by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Thursday, March 31st, 2011
I know that most of us have forgotten all the fuss about the new(ish) scanners in airports because we all have the attention spans of gnats, but they haven’t gone away. The problem that travelers (including the parents of young children) still have to make a choice between being seen naked by persons with whom they have no intimacy, or being groped intimately by the same people -still remains.
And it is curious how quickly we have become inured to this violation of dignity, tzniut (modesty) and personal space (note that I’m not even binging up the question of health and safety, even though it is still unclear how safe these machines are particularly for pregnant women and children). The argument that has been offered is that it is needed for our safety, but the truth is that it is needed mostly for two things: 1. to increase profits for the company that produces the scanners (Rapiscan – a rather infelicitous name, which by the way, was promoted by Michael Chertoff while Secretary of Homeland Security, and was a a company that was one of his clients, a coincidence? Really?), and 2. to continue the process of slowly lulling us into giving up more and more of our rights as citizens in the name of “security.”
More »
by Ari Hart [➚] · Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
Hey Chevre, really great event coming up that you might want to check out if you’re in the New York Area.
The event will feature:
Opportunities to connect with inspiring food justice campaigns;
Space for conversation connecting the Seder themes to food justice;
Re-imagined rituals to highlight food justice issues;
Delicious, Tav HaYosher certified food;
Readings from Uri L’Tzedek’s newly released Food and Justice Haggadah Supplement;
Cost: $18. This is a 21+ event.
Time: Sunday, April 10 · 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Location: 274 Garfield Place, Brooklyn
To RSVP: Visit www.pursueaction.org/food-justice-seder/.
This event is brought to you by Pursue, Uri L’Tzedek, and Hazon and is co-sponsored by Congregation Beth Elohim / Brooklyn Jews.
by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
Jewish Fail points out this charming wardrobe offering from the Jewish Enrichment Center, the Ohr Somayach-affiliated group that is–for reasons that utterly elude me–the only Birthright Next affiliate in the New York area.
The theory behind this hoodie is that you shouldn’t boycott Israel because Victoria’s Secret panties are made in Israel. Now, I agree that you shouldn’t boycott Israel, but, as Jewish Fail points out, this one doesn’t quite add up: The fabric is made in Israel, then sent to Jordan where it is turned into panties. In Jordan, they sew the Made in Israel label in and send them back to Israel for export.
Jewish Fail puts it like this:
That makes this a quintuple FAIL: A failure in taste, factuality, Israel advocacy and spelling (“Isreal?”), as well as a failure in tzenuah (modesty) by the Ohr Somayach-affiliated JEC.
Their whole post is here.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
And now we know. The real reason that we are not permitted to change any policy in a way that might discourage violence. I feel at ease, now that I know. It’s because its all part of our mission as the suffering servant of Isaiah.
Gotcher money quote right here:
There is an untold, sad reason for Israel’s ability to offer such help. For the Jewish State, terrorism has always been an involuntary master of speed, precision and caring. There is an amazing quantity of research, inventions and new techniques for helping the disabled and the paralyzed return to normal life after terrorist destruction.
Now we know. It’s for the good of the world. The right wants Israel to continue to be attacked by terrorists so that we can lovingly give of ourselves our scientific inventions that save everyone else. What a bunch of loving people! Generously sacrificing us for the benefit of the world!
*sarcasm off*
by David A.M. Wilensky [➚] · Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
Anat Hoffman being arrested last July for carrying a Torah scroll at the Western Wall. Credit: Chana Karmann-Lente
In an interview with Anat Hoffman at the New Voices Magazine Northwestern University Blog [full disclosure: I'm the Web Editor at New Voices], Hoffman speaks directly to the intense frustration with Israel I’m having this week as the country consistently shows off just how distinctly they misunderstand what the meaning of “democracy” is. Meanwhile, the term “Jewish democracy” keeps getting thrown around.
Hoffman, the director the Israel Religious Action Center–the Israeli Reform movement’s legal action arm–says in the interview:
“There’s no word in Hebrew for pluralism,” Hoffman says. “The word for ‘integrity’ is only a couple years old and ‘accountability’ has only been around for nine months. These are signs that the basic tenets of democracy and civil rights haven’t made Aliyah to Israel yet.”
