In this month’s Commentary magazine, Jack Wertheimer once again takes on all the terrors of (assume a creaky old gramps voice here) those young people today. Except that it isn’t actually those young people today who are best characterized by his complaints.
Here are his complaints in order (This is just the outline, for the full effect, you’ll need to go see the actual essay):
I. I am the Lord your God, Who took you out of Egypt to ‘repair the world.’
II. You shall not be judgmental.
III. You shall be pluralistic.
IV. You shall personalize your Judaism.
V. Meaning, meaning shall you pursue.
VI. You shall create caring communities.
VII. You shall encourage the airing of all views.
VIII. You shall not be tribal.
IX. You shall celebrate your Jewishness.
X. You shall hold the Jewish conversation in public.
Just to get them out of the way, I’m just going to skim over my major wuts in is piece:
I’m kind of mystified by number 5. Is he saying that Jewish survival, should it have, for example, no Torah at the center, and no community, is worthwhile for its own sake? Why? Number ten, OTOH is classic Wertheimerian krechtzing. He just doesn’t actually get that there is no non-public square anymore. I know the guy is basically a grump (and sexist, though that doesn’t come out so much here) who spends his editorial time complaining about “the kids these days,” but does he really want to advertise the fact that he has no idea what year it is and is unaware of the use of new technologies and how people – not just Jews- actually live?
Still, even a stopped analog clock is right twice a day: More »
No offense everyone, but nothing else is going on my seder plate.
Orange, okay – that actually has a venerable history (I was told by a Moroccan rabbi,that Moroccans have put oranges on their seder plates for generations), but no apples, no tomatoes, no marzipan, olives, paper airplanes, tobacco, safety pins, boots to the head, old shoes, picnic tables, automobile engines, stuffed rabbits, keys, construction equipment, window glass, or used kleenex. Nothing. Else.
I’m happy to have people bring questions to the table, but the seder plate is the seder plate, and this addition of objects has gotten out of hand.
1. Charoset,
2. Chazeret
3. Beitza
4. Maror
5. Zaroa (Actually Selek, because our house is dairy)
6. Karpas
7. Orange
makes a perfect kabbalistic tree of the seven lower sefirot (which is actually why we have 6 plus the matzah, which is seven for the seven lower sefirot – bet you didn’t know that, did you?) adding anything else makes the sefirotic tree impossible, so nope, nothing else. I can talk about freedom without adding any other objects to my table
I hope the kid (I guess he’s barely a kid, at 17, although the story reads as though he’s younger) doesn’t keep hiding his Jewishness. Go, young, Jewish, black, Irish-dancer, use the force! Or whatever.
meet Drew Lovejoy, a 17-year-old from rural Ohio. His background could not be more American. His father is black and Baptist from Georgia and his mother is white and Jewish from Iowa. But his fame is international after winning the all-Ireland dancing championship in Dublin for a third straight year.
Apparently Sandra Fluke’s dating a Jewish guy (Bill Mutterperl) is somehow relevant… to something?
“anyone familiar with Boston and New York political history knows about the wealthy Mutterperl family’s long tradition of supporting the typical Jewish variant of socialism.
I wonder if Adam has ever been to a kibbutz.”
As Gawker notes, “These are literally the same Tea Partiers who accused Occupy Wall Street of antisemitism.” -it’s in fact, the same guy: Brooks Bayne
As someone involved with Occupy Judaism and several other variants of Occupy in my native city, how much damn time did I have to spend talking to newspapers about how stupid the accusations of antisemitism were? And yet, people keep defending tea-partiers as misunderstood?
Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider will team up with Tony winners Patti LuPone and Bebe Neuwirth, in addition to Broadway veterans Cyndi Lauper, Clay Aiken and more on his new album Dee Does Broadway. The heavy metal singer’s forthcoming album will feature a selection of classic Broadway hits. Dee Does Broadway is set for release on May 8 on the record label Razor & Tie. Snider himself appeared in Broadway’s Rock of Ages, which features music from his band, in the fall of 2010.
I could probably just about build a raft and sail around the world with all the books advocating for Jewish Social Justice that have come out in the last couple of years. Several of them are very good. I particularly like Rabbi Jill Jacobs’ first book, which is both thorough and excellent.
But I want to recommend a book that’s a little bit different.
Rabbi Shmuly Yankelowitz, the founder of the Orthodox social justice movement Uri L’Tzedek, has just come out with a book very simply titled Jewish Ethics and Social Justice (Derusha Publishing). Unlike most of the the other books in this burgeoning genre, Rabbi Y’s book is a collection of essays previously published in newspapers journals and blogs. This is both a strength and a weakness, which I will touch on later. More »
Feministe has a round-up on the recent squabbling about whether or not religious organizations that don’t approve of birth control should have to have health plans cover it.
