One Rabbi versed in the Dark Talmudic Arts to create one Golem for household of three. Golem will perform rudimentary household chores such as dishes & sweeping, basic Math Tutoring for our daughter in 3rd grade and basic household security. Golem must be obedient and fairly unobtrusive on our every-day lives.
We will supply all materials needed (clay, twigs, calfskin parchment, etc) needed to create the Golem. All you need to do is use your magical ancient Rabbinic skills to animate said Golem!
Please note! We are looking for a Rabbi to create a Golem: an anthropomorphic being created from intimate matter from Jewish folk-lore, NOT Gollum: a former Hobbit turned into monster and looking for “precious”. This is important! We have no interest in living with Gollum. We want a Golem. Please respond, serious inquiry only.
Location: Astoria, NY
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Are you interested in starting a new grassroots havurah and/or minyan? Are you working on sustaining an existing one? If you’ve never done this before, the way to go about this is usually to talk to people who have. But what happens if you don’t know who to talk to? Like Ezra and Yehudah HaNasi, we’re living in a time when it makes sense to start writing down some of our oral Torah. But thanks to technological advances, the 21st-century Jewish Catalog doesn’t have to be a static document, but can (like the real Oral Torah) be continuously expanding.
Everything on the Havurah Resources site is just intended to begin the conversation, so each of the articles has comments enabled. If you disagree with something there, great! Add your voice. Most important, if you have something to add, about any aspect of running a grassroots Jewish community, that isn’t there yet, email resources at havurah dot org, so that this collection can expand.
I’m not going to chronicle the entirety of the tweet-battle I just had with David Appletree of the JIDF and some other like-minded people. I don’t do those things so I can gloat about them later.
However, I do think it’s necessary to point out a few choice tweets that I received during the whole affair, which to me represent the righteous, holier-than-thou attitude that these right-wingers tend to bring to this issue. In no particular order:
@sarahleah770: @renaissanceboy it isn’t me – it is Torah. And respect for the Sages and Rabonim. And acceptance that there is nothing other than Hashem.
@JIDF: @renaissanceboy no, you don’t, or else you’d comprehend the fact that i speak the truth and don’t take that label lightly.
@sarahleah770: @renaissanceboy we don’t differ on anything. u r a jew? i am a jew! torah non negotiable.
Look, I have no quarrel with people with significantly more conservative religious and/or political opinions than me. In fact, I tend to learn from them, as I do from anyone who has a different opinion. Hence, I seek out respectful discussions because I find that I always walk away knowing more than I did before I started. David Appletree and Sarah Leah clearly don’t have that M.O. Fine by me, but it does need to be said that they also don’t contribute anything to the discussion by refusing to engage anyone except on “you are one of us and therefore infallible” or “you are a terrorist-empathizing, anti-semitic, radical-islamist-rationalizing, Israel-hating uneducated liar” terms.
I think of this comic a lot.
It’s certainly attractive to boil down complex problems into simple “us-and-them” soundbites, and Twitter is an ideal platform for doing so. The problem of oversimplifications in politics is certainly not a new one, but it’s taken on a different face with the rise of social networking.
The result of today’s altercation was that JIDF blocked me on Twitter, and then continued to trash me. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the mechanics of Twitter, if someone blocks you, it means that you don’t see when they “mention” you (put your username in one of their tweets). By doing this, David has demonstrated that he cares more about making cheapstrawmanattacksbehindmyback than discussing real issues (in case anyone didn’t know that already).
@jidf: i’m concerned about my grandmother suffering w/ cancer, chemo, diabetes & @renaissanceboy harasses me about labeling terror supporters
David, if you’re reading this, I’m honestly and truly sorry to hear of her sickness. I also have a grandmother with a degenerative disease, and I feel your pain. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone. Period.
But this?
@jidf: @renaissanceboy what part of “go away” do you not understand? i know children with more common sense and morality than you.
@jidf: the fact that @jewschool_com lets a child like @renaissanceboy blog on it is further indication what a anti-Israel joke the site is.
Mr. Appletree, before you go accusing people of resorting to childish and ignorant tactics to give the semblance of winning an argument, take a look in the mirror.
The Department of Defense (DoD) announced today that it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from non-combat activities 34 percent by 2020. The department set the target in keeping with a recent executive order signed by President Obama that seeks to have the federal government lead the country by example through improved energy and environmental performance.
Killing will, of course, go on as usual.
(full press release here)
Howard Zinn, author of “A People’s History of the United States,” radical, truth-teller, and challenger of mediocrity, died yesterday at the age of 87.
