by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, August 28th, 2005
JPost reports,
Dmitriy Salita defies the imagination. When his name is mentioned, most people are inclined to think about the Orthodox Jewish beliefs of the Russian immigrant from Brooklyn who has made it big as a junior welterweight boxer.
Some boxing aficionados have questioned his talent saying he has yet to fight a formidable opponent.
He has been called the “Kosher Kid”, the “Hebrew Hammer” and the “Hammerin Chabadnik.” Now, he can simply be referred to as a champion.
On Thursday, in front of a capacity crowd at the Hammerstein Ballroom, Dmitriy “The Star of David” Salita (23-0, 14 KOs) crushed Shawn “The Educator” Gallegos (15-2, 5 KOs) to win the NABA junior welterweight championship, thus becoming the first Jewish boxing champion in close to 30 years. At 2:37 in the ninth round, the referee called the fight and declared Salita the victor by TKO.
Full story.
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, August 28th, 2005
The New Republic has some fascinating looking articles on disengagement in their current issue. Anyone out there with an account who can save them in HTML or PDF format and send ‘em to me so I can post ‘em here?
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, August 28th, 2005
Seth B writes, “Quite a lineup for our final August show and our Shabbos Nachamu + 1 week extravaganza. We may even see Chazan Krantz after he plays out @ Todd Ps Willamsburg community gig @ Miss Williamsburg Diner earlier. With Gil Kasner, Emilia Cataldo, the Fiscal Patrons, Yuval Lieblich, and Turner Cody.”
G train to Greenpoint Ave. 1 blk to Franklin and right 2 blks.
Free. $2 cans of PBR also $5 shot of house booze + PBR.
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, August 28th, 2005
JDub Records, a non-profit record label and event production company promoting new Jewish music, is currently looking for part-time interns for our Fall Internship Program, which will run from September through December. We are looking for several interns, each of which will fulfill a very specific role at JDub.
We are looking for 3 types of fabulous interns.
1. Management interns to be involved in coordinating artists schedules, tour management, and keeping things organized in a very busy environment.
2. Record label interns to help keep our office organized and running smoothly. Interns will help out with basic administrative duties and will work on a number of projects that range from event production and tour management, to marketing and promotion.
3. Graphic design and web development interns to help with general marketing materials, websites, tour materials, and merchandise. The time requirement for this position may be less.
All applicants should have excellent organizational and communication skills. Proficiency on the computer is especially important and knowledge on both Mac and PC is preferred. Programming experience is a plus.
There is a requirement of 15 to 20 hours per week, and please be advised that these positions are unpaid, but not without perks! Also, we’re more than happy to accommodate your school’s requirements to obtain college credit.
Those interested in a career in the music industry and/or the non-profit sector are encouraged to apply.
For more information, visit jdubrecords.org.
To apply, send a cover letter and resume here.
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, August 28th, 2005
Kosher ChiXXX
by David Kelsey
There was a time when the 14th Street Y seemed all but oblivious to the fact that they are physically located in the epicenter of the alternative Jewish culture scene.
That time is over.
Susan Lyddon and Alyssa Abrahamson are running that aspect of the Y, and these chicks are out for dominance. Abrahamson, the Director of Arts, Jewish Culture, and Adult Education, who describes herself as a “Jewish Punk Rocker†on her Friendster profile, is responsible for the Y’s participation in Howl, and the programming of “Jewbilation!â€
“I’m basically bringing together my personal and professional world.â€
Her world includes burlesque, and Thursday was Kosher ChiXXX, the only all-Jewish burlesque show in the Diaspora, at the Y for the second year in a row.
Raven Snook, the co-creator pf Kosher Chixx with Abrahamson, was busy with her new child, but Allison Tilsen did a great job filling her, um, shoes as Hostess.
The choice of musical background was particularly smart, including use of the Barry Sisters in a way our bubbies might never have imagined, or at least we don’t want to think about it if they did. Dottie Lux performed her strip tease while playing Hava Negilah on the accordion. But as if that wasn’t enough of a twist, she played a prima donna stripping while playing Hava Negillah on the accordion. When the audience began to clap, she stopped playing, glared at the audience, and shook her head “no.†For we were not getting it. Later, when an insistent audience member started clapping again, she started playing slower to discourage him.
Little Brooklyn proved hilarious as well, with a strip tease that included a devolving magic show, as well as an encore presentation as a mechanic.
