by Danya · Friday, November 30th, 2007
This is geektabulous. The Aleppo Codex, aka the 10th c. manuscript of the Bible considered to be the most authoratative in terms of transmission of tradition (vowels, word choice/spelling Torah trope, etc.) is now online. Much of the original Codex has been lost, but the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem has now put all (I think) of what remains–the end of Deuteronomy onwards–online. Not only that, but it’s got all sorts of nifty zooming functions, so you can see the manuscript up close and personal. It’s pretty groovy.
Here’s the main Codex site for all sorts of background, or you can jump straight to the nifty zoomable codex itself
by Kung Fu Jew · Friday, November 30th, 2007
After damn near two years of planning, fundraising and designing (and re-planning, re-funding and re-designing) the improved New Voices web site is up! Archives, comments, free subscriptions, and all — welcome to the 21st century, Jewish Student Press Service. If you’re not familiar with the sordid history of JSPS/New Voices and it’s thorn-in-the-side approach to Jewish campus life, then read editor Josh Nathan-Kazis’ enemies list below…
The November/December 2007 issue of New Voices is online now at newvoices.org. Highlights include:
A Quiet Freshman’s Secret Past, by Arielle Reich. One year ago, Sam fled his isolated Satmar upbringing for the secular world. This fall, he’s starting college. And you thought your first year was tough.
A Student-Run Shabbaton Falters, by Ashley Bagan. Once the vanguard of the post-denominational movement, Jews in the Woods has fallen on hard times. Will it be a casualty of its own success?
The Best Years of our Lives, by Marissa Brostoff. Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer reflects on his time as editor of Avukah Student Action, a Jewish student newspaper of the World War II era.
My Enemies List, by Josh Nathan-Kazis. Hillel’s domination of Jewish campus life is dangerous for Jewish students, and the Jewish community as a whole. Here’s why.
Plus, a homelessness protest in Jerusalem (see cover image), a Jewish American Girl doll, Reb Schneerson skips the Acid Test, an original comic, reviews, and more.
You can subscribe to the print edition of the only national, independent student magazine for free. Enjoy!
by feygele · Friday, November 30th, 2007
From my apartment in [West] Jerusalem, I can hear the Muslim call to prayer through the day (and night). I quite enjoy this, though I find it somewhat surprising given my location: I can’t really figure out where the nearest mosque (and, specifically, its minaret) is.
For a couple Fridays now, my neighbourhood has also been home to weekly teachers’ strike rallies. They successfully block pedestrian traffic (and sometimes car traffic) on both sides of the street, bringing the pre-Shabbat bustle of errands and shopping and chatting with friends on the street down to a snail’s pace. Pedestrians bottlenecking as we try to squeeze past the rallying teachers and their supporters.
I noticed something this morning that I hadn’t during previous weeks’ protests: an additional layer of noise. Sure, the protesters have whistles, drums, and shout slogans. And sure, many drivers honk their horns in support. But there was something else there… The call to prayer in time for Dhuhr. At first I took it for a protester with a megaphone, but I quickly recognized it for what it was. The conflicting noises, strikers and faithful, were great, and somehow complemented each other nicely.
by Ben Baruch · Friday, November 30th, 2007
by rokhl · Thursday, November 29th, 2007
(translated from the Yiddish by Sol Liptzin)
A Jew of my acquaintance sat down near me in a Warsaw park and asked me why I was so sad.
“Graetz is dead,” I answered.
“God’s will!” said my acquaintance. “One of our townsfolk, I suppose?”
This question, which 90 percent of the Jews would have asked in his place, is a measure of the abyss into which we have fallen…
When I informed my neighbor that Graetz was an historian who wrote the history of the Jewish people, he commented:
“Oh, history!” His voice had the same ring as if he were told that somebody had just eaten a dozen hard-boiled eggs at one time.