Zinn, unsurprisingly, kept his hand in the rabble-rousing business right up until the end. Having been recently featured prominently in The Nation’s “Obama at One” issue, in which he pointed out that Obama has been a fairly traditional Democrat in his seeking of “compromise,” he, as always, encouraged us, the American people, to get off our duffs and push hard for more change, and reminded us that it won’t happen without a lot of back-breaking work on the part of us, we, the people.
He will be missed.
If you still don’t know who he was, try out his website.
It is with great sadness that I learned, a few days ago, of the death of the great modernist Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever ז”ל. Sutzkever’s immense talent as writer was matched only by his heroism as a freedom fighter. During WWII, Sutzkever fought as a partisan and famously saved Yiddish documents in Vilna from destruction at the hands of the Nazis, who killed both his mother and his son. After the war, Sutzkever immigrated to Israel, where he became editor of the Israeli Yiddish literary quarterly Di Goldene Keyt.
Sutzkever has never received his proper due among literary audiences, especially Jewish American readers, and if you have never read anything by him, I commend his understated but intensely powerful writing to your attention (yes, go ahead; buy two copies: one for you and one for the Yiddish lover in your life). Here is a poem he penned in 1948, entitled Yiddish:
Shall I start from the beginning?
Shall I, a brother,
Like Abraham
Smash all the idols?
Shall I let myself be translated alive?
Shall I plant my tongue
And wait
Till it transforms
Into our forefathers’
Raisins and almonds?
What kind of joke
Preaches
My poetry brother with whiskers,
That soon, my mother tongue will set forever?
A hundred years from now, we still may sit here
On the Jordan, and carry on this argument.
For a question
Gnaws and paws at me:
If he knows exactly in what regions
Levi Yitzhok’s prayer,
Yehoash’s poem,
Kulbak’s song,
Are straying
To their sunset —
Could he please show me
Where the language will go down?
May be at the Wailing Wall?
If so, I shall come there, come,
Open my mouth,
And like a lion
Garbed in fiery scarlet,
I shall swallow the language as it sets.
And wake all the generations with my roar!
Can’t get enough of the new Jewish ideas flowing forth from our buddy Dan over at 31 Days, 31 Ideas?
Have no fear, the sequel is here: 28 Days, 28 Ideas. I promise you the ideas will be more clever than the naming scheme for these websites.
Same basic premise, only this time the ideas come from Dan’s colleagues (including a few of us here at Jewschool).
Hey everybody out there in Jewschool-land! Sometimes it feels lonely up here in Beantown. Sure, The Wandering Jew and Danya are here with me, but so many of the events posted about here on Jewschool take place 300 miles south of us, it’s hard to feel part of the cutting edge progressive Jewish community that we hear so much about.
Ok, I kid a bit, but those of you who are also reading these words from somewhere in orbit of the Hub of the Universe know they ring true. So for this reason alone, I encourage you to clear your calendars for Sunday night and join me, and Danya, and hopefully hundreds of like-minded others at Everything is God: A Boston Spiritual Woodstock.
From the accounts I heard and read, the first EIG event (held in Central Park a few months ago) was the bee’s knees. Well, as we all know from The Godfather II and Empire Strikes Back, the second one will be even better. And the second one is happening on Sunday at 7 pm at Harvard Hillel. Facebook it.Buy your ticket. And then make sure you stop by the Jewschool table at the Jewish Organizational Hoe-Down to say hi to me.
All the official information (including, you know, what the event actually IS), in the form of a press release, after the cut. More »
The state of Israeli civil rights alarms me. Since my last update on the damage Bibi Netanyahu’s goalitzia is doing to civil rights in Israel, the country has offered us only a field hospital in Haiti to stem deepening concern. Since that post, the government has come for women’s rights activists. Then humanitarian aid workers. Then opposition journalists. And now civil rights leaders. All in January 2010. As Jewish progressives in Israel and the Diaspora who give a damn about whether Israel is a model society — and who support justice anywhere, everywhere — we’re facing difficult questions.
The New Israel Fund hosts a town hall at Bnai Jeshurun this Sunday, 4 – 6 pm, called LEFT AND “RIGHTS”: Visions of Social Justice in Israel where four illustious and opinionated social justice leaders will debate issues without easy answers:
Avrum Burg, former Speaker of Knesset, author of The Holocaust Is Over. Infrequently do I think books deserve the word “revolutionary” — but his does. In it, this member of Israeli societal royalty assaults Israelis’ (and Jews’) Holocaust paranoia, vowing to destroy its sufficating choke on our people’s universal values and construct a positive frame that could replace it. Fuck yes. (He’s also shamirpower’s crush.)
