by Mobius [➚] · Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
Haaretz reports,
Knesset Finance Committee Chair Yaakov Litzman (Agudath Israel) obtained an expensive Hanukkah gift for yeshiva students yesterday – but the state will pick up the NIS 44 million tab.
The gift consists of a one-time state grant of NIS 330 for every unmarried yeshiva student and NIS 600 for every married yeshiva student, to be distributed over the next few days. The money will be on top of the normal monthly stipend received by yeshiva students – NIS 720 for married men and NIS 400 for single men.
The NIS 44 million in grants is on top of the extra NIS 290 million for ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) educational institutions that Litzman’s party was promised in exchange for joining the coalition at the start of the year.
Is this even remotely fair in any way, shape, or form? Hareidim don’t work, they don’t pay taxes, they don’t serve in the army, and they incite against the state… Did I happen to mention income tax in Israel is roughly 50% and that most Israelis I know work two jobs and still live below the poverty line? WTF?
by Mobius [➚] · Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
The, er, enthusiastic folks at Kumah have created a rather entertaining animation based on The Matrix to advertise aliyah.
Amusing as it is, I think the premise is a bit presumptuous and is, categorically speaking, way off-base. (Not to mention, I’m a bit put off by the whole Third Temple thing.)
Perhaps someone needs to get these guys a copy of Caryn Aviv & David Shneer’s new book, New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora.
For many contemporary Jews, Israel no longer serves as the Promised Land, the center of the Jewish universe and the place of final destination. In New Jews, Caryn Aviv and David Shneer provocatively argue that there is a new generation of Jews who don’t consider themselves to be eternally wandering, forever outsiders within their communities and seeking to one day find their homeland. Instead, these New Jews are at home, whether it be in Buenos Aires, San Francisco or Berlin, and are rooted within communities of their own choosing. Aviv and Shneer argue that Jews have come to the end of their diaspora; wandering no more, today’s Jews are settled.
In this wide-ranging book, the authors take us around the world, to Moscow, Jerusalem, New York and Los Angeles, among other places, and find vibrant, dynamic Jewish communities where Jewish identy is increasingly flexible and inclusive. New Jews offers a compelling portrait of Jewish life today.
Galut (exile) is, like, so over.
by Mobius [➚] · Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
A gevaltig mazal tov to Canonist Steven I. Weiss and his lovely kallah Rachel Feinerman on their engagement! Who’d a thunk — he’s loveable after all! I keed, I keed! A brokha for a beautiful, healthy future! U’mayn!
by shamirpower [➚] · Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
LimmudNY is just about at capacity, so get your registration ASAP before they sell out (likely) or by the Dec. 30 closing date.
If you miss the deadline or can’t make it this year, all is not lost! As official media sponsor, Shamir will be bringing you regular blogging from LimmudNY. Additionally, Jewschool will be providing FREE podcasts of up to ten classes, lectures, or concerts, based on our readers’ suggestions!
Please take a few minutes to look over the online schedule and put your comments to this post of what you’d like to hear.
Remember, you can view sessions by presenter, time, or even track/theme.
Please note that we cannot guaruntee permission from all teacher and artists to offer free podcasts of their music. We’ll do the best we can!
by Mobius [➚] · Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
For those of you reading Jewschool via RSS, please switch your Jewschool feed URL to:
feeds.feedburner.com/jewschool/burner
We’ve switched to a better system which is compatible with more feed readers and which helps us track our feed readership.
Thanks!
by Mobius [➚] · Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
Godfather of Israeli hip-hop and Jewschool acolyte Sagol 59 sends season’s tidings with a remix of a Chanukah classic:
Here’s a track taken from an album of Israeli band Yeladujazz, who interpret classic Israeli children’s songs into jazz, fusion and salsa, combining them with tunes by Coltrane, Ellington, Miles, Gershwin and so on. I appeared as a special guest on their 2004 album, rapping on the famous Hanukka song “Sevivon Sov Sov Sov” (“Dreidel, Go Round and Round”) which is here fused with Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” and renamed “Sevivon Hip Hip Hop.”
Download 3.1MB MP3
by Jewish Robot [➚] · Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, December 26th, 2005
We’re not quite sure who recorded this thoroughly insane rant, but rumor has it that it’s some Satmar loon from Kiryat Yoel.
