The Holiday season is a strain for everyone. Even the Chassidim. Zalman and Aaron loyalists show that fighting ain’t just for the Zionists.
The NY Post reports,
Yesterday’s melee, which included punches, slaps and beard-pulling, broke out between clashing factions of the Satmar Hasidic sect in Williamsburg and ended with cops in helmets closing down streets to restore order on a Jewish holiday, Shmini Atzeret.
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How balanced was the Israeli press in its coverage of disengagement? Not very, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. In a long feature examining coverage in Haaretz, Yediot Aharonot, and Maariv, the CJR claims the press of provided “unequivocal support” for the government’s policy and failed to carry out any meaningful analysis of the plan.
The negative portrayal of settlers was only a small part of how the press helped prop up the disengagement. In the year and a half of preparations and discussion about the pullout, the media failed to ask the kind of questions that are becoming increasingly obvious, now that we are in what Israeli’s had taken to calling “The Day After.†What was really behind Sharon’s proposal? Was he trying to put the peace process back on track or, as Dov Weisglass, Sharon’s chief adviser, said in a controversial interview, to place it in “formaldehyde†by shaking off Western pressure and solidifying Israel’s hold on the West Bank? And why the insistence on unilateral action, withdrawing without negotiating with the Palestinians? Shouldn’t the November 2004 death of Yasir Arafat — always portrayed as the main obstacle to negotiation — have provoked a shift in policy? And where did the Palestinians stand? In the buildup to August 15, Israel’s press made little attempt to understand how they viewed the withdrawal. In Palestinian eyes, was Israel running away, succumbing to the relentless terror campaign, or, as Israel framed it, leaving as an expression of its own strong will? And where would the withdrawal leave the Palestinian Authority? Would it be able to assert control over Gaza in the face of the popular extremist group Hamas? And, importantly, would the unilateral move strengthen Hamas and undermine Abbas, who has always claimed that negotiation was the only way to end the occupation? Would the withdrawal help to a establish a Palestinian state or doom it?Such questions might have altered the way this piece of history unfolded. Instead, throughout the spring and into the summer, hardly anyone was doing the asking. The press fell short of its journalistic responsibility to scrutinize the policy, to explore its many implications. Five years of incessant violence had had a paralyzing effect. Reporters and editors, like most Israelis, were willing to ignore the complexities of this quick fix, if only for the hope that it might break the unbearable status quo.
Read the whole feature here.
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Ha’aretz reports,
WASHINGTON – President George Bush announced Saturday his intention to nominate Paul J. McNulty, of Virginia, to be Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice.McNulty is the Federal prosecutor in the cases of former defense analyst Larry Franklin, and the two former AIPAC lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman….
We all know how, to a certain extent, “neocon” means “Jewish” in the lexicon of American political discourse. Surely, some within proximity of the White House policymaking apparatus believed that the US invasion of Iraq would be as much in Israel’s interest as they believed it was in America’s. But even to the extent that the Israeli security establishment itself believed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to be a WMD threat, it was hardly held to be a priority when compared to Syria and Iran.
And the more we learn of Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the Swift Boating of Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, the better we understand how little the Bush-Cheney adminstration was sincere about the Iraqi threat as advertised in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech. As Joshua Micah Marshall wonders,
Now, if McNulty had been cooperating with or become a participant or enabler of some sort of Fitzgerald’s investigation, he’s not the first person you’d figure President Bush would be appointing to the number two spot at DOJ — especially when you consider that Al Gonzales will almost certainly have to recuse himself from any consideration of the entire Plame case. If something is afoot between Fitzgerald and McNulty, what went into the appointment? Who came up with the idea?I don’t know which of these scenarios is closest to the mark. And these are very strange times — most anything is possible. But there’s something here that doesn’t fit.
Strange times, indeed. At such times it may be wise to consider, as the White House recognizes the necessity to mend fences with its conservative base, and assuming the Bush administration has learned valuable lessons in triangulation, that Israel and its American Jewish supporters are ripe to take the fall for leading Americans into the Iraq debacle. And with the complicity of some American progressives to boot, as Professor Juan Cole sums up,
With both Iraq and Iran in flames, the Likud Party could do as it pleased in the Middle East without fear of reprisal. This means it could expel the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan, and perhaps just give Gaza back to Egypt to keep Cairo quiet. Annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the waters of which Israel has long coveted, could also be undertaken with no consequences, they probably think, once Hizbullah in Lebanon could no longer count on Iranian support. The closed character of the economies of Iraq and Iran, moreover, would end, allowing American, Italian and British companies to make a killing after the wars (so they thought).
