Kefirah
What do you get when you put David Kelsey, Failed Messiah, Unorthodox Jew, DovBear, Kyle’s Mom (aka my mom), and me all together in a blog-o-blender?
Kefirah — the newest sublog from Jewschool.com.
Filed under
Serbia Woos Jewish Population
Some of you might of innocently skimmed over the Mishegaas post a couple of weeks back where I linked to this post by Jer979 with the words “Unintentional antisemitism?”.
Jer writes,
When I lived in Asia, it was not uncommon for me to hear from Japanese and Indians (in particular) that the Jews “control the media and banks in America.”In Japan, this is widely recognized as a good thing and there are guidebooks (written for Japanese) on how the Japanese can be more like the Jews.
Here is an ad from the government of Serbia in this week’s Washington Jewish Week. Initially, I couldn’t figure out why this ad was placed in this particular newspaper.
Then, one answer dawned on me…it’s possible that the Serbians think the same way. They must figure that “the Jews are powerful and control America, so if we advertise in their newspaper in Washington, DC and tell them how good we are and how things are getting better here, it will be good for us.”
Kind of like a Borat without the movie.
Wild huh? Well how wild is this — Serbia just took out an ad on Jewschool via Blogads. What’s up with that?!
Attention Serbia:
Appreciate as we do your advertising, methinks you’re targeting the wrong segment of the Jewish population.
You should try advertising to Jews who have money.
With love,
Jewschool
Filed under
So-called Messianics target Russians and others in Germany, and a Rant on other topics
TO start with, let me say that I hate calling them “messianics.” They’re not messianics (at least no more than Judaism is) they’re Christians. But mainstream Christians don’t for the most part, and especially not in Germany, engage in this kind of evil nasty behavior. So what to call them to distinguish them from real Christians and real Jews? I’m up for suggestions.
Anyway, so the point is reported by JTA, that Jews are being targeted in Germany by these folks, and as usual the vulnerable are, well, vulnerable. Russian immigrants, who are lonely and who don’t know much about Judaism are targets because they don’t feel welcomed by the Jewish community, and they don’t see why they shouldn’t join these communities which seem to treat them well.
As the article comments,
“The answer is to be more attractive than the others,” said Anat Bleiberg, head of the Jewish community of Berlin’s social work office. “Look at Chabad: They make themselves attractive and they get lots of members.”
Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, agrees.
“If Jewish communities are not attractive enough to keep people inside the community, neither a law nor any movement will help,” he said in a recent interview. And if the messianic groups are finding lonely people, “Why are they left alone? Why are the Jewish members of the community not helping each other?”
This is a very good question - and not just in Germany. This problem has been cropping up for quite some time in Israel, where Russians feel discriminated against, where many of them are not halachically Jewish, and no one has been able to get the Orthodox hegemony to work successfully with the other movements to create a program to help them.
But this isn’t just an immigrant problem. In fact, it cuts to the heart. Despite the constant navel gazing about losing numbers (not something that I feel all that worried about personally, given that I think quality is more relevant than quantity, and moreover that quality leads to quantity, but it does seem to be the primary concern of many of our institutions), we just can’t seem to get our act together.
There’s whining about birthrates among Jewish women, but we can’t get our institutions to provide maternity leave; heck, many of them don’t even provide a living wage! There’s moaning about few people coming to services, and what do we do? We focus on the content of the services (either by doing nothing , or getting rid of whatever seems inconvenient at the moment) instead of thinking, “well, maybe there’s nothing wrong with the content; maybe it’s the culture?” Chabad actually does pretty well with this (as noted by the article) - they make sure there are friendly faces at every service, they make sure there are meal invitations, and not just once or twice. There’s tons of other things that could be done too…
I have to admit, I feel tired reading this all the time. We have plenty of money to build Holocaust museums ad nauseum, but where is the money for the day schools outside of the Orthodox community? Where is the money for those who can’t afford the unbeliveable costs of schools, camps, shul memberships, what have you?
What else can I throw into this boiling pot? I could go on, but I won’t; I’m sure readers can help out by filling in the other relevant problems, but I will close with this: When I was in high school, I knew two Jews who came from working class families. I don’t mean middle class. I mean working class. They were friends, we lived not far from one another. One of them, is still Jewish-identified, but doesn’t do anything Jewish. He and his mother never felt welcome in any synagogue, and were too proud to go through all the hoops of proving their need to ask for a handout of free membership and the like. So he doesn’t really know anything much about being Jewish, interestingly, lots of his friends were Jewish in high school, but that never became anything deeper.
The other one, was welcomed very strongly and today strongly identifies as Jewish. Her congregation welcomed her and her mother, never asked them for money, helped them out when they needed it, and they have many close friends there. Oh, yeah, did I mention, they believe in Jesus?
