Moyshe Kulbak (1896-1940), An Original Yid
More concretely, Diwon is arguably the first product of the post-Matisyahu tekufa, which seems to have integrated the cliche of Jewish-Black pairing with unparalleled closeness. What emerges is an image of late 19th century Eastern Europe, when the Chabad Movement spawned a generation of youth wrestling with it all. We again get the Jewish mythman, who synthesizes uneasily the massive forces that collide in the body of every Jew.
Filed under
For many, the idea of an Israeli civil marriage may seem an oxymoron, and not just in religious terms. Still, for those in the latter category whose godlessness, sloth, or attitude toward Rabbinocracy might have sent them to Cyprus, there is good news.
JTA reports that Knesset passed a Civil Union bill. By a substantial margin no less. Now mind you, this is a victory for the GLBT community as well, which often had to rely on a loophole for partner rights when it came to property, inheritance, and what not.
So, kol hakavod for a step forward. I don’t want to think about the political price that may be paid for this (one hopes it isn’t tied to some new conversion acceptance policy). But for the moment, progress. Who’d have thought that this day would come, amidst the Knesset’s notorious acrimony, bickering and partisanship?
Who knows, maybe non-Orthodox Jewish weddings will be next…
Filed under
Awhile back, I was introduced to a really great online resource for Jews by choice aptly named JewsByChoice.org. It was certainly a great website and I imagine a good resource for those who encountered it. For one reason or another the project was put on hold, now it’s back and better than ever.
Incorporating aspects of community blogs and social networking, JewsByChoice.org is an incredibly useful and dynamic website which provides a space for an online community dedicated to Jews by choice to network and share experiences, in addition to providing a vibrant potential for online learning and the sharing of knowledge and information. Regular visitors and contributors to the site come from a very large spectrum of Jewish observance and familiarity.
The website intends to target a trans-denominational audience, and while it is also intended for those in our community who are Jews by choice, it also has an active, and can only assume passive, readership from those of us who are Jews by birth.
In its own words…
JewsByChoice.org is a Trans-denominational grassroots, peer run, blog and online resource, providing Jews by choice (as well as other interested parties) with opportunities for exploring, discussing and engaging with Jewish Identity, Tradition, Culture and Religious Observance.
Our core mission activities include:
Technology: Harnessing the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies in order to provide Jews by choice with improved online opportunities for: social networking, community building and learning; as a means of facilitating greater Jewish literacy and engagement.
Discussion: Providing a forum for dialogue and discussion where Jews by choice from across the denominational spectrum can (respectfully) discuss and exchange ideas with one another on a variety of Jewish topics.
Engagement: Creating opportunities for Jews by choice to deepen their understanding, connection and commitment to Jewish religion, culture and community.
Advocacy: Empowering Jews by choice to better identify and address issues which act as barriers to their engagement and integration into Jewish life and Community.
In my opinion, the most productive way to encourage inclusiveness and acceptance on a genuine and integral level for all denominations and flavors of Jewish lifestyle, belief, practice, observance and thought involves striving to understand the perspectives and experiences of individual people who walk in all of these different forms of Jewish identity. The type of online community which JewsByChoice.org is creating provides the opportunity for people to connect as individuals and share information and knowledge by utilizing technology and relying upon the motivation of any person who chooses to join the community for their contribution.
I highly recommend jumping over to the site, registering with them and surfing around, start a blog, join some groups and share your thoughts. It’s really a fabulous resource that I hope continues to be utilized and continues to grow.
Filed under
Back by popular demand, the Edible Omer Counter. Notable for being the only omer counter that gives you motivation to see the Omer right the way through, this one’s got chocolate.
You will need: kosher-for-Pesach choccies, tissue paper, yarn, scissors, pen.*
Cut squares of tissue paper. I used purple over white here (these pictures are from a couple years ago, I haven’t taken pictures since then). Of course you could also use wrapping paper, fabric, foil, whatever takes your fancy.
Scrunch the paper up around the choccy and tie it with yarn. You can’t really see the colours so well in the photo – sorry; I’ve got a nice layered purple-and-white look going, by having the inside square, the purple one, be slightly bigger than the white outside one.