Aside from the misogyny and offensive attitudes on display in general, let us analyze the statement made by a few people that requiring such organizations to require it would be like serving bacon at a Jewish barbeque. Well, let’s see: suppose someone attending the barbeque had a life-threatening illness that required them to eat pork. And supposing that person had to attend the barbeque and to eat while there. Well, now, I suppose they’d just fire up a separate grill upwind, since under those circumstances, Jewish law requires them to eat it. And if they weren’t Jewish? All the more so.
Now, shut up.
A little tempest in a teapot has apparently hit the ranks of the Conservative movement about the cover of the latest issue of Kolot (The Conservative Movement’s now-integrated magazine, including more or less all the different arms of the movement that used to have separate magazines).
The Jewish week showcased an internal spat between Kolot and some selected women rabbis who objected to the most recent cover which features a picture of two female arms holding hands whilst wearing tefillin. More »
The Jewish Organizing Fellowship is recruiting emerging social justice leaders for our year-long, paid community organizing training program in Boston. The Fellowship is a professional development opportunity for Jewish young adults (ages 21-30) who are currently working as organizers or who are looking for jobs in the field. If not already employed, Fellows are placed in full-time paid jobs that address a wide range of issues including: the environment, civil rights, health care, and interfaith cooperation. We seek Fellows who are eager to learn the theory and practice of community organizing and explore the connections between Judaism and social justice.
Early Selection Deadline: January 30, 2012
Regular Selection Deadline: May 7, 2012
Please join us for an informational conference call on Wednesday January 11th from 5:00pm-6:00pm EST, featuring the Fellowship Director and current and former Fellows, who will share information about the Fellowship and answer any questions. Register now to receive the dial-in information.
Turns out rabbis aren’t quite obsolete after all. Rabbis for Human Rights -North America sent out a press release this morning that they are among this year’s Slingshot Guide to the most innovative Jewish organizations.
Not so buried in the press release: Rabbis lead eleven of the sixty organizations named by this year’s Slingshot Guide. Four of these organizations are new additions to the list this year. An additional two organizations were led by rabbis at the time of the application.
Many rabbis went to rabbinical school not necessarily because they were interested in leading congregations, but because they wanted to be leaders for change in the Jewish community, as well as in American and the world. It may well be that Jewish institutional life is not as synagogue focused as it was, but that shouldn’t make young Jews who want to drive moral leadership despair – there’s plenty of work to be done, and we see that the next generation of Jewish rabbinical leaders has turned in much the same direction as young Jewish leaders of all stripes – towards grassroots, entrepreneurial organizing. Maybe we’re all “Occupying Judaism” now. More »
I have mixed feelings about posting something that uses the word “incentivize,” and even more skeptical of one that talks about “millenials,” but overall, it doesn’t seem like a bad thing, sort of like a political version of Jewish Values Online so what the heck:
On Monday (October 3rd), PolicyMic.com will be hosting a debate on the topic of “Do young American Jews care about Israel-Palestine?” We want you to participate in the discussion!
We’ll post the debate question on Monday morning (6:00am). All you have to do is sign up for an account and comment with your thoughts throughout the day. The most
Mic’d (voted on) contributor will win a special prize.
PolicyMic is a unique platform to host the highest-quality discussion online. Targeted to engage millennials in current events, the site uses game-like technology to incentivize users to participate in discussions more actively and comment more thoughtfully than on other sites. Think of it as Twitter meets the Economist.
Over on Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory declares that sexlessness (or at least articles about it) are officially a trend. Which strikes me as funny, because the article just below that one in the queue is all about the rise of non-monogamy (which together with Dan Savage’s proclamations that people should consider non-monogamy and today’s JTA headline that an Israeli group of Orthodox rabbis (c’mon, you knew this was coming!) is trying to bring back polygamy (a trend that even the Torah implicitly warns against while not forbidding) definitely qualifies as a trend.
