Which of the following Brian Williams stories is true (unless, of course, it turns out not to be)?

A. In 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, Williams was reporting from Gaza when an Israeli airstrike destroyed a house a few hundred yards from where Williams was standing. Said Williams on the Nightly News broadcast, “We were close enough that we could feel the impact of the rocket as it landed, and the resulting smoke and dust from the building collapse caused us to retreat to our vehicle. It was a very frightening moment.”

B. In 2013, Williams appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, where he spoke of reporting from Israel during Operation Desert Shield, the first Gulf War in Iraq, in 1990. “This was my first war assignment for NBC News. I was stationed in Tel Aviv, far from the fighting, with no expectation of trouble (and not looking for any). I was simply interviewing Israelis on the street about the war that was happening ‘down the block.’ Suddenly there was a siren, and everyone ran to the nearest bomb shelter. As Saddam Hussein's scud missiles rained down on Tel Aviv, I thought to myself–and Dave, this is the god’s honest truth–I remember thinking ‘Toto, I’ve a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.’ ”

C. In 2006, Williams was flying in an Israeli military helicopter over northern Israel when, as Williams said, “There were Katyusha rockets passing just underneath the helicopter I was riding in,” leading Williams to say to a general who was on the same helicopter, “It wouldn’t take much for them to adjust the aim and try to do a ring toss right through our open doors, would it?”

D. Williams was the speaker at the UJA-Federation of New York's 2013 Annual Campaign event which raised $45 million. Said Williams, “Growing up in Middletown, New Jersey, my parents taught me that there was nothing more important than helping others, which led to my becoming a volunteer firefighter for the Middletown Fire Department during my high school years. With all that I’ve done in my career, nothing has meant more to me than being a part of that organization, with its brave and dedicated group of men and women. I believe that this is this same feeling which drives the thousands of volunteers and professionals of UJA-Federation and I am proud to stand before you tonight in that spirit.”

E. Speaking at the annual Network Affiliates meeting in 2012, Williams said, “I’ve had many amazing experiences in my life, from inspiring Elvis Presley’s dancing, to meeting President Kennedy (I’m still embarrassed about having to pee). From fighting in Viet Nam and saving Lieutenant Dan’s life, to meeting John Lennon on the Dick Cavett show, to starting the Bubba Williams Shrimp Company. But I’m most proud of the time when I got a felafel with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin and convinced them to sign that peace deal.”

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Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, a Grammy nominee for this year's Best New Artist, has what Jewish connection?

A. Israeli horticulturists at the University of Haifa have developed a breed of azalea which is resistant to petal blight, a common plant disease. They have named this new breed the Iggy Azalea, as the lead scientist is originally from Iggy Azalea’s home town of Perth, Australia.

B. In 2010, Iggy participated in the Sar-El Australia program, where young people travel to Israel as volunteers on kibbutzim, army bases, and hospitals. Iggy spent three months working on a kibbutz near Ashdod.

C. Iggy was discovered by Jewish rapper Matisyahu, who was performing in her hometown of Mullumbimby in New South Wales, Australia. After hearing her perform in a local club, he invited her to join him on his tour and introduced her to audiences in Israel, the United States, and around the world.

D. Though she is not Jewish, her grandfather was a Sephardic Jew who emigrated from Greece to Australia at the start of World War II. His name was Yechiel "Yechi" Azaria, from which she derived her stage name of Iggy Azalea.

E. In 2014 Iggy was performing at a private bar mitzvah party in Beverly Hills when her pants split while she was twerking, providing an unexpected show for the guests.

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Robert Kraft, owner of the Super Bowl winning New England Patriots (and who is Jewish) was the Columbia University graduation speaker in 2005. What was the focus of his talk?

A. The “Four I’s” – Integrity, Intelligence, Initiative, and Imagination.

B. The “Four F’s” – Family, Faith, Philanthropy, and Football.

C. The “Four C’s” – Cooperation, Compassion, Charity, and Courage.

D. The “Four P’s” – Prayer, Philanthropy, Patriotism, and Phootball.

E. The “Four A’s” – Achievement, Ambition, Accountability, and Air Pressure.

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Much attention is focused on deflated footballs this week, as the New England Patriots approach the Super Bowl under a cloud of scandal. What is the "Jewish" connection to the football?

A. German Jewish immigrants Joseph Schwarzchild and Ferdinand Sulzberger were partners in the Schwarzchild & Sulzberger company, whose main business was meatpacking. They expanded by finding other uses for the by-products of their work, including tennis racket strings, surgical sutures, footballs and other products. The company eventually became the Thomas E. Wilson Company, now known as Wilson Sporting Goods, the supplier of footballs for the NFL (including the deflated footballs).

