by David Kelsey [➚] · Tuesday, June 27th, 2006
Jewschool’s own made it big this week.
I remember when Lilit was an intern at Heeb Magazine.
But that was then. Today, she is gracing the pages of Newsweek with her byline in her story, “Beliefwatch: God’s Girls.â€
And in other Heebster news, Joanna Smith Rakoff, a former Associate Editor at Heeb, is the new editor of Nextbook, although her experience at Heeb was accidentally omitted on the staff bio page.Â
Heeb’s editor Josh Neuman noted that, “She was never a good fit for Heeb. She liked books too much.â€
by BZ [➚] · Sunday, June 25th, 2006
A lot of us Jewschool readers are involved with all sorts of grassroots Jewish communities around the world. How cool would it be if all of these communities could get together somewhere? That’s happening this August at the National Havurah Committee Summer Institute. Hundreds of people are already registered, but registration is still open! At least 7 Jewschool contributors will be there, and an immeasurable number of readers. If you can’t get away for the whole week, you can come for just Shabbat.
(UPDATE: Three work-study positions are still available! Attend the whole Institute at half-price; all you have to do is help out for a few hours each day in the office or with the mashgiach in the kitchen. Email institute@havurah.org if you’re interested.)
But even if you can’t get to New Hampshire this summer, there’s another way that all these communities can get together in one place: on the back of the 2006 Institute T-shirt! The back of this shirt will feature a list of havurot, minyanim, shuls, and other communities where people come from. For a contribution of $36, your community can appear on the T-shirt, and you can advertise to the hundreds of people attending the Institute as well as anyone who ever has occasion to stand in line behind them!
To participate, please email Angela Capinera (soshie77@yahoo.com) with subject line “2006 NHC TEE”.
Indicate the name and location of your organization, in the form “HAVURAH NAME (CITY, STATE)”, as you want them to appear.
EMAIL TO RESERVE A SPOT BY: July 10, 2006
PAYMENT MUST BE RECEIVED BY: July 30, 2006
Make checks payable to: National Havurah Committee
Mail to: Angela Capinera
NHC T-shirt Project 06
11 Cardinal Place
Stratford, CT 06614-3703
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, June 25th, 2006
JTA reports,
Dana Landau, 21, from Zurich, and Jeremy Uhr, 25, and Ilan Tojerow, 29, both from Brussels, are among the younger generation of faces at the Congress. Committed and intelligent, they wonder, like many of their fellow delegates, how to keep the World Zionist Organization relevant and results-oriented in the 21st century.
“The Zionist movement is living in the past,†said David Borowich, chairman and founder of Dor Chadash, a New York-based group that seeks to build ties among young Israelis and American Jews. “What are we revitalizing? What is the Zionist movement?â€
A vote at the last Congress four years ago decided that future gatherings would set aside 25 percent of seats for delegates age 30 or under.
At a plenary session held at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, many delegates spoke in favor of giving the younger generation more clout.
“We stand here and we talk about renewal and pay lip service to you. We have 25 percent of the delegates, but the decisions are made at the (Zionist) executive, and there is no voice there for youth,†said a younger delegate from Canada, Tomer Sadetsky. “We have to find a way to make us involved in the real decisions.â€
Sound familiar? I thought so. Expect more of the same.
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, June 25th, 2006
Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix.
The “click” of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue of American Scientist.
“While you’re trying to understand a difficult theorem, it’s not fun,” said Biederman, professor of neuroscience in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
“But once you get it, you just feel fabulous.”
The brain’s craving for a fix motivates humans to maximize the rate at which they absorb knowledge, he said.
Full story.
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, June 25th, 2006
Richard Morin in WaPo:
This is not funny: Jon Stewart and his hit Comedy Central cable show may be poisoning democracy.
Two political scientists found that young people who watch Stewart’s faux news program, “The Daily Show,” develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.
That’s particularly dismaying news because the show is hugely popular among college students, many of whom already don’t bother to cast ballots.
Funny… I tend to think our “representatives” actions lead to more cynicism than Jon Stewart’s impression of Bush’s cackle ever could. In fact, I believe The Daily Show is the last bastion of honesty in newsmedia, and its ability to make us laugh does no more than make our reality hurt a little less. It’s not the Daily Show which makes us cynical, but rather our state of affairs. This is naught but a textbook example of shooting the messenger.
You can download the full report here.
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, June 25th, 2006
The LA Times offers a thorough examination of eschatological church movements in America, and their designs for world Jewry:
According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.
