A Freilichen Purim to all!
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28 Days, 28 Ideas #28: Beit Kneset? Beit Midrash? What about the Beit Cafe?
I recently heard a favorite rabbi of mine say that the American Jewish community may have made a mistake early on by placing all of its communal institution eggs in the beit kneset, or synagogue, basket. He suggested that the beit midrash, or house of study might have been a better choice.
What the beit midrash has going for it is the potential to do highly diverse learning that will attract Jews from many background to sit together and learn. What it doesn’t have going for it is its format. It’s formal and it brings to mind all kinds of imagery and connotations that will turn off many contemporary Jews.
But what about a third kind of beit? What about the modern institution known as the Beit Cafe, perhaps better known in America as the Coffee House? It’s place where discussions happen, planned or spontaneous, as well as cultural events like readings and musical performances. In the contemporary American mind, exciting intellectual and cultural movements are associated with coffee shops, a definite plus for this model.
I’ll start by describing the place I’m imagining and then I’ll talk about why it makes sense for the American Jewish community today. More »
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I vahnt to drink your… Vodka…
This one is so bizarre I’m not sure if it’s disturbing or a very sly bit of tongue in cheek marketing. But since it’s Purim and we’re all going to be Adloyada tonight, this seemed appropriate. And if you’re just an Russian Oligarch who needs to get your drink on, this one’s for you too.
The hottest craze in Russian vodka is the brand “Kabbalah” which sarcastically touts being made with Christian children. Each bottle features a glass baby figurine that’s either flipping you off, picking its nose, or crying. And the babies look just a little bit like Putin. Each flavor is tagged with the name of one of the Kabbalistic sephirot, a pentagram, and a neck-hanger with a phrase in Hebrew.
Reportedly this is a super-premium wheat vodka made with water infused with Gold, Silver and Platinum ions. Naturally it raises questions of blood-libels, Jewish alchemy, cultural appropriation, latent Russian anti-Semitism, and who the hell is behind all this…
It’s a joke, right? A bit of whimsy on the aforementioned issues? At 10,000 rubles a bottle (about $330), the joke’s apparently on us…
HAPPY PURIM!
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Who’s Yur Day-School Daddy?
In the ‘I’m rethinking sending my kids to day school’ department is this letter, circulated yesterday regarding the arrest of a Jewish day school employee:
We are writing to inform you about some unfortunate news. Namely, a very part-time employee of the Chicago Jewish Day School has been arrested on the charge of transporting child pornography. No students, parents, or other staff of the school are involved in this event. More immediately, this person’s schedule in our building meant that he had absolutely NO contact with any Emanuel students.
A few years ago, at a suburban temple where I’d previously worked as youth director, a janitor was arrested for taping kids for ‘potty porn’ in the bathrooms. It was pretty shocking.
B’H, I’m glad that in this CJDS case none of the kids were involved. Both of these people were on the periphery of Jewish schools to the extent that nobody suspected anything. So it’s got me thinking: how do day schools, or for that matter, camps, synagogues, federations, or youth groups avoid having our youth unknowingly involved in some aspect of kiddie porn?
Are there source or secondary texts in our tradition that deal with sexual crimes against children? No pun intended, even on erev Purim, but school me.
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And the king took off his ring and gave it to Haman
Today’s disinformation missive from David Wilder, Jewish Hebron’s propaganda minister, was titled “Despite the violence, Hebron’s children begin Purim.”
There is no hint of the insidious irony in that tag, as it is the violence of the Jewish community in Hebron which we are all mourning.
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Breaking Bread with Fred and David, Breaking Bread with So Called, Breaking Bread
Review of the Abraham Inc. Album Release Party, Le Poisson Rouge, NYC, 2/25/2010.
I feel like I just saw two different David Krakauers on stage. The first one I can only describe as avuncular and earnest. Like your uncle Dovid hearing your high school jazz band and really getting into it, smiling, dancing, clapping, just a really big smile on his face as he’s connecting with this music in a new way because of personal attachment. He’s inside it, and he’s really digging it. This funk the kids play, it’s really something!