Naomi Chazan, former Deputy Speaker of Knesset and President of the New Israel Fund. I’ve seen Chazan speak three times — she’s fiesty, opinionated, and has no patience for Jewish handwringing. She said during her last NYC visit, “It’s as if there’s a total disconnect between the liberal values of American Jews and their attitude to Israel…On one hand we have Ahmadinejad spouting vileness, on the other Jews who support Israel no matter what it does. I can’t stand either.”
Martin Indyk, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, a chief U.S. negotiator at Camp David, and present-day director at the Brookings Institution Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He’s attacked regularly by the right for being an “appeaser” and by Walt and Meirsheimer for being too Zionist. Sounds like the right place to be.
Daniel Sokatch is the new CEO of the New Israel Fund, founder of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, and briefly CEO of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. His speech at the J Street conference placed social justice as the missing ingredient in our community’s approach to Israel.
Over 450 people have registered to attend at B’nai Jeshurun (257 W. 88th Street, NYC) and 1,000 for the webcast at www.nif.org/townhall day-of. It’s not going to be another BJ celebrity deathmatch — more like four brilliant thinkers with positive visions of a better Israel.
Each week, over Shabbat dinner we engage in an experiment in mindfulness. Moving through the Shabbat table liturgy we are forced to think about two things: how does our wine and challah taste and where did then come from?
During the weekday, I eat akin to Homer Simpson, eating too much and beginning each bite before finishing the one before. On Shabbat, we are forced to take a step back. First we remember through blessing the wine and challah that food is a gift, and it is from God. (Of course it’s a law to bless our food on the weekdays as well even the most pious Jew would argue that there is something different and special about Shabbat blessings.)
In addition, the Shabbat liturgy forces us to follow an order. I’ll admit that I’m a fork loader. The more I can taste in a given bite the happier I am. But on Shabbat, we don’t mix. First we taste the wine. Then we taste the challah. Only then do we get to eat everything else. Shabbat is our chance to pause, taste our foods, and enjoy the difference in taste at each step in our ritual.
For this reason, it couldn’t be any more perfect that Tu Bishvat, the holiday where we usually celebrate the unique tastes of nature and look closely at how we relate to God’s world, falls on Shabbat. It is during this holiday that we are encouraged to go above and beyond what we do every week, to be mindful of our food in all aspects. This coming Saturday, at Congregation Beth Elohim when the clocks strike 6PM we will combine the best of Shabbat and Tu Bishvat.
Taste of Tu Bishvat will be an experiment in mindfulness. Like the Shabbat table liturgy we’ll take the time to really taste our food (through meditative practice) and to study and discuss where our food comes from by looking at issues of sustainability and eating. The night will end with a havdallah service as we say goodbye to Shabbat and Tu Bishvat. Cost is $18. To register click here.
Taste of Tu Bishvat is a program of Brooklyn Jews and the Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn. It is co-sponsored by the AJWS-ADODAH partnership.
Early this week on Twitter, David A. M. Wilensky asked why people get so excited about Tu BiShvat. Two rather mundane but honest answers are that for those who are into Kabbalah (and I am decidedly not one of those), it’s a moment in the spotlight for their favorite elements of Judaism, and for those who are Jewish educators (and I am decidedly one of those), it’s a holiday that fills the dead time between Hanukkah and Purim.
Personally, I could take or leave the holiday. I like fruit as much as the next guy. Strike that. I like fruit more than the next guy (as anyone familiar with my biography and tendency towards bad puns can attest). But my disinterest in Kabbalah and unease with the ways the holiday has been claimed by everyone from Zionists to Ecologists make it hard for me to get a firm grounding on what the holiday might mean to me.
However, we all know I like food. And when Tu BiShvat falls on Shabbat, as it does this year, I love the chance to build a Shabbat menu around fruit. Back in 5763 (aka 2003), when I was in my first year as a full-time Jewish educator, Tu BiShvat also fell on Shabbat. The shul where I worked had a very successful monthly community Shabbat dinner event. I asked if I could take the lead for the month when the dinner would coincide with the so-called birthday of the trees.
I was met with some skepticism. “Our congregation loves the dinners as they are. We don’t want any programming,” I was told. “Don’t worry,” I assured them. “I’m talking about menu and decorations. You won’t even know that you’re taking part in a Tu BiShvat seder.”
