by Y-Love [➚] · Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Anyone who has a message relevant to any segment of the general populace in America, be they corporate or non-profit, will eventually have to develop and maintain some sort of presence on social networks if they want their message to be heard. Period. We already know that the majority of young adults (75% of Americans aged 18-24, according to Pew) are on social networks, but 3.2 million seniors have also joined Facebook in the past year. Social networking is bigger than email. Social media has far beyond proven itself as being an integral part of any marketing or publicity strategy.
But on a sociological level, social networking has also irreversibly altered the definition of the interpersonal relationship. A "friend" is what one gains with a click of a button, itemized on a "list"; what one "likes" is their content. We make new "friends" when we find other network members with similar interests. Ours is an age of feeds and connections, of following and stumbling, of seamlessly interacting with our favorite brands, celebrities and highschool classmates in a growing sea of content. Those who interact with the same type or source of content — be they programmers updating the same piece of open-source software, a social network’s user base, or a group of armchair videographers documenting their lives on YouTube — invariably eventually form a "community."
Essentially, the affiliated Jewish community could be similarly defined: a group of people who choose to interact with the same type of content — granted, much more sublime (Divine?) content than YouTube’s — united by a bond infinitely stronger than a mass group invitation. Today’s "community" is a group of people whose connection is not determined by geography, but by their affinity for the content which unites them. It is the affinity for publicly available code that unites the open source community; similarly, it is the affinity for Jewish values, texts and concepts that unites the Jewish community.
Affinity and geography may not always intersect. It holds true for web 2.0 and exponentially more true for Jewish life. There is no shortage of testimonies of people who are bogged down by the geographically-defined Jewish communities in which they live.
It has become counter-productive, then, to define Jewish community in terms of geographic location: both to the Jews in and outside of said community.
It is time for post-geographic Judaism.
More »
by Y-Love [➚] · Monday, June 16th, 2008
In today’s New York Times, reporter Susan Dominus profiles a rising star from the embattled community of Crown Heights who is rising to notariety not only because of his uncommon background, but also because of his positive voice of peace and unity amidst an increasingly polarized cacophony screaming for the opposite. Yosef Abrahamson, a black frum Lubavitcher teen, made his media debut in the Daily News last week after his essay won the NYPD’s essay competition, and his story of transition from Omaha to Brooklyn left Ms. Dominus asking herself the same type of questions many reporters tend to after meeting frum Jews of color:
If Yosef, who attends the yeshiva Darchai Menachem in Crown Heights, ever finds himself writing a college application essay, his advisers would have a hard time choosing which of his compelling story lines would most dazzle those college admissions officers: The story of growing up in the only Hasidic family in Omaha? Or the story of being the only student of color in his yeshiva? Or maybe the story of being the only Hasidic person of color in Omaha’s competitive ice skating circuit?
Kol ha’kavod to Yosef Abrahamson, for increasing black frum visibility. Had the article ended here, dayenu, this would have been a fantastic profile about a family with a heartwarming story of bridge-building and a message relevant to all of our communities.
Unfortunately, it continued. More »
by Y-Love [➚] · Sunday, April 13th, 2008
A few weeks ago on The Jew and the Carrot, I wondered if biofuels were actually the green mitzvah they were touted to be — an ethical alternative to greenhouse gas-belching fossil fuels — or if they were a mitzvah ha’ba b’aveirah, a “mitzvah” coming out of a sin, the sin of unchecked environmental havoc due to biofuels’ “non-toxic” by-products.
The new waves of global food riots, though, have made me much more concerned, and much more wary of entrenching myself in the pro-biofuel camp.
The 2007 “tortilla riots” in Mexico, where some 75,000 Mexicans protested the rising cost of tortillas in Mexico City, followed an astronomical increase in the price of corn — some 400% in a three month span. The cause for the price hike lay north of the border, farmers planting “industrial corn” to be processed into ethanol, replacing the lower-priced food staple relied upon by millions of Mexicans.
Cooking oil is also turning into the world’s “other” oil problem. In Mumbai, India, residents are forced “to ration every drop” of cooking oil, with the price of palm oil having risen 70 percent in the past year. One store in Chongqing, China saw three people killed in a stampede when it offered a “limited promotion” on cooking oil. Half of the increase in worldwide demand for vegetable oils, the New York Times says, is because of biofuel demand.