All the girls were obviously seasoned performers, whose talents exceed but do include the ability to twirl their nipple tassels in unison.
A 
Exclusive
by Zionista [➚] · Friday, August 26th, 2005
On Thursday, Aug. 25, Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH leader Jesse Jackson had a conversation with Israel’s Ambassador in Washington, Daniel Ayalon, lending his oratory to introduce a genuine peace and human rights movement to the political arena.
Ha’aretz reports,
…following the implementation of the withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements, “the moral burden now substantially shifts to the Palestinians.”
“Sharon made a bold and painful step toward a long-term solution. He deserves a partnership that is just as bold and committed,” said Jackson.
The reverend told Ayalon that he would try to use his influence in the Arab world to push for the Palestinian Authority to fully carry out the required reforms.
Full story.
by The Town Crier [➚] · Thursday, August 25th, 2005
Move over Coco Cox, Shepherd K. Seinfeld, the third child of comedian / actor Jerry Seinfeld is welcomed to the clan.
by Mobius [➚] · Thursday, August 25th, 2005
A while ago I announced a call for submissions to a project called Mazal Tov Cocktail. The vision was to create an encyclopedia of Jewish radical culture, which would feature articles about figures, movements and events in Jewish history — from Avraham Avienu’s iconoclasm to Anarchists Against The Wall — and to relate these items back to concepts in Tanakh and Talmud. The goal was to help Jews who identify solely with the social action component of Jewish culture to identify more strongly with our religious tradition and thus to feel empowered by it rather than aliented from it.
Unfortunately, my call yielded limited results. The overwhelming majority of submissions I received were anti-Zionist screeds, albeit well written ones, from fascinating activists like Abe Greenhouse, who notoriously pied Natan Sharansky at Rutgers a few years ago. Sadly, I could not find people willing to write pieces on figures like Emma Goldman, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Barbara Meyerhoff, and so forth.
While I’m still interested in doing the project and am now establishing contacts with other entities who have the resources to make it happen, in the interim I’ve decided to take the “Mazal Tov Cocktail” brand I was graciously granted by Jenn Bleyer, and apply it to another Jewschool project.
Recently I devised a mission statement for Jewschool — a call to arms as such:
Judaism has always been revolutionary. It seems though that every few decades the tradition becomes ensnared in a rigidity and conservativism which defies its radical roots. Jewschool is an open revolt. Offering the latest and greatest from the bleeding edge of Jewish cultural and communal life, Jewschool’s more than just a weblog. It is an ever-expanding network of websites, projects, and events which promote critical thought and provide engagement opportunities for disenfranchised Jews alienated — and bored to death — by the Jewish mainstream.
Jewschool dares to be what others can not: It pries Judaism from the lifeless fingers of the Jewish establishment and serves it up to the public with the insistance, “This belongs to you.”
I intend to have Jewschool live up to this exceptionally confident statement by announcing the launch of our latest project and a new call for submissions which, I believe, our readership may be more inclined to contribute to.
Jewschool’s ultimate goal is to help empower individuals and communities to have vibrant and meaningful Jewish experiences without being dependent on established denominations and institutions which impose alienating agendas on their constituents. As I wrote in my letter to the editors of Tikkun after they ran an interview with me in which, I felt, remarks I’d made about Heeb, Reboot, JDub, Storahtelling, and the like, were misrepresented:
My reservation, which is directed not towards those projects nor the individuals involved with them, but rather the philanthropies which fund them and their perspective towards those projects, is limited to the sustainability of “trendy Judaism.” Basing one’s Jewish identity upon an ironic t-shirt or a Matisyahu record will only go so far. Once you’ve brought disaffected individuals through the door, it is still merely an entry into the repressive and alienating Jewish world which drove those individuals away to begin with. I believe that real change is necessary, and that change can not be subsituted with the “popping” of Judaism. Popularity is fleeting. The new Jewish cultural renaissance was no longer popular the day Time Out New York pronounced its existence in their “New Super Jews” issue. Rather, Judaism in-and-of-itself needs an institutional overhaul and I believe that the philanthropies are ignoring this issue because they themsleves are a part of the institutions which need overhauling. Slowly, but surely, they too will reach this conclusion, or otherwise (to paraphrase the singer Fiona Apple) they’ll be found laying dead in their own hands.