David Krakauer number 1 must feel that way in part because of how David Krakauer number 2 tore it up on stage. More »
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Is It Random or Is It Mishegaas?
- Uh, wow. I guess this is along the same lines as those extreme homophobes who are secretly gay? From Neo-Nazi to Hareidi. Oh, but this is part of a larger trend in Poland.
- Today was (or is, depending where in the world you are) International Agunah Day. Did you know that? Did you think about it or do anything to mark it while you fasted for Esther?
- If you haven’t already discovered it, check out Bad Hebrew Tattoos for some examples of permanent mistakes.
- Delaware got its first gubernatorial mezuzah yesterday.
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J Street Debated in Two-Drink Minimum Knesset
This is too entertaining to be such a serious matter, wherein the Deputy Foreign Minister again sits at the center of political faux pas. The Knesset debated the performance of Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon in allegedly boycotting a delegation of five U.S. Congressmen organized by J Street and Churches for Middle East Peace.
The debate on the Knesset floor (full transcript below the fold!) features the singing of Hatikva; name calling between the Ayalon and the opposition; and buried in there some eloquent vouching for J Street by Meretz, Labor, and Kadima ministers.
Here are some compelling thoughts by Labor MK Einat Wilf:
I think it is important for Israel to have a clear policy about its interaction with [J Street]…while meanwhile not giving up on a big and important part of the Jewish people who want to find a way to maintain a relationship with Israel. We have to know how to bring near those who really want to be near and to draw the line for those who serve interests that are not our own.
And the drivel of a response by Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev:
It is a left-wing organization and it is supported by the Palestinians.
But the gem of the whole conversation is Kadima MK Shlomo Mula:
Some people do not want the Reform movement. After all there are Orthodox people who don’t want the Reform. The next day you are going to say about the Conservatives, then you will say the right and the left. I suggest that we as the state of Israel that embraces the Jewish people, everyone who wants to come and help us, even when we have differences of opinion, it doesn’t matter how they come, you can clarify their positions when you sit down and talk to them, but not with boycotts.
Pressed, Ayalon finally clarifies:
Since you asked what is the policy of the Foreign Ministry towards J Street, I want to be clear about it. We will treat it exactly as we will treat any other Jewish organization in the US, period. There are organizations from the right, organizations from the left, organizations from the center, period.
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Anatomy of a Pastrami Sandwich
Interesting report on a recent panel discussion in Berkeley: will the Jewish deli survive the sustainable food movement?
One critical historical note courtesy of Karen Adelman and Peter Levitt (owners of a Bay Area deli that uses local, grass-fed meat, fish from sustainable farms and homemade celery soda) :
What American Jews think of as the authentic Jewish deli is an ossified construct based on post-World War II ideals of abundance that had little to do with how Jews ate in early 20th-century New York, let alone in the Old World.
That mile-high, fatty pastrami sandwich served at Katz’s or the Carnegie Deli? American, not Jewish, they say. Jewish cooking a century ago was all about thrift, seasonality and resourcefulness. Every part of the animal was used; portions were small; tomatoes were served in summer and beets in winter.
Today’s customers want everything on the menu year-round; if they don’t get it, Levitt said, “they complain it isn’t a ‘real’ Jewish deli.”
“‘Authentic’ is a moving target,” Adelman added, pointing out how Jewish cuisine in this country has developed with each new immigration wave. “What we’re arguing is, we’re more authentic. What’s authentic about mass-produced food and giant menus?”
Click here to consume the full article.
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A fourth post about proofreading sifrei Torah
Following on from the third such post…
Proofreading a Torah is a tremendous task, requiring much memory and data processing and demanding infallible accuracy. Computers, of course, have much memory and data processing ability, and are notoriously accurate. Having established that computer checking can be part of proofreading, one frequently hears the question “Why can’t the computer do it all?”
I think we’ve mostly answered that, under the heads of human error and technological limitations, but I find the question itself interesting. Why would anyone think the computer could do it all?
