An article in The Jewish Week about a new Haggadah for men only has really got me confused. Here is an admittedly simplistic timeline of the last 35 years.
Judaism is seen as being too male centered, with commentaries on the Torah written by males for males and women excluded from various rituals.
Reform Judaism takes note and goes completely egalitarian – ordaining its first female Rabbi in 1972.
Over the next 30 years male participation in Reform Judaism drops drastically – going from 400 Brotherhoods with 40,000 members to 250 Brotherhoods with 20,000 members and dropping to only 20 -25 percent of Hebrew Union College Rabbinical student body.
Since “much of the new spirituality in Judaism feels effeminate to men”, in 2008, Reform Judaism attempts to woo men back by putting out a collection of commentaries on the Torah by male Rabbis about male topics.
In a further attempt to deal with the imbalance Reform Judaism then puts out a Haggadah exclusively for males and 25 Brotherhoods around the country buy these Haggadahs and conduct a MALE ONLY SEDER (even female Cantor’s excluded)!
So apparently men have different needs then women after all! They need their own space, agendas and perspective in order to connect to spirituality. Can you see why this would be confusing?
[Blessings for a wonderful Yom Tov to all - male and female! May we all be worthy of connecting to the spiritual emanations of global, national and personal redemption available to us through the mitzvot of Pesach.]
Babe Ruth was a quintessential American. Somewhat larger than life, the Babe represented the kind of freedom that drives those who believe in despotic regimes mad. During World War II, when Japanese soldiers charged American troops, they would sometimes scream, “To hell with Babe Ruth.” Not “to hell with FDR” or “to hell with Douglas MacArthur,” but “to hell with Babe Ruth.”
And now he needs our help.
OK, OK, so why write about that on Jewschool?
Because we owe him one.
Dr. Rafael Medoff wrote in the Jewish Ledger a few weeks ago that during the last week of December 1942 Babe Ruth helped to keep public attention focused on Hitler’s atrocities. Although the U.S. and Britain had finally publicly acknowledged and condemned the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, there was no talk of any steps being taken to rescue the Jews and the issue was fading from the public eye.
So, Babe Ruth and other prominent Americans of German descent, stepped up to the plate and signed the “Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry†which appeared as a full-page ad in the New York Times and nine other major daily newspapers.
It read in part:
“[W]e Americans of German descent raise our voices in denunciation of the Hitler policy of cold-blooded extermination of the Jews of Europe and against the barbarities committed by the Nazis against all other innocent peoples under their sway. These horrors … are, in particular, a challenge to those who, like ourselves are descendants of the Germany that once stood in the foremost ranks of civilization.â€
The ad went on to “utterly repudiate every thought and deed of Hitler and his Nazis,†and urged the people of Germany “to overthrow a regime which is in in the infamy of German history.â€
Dr. Medoff’s article drew the attention of the Babe’s granddaughter, Linda Ruth Tosetti, who wrote a comment on the article expressing delight in reading about how her grandfather took a public stand against Hitler. She also asked for help in getting Babe’s number retired from all of baseball by signing the petition that can be found here.
So sign the petition folks – it’s the least we can do!
Well, maybe not for ruining it but certainly for injecting a sour note.
In a response to my post earlier today about Yidcore’s new “shteller” (position) you wrote; “That’s all fine. What, however, do you think about Obadiah Shoher’s criticism pf Rosh Hashanah as a holiday that has nothing to do with New Year?
Nikol, Nikol, Nikol. I’m not really sure what your comment has to do with my post other than the fact that the topic is Rosh haShanah. But think. Do we really need to spend our time paying attention to what far right doomsday prophets are saying about Rosh haShanah? I think not but I sensed that you were upset and followed your link despite myself and that’s where the sour note entered my day.
Obadiah Shoher’s post about Rosh haShanah is so offensively ignorant that if he didn’t seem to be a radical supporter of Israel I would think he was an Anti-Semite. His post even includes the prerequisite Anti-Semitic cartoon! But you’d be proud of me Nikol. I made up my mind not to let this get to me and I’ve decided instead to have some fun with his post!