Filed under
Tefillah Tree
This Shabbos, please daven for the speedy recovery of:
- Mazal Bat Miriam, a young girl afflicted with cancer.
- Rachel bat Leah, an esteemed friend who recently suffered a stroke.
- My sister L’via bat Ita Zeisel, who broke a rib in a car accident; and her children Avital, Yonatan and Zev, who all injured themselves in one delightful way or another, behaving as children do.
Filed under
The Charismatic Leader
The current issue of Shma: A Journal of Jewish Social Responsibility is all about charismatic leadership–a crucial issue with which the Jewish community hasn’t yet begun to grapple in any sort of substantive way.
. When we support a charismatic teacher in the belief that he alone is needed to be a teacher of Torah, we support the very hubris that allowed that teacher to confuse himself for the object of love. Only by abdicating his role can the charismatic rabbi who has violated sexual boundaries begin the work of teshuvah. The rabbi’s professional history must remain transparent in future employment searches, and he must do work where his history has little potential to have traumatizing effects. There is good work that rabbis can do without the title rabbi. Just as an alcoholic should forever avoid strong drink, it is precisely because the rabbinate and teaching are erotic businesses that healing from abusive behavior is signaled by leaving the profession — humbly and for good.
–Lori Hope Lefkowitz
Some of its content is online, but it’s worth tracking down a copy of the print journal to see the whole issue. Link here.
Filed under
AJCommittee: Progressive Jews Empower Antisemites
The American Jewish Committee, America’s oldest, most established, and, in some ways, most influential Jewish organization, has gone on the offense against the progressive Jewish community, recently publishing a paper entitled “‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and The New Anti-Semitism,” which aims to illustrate the dangerous connections between post- and anti-Zionist thinking on the Jewish Left and various manifestations of antisemitism.
In it, Prof. Alvin H. Rosenfeld, director of the Institute for Jewish Culture and the Arts at Indiana University, tilts at an array of Leftists who happen to be Jewish and Jews who happen to be Leftists, including Tony Judt, Michael Neumann, Noam Chomsky, Joel Kovel, Adrienne Rich, Douglas Rushkoff and Ora Wise, who he identifies as helping to facilitate the eradication of Israel, and thusly, the extermination of the Jewish people.
Filed under
Best Jewish Music 2006
(XPosted to McAtzilut)
Criteria for inclusion: I felt it somehow added to Jewish music, or made an impact on Jewish music or Jewish listeners - even if it wasn’t overtly Jewish. An album in 2005 that I listened to mostly in 2006 qualified - as did a single that didn’t get wide-release (Myspace babies). Otherwise, it’s what I want - and since it’s one of the few of its kind, you’ll take it and like it. I kid! Oh, and because it’s Jewish music, it’s a list of everything - singles mixed with albums mixed with artists. Deal with it! (Except for the first choice, in no particular order):
1. Ayelet Rose Gottlieb - Tapuah
2. Golem - Warsaw is Khelm
3. Socalled - You Are Never Alone
4. Rashanim - Shalosh
5. Jeffrey Lewis - Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror
6. Y-Love (DJ Handler Mix)
7. John Zorn
8. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
9. Say Anything - Alive With the Glory of Love
10. The Klezmatics - Wonder Wheel (Songs of Woodie Guthrie)
11. Matisyahu - Cut ‘Em Down
12. Nehadar - Signs
Filed under
So much to blog, so little time
- Immigration to Israel is at an 18 year low and 775 Israelis rescinded their Israeli citizenship this year.
- A recent study shows that 35% of Israeli children live beneath the poverty line.
- Michael Oren in WSJ: Jimmy Carter is the Anti-Christ. Or, at the very least, his stance towards Israel defies “traditional Christian values.” The Nation comments on the “vitriolic attacks” against Carter since the publication of his latest book.
- Check out Political Research Associates rather entertaining Conspiracy Theory Generator. I’m sure Jewschool reader Miriam will adore it.
- A split in the Racist Right: “A rift has opened between those who see blacks, Hispanics and Muslims as the primary enemy, and those who blame Jews for every evil.”
- NJDC Blog: Right-wingers agree with terrorists.
- Israel’s best friends: 97.7% of Democrats supported a resolution in favor of Israel’s right to self-defense during the Lebanon War, while only 34.5% of Republicans signed on to it. (Via TTC)
- Two intrepid JTA reporters explore Jewish Christmas events, including the Matzo Ball, Jewltide and Heebonism.
- Iranian democratization advocate Amil Imani writes on the proud historic relationship between Persia (Iran) and the Jewish people.
- Jewish and Muslim activists in Italy joined together to show their support for the Iranian students who told off Ahmadinejad the day the Holocaust revisionism conference opened in Tehran.
- “A delegation of Arab-Israeli Muslims was in the US earlier December to raise funds for the building of an interfaith peace research and conference facility in Galilee.”