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New Web “Magazines”
Sh’ma unveiled its digital edition a few months ago. It’s still laid out just like its paper version, only it’s harder to read on a screen. There’s not even a place for comments or discussion.
The Jewish Review of Books premieres online… stamped “Volume 1, Issue 1.” Oh, I see, this is just the web version of a paper magazine? No place for comments here either… and wait for it – most of the content is behind a pay wall! (I understand this works for the Wall Street Journal, but really, Jewish Review of Books? Is this going to be a successful income-generator for you?)
I guess I’m disappointed in that part of the beauty of the web is that content doesn’t have to come out in “issues.” I’d rather see new content every time I visit than be overwhelmed with content all at once and then have to remember to check back in a month. (Although perhaps on-demand television will break me of this preference, but for now I still rely on my DVR to tell me when there’s new content available.) And we can use space in more interesting ways online! Why restrict yourself to page layouts like a magazine? (I think that Scott McCloud’s books on comics, and his Reinventing Comics
PresenTense released its new issue on Google Wave. They are still stuck with the “issue” problem, but at least they make use of some embedded video and comments…just like on a blog, only uglier and harder to navigate. What are the benefits?
Of course, this is all to say nothing of the content, but I’ll leave that to the rest of you to talk about in the comments section. But you’ll have to do that here, since only one of the three web “magazines” even has a place for discussion.
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The Politics of Archaeology Unearthed
This just in from AP:
An Israeli archaeologist said Monday that ancient fortifications recently excavated in Jerusalem date back 3,000 years to the time of King Solomon and support the biblical narrative about the era.
If the age of the wall is correct, the finding would be an indication that Jerusalem was home to a strong central government that had the resources and manpower needed to build massive fortifications in the 10th century B.C.
Just dig a little deeper, however, and the plot thickens even more. The researcher in question is Eilat Mazar (above), an old school Israeli archaeologist whose essential goal is to prove the historical veracity of the Bible. She’s made no bones (sorry) about this over the years. In a 2006 interview with Moment Magazine, she made this very telling comment:
One of the many things I learned from my grandfather was how to relate to the biblical text. Pore over it again and again, for it contains within it descriptions of genuine historical reality. I work with the Bible in one hand and the tools of excavation in the other. That’s what biblical archaeologists do. The Bible is the most important historical source and therefore deserves special attention.
The only problem with this is that the Bible is not a history book – it’s religious literature. There certainly may be kernels of historical fact to be found in these narratives, but I’d say it’s exceedingly problematic for an archaeologist to assume ipso facto the historical veracity of the Bible. Mazar’s comment that she works with a Bible in one hand and her tools in the other speaks volumes about her fundamental bias.
It’s also noteworthy that Mazar worked until recently for the Shalem Center, a partisan Israeli think-tank. Among other things, the Shalem Center believes archeology should support “the claim that the Bible can be viewed as a work whose historical narrative is in large part accurate, and (strengthen) the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.”
It’s striking to compare Mazar’s approach to that of Israel Finkelstein, who comes from a new school of Israeli archaeologists who are aren’t driven by political ideology and are willing to go wherever their research takes them. In a nutshell, Finkelstein and his colleagues have argued convincingly that it’s impossible to say much of anything about ancient Israel until the 7th century BCE (around the time of the reign of King Josiah). This casts doubt on the historical veracity of the Biblical narrative from the period of the Patriarchs/Matriarchs through the reigns of David and Solomon. These claims have largely been accepted as normative by most mainstream archaeologists outside of Israel.
If you are interested the current thinking of Israeli researchers who are unfazed by nationalist bias, I highly recommend Finkelstein’s 2002 book (with Neal Asher Silberman), “The Bible Unearthed.” Also check out this 2001 piece from Salon, which explores the deeper socio-political implications of Israeli archeology.
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The Vort – Parashat Zachor
The Vort this week is brought to you by Alana Vincent. Alana is from a mixed religious background, which resulted in the sort of confused childhood that prompts a great deal of religious study. As a result, she is currently awaiting the examination of her doctoral thesis on memory, identity, and contemporary Judaism.
