Mayim Bialik Dates Klezmer Zombies

In Yiddish With Aerobics: It has been a wild and crazy week, and Abq Jew is happy to be able to present to you, his loyal readers, a cornucopia ... nay. a smorgasbord ... or perhaps a Viennese Table ... well, a few samples of what one may learn if one sits on the Internet all day.

1. Mayim Bialik Speaks Yiddish

Abq Jew sort of suspected this would be the case, especially since Ms Bialik already speaks 14 other languages - including PhD (in neuroscience) -ese.

Here she is in an episode of YidLife Crisis titled The Double Date.

Drinking in the very best that Montreal's multicultural Mile End has to offer, Chaimie and Leizer, best friends and debating adversaries, tackle life, love, and lactose intolerance in this foodie centric web series done entirely in their grandparents' Yiddish.

Abq Jew might have missed out on this had it not been for Renee Ghert-Zand of The Times of Israel, who wrote

Mayim Bialik does mammeloshen in Yiddish valentine 

Actress plays no-nonsense neurosurgeon ‘pre-screeing’ her schmendrick suitors in less-than-romantic ‘YidLife Crisis’ episode

Ms Ghert-Zand explains:

“Big Bang Theory” actress and attachment parenting guru Mayim Bialik guest stars in the episode as Chaya, a high-powered, no-nonsense neurosurgeon apparently set up by her mother on a blind date with Leizer, the slightly nebbishy character played by [Eli] Batalion. 

The two meet at a kosher sushi restaurant in Los Angeles, which is far from the series’ usual setting of Montreal. Chaya comes to the blind date with a long list of questions to ask Leizer. It’s her way of cutting to the chase and not wasting any of her precious time.

You can read the whole article by clicking here. In Yiddish here.

2. Aerobics and Klezmer Make a Good Shidduch

As everyone knows. klezmer music goes with everything ... or at least everything Jewish. And what, Abq Jew asks, could be more Jewish than exercising without hardly moving?

Here is Rabbi Daniel Bremer, creator of Klezmer Aerobics.

Abq Jew might have missed out on this had it not been for Rose Kaplan of Tablet Magazine, who wrote

Puttin’ on the Schvitz

Daniel Brenner, the rabbi and musician behind Klezmer Aerobics, hopes to have you schvitzin’ like it’s the 1880s

Ms Kaplan explains:

Last year, Daniel Brenner had a dream. As he slept, he heard the Klezmorim’s album Streets of Gold, the 1978 classic that helped launch an American klezmer revival. The next day Brenner went to his local YMCA and put on the album to pump him up while he exercised. 

“People were streaming by me, coming out of Zumba class,” he said, “and the thought that came to me was: it is time for Klezmer Aerobics.

You can read the whole article by clicking here.

3. Amazon is Ready for the Resurrection of the Dead

As Abq Jew first pointed out  - back in 2010, in Torah and Talmud and Zombies - we're not really sure where the idea of the dead rising from the grave entered Judaism. But there it is.

As The Guardian and a slew of techie websites have discovered, Amazon's Terms of Service for its new Lumberyard Materials development tools take it all in stride.

Amazon’s web services arm has updated its terms of service with a special clause that kicks in in the event of corpses consuming human flesh and the fall of civilisation. 

The changes come with the release of its new Lumberyard Materials development tools, which allow developers to create games that run on its AWS servers. The terms state that Lumberyard is not to be used with drones, medical equipment, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft or live military combat in normal times, but have a special exception. 

Clause 57.10 of the AWS terms of service states: 

This restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organised civilisation.

Please note that Clause 57.10 will (apparently) still apply when the dead simply rise from their graves after the coming of the Messiah. Only in the case of human corpses seeking to consume human flesh etc - and even then, only in certain circumstances - will the restriction be lifted.

Oh - and by the way,

Be careful out there!