- NYC’s first Hasidic cop has graduated from the Police Academy and is now on the transit patrol.
- The cop who busted Mel Gibson claims he is being harassed by his superiors for making the arrest.
Filed under
Israel Advocacy Is Bad For Israel
Avram Hein, aka blogger Am Echad, writes @ Israel Insider:
Israel advocacy is not the way to build a strong Jewish people or a strong Israel. Advocacy, as Larry Derfner recently wrote in The Jerusalem Post, “only works on the home crowd - those who love nothing more than cheering Israel and booing the Arabs.” He noted that “the standard hasbara approach is ridiculously one-sided, propagandistic, not to be taken seriously at all.” If this is clear to an Israeli Jew, imagine how clear it must be to the majority who hold no views on Israel.[...]
Professor Steven Cohen once noted that “we need more exposure in the Jewish community to views which challenge our own. We need more opportunities for people to explore their views on Israel, some of which many of us may find uncomfortable.”
Education is nuanced. Advocacy isn’t. Unfortunately most Israel advocacy organizations are run in the Diaspora, by people not fluent in Hebrew and with little exposure to an Israel beyond missions and five-star hotels. Most have not lived in Israel for an extended period of time. Few understand the complexities of daily life in Israel which extend far beyond the battlefield. The lack of education and knowledge about Israel among the elites of the Jewish organizations lead to wasted funds and products which do not help Israel. The result of many advocacy organizations do not speak to most people. This is the root of Israel’s failed hasbara.
Filed under
Bar Ilan Database Online For Free Trial Period
Very exciting–the uh-may-zing Bar Ilan University Jewish text database, featuring just about everything you could think of and a lot of stuff you couldn’t, is free and online for the time being, anyway.
Check it here.
On Macs, it works with Firefox but evidently not Safari.
(Thanks once again to Dr. Aryeh Cohen for the heads up.)
Filed under
The War on Chanukah
From sea to shining sea…
Filed under
FYI, In Case You Lost Count…
As of today, including the seven most recent American deaths, more Americans have died in Iraq than on 9/11.
A hat tip to A Town Crier for the macabre milestone.
Filed under
Painting our Identity
Domari: The Society of Gypsies in Jerusalem is looking for a painting volunteer to foster the young talent at the Center. Youths in the Old City, who have lived in Burj Laq Laq, the traditional Domari quarter inside the Lions Gate, visit the center often to paint their own perspectives on life in the city. We are currently looking for a volunteer to teach basic painting
skills, so that we can continue to build our creative community. Leave a comment here with contact info and we’ll be in touch.
Filed under
Shooting The Messenger
Prominent Left-wing Orthodox blogger DovBear has recently come under attack by an anonymous Right-wing Orthodox blogger calling himself DovWeasel, who has accused DovBear of “serial plagiarism” and denounced him as both a liar and a thief.
Last week, DovWeasel sent an e-mail to roughly 50 Orthodox bloggers pointing to his own blog, which cites 14 instances in which DovBear allegedly lifted text directly from online news sources and presented them as his own writing.
“It may be that DovBear is smart, witty and articulate,” wrote DovWeasel in a follow-up post Saturday, “but to the extent he gets this reputation from his blog it is a result of lying and stealing. It’s that simple.”
DovBear responded to the allegations by outright admitting he had made a mistake, but that his errors were not intentional:
I made a mistake, and I am sorry.
Bottom line: I blog all day long, and sometimes I get lazy in ways large and small. On occasion, thas included omitting to properly attribute sources. Now, DovWeasel has made my sins abundantly clear.
My plan is to carefully review my blog, and to provide proper attribution in every instance. I hope to do this in the coming days and weeks, but I am making my intentions known now, so I won’t be accused of destroying evidence.
Again, I apologize and make no excuses.
He goes on to point out that two out of the 14 instances had been mischaracterized by DovWeasel and could not justly be deemed plagiarism.
Since he first began publishing in October 2004, DovBear has written 3,626 posts (by Blogger.com’s count). Out of those 3,626, DovBear neglected (unintentionally, by his account, which I believe) to provide proper attribution on a grand total of 12 posts. That is .33% (ie., one-third of 1%) of his total entries over the course of two years. Of course, this is hardly anything to squawk about and says nothing whatsoever about DovBear’s credibility.
DovBear makes light of the situation, saying, “In the past, we’ve had a fine time pillorying all sorts of villians [sic] — some large, some small — in the comments of this blog. Now, I suppose it’s my turn. Fair is fair, after all.”
However, I find it rather telling that such self-appointed “guardians” of the Orthodox community are stooping this low to discredit those who present challenges to their world views. Rather than substantially countering the positions which DovBear presents, DovWeasel has sought (and failed rather miserably) to destroy DovBear’s reputation.