Write the numbers 1-49 on the bottoms of the choccy packages, and use the yarn ties to attach them to one long piece of yarn. You could make it more fun (for kids, naturally – right?) by doing them out of order, and/or by having different sorts of choccies in the packages. Or little toys.
Then hang it on the wall. It ends up being pretty long, so you might have to loop it festively over something.
Starting at the second seder, after dark each night, count the Omer (helpful chart) and eat your choccy.
In Kabbalah, each of the Omer weeks is associated with one of the seven lower sefirot: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut. The days of the week are also associated with the sefirot, in the same order, and then you get each day of the Omer having a different combination – so day 1 is chesed in chesed, day 2 is gevurah in chesed, and so on. See wikipedia for more, if you care to.
The interesting bit here is that the sefirot also have associated colours. Swiping from a random internet source, we have Chesed – silver with a bluish tinge; Gevurah – red; Tiferes – light green, like a ripening etrog (citron); Netzach – light pink; Hod – dark pink; Yesod – rainbow of hues including blue, red, yellow; Malchut – dark blue with purple tinge. Almost black.
Now.
The book Kabbalah: an introduction to Jewish mysticism (another random internet source; kabbalah isn’t my thing, particularly) talks about how one form of kabbalistic practice is to meditate on the colours of two different sefirot and then combine the two into a coalescent colour.
So here’s your challenge this year – go and design your own Omer counter which responds to this idea. Share your pictures. There may even be a small prize (a real one, not internet cookies) for the one that makes me go “squee” loudest.
Filed under
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how we as a community can step up our tzedaka game. After following the fascinating comment thread, with highlights from Shoshana, Avigdor, David A.M. Wilensky, ML, and others, I decided to look into some of the questions about what counts for tzedaka, what doesn’t, how to calculate it, etc. This piece I wrote for Ha’aretz was the result. It focuses on the practice of ma’aser kesafim, tithing one tenth of all income to the poor. Is this a mitzvah that the progressive Jewish community could take on in serious ways?
Filed under
… shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass.*
Who says we’re not zionists at Jewschool?!
*With sincere apologies to Groove Armada.
Filed under
East Bay Cowboys Menacing Yidn
The JTA reports:
The bill calls for divestment of ASUC assets from General Electric and United Technologies “because of their military support of the occupation of Palestinian territories.” It further claims that the move is not an expression of support for either Israel or the Palestinians, but rather is “a principled expression of support for universal human rights and equality.”
Despite global efforts by pro-Palestinian groups, no American university has yet taken steps to divest specifically from companies alleged to support Israel’s military presence in the Palestinian Authority. Last year, Hampshire College’s trustees approved a measure to divest from 200 companies deemed to be in violation of the school’s investment guidelines, among them a number of companies that do business with Israel.
It is not particularly surprising, considering that much of the UC-Berkeley student body tends to gravitate towards a type of fashionably left-wing groupthink. I’m thoroughly convinced that pro-Palestinian activism is largely a loose web of flimsy slogans, fashion sense, flag-waving and arrogant pontification. Consequently, the successful campaign to divest from companies doing business with Israel is more a result of the vague sense that this community has of Jewish and Palestinian history, culture, spirituality and anxieties. I’m all for bringing to light the massive injustice done to the Palestinian people, and for more opportunities to contribute constructively to Jewish-Arab reconciliation.
Unfortunately, the vague sense here that militant Jewish nationalism broadly defined is more immoral than any other kind of militant nationalism, creates for Jewish students an atmosphere of hostility, disrespect, and at times, outright mockery. My fingers and toes are insufficient to count the amount of times I’ve been subjected to expletives and sarcastic remarks over the past 2 years from passersby who recognized my kippa but wouldn’t be able to tell me what the Talmud is, or who coined the term “Zionism.”
For those involved in divestment at Berkeley, I petition you to simply move to Israel/Palestine, and see for yourself what types of emotional, intellectual, religious and moral permutations take place in a land of hatred and indescribable beauty. I think, then, that creating the atmosphere you’ve created here will seem rather childish. Here is a video of type of pro-Palestinian activism that happens at Berkeley. Maybe I’m naive, but my guess is that many of your own supporters wouldn’t identify your cigarette and new era symbols of “human rights and equality.”
Filed under
America’s favorite hockey-mom called on President Obama to “Push the reset button on our relations with our ally Israel.”