What disaffected, liberal Jewish person wants to be part of a Judaism that says get back in the kitchen or the closet, or which, for the sake of Israel, buddies up with Christian Evangelicals who think the same if not worse? According to these philanthropies’ own figures, none. Yet little is being done to reinvigorate Judaism itself — by making it open and asserting its spectrum — as so much as to take it as is, along with all its baggage, and make it “hip” by hiring Orwellian mind-control experts like Frank Luntz to redirect its messaging.
Mazal Tov Cocktail is the alternative.
As many of you are likely aware, The Jewish Catalog was an instrumental force in enabling Jewish autonomy and fostering the chavurah movement which arose in the United States in the 1970s. While it was followed up with The Second Jewish Catalog some years later, time has rendered much of the two books’ content quaint and outdated. And while there have been other creative projects since, like Ma’yan’s Ritual Well and even my own Open Source Haggadah, such sites run with a hierarchical, top-down editorial structure, as opposed to a from-the-ground-up, non-hierarchical, grassroots, open publishing system. Thus I propose the creation of a new Jewish Catalog for the modern era — a wiki-based anarchist’s cookbook for autonomous Jewish practice, which can develop and grow along with the communities and individuals contributing to it.
Just as was the approach taken with Crimethinc’s immaculate Recipes For Disaster, my hope is to have you, our readers, contribute articles (which will eventually be freely open to contribution and editing by the site’s users) on subjects like organizing Shabbat dinners, leading services, reading trope, setting up chevruta studies, practical kashrut, Jewish meditation, using halakha as a mindful practice, and so forth.
Many of our readers are Jewish educators, communal leaders, Hillel directors — individuals who are exceptionally experienced with and well-informed on these subjects; moreso than on the more radical concepts I sought submissions for to the previous incarnation of Mazal Tov Cocktail. For this project, I am certain more than a handful of you are capable of participating, and so I welcome you, and even plead with you to get involved.
Institutional Judaism is a dinosaur. It is non-responsive to the needs and aspirations of today’s Jewish individuals and communities, and is much more focused on sustaining itself — by getting individuals to pay synagogue dues and donate to the Federation system — than on breathing life into Jewish practice and culture. In order to take Judaism away from these entities and become ourselves empowered to be the Jews we wish to be — as opposed to the Jews we’re told to be — and to create the Judaism we want for ourselves — as opposed to the Judaism we’re forcefed — it’s incumbent upon those committed to this vision to take personal responsibility towards making it happen.
Judaism belongs to each of us. It belongs to you in particular. Show us what you’re doing with it. Click here to send us your submissions to Mazal Tov Cocktail (or to figure out what they should be). The Jewish future depends on you.
by Mobius [➚] · Thursday, August 25th, 2005
Every month I organize an event in Jerusalem called The Old Jeruz Cipher, a hip-hop freestyle session which transpires under the banner promoting religious and cultural tolerance in the Holy City. The event is hosted by esteemed Jerusalem MC and Israeli hip-hop pioneer Sagol 59, and most often features DJ Caress, a local hip-hop producer and DJ, manning the decks.
Caress recently appeared on “Hakatze” (“The Edge”), a hip-hop program hosted by infamous radio personality Eyal Friedmann aka Quami De La Fox on Galgalatz 91.8FM, Israel’s most popular music radio station. A live in-studio performance, Caress’ 35 minute set goes from straight-up hip-hop turntablism, to Yemenite classics, Indian pop, Israeli disco, 50′s blues, jazz-funk samples and more. Guest vocalists include Sagol 59, Taboo+ – a young, highly talented rapper from Holon, Shelly – the sublime female vocalist of acoustic Jerusalem folk outfit Visiting Hours, and The Archive – a hip-hop duo which has become a staple of the Tel Aviv underground rap scene.
It is offered as an exclusive download to Jewschool readers, with a caveat however: The person who recorded it apparently didn’t turn off ICQ and you can hear his IM sounds intermittently throughout the broadcast. Anyhow, get it while it’s hot. (49.4MB, 192k MP3)
A Exclusive
by Mobius [➚] · Thursday, August 25th, 2005
(c/o Ben Baruch)
by Mobius [➚] · Thursday, August 25th, 2005
The Big Jewish Quiz Thing – Back on the Roof
by David Kelsey
I intended to attend the Big Jewish Quiz Show. But I didn’t intend on being in the Big Quiz Show.
Josh Neuman, the Editor of Heeb, called me at 2 pm to tell me he couldn’t make it, and I would be taking his place. You try telling your boss that you already have plans — when he already knows your plans were to be with him.