So what to get to first? I’m impressed by the ridiculousness of Erica Jong’s complaint. I’m not sure why Clark-Flory concludes that her complaint is that technology has taken over for the actual messiness and intimacy of sex – from what I can tell, her real complaint is that this younger generation prefers monogamy and childrearing to the raunch that she claims her generation championed. Look at the utter condescension: More »
Both of these articles have a familiar tone: “What a bunch of whiners Jews today are!” And to some extent, there’s something to be said for that. In the shabbat meals article, towards the end, Rabbi Rebecca Joseph comments, “This is a problem of an affluent society and an affluent group within that society.” Again, true. Indeed, homeless Jews, poor Jews and Jews struggling to make ends meet aren’t going to be picky about what is served to them at a shabbat meal – or any other (I was reminded of recently rereading the book Rachel Calof’s Story about a Jewish woman who emigrated from Russia to be a pioneer bride, and while they certainly cared about kashrut, which is demonstrated throughout the book in various ways, when her husband comes home with a tin labeled herring and it turns out to be pickled pigs feet.. well, she doesn’t say that they ate, but she certainly hints at it. When there’s no other food, you eat what there is).
Nevertheless, there’s a certain oddity about these two articles. For example, let’s take the shabbat meals article: The title is, “With increasingly particular eaters, Shabbat meals get tough.” And yet, that isn’t actually the sense I get at all from the actual content of the article – let alone from my personal experiences. More »
Those who are familiar with the oddities of the Jewish calendar may be aware that a largish holiday begins tomorrow night (called Passover). Fewer people may be aware that on the second night of Passover begins… well, it’s not a holiday exactly, but it is a holy period, called the Omer.
Beginning the second night of Passover, every adult Jew is supposed to count off the 49 days (seven times seven weeks) that make up the period between Passover and the holiday of Shavuot, the holiday of the giving of the Torah. I have to say, it’s a bit of a pain. Not he counting, which is fine, but remembering to count properly, keeping track of which day it is, and so on. It’s enough of a difficulty that the Jewish legal code has instructions about what to do if you forget to count at the right time, or for a full day. You’ve got to count every day, or you lose your obligation to say the full blessing as you count.
The counting itself is a lovely tradition: each of the weeks represents one of seven traits of God, as does each day, so one develops a spiral of thoughts throughout the counting period (for example the trait of strength during the week of mercy… consider what that might mean as we approach the giving of the Torah… etc.)
Well, I decided that the best way to do this would be a sort of advent calendar, with little treats each day as you opened up the proper box to say the blessing for that day (hey, why should Christians get all the calendar fun?). At one time, I thoght the best way to do this would be through carpentry, but it’s been some time since I had any access to the proper tools,a dn I just didn’t want to wait anymore this year, so for pretty cheap I made one out of things that one could glue together – namely cardboard, cardboard, and , uh, some glue and glitter paper.
Almost everything came from the container store, and it took me about three days to make (including some glue drying time. Not labor intensive, but pretty sturdy anyway).
I’m happy to share instructions with anyone who wants to build one. I used a hard cardboard ornament storage box and three by three folded gift boxes (seven of which fit perfectly across, although you need two ornament boxes cut to size and glued together to get the height as only five rows tall fit, if you pop open the top edge of the ornament box).
The numbers for the days (written out in blue in Hebrew letters) as well as the blessing on the inside (which has the blessing, the day and date – in other words, everything you need for each day… no looking anything up!) are printed on clear sticky labels cut to size.
For your delectation:
(Not sure why the blessing box is shown on its side, just ignore that, it opens upwards (although you can make yours open any direction you want, of course)
I don’t think I”m quite done decorating it – obviously this is pretty simple, but the plus is that the boxes make it so that magic marker will write on them perfectly nicely, so if I go for color, that’s probably the way I’ll go. Stickers work fine too, but I’ll probably eventually go for a large picture that covers the entire front face of the Omer Counter. Happy counting!
Over the past several years, we have seen quite a number of Jewish or pseudo-Jewish practices picked up by non-Jews. While this isn’t exactly a novel occurrence – Christians sort of invented it with the creation of their new religion not quite two millenia ago, and Christian “Passover seders” of various sorts have been going on for some number of decades- it’s worth considering how Jews should react to the “democratization” of Jewish practices.
Whether it’s the pseudo-Jewish kabbalah center (whose practices misrepresent kabbalah quite a huge amount) and its superstitious practices, or Justin Bieber saying the Shema before concerts, we can expect to see more of this kind of thing.
To a certain extent, a certain amount of syncretism is inevitable. More »
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 »
Over the past several years, we have seen quite a number of Jewish or pseudo-Jewish practices picked up by non-Jews. While this isn’t exactly a novel occurrence – Christians sort of invented it with the creation of their new religion not quite two millenia ago, and Christian “Passover seders” of various sorts have been going on for some number of decades- it’s worth considering how Jews should react to the “democratization” of Jewish practices. 
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