I propose a little game. I put together a list of 9 quotes from his post that are blatant and completely ignorant errors. The rules are as follows: Read his post. As you’re reading come up with a mental list of errors. Then compare your list to mine and if we agree then you win!
For a minute there I thought the world had come to an end.
According to The Forward, on Rosh haShanah at The North Eastern Jewish Centre, an Orthodox synagogue in Australia, the largely conservative, middle-class congregants were “forced to face a Jewish choirmaster named Bram Presser”, who just happens to be the lead singer of Australian punk band Yidcore!
Nothing wrong with that – but I was having a hard time imagining an Orthodox synagogue here in New York ever appointing someone like Joey Ramone as choirmaster.
Not that there wouldn’t be an Orthodox synagogue open-minded enough to do so, I’m sure there’d be many – just I’d find it hard to believe that Joey Ramone would show up in time for services that routinely start as early as 6:30AM – at least in my neighborhood! What kind of a punkster could Bram Presser be with that kind of early morning schedule!?
So I googled North Eastern Jewish Centre and then I understood. At North Eastern Jewish Centre Shacharit during Festivals begins at 9:15AM!
Not bad Bram, and I’m sure you did a bang-up job, but you and I both know that even at 9:15AM Joey would’ve overslept.
———
[Note to God: In deference to the 10 days of Teshuva I have made no mention whatsoever of the fact that North Eastern Jewish Centre is Chabad in this post; no judgments or innuendos, not even an oblique reference to 'zman krias shma' - I hope that counts for something!]
Reading “My Holocaust” (Tova Reich’s satirical send-up of the Holocaust industry) during my short vacation this summer in northern California was at the bottom of my list. But when I saw Cynthia Ozick taking Gary Rosenblatt to task over his closed minded reaction to the book I upped the priority level. Somehow, in between two mile hikes up Mt. Shasta, driving through bizarre old-growth Redwood forests, and foraging for Kosher food in local supermarkets, I managed to get through most of the book and the long plane ride home allowed me to finish.
I like satire and was not offended by the usage of satire to deal with such a sensitive topic. I actually appreciated the issue raised: the victim-commemoration industry. But I did not like this book. Satire does not have to be laugh out loud funny. “Satire – the use of humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices…” (definition handily provided by my iMac’s Dashboard Dictionary) – and this book definitely fits that description. However, the characters in this book are so overblown and stereotypical that once you get the point many of the scenes and much of the dialogue are, as David Margolick’s review in the NY Times says, “long and excruciatingly unfunny”.
It’s true that Tova Reich’s writing is crisp and professional but with all due respect to Ozick’s claim that this book is “a ferocious work of serious satiric genius” I found that reading the reactions to this book (the Jerome Chanes review has apparently been removed from the Jewish Week archive) was actually more entertaining than the book itself. All the important satiric points could have been made in a book half this size. Maybe that’s why The Forward accused the author of writing the book to settle old personal scores. I did appreciate some of the inside barbs aimed at Hatzalah and Carlebachian “holybrother-speak” but overall my interest decreased exponentially during the final 2/3′s of the book.
What is prompting me to post this today is how the book seems to have anticipated the current international crisis touched off by ADL’s statement recognizing the Ottoman massacre of Armenians during World War I as “tantamount to genocide.†This threatens to turn ugly because of a pending resolution in Congress that would officially declare the massacre of up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as “genocide”.
Of course I agree with Mobius’ post of May 2nd 2007 that the organized Jewish community’s should recognize the Armenian genocide.
What is really interesting to me is the response of certain Orthodox Rabbi’s of the past generation to the idea that the Holocaust be raised above all other horrors. They were against it for a variety of reasons and some even refused to use the word Holocaust referring to the horrors of that time as “Churban Europe”. They felt that by removing the events from the context of Jewish History we would in fact be taking the Jewish component out of those events. Looks like they were right!
follow us on Twitter
follow us on Facebook
subscribe to our email