I’ve met Hoffman. She’s a funny person about dark topics in that way that Israelis somehow manage to be.
Take a look at the full interview over here.
by Danya [➚] · Monday, March 28th, 2011
Just thought I’d bring to your attention an amazing conference that’s happening in NYC in a couple of weeks (April 10th, to be precise). It’s called Transforming Beitech/a, and it’s for clergy, Jewish professionals, and folks studying to be one of those things, run by, and happening at, CBST. It’ll cover everything from lifecycle and ritual stuff to pastoral care issues, working with elders and youth, institutional audits, and a whole bunch of other things. It’s going to be fabulous, (and I’m not just saying that because I’m on the advisory board, either.)
Go here to learn more and to register.
by guestpost [➚] · Monday, March 28th, 2011
As we’ve posted before, R. Art Green and R. Danny Landes have been having quite an intense back-and-forth debate about theology and other things over the last few months.
To recap: Last year, R. Art Green published a book, and R. Daniel Landes wrote a critical review of it in the Jewish Review of books. Green then responded to the review, and Landes responded to the response (on the same link). Green’s next response appeared here in Jewschool, and Landes responded on his own blog.
This is rumored to be the last installment, by Green:
Dear Danny,
I think we are still far from understanding each other. You just don’t get me. Identifying me with Mordecai Kaplan and Richard Rubenstein is way off the mark in terms of how I see myself or self-identify, whom I read, or my relationship with either God or tradition. Kaplan was never an influence on me; I came to JTS the year after he retired and never had the privilege of studying with him. I read Heschel’s God in Search of Man for the first time when I was fifteen, and fell in love. I tried Kaplan a bit later, but found him dry and boring, too prosaic, too American and pragmatist, not the soaring spirit I needed. I did indeed try to align my neo-Heschelian mysticism with aspects of Kaplan’s legacy during my RRC years. That attempt did not succeed very well; just ask the Kaplanians. Yes, of course I share some concerns with Kaplan and greatly respect his honesty in raising them, but our framework for responding to them is quite different. We both want to respond out of the most contemporary and profound understanding of religion. But for him that is the rationalism of Dewey and Durkheim. For me it is the phenomenology and post-critical religiosity of Otto, Eliade, and Peter Berger.
Along with most of the intellectually-oriented JTS students at the time, I was excited when Rubenstein published After Auschwitz in 1966. He had dared to say what many of us were thinking. But I soon realized that his net result was the demise of traditional Judaism, reducing it to nothing more than a psychological tool. My move toward a neo-Hasidic reading of tradition was precisely a response to Rubenstein, not an alliance with him. I needed a Judaism that expressed a spiritual truth, not just religion serving as a crutch with which to get through this absurd life.
It took me many years to say out loud that I am a mystic. In Jewish circles it sounds a bit like proclaiming oneself a tsaddik, which is the farthest thing from my mind. But it is true that as a thinker and as a religious personality, it is only the mystical tradition that has saved Judaism for me. Scholem quotes R. Pinhas of Korzec as thanking God that He created him after the Zohar was revealed, “because the Zohar kept me a Jew.” That is true for me too, regarding both the Zohar and the teachings of the Hasidic masters themselves.
I would love to be able to explain this to you, but find it subtle and difficult. More »
by BZ [➚] · Sunday, March 27th, 2011
Jacobs
Jacobs
As you may have heard by now, the Union for Reform Judaism has chosen Rabbi Richard (Rick) Jacobs of Westchester, New York, as its next president, to succeed Rabbi Eric Yoffie, who is retiring after 16 years. Here at Jewschool, we wish Rabbi Jacobs the best in his leadership of the Reform movement, but we are left with one burning question: We are wondering whether he is related to Gregory E. Jacobs, aka Shock G, the former member of Digital Underground best known for his alternate persona Edward Ellington Humphrey III, aka Humpty Hump.
They share more than a last name: As a number of news reports have noted, Rabbi Jacobs is doing a Ph.D. in ritual dance, and Mr. Jacobs has “even got [his] own dance“. Rabbi Jacobs leads one of the largest Jewish congregations in America; both how Mr. Jacobs is living and his nose are large.
