S atire / F ake N ews / P urim
JEANIE OLOGY | JE STAFF
BRYCE HARPER, who recently signed
a blockbuster deal with the Philadelphia
Phillies and spurred a frenzy of jer-
sey-buying, has revealed that he comes
from an Ashkenazi Jewish background.

Though Harper is a member of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
and has talked publicly about serving as a
representative for the Mormon faith, sus-
picions of Jewish heritage were raised early
on in his life by a Jewish girl Harper met
at a party in high school. The girl, Britney
Greenbaum, was living in Harper’s native
Las Vegas temporarily while her mother
was a visiting professor at the University
of Las Vegas. Greenbaum saw Bryce across
the room at their first high school party
and thought he was cute.

“So I walked over and started talking
to him and it was like an instant connec-
tion, even though we were from different
worlds,” said Greenbaum. “Maybe it was
the forbidden aspect that drew us together,
but we talked about homework and sports
— he talked more about hockey than base-
ball! — and our parents. And he told me
his middle names were Aron and Max and
I started wondering. I mean, there is some-
thing of the Bar Mitzvah boy about him.”
Harper and Greenbaum grew apart
after a brief makeout session in a bedroom
closet, but later, when Harper was named
MVP in 2015, Greenbaum reached out and
reconnected with Harper, urging him to
take a DNA test to confirm her suspicions.

Harper’s 23andWe results stunned
him: 37 percent of his background came
back as “Super Rabbinic Russian.” His
parents knew nothing about the Jewish
heritage, but everyone in the family is
quite comfortable with the news.

“Mormons and Jews have a lot in com-
mon,” said Harper, who is considering
having his Bar Mitzvah on the mound
at Citizens Bank Park. He pointed to the
Mormon prohibition against alcohol. “In
my experience,” he added, “lots of Jewish
people are pretty indifferent to booze.

Though Britney Greenbaum did get pretty
toasted at that party.”
For Passover this year, Harper will
attend a baseball-themed seder that posi-
tions the four questions at four bases held
at the home of Phillies Manager Gabe
Kapler. Kapler is also Jewish, and maybe
secretly Mormon, too. l
Congregation Beth Stoner
Opens for Weed Fans
FAKE N EWS
FA K E N E WS
JUDY IZM | JE STAFF
JONATHAN KUGELSTEIN
opened up
a box
of Manischewitz’s finest matzah
on March 11 and imagine the
surprise he received: The face of
Moses was staring back at him
on the matzah sheet.

“At first I thought it was
just a trick of the light, but
those little dark spots were
telling me something,” said
Kugelstein, of Merion. “Then my
girlfriend Taylor, who was also
in the kitchen, dropped her glass
of Tang and shouted, ‘OMG, it’s
Charlton Heston.’”
Not knowing what to do next,
Kugelstein called the Good Day
Philadelphia team at Fox29, which
immediately set up a live broadcast
that aired for the next 24 hours,
pre-empting the usual mind-numbing
content that’s the channel’s specialty.

Kugelstein enjoyed his 15 minutes
of fame, particularly when Fox 29
reporter Jennaphr Frederick inter-
Jewish Woman Breaks
Record for Longest Name
FA K E N E WS
MARY JUANA | JE STAFF
YENTL ROSENBERGMAN | JE STAFF
VERY REFORM Congregation Beth
Stoner opened up in Center City, promis-
ing to cater to marijuana-addled Jews.

Rabbi Tommy Chong and Cantor Snoop
Dogg will lead the new synagogue, which has
already signed on 420 congregants.

“Hey man, if you want a far-out expe-
rience where nobody will harsh your reli-
gious buzz, Congregation Beth Stoner is
for you,” Chong said.

“And unlike other synagogues, where
you break bread after services, we break it
beforehand because we’ve always got the
munchies,” Dogg added. “We put the sin
in synagogue.”
Congregants will be permitted to
SOCIETY HILL resident Shoshana
Rubinivitzkyman never imagined
that she would one day see herself in
the Guinness Book of World Records.

