by shamirpower [➚] · Thursday, January 22nd, 2004
There may be snow and ice on the ground where some of us are, but the Jewish New Year for the Trees, which marks the beginning of spring in the land of Israel, is just around the corner-February 7.
But how does one celebrate Tu B’shevat? One could attend or hold your own a Tu B’shevat Seder, a Kabbalistic ritual based on the Pesach seder. But if you can’t get to a seder this year, such as the one at the JCC in Manhattan, there are plenty of other ways to connect with the trees and show your appreciation for the earth.
The Teva Learning Center and Yeshivat Olam Echad have a variety of resources ranging from activist groups such as COEJL (national conference February 22-24) and The Shalom Center to organizations promoting educational opportunities and adventures such as The Jewish Nature Center, Hazon, and Torah Trek.
Another great option: Make a new year’s resolution by taking a few simple steps to save our forests.
by Mobius [➚] · Wednesday, January 21st, 2004
“Please God, help me cleanse the computer of viruses and evil photographs that disturb and ruin my work [...] so that I shall be able to cleanse myself.”
The chief rabbi of Tzefat has written a prayer for porn surfers. Yes, can I get an oy gevalt?! (c/o l’via w/props to sarah lefton)
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, January 19th, 2004
Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the tzaddik behind Rabbis for Human Rights, is standing trial in Israel for defending Palestinian homes from being bulldozed.
Ascherman says that Israel’s demolition policy contravenes [biblical commandments favoring human rights] and he hopes to use his trial to put government actions in the public spotlight. “Not everything that is legal is just and that is the whole point of civil disobedience,” Ascherman says. “The demolition policy tramples on the torah, which is my duty as a rabbi to uphold.”
Over 400 rabbis have come out to support Ascherman including Phyllis Berman, Rachel Cowan, Arthur Green, Arthur Hertzberg, Michael Lerner, Marcia Prager, Jeff Roth, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Hanna tiferet Siegel, Michael Strassfeld, Arthur Waskow and Sheila Peltz Weinberg, who signed a formal letter to the Israeli government condemning Israel’s actions against Ascherman, and pledging to raise awareness of the issue among their friends and congregants.
If you feel strongly about the subject, and would like to express your support for Ascherman, please contact the Israeli embassy at 202.364.5500, ext. 4.
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, January 19th, 2004
Israeli psychic Uri Geller (co-author of The Psychic and The Rabbi with Shmuley Boteach) claims that Michael Jackson is innocent, as he’s denied partaking in any sexual abuse while under hypnonsis.
…and you can’t fake being hypnotized?
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, January 19th, 2004
There has clearly been a revolution in the young Jewish self-image. Overnight, it seems, third-generation Jews are reshaping their culture.
Who are these Hebesters and what is the new sensibility? Here is what it is not: self-deprecating, dweeby, asexual or yearning for goyishe validation.
It is also no longer a ghettoised sensibility; if one thing distinguishes the “new Jews” from the thinking of their parents it is this generation’s impatience with the “chosen people” selectivity of their parents and grandparents that made for strong ethnocentric boundaries.
Naomi Wolf in The Sydney Morning Herald
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, January 19th, 2004
The killer of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin plans to get married in jail, Israeli television has reported.
Yigal Amir, 34, announced his intention to marry Larisa Trimbobler, a divorced mother-of-four, the private Channel 2 said.
Rabin’s daughter, Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, was taken to hospital suffering from chest pains after hearing the news, her friends told Israel Army Radio.
I see—honest Israelis can’t marry Palestinians if they want to… but the man who shot Rabin, and thus scuttled the peace process, is entitled to wed from prison.
Meh, he’s serving a life sentence. I guess it doesn’t matter anyway.
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, January 19th, 2004
“It’s like a weave, a cloth of many different experiences which we can explore and learn,” Byrd said about the band’s music. “We’re able to discard our differences and any prejudices.”
The Daily Northwestern has a feature on the Afro-Semitic Experience (cough, someone needs a better website) and their recent performance at the Kfar Center.
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, January 19th, 2004
The NY Times has a fun human interest piece on some would-be rabbis and their recent trip to El Salvador for the American Jewish World Service.
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, January 18th, 2004
Israel must get out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as soon as possible and evacuate most of the settlements. I have long advocated this, but it is now an urgent necessity. Otherwise, the Jewish state is in peril. Ideally, this withdrawal should be negotiated along the Clinton plan. But if necessary, it should be done unilaterally. This can’t happen too soon, and the U.S. should be forcing it.