Here’s the translation from Yiddish:
Do we have to be afraid of things other than Hashem, the blessed One?
You answer a telephone…a woman answers a telephone…
First of all, today, we put on message, even by the “haimishe†Jews, there is a message machine—and if a wife or a daughter speaks into it, this is a dear…this is a lewdness, this is a curse that we should find among us such a thing.
Secondly, we answer telephones. Okay then, so a wife answers, a son answers, a daughter answers, a boy calls his friend… and the sister picks up the phone. This is like the flame from menorahs. And it lights a bonfire. It is a fright in the world!
As long as we have technology today, and it really doesn’t make a difference one way or the other, we would need a special line that will be driven to be 100% modest, a line for males and a line for females.
It doesn’t make a difference. You can get a line that you don’t call out, that you can just receive calls; you have a line, you pay for it, it’s worth it.
A woman, even if she picks up, it can start right after the wedding—this one, a young wife, calls that one, and it’s worthless…
We have seen over time, there a times when a man wants to walk, he asks questions, he wants to make himself “batampte†(literally tasty—but it means socially attractive or savvy in this case), he wants to be “geshmack†(literally lipsmacking good), he wants to be haimish (a homey). It can bring to the point to completely destroy a home.
We are asking, and, of course, this is a new thing, and you might dismiss this as another “fresh storyâ€. No, that’s not the case.
You should know that we are playing with fire. This is a vital matter.
We should see to it that the edict and those who first came up with it, should be given credit from Heaven for the future to come (in Yiddish the words mean eternity), and we will give it to them.
We have to watch, we need to be careful. There should be numbers for the men to call the men and the women to call the women.
That’s right folks: Simply hearing a woman’s voice at the other end of the telephone will cause you to lust wantonly and, as such, will surely destroy your marriage.
Did any of these great khakhamim ever stop to think that the absence of normal/healthy/plutonic/egalitarian relationships with women may be more responsible for their fetishization and objectification than say, engaging them as equal human beings and learning to cope with/master your hormones?
by Moishe Oofnik [➚] · Monday, December 26th, 2005
Old story, but worth posting for those of you who might have missed it. Palestinians and Israelis put a caravan on land that used to be part of Bil’in but was cut off by the separation fence. The army sent 150 soldiers to evacuate the caravan from its 50 inhabitants:
“This will be blatant proof of the fact that there is selective law enforcement if they deal with the poor caravan before the hundreds of housing units built illegally in Upper Modi’in,” [said lawyer Michael Sfard].
Sfard submitted a letter in the name of Peace Now to the Civil Administration demanding a halt to the construction within a week. At the end of this time, Sfard wrote in the letter, he will turn to the Supreme Court.
“After what happened today in Bil’in, there is no reason that the state should defend its decision to continue the construction” in Matitiyahu, Sfard said.
“Now the truth is out, and the truth is that Jews are allowed to break the law and Palestinians are not.
“This,” Sfard continued, “is called apartheid.”
Security sources said that it was clear to them that immediately after the evacuation, they would need to explain to the court why they are hurrying to act against Palestinian illegal construction and tarrying on curbing illegal construction in the settlements.
Full story here.
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, December 26th, 2005
by Benyamin [➚] · Monday, December 26th, 2005
by Mobius [➚] · Monday, December 26th, 2005
Jewicide Girl/hottie IDF soldier Katya is at it again, profaning our sacred cows ritual objects, in the name of lusty holiday fun. Links NSFF: Not safe for frummies.
[This segment no longer makes sense absent the photos.] And before you start screaming at me for posting this, a) Jewlicious has posted worse (but seems to have redacted all the posts — guess CK cracked under the pressure of the tznius police), b) comparatively speaking it’s not so bad, c) I did blur out the boobies, and d) grow a sense of humor.
Previously: Pesach Pr0n, Cult of Personality, Real Suicide Girl
[Update] Looks like Katya’s got company. Before it was amusing. Now it’s hackneyed.
