Young Jews in Heat

So, I'm just back from the Washington 14 UJC Young Leadership Conference, which I'll be covering in several articles for the Jewish Week over the next several weeks. It was about 1800 young men and women from across the US, Israel and Canada, all between the ages of 25-45. And I have to say, I've never seen so much scoping in my life. It's like someone pumped pheromones into the air...and then added alcohol. Lots of it.

So I don't want to give away the totality of what I'm going to address in the articles I'll be writing sometime in the next few days, but I thought I'd just recap some of the things that I learned over this weekend:

* That almost no one from Orange County, California calls it "The O.C." Every time I made a joke about the show (which was really a joke about that first commercial where the kid says "Welcome to the O.C., bitch!" because I've never seen the show) it fell into an abyss, echoing on its way down, but ultimately not provoking any effect.

* Despite her first season absence from the show's writing staff, Cindy Chupack is the voice of the girls on SEX AND THE CITY. And she's not as Hollywood as you'd think--she's really a nice Jewish girl from Oklahoma.

* That I'm really not good at numbers. If my room number hadn't been 9211 (9+2=11), I'd still be wandering around the hotel, sliding my electronic key into random doorknobs and hoping for access.

* That Adam Mesh's mom, Andrea, thinks I have great skin and, after reading "Seuss in the City," proclaimed that I was "the Jewish Carrie Bradshaw."

* That even my JDate profile needed some work. Thank you, (E-Cyrano.com CEO) Evan Marc Katz!

* That not all Canadians say "eh." But most of them do.

* That you can take the boys out of the frat house, and add jobs, salaries, responsibilities and social action, but you can't take the frat house out of the boys.

* That among Pittsburgh's famous products are Steelers merchandise, Clark bars, Heinz ketchup, and guys named Richard.

I have no doubt that other life lessons will follow as I develop distance from the conference. But these were the immediate ones...just the initial share. More insights to come.

Young Jews in Heat

So, I'm just back from the Washington 14 UJC Young Leadership Conference, which I'll be covering in several articles for the Jewish Week over the next several weeks. It was about 1800 young men and women from across the US, Israel and Canada, all between the ages of 25-45. And I have to say, I've never seen so much scoping in my life. It's like someone pumped pheromones into the air...and then added alcohol. Lots of it.

So I don't want to give away the totality of what I'm going to address in the articles I'll be writing sometime in the next few days, but I thought I'd just recap some of the things that I learned over this weekend:

* That almost no one from Orange County, California calls it "The O.C." Every time I made a joke about the show (which was really a joke about that first commercial where the kid says "Welcome to the O.C., bitch!" because I've never seen the show) it fell into an abyss, echoing on its way down, but ultimately not provoking any effect.

* Despite her first season absence from the show's writing staff, Cindy Chupack is the voice of the girls on SEX AND THE CITY. And she's not as Hollywood as you'd think--she's really a nice Jewish girl from Oklahoma.

* That I'm really not good at numbers. If my room number hadn't been 9211 (9+2=11), I'd still be wandering around the hotel, sliding my electronic key into random doorknobs and hoping for access.

* That Adam Mesh's mom, Andrea, thinks I have great skin and, after reading "Seuss in the City," proclaimed that I was "the Jewish Carrie Bradshaw."

* That even my JDate profile needed some work. Thank you, (E-Cyrano.com CEO) Evan Marc Katz!

* That not all Canadians say "eh." But most of them do.

* That you can take the boys out of the frat house, and add jobs, salaries, responsibilities and social action, but you can't take the frat house out of the boys.

* That among Pittsburgh's famous products are Steelers merchandise, Clark bars, Heinz ketchup, and guys named Richard.

I have no doubt that other life lessons will follow as I develop distance from the conference. But these were the immediate ones...just the initial share. More insights to come.