on the father’s side), R. Akiva Eiger.
Sounds nice, but I’m personally schepping the irony. As Chaim noted, R. Eiger was known for his staunch opposition to all things haskalah. Deena, on the other hand, is a PhD student in Bible at NYU (hamaskil hameivin yavin).
No word yet on seismic activity in Bratislava, but I’ll keep you posted.

I freely admit I’ve never been much of a drinker – regardless of Purim and I identify liquors mostly by relation to Monty Python Shticks. Still, one of the more interesting discussions we had in smikha involved what to do with whiskey which is often stored in sherry casks.
I don’t have my Yoreh Deah handy at the moment for citations. The short version is that if the wine isn’t kosher (a likely assumption), and it gets absorbed into the walls of casks, then when the whiskey is stored in said casks the non-kosher wine (or at least the taste) seeps out and would contaminate the whiskey.
R. Moshe dealt with this in Iggros Moshe (can’t check it now), R. Tendler brought this up in class a few times and R. Schachter addressed this issue in a shiur he gave when I was in Gruss. In fact, R. Schachter related a story that he was actually on the phone with someone in a Scottish distillery who explained that the reason why whiskey is stored in these casks is because they want the whiskey to absorb flavor from the wood of the barrel itself. However, since the full flavor would be far too intense and would ruin the whiskey, sherry casks are used such that the sherry mutes the flavor of the wood. Hence, any flavor given over by the remnant sherry is actually a negative taste (notein ta’am lifgam) and thus you don’t have a problem. (Not even dealing with batel b’shishim).
So now Avraham informs me that there is a new debate on the kashrut of whiskey which is I’m sure going to start a massive riot among kiddush clubs worldwide.
I should note however, that if the whiskey was stored in a Cask of Amontillado, you should probably go easy…or at least bring a pick-axe.

To all remaining loyal readers:
In my attempts at despamming the blog it appears I have deleted all previous comments. This of course, really stinks. Unlike many blogs out there I took pride in having the fewest nonsensical flame wars (the Edah post was a notable exception) and having one of the most articular and/or humerous commenters in the J-Blog world or otherwise.
I have the static pages backed up and I can start putting comments back slowly but believe it or not there were about 860ish in total so it’ll take some time. I could just put back the comments with the more serious discussions or if anyone out there wants to write a script and help me out, that would be great.
At any rate, please don’t be offended since this was completely unintentional.
Josh

I mentioned last post about starting up some new features on YUTOPIA. While I’ve been too busy as of late to write up my thoughts on the parasha, I am just about ready to break in a new section for reviews.
While I’m open to reviewing most media, I will probably wind up doing more by way of books in whatever genre I happen to be reading at the time. Solicitations are more than welcome, and are in fact encouraged. I can guarentee that anyone who sends over a book for review will not only be bumped to the Top Of The Pile, but will also find me in a less ornery mood than usual. If you’d like your book (or anything else for that matter) reviewed on YUTOPIA, let me know via e-mail.
Obviously the nature of reviews will depend on what I’m reviewing; some will be more serious and academic than others. However, I’m well aware of the limits people have in terms of time, money, and bookshelf space so I will be instituting a completely arbitrary rating system. For books at least the numbers would mean something like this:

***** (5/5) – Excellent. Buy it in hardcover and memorize.
**** (4/5) – Really good. A strong recommendation to read and own.
*** (3/5) – Pretty good. Worth your time, and perhaps a spot on the bookshelf.
** (2/5) – Eh. Only if you’re holding in the topic/genre, otherwise get the gist from someone else.
* (1/5) – Bad. You can safely ignore this book without missing out on anything.
No Stars – Labotomy in print. Reading this book will actually lower your I.Q.

You get the idea. Also, I’ll probably give different ratings based on the genre of the book or how it would be used. For example, As a Driven Leaf would have to be rated differently than academic or halakhic books because the latter types presumably aren’t intended to be fiction.¹
You’ll see what I mean when we get started, hopefully some time this week.

1. Yes, it’s taking a lot of self-restraint not to name names.

It looks like the upgrade went off easier than expected. Of the improvements, you should notice faster load times and we now have an atom feed if you’re into that sort of thing.
The downside is that all the links in the archive are changed. I caught most of them and set up a redirect, but it’s likely I missed one or two. If you find any bad links out there or any other bugs, please drop me a line.

SIW e-mails me about a quiz show he’s doing with some other folks and he’s looking for the looking for the funniest Jewish jokes.
You read that right – someone is actually asking me for jokes.
Of course, this meant I drew blanks. While I may contribute to Purim shticks or throw in a few lines in situations, I was never good at coming up with jokes on the fly nor have I memorized the collected works of Henny Youngman. But while I couldn’t help Steven out directly I did start thinking about what constitutes “Jewish” humor.
The obivous angle is that the comedian is Jewish – which seemed to the the basic theme of a Comedy Central special on the new Jewish comedians. This connection isn’t surprising considering that “Jewish” jokes are cultural if not stereotypical and as Sienfeld has taught us, only Jews can get away with these jokes without being considered anti-semetic.
The problem is that as cultures change, the stereotypical references become less significant. The classic Jewish jokes from the Borscht Belt were mostly based on a European “old country” mentality of Jewish culture and Jewish history. But as Jewish life moved out of the shtetle, so too must the humor.
One option is to identify and contemprize the familar themes. For example, topics such as mothers, guilt, and anxiety are are still things relavant to most people. The persecution complex may have to be toned down a bit, but there’s plenty of paranoia to go around. Or you could turn the stereotype dial up to 11 like Hebrew Hammer, which in the style of blaxploitation provided a fresh take on old ideas. Of course, some things would work better than others and through differnt comedic formats.
The other direction would be to satarize the modern societies of Judaism. There are websites and plays dealing with the modern professional Jewish world, and of course, there is no shortage Yeshivish jokes out there. The problem is that while these jokes may reflect the current reality, most of these are far too specialized to be funny for outsiders.
At any rate I’m at a loss for now, but I’m sure some things will be percolating in the back of my head.

Sorry about the outage for the past two days. Shaya says it was a hard drive problem, which has obviously been fixed. There is no evidence that my last post caused this in any way.
One more thing. If you’re going to be in Washington Heights for shavuot, I’m going to be speaking in Mt. Sinai on “Does Matan Torah Really Matter?” at approximately 12:45 at night. It should be a fun shiur and I’ll probably blog it when it’s done.