Oh, those crafty Zionist neocons…
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Mima’amakim published its sixth annual issue. We’re going to celebrate like Semitic Naiads and Satyrs on Nov 6th at Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village. Illustrious guest appearances include Dan Mobius himself. This time, we’ll be heavily experimenting with jazz and hip-hop music-meets-word material, as always with midrashic salut to Zion, chassidic cheeleadering, and all such.
And by the way, check out these pics and sounds from the show we did together with Jewschool in Jerusalem back in August.
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So, I’ve been spending my year studying at a liberal-Orthodox Yeshivah in Jerusalem. This was my first opportunity to celebrate the Chagim of Tishra’i in Israel. I was really looking forward to it, as I had been told that it was a special experience to be able to celebrate the holidays in a place where the whole society recognizes the holiday and where the natural phenomenon (in this case the harvest and the beginning of the rainy season) match the themes and prayers of the holidays. While the experience of walking in the streets on Yom Kippor and seeing zero cars, but hundreds of people dressed in white, or waking up in a succah to the first drops of rain for the season certainly added a nice touch to the holidays, mostly I was disappointed.
I realized that what was most disappointing was the pedestrian nature of the holidays in a culture where the dominant forces are Jewish. The holiday’s here just happen. Every friday shabbat comes, no matter what you do. The the siren goes off, traffic stops and unless you want to be a hermit, you’ve already accepted an invitation to someone’s dinner. Of course, it takes some effort. There is still the last minute scrambling, and the shabbat bride still needs to be received by the community, but the actions of Jewish life here require much less consciousness and deliberate action than in the wider world.
At home, in the glorious diaspora, Jewish belief, culture, and action stands at an oblique angle to dominant culture. Of course Judaism in any place is influenced by its host culture, but no matter how one chooses to “do Jewish” the process of making different choices and consciously creating a different meaning can provide some critical distance with which to engage and evaluate the host culture. This ability to be simultaneously inside and outside of western culture is one of the reasons I love being Jewish. It is also one of the gifts that Jewish culture can provide to the western world.
The dissonance between my own community, mythic-history, and meaningful symbols and those of the host culture also requires me to really work hard to make Judaism compelling and meaningful to me, and perhaps more significantly, to those around me. At home I need to investigate the possible meanings of the holidays and create communal experiences that will draw together a diverse community. This hard work helps me own the holiday as my own. I’m taking what others before me have thought and done, and re-fashioning it to make it relevant and compelling.
The ease of Jewish expression in Israel may explain why, for the most part, religious expression here is a yes or no question. Here you either participate, or you don’t. If you are a Jew, you are either Dati (religious) or Chiloni (secular). With some important exceptions, few communities are seriously reevaluating the possibilities of Jewish religious experience. Despite all the problems of movement politics in America, I’ve really come to value to tremendous diversity of options that exist there. Even more, I have come to value the space that is created for individuals and communities to fashion their own Jewish meaning. Because “normative Judaism” has a much weaker grip in America, all sorts of incredible possibilities spring up.
Despite ease and comfort of being a Jew in Israel, I’ll take the messy, hard, creative, exciting, reconfigured Judaism of the diaspora any-day.
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When I was kid a science teacher gave me and my classmates entree into the raging debate over the status of a tomato. Is it a vegetable or a fruit? The dilemma is aptly described in the haiku I composed to celebrate this puzzle.
such an enigma
oh sweet juicy tomato
what the hell are you?
According to Oxford dictionaries: “Scientifically speaking, a tomato is definitely a fruit.” Or if you prefer to be confused, Yard & Garden Solutions tells us: “Botanically speaking, the tomato you eat is a fruit. Horticulturally speaking, the tomato is a vegetable plant.” Thank you so much because that clears it all up. In other words according to science a tomato is a fruit, unlesss you’re speaking horticulturally.
