by guestpost [➚] · Friday, September 10th, 2010
Jewish educator and comics critic David Wolkin digressed from his usual lampooning of graphic novel misfires to muse meaningfully on the new year. The post has, decidedly, nothing to do with comics and thus we happily repost it here.
Yesterday was the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. It’s can be a weird thing to have to have two different New Years (yearses?), especially when the second one usually overlaps with the start of the school year. As someone who works in the Jewish community and in a school (this is what I do!), this is undoubtedly a stressful time for me. It can be a challenge to get into the celebration, to not have it feel like work, because for me, it is work.
So that’s one piece of this and I suppose I’ve learned to deal with it in my own way, by viewing it as a second opportunity per year for reflecting on what I’m doing right and what needs work in my life. Ultimately, this is a time of reflection for Jewish people and their loved ones. Rosh Hashanah begins the new year on the Jewish calendar, but it also is the first day of what we refer to as the Ten Days of Repentance, which ends on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This is basically a ten day period in which we’re asked to reflect upon our sins of the past year and do whatever we can to repent for them.
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by BZ [➚] · Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
It’s (almost) another year on the Hebrew calendar, and that means it’s time for another cohort of DC Jeremiah Fellows. This fantastic program is run by Jews United For Justice, DC’s local Jewish social justice organization. If you live in DC and are in the right demographic, consider applying this year; otherwise, tell other people who might be interested. Shanah tovah!
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- Access a dynamic network of activists, organizers, scholars, and religious leaders.
- Develop new skills in community organizing, advocacy, and leadership.
- Explore DC through the lens of social justice and Jewish texts, traditions, values, and history.
- Build a lasting community of friends, colleagues, and mentors.
Jews United for Justice is thrilled to announce that applications are now online for the 2010-2011 Jeremiah Fellowship! Brought to you by a partnership between JUFJ and California’s Progressive Jewish Alliance, the Jeremiah Fellowship is an innovative program to train a select group of young adults (approximately ages 25-35) to become the next generation of Jewish social justice changemakers.
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by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
The wonderful Israeli poet Ruhama Weiss captures in this poem, I think, the deep sadness and the deeper responsibility of this moment. Its from her book Shmirah. When I read it, it touched me very deeply and I thought “This is part of what I mean when I say u’netaneh tokef.” This is my translation (with the permission of the author):
Things that I hope that you don’t yet know
for my child
That there is someone in the world who wants to kill you.
That there is not much to do about it.
That it is not wholly accurate that there will always be someplace to escape to.
That I was approximately your age when I discovered that home does not really provide protection.
What helps me fall asleep.
That you might not reach my age.
That you might kill children.
That what we saw today on the television was not a joke.
That the history that I know does not succeed in calming me down.
That you have no idea how scary it can be.
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Monday, September 6th, 2010
Julie Weise, Shtibl member and smart person, has written an important piece about the anti-14th amendment agitation–looking at countries (Germany, Israel, Japan) who don’t grant citizenship on the basis of being born in their territory. Her bottom line:
We can already see the future of our nation if it renounces birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, and it isn’t pretty. Dragging economies, new forms of fraud, a disenfranchised underclass, children deported to places they have never even visited — countries that do not have birthright citizenship have experienced these problems and more, and have been forced to reconsider their practices. Germany, Israel and Japan are just three of those countries, and their experiences have much to teach us.
Read the whole piece here at the L.A. Times, then come back and opine.
by Danya [➚] · Monday, September 6th, 2010
This just in from Women of the Wall, in reference to Hoffman’s arrest in July:
This week brought with it more attempts to vilify Women of the Wall and protect the Western Wall as accessible for ultra-Orthodox prayer exclusively. The Jerusalem Police recommended this week that the Ministry of Justice press charges against Anat Hoffman for the felony of “gravely obstructing a police officer in the performance of his duties”, in regards to her July arrest while holding a Torah at the Western Wall. The sentence for such a conviction is up to 3 years in prison. Members and supporters of Women of the Wall in Israel and abroad stand behind Hoffman, and have been busy sending hundreds of letters and pictures of women holding the Torah to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Head of the Opposition Tzipi Livni, Chairman of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky, and Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbi in charge of the holy places. In these letters, women from all over the world ask Israeli leaders, “How is it that as Jewish women, we are free in Berlin, in Rome, and in Chicago, while in Jerusalem it is illegal and profane for us to read from the Torah?” Supporters are encouraged to continue to send letters and pictures from the website, womenofthewall.org.il/solidarity/take-a-stand, conveying a clear message to Israel’s leaders that Women of the Wall will not be intimidated or silenced.
In response to Women of the Wall’s twenty year battle to read Torah on the women’s side of the Western Wall, Rabbi Rabinowitz issued a new regulation, giving him sole and complete control over who is permitted to enter the Western Wall Plaza with a Torah. This new dictatorial procedure extends the blockade against entering to the holy site with a Torah to not only women, but also men who might be determined unfit to carry a Torah by the extremist Rabinowitz. Adv. Nira Azriel is preparing a statement on behalf of Women of the Wall to the authorities regarding the unreasonable strictness of the new regulations, which promise to worsen conditions for women even further.
by guestpost [➚] · Monday, September 6th, 2010
This is a guest post by Sam Novey.
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Abraham Lincoln didn’t go to services on Rosh Hashanah.
