25 September 2009

Yom Kippur: Who's coming to your break-fast?

For a twist on the usual "name five people you'd like to have dinner with," the JPS Blog posted this question: Name five Jewish authors (living or not) you'd like to break the Yom Kippur fast with.

Sarah's JPS Blog post listed Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead), Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are), Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is illuminated), Philip Roth (Portnoy's Complaint) and Shel Silverstein (The Giving Tree and others).

Hmmmm.

Tracing the Tribe would like to break-the-fast with this group: Cecil Roth (History of the Marranos ... uh ... Conversos!), Pere Bonnin (Sangre Judia), Dr. Spencer Wells (DNA books), Jon Entine (Abraham's Children) and Mel Brooks (aka Melvin Kaminsky, too many too list), but I'm also adding in Jeff Malka (Sephardic Genealogy). The more the merrier.

Anyone else coming? Let me know as I have to order the bagels.

While searching around, I found some interesting online resources such as Quoteland.com. Here's one of Mel's lines:

"Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him."
Almost like genealogy, except our hundreds or thousands of separate people live in our genealogy software programs.

And this one at Famous Quotes & Authors, particularly fitting:

Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So, for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.
We have a choice of laughing or crying through life. I choose laughter.

Onion or plain? Let me know.

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