The ADL has come out against the bigotry of those who want to stop the Cordoba Project Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan… but they’re still opposed to building it. Wait. What?
We regard freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the American democracy, and that freedom must include the right of all Americans – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths – to build community centers and houses of worship.
We categorically reject appeals to bigotry on the basis of religion, and condemn those whose opposition to this proposed Islamic Center is a manifestation of such bigotry.
However, there are understandably strong passions and keen sensitivities surrounding the World Trade Center site.We are ever mindful of the tragedy which befell our nation there, the pain we all still feel – and especially the anguish of the families and friends of those who were killed on September 11, 2001.
So, once again (there was an article in the Washington Post from April 2009, but you have to pay for it), the mainstream press has discovered the independent minyan phenomenon, and written the same boilerplate article about it. To make things easier in the future, I thought I would provide a simple outline for future intrepid reporters who discover this phenomenon.
1. Start with a paragraph about how lively or passionate the service is.
2. Get a quote from Jonathan Sarna. (This seems to apply to anything in the Jewish community.)
3. Get a quote from Elie Kaunfer.
4. Write that everybody in the Indy minyan movement is in their twenties or thirties, is not looking for a community and sees the minaynim as a stop-gap until they settle down.
5. Get a quote from the head of the Reform or Conservative minyan saying that while it is a positive phenomenon, the Indy movement is disturbing since those folks should be in our shuls.
6. Include a picture of an open Torah Scroll.
7. Don’t let any facts get in the way of the story you want to write.
Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from Gavriel Meir-Levi who heads up Jewish Outreach for the Mark Levine State Senate Campaign for District 31 which runs along the Hudson River from the Upper West Side to North Riverdale. He worked on the 2008 Obama Campaign and is currently exploring the intersection of Democracy and Technology.
Tu B’Av with the Orthodox Avante Garde
One of the most interesting things about running Jewish Outreach for a state senate campaign has been re-discovering all of the technicolored streams within waves within movements of Jewish observance and identity that run from the Upper West Side to Washington Heights to Riverdale; Modern Orthodox meets Open Orthodox meets YU Orthodox meets Black Hat Orthodox meets Non-Traditional Chassidic meets Liberal Conservative Halachic meets Non-Pluralistic Egalitarian meets Zionist Traditional Reform meets Post-Zionist Israeli meets Meta-Judeao Eco-Zionist meets Activist Atheist.
Did I miss anyone? It’s impossible I did not, and even if somehow a complete list were compiled, no doubt crashing the Jewschool server in the process (not to mention our own heads), we would need but to wait a few minutes for a new movement to emerge from within the Brownian Motion of contemporary Judaism.
It was just such an emergence that my friend Mark Levine who is running for State Senate witnessed for the first time at the Bangitout Tu B’Av party in Riverside Park, the emergence of the Avante Garde Orthodox. Somewhat ironically, the Orthodox communities have been most welcoming of my candidate (who founded the Barack Obama Democratic Club of Upper Manhattan) even though many of them have deep misgivings about President Obama. Intuitively the expectation was that the more liberal communities who are Jewishly closer to Mark’s level of observance and practice would be his strongest supporters, his “natural base” in political parlance. And yet the enthusiasm of the Avante Garde Orthodox has been astonishing to behold, even though they were far more interested in each other than in anything Mark had to say on Tu B’Av.
Despite their misgivings about Obama and progressive causes (of which many Mark supports) the Avante Garde Orthodox may be closer to Obama than they realize, albeit not in the strictly political sense. Many of them may have suffered through overbearingly Ultra-Orthodox childhoods and day school experiences during which year after year they were told, “No, you can’t!” Well, they are now discovering that as young adults living on the Upper West Side oh yes they can! Yes they can stay up all night flirting on Tu B’Av, yes they can appreciate a Broadway show, yes they can become active politically and yes they can figure out their own unique contribution to the multi-faceted multi-colored movements within contemporary Judaism.
There’s an article in the current Washington Jewish Week, of DC not the state, that addresses this week’s parasha, specifically those sticky parts we say in the daily Sh’ma. You know, the passage about God rewarding us or punishing us by manipulating the rain.
We are turning away from God’s command by Joelle Novey
Special to WJW
I’ve been having a hard time with a passage in Ekev, this week’s Torah portion. Unfortunately, I’ll be reading it again soon, because the words appear in our daily liturgy, after the Sh’ma:
“If you heed my commandments, then I’ll grant your land’s rain in its season, that you might gather your grain, wine and oil. I’ll grant grass in your fields for your cattle, that you might eat and be satisfied.
