Every year when Holocaust Remembrance Week roles around, there’s one special lady on everybody’s minds. No, not Eva Braun. I’m talking about the one that would give all Jewish girls between the ages of eleven and fifteen the the chance to star on the community theatre stage.

Yes, Anne Frank is one of those roles that every young actress dreams of playing. As a Ginjew, the Ginger in me always wanted to be little orphan Annie (alas, I never got the chance), but the Jew in me yearned to play the title role in In Diary of Anne Frank. All this time, I thought it was my red hair that was keeping me from nabbing the part, but it turns out, I just needed to show more boob. (Now that I think of it, maybe that was my problem with Annie, too.) Thanks for teaching me how it’s done, Bobby Chicago.

Comedian Moshe Kasher recently appeared on Conan to promote his new book Kasher in the Rye. In the interview he discusses his father joining the Satmar sect of Hasidim (the same group Deborah Feldman speaks about in her new memoir Unorthodox), where members spit on redheads because they are considered bad luck. This was news to me, but some quick googling reveals that Satmar is not the only culture to deem red hair bad luck. According to the Irish-themed squidoo.com, during the Spanish Inquisition:

. . . red hair was evidence that its owner had stolen the fire of Hell and had to be burned as a witch.

Considering what the Inquisitors did to Jews and Gingers separately, I can only imagine how they treated Ginjews!

Thankfully, living in Mahattan today, the worst offense I have to face are the weirdos on online dating websites with creepy redhead fetishes. But thank you, Moshe Kasher for giving me yet another reason to stay out of Seagate, Brooklyn.

But you know what, Mr. Eberle? If you’re really that desperate to join Club Yid, then okay. On behalf of Team Heeb (or at least the Ginjew contingent), let me be the first to say, “Welcome to The Tribe.” Did I mention the position comes with a whopping side order of guilt? For the sake of decorum, let me answer that question with another question. Would it be too much trouble to stop making internet videos for thirty seconds and call your aging mother already?

What I appreciate most here is that the video somewhat deviates from the typical formula. Instead of enacting stereotypes, it ridicules the stereotypers – perhaps taking a page from Sarah Silverman’s playbook.

I’m still holding out for a “Shit Jewish Girls Say” worth mentioning. Perhaps I’ll have to borrow a sheitel from my landlady.

Photo by Seth Kushner

For whatever reason, I’ve been lucky enough to work and jam with lots of my heroes, in this case, the 91-year-old laugh machine AL JAFFEE.  Jaffee invented the MAD “Fold-In,” which he started in 1964 and has done over 400 since. He’s also the author of eight volumes of Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions. A month prior to this performance at the 12/21/10 HEEB Storytelling Live Comics Edition at Joe’s Pub (full recap here), I interviewed him on stage at Drew University and told him about the upcoming event I was producing. Not missing a beat, Jaffe goes “I’d like to try that.” In the car back from the talk, we decided on doing some of Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions live, which he’d never done before,  with me being the straight man, a la Mel Brooks / Carl Reiner’s 2000 Year Old Man, and voila:

From AL JAFFEE'S MAD LIFE

Last year, I worked with Jaffe on promoting Al Jaffee’s Mad Life, his recent biography written by Mary-Lou Weisman with 65-plus new Jaffee illustrations (Heeb ran the complete prologue as an exclusive) Unintuitively it’s quite the tearjerker. He had a wretched childhood, with a hyper-religious mom who locked him and his brothers in an apartment with nothing but a piss bucket and gave all the family’s money to tzedakah, letting her kids go hungry.  As if that wasn’t enough for these poor pishers, when Jaffee’s dad got them out of Lithuania to the U.S., she kidnapped them and took them back! Just in time for Hitler! So no wonder he’s the ultimate sillyheart; he escaped misery by entertaining himself and others and made a career out of it.

The ultimate treat for Jaffee fans was recently unleashed, The MAD Fold-In Collection –a deluxe four-volume set, including ALL 410 fold-ins reproduced at original size, with the “folded” image on the following page.

Bonus selection of Jaffee gems:
Interactive NY TIMES feature “Fold-Ins, Past and Present“  (use mouse to fold the Fold-In!)

COLBERT REPORT: “Sign Off – Mad Magazine; Stephen honors the inventor of the Mad Magazine fold-in, Al Jaffee.“

3-Part AL JAFFEE Interview by Heeb contributor Brian Heater at THE DAILY CROSS HATCH

Al Jaffee & Michael Kupperman in Conversation at The Comics Journal

AL JAFFEE makes a FOLD-IN for ROYAL FLUSH MAGAZINE #7

]]> http://heebmagazine.com/al-jaffees-snappy-answers-to-stupid-questions-video-from-heeb-storytelling/31221/feed 4 http://heebmagazine.com/how-to-talk-dirty/29896 http://heebmagazine.com/how-to-talk-dirty/29896#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:10:54 +0000 Bernard Mendelbaum http://heebmagazine.com/?p=29896 You might realize that you will benefit from talking dirty, but are afraid to. Like so much else in the human condition, talking dirty comes naturally, but still needs practice. This video will help you build your confidence with subtle–but critical–pointers. As Dr. Carol Smith-Goldberg notes, “Talking dirty has become a mainstream method for modern couples to achieve intimacy.”

In a commercial that could have been made any time between 1989 and 2001 (hard to tell), a goy named “Lloyd” sports the world’s ugliest kippah in order to cover his shameful bald spot (if only Lloyd know there’s nothing more shameful than being Jewish and wearing a yarmulke). When “Cindy,” his gauche acquaintance, notices the black satin Kilimanjaro sitting atop his head she blurts out “I didn’t know you were Jewish!”

Oh babygirl sweety-pie: Lloyd’s not Jewish: he’s just lost in a one-man diaspora of duplicity. But after a nice, toxic dousing of Hair Cubed, Lloyd doesn’t need to hide beneath his five-cent prayer cap or Judaism. So he abandons both. And the next time Cindy sees him, he’s no longer Jewish or bald. Which means now…he’s doable.

Text by Megan Neuringer

via Barstool Sports Boston