A quiet, relatively reserved oasis in Lerner's weekend Dance Marathon and Egg and Peacock craziness rests on the 5th floor, adjacent to the Satow Room. The National Union of Jewish LGBTQ Students, or NUJLS.

Bwog caught up with Zach Scholl, 21, who traveled from LaGuardia College by way of D.C. to attend the group's annual meeting. It's was Scholl's first year at the conference, which has been in existence since the mid-90s and was held last year in St. Louis.

Since Friday, the group has been in Lerner in workshops—discussing everything from "religious texts to queer people in the Torah," according to Scholl—and eating Shabbat dinner (separate dinners for conservative, orthodox and reform Jews).

White poster-board hung outside the Satow Room with the sentence: "At NUJLS I discovered..." And though the conference (and learning!) isn't quite over, markers were provided for attendees to finish the phrase.

Answers included, "Sarcasm will only get you so far" and "It's cool to be a Judith Butler fanatic."

While you were celebrating the last day of classes in Butler or 1020, Bwog theatre critic Ginia Sweeney attended the late viewing of XMAS 2: The Secular Spectacular. Although the show's run began and ended last night, Ginia shares her thoughts. Photos by Lydia DePillis.

I've been so wrapped up in the end of the semester that I almost forgot how quickly Christmas is creeping up on us. You can bet that the cast and crew of XMAS 2: The Secular Spectacular, which showed twice last night in Roone Arledge Auditorium, haven't forgotten. The student-written, directed, and produced musical seeks to reveal the origins of that blockbuster holiday, as Judy Maccabee (Madeleine Stokes C'08) tells her children the story of a shake-up back in her teen years at Polar High School.

I went to the later showing and considering it was 11pm on the day classes ended, it was unsurprising that much of the audience members had already commenced their Monday night drinking. This would explain the loud guffaws at almost every attempted joke.

Some amount of kitsch is always appreciated, but XMAS was campy to a fault. It was filled with too many lackluster performance and musical numbers. It's clear a lot of work went into this production, and some of it paid off: there were several hilarious lines and well performed characters. Overall, though, the show was no where near as clever as it thought it was, and was irritating and uneven.

In an attempt to recreate the magic of Coney Island's 92-year-old tradition, kosher frat Alpha Epsilon Pi hosted a hot dog eating contest that was a real sausage fest. In fact, that's what they called it: "Sausage Fest." Justin Vlasits filed some photos and an account of what went down.

AEPi's hot dog eating contest began with a hail of smack-talking, much of it from AEPi junior Michael Drabkin. Freshman Kevin Elder, however, took it up a notch with a self-designed T-shirt proclaiming "Joey Chestnut Who?" referring to this year's Nathan's world champion who scarfed down 67 dogs on the way to a new world record.

At the last minute, Sausage Fest mastermind Aaron Goldman (right) entered the fray, deciding a showdown with only three contestants would be worse than the stomachache he'd get from several quickly devoured hot dogs plus his recently consumed lunch -- a Spicy Special.

We got distracted in all the weather-related excitement, but if you did read the Times this morning, you may have noticed a full page ad headed by none other than Lee Bollinger--he became the poster child for academic freedom after protesting a British teachers union boycott of Israeli universities a few months ago, and now the American Jewish Committee is gathering signatures in support of his statement. The ad ran with 286 schools, including some heavy hitters: almost all the City Universities of New York, most major state universities, Princeton, Cornell, Georgetown, the University of Pennsylvania, and dozens of other schools nestled comfortably in U.S. News' top 100.

The interesting part, then, is who didn't make the list. Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, Amherst, Williams, Duke, Stanford, and Brown were nowhere to be found. Eighteen other schools--including NYU, Temple University, George Washington, and Johns Hopkins--signed on since the ad ran today, so presumably the silent ones have had a chance to reconsider. And in any case, the story broke at the end of May, which means that the AJC has been scuttling around since then gathering signatures.

What gives?

- LBD

In which recovering V-Show writer Rob Trump reflects on Michael Chabon's latest effort.