Legally though science is wrong. According to Wikipedia the US Supreme Court declared in 1893 that the tomato is a vegetable. I wonder if Bush uses a judge’s stand on the tomato issue as a litmus test for appointment to the Supreme Court? I’d love to see Chuck Schumer ask that question of a nominee. But I digress.
From a Torah point of view the Supreme Court is correct and the scientists are a bunch of faithless heathens. On every item of food that we eat we must first recite a bracha (blessing) thanking G-d for the bounty he hath given us. To emphasize our thanks and recognize the detailed gift we have been given we must give more than a generic “Rub-a-dub-dub thanks for the grub”. For different types of food we have to say different brachos (blessings). On fruits we say the bracha of “borei pri ha’eitz” (Creator of the fruit of the tree) and on vegetables we say the bracha of “borei pri ha’adama” (Creator of the fruit of the ground). So according to halacha, a fruit grows on trees and a vegetable grows in the ground. Guess where tomatoes grow? In the ground. And we say a bracha of “borei pri ha’adama” on tomatoes.
So to be more precise, according to the US Supreme Court and G-d Almighty a tomato is a vegetable. According to scientists (botanically speaking of course) a tomato is a fruit.
PS: Am I the only one who sees Divine Providence in that the Lakewood Yeshiva is in a state that currently has legislation pending to designate a tomato as the official state VEGETABLE? Hallelujah for New Jersey!
PPS: For those who cannot see through my strange brand of humor: There is really no disagreement between halacha and science. They each just have different definitions for different terms. Get it? You say a “borei pri ha’adama” on something that grows in the ground regardless of whether it is a fruit or vegetable.
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The New York Times has a profile of David Berman, a poet as well as the frontman for the Silver Jews musical act. Berman, who says he’s now studying the Torah, tells the Times his religion had nothing to do with his band’s name: “When I was working at the Whitney I stared out the window and a sign said ‘Silver Jewelry’ but from my angle you couldn’t see the end.”
Cross-posted on The Yada Blog.
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The NY Times reports on the forthcoming release of Bar Mitzvah Disco.
TWO years ago three bored New Yorkers in their early 30′s were trapped inside an Upper West Side apartment on a rainy autumn day when the conversation came around to memories of their bar and bat mitzvah celebrations. On a whim they challenged one another to dig out their photo albums for group inspection.A few days later all was laid bare: the boys in their tiny polyester three-piece suits, the girls towering over them with their careful yet enormous hair, the braces, the ruffled skirts, the acne, the relatives. “It was pretty startling to see how my parents allowed me to walk around with a pair of what were quite clearly women’s spectacles,” Roger Bennett said, recalling the queasiness he felt as he revisited photographs of himself sporting eyeglasses the size of cocktail coasters and a blue hair dye job for his punk-theme bar mitzvah party in 1983.
But their horrified fascination soon gave way to sociological awe. “What started as a joke between friends grew into an obsession,” said Mr. Bennett, who works for a charitable foundation [The Bronfmans! He runs Reboot. -Mo] and said it had been 17 years since he last looked at his album. Soon the three created a Web site [Which I built the first three versions of. -Mo] on which to post their photographs and invited readers to mail in their own to add to the collection. It struck a nerve: within months, Mr. Bennett and his partners, Jules Shell, an independent filmmaker, and Nick Kroll, a television comedy writer, had received so many photo albums, commemorative T-shirts and centerpieces via Federal Express that they had to rent warehouse space to store it all.
Now it is a book. A collection of more than 300 photographs culled from bar and bat mitzvahs from the 70′s to the early 90′s with essays by friends of the authors like Jonathan Safran Foer and Sarah Silverman, “Bar Mitzvah Disco,” which will appear in bookstores on Nov. 2.
Stay tuned for our feature on BMD along with our interview with author Nick Kroll coming later this month.
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Not one to turn the other cheek after Heeb hilariously slammed him after his conversion to Messianism (while he was still getting gigs at unknowing synagogues and Jewish youth groups) in the NY Post and the Forward, 50 Shekel, the Christian artist formerly known as a Jewish parody rapper, is leading a boycott of the anti-Christ itself, Heeb Magazine.
This “True Jew” only has the community’s best interests at heart, of course.