More »
by Y-Love [➚] · Monday, March 10th, 2008
Now that we have brought out our dead and escorted the slaughtered kedoshim to their final graves, now that we have torn our garments and have begun to recite kaddish and Tehillim, now that the blood has been mopped up from the floors of the beit midrash, Israel — and indeed, the entire Jewish Nation — is beginning to enter the painful phase of “where do we go from here?”
While Hamas of course are still making statements praising the operation as a “normal response” to the Gaza incursion (with Hezbollah now distancing themselves from it), Olmert is still insistent that roads of communication must remain open with Palestinian local leaders, and that we must still continue on the road to peace. Jerusalem’s Arab citizens say they fear Israeli reprisal, and Women In Green is calling for eight new settlements to be constructed in the West Bank, in memory of the eight murdered yeshiva students:
“The Jewish Zionist revenge must be an immediate revenge by establishing eight new communities throughout Judea and Samaria in memory of the those murdered, especially in light of the fact that the Mercaz Harav yeshiva symbolizes the settlement in the Yesha region,” a statement from the organization read.
(As an aside, it is so refreshing to see a charedi rabbi speaking so highly of Obama’s plans for dealing with terrorism.)
However, I must say that I agree in this one case with Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar above all things:
“This is a tragedy of the entire nation of Israel; we are all crying, we are all mourning… Let us arouse to distance ourselves from all hatred and disunity, and let us increase love, brotherhood and Torah study…†he added.
Like I ask on thisisbabylon.net, if the Talmud teaches us that “G-d, Israel, and the Torah are One”, if yeshiva students can be murdered with their blood spilling out over their volumes of Talmud and if it can happen in the Holy City of Jerusalem, if the Torah is not protecting members of Israel in Israel, what does that say about our relationship with Hashem?
Metaphysically, how can it be that a terrorist can accomplish such a thing? The Torah is supposed to protect us!
In addition to the military one, I believe the Jewish Nation has been called upon a very important spiritual reconnaissance mission — one that can be ignored no less than Hamas — and it behooves all of us to find the “breach” in our collective soul’s “security fence” to insure, on both physical and spiritual planes, that never occurs again.
Increase love, brotherhood, and unity. Shalom al Yisra’el.
by Y-Love [➚] · Monday, February 11th, 2008
First, we had January 4th, which saw Jonathan Chait from the New Republic saying “It’s over”:
And now, it seems that more than a few bloggers are beginning to predict the previously thought improbable (if not impossible) — Obama defeating Clinton in the primaries, and winning the Democratic Party’s nomination for the election.
Cogitamus, source of the above video, does a little math:
Even if Clinton manages a narrow loss, tie, or narrow win in Virginia, Barack Obama should win Maryland and DC handily. Combined with a likely big win in one of his home states (Hawaii), he’ll have roughly a 100 delegate lead going into the Wisconsin primary. Let’s be pessimistic and assume Obama loses by 15%. With 75 pledged delegates, that means his lead will drop to the high 80s.
We’re now all the way to the Ohio and Texas primaries, with a total of 334 pledged delegates at stake. To claw back to a draw, Hillary Clinton will have to win a whopping 61% of them. There’s no way that can happen…
The Cuban-American blog Babalú also projects an Obama win, citing problems with the Clinton camp:
What I thought was inevitable, the nomination of Hillary Clinton by Democrats, now seems unlikely. Obama wins several contests tonight and will probably sweep Tuesday’s “Potomac Primaries”. Clinton’s campaign is in financial trouble and those high-value politicians that endorsed her haven’t delivered the number of states and delegates necessary to win.
Babalú also notes — even Intrade.com is putting the likelihood of an Obama nomination at around 65%. (This is up from being at between 60-62 percent on Friday.) Even the conservative RedState.com said flatly, “Hillary Clinton will not win the Democratic Presidential nomination” on the first try.
While I don’t want to jump the gun, I can’t ignore that even the New York Post is saying that Obama could “yet pull off” the nomination. (Some people were saying this way back in the day as well.)
If this momentum keeps up, perhaps Obama will be to voters this fall the “real choice” he alluded to on Super Tuesday after all.
by Y-Love [➚] · Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
Time Magazine today reported their list of Five Lessons to be Learned from Super Tuesday. In a nutshell, they are:
1. Hillary Clinton still gets love from “white and Latino women and older people”, regardless of who endorses Obama;
2. Barack Obama has made “significant inroads among southern white men”, but his “efforts to sway” the Latino community “have so far failed”;
3. John McCain, while emerging as the GOP frontrunner, “has a lot of work to do among die-hard conservatives, who remain distrustful of him”;
4. Mitt Romney “failed to impress almost anyone”;
5. Mike Huckabee‘s next task, if he is to remain in the race, must “turn himself into something more than a regional favorite”.
