Jewlicious is one year old now.


Actual photo taken by ck of laya on the temple mount on aforementioned fateful day.

Thanks for remembering! Now I know how my Mom feels… But yeah, the blog that was started by a chance encounter on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has now evolved into a blog that is, uh… one year old. 990 posts, 14,208 comments, 300,531 words (not including comments). Woowoo. Thanks to all our readers and posters. It’s been a fun year, what with the press, the trips, the conference etc. I wonder what the next year will bring?

Probably the whole blog thing will die and we’ll be left broke and alone, Laya, me, muffti, esther, michael, themiddle huddling together for warmth, living under a bridge, sharing a bottle of Manischewitz and reminiscing about the good ol’ days. Oy.

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About the author

ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

72 Comments

  • MAZAL TOV!
    First time I came on your blog was a few weeks ago and now I’m addicted! I wish you “The bold and the beautiful” life! When do we drink to celebrate this?

  • I’m just curious but how does the business side of this work, in theory, how are you to make money from this site?

  • Mazal tov! Many more years for jewlicious. Now that I’ve just discovered you guys, can’t stop reading.

  • Great work! If I don’t meet my rich handsome Prince on JDate and live happily ever after, I’ll bring a can of beans and meet you under the GWB!

  • Geez, jobber, what is it with you jews and money! 😉 ck is the son of poor immigrants btw, far from trust funded.

  • That’s right old man Town Crier, now lean on your cane and tell us again how it was back in your day, when Al Gore created you using only a laptop and a dream…

    A self-congratulator mazal tov toast to us: here’s to good friends…tonight is kind of special.

    Now I’m off to the Hadassah convention. Catch ya later, my trust fund babies homies…

  • Laya, here are some more fun facts about ck’s “poor immigrant” family: we are also basically illiterate, uncomfortably dark-skinned, and um, hygienically challenged. It’s what keeps us so darn poor! Yeah, and she wonders why I don’t like her…

  • arg tiff, i can’t do anything right by you! Where I come from, being called a trust fund baby is an insult. I was trying to defend the honor of your hard working family. But yes, as we all know, sephardim are generally illiterate, that’s why you sing your prayers, right?

  • I’m just like so impressed with ck – rising above his humble and meagre origins to the heights of the blogosphere. Yeah, I gotta sign off, the girl I’m dictating to has an 11 o’clock with another sepharadi. They will be working on how to tackle the grocery store experience with limited reading skills.

  • Tiff- 😉

    Well, at least Sandy doesn’t hate me yet….but I’m sure I can change that.

  • Sorry to poop on your parade Laya but, while I do find it amusing that you think so, I don’t actually hate you.

  • A chance encounter on the Temple Mount? Sounds like the first chapter of an espionage thriller. Details?

  • well, tiff, you have to admit, the Abitbol women can be a bit…intimidating. I mean, I’m still a little scared of you all.

    Judi, ck loves telling that story, maybe I’ll let him handle it.

  • that photo was taking by a possible nut job as evidenced by his wearing of a “christ killer” t shirt onto the temple mount. I trusted him not to run away with my camera, because he knew the Sarna’s (aka the most wholesome family on earth) so I figured he couldn’t be too shady.

  • what do you mean that doesnt look like me? Just cause I look like I’d be comfortable in a caravan on a hilltop with 3 kids already? And what do you mean “Conspiracy”, (and by that, i mean shhhhh! don’t reveal our secret plans to take over the blogoshere yet michael!)

  • fun? yes, I think so. I’m still processing the craziness of it all, and all the changes, but i won’t do so here, because Muffti will call the french an tell them I’m stealing their existentialism again.

  • I don’t know. I think the person pictured is probably the real Laya, and the current Laya killed her to take over her position on Jewlicious and spread vicious anti-Sephardi propaganda. You can’t fool me.

  • Happy Birthday Jewlicious!

    ck, you really should tell the story of how you met Laya… All of your loyal readers deserve to hear how close Jewlicious was to never coming to be since you almost had Laya thrown in jail!

  • hey, for all of MY shadiness, HE was the one wearing Christ-Killer T shirt. I was just taking some innocent photos…about 400 of them.

  • Happy Birthday!
    I was getting scared that there is no good reason to get drunk today. I was wrong. Thank you Jewlicious, ck, laya, esther, his grandmufftiness, themiddle, michael and all those that have some pity on us working people and write a bit shorter posts. BTW I hate because after I am done reading all your production it s always so late! But thank you anyway. Belive me I ll drink for you.

  • Looks like Laya to me… what did you guys do to her over the past year that she’s no longer recognizable?

  • Is Esther right (#9)? Are you folks really trustafarians? No wonder you have all this time on your hands!

    We bestow our Papal Blessing herewith…

  • Sigh. No, we are NOT trust fund babies. We’re just very dedicated and we manage our time well. Laya used to be homeless, muffti is a philosophy grad student (Philosophy!! Oy what a shanda! but he does live in the former mansion of an Israeli drug lord) esther lives in a closet, themiddle spends all his disposable income on Jewish education and Michael spends all his cash on Yemenite drugs. And me? I am a simple illiterate Sephardic Jew, one generation removed from our quaint Moroccan village in Hassaniyah where my family used to live in cave like homes and made our living spitting on people as a kind of homeopathic therapy. Thank goodness I am possessed of an intense and inate spirituality. We have spirituality up the wazoo. Cash? Not so much, but we try.

  • Really, only a year old? I thought Jewlicious had always existed.

  • ck, you must be the most verbally-accomplished illiterate person on earth.