Remember what Amalek did on the road when you were brought forth from Egypt. Finding you on your journey, he struck at the stragglers, the feeblest of all that were faint and weary; he did not fear God. When the Lord your God grants you rest from the enemies that surround you, in the land that the Lord your God will give you to hold as your inheritance, you shall blot out the remembering of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget. – Parshat Zakhor (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)
“Every moment is two moments.” – Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
We’ve heard this story before, a few weeks ago, in Beshalach. We’ll hear it again, later on, in Ki Seitzei. It’s the same story, and yet not. It changes every time, sending a slightly different message depending on the context in which we hear it, but each repetition contains within itself echoes of all the other repetitions. This is especially important this week, when we call this passage by its first word: Zakhor. Remember.
We read Zakhor this week as one of four extra bits of Torah that are appended to the regular readings in the month before Passover. Taken together, these passages help promote reflection on the festival cycle that will commence in the following month—before we begin the journey that culminates in the covenant at Mount Sinai, we are reminded of how that covenant marks us as a distinctive people, with obligations to charity (as in last week’s reading, Shekalim), ritual purity (next week’s reading, Parah), the observance of sanctified time (HaChodesh), and remembrance (Zakhor).
Parshat Zakhor brings up two important (and interlinked) questions. It is a violent text, and contains what has usually been interpreted as a commandment to eternal war against the Amalekites (“blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven”); the violence is accentuated by this reading’s positioning on the Sabbath before Purim (which commemorates another encounter between the descendants of Israel and the descendants of Amalek). In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides identifies three types of religiously obligatory warfare: defensive war, war against the seven nations, and war against Amalek (MT, Hilkhot melakhim, 5:1). He makes clear that rules for war against the seven nations are merely theoretical, as “their memory has long perished” (MT, Hilkhot melakhim, 5:4). War against Amalek, however, he treats as an ongoing concern. Later rabbis, up to the present day, have also tended to speak of Amalek as a contemporary enemy, a presence still needing to be blotted out from under the heavens.
The violence of the text is troubling to fuzzy-hearted progressives like myself precisely because of the way it resonates into the present, the way that there is always a new Amalek lurking around the corner—and the unexpected forms that Amalek might take. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsh, writing in the generation following the German Reform movement, identified Amalek as the worldliness that tempted Jews away from Torah, pointing a not terribly well disguised finger towards the Reformers; Rabbi David Einhorn, writing a few decades later, in Philadelphia, suggested that Amalek lurked in the literalist Biblical interpretation that lent an air of divine sanction to the practice of slavery, pointing an even more obvious finger towards the American Orthodox community. And that was only the nineteenth century—I’ll leave poking around on the internet to see how Amalek-rhetoric has evolved into the twenty-first century as an exercise for anyone bored enough to wade through that much sludge. Trust me, it’s not pretty.
This resonance points to the second question brought up in Parshat Zakhor—and, I believe, the more important one for this week’s repetition of the Amalek story: What does it mean to remember? How on earth am I supposed to remember something that happened thousands of years ago, to someone else? How can we both remember and blot out the remembrance of Amalek? Why go through such terrible mental contortions at all—isn’t it better to just forget?
Next month, each of us will be commanded to regard ourselves as though we personally came out of Egypt; the month after that, we will celebrate Shavuot as though we each were personally present at the formation of the covenant. But it begins this week, with two impossibly contradictory commandments, and a story we can’t quite remember but are forbidden to forget.
