January 13 is National Clean-Off-Your-Desk Day. According to the ancient art of feng shui, my desk is creating a negative energy--and I'm tempted to ditch it. Instead, I've emptied the IN/OUT Box in my home/office and noted its contents:

National Lampoon's offer of the $29.95 US "Clapper" device which permits electrical switches to be turned on and off by clapping:
Clap once for love
Clap twice for joy
Let Clapper be
Your Shabbos goy!

Hallmark greeting card containing a check for $18 (Chai). Caption: "The best gift is one with real value...one passed from generation to generation...a gift that's part of an old established tradition of [Jewish] giving...You know--MONEY. Mazel-tov."

Copy of article stating that the father of Jewish astronaut, David Wolf, prayed for his son's well-being before he blasted off into space. Harry Wolf met with Rabbi Zvi Konikov who said, 'A little pulling of the strings from above won't hurt." (The Atlantis lifted off on Oct. 7 to take the crew to work on the international space station.)

Fax of Haifa University survey which said that about 18% of Israeli men decide if their wives may speak to other men and demand their spouses account for their whereabouts, and 10.5% govern their wives' dress.

List of real student bloopers, compiled by Jonathan D. Safren:
"Tu B'shevat is celebrated on the 15th because by that time the sap from the tree comes out of the leaves and renews the tree and makes it more lively."
Copy of article by Michael Freund stating that "The average American Jewish couple had just 1.8 children per family, which is less than the 2.1 figure which demographers describe as 'minimum replacement level.'"

Post-it note containing a quote by Douglas Rushkoff:
"...the worse things get, or the more dire the circumstances are depicted, the more committed and generous Jews become. With each new crisis in the West Bank, tourism to Israel goes down, but donations to Jewish philanthropies go up."

List of food terms;
'Open Sesame' - a precut bagel
'high hollandaise" - seasoned sauce served with yom kipper
'almond mandelbread' - Jewish biscotti

Theatre stubs from "Goy Vey!"--a one-man "stand-up Jewish-Chinese Oper-edy." (Adventures of the Dim Sun in Search of His Wanton Father: The Whole Megillah.)

Two corrections from The New York Times:
(Sept. 13, 1934) "Because of a transcription error, a dispatch from Tel Aviv on negotiations for a new Israeli government referred incorrectly to Yosef Burg, leader of the National Religious Party. It should have described him as a veteran (not Bedouin) in Israeli politics."
(March 1, 2000) "An article about the growing number of Orthodox Jewish couples moving back to the Lower East Side of Manhattan misstated the circumstances that allowed one couple to take over her grandfather's apartment on Grand Street. He moved out; he did not die."

List of Beatles Top 10 Jewish Songs:
Luzzamoff (Let it Be)
Short Fat Solly
Back in the Shtetl
Give Pesach a Chance
She's Leaving Home Shalom

Sales receipt for Letty Cottin Pogrebin's book, "Three Daughters" and a list of Yiddish words used by Ms. Pogrebin:
"Shtarka-Barca"--a Barcalounger for a strong-arm character; a bully

Canceled check for subscription to PLOTZ, the 'zine of Jewish pop culture

Fax from Temple Rodeph Shalom (New York City) confirming the fact that the tuition at their preschool ranges from $7,900 for two half days (for two-year-olds) to $16,800, for five full days (ages 4 and 5).

3" x 5" index card stating that 137,000 babies were born in Israel in 2001. Of the infants, 91,000 were born to Jewish parents; 36,000 to Arab parents; 51.4% were male and 48.6% were female. The most common names given to new babies was Daniel for boys and Noa for girls.

Copy of The New York Times Metro section, 3/30/98:
Dear Diary:
Passing a listing of future services to be held at an Upper West Side church, I noticed the following subject for a coming sermon: "The Whole Megillah." Chalk up one for the Brotherhood of Man."
Lucille Waldman
Sales pitch for www.laughmeister.com  (Jewish Joke Daily):
"What has a beard and goes Yo, Yo, Yo?... A Dyslexic Rabbi. Come on already! Get Mit da program and sign up for Jewish Jokes Daily, another Hilarious Newsletter by Your Laughmeister. Each day, you'll get from our own Shayna Meydle a joke, one liner or funny story, right in your e-mails. What? You don't think that they can? You should only be so lucky!"

Printout of eulogy for Abba Eban:
Benjamin Netanyahu said, "He was able to bring his brilliance, his level of wit, his knowledge of poetry and of literature to the assistance of an embryonic Jewish state and immediately catapulted it into the front lines of international diplomacy."

Invitation to attend a conference titled, "Gray Hair and I Don't Care."

Article stating that Moshe Shimon Cohen, a British philanthropist, funded trips to Israel for thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Entire yeshivat and their rabbinical staff were brought to Israel for two-month stays, with room and board entirely at Mr. Cohen's expense. The one "payment" expected of participants in the project, called We Will Do and We Will Hear, is a prayer offered at the Kotel (the Western Wall) at least once a day. Another group staying in Tiberias, agree to daily prayers at the Tomb of Rabbi Meir "Baal Haness."

One enormous envelope labeled, "When you can't find it anywhere else, look into this."

Coffee cup imprinted, "Great Minds Have Messy Desks."

List of lingo used by The Simcha Connection--a Long Island, New York, group of mostly Orthodox Jews gathered as shadchanim (matchmakers):
F.F.B. Religious from birth/frum from birth
B.T. Someone who became religious later in life
Jewish Personal Ad "Torah scholar; long beard; payos [ear locks]. Seeks same in woman."

Copy of 1999 message from Rabbi James Ponet, campus rabbi at Yale. Rabbi Ponet had considered the song "Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water" (Simon & Garfunkel) to be vaguely Christian. It then dawned on him that bridging all kind of troubled chasms may be the Jewish art par excellence. He wrote, "Bridges, by definition, link separate worlds that appear inaccessible. And surely this is the vocation and destiny of Jews--as individuals and as a people--to insist that life is not either/or but rather both/and, to straddle incompatible categories."
So, when people ask Rabbi Ponet, "What do you do?" he replies, "I bridge. I link the generations of Jews at Yale, parents to children, alumni to students, professors to undergraduates, ancient rabbis to post-modern seekers."

3" x 5" index car containing a quote by Jaffe Cohen, a stand-up comic with Kung Po Kosher Comedy: "Most Jewish holidays are based on miracles, which I don't believe in. Moses never parted the Red Sea. The miracle was that 25,000 Jewish women swam across without getting their hair wet."

Newspaper article stating that according to Andrew Goldsmith, Exec. VP of the One Israel Fund, two years ago, the organization focused on community centers, libraries and other amenities of daily life. Now, the bulk of the money goes toward bullet-proof vests, better fences, patrol vehicles, and other security-related sites.

Form letter from a major computer company: "Dear Ms. Wolfe: Put your money where your mouse is.

A survey of top-level executives at Fortune 1000 companies which found that the stock of messy-desk companies rose an average of 3.5 points while neat-desk stocks fell by one point.

Directions on how to construct a Neil Tzedakah Box--from the book, "Judaikitsch: Tchotchkes, Schmattes, and Nosherei" by Jennifer Traig.

Business card from "Trayf-Busters"--an organization which rids the kitchen of any trace of "trayf"

An unpaid bill from "Renta Yenta"

Receipt for one ergonomically-designed office chair, which claims to solve the problem of "sitzfleish"

Three crispy fortune cookies with delightful Jewish sayings:
"It takes two to make a Jewish marriage...a girl and her mother!"
"May your pastrami never have mayonnaise on it"
"You will meet a real mensch - tall, dark, and calls his mother every day"