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What’s next?
This is my workshop description for the NHC Summer Institute:
Havurah: What’s Next?
Many new independent minyanim/havurot/communities have sprouted up over the last few years. These communities have a particularly strong following among people in their 20s and 30s, and exist primarily in urban centers. This workshop is for people in this constituency who are starting to think about the next stage. Where will we move if we can’t afford to stay in our current neighborhoods? What kinds of meaningful Jewish communities will we create there? What new models of Jewish education will we create for our children? How can we think about doing this together? This workshop is an open discussion to brainstorm proactively about these questions.
I have explicated these questions (and my reasons for asking them) in much greater detail at Mah Rabu. I know a bunch of Jewschoolers will be at the ‘tute, but even if you’re not there to participate in the conversation in person, we can start talking here on the Internet. What are your ideas?
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Wu Tang Invades Gaza
My friend, and roommate, David Druce wrote this little piece. Enjoy.
In a development that stunned Middle Eastern experts, the embattled Gaza Strip was seized by a shadowy group of heavily armed men. Yet it was not the incumbent Fatah regime or the isurgent Hamas but one of New York’s most respected rap groups. The Wu Tang Clan, a consortium of an estimated thousand strong rappers, producers, and others involved in hip-hop were well armed with Uzis and pinky rings. Flanked by a unit of masked ninja wielding liquid swords and heavily armed ‘homies’ from the Stapleton Projects, the GZA quickly led a unit of soldiers into the Hamas stronghold of Seijiya in Gaza City, iron flag in hand.
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Hasidim vs. Wal-Mart
You won’t believe how good this made me feel.
The New York Times reports that Hasidic Jews in Monsey, NY are protesting Wal-Mart — they fear that its unfair labor practices, tumultuous employee hiring procedures, underpayment, Christian Coalition donations and corporatization will corrupt Monsey.
Well, not exactly….but it *is* a fine example of the Jews using grassroots anti-corporate support.
And, to look at it another way: it really is, I think, a stand against corporate America and the commodification of everything. To put it another way: when big corporate players start catering to the Jews — especially the religious Jews — smaller-time, mom-and-pop operations are going to suffer and go bankrupt.
So give the Wal-Marters a kick for me, Monsey folks! Only, not any of the female ones.
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èéé÷ îé àåè èå è’ä áåì âééí
3,112 fans from across Israel converged on the Baptist Village outside of Petach Tikva for the opening game of the Israel Baseball League. The baseball was real, the hotdogs were Kosher, and the kids had a great time. All around the diamond, children, many of whom at their first ball game ran around collecting foul balls, and getting anybody wearing a uniform to sign them. These players, many of whom were passed over in the recent draft got to feel like they were in the big leagues, or at least the Cape Cod league.
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GOP Rejects $2.4B for Israel to Prevent Africa from Getting Condoms
The NJDC today was apoplectic at the GOP’s partisan rejection of a foreign aid bill yesterday that would have provided Israel with $2.4 billion in funding.
“After all their rhetoric about supporting Israel, Republicans yesterday placed politics above the U.S.-Israel relationship,” wrote NJDC Executive Director Ira N. Forman in a press release issued this morning. “By claiming to support Israel from one corner of their mouths, while telling Members to vote against billions in aid from the other corner, the Republican leaders have engaged in a sad, cynical act of political hypocrisy. For years, support for the foreign aid bill has been a top priority of the pro-Israel community. This vote was a real blow to the bipartisan consensus that we’ve worked so hard to develop on Israel.”
In toll, 164 out of 195 Republicans voted against the bill, which passed 241-178 in the House.
The JTA reported today on the GOP’s position:
Republicans opposed the overall bill because it restores some funding for contraception aid to overseas groups that provide abortions. Rejecting such funding has been a Republican red line for over two decades.
The Senate has yet to consider its own version of the bill. If the amendment restoring the funding survives the Senate-House conference, President Bush is sworn to vetoing it.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbied hard for the inclusion in the bill of $2.4 billion in defense assistance for Israel and another $40 million in refugee assistance.
In a P.S. attached to a memo to all Republicans instructing them to vote “no,” minority leader Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio.) adds: “Members are advised that the Leadership has drafted a letter to AIPAC affirming Republican support for Israel funding, not withstanding final passage of this bill. This letter will be available for Members to sign at the Leadership Desk on the floor tonight. A copy of that letter is attached.”