It is none too dissimilar — though certainly less threatening and damaging — from the attempts of other Orthodox bloggers and community leaders to destroy the credibility of Un-Orthodox Jew who, earlier this year, outed Rabbi Joel Kolko of Yeshiva Torah Temimah as a serial sexual abuser. Kolko was indicted for his insidious crimes only days after Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon of Agudas Yisroel decried UOJ as a liar who was motivated only by his hatred of G-d and Torah.
Rather than acknowledge that something is desperately wrong in the Orthodox world that needs both attention and fixing, individuals like DovWeasel and Matisyahu Salomon prefer to shoot the messenger.
B”H, DovBear dodged the bullet on this one.
From DovBear “One clarification: I can’t say that the passage lifting was unintentional. Some of those examples are over a year old, and I can’t say with any certainty what I was thinking when I wrote those posts. It could be that I stole intentionally; I can’t rule it out.”
Filed under
James Brown’s Bisseleh Yiddish
The Godfather reminds us where our thoughts ought to be this Christmas season: On unity, rather than division.
Check the “zeigezunt” at the 2:47 mark.
Filed under
Tear Down The Walls of Prejudice. With Your Bare Hands.
A 5th grade class in California has a novel way of attacking the problems of racism and prejudice in its school. They have the students write down incidents of prejudice or intolerance that happen to them, and post them on a wall.
Over the course of a month or two, the wall “builds up”, and the children, after the wall is full, ceremoniously “tear down the wall of intolerance.”
You can read this heartwarming story at thisisbabylon.net.
Diversity education in Jewish schools is already long overdue. A program like this implemented into Jewish schools — not as a mussar subject, but to tackle prejudice as a real issue in the Jewish community — would not only lead to a decrease in disunity and fragmentation within the communities, but would also lead to generally improved relations with the world at large. Were intolerance effectively stigmatized — and noted as forbidden, which it almost always is — the Jewish day school student would be loath to speak derogatorily about “the goyim.” This could, in turn, lead to a decrease in interpersonal anti-Semitism and perhaps even hate crime (though, sadly, anti-Semitic institutions would remain unaffected, many people’s daily lives could be positively impacted).
I fail to understand the reason for not implementing such things in every school.
But as far as Jewish schools are concerned, I think the added benefit of a potential decrease in anti-Semitism and an increase in community unity makes such a thing almost imperative.
Filed under
James Brown takes the Night Train at 73
James Brown has left the building.
Dramatic to the end, he died the day before that big Christian holiday (did he think he could upstage it? If anyone could…) and the cause of death is unknown.
Filed under
Motzash Mishegaas
- Abbas and Olmert meet 10 minutes from my apartment. Is this the first time a Palestinian official has been invited to the PM’s house for dinner?
- WFMU radio opens fire in the War on Christmas, by demonstrating the link between Nazism and Christmas in its function not only as a national holiday, but as a Nationalist holiday.
- Jeb Bush has cast doubts upon his Presidential candidacy, telling reporters, “I have no future.” Praise the frickin’ lord!
- According to Prof. Mark Taylor, there are more religious college students on campus now than in his entire three decade career. And with them arises a new phenomenon of tolerance for faith and intolerance for reason among university administrators: “religious correctness.”
- Not unrelated to the preceding, The Economist reports on how modern neuroscience is throwing the concept of free will to the dogs and how “political correctness,” when applied to this issue, may result in the complete overturning of human social norms.
- The NRA is working on a new comic book in which rich liberal Jews are shown to be responsible for the impending downfall of America.
- COEJL led a Chanukah initiative to promote energy conservation. The Washington Post reports on “The Festival of (Energy-Efficient) Lights.”
- Asher Weissgan, the West Bank settler who murdered four Palestinian workers in Shiloh in a supposed act of protest against the Gaza disengagement,
hunghanged himself with his tefillin in Ayalon prison Friday. - Foreign Policy magazine lists the “Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006″ and Project Censored lists the “Top 25 Censored Stories of 2006.”
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whose name I’ve typed so many times I can spell it properly from memory) suffered a humiliating setback in last week’s elections.
- Iran has denounced a UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic for its failure to suspend uranium enrichment. Oh, and this is scary, though completely undocumented hearsay.
- Speaking of Iran and dead Jews, a website was recently launched documenting Beheshtieh, an Iranian Jewish cemetery. Forgive the morbidity, I just find cemeteries fascinating. Particularly this one.
- According to Middle East News Line, the US government has been blocking shipments of arms to Israel since September. “The halt reflected deteriorating relations between the two countries since the end of the war in Lebanon.” US officials are apparently dissatisfied with Israel’s performance in this summer’s war, in particular, its failure to attack Syria. No wonder the Iraq Study Group’s findings indicate a shift in gears… And maybe that’s a good thing.
Filed under