“I am asking you to please contact any store(Tower Records, Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc.) that carries this magazine and ask them to pull it off of their shelves ASAP. Some people criticized me for being a believer in Yeshua (Jesus) and how I am such a bad example to children for reading God’s Complete Word, yet this magazine has been out and even the unsaved Jewish community has NOT EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT HOW THIS IS GOING TO SCAR THEIR CHILDREN FOR LIFE.” [...] I’m glad to be on God’s side as a True Jew a/k/a Messianic Jew. We don’t do such things and that’s because we are True Jews after all. From a reailty [sic] standpoint, I don’t see how there will be a Heeb Magazine Issue #10. They should get shut down permanently. Surprisingly, the unsaved Jewish world has not complained and took action to protect their children and God’s Word…I wonder why [...] Now you understand how much I am all about raising a new Jew generation to know God in Truth and that means knowing Yeshua (Jesus) Ha’Mashiach.”
Always one to observe even the more stringent aspects of Jewish Law, Fifty dutifully notes that, “They have an astrology page, which by the way, God forbids in The Tanakh.” Come on 50, stop the hate. One love G-d, yo.
[Update] 50 Shekel smears Jewschool and David Kelsey on his website, decrying us for, among other things, our t-shirts. Oh, the horror! —Mo.
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The NY Times reports,
“Tzipi Livni, the Israeli justice minister and a close party ally of the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, told Israel Radio that the government would not try to hamper the election, scheduled for Jan. 25, if Hamas took part. “It is not in Israel’s interest” to try to intervene in the election, she said. “It is in the Palestinian interest that Hamas takes part in elections.”
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Allison Silverman shares a funny, sad, cute — and by cute I mean creepy — tale of racial profiling and dating here.
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These two little biatches are getting way too much publicity, so why make another blog post about them? To educate the masses to ignore the hype. – They seem to be the unfotunate product of the nurturing of their Nazi bastard father who raised them with a culture of hate masked in white pride. And for the love of Mike, someone please tell the media hounds to quit the asinine Olsen analogies, it is an insult and an absolute blasphemy to all that Mary Kate and Ashley have meant to us for many years.
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It might be cold and rainy but it’s still Sukkos so here’s a halachic question for you. Are you allowed to pee in the Sukkah?
It might sound like a crazy question but let’s go back in time a little. Remember that Torah goes hand in hand with history. Not too long ago there was no such thing as indoor plumbing. People in small towns in eastern Europe lived in houses with dirt floors that were pretty much shacks. Actually if you visit there today you’ll still find people in small towns living in small shacks without indoor plumbing. Even in people’s own houses they sometimes peed into a container rather than making the trek to the outhouse. Kind of like a spitoon but for urine and with a cover for when you’re done so you don’t stink up the place. So the question was asked whether you can do that in a Sukkah just like you do it in your house.
The Chayei Adam said that you can’t because a Sukkah has a certain amount of holiness and that is how the Mishnah Brurah holds. However the Minchas Elazar argues that you can and says that he personally saw great and holy rabbis do it! I’m guessing that it must have been his father and grandfather, both great chassidic rabbis themselves, who he saw because it’s the kind of thing you don’t do around strangers.
To give a little context the Minchas Elazar was Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapiro (1871-1936, Hungary), the Munkaczer Rebbe. The Chayei Adam was Rabbi Avraham Danzig (1748-1820, Lithuania). And the Mishnah Brurah was Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (1838-1933, Poland).
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“I think there needs to be change in Syria,” said Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres according to a report by the Associated Press.
Ephraim Halevy, former chief of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, said it was not necessary to prove a direct involvement by Assad. “The head of the Syrian pyramid is Bashar Assad,” Halevy told Israel Army Radio.
Israeli legislator Yuval Steinitz, head of parliament’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, called for regime change in Damascus. “As far as I am concerned … and here I have a dispute with some of the people in the (Israeli) security establishment, it is not just an American interest but a clear Israeli interest to end the Assad dynasty and replace Bashar Assad,” said Steinitz, a member of Israel’s ruling Likud Party.
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The JTA reports,
An Israeli is among more than 300 foreign fighters captured in Iraq by U.S. forces, a U.S. commander said.But Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who divulged the news Thursday, refused to give more details on the Israeli captured. Most of those captured since April are from Arab countries, with Egypt, Syria, the Sudan and Saudi Arabia leading the way.
If anyone comes across any links with greater details, pass ‘em along.
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