Having made the bold claim, and not entirely sure how I was going to back it up, I got to work with my partner-in-crime, Robin Kahn, then the synagogue’s family educator. We bought up every mylar tree that iParty had for sale. We made up vertical seder plates with four levels, representing the four Kabbalistic spheres the seder traditionally mentions. One set of plates was filled with the expected fruits (the top level being left empty, natch). The other filled with dips like hummus and olive tapenade, because we’re classy like that — and because it gave us a second set of surfaces on the table to which we could affix labels. A third set of four bottles of soda or juice (representing the color spectrum from red to white) gave us our third canvas. The labels we places on each level, each bottle presented all the information of the seder in small, non-threatening and non-invasive chunks. (And lest you think I forgot about the שבעת המנים, the seven types of grains and fruit grown in Israel linked to the holiday, we had crackers made of barely & wheat to complement the rest of the fruits & dips on the seder plates.)
Our crowning achievement was the placemats we created. They were double-sided, with one side aimed at kids featuring a word search, a Cosmo-style “What Kind of Tree Are You?” quiz, and more. The adult side included a timeline detailing the evolution of the holiday from the time of the Second Temple though today, some text about the mitzvah of baal tashchit, and the words to the song השקדיה פורחת. No one had to look at the placemats if they weren’t interested, but to load the deck in our favor, we set the table with transparent plates and cutlery.
The dinner was a success, both from a culinary standpoint and an educational/programmatic one. Today I printed out a new set of those placemats to use this Shabbat. It’s weird to look back at something from so early in my career — I admit to going through and changing the way I spelled the name of the holiday (thanks, BZ!) (although now I noticed I missed a spot). But I’m still proud of the work Robin and I did. And today it serves as a reminder to me that Jewish education can touch even those most resistant to it if we approach it with a little creativity and a lot of office supplies.
The official blog of domestic justice issues, jspot.org, brings you critiques and thoughts on last night’s State of the Union address by Jewish social justice leaders from around the country:
Every day we face difficult interpersonal situations, whether at the office, with our family, or in our communities. How do we deal? We’ve been trained to use our critical faculties and analyze the situation, and pick it apart. Deconstruct. But at what point does that strength become a weakness?
In this week’s parsha, the Israelites face challenges in their journey through the desert. They culminate with the attack by the notorious nation of Amalek. In Deuteronomy 25:17, Amalek‘s attack is described as follows:
“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God.”
The Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of chassidut, explains that Amalek, our great nemesis, is the incarnation of doubt. The gematria, numerical value, of the word עֲמָלֵק (Amalek) is 240, the same as the word for ספק (safek), doubt. Doubt attacks us when we are faint and weary. It cuts us where we are weakest. This interpretation, Amalek‘s connection to doubt, also makes sense if we look at the story in context. Right before Amalek‘s attack, the Israelites made sarcastic, bitter jokes about their plight and picked unnecessary fights with their Moshe and Aharon. They doubted.
In our culture, doubt and skepticism are ways of showing strength. To be taken for a ride is a sign of weakness. Expressing cynicism and sarcasm is a way of attaining social power. It sometimes works, too. But at what price? The Jews got the food and water they were looking for, but their cynical harping hurt their relationships with Moses, Aaron, and God. It also hurt their capacity to believe in themselves.
The ability to dissect a problem or a person into a million little pieces might leave me feeling confident about how smart I am. My sarcasm might make someone laugh. But where does it leave me? When I’m at my weakest, will the bitterness and doubt I’ve sent out into the world come to my aid? Will all the thoughts I’ve had that cut those around me down bring them closer when I need them most? Will I be able to believe in others? Will I be able to believe in myself?
I’m not saying forget about critical thought or blindly follow any leaders. What I think works, and what I try to do when I have the presence of mind, is to examine the source of my skepticism and see it’s root. Am I pointing this flaw out to really help someone, or am I just doing it to raise myself up? Do I really want a situation to change or would I actually be more satisfied complaining about it? These are tough questions to ask, but the results of living a life of skepticism and doubt, of not being able to trust and to follow, or often much worse. The doubt we think makes us strong can make us the most vulnerable. It is our Amalek.
A call for submissions was just sent out by Tamar Fox and her sister, Deena Fox, soliciting writing about the experiences of Jewish women in dealing with death and mourning.
The full submissions call is below, after the jump. They’re looking for all sorts of writing, but to show you the depth and breadth of the collection-to-be, I thought I’d include a little cut from Tamar’s bleak and wholly incredible blog, Blogging the Kaddish, which she wrote over a year of mourning for her mother:
It has been a pretty scary month since I stopped saying Kaddish. Two weeks ago the family gathered in Chicago for the unveiling of the headstone, and since then I’ve been feeling pretty strange. I’m calmer than I have been in months. I’m getting more sleep. I’m seeing more of the people I want to see more of. I’m riding my bike, and reading interesting books and staying up all night with friends drinking whiskey and laughing. I don’t think I’m better, really. I certainly have a lot more “grief-work” to do, but I think that ending Kaddish allowed me to settle into my grief in a way that I never could during the eleven months.