In the midst of all this embracing of enemies, where does the Obama Administration choose to escalate a minor incident into a major diplomatic confrontation? With Iran, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea or Burma? No. With our treasured ally, Israel.
She may be right that the treatment is heavy handed, but in case anyone missed it, Palin lost the election. And part of the reason is that her foreign policy experience was the equivalent of my knowing how to read Hebrew making me Moses. Does being a religious wingnut make her an expert on relations with Israel? Or does it have to do with Alaska’s distance from Washington? Or that Alaska was the 49th or 50th state and Israel is the 51st? All seem possible.
The only difference between a political loser and Palin? Lipstick.
If only it were glue.
Filed under
Humanitarian aid arriving in Haiti? Essential goods finally delivered to Gaza?
Oh wait, it’s just the opening of the first H&M store in Israel last week…
Filed under
I’m always falling short. I fall short in my interpersonal relationships, in my avodat hashem (service of God through prayer, mitzvot, mindfulness), in my work trying to repair the world. Not a single evening comes where I can’t look back on the day and realize I could have treated someone better, said a blessing with more appreciation, or fought harder for something I believe in. This falling short is a feeling of distance: distance from my values and ideals, distance from those around me, distance from God.
But I keep going, religiously. For me, one of the most important functions of Judaism is to deal with the reality of these gaps, these distances in our selves. When I fall short, how do I get back to what is good and true in me and in the world? That question is what this week’s parasha, Vayikra is all about.
A surface read of Vayikra might seem to be instructions for a massive bbq – animals, smoke, blood, and fire, but dig a little deeper in the text and there’s a lot more. The parasha is essentially a list of korbanot. What is a korban? It’s commonly mistranslated as sacrifice or offerings but as the Ramban points out in his introduction to the parasha, the word means “drawing close,” from the root k-r-b, to be near. The different korbanot in our parasha are intended to be vehicles to draw close to God.
And when do we feel the strongest need to draw close? After we’ve been distant. The Torah’s word for this distance that I described earlier is: chet. Chet is commonly mistranslated as “sin” but is much closer to the word for missing a shot in basketball, להחטיא. To do a chet means to miss the mark of your potential. I don’t mean this in a fuzzy self-help way, there are times when I’ve missed the mark that have had serious, painful consequences for myself and others. Chet is real, but it’s not the end. It does not have to lead to despair or an abandonment of ideals. You can get back on track.
Religious ritual, whether korbanot, prayer, song, etc. can serve as a bridge from the missteps and missed opportunities of today to how we want to be tomorrow. They force us to confront the things we don’t like in ourselves but at also create the space to move forward. The message of Vayikra is the times we fall short are not excuses to run from our most important values and our relationships. It’s the opposite. Those are the moments when God calls for korban, the moments when we are to draw closest.
Filed under
South by Southwest is an annual music, film and interactive media festival/conference that descends upon my (David AM Wilensky’s) hometown of Austin, TX every March. Yesterday, my mother, Glenda S. McKinney, attended the Judaism 2.0 session of SXSW Interactive.
She is a great Jewish mother and tweets as @gsmaustin. What follows are her tweets and notes from the session.
The Judaism 2.0 session at SXSW Interactive was live streamed, and the video is available at here.
At about 6:30, there’s a pan of the room, so you can see the original group of about 40 in addition to the 20+ sites that were live streaming. The introductions are pretty much unintelligible, but it was a good mix of people: Jews and non-Jews, several Austinites and a few Israelis, active bloggers, and Jewschool founder Dan Sieradski.
Dave Weinberg @weinberg81 announced a conference on the future of Jewish non-profits that will be held in July 29 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City: bit.ly/fojnp. He did ParnasaFest parnasafest.org/.
Chaviva Edwards @kvetchingeditor blogs at www.kvetchingeditor.com/. She pointed out that Judaism was the original social media.
Mordechai Lightstone @mottel blogs at mordechai7215.blogspot.com/
Chaviva said that there is no funding to do the decennial census of the US Jewish population, and talked about work she did to gather contact information for congregations and federations to try to do an informal census. At around 30:00, this went into a discussion of congregations not being active on the internet, and privacy and security concerns.