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Some Visuals
I often get quizzical looks from friends when I posit that Jews should remix the couture of Ashkenaz. “I mean, why would you want to look Haredi if the whole point of dressing that way is to evacuate any sense of individuality and to emphasize modesty?”, they ask. The first problem is that not all Jews dressed that way, and nevertheless, there has to be a way to subvert traditional attitudes towards Jewish ways of dressing while exploring the ways that our ancestors wore their identity. Putting aside our anything-but-cool associations with the bekishe and borsalino of today’s hasidishe velt, gaze upon this studious young man from Krakow. Check out his distinctly cut cap, ankle pants, his sturdy-worn ankle boots and stylish leather briefcase:
Yael Sloma of TheStreetsWalker, a Tel Aviv/Jerusalem fashion blog, seems to be drawing unconscious parallels between the threads of Ashkenaz and Israeli street fashion, which draws unapologetically from continental concepts. Check out her photo of a Jerusalemite rocking a DIY version of the ankle pants, the wingtips and watchmaker vest. He may not be on his way to the shtibl, but he’s probably on his way to oylem habo:
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One State/Two State
Nathaniel Berman has a fascinating and provocative piece over at Zeek questioning the two state solution:
Indeed, the “two-state solution” has now come to function as an apologetic myth for the Jewish mainstream.Today, it is an alibi for its refusal to confront the concrete situation. That concrete situation is one in which, since 1967, i.e., approximately two-thirds of Israel’s existence, there has been “one state” between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Since the basic positions of both Palestinian and mainstream Israeli leaders mean that two states will never be set up, the “one-state” status quo, which is what we have and will have for the foreseeable future, is what we have to face up to.
The full essay is here.
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Are Those Immodest Catholics, Muslims, and Jews?
This weekend, Pope Benedict XVI voiced concern over the use of those creepy full body scanners at airports. He’s against them, saying “the primary asset to be safeguarded and treasured is the person, in his or her integrity.” 
The Pope continued:
Respect for the principles he enunciated “might seem particularly complex and difficult in the present context”, he told his audience, which included airport managers, airline executives, security workers, pilots, cabin and ground staff.
They had to contend with problems arising “from the economic crisis, which is bringing about problematic effects in the civil aviation sector, and the threat of international terrorism, which is targeting airports and aircraft”. But, he warned: “It is essential never to lose sight of respect for the primacy of the person.”
The pope’s words will delight civil liberties campaigners opposed to a device that strips passengers virtually naked.
He’s only a few weeks behind various Islamic authorities, who have come out against the scanners. Fiqh Council of North America issued a fatwah statement as passing through the scanners would violate Islamic rules of modesty.
And the Jews? There seems to be (shocking, I know), differing opinions. The Rabbinical Center of Europe (an umbrella organisation for Orthodox communities) has declared the scanners to be immodest, but allowed. Part of their issue is that men should review images of men, women those of women. They were assured that images are reviewed by computer software, and humans are only involved if something is found. But this isn’t accurate. We know from many reports that the images aren’t written over or erased, that security staff are looking at images. So will rabbis in Europe reconsider? What about in North America?
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28 Days, 28 Ideas #21: Augmenting Jewish Reality
Remember a year or two ago when GPS technology started being added to cell phone applications? Many of us scoffed at the idea of being trackable by Big Brother or God knows who else, imagining the worst case scenarios of a privacy-free world. Fast-forward to today, and we can’t imagine walking from the subway to a meeting at an unfamiliar location without whipping out our phone and asking Google Maps to guide us, and when the meeting is over, we ask Google Local to guide us to the closest bar with a happy hour.
Well, my friends, Augmented Reality is the next feature coming to your phones that you won’t be able to live without. At its most basic, AR technology allows you to point your phone’s camera lens at objects in the real world to conjure all sorts of information related to it on your screen. The Boston Globe had a great introduction to the technology published in September.
AR technology has many potential applications in Jewish life. The most obvious to me fall in the categories of preservation of memory. Imagine walking through a Jewish cemetery and having instant access to biographical information, photographs, videos, family trees, and more, all available on your phone simply by focusing your camera on a particular headstone. Or envision a tour through the Lower East Side where every building unlocks an oral history from the people who grew up, lived, and worked there. Or think about all those portraits hanging on your synagogue’s walls — wouldn’t it be great to hear your beloved old cantor sing once more, simply by pointing your phone at the painting of him? More »
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