Britney Spears will apparently be ditching her Kaballah Faith in favor of a Catholic wedding ceremony instead. This comes only a day after reports of Madonna’s alleged falling out with Kabalah guru Rabbi Yehuda Berg.
The fad was short lived, I’m glad its almost over.
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Just back from KlezKanada where I spent a delicious week in celebration of Eastern European Jewish music, and the new derivatives of same, plus theatre, language, and cultural classes. This is such a wonderful way to take a vacation, even if, like me, you aren’t a musician.
It was also a place to reflect on how music has become more of a cultural symbol for us, and an expression of who we are, even more than words. This really hit home on Wednesday night at the second staff concert. There was an awesome sequence in which Yaella Hertz played a classical violin duo with a protege with whom she works at the camp, followed by Jeff Warschauer and Deborah Strauss performing a suite that included Jewish folk song, but also more, and then Aaron Alexander, the popular downtown drummer, came onstage to perform a piece from his forthcoming Tzadik album.
Okay, here’s some background. There is a photo at the National Yiddish Book Center of a table at a library in, I believe, Vilna. At the table, doing research, are luminaries from the Orthodox, and Marxist, and Socialist, and Yiddish, and Zionist worlds (with some overlap). There will probably never be a table like that again. There is no common ground for the scholars in those fields. But onstage with Aaron Alexander last Wednesday night there were Jews and non-Jews, representing music from traditional klezmer to avant garde (again, sometimes with considerable overlap) all playing joyously together (do Josh Dolgin’s samples count as playing?). And it flashed through my mind that this KlezKanada stage was our generation’s Vilna library table - the place where people come together either as Jews for the culture, or as non-Jews for the culture, and share and create entirely new, exciting music.
We saw more diversity and got to hang together, shmooze, and jam until all hours, than you’ll see over the course of several weeks here in NYC during the “350 years of Jews in America” celebration this fall. If it isn’t there already, do put KlezKanada on your calendar for next August.
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As you’ve undoubtedly heard, (at least) another 15 innocent Israelis have been murdered by Hamas terrorists in a double suicide bombing in Be’er Sheva. The bombers apparently came from Hebron, where the security fence has yet to be built.
For all you out there equating the morality of Palestinian terror with the building of a security barrier, let me know if you still think that Israel’s logic is similar to that of Hamas after reading this from their leaflet:
Our religion orders us to respond in kind to aggression against us. You [Israeliis] are the ones who choose your leaders and choose to be their shields. Therefore your shields will suffer more blows…This is a gift to the newcomers [olim] who arrived recently to our land. We say to you: ‘This is your fate, so wait’.
In the face of such blatant and hateful disrespect for human life, it would be a crime not to build the barrier. Details of the bombing here.
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Madonna wants to know what the Kabblah Center is spending her money on, as she is apparently disatisfied with their spending priorities. More on her ongoing fallout with the Bergs here.
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BusinessWeek reports,
If Bill Clinton was the first black President — a moniker he relished — then George W. Bush is the first Jewish President.
If George Bush is to be regarded as a Jew, count me out of the club… Sigh. At least I’m not alone on this one.
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Check out INJEWCON’s coverage of the RNC.
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AFP reports:
French police confirmed that a man arrested in connection with what was first believed to be an anti-Semitic arson attack on a Jewish social center a week ago was a Jewish man who had worked there. Police headquarters refused to identify the man taken into custody in connection with the August 22 attack, but investigators said the man had worked on occasion as a guard at the center, but that management wanted to fire him. [...] Last month, a 23-year-old woman who claimed she had been the victim of a vicious anti-Semitic assault later admitted she had made up the entire incident, and was given a four-month suspended sentence for lying about it.”
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“I’m all Jew. You may be a quarter. I’ve got everything.” — John Stewart to John Kerry on The Daily Show. Watch here.
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CBS News reports:
The FBI believes it has “solid” evidence that the suspected mole supplied Israel with classified materials that include secret White House policy deliberations on Iran. At the heart of the investigation are two people who work at The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington. The FBI investigation, headed up by Dave Szady, has involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance and photography that CBS News was told document the passing of classified information from the mole, to the men at AIPAC, and on to the Israelis. [...] The case raises another concern among investigators: Did Israel also use the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq?
From The Forward in 2003:
“A budding coalition of conservative hawks, Jewish organizations and Iranian monarchists is pressing the White House to step up American efforts to bring about regime change in Iran.”
This doesn’t seem like it will do much good for Jonathan Pollard’s case.
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Around 2,000 Palestinians and Israeli protestors demonstrated Friday adjacent to the separation fence as it runs through the town of Abu Dis, calling for non-violent opposition to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials tend to categorize any palestinian violent resistance as terrrorism, while claiming that Israel has a moral monopoly over the use of violence in order to defend itself. Considering the fact that Israel consistently used excessive violence in order to dispress the recent anti-fence demonstrations and many other non-violent protests, it is obvious that such kind of resistance poses a far greater threat to the moral legitimacy of Israel’s policies than violent resistance.