Dan Sieradski talked about using technology to interact differently with Judaism: build alternative communities on-line, open source Judaism, build your own Haggadah, BBYO’s build-a-prayer site, and JPS Tagged Tanakh. A few people talked about using Second Life to do Jewish things, like visiting the Wall and attending Torah study or services. (So I could ‘really’ go to the Wall, virtually.) You can tweet to @kotel to have your message inserted into the Wall. Mordechai talked about people discussing Daf Yomi via Twitter.
Foreign Service language training materials are in the public domain: www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Hebrew
The best part came towards the end, which was planning for next year Apparently, there was some resistance to having this session at SXSW–because there was a fear that it might be religious in nature–so we talked about what we’d like to see in the future, where it could happen, who could do it, etc.
Intersections of Jewish interest with the larger group, like moderating hate speech, were proposed as possible topics that might be more easily accepted as sessions.
There was talk of having Israeli start-ups and tech companies at the conference, just as there are booths for the West Midlands of England and for Finland. The Cleanovation event by the Texas-Israel Chamber of Commerce in Austin earlier in March and Austin’s Blue Knot group were talked about as possible models and resources.
As a final editorial note of bizarreness, as the session wrapped up, I was sitting on a train on my way to Taste of Limmud NY when I recieved the following tweet from Dan: “mobius1ski: @davidamwilensky I just met your mom.”
Filed under
Once again, a number of Hareidim have violated the sanctity of the Kotel. As women prepared to pray on Rosh Chodesh Nisan, several chairs were thrown at the daveners.
Poor form. I mean, if you’re gonna cast something at the Wall, why not stones? If you’re gonna get medieval on someone, at least practice what you preach… Until then, we know it’s March Madness and all, but can someone tell these folks to give the Bobby Knight impressions a rest?
Filed under
My latest piece, Upside Down Judaism: Why Are Progressives Studying Talmud?, was just posted over on Religion Dispatches.
It used to be commonly held that Orthodox Jews were more interested in ritual observances—the obligations between people and God—while Reform Jews were interested in charity and justice, or the obligations among people. (No one really knew where the Conservative movement stood…)
The last decade has changed all this.
Enjoy.
(KFJ talked about a related topic in a recent post here.)
Filed under
So you’re looking online, trying to find some like-minded folks in your area to share a shabbos meal with. Maybe you’re new to town and are trying to meet new people. Maybe you just haven’t had a shabbos meal in a long time, and you’re looking for that sense of community. Maybe you start perusing Craigslist or Idealist in hopes of finding…
EeGADS! Extra Eclectic Gentiles Are Doing Shabbos!
Mission:
“SHABBAT IS MORE FUN IF YOU YOURSELF COME.” Meet with us Friday evenings for a little liturgy, music & meditation, poetry, prose, and prayer, BREAD & WINE…and of course a good vegetarian shabbos meal together. What more could you ask for?! Non-goyim are welcome, too. Straight friendly. We need all the help we can get! Most of us, though, are Christians, of one sort or another. For information: goyshabbos@yahoo.com
(That was fully unedited, of course.) Vegetarian queers hosting a lovely shabbos dinner? What more could you want…? Oh right, some Jews…
h/t Leah!
Filed under
Jewish Bagel Brunch, Interfaith Service and Immigration Rally 
Sunday March 21, 11:00 am – 4pm
If you’re in Washington DC, you can be part of history and help change the future for millions of our immigrant brothers and sisters. Join tens of thousands of people of faith from across the United States for “March for America: Change Takes Courage and Faith.” Register here: tinyurl.com/Jewishimmigrationmarch.
National Jewish Conference Call on Immigration Reform
Sunday March 21, 6pm
Learn about the Jewish imperative to call for immigration reform on a conference call with Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rabbi David Saperstein (Reform), Rabbi Morris Alan (Conservative) and Rabbi Menachem Genack (Orthodox) and other leaders.
Register Here: www.jcua.org/immigrationcall.
National Lobby / Call In Day
Monday March 22, 9 am – 5 pm
The We Were Strangers Too coalition is helping to organize lobby visits with members of Congress. Please register at the following site if you are able to stay in town: changetakesfaith.org/.