The kicker was, my good friend Steven I. Weiss of the Canonist was going to be on the panel as well. I agreed, providing I wouldn’t be on his team. I’m not a baby — but I am petty and bitter.
There were approximately 85 audience members not including staff and panelists. Noah Tarnow hosted the event. I was on Fleishik, Weiss was on Milchik. I thought Weiss would provide the majority of the answers requiring academic and religous knowledge for team Milchik.
I thought wrong. Team Fleishik quickly took a masive lead. On the Yiddish spelling bee, each team had to suggest the most favorable spelling of Yiddish words as determined by Leo Rosten’s ranking of preference. Fleishik took a solid eight out of a possible ten points. I expected a formidable opponent and a fierce fight — at least in this round — from the man who had eloquently and affectionately dismissed me a “jackass, moron, idiot, intellectually impaired†and â€stupid.†This guy was frothing at the mouth to embarrass Heeb at this event with his self assessed superior knowledge of all things Jewish. But instead I felt like a schochet in the slaughter house, with Weiss as my designated behaima. What is the Rosten preferred spelling for shmendrik? To be fair, I was at the Forward longer than Weiss. Much longer in fact (as he now knows), and you just learn a little Yiddish over time through osmosis there.
Things were so bad, the judges started giving bogus points to Milchik, in the name that Jewish rock song and roller section, on a song none of us knew, Weiss shouted “Avraham Fried! Just One Shabbos!†Tarnow gave it to him, even though it wasn’t the song playing, “because it was funny.†What was funny is that “Just One Shabbos†is the magnum opus of Mordechai Ben David, not Fried. But for me, these irregularities favoring Milchik were not funny at all. I was having a grudge match; the host was running Color War. I counted three points in all given to “the underdog†team. Even in a quiz show, we Jews can’t get away from our victimology.
Milchik started gaining some legitimate ground however, when we got to “Jewish or Gay.†Jesse Oxfeld, the co-editor of Gawker, began to flex mightily. He is king of gossip, and he showed his stuff, though Susannah Perlman — ringleader of Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad — made him work for it.
We were still ahead 32½ to 20½, having climbed there one (sometimes a half) point at a time (with no freebies for us), when the final joke section arrived, this one subject to audience approval. It was itself divided into three separate rounds, one player each pitted against one from the opposing team, each round worth five — not one — points, each responsible to tell a funnier Jewish joke than the other. I wanted to go against Weiss, but when the second round was given to us, I elected to go, thinking he would take my obvious challenge. Instead he sent Rachel Kramer Bussel. I couldn’t believe he declined. What a sissy.
To give credit where do, Milchik won all three rounds of the jokes (and therefore the game) and all of them did a good job on this last critical section. Even Weiss.
Tonight is Kosher ChiXXX, which is a damn good thing.
I’m ready for some T & A.
[Editor's Note] I love Steven I. Weiss, but I also love punching Steven I. Weiss’ buttons. While he and David may have some, er, tensions, that in no way reflects my (and thereby by extension Jewschool’s) feelings towards him. I think he’s one of the best Jewish journalists out there and I’m thankful for the three years of drama — and freelance work — he’s provided me with. 
A Exclusive
by Mobius [➚] · Wednesday, August 24th, 2005
Are you on MySpace? Welp, now so are we. Add us as a friend and stay up on Jewschool related events, projects, and more.
by Benyamin [➚] · Monday, August 22nd, 2005
While Jon Stewart is certainly the most Jewy person on Comedy Central, he’s up against some stiff competition from his new network-mates: the boys of Stella. Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain (the geniuses behind Wet Hot American Summer, a hilarious film about a Jewish summer camp in the 1980′s) are a three-stooges for a new generation. Although Stewart’s recent “The Jew Carry Show” was very salient.
by Danya [➚] · Monday, August 22nd, 2005
The Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York is currently accepting concept letters for “social change” projects as the preliminary application for some good grant money. According to the email I just got,
One-year grants will be awarded in the following categories: Jewish Education, Training and Culture; and Mental and Physical Health. A two-year grant will be awarded in the following category: Economic Independence.
Due date is Sept. 30th. More information can be found here.
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, August 22nd, 2005
A new play by playwright Adam Klasfeld which opened last week at the NY Fringe Fest gives a peculiar spin to questions raised by Israel’s enduring conflict:
Set in a fictional town in Arabia, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors is about a writer who gets shot in the arm outside of his house, making him an amputee. But nobody believes his arm is missing, fracturing his entire reality. His only source of safety from future attacks comes from an old stone wall supervised by a short but crafty elf, whose job is to tear it down. An oblique commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it examines how the fear that terrorism generates can almost be as debilitating as its carnage.