[Update] Photos removed ONLY for Sarah who I appreciate infinitely more than Suicide Girls, and whose opinion I care for infinitely more than most others.
by David Kelsey [➚] · Monday, December 26th, 2005
If we were to pick a modern Jewish leader who most closely advocated the policies of the Maccabees, it would have to be the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.
The Hasmonean uprising was not one of only spiritual and physical resistance to an outside occupier. The favorite biblical hero of the Maccabees was clearly Pinchas, the zealot who persuasively stopped fornication by spearing a couple “in the act†by spearing them through their genitals. The Books of the Maccabees (by “Books†I mean the first two) mentions him most frequently, and specifically compares their patriarch Matisyahu to him.
But though Pinchas was rewarded with descendants inheriting the ritual priesthood, all Levites–including the priests–were banned not only from political leadership, but from owning land itself, out of fear of their predisposition for zealotry.
The Maccabees glorified this zealotry and utilized their unchecked power to transform this world view into national policy.
It was tyranny.
Traditional Judaism does not sanction a democracy like the Athenians did. But it does advocate a balance of power. The Kohanim (the priestly class, of whom the Maccabees were prominent members) controlled the Temple; the rabbis were a branch unto themselves; the prophets, once recognized, also had a measure of independence; and of course, there was a king. The Rabbis criticized the Jews for their desire for a king. It was considered to be a desire by the Jews to be like the other nations of the world.
But perhaps it was a desire by the people to add another branch of government to further impede the due process for change through additional checks and balances. Such a desire was the reason the ancient Spartans had two kings.
The Books of the Maccabees (the first one is believed to have been written by a Hasmonean chronicler), were not included in the Jewish Canon. So little value was placed in these documents that only the Greek translation survived. The original Hebrew one was lost.
By the Hasmonean era, there were no recognized prophets, and Antiochus had made himself king over Israel.
After their rebellion, the Hasmoneans became not only the high priests, but also controlled the kingship as well. They certainly enjoyed at least substantial rabbinic support, but if there was rabbinical resistance, it was surely beaten into submission.
Those who disagreed with them surely faced the threat of being declared a Hellenist, that is to say, a “collaborator.â€
And known “collaborators†rarely fare well in Middle Eastern fundamentalist uprisings.
Jewish men attempted to reverse circumcision during the Hellenistic period, and circumcision had fallen out of favor with many Jewish families, not only because of Hellenism, but because of the death penalty attached to it courtesy of Antiochus.
But the Maccabees restored the Jewish norm with forced circumcision for Jewish children of all ages. And perhaps went further.
There is speculation that a more radical form of circumcision was enforced more broadly, or perhaps even introduced during this period, in order to prevent its potential reversal. If so, this included instituting two new procedures: brit priah (the inner skin is torn and pulled back, today often removed in its entirety, as it’s just part of the penis, so who cares? Let’s just excise as much as possible), and metzizah (the very, very, very important holy sucking of the wounded and bloodied penis which today’s Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis assure us rarely, if ever, leads to complications, since we all know diseases and infections are rarely communicable through blood).
For the Maccabees, it was not enough to make sure the Jews were sufficiently religious. The gentiles, who were absorbed by the eventual Maccabee land expansion needed to be as well, which included forced conversions, and of course, more forced circumcisions.
The brilliant Maccabees also brought in Rome to help mediate the situation, and the Romans, as we know, eventually decided to mediate the Jewish state by liquidating it.
The Eight Day “Miracle†Oil
Though the Books of the Maccabees were not included in the Bible nor even preserved for posterity by the rabbis, Chanukah was included as a rabbinically legislated holiday. Much attention is paid to the oil that lasted eight days when it should have lasted only one. It would appear, however, that if that were the case, the holiday should be kept for seven days. It is therefore customary in some yeshivas to offer a different reason on each day of Chanukah for inclusion of the eighth day as a miracle.
Except it wasn’t like that. There was no miracle oil. If there were, the Maccabee chronicles would surely have mentioned them, since they find miracles and proofs of their G-d given mandate to kick butt all over the place, and according to the Talmud, this is the most important aspect of Chanukah’s significance. The fact that there is no mention of the miracle oil strongly suggests it didn’t happen, as it would have been included in the document. This may also be one of the reasons why the Books of the Maccabees were not included in the Jewish Canon. This was a celebration of an activist fundamentalist uprising, the last and only time such an event succeeded. It was, as Mobius noted, a precedent for future failed uprisings later.