But that’s exactly what happened,
and it was love that brought her there.

After getting married in a
wintry ceremony in February,
Rubinitvitzkyman decided to
hyphenate her and her husband’s
last name, instead of adopt-
ing his surname in the more tra-
ditional choice, thus becoming
Shoshana Rubinivitzkyman-
Satzbergerkatzbaum. Her friends advised against the
12 MARCH 14, 2019
smoke marijuana or use medical mari-
juana at all times, which drew protests
from other area rabbis.

“Having fun in synagogue? Whoever
heard of such a thing?” questioned Rabbi
Fred Neulander, who said smoking mar-
ijuana violates traditional law, although
hiring someone for murder doesn’t. l
viewed him live on air.

“I’m a little shy, but she ulti-
mately coaxed me to dance with the
matzah while singing ‘Matzah Man’
to the tune of ‘Macho Man,’” he
laughed. “You only live once.”
Kugelstein had planned to send
the matzah for scientific testing,
but the unleavened bread met a
tragic fate.

“I left it on the counter and my
roommate, who had been out of
town, came home and fried it up,”
Kugelstein said. “He later told me
Moses was delicious.” l
verbaska_studio / iStock / Getty Images Plus
FAKE N EWS
Face of Moses Found
in Matzah
JEWISH EXPONENT
hyphen choice, Rubinivitzkyman-
Satzbergerkatzbaum said. They told
her she should choose one or the
other, but she felt strongly that this
was the best decision for her family.

Soon after the Jewish Exponent
published her mazel tov announce-
ment, representatives from the
Guinness Book of World Records
reached out to her about appearing
in their forthcoming edition.

“I can’t believe I was hes-
itant at first to join JDate when
my rabbi suggested it, but I’m
glad I did,” Rubinivitzkyman-
Satzbergerkatzbaum said. “At the
time, I thought I would just be lucky
if I found my beshert, but now, I
have a world record, too.”
“Dayenu!” she added. l
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM DedMityay / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Bryce Harper Reveals
Secret Jewish History



S atire / F ake N ews / P urim
Local Father Apparently
Unbridled Freedom
Eating Herring Straight From of Driver’s License
the Jar Now
Allows Teenager
to Go to Wawa
Unaccompanied FAKE N EWS
Lena_Zajchikova / iStock / Getty Images Plus
MATT Z. O’BALL | JE STAFF
LOCAL BUSINESSMAN Eric
Goldman apparently eats pick-
led herring straight from the jar,
according to his wife and daugh-
ter. “Just, like, with the tips of his
fingers,” said his daughter Sarah
Goldman, 16. “He … dangles it
over his mouth.”
Goldman’s behavior, though
not technically wrong or legally
actionable, is “unsettling,” his
daughter said.

Each evening, said Beth
Goldman, Eric’s wife of 18
years, Goldman rises from the
couch, walks over the fridge
and selects the jar out of the
wide array of foods that are
FA K E N E WS
STEPHEN GLASS | JE STAFF
not pickled fish. He taps on
the jar, as if to say, ‘Yes, this is
precisely what I needed to sati-
ate myself,’ and then picks the
herring out of the jar.

“He does this on purpose,” his
wife stressed. “No one is making
him do this.” He then proceeds
to throw back a bit of the vin-
egary mush, making satisfied
grunts as he finishes chewing.

Goldman, for his part, offers
the herring to any and all mem-
bers of his family or close circle
of friends when they happen to
be in the vicinity.

“I don’t really see what the
big deal is,” he said, wiping a bit
of the pickle juice off the cor-
ner of his mouth. “You did this
story last month on the way I
eat beets straight out of the can.

What’s the issue here?” l
FOP Defends Officer Whose Mother
“Decluttered” Evidence Room
FAKE N EWS
ELIOT NESS | JE STAFF
FRATERNAL ORDER of
Police spokesman John McNesby
is fighting back on behalf of a
Jewish police officer who’s been
reprimanded by his superiors.

