JEWS OF THE WORLD! BROTHERS AND SISTERS! SISTERS, IN PARTICULAR. Hello, there. I am gushing, never having written for or about the Jews. Let's get it on....

Friday night hits New York City like a midsummer storm and we maniac kiddies are looking to rock and roll. Let us say Wednesday night, rather. Wednesday night. The sky darkens a little and you sniff a trace of ozone in the afternoon air and say to yourself, By Christ, Eh, Jove, Eh, Ariel Sharon: What to do?

Sisters (and for that matter, shikses-hi!), we hombres of culture know what. The Internet tells us. It's June 30. Tonight we have an ancient flick, Judaic in theme, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, with live musical accompaniment. It even has a foreign-sounding title: Der Golem.

That means The Golem, ladies. I wish for you to understand everything. The film is silent, else I'd translate the whole show right there in the theater, whispering discretely in your lovely ear. Instead we only have music, so I will translate the score: This song is about sensuality. Let me see your hand. And so forth. You are going to love it!

Weeks down the road I will dump you, quite arbitrarily, then torment you for months afterward in a twisted, sado-masochistic endeavor at winning you back. You won't love that quite so much, but you will succumb-against your better judgment-then catch me in bed with a leprechaun eighteen days later. "A CATHOLIC? " you'll sob. "Let me guess: for her you translated Passion of the Christ..."

I am sorry.

"It's an it."

"What?"

"Leprauchans don't have genders."

"GET OUT OF MY BEDROOM."

Bad times, muchachas. I am trying to level with you here, now, in advance, before anything happens. Before we carry this thing too far. Level, then seduce: my new approach, vastly more challenging. (A recent telephone call: "Glinda? Josh Axelrad. Look, you're moderately attractive at best, and none too bright. I'd like to take you to dinner but you'll have to cover wine and tax. Yes, Thursday is fine.")

By and large, this method has failed. I am thirty years old. Each day I boot up the Internet to see what to do. If the event has the right kind of grit, you can usually sucker some lonely young thing away from her Sex in the City DVD collection for the night. Der Golem caught my eye at once. "This'll show 'em I've got kultur," I said to myself. That weird word golem kept ringing a bell.

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