Torah Hero - B&T wants you to be a "Bar Mitzvah Bad-ass"

In a great post, B&T of the Bridge & Tunnel Crowd blog, imagines the game Torah Hero. The game riffs on Guitar and Band Hero, but focusing on Jewish music. As he says...

"Hey kids, ever wanted a cool way to practice your Bar/Bat Mitzvah prayers and Torah portions? Then Torah Hero might be just what you need. Here's how I'd design the game as a parody of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band videogame franchises. Neither the people nor companies nor places mentioned have endorsed or agreed to the game...yet. And as you know, now that it's posted here, I own the copyright to the idea...suckas!"

It's not just the concept I love, it's the detail that he put into it. 4 difficulty levels (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Chassid), 12 game tiers (including Shabbat, Passover, and Debbie Friedman), and create-a-shul. Each of the 12 game tiers is linked to 8 to 10 well chosen YouTube videos. You could spend an hour just listening to the tracks he links to. In fact you should. Get going....

(I promised B&T I'd come up with a list of Orthodox and Chassid videos for him, but I haven't had time. Sorry)

Hava Nagila & JumpStart World

So, is Judaism the only religion in the world with a theme song? The occasion doesn't matter, if you want to something to sound Jewish, just add Hava Nagila. Sigh.

I had funny 'Hava Nagila' moment recently that I thought I'd share. I was washing dishes and humming to myself. I'd wanted to put some music on in the kitchen, but was foiled by my 5 year old. Before I could fire up one the 'Ofer Ben-Amots' discs I just got in the mail she asked to play her video game, JumpStart World Kindergarten. (Brief plug, JSW is a pretty slick game, with a great mix of educational and entertainment content. The wiggler loves it.). JSW is pretty noisy and has it's own sound track, so no music for me. Oh well. Back to humming. All of a sudden I realized I was humming Hava Nagila. Huh? Then I realized I was humming along with the little one's game. She was running around her game world with the body of a girl robot and a MIDI instrumental Hava Nagila soundtrack. When we started the game, we'd identified ourselves as "celebrating Chanukah." That got us lot of Jewish stars and menorah's around Chanukah. And now...Hava Nagila.

To quote a friend from college..."now thats a metaphor for something larger"