B. The Wilson Sporting Goods Company is the official supplier of footballs for the National Football League.  In 2003, the NFL complained to Wilson officials that they were not satisfied with the laces on the football, which had a tendency to open slightly on very hot days. In its effort to find a better product with which to make the laces, Wilson turned to Israeli company Para-Tec, which makes parachutes for the Israeli Defense Forces. Para-Tec provided a product based on the strings they used on military parachutes, and this product has been used on NFL footballs ever since (including the deflated footballs).

C. While footballs are referred to as pigskin, they are in fact made from leather. Originally, however, they were made of pigskin. In 1950, Brandeis University played its first football game, but the Board of Trustees was not happy with the use of the footballs made from pigs, given that the university operated under Jewish auspices. They contracted with the Spalding Company to design a football made of cow's leather rather than pigskin. The ball became so popular that over time other teams began using it, and now, all footballs are made of leather rather than pigskin (including the deflated footballs).

D. Wilson Sporting Goods, the official supplier of footballs for the NFL, was founded in 1915 by Thomas Wilson. This was a time of strong anti-immigrant feeling in America, and Wilson (like many employers at that time) refused to hire Jews to work in his company. In 1918, a lawsuit was filed by the recently established Anti-Defamation League on behalf of Harry Schild, a Jewish immigrant who was refused employment because of his religion. The case, Schild vs. Wilson, eventually reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Schild. The company hired Schild, but ironically he quit almost immediately after being assigned to work with the pig skins, a product he refused to touch because of his religious beliefs.

E. Football was invented in the shtetl of Pinsk in Belarus when a kosher butcher sewed together sections of cow hide, which he gave to the neighborhood children to play with. They began throwing it and kicking it around, eventually developing teams and rules. The ball was called the Pinsk-Skin, but over time, as the popularity of the game spread beyond the shtetl, the name morphed into Pigskin, which the non-Jews who played the game found easier to pronounce.

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Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson just completed a free climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. In 2005, Israeli Felix Slamovics completed a partial ascent of El Capitan in a unique way. How did Slamovics climb El Capitan?

A. Slamovics climbed El Capitan aided only by the use of his hands and arms, as he is paraplegic, unable to use his legs. While he did not successfully reach the summit of El Capitan, he set the record for the highest ascent of the peak by a paraplegic, a record which holds to this day.

B. Slamovics, a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi, climbed El Capitan on Yom Kippur, while observing a total fast, not even drinking any water. Though he did not reach the summit due to dehydration, he is credited with calling attention to the mitzvah of fasting among a large population of young Israelis for whom religious observance was not an important part of their lives.

C. Slamovics, an Orthodox Jew, carried a Torah Scroll with him on his climb. His goal was to read one Torah parsha (chapter) at each resting stop along his ascent. However, the climb proved so strenuous that during his frequent breaks, he completed the entire Torah before reaching the top of El Capitan, so he discontinued his effort after reading the final parsha, V'Zot Ha’Bracha.

D. Because Slamovics has ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), he ascended the mountain in a homemade device he dubbed the Harley Felixson, made of bicycle parts and mountain rescue equipment. Two years later he successfully climbed the 614-foot Azrieli Tower in Tel Aviv using this device.

E. Slamovics was carrying his son, Isaac, whom he intended to sacrifice at the summit of El Capitan, to show his devotion to G-d. However, as he neared the summit, G-d stopped him and provided a ram to be sacrificed instead.

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Israel was represented by 12 high tech companies at the just ended Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. One of the Israeli companies, Silentium, offered what kind of product?

A. Silentium was demonstrating a small noiseless drone known as the SilentCopter, with a high definition camera that can be controlled from a smartphone. The device is based on one which they originally developed for the Israeli military, but the consumer model does not contain a rocket launcher.

B. Silentium, founded in 1979, originally made white noise machines for use in therapist offices. They have since expanded to make a wide range of noise reducing and noise masking products. Their newest device, exhibited at CES 2015, is known as the SheketCell. Rather than masking noise, this device can be used in locations such as theaters and restaurants to block all cellular and wireless internet signals, thus silencing cell phones by eliminating their connection to the outside world.

C. Silentium invented the Quiet Bubble, which can reduce ambient noise in a zone around a person's head without the necessity of wearing noise-canceling headphones (sort of like your own personal Get Smart Cone of Silence).

D. Using high-tech technology, Silentium has invented the ultimate low-tech product–a noise canceling tallis. When placed over your head, the tallis completely blocks the noise of the two guys sitting behind you in shul who are constantly shmoozing about their aches and pains, even during the Silent Amidah. Because the “SilenTallis” uses no electronics, it is acceptable for use in Orthodox synagogues.