In 2002, Michael Chabon lashed out against the modern short story, claiming that publications like The New Yorker are filled with nothing but the "quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story." He did this in a McSweeney's compendium, no less, giving the hipster literati two things to think about: 1) What the hell does "quotidian" mean? and 2) Whatever it is, it sounds pretty bad, so what should be done? The answers to these, via the internet and Chabon, respectively, are "everyday or commonplace," and "learn something from genre fiction." Genre fiction, if you can't guess, is fiction that conforms to an established genre—science fiction, fantasy, mystery, horror, etc. To paraphrase: your Tuesdays with Morrie would be a lot more interesting if the old fart's death turned him into a flesh-eating zombie, and you and a double-barreled shotgun were the only things between his bloodlust and your family. Put this way, I think we can all agree.

What? You're not already sick of the amateur parodies of SNL's "Special Christmas Box" that have been pollinating YouTube for months? You want to see law students pretend they have an iota of creativity by donning fake beards and Orthodox Jewish outfits to present you with boxes full of...Bagels with Lox? That's the theme of the featured hit for this year's Law Revue (get it?), "A Special Finals Care Package" (keep them coming...)

For those who haven't caught on, the Revue is a sort of V-Show equivalent bred among the huddled masses yearning to breathe free in Jerome Greene's claustrophobic library (Bwog enjoys waving to them enroute to EC, hoping to get some response). This year's title (referencing said library, and indicating writers who just can't seem to pun enough): "Arthur Diamonds are Forever".

-CJS

David Iscoe reports on secular advantages to Kosher-for-Passover food.

In many ways, for food lovers, religious dietary restrictions are horrible. It's not that I can't imagine a life in which I couldn't eat a cheesesteak, it's just that I imagine that life would suck.

The laws cut both ways, however. Sometimes, religious laws act as a de facto protest against the race to the bottom in terms of food quality. For example, halal and kosher meats are often considered to be higher quality, the difference due to restrictions on how the animals can be raised and slaughtered. In the case of Passover, which begins Monday night, laws proscribing processed grain include a ban on products containing high fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper than sugar in part due to us having far more corn than we know what to do with (the latest idea is to make fuel out of it, which has caused rising corn demand and crippling tortilla inflation).

Companies that value the kosher market more than the cost differential release a seasonal Kosher-for-passover variety. While Jewish purists need to buy these products for the duration of pesach, food and beverage purists choose to stock up on them for the rest of the year. One of the most common instances of this is Coca-Cola with sucrose (generally beet sugar) instead of high fructose corn syrup - identifiable by its yellow-capped two liter bottles, with the words "kosher l'pesach" written in Hebrew along with the kosher for passover symbol - check out this NPR interview with a Coke-head for an expert analysis of the difference in taste. Cane sugar Dr. Pepper has a similar fandom, although acquiring it is a regional rather than seasonable matter - Texas Jewboys and soda lovers alike can get the good stuff from the Dublin, Texas plant which produces Dr. Pepper the old way all year round.

The Quest for the Perfect Egg Cream After the Jump

Busy Bwog reporter Bari Weiss found herself in Hamilton Wednesday evening, listening to the stories of students who stepped outside their comfort zone this summer. Her account follows.

Two Jews, two Palestinians, one half-Jew half-Palestinian—sounds like the introduction to a bad joke. But tonight in Hamilton 603, these were the identities (or, as they will be happy to remind you, just some of the identities) of the five women who presented to a smallish crowd about their experience this summer in the Balkans. While the war raged in southern Lebanon, SGA President and Project Tolerance founder Eman Bataineh B'07, Yael Hammerman B/JTS '07, Hannah Assadi C '08, Shira Danan C '07, and Tina Musa C '09 were among twenty-three students (12 Jewish, 11 Palestinian) who traveled to the Balkans as part of a program run by Abraham's Vision, an NGO aimed at creating a new generation of mutually respectful American Jewish, Palestinian, and Muslim leaders. Participants were chosen from schools--like Columbia--that are often hotbeds of controversy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The plan? By traveling to Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia-Herzegovina and engaging in comparative conflict analysis, the participants would be able to, in Assadi's words, "de-exceptionalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Traveling to a place where a similar conflict has occurred, in other words, may show the participants that the Middle East turmoil need not be eternal.