    Thanks for expectorating the brief biographical sketches. What we got? Let’s see… A lover of wisdom, coupla grad students (my deepest sympathies), someone trapped deep in the closet (now, I had a theory about that, but it didn’t involve Esther).

    Your account of Middleman doesn’t ring true, though.

    “Disposable income,” eh? Bet he’s rich as Croesus. Maybe even… … a WASP?

  • WASP? No, we’re all mormons. Do a search for Mormon on this site and you’ll understand what I mean. Yup, Mormons with Jew envy.

  • Mormons? Not buying it.

    Not until the ‘I’m Havin’ a Helluva Time Practicing Polygamy’ posts start replacing the ‘I’m Too Damn Holy to Have Sex’ posts….

  • Rich? Hah! I do fine, but if I moved to Mississssssippppi, I would be better off. I do work damn hard, though, and spending all my disposable income on Jewish education.

    Don’t get me started on that again, it makes me very sad.

  • Hey! That closet was good enough for you when you needed to stow a map/ICBM!

    Sigh. CK’s right. I live in a closet. With two closets. It’s very meta.

  • Grad student? I’m not a grad student! I would never have the fortitude to stay in college that long! Unless I’m the lover of wisdom.

  • I would like to wish my mazel tov’s and remind everyone that Jewlicious has been active in the mitzvah of being fruitful, by spawning off many blogs, programs, and immitations. I have a few more words for the Jewlicious Tribe in my Beachhillel tribute.

  • Just keep buying stuff at the bookstore and keep ordering from Alibris and keep an eye on the little ads at the back of all magazines for great stuff for the young you don’t see in stores. Star Magic is a good store. Astronomy is a good magazine. Have a large globe. Order from Edmund Scientifc. These are home-schooling techniques but they work fine if the children are in a school, too.

  • Ah! one year… So many frisbee posts… Tiff we should really start that up again sometime, I think it would make ck happy 🙂

  • Yom Hayoledet Samaich for all and the Jelicious Crew!

    Youre Baby is one years old and crying its head off!

    And could use a change….

    and feeding to…

    Was the day 24th of Tamuz last year?

    Or like July 31 this year, yeah?

  • Yeah, maybe if you didn’t leave the JOINT frisbee at home all the time!!!!:(

  • Baby, it’s right here next to me! Waiting for you! It keeps being all like, where’s my mommy, where’s my mommy?

  • Man, that frisbee is a whiny brat! Tell that bitch I’ll play with it when I damn well feel like it.Oh and Patty, you better have dinner hot and on the table for me when I get home. And that frisbee brat better be asleep!

  • hahahah…ck, you are so funny…what’s funny about his description of our living conditions:

    …muffti is a philosophy grad student (Philosophy!! Oy what a shanda!) esther lives in a closet, muffti is a grad student…

    Anyhow, thanks to all the readers coz it’s provoking you guys that keeps us going.

  • Whatever, you ain’t getting no dinner till you buy me that skanky new dress I need for Agatha’s wedding!

  • true… and we should defnitely get skanky frisbees to match 🙂

  • “frisbee, frisbee, frisbee”- Is that all you think about? Get your mind outta the gutter girl!

  • Sorry I stole your line, I meant to give you credit for it with the quotation marks or something…

  • Happy Birthday Jewlicious.com.net.biz/
    You guys have been my portal to the jewish “blogosphere” as it were. To many more years!

  • Happy Birthday Jewlicious.com.net.biz/
    You guys have been my portal to the jewish “blogosphere” as it were. To many more years!

  • Can you guys post the link to the original blog, the one that started it all? I’m curious… (and a little bored at work at the moment)

  • I just wanted to say that we still celebrating over here and l’chaims are keep pn coming.
    L’chaim Jewlicious!!!

  • i certainly did, and i’m pretty sure I remember ck later telling me he had also. No worries.

  • Yup. Did the mikvah thing, me and some nekkid haredim and wore no leather. That’s important too.

  • you laugh at the nekid haridim thing….

    My first encounter with Chabadniks on thier turf was two guys, just over bar mitsvah aged, trying to shlep me to the mikvah. We got to the entrance door from the outside and I just stopped right there… scared shitless…

    I asked the two young guys, about half my age then, “just what goes go on in there?”

    They said, we just go into a pool, yeah naked with other chasidim….

    I refused that one…

    I had nightmares for months about mikvahs and dirty crazed chasidim forking me to jump the plank into a scum encrusted filthy mikvah…

    ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!

  • Yeah, seriously, nothing out there to make you more appretiative of what married women go through every month to keep “purity in the home” then to make a trip up to Har Habayit. The mikvah itself may only take 5 min, but the prep work took me a good 3 hours each time. Granted I had a nice size beard to untangle, and lots of cleaning and scrubbing to do. (The whole live a year as a hippy thing)

  • Baloney.

    You can shower, shampoo and scrub at home, and show up squeaky clean, no jewelry or nailpolish, and take it from there.

    They can tell you are clean enough to go in by your appearance, and also your attitude, which they can read.

    Afterward, you go straight home; you don’t have to shower there at all if you do not want to.

  • Alright, guess I might have gone a little overboard in my prep work, they don’t exactly explain it that well to guys, and needless to say I was a bit intimidated.

  • I freaked out over my introduction to the mikvah concept. Later I learned to deal with it. In retropect, I am glad I got so hyped up over the issue. I learned to make a big deal out something that is a big deal. Some people in this world are new to such realities of jewish life.

  • I love you Laya!!!! and Dave and Ronnie too…MWA!!!!!!!!!