“Take care that you not be seduced and turn away to serve other gods. Then God’s fury will turn against you. God will block the sky. There will be no rain. The earth will not grant its produce. You will quickly perish from the good land that God grants you” (Deuteronomy, 11:13-17).
It’s harsh, and some prayer books have omitted it, uncomfortable with divine judgment. But that’s not what concerns me.
For me, it’s hard not to notice that the threatened curse itself seems to be coming true.
The global average temperature has risen 1.4 degrees in the past 150 years, and is rising faster and faster. Spring is coming one to two weeks earlier across the Northern Hemisphere. We have just lived through the hottest April, May and June ever recorded.
Around the world, rain isn’t coming in its season. Draught and other climactic changes have caused $5 billion in crop losses annually for three decades. Many are finding it more difficult to eat or to be satisfied.
Why is this happening? We have blocked the sky. Coal-fired power plants, airplanes, cars and agriculture are generating greenhouse gases. They accumulate and trap the sun’s heat, causing the Earth to warm. The safe carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere is 350 parts per million. We’re near 400 already, and rising.
“Isn’t the weather God’s department?” writes Rabbi Julian Sinclair of the Jewish Climate Initiative. “In traditional Jewish theology, climactic conditions are part of the divine prerogative.” But now, “the natural climactic systems are responding to human actions … [that] are creating their own retribution.”
Some teachers of Jewish ecology have suggested that we understand “turning away” to describe people polluting. Then, the climactic punishment fits our crime. The text, at least, is fulfilled.
Unfortunately, what’s really happening isn’t anywhere near that fair. We have turned away, but it is others who find that there is no rain, and the earth won’t grant its produce. Those perishing from the good land have done least to contribute to the problem. Already, the World Health Organization estimates that 300,000 people around the world are dying from direct effects of climate change, most of them in developing countries.
In the weeks following Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year, we seek consolation.
In this, what is our consolation? Maybe Americans will call on Congress to pass strong climate legislation. Maybe in our homes and communities, we will find ways to reduce our carbon emissions. Our society may yet come together to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. Maybe this work will leave us ultimately with a better world.
But today, as I anticipate hearing that threat read from the Torah, I don’t feel ready for consolation. I’m just too sad to be living in a time when human beings have managed to cause, for ourselves, the most terrifying divine punishment our biblical forebears could imagine.
It’s lonely to be in uncharted territory, beyond even the harshest rebuke from nature that the Torah describes.
Who are we in this story? We are both those who heed the Torah and those who interfere with rain in its season.
No matter what we do next, we’re already partly too late. I grieve that even those of us who say the Sh’ma — who call on our people to hear, three times daily, about the unity of all — I grieve that we, of all people, haven’t been listening.
Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it.
…Now, you know, I’m all about freedom of religion. I value the First Amendment as much as I value the Second Amendment as much as I value the Tenth Amendment and on and on and on. But you cross the line when they try to start bringing Sharia Law here to the state of Tennessee — to the United States. We live under our Constitution and they live under our Constitution.
Someone should tell him what those Jews have been doing in their yeshivas in America all these years and then get him on the record about that.
Hey y’all, I just posted the next part of the Jewish Food Movement series in the Huffington Post, this one focusing on growing sustainable food. My goal in writing these pieces has been to get the word out to people about all the amazing food work happening in Jewish circles: farming, social justice, spirituality, etc…
I’m trying to include all the great work that’s going on, but if there’s anything I missed please let me know in the comments. Last time I posted up the social justice and food piece there was some helpful stuff.
Although Jean Epstein’s films are all but lost on today’s Jewish youth, his early 20th century Warsaw/Paris aesthetic and stylistic contributions are crawling all over those foppish Hebrew man-boys gliding through Union Square with cigs dangling from their mouths. Jean Epstein’s films are rarely screened. Many of his techniques, in fact, are so off the wall you wonder if the Ishbitzer Rebbe in nisgalgal in the nutjob. Today, Epstein is remembered as a filmmaker and theorist who sought to continuously examine the connection between the viewer and the cosmos. I say let’s examine the connection between the Shaagas Aryeh and this big-haired Wideboy.
I often hear the right-wing voices reiterate the mantra that the settlements aren’t an obstacle to peace. Which is, at best, phenomenally and stunningly ignorant. Having just been there myself a week ago, it sticks in my craw as the single biggest myth American Jews believe.
What’s a shame is that over here in the Diaspora, one could believe anything, but a quick jaunt around the territories will reveal the obvious truth. Just a 30 minute drive from Jerusalem down highway 443 will reveal the glaring inequalities between lush green settlement oases looming over dustbowl villages. It is no secret that much of these settlements are built on Palestinian land. A tour with a more discerning researcher will point out where buffer zones, checkpoints and JNF forests (yes, in the territories) strangulate the natural flow of people and goods.