With the Jewish vote, things are bit less complex. First of all, like the Jewish Week says, no analyst believes that McCain could carry a majority of the Jewish votes in November were he the Republican candidate — the best to be hoped for is that he returns the Jewish GOP-voting levels to where they were during the Reagan administration (about 39 percent). A Huckabee or Romney nomination would equal a “blowout” of the Republican party in a general election as far as Jews are concerned — and the American Jewish Committee called Huckabee a “prescription for theocracy”, his ideal of a “more Christian America” being more than a bit off-putting for many Jewish voters.
So with a little help from Ha’aretz, and with Romney and Huckabee being basically irrelevant as far as Jews are concerned, here are the three lessons I think the Jewish electorate learned from Super Tuesday:
1. Despite doing, in one author’s words, “everything, and I mean everything, in order to appease American Jews”, Barack Obama is going to have to work a lot harder to reverse the toll taken on his image by the various blasts against him in the Jewish community. Some of the attacks involved “racist language” because of his Muslim father and while it’s lamentable that this forces him to defend himself against things “such as nonexistent ties with elements hostile to Israel”, it’s an unfortunate PR dilemma he’s not sufficiently dealing with.
Without a “longstanding pro-Israel track record” to point to (on the level of say, a 25-year McCain streak), Obama’s going to have to make up for it with PR and outreach. To quote Rabbi Klein from the NY Board of Rabbis, Jews just don’t think Obama “gets the Jewish agenda and the issues of the State of Israel” — and he’s going to have to counteract this on Jewish communities’ turf. Much of his star-power just isn’t making so much of an effect on the ground with Jews, and for many Jews wary of his inexperience, the “change” mantra being brought up in so many endorsements could hinder his campaign instead of bolster it.
2. Hillary is either ignoring the kids, or speaking a different language. The younger crowds are skewing towards Obama in community after community, and this fact belies the Jewish poll results — the older Jews of Florida (in 1993, one community boasted 9 out of 10 citizens being seniors) turned out roundly for Hillary (74%) but the younger Northeast — in Massachusetts, for example, only 23% of Jews are over 60 — showed some Obama victories: a slight one in Massachusetts, a sounding one in Connecticut.
3. Israel really is John McCain‘s bread-and-butter falafel-and-hummus. No one even cares that John McCain said that “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation,” a statement that killed Huckabee’s chances. All that matters is his pro-Israel voting record, combined with Lieberman as his one-man heimish PR engine, and McCain is poised to cull Jewish votes at levels not seen in decades. The only way to counter this is going to be by, to quote the Jerusalem Post, “reminding voters that McCain has said we could be in Iraq for another hundred years”, and reminding Jewish voters that McCain’s brand of conservatism is not always square with Jewish values.
(Side note, no matter what, never, ever schedule a caucus on Shabbos.)
by Y-Love [➚] · Thursday, January 24th, 2008
What, in the hell, is this?
The Mr. President hotel in Belgrade is receiving increasing flak from Jewish communities worldwide for its $200 a night Hitler suite, one of numerous room dedicated to various world leaders. In the hotel, Serbia’s B92 radio reports, one can “have tea with Margret [sic] Thatcher, surf the Internet with George Washington and soak in the Jacuzzi in the company of Josip Broz Tito”.
The ADL announced their outrage in the Jerusalem post on Tuesday, with Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, saying, “using this tyrannical dictator to promote a hotel is a gross marketing ploy and demonstrates a profound failure to understand the horror of the Holocaust.”
Gross, macabre, and effective — Foxman said he was “deeply” disturbed by the “high demand for the hotel suite”. The room is the hotel’s “most popular”, attracting mostly German, Croat, and Slovenian guests. Zabunovic considers his choice to have a certain nobility, saying he is memorializing the Holocaust with the suite:
[Hotel manager Dusan] Zabunovic has not specifically commented on the ADL’s complaint, but on Wednesday, the hotel manager told Cybercast News Service, “It’s not just marketing. We placed the (Hitler) picture there because we don’t want to forget the bad things that Hitler has done.”