Just as I was about to get angry, he continued very naively:
“And what’s the use of history?”
by Chorus of Apes · Thursday, November 29th, 2007
From Ha’artez:
“If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008
So now even Olmert is making apartheid allusions? Does this mean he is ready to support the creation of a viable Palestinian state via negotiations, or is this just an attempt to implement the unilateral separation he has been supporting since 2003, which is itself just a recasting of the Allon Plan from ‘67, which is basically pockets of ‘autonomous’ Palestinian population surrounded by large settlement blocks?
by rokhl · Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
I’ve had Communists on the brain the last couple of weeks. On November 7, I gave my lecture, Mechanics of the Blacklist, 1946-1954, as part of the Jewish Currents Morris U. Schappes lecture series. Jewish Currents is the magazine for which I am a regular contributor. It started publishing in 1946 as Jewish Life. Back then, Jewish Life was published by the Morgn Freiheit, the Yiddish language Communist newspaper. Morris Schappes was the editor of Jewish Life and its second incarnation, Jewish Currents. Today, Jewish Currents is published by the Workmen’s Circle, an interesting development seeing as the politics of the two organizations have been at odds for a very long time. (Workmen’s Circle or Arbeter Ring has been passionately anti-Communist since they pushed the Communists out of the organization in the 1920s.)
Given that I’ve been writing for Currents for almost three years, I’ve become very interested in the trajectory of Yiddish Communists in this country. Two summers ago I gave a talk on the history of Currents in the context of other Jewish and radical magazines. I learned some pretty interesting things about Jewish radicals, and human nature. But that’s for another post. (Or you can hire me to give my talk about Jewish Currents.)
But I wasn’t interested in the topic of blacklisting until I saw The Front last year. As a movie it’s kind of a failure, but as a topic, it’s fascinating. Woody Allen plays a nebbishy bartender (I know, get out!) who gets drawn into a scheme to act as a ‘front’ for blacklisted writers in the 1959s. Back in those days of ‘McCarthyism’ and Communist persecution, a writer who had been identified as a Communist, or a sympathizer, or a dupe, or a fellow traveler, would find him or herself unemployable at all of the major networks and studios. In ‘The Front’, these blacklisted writers use Woody to sell their scripts and Woody, for putting his name on the work, gets a cut. Hijinks ensue.
The coolest part of the movie is that much of the talent involved with it (it was made in 1976) was in fact blacklisted during that time. Zero Mostel gives a particularly riveting performance as a comic who can’t get work, and in the end, is driven to desperate measures.
It was one of Zero’s scene which caught my attention. Desperate to work again, Hecky Green (Mostel) tries to defend himself against allegations that he is a Communist. He meets with an FBI agent and pleads for help. Pathetically, he explains, on his knees, that the only reason he went to that May Day parade (which is what got him on the blacklist) was his desire to nail one of the chicks who was marching.
Ultimately unable to clear his name, and unable to work, Hecky jumps out a window. His tragic death is based on the death of Philip Loeb, the real life actor (the Goldbergs) who was also persecuted for supposed Communism and, with nowhere to go, ended his life by jumping out a window.
I had heard about the blacklist before, but I never thought to wonder how exactly it was promulgated, or enforced. As portrayed in The Front, it appeared to be something nebulous, a government taking without opportunity for a hearing and without appeal. I started to wonder about the due process implications and the government’s ability to destroy lives based not on concrete charges but on rumor and whisper.
Our government has a long history of persecution of Communists, starting with the Palmer Raids of 1919. I mention these only because it was a large scale, systematic assault on Communists which ended up with thousands of arrests, and served as a proving ground for a young J. Edgar Hoover.