For me, saying Kaddish was really a struggle. It hurt, but it felt important. I guess it was like the intense ache you get in muscles after you work out really hard. The next day it’s painful, but also a sign of increasing strength. You’re not exactly glad for the pain, but you appreciate that it’s necessary for the work you have to do.
Be’col Lashon is taking nominations for its “Excellence in Reporting on Global Judaism” media awards. Winners are awarded $1000.
“Seven rabbis traveled to Washington, D.C., Tuesday seeking a remedy for what they say is overly harsh and unjust treatment of Sholom Rubashkin, the former Agriprocessors executive convicted of fraud at the kosher meat packing plant, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008.” Pardon me while I throw up a little in my mouth. Story here.
Maharat no more! Sara Hurwitz takes on the title of Rabba (ie, the feminine construction of the Hebrew word “rabbi”.) And this rabbi says: About damn time.
Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Dvora Meyers. She usually blogs at Unorthodox Gymnastics.
I saw Srugim for the first time over the summer. Ever since then I’ve been hooked on the Israeli television show that follows the romantic travails of four Modern Orthodox singles in Katamon, Jerusalem’s equivalent of the Upper West Side, as they search for partners and meals on Shabbat.
Since the program does not air on any channel in the U.S., I was forced to download it illegally on the Internet thus opening my computer up to a whole host of viral threats. But it was definitely worth it.
Apparently, I am not alone in my fandom. The [spoil alert]Jewish Week has just run this cover story about the show’s popularity stateside. The show has just begun its second season in Israel (and on my computer in Brooklyn). If you’d like to watch it without endangering your hard drive, the JCC in Manhattan (in conjunction with Jewschool) will be screening the first season (two episodes a week) starting Wednesday, Feb. 3 at 7:30pm.
In addition to being entertained, it’s the perfect opportunity to sharpen your Hebrew comprehension skills. Or if you are seated next to a particularly cute man/woman, you can pretend to not understand what’s transpiring on-screen and ask for help. I’m sure that the show’s characters would approve. Or you can tally the number of halachic inaccuracies you can find throughout the two episodes. Sounds like a good idea for a drinking game to me… Though I suppose the alcohol part will have to wait ’til afterwards, when the Jewschool crew heads next door to Amsterdam Alehouse. Join us! Bloggers and readers alike will be toasting pints and sipping cocktails in the back party room.
SRUGIM COCKTAIL CONTEST: We’re taking suggestions for drink specials in the comments field of this post. The only rule is that you must include the name of the drink, its ingredients, and, of course, the name of the drink must be related to a character, place or theme of the show. The top three favorites will be served at the Jewschool after party on Wed. Feb. 3 – and those three lucky winners will suck down their first drink on Jewschool. RSVP on Facebook now!
RobinHolland.jpg)
Zinn, unsurprisingly, kept his hand in the rabble-rousing business right up until the end. Having been recently featured prominently in The Nation’s “Obama at One” issue, in which he pointed out that Obama has been a fairly traditional Democrat in his seeking of “compromise,” he, as always, encouraged us, the American people, to get off our duffs and push hard for more change, and reminded us that it won’t happen without a lot of back-breaking work on the part of us, we, the people.
Each week, over Shabbat dinner we engage in an experiment in mindfulness. Moving through the Shabbat table liturgy we are forced to think about two things: how does our wine and challah taste and where did then come from? 
Having made the bold claim, and not entirely sure how I was going to back it up, I got to work with my partner-in-crime, 
The dinner was a success, both from a culinary standpoint and an educational/programmatic one. Today I printed out a new set of those placemats to use this Shabbat. It’s weird to look back at something from so early in my career — I admit to going through and changing the way I spelled the name of the holiday (
interpretation, Amalek‘s connection to doubt, also makes sense if we look at the story in context. Right before Amalek‘s attack, the Israelites made sarcastic, bitter jokes about their plight and picked unnecessary fights with their Moshe and Aharon. They doubted.
Am I pointing this flaw out to really help someone, or am I just doing it to raise myself up? Do I really want a situation to change or would I actually be more satisfied complaining about it? These are tough questions to ask, but the results of living a life of skepticism and doubt, of not being able to trust and to follow, or often much worse. The doubt we think makes us strong can make us the most vulnerable. It is our Amalek.
I saw Srugim for the first time over the summer. Ever since then I’ve been hooked on the Israeli television show that follows the romantic travails of four Modern Orthodox singles in Katamon, Jerusalem’s equivalent of the Upper West Side, as they search for partners and meals on Shabbat.
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