Perhaps the myth is all the more infuriating because the average American Jew opposes the settlement enterprise and religious settlers, largely because they make the two-state solution more distant. But asked if the settlements themselves are an impediment to peace, most eagerly say that Palestinian outcries over their growth are misplaced. Certainly the Jewish establishment repeats it like a mediation. Thank God for the slow but vital progress of programs like Encounter which introduce rabbis, educators and federation types to life on the other side. Once you’ve seen the lay of the land from atop a tall hill in the West Bank, the question becomes why continue the construction, not why stop the construction.
Here, Nicholas Kristof opines via video about the shameful unfairness of Israel’s demolishing of Palestinian villages while settlements grow in the Southern Hebron Hills:
Just in time for our Tu B’Av reflection on Jewish love songs comes a brand-new entry into the field. Y-Love (aka Yitz Jordan) is known as the world’s first African-American Orthodox Jewish hiphop artist, but he’s good enough that you don’t need all those adjectives to sell his music.
He’s also a stand-up guy. We first met at a Jewish conference a few years ago, and I was immediately impressed with his commitment to speaking truth in his music, online right here at Jewschool, and his life, even when his opinions contradict the establishment.
His Tu B’Av song continues in that vein, taking aim at the shidduch (matchmaking) practices of some Orthodox communities. He describes the song, “Second Chance,” as his first foray into ballad territory, but it’s as much a rant and a lament as it is a ballad.
Speaking about the origins of the track, he says, “It’s basically taking my life from 2005-2006, and blowing it up to illustrate a point — people have to be allowed to take more control of their own shidduchim process in the Orthodox communities, and when a person ‘listens to the rabbi,’ well, all decisions have consequences. (Yes I am referring to someone specific in the song. And that’s all the info I’m giving on that subject )”
You don’t have to be Orthodox or have participated in matchmaking to relate to the song or its message. Click here to download the MP3.
Check out this interesting Statement of Principles, written and edited by leaders in the Modern Orthodox community:
For the last six months a number of Orthodox rabbis and educators have been preparing a statement of principles on the place of our brothers and sisters in our community who have a homosexual orientation.
The original draft was prepared by Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot. It was then commented upon by and revised based on the input from dozens of talmidei chachamim, educators, communal rabbis, mental health professionals and a number of individuals in our community who are homosexual in orientation.
Significant revisions were made based upon the input of Rabbi Aryeh Klapper and Rabbi Yitzchak Blau who were intimately involved in the process of editing and improving the document during the last three months.
The statement below is a consensus document arrived at after hundreds of hours of discussion,debate and editing. At the bottom, is the initial cohort of signators.
We, the undersigned Orthodox rabbis, rashei yeshiva, ramim, Jewish educators and communal leaders affirm the following principles with regard to the place of Jews with a homosexual orientation in our community:
1. All human beings are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect (kevod haberiyot). Every Jew is obligated to fulfill the entire range of mitzvot between person and person in relation to persons who are homosexual or have feelings of same sex attraction. Embarrassing, harassing or demeaning someone with a homosexual orientation or same-sex attraction is a violation of Torah prohibitions that embody the deepest values of Judaism. More »
On Shabbat, the American children take over the perpetual soccer game across the street. They are exponentially whinier than the Israeli children. They are far less interested in the rules than in each having a turn (or five) to hit the ball into the net.
I’ve been doing this for the last week or so, observing the Americans. It started when I went to two English bookstores in the same day, having read my way through the fiction supply I brought with me. The Americans came into the store looking for Alexander McCall Smith, John Grisham, Danielle Steele, vacation reading, beach books. Sometimes they came to sell back books they’d bought there, bags and boxes of them, unloading their stash before they leave to go back home.
I try to imagine their apartments, in Katamon, in Nachlaot, on Emek Refaim-large, maybe only lived in for the summer, the chagim. If I had traveled to Israel as a kid, if I had been involved in a youth movement, if I’d spent a year or a summer here, maybe it would be for me what it is to other people-what that is, I’m not sure. It seems like it’s about a certain Jewish confidence,a comfort, an ease to being in this place that I don’t have, because I’ve never been able to take being here for granted.
To be clear: I don’t mean “for granted” in the “assuming that Israel will always be here” kind of way. That’s another issue entirely. I’m talking about taking for granted that means having relatives here, or an apartment, or some kind of roots other than the religious or existential kind. You can come and go with a level of ease, taken care of, buffered from the strange and scary, having a sense of the transient and also of the grounded. In short, a relationship of privilege.