E. The company is named after the newest atomic element, number 119, which is called Ununsilentium. The Israeli company has found a way to modify the Uzi submachine gun to fire a small burst of radiation instead of bullets. This nuclear “bullet” device is a type of portable x-ray machine that can be administered anywhere at a greatly reduced cost compared to traditional x-ray equipment.

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House Majority Whip Steve Scalise is taking heat for his 2002 address to the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a white supremacist group co-founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Duke has had much to say regarding the Jewish community. Which of the following is NOT a quote from David Duke?

A. Jewish hatred of Christ and Christianity can be seen in a never-ending parade of vicious Jewish attacks on Jesus and Christianity in the media. It is illustrated by Larry David’s HBO television program Curb Your Enthusiasm where this Jew urinates on a picture of Jesus.

B. [The Talmud] sets the entire course of law by which Jews must live, boasting that Jews themselves were the ones who executed Jesus, not the Romans. It also claims that Jewish priests in the afterworld have conjured up Jesus where they are boiling him in excrement for eternity.

C. No Jewish leader has to direct his minions to seek political control of Gentile nations; they do it as naturally as the Blue Jay appropriates another bird’s nest.

D. These Jews who run things, who are producing this mental illness - teenage suicide... all these Jewish sicknesses. That’s nothing new. The Talmud’s full of things like sex with boys and girls.

E. The only positive contribution ever made to the world by the Jewish people is the pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli. Oy. Such a mechaya!

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In 1992 and 1993, Israel conducted secret talks with North Korea, which included a visit by Eitan Ben-Tzur, the deputy director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, to Pyongyang. What was the issue over which they negotiated?

A. North Korea had been a supporter of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians since the 1970's. Israel contacted North Korea in an effort to get them to serve as a go-between to Arafat. As a result of these negotiations, North Korea pressured Arafat who agreed to meet with the Israelis, leading to the successful negotiation of the Oslo accords in 1993.

B. Israel was attempting to get North Korea to open a kosher kimchi factory in the Negev to provide work for the huge influx of Russian immigrants that resulted from the Soviet Union's 1990 decision to allow Jews to emigrate. However, the deal was scuttled when the Ministry of Religious Affairs learned that the brine used to flavor the dish included a salted food known as saeujeot, which is derived from small shrimp.

C. North Korea was attempting to build nuclear weapons. Israel, which had lost South Africa as a purchaser of Israeli arms when the country transitioned to democracy from its apartheid government, was looking for other customers for its military technology. However, under pressure from the Clinton administration, Israel discontinued these negotiations.

D. Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il was attempting to hire Mossad assassins to kill Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who at the time were students at the Vancouver Talmud Torah. They had written a Purim shpiel which featured a cross-dressing Kim Jong-Il as one of the women who paraded before Ahashverus as he looked to select a replacement queen for Vashti.

E. Israel was attempting to get North Korea to agree to cease sales of Scud missiles to Israel's adversaries in the Middle East, and in particular to Iran. Korea agreed to do so only if Israel paid $500 million. Israel counter-offered to pay $25 million; however, this was rejected by North Korean officials and the negotiations fell apart.

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In the 1990's, an operation was launched which enabled more than 400 Jews to secretly emigrate from Cuba to Israel. What was this operation called?

A. Operation Cigar.

B. Operation Rum.

C. Operation Git Mo Jews Out of Cuba.

D. El Exodus de los Judios.

E. Operation Ima and Aba Babalu.

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Why did Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards recall a Chanukkah gift wrap from the shelves last week?

A. The blue ink used on the gift wrap was made from products derived from copepods, which are microscopic shrimp; therefore it was determined by the Chief Rabbi of Kansas City that the gift wrap was not kosher.

B. On the gift wrap, the words Happy Chanukkah in English and Hebrew were printed against a background picture of Passover matzah.

C. The product design was a pattern of blue and silver angular lines that included swastika shapes. Said a Hallmark spokesperson, “It was an oversight on our part to not notice the intersecting lines that could be seen as a swastika pattern.”

D. They did so under pressure from the faculty at the University of Missouri who are pushing Hallmark to join the BDS movement and discontinue selling any holiday cards, gift wrap or other Jewish-themed products until Israel withdraws from the West Bank.

E. When they printed the Hebrew greeting Chanukkah Sameach (Happy Chanukkah), they inadvertently omitted the Chet which is the first letter in Chanukkah, yielding Nacheh Sameach, which means Happy Cripple.

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