Officer Lev Mandelbaum,
who’s been on the force for two
years, has been indefinitely sus-
pended with pay as the depart-
ment tries to figure out how to
punish Mandelbaum for letting
his mother, Linda Mandelbaum,
into an evidence storage room
without supervision.

Apparently, it all started when
Linda Mandelbaum got irritated
that her son had lost a Chanukah
card his younger sister made for
him when they were children.

“That was a precious keep-
sake!” she said to him. “Where
did it go?”
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM “I took it to work with me
and was going to hang it up near
my desk but it must have gotten
lost in the papers and stuff. The
station house is a mess, Mom.”
That was all Linda — who
runs the organizing business
Living Lighter With Linda —
needed to hear. Using the pre-
text of bringing Lev a surprise
lunch one day, Linda disap-
peared “to the ladies room,”
she said, and didn’t return for
five hours. Her son, who was
abruptly called out on police
business, forgot she was there.

But when the officers went
to look for something in the
evidence room the next day,
they found everything had
been entirely rearranged and
smelled strongly of Febreeze.

Their cardboard boxes had
been replaced by multicolored
plastic bins, each with distinctly
colored and patterned contact
paper on the exterior. A small
vase with a fresh spray of flow-
ers sat on a small circular table
that was wedged inside the door
and overhead fluorescents had
been pulled out and smashed
and replaced by two floor lamps.

It was unclear where she’d so
quickly procured the transfor-
mative items.

Though no evidence was
thrown out, the organiza-
tional system in the room was
destroyed, replaced by col-
or-coordination. The young officer was
embarrassed and apologetic,
but was suspended anyway,
which McNesby felt was unfair.

“Do you realize how much
razzing this guy is going to get
about his Jewish mother for the
rest of his life on the force?”
McNesby said to a reporter.

“Man, that’s punishment
enough.” l
JEWISH EXPONENT
AFTER 16 YEARS of being
beholden to the schedule of
his parents, Matthew Shapiro,
newly licensed driver, is now
free to unshackle himself from
the irons of childhood, to
throw off the yoke of adoles-
cence, to seize the open road as
so many teens before him have
done and to procure fast food
for himself slightly faster than
he could before.

“It’s amazing,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro, who lives within
biking distance — if not walk-
ing, on a nice day — of a
Wawa, a Wendy’s, a Chipotle
and a McDonald’s, took driv-
ing lessons for months in order
to speed up the journey of a
Shorti hoagie from an employee
to his mouth by about four min-
utes. Dozens of precious photos
of Shapiro driving around an
empty parking lot for the first
time were taken in the service of
Shapiro’s desire to get a Big Mac,
hold the tomato, slightly faster.

“At first we were worried,”
said his mother, Lori Shapiro.

“How was he going to use
this newfound responsibility?
Would he take around too
many friends, and get dis-
tracted? Would he play music
loudly and take his focus off
the road? Would he be gone
every weekend?
“Luckily, none of that has come
to pass,” she added, happily. l
Christmastime Chinese Pop-Up
Restaurant Opens
FA K E N E WS
IMA FOODIE | JE STAFF
SHANGHAI DYNASTY
is opening a Christmastime
pop-up restaurant in a Jewish
community center parking lot
to better engage its customers,
a spokesperson for the restau-
rant said last week.

Shanghai Dynasty’s
Chinatown location is already
open on Dec. 25, but this pop-up
restaurant will bring favorites
like sweet and sour chicken, beef
and broccoli and chow mein to a
more convenient location.

The pop-up will be in the
parking lot and not the build-
ing itself because the JCC is
closed on Christmas, JCC CEO
Rachel Berger said, noting the
JCC’s many non-Jewish staff,
as well as the staff who cele-
brate the holiday with inter-
faith families.

Multiple financial planners
who stopped by the pop-up restau-
rant on their way to the gym —
before they realized it was closed
for Christmas — assessed that the
pop-up would be a success.

Shanghai Dynasty declined
to comment on whether the
offerings would be kosher. l
MARCH 14, 2019
13