A while back, the 5 Israeli youth refuseniks who are now sitting in jail for almost two years, initiated a letter calling the Palestinians to choose non-violent methods to fight the occupation. As far as I remember the letter was published in some of the major Palestinian and Arab newspapers around the world and was endorsed by the refusal movement. Israel’s media response was much colder. I was sent as a representative to speak on Erev Hadash, a daily news show; sadly, the cynical responses of the news anchor Dan Margalit and MK Zvulun Orlev (who happened to be on air) wasn’t surprising at all. While the former belongs to the mainstream right-of-center and the latter to the extreme right, both men know and agree that Palestinian non-violent resistance is the last thing Israel wants.
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Project Genesis goes higher tech becoming the “net flix” of Torah on the internet:
Since Rabbi Menken also is head of one of the world’s largest and most modern virtual yeshivot, he probably needs the energy. Starting Sept. 1, Rabbi Menken and his Project GenesisTorah.org will test becoming the Netflix of Jewish Torah studies. He calls it Torahmedia. Students download a lesson to their digital player, listen to it, delete it when they are done with it and go online to get a new one.
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In December of 1999, a 20-year old Hasidic Jew, “Chaim,” stumbled into a The Right Bank Café where “Vic Thrill and The Rev. Vince Anderson” were performing some hardcore experimental rock. Chaim was immediately taken by the “loose,” free feeling of the music, and by the band itself.
A few weeks earlier, Vic Thrill had asked God to introduce him to a Hasid, thinking that he was living right next to these mysterious Jews in Brooklyn, but didn’t really know anything about them.
During an intermission, the two meet and exchange phone numbers. Chaim calls Vic a week or so later, visits the band’s recording studio / apartment / “salon,” and a year later Chaim starts performing with the band.
Listen to this truly unbelievable story on This American Life (Episode 268, 6/25/04).
And stay tuned for an upcoming feature film written by SNL’s Tina Fey about the pair.
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31 years after her last appearance at the garden, Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis shall be giving the closing benediction the second evening of the Republican Naitonal Convention next week.
“Everything is bashert,” says the rebbetzin. “Can you imagine? Isn’t this terrific?”
…
And her books, such as 1998’s “The Committed Life” and 2002’s “The Committed Marriage” (both Harper Collins), have made her the darling of Christian columnists and Conservative talk-show hosts, such as Dr. Laura and Rush Limbaugh.
Now isn’t that special.
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Looks like Australia has a controversial Jewish prankster of their own. In his new television series, John Safran travels to London to convince a “fundementalist Muslim cleric” to “put a fatwa on Rove McManus,” among other faith-based antics.
Australia’s The Age has the story (bypass registration):
In this eight-part series he considers some of the world’s biggest and lesser understood faiths by inserting himself in the midst of them. To the dismay of his lapsed Catholic friends, he says, that religion comes off best. Certainly the gruff South Melbourne priest he focuses on seems kinder than the cane-wielding Japanese Zen Buddhist monk who, Rove may be happy to hear, cruelly beats Safran on several occasions.In a discursive, sometimes fascinating series, Safran occasionally diverts from strict religious organizations to try to get the Klu Klux Klan to admit him as a member because he is only “half Jewish” or to uncover some of the secrets of Freemasonry. The series veers between comedy and the realm of the more serious documentary as Safran prods at the contentious and humorous aspects of spiritual belief.
Gotta love his tactics in prompting the fatwa on Rove’s head — that is, presenting “ridiculously doctored images … to the cleric - in one Rove is supposedly advertising pork with the slogan ‘Forget hallal, get some pork on your fork.’”
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In select theaters this week is Rosenstrasse. The Jewish Press reviews:
Based on an actual event in 1943, this beautifully crafted German language film does not pretend to preach about the Holocaust or the treacherous waters of German-Jewish relations. What it does suggest is that simple decency, like that between husband and wife, can rise to heroism when all other values seem to be evaporating. It is a story embedded in a terrible past that resonates eerily in the present.
The Forward also reports on the difficult task of getting the film made.
At a recent Brandeis University screening, the filmmaker was asked why she made the movie. “Must I answer this question?” she asked, balking before changing her mind. “Because I am German, I have to make these movies.”
In New York, Rosenstrasse is playing at Cinema Village, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and Kew Gardens.
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From Ha’aretz: Windsurfer Friedman wins Israel’s first ever Olympic gold.
President Moshe Katsav congratulated Friedman and invited him for a meeting to give him a “hug.” “I’m happy together with everyone about this win,” Katsav said. “We all had great expectations that Gal would do this.”
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New Phrase Coinage Alert: The Metrodox.
Jewsweek reports on the “new phenomenon” of urban frumsters who mix engagement with the big outside world with serious devotion to Torah. (I think they used to call that “Modern Orthodoxy”, but nobody asked me.) Something about the word appeals to me–probably the part in my head that’s confusing it with “metrosexual”–but I do take issue with their characterization of Metrodoxim as having to be all single. What happens when two get together–do they suddenly go fully haredi or hiloni? It doesn’t make sense.
Anyway, snippets below:
In this 35-block radius, nestled comfortably between Riverside and Central Parks, knit yarmulkes and long jean skirts are di rigueur. Not a surprising sight in New York, but when you consider the skirt is tight and low-riding and the knit yarmulke has fold creases from being in a pocket all day at work, then it’s a whole different ball of matzah.They are in their 20’s, proud of their religion, and inventing their own unique brand of Judaism. They do the secular (travel, watch movies, go dancing) and they do the religious (have an active synagogue life, keep kosher, and study Torah). And they are all single. They are the Metrodox.
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