[...]
For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews — or proselytizing among them — to advance the Second Coming.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, June 25th, 2006
Synagoge 3000 research chief and Syanblogger Shawn Landres parallels synagogue revitalization and the indie minyan scene to “emergent churches” in the latest Shma Journal:
The past few years have witnessed a renaissance in Jewish religious life through the formation of new spiritual communities unbound by conventional expectations about the roles and parameters of a synagogue. These new groups — led mostly by Generation Xers (born 1965-83) and Millennials (born 1983-2000) — crave spirituality, but they aren’t interested in rote rules or in lightweight worship. Instead, they focus on devotional experiences that move beyond the walls of the synagogue, build community, and, perhaps most of all, create what they call an authentic connection to their traditions and to God. De-emphasizing the 20th-century themes of Holocaust memory and “Israel right or wrong,†the leaders are formulating a community-based spirituality through a return to Judaism’s sacred pillars of Torah, prayer, and social justice.
Read on…
by Mobius [➚] · Sunday, June 25th, 2006
by David Kelsey [➚] · Friday, June 23rd, 2006
Just a few short months ago, while chilling at my luxurious sixth floor walk-up on their very bare bones fundraising trip in New York, Barbara Ann Radnofsky, the Texan Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and her campaign manger, Seth Davidson, discussed how they were fighting a lack of interest in both donors and Democratic support because of the perception that they didn’t have a chance to take down a Republican senator in Texas with close ties to Bush (Sen. Hutchison has a 95.6% legislative agreement with W), and how they knew this would change once they won the nomination, which they proceeded to do handily.
And indeed, this is clearly no longer the situation, and significant support is now being offered even on a national level. For instance, both Senators Kennedy and Kerry will be hosting a fundraiser for Barbara in July, as this fight is considered a critical one, and one worth fighting.
But where are New York’s senators? Why is their no such fundraiser scheduled in New York? It is certainly not because the Radnofsky campaign wouldn’t like to have one here.
Barbara is still behind, but has made fierce and fast progress. Hutchison’s approval rating is down 11 percentage points, to a historic low of 53%.
Part of this can be explained by the fact that Hutchison hasn’t faced serious opposition since at least her first campaign. Hutchison is even refusing, so far, to debate Barbara, which is as telling of her fear of Barbara’s abilities, and her lack of confidence in her own record, which Barbara would certainly seek to discuss.
So in the off chance that you or someone you know is unhappy with the current administration and its legislative allies, please pass along the link to Barbara’s website, and the address for contribution to Barbara’s campaign:
Barbara Ann Radnofsky US Senate Committee, P.O. Box 550377, Houston, TX 77255-0377
by E. [➚] · Friday, June 23rd, 2006
With The NY Times’ Kelefa Sanneh and a chorus of critics chanting down Matisyahu for making dough off Jamaican music, few if any who covered Matisyahu’s recent rise acknowledged the presence of Jews in reggae’s birthplace since they arrived there as refugees in 1530.
Much attention has been paid to the common imagery employed by Jews and Rastafarians to affirm their religious beliefs, but less has been paid to the struggles and triumphs of West Indian Jewry in general. By fleeing to the colonies, Jewish communities inhabited a unique space in a rapidly developing economy. As the British-Jamaican novelist Andrea Levy novelist noted in a recent Haaretz interview, Inquisition-era Jewish refugees came to settle the islands as actual countries, realizing that their fate there didn’t lie with the Christian planters or their slaves. Jewish communities were polylingual, which often encouraged their success in trade across colonial borderlines.
Although a small portion of Jews owned their legally allowed two slaves, most did not. A loosely enforced law decreed Jews were only allowed to hire indentured servants of their own faith. After one Jew introduced sugar cultivation technology to Brazil, another brought this technology to Jamaica, thus reducing the need for certain slave responsibilites. The Miami Herald reported in 1999 that the first parliament to abstain from meeting on Yom Kippur was the Jamaican one, in 1849. 8 MPs professed Judaism over 100 years after Jews were legally emancipated on the island.
In the fall of 2007, Yale University’s Center for British Art will be presenting Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: The World of Isaac Mendes Belisario. The Jamaican-born Jewish artist returned to Jamaica from London in 1834. His paintings evoked the visual culture of abolition and depict the slaves’ African costuming, creolization and consequent contextualization in the European cultural landscape. Now that sounds like a good job for a nice Jewish boy.