The NJDC, as usual, seems to have jumped the gun and made themselves, and Democrats in general, look ridiculous by engaging in the same sort of excessive hyperbole for which most Jewish liberals denounce Republicans. I mean, come on– The GOP “placed politics above the U.S.-Israel relationship?” What an absurd contention. The U.S.-Israel relationship is politics. “G-d forbid our politicians should be playing politics!” What the hell are we paying them for? To play pinochle?
I think the more fascinating issue here is that of the GOP’s hierarchy of priorities, of which the NJDC made no mention.
This incident evidences the fact that pandering to Christian fundamentalists (by denying contraception to AIDS-stricken nations, thus causing millions to die annually — how Christ-like!) is a greater priority than bolstering Israel, America’s most committed ally in the War on Terror™. According to the GOP’s own talking points, without the U.S.’s ardent support of Israel, the fate of Western civilization in-and-of-itself lies at risk. Yet nonetheless, in this case, Christian “sexual ethics” have trumped our national security interests. More fascinating than even this fact, though, is that Christian groups that are likewise committed to Israel’s defense for theological reasons here have put “sexual ethics” before even fulfilling the criteria of the Second Coming.
Now’s a great opportunity for Israel’s Jewish swing-voting supporters to ask themselves some serious questions, like:
Are Republicans really better for Israel if their bizarre need to impose conservative Christian values on third-world nations is allowed to stand in the way of supporting Israel?
And likewise, is getting GOP support for Israel really worth the cost of, in this case, millions of AIDS victims lives? Should we support the GOP’s decision to push for a separate bill just to suit Israel’s needs, while davka, leaving the poor and the sick behind?
And finally, if you’re a God-fearing Christian fundamentalist who believes in the Second Coming and the defense of Israel as an a priori of that event, is the prohibition of sex that’s not intended for procreation really more important than saving lives, both in AIDS-stricken nations and in terror-threatened ones?
It’s something to think on…
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Making Christianity look good
While in Israel with the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour, fellow comic Ray Hanania and I visited the west bank town of Ramallah. This guy honors his coreligionists as Machsom Watch and B’Tselem honors ours.
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Fiddler on the Tatami Mat
The real singing doesn’t kick in for a minute or two. Give it the time.
(Thanky-nod to Avielah.)
Bonus weirdness:
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Join the JLC in supporting grocery workers in LA
Hey all you Jewschool readers out in LA, this tidbit was passed on to me by my buddies at the Jewish Labor Committee. Come out for an hour Sunday and show your support:
Join the JLC as we march for supermarket workers this Sunday!
Please Take a Hour to Join Us as the California-Western region Jewish Labor Committee (CA-WR JLC) & Nabet-CWA March in Support of the Grocery Workers and their Fight for Healthcare & Decent Wages
This Sunday, June 24th
10 am-11:30 am
@ ALBERTSON’S
3838 W. Verdugo Ave, Burbank
(Hollywood Way & Verdugo)
March and add your voice in support of the grocery workers and their struggle.
Please wear your union or organization’s T-shirt. Help us show Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons that people care and support these hard working employees!
The Torah teaches Tzedek, tzedek tirdof — Justice, justice shell you pursue.
Join us as we gather in pursuit of justice for supermarket workers.
Let’s all gather united in solidarity for the welfare of these supermarket workers.
As the book of proverbs teaches us (31:8): Speak out for those who cannot speak, speak up for the rights of the unfortunate.
For more information call:
Cookie Lommel, CA-WR Jewish Labor Committee, ph. 323-658-5500, jlcla2 {at} aol(.)com
or Larry Mono, Nabet/CWA 53 ph. 818-846-049, email: lmono {at} nabet53(.)org
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jewish bands for Lollapalooza
There’s a contest to find out which band can garner enough votes for Lollapalooza, and some of our favorites are in the running. Consider: vote for The Shondes here, or vote for Y-Love, along with his erstwhile companion DJ Handler, who made this cool graphic to pursuade us:
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The Atheist Siddur
Atheist siddur: Oxymoron or exciting new way to think about ourselves and the world around us?
According to Dr. Tzemah Yoreh, a 29 year-old Bible scholar living in Jerusalem, it’s the latter option.