But on this Rosh Hashanah, Rosh Hashanah 2010, we are asking to be written in the book of life and entering the ten days of teshuvah at a time when our online lives are so intertwined with our real lives that the structure of the world online is inevitably a part of these holy processes. Even though history might be different if Lincoln hadn’t let John Wilkes Booth know where he was by checking into Ford’s Theatre on foursquare that fateful night in 1865, good ole Honest Abe has some useful things as we renew ourselves in a more connected and searchable world.
In December 1862, one month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln spent days toiling over a message to Congress. The concluding paragraph is a rousing call.
“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” -Abraham Lincoln
Now the theme of emancipation is one that we as Jews are familiar with. But Lincoln’s message highlights an important aspect of emancipation that is often overlooked. Emancipation is not just about justice for slaves. As Lincoln says, we must rise to the challenges of our times, and these challenges require us to think and to act in new ways. How can we think and act in new ways if we are stuck in the same social roles that we have inhabited our whole lives? Stuck in roles that we may have even inherited from our parents or even grandparents. Master and slave, employer and employee, rich and poor. The problem with persistent, generationally inherited inequality is not only the injustice for those who get the short end of the stick. It is the erosion of a society’s ability to rise to the occasion when it is piled high with difficulty. How can you think anew and act anew when your role in the world is entirely defined by your past? How can you think in new ways when the world is constantly adapting itself to fit your old ways?
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by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Sunday, September 5th, 2010
Alright, I know I’m kinda behind, as this is last week’s (month’s really) news, but it’s the season of forgiveness, okay?
Over the past month, there’s a been a lot of discussion of intermarriage in the wake (Is that a pun? Sorta) of the Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding. One article that caught my eye is the piece in the Forward last week by Conservative Rabbi Jason Miller,urging the Rabbinical Assembly to rescind the ban on Conservative rabbis participating in or attending intermarriages (of Jews to non-Jews anyhow. I don’t think other pairings are found disturbing).
In theory, violating this ban can have a rabbi expelled from the RA, although in practice, as Miller points out, attendance at interfaith weddings has not – as far as I or he or anyone I’ve queried, knows- actually resulted in said expulsion. I can’t say that I agree with Rabbi Miller, although I have mixed feelings about it: since in fact, there is no consequence for for violating the attendance part of the ban, rabbis who need to go because it is their child or a close family member, can actually attend, while preserving other rabbis’ ability to say that ultimately, intermarriage is not something that they are able to celebrate, if that is their bent, and having the movement stand behind them, which given the ostensible principles of the movement, seems reasonable to expect.
Rabbi Miller seems to view the refusal to attend interfaith weddings as tribalism, rather than as a more complex problem. I suppose in the case where the Jewish member of the couple is Jewish in name only, and doens’t view Judaism as important at all, then tribalism might be a fair description, but for a rabbi in the Conservative movement, who at least in theory views Judaism as having a divine component, and Jews (as a people) as having a particular and holy mission, that strikes me as an unfair description.
In some respects, I view this as a variant of the same discussion that happens about the driving tshuvah. Jews on the more observant end may point out that it was a mistake to allow it, as those who were going to drive would drive anyhow, while the tshuvah givies the appearance that driving is okay to everyone else, halachicly speaking (the problem with the tshuvah appears most especially to be two things: 1. the people who wrote it had only the sketchiest idea of the inner workings of an engine, and 2. there was a deliberate stretching of the way halachah works , in honesty, beyond the breaking point: claiming that the spark of the spark plug is a sort of unintended side effect of the driving is sort of like claiming that the heat on a stove is an unintended side effect of cooking the food) while in fact, it isn’t really, and even the tshuvah sort of admits it. Instead the better solution might have been to simply not address the issue, nor castigate those who chose to drive, and welcome them as one would anyone else, simply not taking note of the matter. However, once the tshuvah is published, it’s very difficult – I would say impossible- to reverse it to that situation, since any change away from a complete acceptance then appears to be a rejection of the people who drive.
Am I advocating hypocrisy? I suppose so. I think that in this case Miss Manners would approve (Miss Martin, if you should happen to read Jewschool please feel free to weigh in). Perhaps I can argue that mipnei darkei shalom, hypocrisy might be our best alternative?
Interested in other peoples’ thoughts on this.
by Dibur Acher [➚] · Friday, September 3rd, 2010
Recently there has been a little buzz about the not-really-so-new ideas at Kohenet, the Hebrew Priestess Institute (founded in 2006), which was founded Holly Shere, a folklorist, and Jill Hammer, a JTS ordinee and her co-director. Tablet ran a short article about it, reasonably even-handedly attempting to explain what they are and do.
The responses in the article, from Rabbi Daniel Nevins, dean of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s rabbinical school,“I don’t see how Kohenet, to judge from its website, is compatible with Jewish belief and practice,” and from Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a dean of the seminary at Yeshiva University, are, respectively, accurate and a bit over the top. Nevertheless, they both really miss the point anyway.
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by Justin [➚] · Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
The URL is the same, but the look and feel are different. Starting today, jcarrot.org is now a blog at the Forward. Started by Hazon in 2006, the Jew and the Carrot has provided insight, recipes and news covering the spectrum of Jewish related food issues. Hopefully this new move will give the blog more readers, more contributers and more legitimacy.
It’s great to see two Jewish institutions, one historic and one relatively new, working together. This type of collaborative effort embodies exactly the kind of effort Hazon is embarking on by creating their new office space in lower Manhattan (which shares a floor with The Forward), Makom Hadash, which seeks to be “a multi-tenant nonprofit center for second-stage Jewish nonprofits, which will enable member organizations to focus more on their missions, develop more sophisticated organizational infrastructure, and collaborate more effectively together.”
So head on over to the new jcarrot.org and have a look around!
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