Forward.com

Matisyahu’s New ’Do

Reggae sensation Matisyahu made waves last year when he revealed that he was no longer affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic sect. Since then, he has been davening at a shul affiliated with the Karliner Hasidim, who are known for screaming their prayers. Now, it appears, his new spiritual orientation is starting to show in his hairstyle.

While Matisyahu has long had a long beard, more recently he has been seen sporting payos (which are generally eschewed by Lubavitchers) and wearing the rest of his hair shorn close to the scalp, a style favored by members of other Hasidic sects. Matisyahu’s new ’do is evident in photos from this year’s Jewlicious Festival in Long Beach, Calif.

The three-day festival, sponsored by Beach Hillel and the blog Jewlicious.com, is now in its fourth year. It drew more than 600 mostly college-aged participants from across North America with lectures on Jewish topics, Shabbat services representing different streams of Judaism, yoga and performances by Matisyahu and other popular Jewish musicians.

According to JTA, Matisyahu chatted with festival participants about dating, making music and praying. He said he liked the way that the Karlin Hasidim shout each word of the Shema prayer “as if there’s a firing squad in the room, and they’re saying it with their last breath. That’s the way I like to kick off my morning.”

UPDATE: Jewlicious.com has some video from the festival.

Searching for Peace? No, Sex (and Shakshuka)

Ck, the fellow behind the wonderful blog Jewlicious, has been analyzing his site’s Web stats — and he’s made some interesting findings about what Palestinians are searching for:

In the past year, Jewlicious has recorded 1262 visits from what Google calls the Palestinian Territories. What sort of insight might we be able to gain from this informal interaction? Well, it seems the vast majority of the traffic, 84% of it, came from search engine results. The top keywords were as follows:

1) israeli girls

2) israeli sex movies

3) palestinian singles

4) hot israeli girls

5) israeli sex movie

6) arab hot babe

7) escort israel

8) german colony restaurant

9) israel girls

10) hot Israelis

Other notable keywords were: address sex home in tel aviv, balestine gay (not a typo), gay arab shoes, gay nazis pic, homophobia palestine, natalie portman zionist, sex children egy 15year photo (??? I don’t want to know…), shakshuka recipe and of course miri eisin. The rest of the Arab world evinces similar themes - Egypt, with 8,664 visits has israeli girls, israeli babes and hot israeli girls as top key words (shakshuka is in there too). The United Arab Emirates with 8,023 visitors has Israeli girls, Israeli babes and Jewish babes as their top key words. Israel, with 398,342 visitors in the past year had jewlicious, israeli babes and shakshuka as it’s top three keywords.

Well, that’s the Internet for you. At least, Israelis and Arabs can come together over their shared (and wholesome) taste for shakshuka. I just hope the State Department will be serving up some of the tasty tomato-and-egg dish at Annapolis.