Whether or not they are related, we hope Rabbi Jacobs’s tenure at the URJ will be committed to the Reform Jewish values of informed autonomy (“No two people will do it the same”), inclusivity (“Anyone can play this game”), intellectual honesty (“Oh yes ladies, I’m really being sincere”), and social justice (“Peace and humptiness forever”).
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Sunday, March 27th, 2011
Let’s legislate non-orthodoxy out of existence. OTOH I’d like to see what the law actually says. Maybe we could add a friendly amendment that since there are no streams of Judaism, therefore the Orthodox have no right to maintain their hegemony, because the Reform and Masorti are not (now, according to this new bill) streams, but exactly as legit as orthodoxy, since it would now all be “just Judaism”? FTW, right? Or we could counter-propose a bill that there is no such thing as Orthodoxy, and the true heir of Jewish practice is [name your favorite non-Orthodox movement].
Or maybe we could get the government out of the religion business, stop allowing the nuttiest of the nuts to determine who is a Jew, while simultaneously preventing people with good intent from converting (contrary to Jewish law, despite the fact that they keep claiming they’re the true inheritors, just like lots of other odd things they do, such as (my fave) prevent Jewish weddings unless their roster of rabbis is involved, despite the fact that one needs no rabbis at all halachicly speaking).
Hey, maybe we should just do that anyway.
Gene Simmons of KISS on Israel. It’s kinda weird, but I love it when Simmons/Witz tells Israelis to toughen up because Americans criticize everyone. So much for the tough-on-the-outside sabra? Maybe the real reason we don’t have peace in the middle east yet is because despite all the machismo of the Israeli image, Israelis aren’t really all that tough? Or maybe even because they are trying to live up to the image that American Jews on the right desperately want them to be? (Hey does that mean we can blame the occupation on all those kids who beat up Jewish kids in elementary school?)
A very neutral explanation of checkpoints
A piece on autism and inclusion by Jacob Artson (Rabbi Brad Artson’s son)
Rabbi Jill Jacobs touting my line on spirituality, social justice, and prayer
HuffPo on the cost of day schools
by guestpost [➚] · Friday, March 25th, 2011
Shiri Raphaely is an American-Israeli currently living in Israel and working in the human rights field with the Mossawa Center and Friends of the Earth, Middle East. She co-writes on Midthoughtblog.com where a version of this article originally appeared.
I think I may have lied to someone.
After speaking at a a conference in Spain, I got heckled for the first time in my life by a Palestinian refugee from Nablus who left at the age of 20 over 30 years ago. “Why do Jews and the US and Israel remember the Holocaust and not the Nakba?!” he said. “If you’re American and Israeli, tell me why America and Israel do the horrible things they do?!” I avoided his questions — I’m not the government, I told him, there’s a difference between the government and the people.
I tried to understand why he said this to me-I was the first Israeli he ever had the opportunity to ask these questions that have touched his life in a way he has not been able to move past even after living in Spain for the last 30 years.
But the next day, when he said that he and I could never find common ground and there was no point in working for peace because Israel, and Israelis wouldn’t change, I needed so badly for that not to be true that I may have lied: More »
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Thursday, March 24th, 2011
Diaspora philanthropy to Israel is part of my profession. Here are some little known facts about this element of the Israel-Diaspora relationship:
- Israel’s state budget is $62 billion. The country’s per capita GDP in 2010 was $29,500.
- The federation system contributes around $300 million to government services in Israel. (That’s roughly .005% of its state budget.)
- Yet philanthropic experts anecdotally estimate that 90% of Israel’s nonprofit sector is funded from the Diaspora, including its social change and human rights sector.
- Israeli politicians receive roughly half of their campaign war chests from American donors, and a disproportionate amount to right-wing parties.
- Approximately $250 million in Diaspora funds has gone to the settlement enterprise alone.
It seems clear that Israel doesn’t need our money for day-to-day services. And that the overwhelming majority of our contributions to it go towards influencing its politics — right or left.
Open thread: Does Israel really need our money? Discuss.
by chaneld1621 [➚] · Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
My lovely friends are getting married in Jerusalem next week, and as their wedding gets closer, I’ve been thinking about them more and more-how they’ve been together for longer than most people I know, the unfathomable amount of patience required to hold a relationship in place during army service, college, and many, many miles. I hate that now they have to think about how today’s bombing is going to effect their wedding.