For individuals who cannot travel to Washington on the 21/22, we need you to call your Members of Congress and advocate for reform. Everyone who registers for the March 21 Jewish conference call will receive an email with the information for the national call-in day on March 22.
Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Jewish Community Action, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society are the co-conveners of We Were Strangers Too: the Jewish Campaign for Immigration Reform.
Filed under
From the good folks at JCUA (Jewish Council on Urban Affairs):
Just days before Passover, we have a tremendous opportunity to call on Congress to fix our broken immigration system. As we commemorate that We Were Strangers Too in the land of Egypt, we should take time to reflect on how strangers in the U.S. today are treated. Think of these as the “plagues” of our current immigration system:
1. Keeping Families Apart: The current system keeps families apart. Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters are separated with no means of contacting one another during the detention process. Others have to wait as long as 22 years to be reunited with immediate family members who have been granted legal status. More »
Filed under
Shalom from Israel! I’m spending the week in Haifa through the generosity of Combined Jewish Philanthropies, working on a pilot project for the Jewish Identity and Education subcommittee of the Boston-Haifa Steering Committee (aka שותפות חיפה-בוסטון). Although I’ve been here since Tuesday working with a team from my school and a team from our sister school, tonight was the official kick-off to the Steering Committee meeting.
As far as kick-offs to Federation sponsored meetings go, it was pretty kick-ass. First off, one of two leadership awards was presented to Dr. Eshetu Kebede, the Haifa-side co-chair of Shiluvim (“Integration”), a program to empower and integrate Ethiopian residents of Haifa into mainstream Israeli society. Dr. Kebede took the opportunity to highlight the educational work Shiluvim has done, busing Ethiopian children into schools across the city, noting how far we’ve come in the areas of student commitment and parental support. But then he acknowledged how far we still have to travel in the third pillar of student success — relationship with teachers. And he specifically called out the racism still rampant in some Israeli classrooms, where some teachers tell their Ethiopian students they aren’t Jews, aren’t Israelis, and aren’t worthy or capable of an education.
You can imagine the shitstorm unleashed behind the scenes as the professionals involved with the project leap into damage-control mode. Sitting at a table full of Israeli educators, I could feel the tension in the room, and yet despite the discomfort, it was clear that many recognized the truth in his words. I know that there are many excellent teachers in the Haifa schools who work hard as partners in their Ethiopian students’ (and all students’) success — some of them were at my table. But that doesn’t discount the work left to be done. I hope Dr. Kebede’s call to arms will be taken seriously, galvanizing the community to continue the important work this program has begun.
After some more speeches (and another leadership award presented to Bostonian Debbie Kurinsky), the evening took a decidedly less serious turn with the introduction of Kolot Min HaShamayim (“Voices from Heaven”), an Orthodox Boys’ Choir, to be the evening’s entertainment.
Maybe it’s jet lag, maybe I needed something to relieve the tension left from Dr. Kebede’s speech, or maybe my inner USY dork simply came alive, but I was totally sold on them. Their style is best described as “Glee set in a yeshiva.” Their repertoire ranged from traditional and liturgical settings to a Caribbean take on Adon Olam and a mash-up of Kabbalat Shabbat and O Sole Mio. I didn’t have my Flip camera handy, but thankfully my Blackberry takes video. It’s not the best footage I’ve ever recorded, but I do hope you enjoy it. (And somebody, please get these guys a record deal!)
Filed under
A Gut Vokh oyf aykh un oyf kol Yisroel.
There is a lot to be said about the possibilities of Jewish film. We’ve heard about kollel guys turning the lens on themselves, Israeli filmmakers orchestrating the visual return of Jews to Poland, or Palestinian filmmakers depicting the society that excludes them.
Then there is Wallace Berman. Born on Shaolin Island in the Roaring 20s, his family made their way to California in 1930, just in time for the Depression. He was a member of many loosely organized bohemian camps. He’s often mentioned in the same catalogs as Artaud, Bukowski, and Burroughs – but like some tzadikim, he wasn’t exactly like any of them. Berman experimented with proto-xerography processes to create collages that upended conventions in postwar American art. The only film he made is called Aleph – and it brings together his interest in abstract visualizations and Jewish Mysticism.
Watch Aleph HERE.
Filed under
follow us on Twitter
follow us on Facebook
subscribe to our email