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March 19, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: The Divine is in the details
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Israel's New Enemy: America?
JWisdom.com Love me not? with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Orwell, Santayana, and Me
Jonathan Tobin: How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth?
March 16, 2010
Steven Emerson: Combating Lawfare
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Father's obligations toward minor children
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Judith Graham: Get the whole picture before a CT
March 12, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades
March 11, 2010
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk
Feb. 19, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

Jewish World Review June 11, 2007 / 25 Sivan, 5767

Smile and say cheese

By Dave Barry


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | As a molder of public opinion, I regularly go on fact-finding missions to foreign countries located outside of the United States. I then report my findings to you in the sincere hope that I can improve international understanding by deducting the entire cost of my mission, including beer, on my income taxes.


Today I present Part One of my two-part report on this year's mission, which took me to the Netherlands, which some people call "Holland," or, if they are very lost, "Czechoslovakia." At one time, large areas of the Netherlands were actually covered by the sea, but over the centuries the hard-working Dutch have turned these areas into dry land. How did they do this? By stealing chunks of other countries. Groups of Dutch persons, posing as tourists, would travel abroad and return with large suitcases filled with dirt, which they would use to form Netherlands (literally, "dirt piles"). By the time the rest of the world realized what was happening, the nation of Luxembourg, which at one time was larger than Germany, had shrunk to the size of a volleyball court, which it remains to this day.


No, I'm kidding. The Dutch actually drained the water off the Netherlands by building a very clever network of canals and dikes, which today are held firmly in place by roughly 23 million cows. A key element of this network is the famous windmills, which, by utilizing the wind to turn giant sails, attract tourists, who in turn buy the cheese produced by the cows, thus completing the ecological cycle.


The Netherlands is beautiful, and the Dutch are a friendly, funny, low-key people who are not opposed to beer. As a bonus, everybody in the Netherlands, including dogs, speaks English more fluently than, for example, Dan Quayle.


This is a good thing, because the Dutch language has some kind of design problem, such that when Dutch people pronounce the letter "g," which appears three or four times in the average Dutch word, they sound as though they are hawking up a loogie the size of a cocker spaniel. Also, many Dutch words are too long to be safely pronounced by amateurs. For example, if you tried to say the Dutch word for "youth hostel warden," which is "jeugdherbergbeheerder," you'd run out of oxygen somewhere around the 15th syllable and fall into a canal.


USEFUL FACT FOR TRAVELERS: The Dutch term for "skee ball" is "skee ball."


The Dutch unit of currency is the "guilder," which you obtain by going to one of the many money-changing places found all over Europe, surrounded by Americans who have given valuable American money to the person in the booth and now are looking with alarm at colorful, odd-sized pieces of paper that for all they know are cereal coupons that the person in the booth has given them as a prank.


Once you change your money, it's time to see the country. The best way to see any foreign country is to get on a bus filled with other tourists and be driven to a castle, cathedral or other Famous Historic Thing, which you'll recognize by the fact that it's surrounded by a rumbling herd of tour buses. Then you get out of your bus, take a photo of yourself standing in front of the Famous Historic Thing, buy souvenirs, consume snacks and use the scary foreign toilets. Also, if you have time, you should read the plaque explaining that the Historic Thing was constructed in 1158 and went through many historic events before burning to the ground in 1953, to be replaced by the Authentic Reconstruction that you are looking at now.


In the Netherlands, I joined a tour group going to see the famous cheese market in Alkmaar, a picturesque city where the Dutch market cheese in a historic and photogenic way. It was a beautiful day, and my group was joined in Alkmaar by basically every other tour group on the Eurasian continent. We had to fight our way through the crowd, trading elbow jabs with enemy tours, but we finally reached the front, where we were rewarded with a fine view of . . . a bunch of cheese. We reacted as though this were the Grand Canyon. "There's the cheese!" we shouted as we snapped dozens of blurred photographs. I can't really explain why this was so exciting. It's a tour-group thing.


We also visited a cheesemaker, where a woman in an authentic Dutch costume that nobody in the Netherlands actually wears explained how to make cheese. Because of the crowd, I missed a lot of the explanation, but in case you want to make cheese at home, I distinctly heard her say that you start with 300 liters of warm milk.


This concludes Part One of my report on the Netherlands. Next week, in Part Two, I'll describe the beautiful and cosmopolitan city of Amsterdam, where I suffered a knee injury as a direct result of legalized prostitution. In closing, I'll leave you with this:


TIP FOR BUSINESS TRAVELERS: If, while visiting the Netherlands, you take a side trip to Paris, you should refer to it in your report as follows, "I took a side trip to Paris," so you can deduct it on your income taxes.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

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Previously:

Shooting carps in Wisconsin
The perfect storm
Stickup in aisle 3
Please don't feed the tourists
Land of the Frozen Earwax
The birth of wail
Honk if you're married and can't cope with anger
Rabbit ears get poor reception
Percentage of frogs in food jumps
Night of the living roach
Mr. Language Person: Some words of wisdomality
Mind your P's and Q's and teas
Loose lips sink sequels
NOW WE'RE COOKIN'!
The right to Bear clubs
Science: It's just not fair
Road warrior specials
Where's the beef? (Low fat)
There is nothing like a male (guys)
MOTIVATE! THEN FAIL! NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS
Rooting for the midgets of the Midway
Revolt of the rodents
He can drive any truck named ‘Tonka’
All bets are off
How do you spell S-A-T?
Sour grapes and mud
Pro golf: A game of non-stop boredom
Guard-dog vigilance is nothing to sniff at
Warm and fuzzy Cold War memories
The funny side of ‘Beowulf’
HOLY HEAT WAVE, BATMAN!
Abs-olute madness
Beware of brainy bugs
I'm in a sorry state
The frog plague: The inside story
If she had a hammer….
Keeping an eye on crime
Camping and Lewis and Clark
When in Iowa, don't forget to duck
Junior takes the wheel
Growing old with Dave
Sites for sore eyes
Beware of sheep droppings
Ireland, land of bad Elvis
Mr. Peabrain's misadventures
When they're out to get you, keep cool
Mothers of invention
Kill 'em with kindness



© 2006, The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

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