Of the play, independent theatre critic Hy Bender says, “This show is a Fringe rarity—a serious play about a serious subject that’s executed with conciseness and wit.” The play also received a Chashama AREA Award. Tickets are still available for performances tonight, Thursday and Sunday. To order online click here.
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, August 22nd, 2005
Whatsa matzo you?
by David Kelsey
Howl!, the festival produced by the Federation of East Village Artists, runs from Aug. 21 – 28th, and “celebrates the neighborhood’s role as the cradle of counterculture.†The neighborhood includes both the East Village and the Lower East Side. Jewbilation is organized by the 14th Street Y, and begins tomorrow night, Aug. 22.
But the Jewish role in Howl! is not limited to Jewbilation, and today was the opening of the temporary exhibit “Reliquariesâ€, which features relics from both the Streit’s Factory and City Reliquary Archives, including a police billy club with the Hebrew word “kosher†engraved in it. No one is sure why.
This partnership is not as exceptional an event as it sounds, as Streit’s retail store is home to “The Matzo Filesâ€, which presents art work from over 250 artists right inside Streit’s retail outlet, and eliminates the role and of art curators and dealers. The Artists Alliance facilitates this and other programs in hopes of “fostering the relationship between contemporary art and the local community.†The works are kept in boxes and folders, and are sold alongside macaroons and other kosher for Passover items produced on the premises of this Matzo factory, which is still in operation on Rivington Street and has been since 1925.
Streit’s donates the space, and in return? Sara Eichner, a file coordinator, shrugged. “They have that sort of spirit about them. They sell a lot of matzo, though.â€
It is, perhaps, this sort of bizarre corporate sponsorship that proves that despite the continued malling of Manhattan, particularly downtown Manhattan, something good, community oriented, and “only in New York†has survived.
A Exclusive
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, August 22nd, 2005
The NY Times reports,
The United Nations, with the support of the Bloomberg administration and Congress, has also proposed building a 35-story, one million-square-foot tower… But in a setback to the Bloomberg administration and the United Nations, the State Senate has blocked the project for the time being, with legislators complaining about the unpaid parking tickets of diplomats and anti-Israel votes in the General Assembly.
Full story. (c/o Dan Berger)
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, August 21st, 2005
On Gaza — 8-19-05
by Farrah Fidler
I hate the fact that I don’t have the courage
to pick up and leave for Israel right now
That I don’t know what I would do if my back was against the wall,
Would I have the guts to be one of those people in Gaza
shouting tefilah and refusing to leave on my own will?
Or would I be rational, knowing that no matter what
I would be out anyway, so why not leave peacefully and on my own terms
I hate that the Israel I know inside of me is only a minor piece
The Mizrachi music that is the beat of my heart
Moving me forward, guiding my hips as I walk
Israel, I know not of your settlements, your bulletproof cars
ensuring safety in unsure lands in unsure times
I know little of your holiest of holies, barely able
to muster up some feeling of a presence far greater than I will ever know.
But I know of the beauty of your land
Hikes in the North on trails I will never remember the names of
Gardens my photos do no justice
Deserts I dream to camp
Beaches I grow tired from the overpowering heat and sink into the sand
Seas with waves I have grown to love
People who are like family upon first site
Israel, this is the you I know and internalize and love
sometimes more than my own life
You gave birth to my father, indirectly giving birth to me
Israel, I am so desperate sometimes for the caress of your sun on my skin
Israel, I am so desperate inside for your warm embrace
like a mother who dies, I fear I will never be able to touch you again if not now
Israel, my longing for you grows with each passing day
I am but a grain of sand longing to be washed on your shores
This is the Israel that I know
Warm, inviting, welcoming, impolite, brash, struggling, vulgar, strong,
more beautiful than I will ever be
Israel, if you were a woman all eyes would be on you,
people gasping with every step you take
I am but a mere American in awe of you
In awe of your people
In awe of the strength I wish I possessed
so that I could one day be a part of you
And even this
Even my words
Even if I exhausted every way to express how I feel about you
It would not be enough
Like me sitting here at my desk
Writing till my hands grow numb
It can never be enough until I finally wash up upon your shores
And wait to be welcomed by your warmth
I will compose poems in your mother tongue and wait for your mother embrace
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