So to critics and fans of Matisyahu, me vexed. Our roots, seen?
by Monk Eastman [➚] · Thursday, June 22nd, 2006
Rabbi Dov Wolpe of Kiryat Gat is of the opinion that Israeli re-alignment will lead to divine wrath. And, should divine wrath fail to arrive in a timely manner, he’s got alternatives.
The SOS Israel organization also has a clear plan for dealing with horses and mounted police officers who will take part in the evacuation if it takes place.
“It can’t be that horses will decide the fate of the Land of Israel. It’s enough that we have leaders that are similar to animals,” the rabbi said.
My favorite line?
“We are pushing back the arrival of the messiah due to loathing of the Land of Israel.”
What I’m trying to figure out is… is he pushing back the Messiah’s arrival by being an intractable jackass through force of will and faith? By inciting further violence in an already inflammatory situation? Or just through the deplorable conduct and rhetoric of wishing ill on a fellow human being?
by Mobius [➚] · Thursday, June 22nd, 2006
Mazal tov to Nachama Shaina Langer and Micha Adam Levin on the occasion of their wedding last night in Mevo Modiin. All couples should merit to have a wedding as beautiful, as high, and as holy, and to experience a bond as precious and sincere as theirs. May they be blessed with health, security, and wealth, and may they continue to be surrounded by a community of lovers, as those who clamored about their chupa last night to partake in and add to the ecstatic simcha of the occasion. Ahaha-mayn.
Click here for over 100 photos from last night’s festivities.
by Monk Eastman [➚] · Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
You can join the club just try to not to look too Jewish while doing it.
I mean… a Red Diamond?
What the $%^& is that?
I’m actually unreasonably offended: the Muslims can flex the crescent, the Christians can wave the crucifix, but we have to castrate our sigil because… what? What possible fair reason can they have for that?
by David Kelsey [➚] · Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
Changing Hearts and Minds, One Fundamentalist Despot at a Time
I was disappointed and quite frankly, surprised, at the backlash and backfire when a not normal quite mainstream Jewish organization spread false rumors of mandatory Holocaust couture in Iran. I mean, okay, they were technically wrong, but what about the emotional truth beneath the fabricated policy? Doesn’t the fact that it could have been true mean anything? And wasn’t this sort of thing inevitable when several board members of an already over the edge Jewish defense group collectively decided to go off their anti-anxiety medication at the same time?
Regardless, I have to reluctantly concede that perhaps there is a better way to bring us closer to the Iranian president, and give him the international Jewish communal bear hug we know he wants so badly.
And that is why I am thrilled that finally the president of the Jewish agency is reaching out.
The JTA reports,
The chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel offered to teach Iran’s president about the Holocaust. “I would be happy to host him at Yad Vashem and explain to him what befell our nation,†Ze’ev Bielski said of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and called for Israel’s elimination…
This is a generous offer, President Bielski, and should do the trick. I sure hope President Ahmadinejad appreciates how valuable your time is, and how far you will personally go for educational purposes, and I hope that President Ahmadinejad understands that even if many in our community have manipulatively attempted to use this whole debacle in a crass and opportunistic manner to bolster their own Zionist political agendas, you, sir, just want to help.
In a further attempt to encourage Ahmadinejad to reconsider his animosity towards the Jewish people and his historical revisionism and consider his genuine suggestion for a different relationship entirely, Bielski added that,
It is unacceptable to welcome this anti-Semite who works tirelessly to deny the Holocaust and does nothing to benefit his people.
Exactly. Does not the Talmud advise us to push our student away with one hand, but pull him towards us with the other? Sometimes the gates of diplomacy are open, and sometimes the gates of diplomacy are closed. But the gates to fundraising are always open.
by E. [➚] · Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
For a good portion of the time I spent living in Jerusalem, I felt as if my creative inspiration, much of which was dedicated to exploring my Jewish identity in New York, was running dry. I would pry my eyes open to the sound of Sheikh Jarrah’s minarets’ and roosters, stare out the window at our dormitory’s guards’ feeling the underside of backpacks and watch them ask each young man if he was carrying a weapon; with unforgettably blank faces. Every so often, in between bar crawls and a pack of harsh Levantine cigarettes, I’d be able to write a poem or something. For the most part, I felt so alienated by a Jewish city on the brink of an Arab one, a religious city in which I couldn’t shake a secular, liberal American outlook, that the exciting creative and intellectual possibilities Jewishness posed in the Bronx had been transformed into a city obsessed with its borders; needless to say, one in which I didn’t feel liberated, but silenced. I became a wanderer in the city, muted by the bus guards darting in front of me as I made my way to some other vantage point from which I’d sip a cup of coffee and watch.