A few weeks ago, I read a piece in the New Yorker called “The Dissenters,” about the future of Ha’aretz (the newspaper). The author, David Remnick, interviewed the paper’s columnists, including Zeev Sternhell, one of the founders of Peace Now. The quote below is from him, and it’s been in my head since reading the peace. I think now is as a good time as any to post it.
“I still am a Zionist—a super Zionist…That has never changed for me, you know. If I didn’t want to keep Israel as a state of the Jews—a state in which the Jews are a majority and enjoy sovereignty—I would have lived elsewhere. I came here when I was sixteen because I wanted to participate in this story. This was a Jewish renaissance. And I wanted to be part of that. That was the meaning of Zionism for me. If the result is to be the end of the Jewish state, by the creation of an apartheid state or even of a binational state, both of these solutions are unacceptable. This would be the end of it.”
by Ari Hart [➚] · Monday, March 21st, 2011
“Will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked… ?” Genesis, 18:23
These words echoed in my spirit as I watched the images of the tsunami strike in Japan, and as the situation continues to unfold it evokes profound spiritual anxiety in me. How do we make sense of such enormous tragedy within the context of our faith? For we who believe in an active God who cares about what happens in this world, how do we make sense of wide-scale catastrophe? How do we respond when horrible things happen to innocent people?
We hold God accountable. Continued here…
by E. [➚] · Friday, March 18th, 2011
Have a Beautiful Purim with a Righteous Heart from all of your Comrades at Jewschool.
Children in Purim Costume (pictured above), at the S.M. Gurewicz high school in Vilna, 1933. Note the two Native Americans complete with headdress and bow and arrow, two Gypsy girls complete with timbrels and beads and various other ethnographic costumes. Who are you dressing up as?
by guestpost [➚] · Thursday, March 17th, 2011
Yosef Goldman is a rabbinical student and cantorial student at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He serves as a Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinic Intern at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) in Manhattan. You can follow Yosef on twitter: twitter.com/yosgold.
“Esther reminds us that we too have choices to make, even if they are not as dramatic as her own. We too have a destiny we must not flee out of fear.” –Rabbi Jill Hammer
Today is a noteworthy day on the calendar, not just because it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Today is the Fast of Esther, a minor fast observed by most traditional Jews that precedes Purim. It commemorates the three days on which Esther and her handmaids fasted in the story of the Book of Esther before Esther approached King Ahashuerus without being invited.
Like Purim itself, the fast of Esther highlights the protagonist of Purim the story for whom the megillah is named. No other holiday in the Jewish calendar spotlights women to the extent that Purim does. Yet the role that Esther plays is fraught with difficulty.
At first blush the story of Purim can seem to border on misogyny. Esther might be the heroine, but in the megillah, she often seems meek and suggestible. She achieves her goals through an act of sexual diplomacy, getting the attention of a king hungry for beauty and sex by coming close to him and “touching the head of his golden scepter” (Esther 5:2).
Other women don’t fare much better. In the first two chapters, Vashti is killed for refusing to appear at the king’s banquet in (nothing but) her crown for Ahasuerus and the revelers. The king signs a royal edict demanding women’s subordination and then rounds up all virgins in the kingdoms to “audition” for the throne. (The other named woman—Haman’s wife, Zeresh—is not exactly a pleasant character either.)
Over the past 15 years Jewish feminists have reclaimed the book of Esther as a celebration of women. Their readings are beyond the scope of this post, but anyone interested in encouraged to check out articles by Wendy Amsellem in the JOFA Journal and Bonna Devora Haberman in Tikkun. Lilith has a slew of resources online written by senior editor Rabbi Susan Shcnur at Lilith. (For a more in depth, academic approach, check out this paper from Sylvia Barack Fishman.) More »
by E. [➚] · Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
In November of 1940, Roman Kramsztyk (pictured above) found himself behind the ghetto walls. The Germans had invaded and Kramsztyk, a Polish-speaking Jew who spoke no Yiddish and read no Hebrew, suddenly found himself surrounded by the battered Jews of which he knew practically nothing. The son of two of Poland’s most wealthy Jewish families, Kramsztyk’s forced move into the ghetto symbolized, in dark tones, the estrangement of Jews living, by chance of their birth only, on the gilded periphery of Jewish and Polish life.