The rabbis apparently created a completely different core reason for Chanukah’s celebration.
Inclusion of the second book of the Maccabees would have revealed that, “And they kept eight days with joy, after the manner of the feast of the tabernacles, remembering that not long before they had kept the feast of the tabernacles when they were in the mountains, and in dens like wild beasts.â€
No miracle oil, folks.
So I’m sitting this one out.
Wake me up for Purim, when we celebrate a holiday whose megillah was included in the Jewish Canon (because it wasn’t a national embarrassment of hatred), whose heroes are not disparaged by the Talmud, and whose victories are not considered so problematic that a new one needs to be fabricated and placed as the holiday’s headline.
by lchayim [➚] · Sunday, December 25th, 2005
I stumbled onto this nice Chanukah Menorah how-to animation at Aish.com. It’s part of a series of articles on Chanukah that are worth linking to.
This image comes from this webpage.
Here are the other links in the Aish series:
Lighting Instructions
Chanukah Party Planning (nothing about kegs or Matisyahu CDs)
Chanukah Recipes
Laws of the Menorah (they call it in-depth but anyone who has learned Shulchan Aruch laughs at that description)
Lighting Erev Shabbos (read this because if you don’t, you’ll probably mess it up)
Guide for Travelers
Where to Light
More Recipes
Even More Recipes
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, December 25th, 2005
Lots of biting remarks from a secular perspective in this 20 minute stand-up special.
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, December 25th, 2005
James Ponet in Slate brings up some very pertinent questions for us to reflect upon during our celebration of Chanukah, which begins this evening (and which has already began for us here in Israel):
Was the bloody Maccabean civil war and revolt necessary to the survival of Jewish identity? The Hasmonean state, originally a bulwark against Greek dominance, eventually declined into a petty Hellenist tyranny barely distinguishable from other military-political entities in the Middle East at the time. Memory of the Maccabean era of war and autonomy inspired the Jewish zealots of 67 to 73 C.E. who led the costly losing struggle against Rome that led to the destruction of Jerusalem. The Maccabean memory also fueled the messianic hopes of Rabbi Akiva and his followers, who backed the quixotic revolt of the warrior Shimon Bar Kochba, which Rome bloodily smashed in 135.
Today, the Maccabean memory has been resurrected in the modern state of Israel in the image of Jew as warrior, and Hanukkah is celebrated by many as a military holiday, the vestige of an ancient Independence Day. But I propose that on Hanukkah, we ought to consider whether an ethnic group that wishes to survive must turn itself into a nation-state. In the aftermath of the Bar Kochba debacle, at Hanukkah the words of the prophet Zachariah were read in the synagogue: “Not by power nor by might but through My spirit, says the Lord.” In the glow of the candles this year we should wonder aloud whether the prophet’s vision is but balm for losers or whether the international system may yet generate a new way for groups to be both part of the world and apart from it. Here is the hard question that an adult celebration of Hanukkah can bring into deliberate focus.
Full story.
by Benyamin [➚] · Sunday, December 25th, 2005
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, December 25th, 2005
The AP reports,
The letters pour in from children around the world, telling two magical far-off figures their holiday wishes.
These missives aren’t sent to Santa Claus. They come from Jewish boys and girls who, for so long, had no one to write each December. They’re for an ageless Kansas City couple known simply by Yiddish derivatives for grandmother and grandfather, Bubbie and Zadie.
The story was created in 1981 by Danny Bloom, then a thirtysomething public relations professional at an Alaskan community college who wanted to pen a holiday narrative for Jewish children.
“I remember as a Jewish kid myself growing up in Massachusetts every winter reading the newspaper and seeing the TV shows about Santa Claus. Jewish kids couldn’t participate,” he said.
The story told of a diminutive grandma and grandpa, bundled up for the cold, who are able to fly through the skies on the first night of Hanukkah. Bubbie and Zadie once lived in Alaska but later moved to Kansas City to run a tailor shop. They visit children everywhere, bringing them stories and songs instead of gifts.
If I were a Maccabee this dude would so be toast right now.
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