As I write this, I have five days left here, and the panic is starting to seep in. I will have to leave soon, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m traveling now on what is my fourth free ticket. In other words, I’ve only been here when someone else is paying for it. When I was working in the Jewish community, there was always a project, or a Birthright bus, or a learning opportunity, that would get me here. (Certainly, the fact that the Jewish community doesn’t pay a person anywhere near enough to be able to travel to Israel on a regular basis wouldn’t be an obstacle.) I don’t have family here, I grew up with no sense of Israel, and this is a relationship I’ve built, and continue to build, myself. I’m not alone in this. I just watched a group of 38 people struggling to build their own relationships- out of familiarity, a strange sense of connection, others out of nothing at all.
Grandiose geo-political implications aside for a moment (try, please), creating a sense of entitlement to Israel, one of the primary goals of world Jewish community be sure, results in a group of folks like me, who constantly feel like they’re playing catch up. To what, exactly, remains to be seen.
I just published a piece at the Jewish Journal about my experience yesterday at the action at the Hyatt hotel in Los Angeles, called “Putting On My ‘Going to Prison’ Clothes” .
Thursday, after seeing my two children off to Camp Ramah, I came home and I put on my going to prison clothes. This is something I have not thought about in a while. When I was in Grad School near Boston, once or twice a month on a Sunday I would visit Jeff (not his real name) at Walpole State Prison, about an hour or so south of Boston. One of the saddest things about these visits was seeing the children in (what I came to call) their “Sunday going to prison clothes” visiting their fathers.
Thursday, however, I was not going to visit somebody else in prison, I was going to get arrested. I was part of a group of approximately one hundred Rabbis, priests, ministers and workers who sat down in front of the Andaz Hotel on Sunset Blvd. to protest the practices of the Hyatt Hotel.
More information about the struggle of Hyatt workers is available here
And if you are a rabbi or cantor you can sign on to a letter to the Hyatt Corporation in support of the workers here.
Avraham Burg, one-time Speaker of Knesset and renegade political royalty, has done what all successful (and/or out of power) politicians in Israel do: started his own party. He outlines a party platform for “Israel Equality” (Shivyon Yisrael) that is eyebrow-raising: a new joint Jewish-Arab party focused on social equality. In a stirring lambast against the aging and boring existing political leadership, he calls for “thorough shake-up”:
A party that will sail far beyond the paradigms of classic Zionism, which to this day ignores the place of Israel’s Arabs. A party that will demand full equality for all Israel’s citizens, the kind of equality we demand for the Jews in the Diaspora wherever they live.
…Those who vote for [Shivyon Yisrael] and its candidates will accept the definition of Israel as “a state whose regime is democratic and egalitarian, and which belongs to all its citizens and communities. The state in which the Jewish people have chosen to renew their sovereignty and where they realize their right to self-determination.”
Some people are really excited about this and I have no dearth of enthusiasm for Burg himself. He’s an accomplished politician raised in the core of Israeli politics who has the balls to say prophetic things that are deeply unpopular to say. (Such as: the Holocaust is over, get over it.) Having met and worked with him, he’s certainly charismatic, politically aggressive, and deeply cares for moving (or pushing) Israel into its next stage of existance.
However, I find myself none too skeptical. My skepticism is rooted in not just the usual frustration with micro-parties but knowledge that there already exists a Jewish-Arab political party focused on social justice: Hadash. More »
I’m always afraid of saying anything about women on the internet because obviously I’m a moron with the wrong junk between my legs. But I gravitate toward saying things about rabbis. Especially lists of them. So here we go.
The results got us thinking about all the female rabbis whose influence cannot necessarily be measured by their national/international profile, their media presence or the size of their constituencies — some of the criteria on which Newsweek bases its rankings — but who, nonetheless, are playing important roles in shaping the Jewish story.
When my mom was a kid, she invented the children’s caucus of the Texas feminist something or other (she’ll correct me in the comments, I’m sure), so I grew up with feminism. I like it. I even like saying I’m a feminist myself. So the idea of The Sisterhood 50 appeals to me. Yet, in practice, a lot of it looks like wishful thinking that only serves to prove one point: There just aren’t that many women in influential rabbinic roles.More »
Our awesome friends over at Jewish Funds for Justice are recruiting for their next leadership cohort. This one is kinda different because it’s focused on Jewish leaders with more experience.
The Selah program is a great opportunity for learning, networking and exploring the intersection and connections of one’s work life and one’s Judaism.
Applications are now online for the Selah Executive Cohort!