He’s quoted this week in the Jewish Chronicle:
“The desire to seek things beyond our power is a universal one, and it’s not restricted to theists or atheists,”… “One mode of expression is prayer, which is an expression of our deepest desires. Prayer is a way of voicing our will, something which only a community can do.”
His atheist-feminist siddur (prayerbook) is, in many ways, quite a radical departure. I know Tzemah and the Kiddush Levanah group of which I took part when I lived in Jerusalem experimented some with his liturgy for the Kiddush Levanah ritual, and I found his writing to be quite beautiful, and mostly comprised of pasokim (Bibilical verses) woven together, and not explicitly non-theistic at all. I personally prefer traditional liturgy in general, though.
Of course, the question remains: to whom does an atheist pray?
The Chronicle notes,
For example, the Shema [in Tzemah's atheist siddur] is preceded with the following: “May favour be found in the recitation of these verses — a respectful echo of the belief of my ancestresses and ancestors, who devotedly worshipped Adonai. For although I cannot sing odes to a patriarchally imagined deity, as it says in the Torah (Deuteronomy 4:16): ‘Do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure — the likeness of male or female’, the tradition of my parents is carved in my heart in immutable letters.”
Every section (excluding the biblical passages) of the siddur is reworked to represent the author’s sensibilities. In traditional siddurim, the section before Yishtabach reads as follows: “For the Kingship is God’s and He rules over nations. Redeemers shall come from Mount Zion to rule over/judge (the inhabitants of) Mount Esau, and the Kingship shall be God’s. And God shall rule over the land, on that day God shall be one and His name shall be one.”
Yoreh’s version reads: “For human beings were meant to be kings, governors of their environment. Redeemers shall arise, saviours shall come. From Mount Zion and from among all peoples, they shall beat their swords into plowshares. They shall eradicate despotic government. On that day harmonious coexistence shall be realised.”
So what do y’all think: Does it work? Does it not work? Hillul Hashem or a new way to engage kedushah?
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Stand up and be counted
Independent minyanim/havurot/communities have been transforming American Judaism for 40 years, but there has been a particularly significant wave in the last few years, with new communities starting (it seems) every few weeks. There has not yet been a systematic study of the population of these independent Jewish communities, to gather data about who we are and what our values and concerns are. Mechon Hadar and the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute are now conducting such a survey, designed by sociologist Steven M. Cohen. You can participate in the survey at www.communitysurvey.info and share information about yourself and your community.
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Why Every American Jew Should Love the Boston Red Sox and Hate the New York Yankees
I tend to agree with Chomsky’s view of spectator sports, and I generally find many of my fellow Bostonian’s relationship to their team to be rather golden calf-ish, but I’m posting this anyway.
From the newest issue of AJL:
There are five seminal moments in the history of Jewish baseball players. Four of them involve the Boston Red Sox. Only one of them involves the New York Yankees. I really think you should do the math.
The history Jewish players have with the Red Sox is only the first reason why — please sit down now — Jews should not support the Yankees. It’s simple logic. The Yankees and Red Sox hate each other, or at the very least, Yankees and Red Sox fans hate each other.[1] Jewish players have a greater history with Boston. Thus Jewish pride demands some form of (at least) token support for the Red Sox, and any support of the Red Sox cannot exist alongside Yankee fandom.
Please do not try this. A Red Sox fan and a Yankee fan in the same body is a paradox of universe-obliterating proportions. Do you really want to be responsible for the end of all existence?
I’m offering this argument for your own good. I even traveled to the team’s spring training to meet Jewish Red Sox and bring you back their story, though that turned into an adventure all its own.[2] Too long have Jews paid homage to the Yankees and their pinstripes. It makes sense, the center of the Jewish universe being in New York[3], but we should be asking, “What have you done for us lately?”
The answer is and always has been, “Not much.” In fact, the Yankees have on occasion screwed us out of our rightful due. I will explain everything to you, but first, the aforementioned seminal moments and why all Jews should love the Boston Red Sox and hate the New York Yankees:
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a nes (miracle)
Over the last couple of summers at Klezkanada, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of the young folks who are reinventing Jewish/Yiddish culture in the FSU, including the virtuosic Jewish/Gypsy folk explosion Dobranotch as well as the more rock and roll oriented Nayekhovichi, featuring Moscow based blues guitar legend, Vanya Zhuk. If you haven’t heard his new verses of Borscht (in yiddish, russian and english), then you’ve never tasted such a dish. Or heard such a song.