Thomas Friedman in the Sunday Times
by Mobius [➚] · Saturday, January 17th, 2004
“Israel’s ambassador to Sweden was kicked out of Stockholm’s Museum of National Antiquities after he destroyed an artwork featuring a picture of a Palestinian suicide bomber, the artists said.” (c/o Darieus)
by Mobius [➚] · Thursday, January 15th, 2004
The Forward takes a look at the “new cultural subset” of children of Jewish and Hindu parents.
by Mobius [➚] · Thursday, January 15th, 2004
Despite pressure from various sources, the Republican National Committee and allied organizations are declining to speak out against two conservatives, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and New York Post columnist Ralph Peters, who compared opponents of the Bush administration to Nazis.
The RNC led the charge last month against the liberal Web site MoveOn.org for allowing users to post two 30-second videos comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler. The videos were posted as entries in a MoveOn.org contest soliciting model campaign ads and sparked a flood of protest from across the political spectrum.
Full story here. Is Eric Marx reading Jewschool? If he’s not, perhaps he ought to, particularly with a last name like that! 
by Mobius [➚] · Thursday, January 15th, 2004
The Jewish Week reports,
Poverty among New York City’s Jews is at historic highs and rising, even as it is diminishing among other groups in the five boroughs, according to as-yet-unreleased data from a recent survey of New York’s Jewish community.
For the first time in recent history there is a higher percentage of poor households within the Jewish community, 13 percent, than among white households in general in the city, 12 percent, according to the data.
And while New York City’s overall poverty rate fell between 1991 and 2002 — from 25 percent of households earning the federal poverty level or less to 21 percent — it nearly doubled among Jews in that period.
Yet we run all the banks, Wall Street, Washington, the media, and Hollywood. Clearly it’s time to bury that stereotype.
by Mobius [➚] · Thursday, January 15th, 2004
Debbie Rowe, the Jewish ex-wife of Michael Jackson, and mother of his two eldest children, is expressing concern for her kids religious tradition now that Jacko’s rollin’ with the Nation of Islam.
Puh-leeze.
Didn’t know Jacko’s kids rocked the Hebrew flava? Oddly enough, according to the article, not even Shmuley knew. Strange. But then again, what about Jackson isn’t?
(c/o Darieus)
by Ari [➚] · Wednesday, January 14th, 2004
There must be something about Irish music and Jews, because so many Jews I know who make music play Irish music. Could be some similar fascination with language – we’re people of the book, and the Irish have so far given us the Book of the Kells and James Joyce. In any event, Andy Rubin posts dates for the NY showings of a new film, “Shalom Ireland,” on the Klezmershack, for which he and friends have done a bang-up fusion of Jewish and Irish musics.
by Ari [➚] · Wednesday, January 14th, 2004
It seems simple to describe “Ghetto Tango.” It is a program Adrienne Cooper sings comprised cabaret songs written by Jews in the ghettoes during the Holocaust, many of which are political, many of which are poignant and personal. If that seems to invite contradiction, then you owe it to yourself to see a rare New York performance this coming Sunday.
Sunday, January 18, 8 pm
Adrienne Cooper, Dan Rosengard & Frank London
Ghetto Tango
Satalla, 37 W. 26th St., NYC
212.576.1155
$15
If you’ve already seen the show, you’ll probably be there to hear it again. Cooper has an amazing voice, and is an amazing storyteller. Most reviewers put the album containing much of the music for the show in their annual Top Ten lists — the KlezmerShack, my website, did as well. But however good the recording is, it doesn’t begin to describe how good this show is. Cooper is one of the great vocal interpreters of Yiddish music appears with Dan Rosengard, pianist/arranger, late of Saturday Night Live; & Frank London, famed trumpetter/Klezmatics/ All-Star Brass Band. Together, they bring to life the extraordinary cabaret music of war-time Eastern Europe. In the Nazi-mandated ghettos during World War II, audiences gathered in makeshift clubs and theaters to hear newly-created songs, rooted in Jewish folk song, European cabaret, American jazz and Argentine tango. Jewish performers tuned these cosmopolitan songs in a local key: satirical and elegiac, political and personal, angry and heartsick, creating something scarcely conceivable: art at the edge of the abyss. Don’t miss it.
by Mobius [➚] · Wednesday, January 14th, 2004
“Some 100 Palestinian journalists converged on the presidential headquarters in Ramallah on Tuesday – not to interview Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, but to pledge allegiance to him.”
by Mobius [➚] · Wednesday, January 14th, 2004
A judge in Florida has petitioned the National Security Agency for documents pertaining to the USS Liberty incident (in which it is alleged that, during the Six Day War, Israel purposefully attacked a US naval vessel) only to discover that, not only is there no evidence to support the claim that Israel attacked the ship on purpose, but that the U.S. has—on record—evidence to the contrary, and that it was, in fact—as Israel claims—an accident.
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