More »
by LastTrumpet · Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
Humor site Cracked has a hilarious list of the 9 Most Badass Bible Verses. They’re not so much central to my religious life (or the way I understand how we live Torah, for that matter), but I laughed. Here’s #8 (the verse is above):
We’ve all been there. You’re walking along, minding your own business, when a gang of cocky, young bastards start hurling abuse at you. Most of us would just keep walking, or maybe, yell some insults back or flip them the bird. Elisha (commonly regarded as the Luke Skywalker to the Prophet Elijah’s Obi-Wan Kenobi), however, decides to take it one step further. Invoking the name of God, he summons motherfucking bears to come and claw the shit out of them. More »
by zt · Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
New Voices just published a piece about Jews in the Woods disbanding. After a streak of 12 consecutive shabbatonim all over the Northeast and even in Israel it seems JITW has run it’s course.
Emily Fishman and Abigail Friedman were distraught. The two students had just returned from the spring 2007 gathering of Jews in the Woods (JiTW), the biannual student-organized Shabbaton known for its pluralistic, spiritual environment. After serving as the chief organizers of the event, the Brandeis sophomore and Columbia senior had expected to recruit a new pair of volunteers to organize a gathering for the fall. They were shocked when none of the 130 students present volunteered. Together, they composed an e-mail to the group’s listserv. “This one isn’t going to be easy,” they wrote. “It’s a concern that goes to the root of what JiTW is, what it should be, and what road this community is headed down…There no longer seems to be a pool of JiTWniks with the interest, experience, and right kind of energy to step up…and lead this group forward.”
In the interests of full disclosure, I have been very involved over the years with helping this community work and have been struck deeply by it. So much so that for a long time I viewed it as home even more than my parents shul or my college hillel, both of which i loved and love very much.
This is the first semester since the fall of 2002 in which there won’t be a JITW shabbaton. My feelings are mixed. I am delighted that JITW didn’t just go because of inertia. If it happens it will be because someone or some group of people sees a deep need unmet, tries to meet it, and creates a home the way I found a home.
Michael Brooks once told me that he opens Michigan Hillel Meetings with a motion to defund and shut down that Hillel and they don’t proceed until someone can provide a good reason not to do so. In that case it is brilliant rhetoric, in JITW’s case it is the real deal. This semester no one came up with a Brooksian good reason.
In part it is because since 2002 dozens of beautiful new communities have popped up. Havurot sprung to life at many schools that fueled JITW in years passed like Brown, Columbia, and Brandeis. Minyanim have also erupted in the 20s and 30s set. A lot of those dynamics overlap. JITW folks are disproportionately involved in visioning and stewarding those minyanim. All the people who met, endeavors that sprung up, and hearts which opened convince me that the work I did in the JITW community was well worth it even if its time has passed. That is why I am happy even in a sad moment.
I am very sad that folks who heard about JITW over the last decade, since its inception, and are just now getting to college may never experience it. At a personal level, it is upsetting that my younger sister, who just started college, may never get to go. But, if there is so much sadness, people will step up and make it happen, fill it with shabbos joy, and help it be a nexus of next-step Jewish creativity and node of experimentation again. If it is that, it will always have a place. If it were anything less, i’d be sad that it came back.
by LastTrumpet · Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
Treehugger reports:
They may still be leagues ahead of their time in Israel, but the Good Energy Initiative established by one of our favorites - the Heschel Center - is acting to offset carbon emissions.
The do-gooders are aiming to reduce greenhouse gas source production, and to support Israeli energy independence via energy efficiency and alternative technologies.
The Good Energy Initiative does this by investing its revenues in non-profit social/enviro projects (see the list below). It appears to be the only active and voluntary carbon offset project in Israel.
The list of projects includes CFLs, biodiesel, garbage seperation and a host of other sustainable ideas.
Joshua Berman, a member of the initiative, tells Treehugger:
“I believe we are offering something very special for Jews in Israel and abroad, that is, rather than buying carbon credits which support initiatives in New Mexico, India or other developing countries, which is fine, we are giving people the opportunity to not only offset their carbon emissions but support Israel and green Israeli initiatives at the same time.”