The manager said he’s not sure if the Hitler portrait will be removed, but he added that the hotel does not want to attract negative publicity.
The manager also said Hitler isn’t the only controversial leader. He mentioned one Serbian man who didn’t want to sleep in the Bill Clinton suite….Zabunovic told ABC News that Hitler’s victims would “turn in their graves” if there was no memorial to “what a monstrous criminal he was.”
I can’t say that I’m inclined to buy the whole “we’re the Yad Vashem Inn” defense he’s saying in the media; his “negative publicity” is keeping the room booked. Whether he is really acting under noble intentions or putting the lock on the anti-Semite niche market only time will tell.
Is the memory of the Holocaust and its catastrophic genocide becoming cheapened? The 2006 Indian faux pas of the Hitler’s Cross cafe still haunts search engines, and Italian winemaker Vini Lunardelli got caught up in 2007 for making its Der Führer line of wines, made “on special request” from German and Austrian vinophiles. 2002 saw the heyday of the Hitler Techno Bar in South Korea’s 2nd largest city Pusan, and Dubai-based Conqueror Realty “stood by” its 2007 decision to use Hitler in its UAE advertising campaign, with its owner saying: “He’s a famous person — bad or good, I don’t care — and I want to attract the attention of readers. And yesterday we had a lot of response.”
We should be outraged, but I feel, more than that, when Hitler triggers positive enough responses in people’s minds that they make consumer decisions based on seeing his face…perhaps it’s a sign we should be watching our collective backs.
by Y-Love [➚] · Thursday, January 17th, 2008
Columnist/blogger Andrew Sullivan from The Atlantic’s “Daily Dish” received a letter from a reader commenting on Richard Cohen’s Washington Post column, “Obama’s Farrakhan Test” written in the aftermath of the backlash from the anti-Muslim emails sent out to potential Jewish voters these past couple weeks. Cohen’s column calls Obama into question for not having spoken out against his church’s having awarded one of its most prestigious awards to Louis Farrakhan.
Sullivan writes about how perturbed he is about the Cohen piece, saying that he has long advocated the viability of a black presidential candidate, and adding that:
And so…some Jewish-Americans, seeing a black man with real power emerging on the national scene, immediately panic that it’s Farrakhan in disguise.
This Daily Dish reader apparently thought of the column as representative and symptomatic of a far deeper, more insidious problem of general distrust among Jewish voters and a cynical eye being cast towards Obama:
[U]nfortunately I think Obama faces a lot of obstacles with the Jews–especially older ones who’ve grown leery of the black community. The anti-semitism there is real, and not just with Farrakhan, but with Jesse Jackson referring to New York as “Hymie Town” to and Al Sharpton calling Jews “diamond merchants” and Andrew Young’s more recent comments about Jewish store-keepers. And these aren’t isolated incidents – the hate pops out of the mouths of rappers and athletes. This is especially hurtful to a group that has traditionally espoused black civil rights.
Sadly even my mother, who lives in Florida, says about Obama, “I just don’t trust him.” She can’t give any reasons, though she will usually mutter something about Israel.
My mother’s fear is that he’ll cut ties to Israel. She’s typical of the older generation and their belief that in every black person’s heart, there is hatred toward the Jews….Cohen’s column is a disgrace. There is something of the “loyalty oath” about it. But, unfortunately, it’s more deeply reflective of Jewish opinion than any of us rabid Obama supporters would like to admit. I don’t know much about what Obama is doing to reach out to Jews, but he should probably be doing more of it.
I definitely agree with the reader that Obama needs to be doing far more outreach to Jews — the reality of Obama’s “impeccable” voting record on Israel issues has simply not reached enough people “on the ground”.
My major fear is, will his publicists be working in vain pushing subjectively irrelevant information to a population whose collective mind is already made up? One finds no shortage of young Jewish Obama supporters (some of whom said his “views on Israel…put their minds at ease”, but is the older generation so set in its ways that it can not warm up to the idea of a pro-Israel black liberal president? Is it to this end that the Forward notes that Jewish South Carolinians historically sought “to balance their Jewish identity with acceptance into the larger white community” even until the tolerance of slavery — did some unfortunate Jews of old lie down with the antebellum pro-slavery dogs of South Carolina’s yesteryear and are their descendents waking up with post-Jim Crow fleas in this campaign?