Between an idealized version of Itzhaq Shami’s Hevron and the world of Mr. Mani, I couldn’t find much space for the possibilities of my own Zionism, one open and so bent on individual liberation that it could thrive on the big differences between the Grand Concourse, Warschauer Strasse and Bab Al-Huta.
My interest in Jewish culture grounded itself in its multiple root systems. I had grown up two generations from Orthodoxy, one generation from Yiddish culture and within a suburb in which black American culture had infiltrated the space left by the Jewish, Italian and Irish immigrant histories many of our family’s worked hard to surpass. The international Jewish cultures I read about became enclaves unto themselves. Before I arrived in Jerusalem, I looked out my window and saw Kasrilevke, Vilneh, Baghdad, Kingston and Connecticut. I envisioned Daniel Israel Laguna’s Daily Gleaner, Shalom Aleichem’s Tevye, Samir Naqqash’s Nubu’at Rajul Majnun fi Madina Mal‘una and Naftule Brandwein’s melodies. They were my flower-stuffed Zionist gun barrels. Now, I saw something real and foreign, the capital of all the Jews. It was under siege and those who ruled it declared war on their enemies. Nowhere in my thinking had I begun to grapple with something so obvious as the war with the Arabs. All I knew was that I didn’t feel like I was at war with them. This distanced me from Jerusalem and the Jewish community it harbored. From whichever political perspective one came, Jerusalemites shared in a common geography and a common physical fate, whatever it was and will be. My Jewish-American life had no common geography, little shared fate.
More »
by deitybox [➚] · Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
Jews for Judaism has learned that the New York Behold Your God initiative , beginning this week in New York, will incorporate a gospel media campaign utilizing a new look and marketing slogan.
Taking their cue from the NY subway system, the campaign logo will consist of bold-colored letters on a black background with a directional sign:
This multi-media campaign will involve billboards, radio spots, subway and newspaper ads, and direct-mail pieces all asking the rhetorical question: “Who’s there for you”? with the standard Christian answer: Jesus. The eye-catching twist is the slogan “Jesus for Jews.”
Those who live in NYC and all boroughs are already receiving direct mail from Jews for Jesus (scroll down in the pdf to see sample).
If you live in New York and encounter these media, you can help Jews for Judaism be informed on the BYG campaign in New York by faxing ads/mail to them at 410-602-0578, by calling them at 410-602-0276, or by emailing nybyg@jewsforjudaism.org.
Jews for Judaism has partnered with the Spiritual Deception Prevention Project of the JCRC of New York to help the greater Jewish community respond to this greatly expanded proselytizing effort which will reach all five boroughs of the city as well as neighboring Westchester, Bergen, Suffolk and Nassau counties, with special ministries targeting the Russian-speaking, Israeli, and Orthodox communities.
Click here for full memo.
by E. [➚] · Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
German Goldenshteyn, 71, was one of the greatest klezmer musicians to immigrate from the Soviet Union to New York in 1994. Known to have transcribed over 1000 klezmer melodies, his notebooks contain the rhythms that permeated our shtetlach.
The NYTimes obituary.
by Y-Love [➚] · Tuesday, June 20th, 2006
The Miami Herald reported today the story of Ross Lawson. He’s currently serving time in Florida State Prison for a list of unsavory offenses, including armed robbery and carjacking, and “felony causing bodily injury”. Turned on to Orthodox Judaism in 1997 by a rabbi from Surfside, FL shortly before being sentenced to life in state prison, Mr. Lawson now is Torah-observant and his mother credits Torah with saving his life.
Mr. Lawson has had his requests to keep his beard and for kosher food repeatedly turned down by the prison, and is resorting to the courts for redress. His lawsuit comes in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Cutter v. Wilkinson, which upheld a 2000 federal law stating basically that:
States that receive federal money must accommodate prisoners’ religious beliefs in such matters as special haircuts or meals, unless wardens can show that the government has a compelling reason not to, the law says.
Now obviously the court’s decision incensed the foaming neo-cons who opined that liberals “seem intent on providing more confort(sic) to the criminals than normal people are allowed on the outside.” “Normal” people can get kosher food, however.
More »
follow us on Twitter
follow us on Facebook
subscribe to our email