But besides the hot musicians and amazing new Yiddish song, there are other superstars of the Yiddish avant-garde of the FSU. Today I heard from Motl Gordon. In addition to studying mathematics, Motl teaches Yiddish sunday school at the JCC in St. Petersburg.
This means he has little 7, 8 and 9 year olds performing (for example) yiddish purim shpiels that were collected in Ukraine by Moyshe Beregovski, some 90 years ago. A lot of the Beregovski material, some of the most important ethnographic work ever done on Yiddish, is still unavailable to us here in the US, especially if you don’t speak Russian. Point being, these little kidniks are doing stuff we can’t even dream about. The cuteness is almost too much to bear, even thousands of miles away.
And it’s not just cute, though, Yiddish sunday school symbolizes a real, substantial, enviable commitment to the revitalization of Russian Jewish culture, a commitment that will have a profound impact on the future of spoken Yiddish in the FSU. Motl’s been doing this for three years and it’s been very successful, especially considering how Yiddish, and Jewish culture, barely survived the last sixty years or so. In fact, though the context is obviously wildly different, Yiddish faces similarly daunting challenges in the FSU as it does here in the US (discontinuity, lack of resources etc).
Nonetheless, based on the success of the St. Petersburg sunday school, there will now be a similar school opening in Moscow, the nes (miracle) to which I refer in the title of this post. Here’s a brief word about it from Motl (in yiddish and english):
In september vet in Moskve onheybm tsu arbetn a naye zuntik-shul far yidishe mishpokhes “Di Yidishe shtikelekh”. Kinder un eltern veln zikh lernen yidishe shprakh, yidishe lider un traditsie mit profesionele lerers. S’iz di ershte azelkhe shul in Moskve un di tsveyte in Rusland (di ershte iz geven gegrindet in Peterburg dray yorn tsurik). Der program-direktor funem nayem zuntik-shul iz Motl Gordon, folklorist un lerer fun der yidisher shprakh.
“In September 2007, a new Yiddish Sunday school, Yiddishe Shtikelekh, will open in Moscow for Jewish families. Parents and children will learn Yiddish, Yiddish songs and traditions with professional teachers. This is the first school of its type in Moscow and the second in the FSU (the first was opened in St Petersburg three years ago). The program director of the new Sunday school is Motl Gordon, folklorist and teacher of Yiddish language. “
This will be first school in Moscow teaching Yiddish to Jewish children (and adults) in over 50 years. So mazel tov, Motl and I’m about to run home and make a l’khayim in your honor.
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Gay marriage is for keeps in MA
I remember when gay marriage was being debated back in 2004. All day long, the tv’s in my college student lounges were showing local access to catch the debates going on over at the State House. Impassioned speeches about daughters and siblings who wanted simply to marry their beloveds, Bible-brandishing arguments, reasoned and not so reasoned appeals. It was inspiring — civics at work in an intelligent, nuanced way.
When gay marriage was finally made legal a little later that year, there was a party down at Cambridge city hall. Couples showed up in wedding dresses and tuxes, bright and early in the morning, to be the first to wed. It was one long simcha, lasting throughout the day. I was stuck in my library cubicle writing my thesis while friends went over there, but the photos just made me cry with happiness for these folks, and to this day I really regret not making it down to Central Square to celebrate.
That was not the end of it, though. Although 8500 couples have wed since then, for those of you following the debate, today was the constitutional convention to vote on whether or not to bring an ammendment banning gay marriage in Massachusetts to a referendum in 2008. Basically, this was a vote on whether gay marriage, which has already been made legal in Massachusetts, should be open to being outlawed.
Well, we won! Gay marriage is safe from challenge, at least for now, in the fine state that brought you the American Revolution, JFK, the Red Sox, universal health care (if only they would fund it), and lots of other good things promoting freedom and justice.
We remain the only state in the union in which gay marriage is legal.
Keshet did a great job of organizing the Jewish community.
See more in the Boston Globe here or, if you have to get it from the NYTimes, here . By the time you read this, there may be updates, so check the Globe for more detailed anaylsis later here. For more info on the issues, see the MassEquality website.
[And congrats to Leah featured in the photo below!]