In reaction to Cohen’s column, Obama issued a statement saying:
“I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan,” Obama said in the statement. “I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”
(Part of me also wants to say that this reader’s mother is driven by a mutated version of the left’s anti-Semitism, but from a defensive. Threat-based racism (“all members of group X want to kill me and I can’t let that happen”), or any other prejudice-based reason for not voting for a candidate will easily find themselves well covered over by a claim of “oh s/he won’t support Israel.”)
Is today’s under-40 Jewish voter so much more intrinsically enlightened than those of the prior generation? I think that those of us for whom Web 2.0 is not something we encountered in middle age, and for whom multicultural interaction was a quite un-revolutionary norm from infancy, have had our brains primed for Obama in a way previous generations have not. We have seen alliances rise and fall in unprecedented ways, and life under the yoke of the anti-Semitism previous generations lived under will make one wary of even the most benevolent.
But I think it behooves us, those of us with parents in that generation, to stop them from contributing to the ruination of the election for us — and chas v’shalom voting for a right-wing candidate, running after a blue-and-white mirage of “doing something good for Israel”.
by Y-Love [➚] · Sunday, December 9th, 2007
Shotei ha’Nevuah are truly a musical phenomenon. Selected Israel’s “Band of the Year for 2005 (no small feat considering the amount of talent in the Holy Land), Shotei ha’Nevuah (The Fools of Prophecy) is an Israeli supergroup which combines reggae, dub, hip hop and dance spiced with an eastern Mediterranean flavor, singing in Hebrew, Arabic and English. I had the pleasure of playing with Shotei ha’Nevuah in Israel this past year, and I can attest — they put on a damn good show live, and their powerful music has been called a “message of peace and pluralism.”
So I knew when I got the email, I had to spread the word on this little note from DJ Handler and Shemspeed tout de suite.
The headlining finale to the Sephardic Music Festival, P’shutei ha’Am (The Simple People), consisting of the founding members of Shotei ha’Nevuah, are celebrating the last two nights of Chanukah with us in New York at the Knitting Factory:
SHOTEI HANEVUA’S FOUNDING MEMBERS PSHUTEI HA’AM WILL BE PERFORMING FOR TWO NIGHTS AT THE KNITTING FACTORY!!!!
Monday December 10th – HEEDOOSH, EDOM & Pshutei Ha’am (Simple People), (hosted by Y-Love and dj handler)
Tuesday December 11th – PHARAOH’S DAUGHTER, ASEFA & Pshutei Ha’am (Simple People), (hosted by Y-Love and dj handler)
We are very excited to be able to bring in Pshutei Ha’am from Israel to headline this years Sephardic Music Festival! The group which is formed of the founding members of the world famous Shotei Hanevua bring Middle Eastern melodies with funk and electronic grooves.
Performing for two exclusive nights at the Knitting Factory along with local Sephardic heroes Pharaoh’s Daughter, Asefa, Edom and Heedoosh, hosted by Y-Love and dj handler. These are the two most exciting nights of the festival that you do not want to miss!!
Doors open for both events at 8pm, and tickets are $25 — with a $5 discount if you RSVP to rsvp@shemspeed.com. Both events are open to celebrants of all ages.
Happy Chanukah to all, and to all a good light.
by Y-Love [➚] · Thursday, November 1st, 2007
Opposition to the Iraq War, military counterrecruitment, and the barrage of horrible media images coming from the Middle East are making a huge impact on Army recruitment. As the Associated Press tells us, Army recruitment is at a record low, the lowest it has ever been since the draft was done away with:
The Army began its recruiting year Oct. 1 with fewer signed up for basic training than in any year since it became an all-volunteer service in 1973, a top general said Wednesday.
Gen. William S. Wallace, whose duties as commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command include management of recruiting, told reporters at the Pentagon that the historic dip will make it harder to achieve the full-year recruiting goal — after just barely reaching it in the year ended Sept. 30.
Achieving the Army’s recruiting goals — a challenge in the best of times — is not only more difficult now but also of more consequence. That is because the Army has decided that it must grow its active-duty force by several thousand soldiers a year in order to relieve strain on war-weary troops.
Wallace said he expects to reach the goal of 80,000 recruits, with extra effort by his recruiters. “It’s going to be another tough recruiting year,” the four-star general said.