Full story.
by LastTrumpet · Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
In non-Annapolis news, the Times this morning reports:
Without a building and budget, Tikkun Leil Shabbat is one of the independent prayer groups, or minyanim, that Jews in their 20s and 30s have organized in the last five years in at least 27 cities around the country. They are challenging traditional Jewish notions of prayer, community and identity.
In places like Atlanta; Brookline, Mass.; Chico, Calif.; and Manhattan the minyanim have shrugged off what many participants see as the passive, rabbi-led worship of their parents’ generation to join services led by their peers, with music sung by all, and where the full Hebrew liturgy and full inclusion of men and women, gay or straight, seem to be equal priorities.
Members of the minyanim are looking for “redemptive, transformative experiences that give rhythm to their days and weeks and give meaning to their lives,” said Joelle Novey, 28, a founder of Tikkun Leil Shabbat, whose name alludes to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or repairing the world. It is an experience they are not finding in traditional Jewish institutions, she said.
In my mind, there’s nothing in the article most of us don’t already know, but hopefully publicity on this level will help the broader Jewish institutional world wake up a bit. That being said, while the Havurah movement has had notable impact on institutional Judaism, it is still around, and still countercultural. So who knows what the future will hold.
Full story.
by Kung Fu Jew · Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
Thanks for that, BZ. And now the real Annapolis news:
Negotiations are agreed! And, the greatest accomplishment of all: all topics will be covered, saving nothing for second-stage final status talks in an indefinite future (the real failing of Camp David, Oslo, etc.), including right of return, final borders, and a comprehensive settlement with other Arab countries like Syria. The deadline? The end of 2008 (read: the end of Bush’s presidency). From JTA:
In the joint statement, announced by Bush prior to the speeches by Olmert and Abbas, the two sides announced, “In furtherance of the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, we agree to immediately launch good-faith, bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues, without exception, as specified in previous agreements.”
But here’s the biggest, most unexpected news to emerge from the Israeli side:
“For dozens of years, many Palestinians have been living in camps, disconnected from the environment in which they grew, wallowing in poverty, neglect, alienation, bitterness, and a deep, unrelenting sense of deprivation,” [Israeli Prime Minister Olmert] said. “I know that this deprivation is one of the deepest foundations which fomented the ethos of hatred towards us. We are not indifferent to this suffering. We are not oblivious to the tragedies you have experienced.”
THANK YOU. We have been saying this for years, a truth that is dubious from afar surely but painfully obvious for anyone who has spent time in the territories. Fermentation of radical, violent ideals has pickled among Palestinians for 40 years — and more, but the pressure cooker has certainly been 40 years of occupation. It is a deep, deep reward to hear the words come from the Israeli Prime Minister, a concession that by it’s own right changes the very terms of debate between right and left and Israeli and Palestinian.
More »
by BZ · Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
The Annapolis conference convened today, bringing together delegations from around the world. Many expected (indeed, some hoped) that nothing would be accomplished at the conference. However, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has shocked everyone by pushing through his radical left-wing agenda of dividing Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Not only has the division of Jerusalem been ratified, but it has already been implemented in the space of less than a day, with an efficiency uncharacteristic for Israel.
From here in Jerusalem, we can look around and see what the peaceniks have wrought. Traffic was insane today with all the moving trucks driving around the formerly undivided capital, but now that everything has settled, the Jewish and Arab residents of Jerusalem are now living almost entirely in separate neighborhoods. (However, in an apparent concession to parties like Yisrael Beiteinu that had threatened to quit the coalition, Olmert has agreed that municipal services will be provided primarily to the Jewish neighborhoods.) In clear defiance of the will of the many Zionist organizations who opposed the division of Jerusalem, Jewish and Arab students are now attending almost entirely separate school systems. And the anti-Zionist left has shown that it means business, by placing some neighborhoods outside the separation barrier, to create a physical rupture in the everlasting unity of our 3000-year-old holy city. Construction crews have been working triple shifts to ensure that all of this is carried out as soon as possible, ever since the order arrived from Annapolis just a few hours ago.