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Rock to Golem and save a life: Boston, 6/23
So my friend Barefoot told me a few weeks ago, “The most amazing thing has happened. I am a bone marrow match for a girl in the States, and I am going to donate my bone marrow.” I didn’t quite get it. I asked, “What does that mean to you? I’m not sure what to say, is it like ‘Congrats’? Tell me about it.”
“It’s probably one of the most amazing things I will ever do in my whole life. I have the capacity to save another person’s life, and I’m going to do it.”
I don’t know why it took her basically repeating what she’s said a second time in order for it to sink in. I don’t know why I didn’t immediately understand that actually saving another person’s life by your actual actions could be one of the most amazing things you’ll ever do. I guess we talk a lot about “saving lives” in the activist world, and so maybe I’ve become desensitized to it. But I’m not sure I can say that I’ve ever actually saved a person’s life.
Well, now Barefoot can. And you can too.
GesherCity Boston, along with the JCRC, Harvard Hillel, Kavod House, Tremont 20s and 30s, Tufts Hillel, Workmen’s Circle, Havurah on the Hill, Young Leadership Division of CJP, are holding a bone marrow drive in which they test you with a simple cheek swab and add you to the national registry of bone marrow donors. As if the chance of saving another person’s life is not enough, the event will also feature
GOLEM!!!!
who just absolutely rock the house with their fierce and cheeky Klezmer fusion. Also speakers, food, giveaways, a JP Licks Sundae bar, activities, a raffle (including Red Sox, Patriots and Blue Man Group tickets, restaurant gift certificates and movie passes!), and lots of other good stuff.
WHAT: The GesherCity Bone Marrow Drive and Community Celebration of Life made possible by the Winn Family, in partnership with North America’s only Jewish bone marrow donor registry, the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation, and Combined Jewish Philanthropies.
WHEN: June 24, 2007 2:00pm to 6:00pm
WHERE: 52 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge MA (at Harvard Hillel, Red Line to Harvard Square)
TO SIGN UP, CLICK HERE.
Also check out the pretty:
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Lamed Hei
In today’s Forward:
Scurrilous barbs and sharp-tongued insults are routinely tossed back and forth through cyberspace from one Jewish blogger to another, appearing in long threads in the sections reserved for reader comments. The invective often revolves around political stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with bloggers on the left and on the right painting one another into corners and caricaturing one another’s beliefs.
“Because of the challenging views I’ve expressed with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I’ve been called a Zionazi by Left-wingers and a self-hating Jew by Right-wingers,” Daniel Sieradski, founder of the blog Jewschool.com, wrote in an e-mail to the Forward. “I’ve had people write that I, personally, am why the Holocaust happened.”
In recent months, Sieradski said, he has begun editing reader comments on his blog to keep the conversation civil. But his first attempt at reconfiguring Jewish blogger etiquette came in 2005, when Sieradski, 28, launched a campaign to lift the language out of the gutter. “Jewish Bloggers for Responsible Speech Online” invited Jewish bloggers to insert a photograph of the Chofetz Chayyim, a 19th-century Lithuanian Jewish scholar who redacted the religious laws governing speech, on their Web sites. The picture would then link to an explanation of the edicts against speaking negatively of others, known in Jewish law as lashon harah. The move, Sieradski said, grew out of his frustration over verbal skirmishes with a competing Jewish group blog, Jewlicious.com, founded by David Abitbol. Dozens of Jewish bloggers have since added the link, Sieradski said, but Abitbol’s operation is not among them.
Abitbol, a 42-year-old Jerusalem resident, said that to adopt a code of speech for the Jewish blogosphere would tamp down the free and open debate that gives it its zest. “There’s a lot of testosterone on the Internet, a lot of swagger,” he said. What makes “the blogosphere interesting is the fact that it is dynamic and anything can happen.”
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Former Secretary General of the UN and Austrian President, Kurt Waldheim, dead at 88, will always be remembered for not wanting to bore readers of his autobiography with too many details of the years 1942-45
Wow, Kurt Waldheim- that name takes me back to sixth grade. I hoped assumed he was burning in a hell he theoretically believed in dead already. Check out this story about his life. Best parts: the writer of the obit refers to Waldheim’s lying about his service in the Nazi officer corps as his ”economy with the truth.” Also, during his tenure as Austrian president he was unwelcome in most parts of the world and he took virtually no official state trips to other countries- except to the Vatican (twice) and unspecified “Arab countries.”
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