The Selah Leadership Program is rooted in the belief that by transforming leaders, we are better able to transform society. The Executive Cohort will bring 22 to 26 social change leaders together for eight days of intensive leadership and management training over six months. The cohort is designed for Jewish leaders dedicated to social change who have at least 10 to 15 years of experience.
The Executive Cohort provides unparalleled training for senior leaders, new tools to enhance your vision and facilitate organizational change, and the opportunity to learn among some of the nation’s most innovative and inspiring Jewish social change leaders. After all, no social justice leader works alone.
The application process, open to senior leaders in Jewish and secular social justice leadership positions, is highly competitive.
Applications are due by Monday, September 27, 2010.
Training dates:
Training 1: Sunday, January 9- Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Training 2: Sunday, June 12- Tuesday, June 14, 2011
*Selah is a collaboration between The Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Jewish Funds for Justice, in partnership with the Rockwood Leadership Program.
Job Opening: JFSJ Director of Leadership Initiatives
Jewish Funds for Justice seeks an energetic and motivated Director of Leadership Initiatives to drive all aspects of the Selah Leadership Program, from developing strategy to managing execution. The Selah Leadership Program is a collaboration between the Nathan Cummings Foundation and Jewish Funds for Justice, in partnership with the Rockwood Leadership Program. Selah is the first leadership training designed specifically for Jewish social justice leaders working in secular and Jewish organizations. Since its founding in 2004, Selah has trained more than 200 leaders from 165 organizations. This is an excellent position for someone interested and experienced in the transformative leadership, social justice and non-profit sectors. Candidates should have 5+years of leadership development experience and enjoy working collaboratively.
On a blistering, sunny Thursday morning in Jerusalem, I meet a group of folks from Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence) for a tour of Hebron. In true Israel fashion, there’s someone I know taking the tour, S, a Phd student whose politics and life experience I am in deep admiration of. We sit together on the bus, and I admit to him that I’ve never been to the territories before. (What I don’t say is that I’m afraid that this significantly taints my political clout, in case I had any.) He’s surprised, and as we drive out of Jerusalem, he pushes the curtains away from the windows quickly, so that the landscape spills out before us. Be sure you look at everything.
The folks in the group, all English speakers, seem to be from everywhere, and I have no idea how many are Jews. Immediately, I know that what’s going to bother me here, and beyond today, is not just what I see, but the panic, the insane, habitual jerking of my knee. What are these people thinking about Jews? How can I make them stop thinking it?
At the Tapuz Gross checkpoint, we are able to cross into the Palestinian side of Hebron, loud and bustling. A woman in our group says, “This isn’t as bad as Nablus.” I wonder if she’s one of those people who’s condescending and self righteous about her work. What are her intentions? What are mine? I hate these thoughts, every single one of them. This is not who I am, this is not even someone I recognize.
We meet with Hani, a Palestinian man who lives near the military base in Tel Rumeida. He tells us about settlers who have burned his cars, how they come into a neighbourhood to have a barbecue, and never leave. “The Jews,” he says, “occupy, all they do is occupy.” This guy, he’s seen things I will never even be able to imagine, every Jew he meets is either a settler or a soldier-why should he think any differently? The way I find myself looking at these settlers, with disgust, with disbelief, is how the world is looking at Israel, at all Jews.
En route to Jerusalem again, I can’t hold my head up. It’s as though my brain is now covered with thick dust, and I’m too tired to wipe it away. “This isn’t activism,” A, our guide says over the microphone to the sweaty, barely conscious bus. “This is learning.” We have seen something most people never see, but we aren’t heroes, we’ve done what we should have, and this is only the beginning.
I go back to Katamon and proceed to become humbly and thoroughly ill. This always happens when I’m traveling intensely, but today I wonder if while something is clearly trying to get out, something else is also trying to get in.
Hey y’all, this is from Daniel Raphael Silverstein, a friend who does some good spoken word. He writes: During the 3 weeks of mourning, culminating in the 9th Av (Tisha B’Av) we mourn the destruction of the 2 previous Jewish Commonwealths, and especially the Temples that were their epicentres. This poem is an attempt to relate this ancient pain to our lives today, and to explain why Tisha B’Av is still very much relevant, not only to Jews, but to all humans. We each have to go through the process of mourning what is lacking, what is still missing from our world, in order to direct ourselves towards rebuilding it as we would like to see it. 1love.
How do you connect to Tisha B’av? What are you committing yourself to fixing?
Just in time for our 
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However, I find myself none too skeptical. My skepticism is rooted in not just the usual frustration with micro-parties but knowledge that there already exists a Jewish-Arab political party focused on social justice: 
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