The Holiness of OMGWTFBIBLE

I don’t know if you’ve realized, but by making fun of religion, OMGWTFBIBLE is actually serving a greater sort of holiness. In The American Scholar, Brian Doyle writes about the benefit of weaving humor into religion:

For all that religion has been a bloody enterprise through history, and for all that religious people seem often the most almighty easy people to offend, and for all that there are many people in my faith tradition who think I am an idiot to grin over the most colorful of our traditions, I think we should grin over the more colorful parts of our faith traditions. For one thing, they are often funny—imagine the wine steward’s mixed feelings at Cana after the miracle, for example—and for another, it seems to me that real honest genuine spirituality is marked most clearly by humility and humor. The Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Meher Baba, Flannery O’Connor, Sister Helen Prejean, Pope Francis—all liable to laughter, and not one of them huffy about his or her status and importance. Whereas all the famous slimy murderers of history—Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, bin Laden—what a humorless bunch, prim and grim and obsessed with being feared. Can you imagine any one of them laughing, except over some new form of murder? Think about it—could laughter be the truest sign of holiness?

Who knew?

<h/t: The Daily Dish>

Meet the Guest: Leah Vincent

Every month, OMGWTFBIBLE snags some pretty great guests. But there’s never enough time in the podcast to discuss everything our guests our up to. Our Meet The Guest series puts the spotlight on each month’s guest.

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Episode 20: Leah Vincent

All it took was a sweater. 16 years old, Leah Vincent was living in a seminary in Israel, clinging to the hope that she could prove herself observant enough to find a place in her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family’s community. When word reached her mother in Pittsburgh that, on a whim, she’d bought a sweater too tight for her family’s incredibly modest dress code, her dream unraveled. Furious that, on top of committing the sin of writing letters to boys back in the states, Leah had publicly flaunted the strict Yeshivish codes of modesty, her mother cut her off. Continue reading

Spider-Man Is Jewish

What a Spider-Mensch!

Finally confirming my life-long suspicions, actor Andrew Garfield, the man who bears the name of one comic book character but plays another, has announced in an interview that Spider-Man is a yid.

As Jewcy wrote:

Garfield told The New York Post, ““Peter Parker is not a simple dude,” Garfield told Time Out. “He ums and ahs about his future because he’s neurotic. He’s Jewish. It’s a defining feature.”

I definitely don’t want to face down Spider-Man this week, when he’s subsisted on nothing but matza and cream cheese for days.

Hear Me at Sermon Slam Tonight!

SermonSlam is a unique Jewish event, a religious-themed open mic, where anyone can take the stage and deliver a 5-minute sermon, speech, or whatever. Tonight, I’ll be talking about “What We Talk About When We Talk About God” at the freedom-themed SermonSlam in Washington Heights. I’d be delighted if some podcast listeners came to see me! Details are here and below.

SermonSlam Washington Heights
YM & YWHA of Washington Heights & Inwood
54 Nagle Avenue
8:00 PM

OMGWTFBIBLE is Getting Jewcy

jewcy_heart_omg_RGB I’m very excited to announce that Jewcy.com is now the Internet co-host of OMGWTFBIBLE. Starting with episode 19, recorded last night, new episodes will be available exclusively on Jewcy for a full day before they get released elsewhere. So if you want to get your OMGWTFBIBLE fix before anyone else does, point your browser to Jewcy.com in the week after each episode is recorded (Did I just say “point your browser?” What am I, somebody’s grandma?). Episode 18 with Ari Mandel is already up. Really, though, I’m just honored to be part of the blog network behind Jewcy, Tablet, and the Vox Tablet podcast.

As we geared up for this partnership, I sat down with episode 12 guest and Jewcy editor, Elissa Goldstein, to talk about the genesis (sorry) of the show and where it might go in the future. The whole interview is on Jewcy, but here’s a taste:

Where did the inspiration for OMGWTFBIBLE come from? How long do you think it will take to complete?

I find this question difficult to answer because I can’t really name one source of inspiration. To me, OMGWTFBIBLE is the merging of a few strands I was following at the beginning of 2012. I’d long been fascinated by how few people had read the Bible, let alone in the original Hebrew, and would sometimes drunkenly take a Tanach off my shelf and try to read the story of Tamar and Judah to people. In my stand-up, I started reading very loopy sci-fi stories I wrote when I was 9 and interrupting them with jokes about how silly they were. I had just learned about Mishnah Nazir and thought it was absolutely crazy and, for a week, was considering using the interruption story model for the Talmud: I’d project snippets of the Mishnah for stand-up audiences and translate them live, emphasizing their goofiness.

But then I realized I should go back even further.

– See more at: http://www.jewcy.com/jewish-religion-and-beliefs/omgwtfbible-comedy-podcast-david-tuchman#sthash.K2BIxb5s.dpuf

Meet the Guest: Rabbi Yuter

Every month, OMGWTFBIBLE snags some pretty great guests. But there’s never enough time in the podcast to discuss everything our guests our up to. In our Meet The Guest series, you can get to know our guests a little better than you will on the show.

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Episode 19: Rabbi Joshua Yuter

Rabbi Joshua Yuter in no stranger to controversy. He serves in an official capacity as the rabbi of the Stanton Street Shul, a traditional synagogue that has stood in New York’s Lower East Side since 1913 and will host the recording of episode 19. Ordained in 2003 at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Rabbi Yuter is definitely an actual Orthodox rabbi. He also went to Yeshivat Har Etzion, a place I dropped out of.

Continue reading

Episode 19 Live!

omg032014_high-resOMGWTFBIBLE is live on March 20!

This month, Rabbi Joshua Yuter will join me as we read about Yoseph’s time as a wannabe therapist in Egypt.

OMGWTFBIBLE Episode 19 Live
Stanton Street Shul
180 Stanton Street
March 20, 8PM
$FREE$

OMGWTFBIBLE Episode 18

Behold! Episode 18 of OMGWTFBIBLE with Ari Mandel is now available!!

This episode was recorded at A Gathering of the Tribes.

There are so many ways to listen to Episode 18!

You can listen using the embed above or here. OMGWTFBIBLE is now on SoundCloud! Explore our SoundCloud here.

You can also: subscribe in iTunes, subscribe via RSS, or listen via Stitcher!

What did you think of this month’s episode? What are your thoughts on Onanism? Did you have a weird experience with Rabbis and masturbation (hopefully not at the same time!)? Have anything you’d like to add on the whole Potiphar story? Let me know in the comments!

Zach Braff Plugs YU For Some Reason

Have you seen this? It is a video of Zach Braff doing an ad for YU. It is very odd. How did this happen? Why is this here? Is there a God or the universe as random and capricious as we thought it was?

Not satisfied with “because Internet,” Tablet did some digging:

Yeshiva University hasn’t taken credit for it, but it looks like they or one of their supporters contributed $500 to the Kickstarter campaign for Braff’s upcoming movie. The prize offered by the actor for such a generous donation? “I’ll say or do pretty much whatever you want for twenty seconds. I will send you the mpeg file so you can upload to YouTube, play at parties, or send to friends. I will be your dancing monkey.” Or in this case, mascot.