Up until that point, Kramsztyk, who had been baptized at birth, had become known as one of Poland’s most compelling painters and he considered himself a Pole. He was committed to melding the demands of modernist aesthetics with traditional masters. A member of the Polish Rytmists (Rhythmists), Kramsztyk’s paintings drew on Cezanne, orientalism and the Baroque. Jewish themes emerged in his work only around the time of his internment in the ghetto, when he became known for compiling artwork that would testify for victims there.
Here is an early portrait of Kramsztyk himself, sitting beside his painting in his Warsaw studio. The photograph’s symmetries, and the asymmetries for that matter, are striking.
Roman Kramsztyk was shot and killed in the Warsaw ghetto on August 6th, 1942 at the age of 57.
by Charles Lenchner [➚] · Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
I’m a big fan of Jewschool, though until today my name hasn’t graced it’s fine pages. Back in 2005, when I was working for B’nai Jeshurun, reading it made me feel connected to a rising cohort of committed activists in the Jewish world. Secret agent activists, working to change what they could with an inside/outside strategy. Sure, y’all were a bit clannish, and I still didn’t get all the UWS or Park Slope references, but I remember feeling part of something important.
That’s one of the ways that online communities function when they work - they create strong bonds and lasting impact even among participants who aren’t even contributing or making themselves known. Jewschool might have a smaller readership at this moment than at its peak, but the foundations laid by Mobius/Orthodox Anarchist/Daniel Sieradski have led to great things.
Enter RepairLabs. Created by Repair the World, it represents a particular kind of online community in formation; a community of practice. Where Repair’s overall mission is to support and expand the role of service in Jewish life, RepairLabs is to support the staff at Jewish nonprofits that actually operate service programs. As editor of the site, my job is to contribute to the formation of what might be a new identity: the Jewish Service or Jewish Service Learning professional.
To accomplish this, a little bit of identity surgery is required. In my years interacting with the Jewish world, I’ve met many staff members who only identified with a particular organization, not with employment in the Jewish ‘sector.’ Contrast that with many Federation executives who move around with some frequency, and know full well that they are ‘Federation executives.’
A similar instance might be with Jews doing environmental work (Adama, Hazon, COEJL, Teva, etc.) My impression is that they see themselves as working in the Jewish environmental world, a somewhat developed niche. Many of those staff people engage in Jewish Service Learning, or Immersive Jewish Service Learning. Do they see themselves as ‘JSL professionals’ who might someday be working for another JSL program?
I hope that someday RepairLabs can function as a community hub for a sector of the Jewish professional world. We’re trying to entice folks with resources, articles, and info about upcoming events in the sector. Consider this an initial effort to crowdsource some of our thinking. But the most important offering has yet to come: the wisdom and enthusiasm of a real community.
Are you a JSL or IJSL professional? Is that designation even helpful? What resources can a capacity building effort like RepairLabs provide? Do you have any experiences with cultivating a community of practice that might be useful here?
Thank you!
(Full disclosure: Dan S. currently works for Repair the World, and he introduced me to that fine organization, leading to my current gig at RepairLabs. RepairLabs wouldn’t exist without all the amazing content from Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Rabbi Brent Spodek, Amy Schrager, Perry Teicher, and Beth Steinhorn.)
by renaissanceboy [➚] · Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
Check out this gem in Marty Peretz’s most recent TNR editorial:
…it is not Islam per sebut the very restraints on print and the idolization of language, among other factors, that are responsible for the benighted state of intellectual achievement in that orbit.
Peretz has mastered the art of turning a seemingly highly culturally-aware observation into a complete non-fact uninformed by, well, anything (and certainly lacking any understanding of basic cultural relativism). Perhaps he’s forgotten that the Islamic world gave us, you know, the foundations of algebra and chemistry. Those are kind of important.
The rest of the article is similar. Peretz says lots of things I agree with, lots I don’t, and still manages to come off sounding like a pretentious Western intellectual supremacist.
Updated: light grammatical editing.
follow us on Twitter
follow us on Facebook
subscribe to our email