The anti-Zionist left isn’t content merely with dividing Jerusalem; their agenda also includes weakening the city. To this end, they have begun encouraging Jewish residents of Jerusalem to move to fast-growing outlying neighborhoods on Jerusalem’s periphery, and away from the city center, to ensure that central Jerusalem (associated with the Zionist entity) will not see economic development.
In further evidence of a left-wing anti-Israel conspiracy, population studies show that Jews will soon be a minority of the total population of all land under Israeli control, posing a threat to the future of the Jewish state.
How will supporters of Israel respond to these latest provocations?
by Eli · Monday, November 26th, 2007
The whole slew of new websites and print pieces, complete with cutting edge coverage of cultural progress among our people, sometimes don’t do it for me. The reason? There’s little coverage of recovery, that Gershom Scholem-esque treasure hunt within tradition that seems all-to-limited to the spiritual these days. We Ashkenazish Jews feel very comfortable exploring the religious and culinary styles of non-European Jewry and intregrating it into our postcolonial Judaism, but we draw little from the dynamic cultures we ourselves left behind when our families boarded ships to America.
In Poland, throughout its history and certainly in the aftermath of World War II, was one bohemian haunt. The pre-war Warsaw of assimilated Jewish intellectuals, Polish painters, Yiddish designers and Abraham Joshua Heschels was destroyed and to Poland’s detriment, the shtetlach had burned.
So what does a Polish soul do when its been destructive and been destroyed? It embarks on a journey into the mirror. The Polish Cinema is a good example.
The Polish Film School, which emerged in the 50s after a group of film-men took advantage of a nicer government and began to create films that dealt with World War II and the trauma it inflicted on Polish people. That burst of moral creativity perhaps gave way, 3 decades later as the Soviet Union withered, to a slew of Jewish, Israeli and Yiddish plays being shown in Poland at The National Jewish Theater. The people were starting to talk about the Jews, or went to see what the Jews had to say after all. Check out some of the show posters here.
Jewish theater being shown in Poland during the thaw is just one example of how our culture, our creativity and our brilliance was staged. Appropriately, Polish poster artists interpreted these plays in the images they created to promote them. Here stands a new Jew for our youth to gaze upon, a Redskin of East Europe. We are a lone spiritual civlization, connected to the landscapes, we are both very present and we don’t seem to exist.
Meanwhile, the European Jewish press reported on November 13th, that Germany will give 5 million euros for a project to build a Jewish Museum in the heart of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Full Story.
by matthue · Monday, November 26th, 2007
Editor’s Note: The following post is the first in a series meant to both present excerpts from the introduction to a new book, as well as spark discussion among Jewschool readers about the nature of Jewish tradition. We encourage you to read on to see the excerpt and share your comments.
I met some people from Parabola magazine at Book Expo a few months ago, and I was taken most by how, in the midst of a frantic net of marketing hustlers and gung-ho young buy-my-book! writers, there were a bunch of….well, congenial-looking professor types. They were eager to talk to anyone who looked curious, and incredibly friendly, but not potential used-car salesmen like everyone else around. They passed me a copy of their forthcoming volume, The Inner Journey: Views from the Jewish Tradition
, and said it would be good for me.
They were right.
That’s kind of Parabola’s approach to their subject matter. The Inner Journey series is a hallmark of this attitude: books that portray different religious experiences that are accessible, but not condescending, and function less like Cliff’s Notes and more like
Views from the Jewish Tradition is no exception. Contributions come from the expected high-profilers (Elie Wiesel on myths) as well as some canonical folks (Buber, Heschel, Rebbe Nachman) and surprising luminaries (Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s insightful and multi-layered take on the Messiah). The editor, Rabbi Jack Bemporad, is the founder of the Center for Interreligious Understanding, and has spent his life negotiating Judiasm’s relationship to other religions and cultures, from his childhood as a Holocaust survivor to his recent negotiation to relocate the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, and his work getting the Vatican to ask forgiveness for their role in the Holocaust.
Jewschool is proud to present a series of excerpts from Rabbi Bamporad’s introduction.
More »
by Kung Fu Jew · Monday, November 26th, 2007
Just in case the definition of the Jewish right-wing is in question, the Zionist Organization of America is cause for pause. Ami Eden’s JTA blogging of their annual dinner fills in their basic understanding of Annapolis:
The ZOA’s base is a mixture of secular and Orthodox right-wing Zionists, who can come together on at least one point: their belief that Arabs are murderous Jew-haters who will be motivated, not mollified, by Israeli and American appeasement. There were loud cheers when [Mort] Klein insisted that peace could only be achieved after the Arab side was dealt a decisive military defeat and when he said that Jerusalem was more important than peace — that no deal would be acceptable, even if it were to bring peace. [emphases added]
The fear of trustworthiness on Israel’s neighbors is a legitimate fear, let’s not discount that one bit. But it’s not reasonable as a political platform and certainly shows a pathetic understanding of Middle East dynamics, demographics and opinion.
Interestingly enough, AIPAC took indirect heat for not standing up for Israel’s sovereignty over disputed territories enough, which goes to show not how centrist AIPAC is, but how far extreme the ZOA thinks. U.S. Representative Weiner (D-NY) took a veiled swipe at them from the ZOA stump:
There is no organization in Washington, no organization at the grassroots that is more in keeping with making sure that Israel stays strong and our relationship stays solid than ZOA. Without fear of contradiction I’ll say this: more so than even that better known organization that does some very very important work.
Gag. It is no surprise that when Israel proceeds with actions the right detests (such as talking with Arabs) they cease in their assertion of supporting Israel “no matter what” and take aim at Olmert, like the Republican Jewish Caucus is doing presently.
AIPAC, unwilling to be left behind although weaker on it’s version of obstructionism, is sponsoring a resolution in Congress which parrots long-standing positions about the need for Fatah’s party platform to change, which is a moot point, being not an point of contention between the right and the left, but simply serves to flag-wave and saber-rattle amidst right-wing constituents. (AIPAC doesn’t want to be accused of laying off it’s own talking points by it’s own members.) Arguing that either Fatah or Hamas change their charter before being worthy of negotiations is like claiming Israel can’t negotiate until it defines it’s own borders and picks a constitution. Which is an interesting idea, I’m surprised the ZOA, the RJC and AIPAC haven’t tried it already…
by Chorus of Apes · Monday, November 26th, 2007
While most “organized” Jews are downplaying the importance of Annapolis, Leonard Fein thinks the future of Zionism is at stake.
Time does not favor the concept of a Jewish state. Not the concept, not the reality.
Is a two state scenario even possible, or is it to late for that, given that the matrix of control is entrenched deeper and deeper everyday?
by BZ · Sunday, November 25th, 2007
Here at Jewschool, we’ve had some posts and comments that have been critical of Israel, so it’s only fair that we balance our coverage with some flagwaving. 5.2 metric tons of it.
That’s right, today marked the unfurling of the largest flag in the world, measuring 660 meters by 100 meters. (For the Americans, that means the short side measures one football field).
Filipino entrepreneur and evangelical Christian Grace Galindez-Gupana said she decided two years ago to produce a giant Israeli flag as a testament to her love for Israel and the Jewish people, and as a celebration of 50 years of diplomatic relations between the Philippines and Israel.
“God spoke to me in thunder and lightening,” Galindez-Gupana said. “The Lord said, ‘Make the flag of Israel, the standard of my people.’”
Personally, I think this flag isn’t nearly as tasty as the world’s largest hamentashen, but then again I’m one of those lefties.