Making it even tougher is the decline in what the Army calls its delayed entry pool, which is the group of enlistees who have signed contracts to join the Army but want to wait before shipping off to basic training. Normally the Army tries to start its recruiting year with a delayed entry pool equal to about 25 percent of its full-year goal, which in this case would equate to 20,000 recruits.
Instead, the Army began with 7,392 recruits, or about 9 percent of its full-year goal.
Last year at this time the Army was beginning its recruiting year with 12,062, or about 15 percent.
Great! Less kids are going to die! Less kids are going off to war, so this must be a good thing, right?
Not necessarily.
Like I wrote back in February 2006 (back when I used to write in MySpace-compliant style, complete with SMS English), when the military is strapped for recruitment numbers, they begin to either lower their standards, or try to target different people. The Army went specifically for the poorest people to achieve last year’s standards (one reason they were offering a “‘quick ship’ bonus of $20,000 to recruits willing to leave for basic training by the end of September), and ended up with more than a few criminals, more than a few Nazis, more than a few gangsters. Last year, convicted felons also helped the Army achieve its recruitment goal, with 1,620 felons receiving “moral waivers”, a 60 percent increase over the previous year.
In total, 22,186 waivers — 18.5 percent of all recruits — were granted in 2007. More than half of them for “moral character” issues — the majority of which were for misdemeanor offenses. Another 38.9 percent were medical waivers, with the remaining 6.7 percent for drug and alcohol problems.
And even with their targeting the most underprivileged Americans, they’re still having record low recruitment. One doesn’t even have to have citizenship to serve and die for this country. “Illegal immigrants” were also spoken of as potential targets for recruitment.
How much lower will standards go? Will all-American “soldier boys” have to be serving alongside the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer or a serial rapist just so the DoD can get its numbers up?
With the war being outsourced to murderers, and with corruption scandals erupting all the time, the last thing I think the troops and this country needs is an analysis of how we can lower standards, and a new batch of recruits culled from the lowest pits of Supermax prisons and mental institutions are not going to be the best representatives of America on the world stage.
by Y-Love [➚] · Thursday, September 6th, 2007
The charedi Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights has been grieving as of late after two deaths rocked the close-knit community. Today, the mostly Chaba”d community learned of the passing of Gershon Gorodetsky, age 34, who died after being struck by the #3 train at the Kingston Avenue station. Only a week and half had passed since the passing of Noach Tzfasman, age 24, who was also struck by a train at the same subway station.
Noach Tzfasman’s death was proven later to be a suicide. On the street, people are already saying the same thing about today’s niftar.
In January, a frum 12th grader committed suicide while on winter break in Miami. Orthodox attorney Moshe Kanovsky plummeted to his death from the Empire State building in April. MentalBlog has a short list from May listing a few then-recent Lubavitcher suicides. Sarah Adelman jumped to her death on July 24, distraught over a recent breakup.
The suicide rate in the Orthodox world seems to be on the rise; it seems that suicide in the Orthodox community is becoming more of a phenomenon. CrownHeights.info is offering information on frum counseling services for the bereaved and for those impacted by the suicides, but I feel as if there is a huge pink elephant in the room that no one is talking about.
Sarah Adelman’s suicide was followed by a discussion of the validity of the stigma surronding unmarried women in the Orthodox community, as well as critical analysis of the value placed on ‘coupledom’ in the Orthodox world — and this is the most laudatory upshot of all of these tragedies. Crown Heights, and by extension all religious communities, should have the same reflex: immediately turning the lens inward and asking “how can we prevent this from happening?” One commenter on CrownHeights.Info noted that some people have committed suicide because of debt to yeshivos. Societal norms are also changing and tightening. Regardless of the precise reason, this must be a cause for introspection — and it will truly be lamentable if more young adults have to die before the Jewish Observer article comes out and sends the entire Brooklyn into a tizzy screaming “Gevalt! What’s gonna be?”
How were these bochurim perceived by their community? What were their social interactions like, their family lives? Was Gershon, for instance, driven crazy by societal stigma and rumors and family and friends wondering “why he was still a bochur” at 34? Was the high school student “selected” out of yeshiva? Surely, there is always an acute “moment of insanity” immediately preceding any suicide attempt. But are all these suicides driven by ongoing mental illness? And if they were all chronically mentally ill, can their suicide be totally dismissed by saying, “oh, he was depressed for a while anyway”?
In this time before Yom Kippur, a time when G-d says, as we learn from the Mishnah, that He will not listen to our prayers for forgiveness until we ask our fellow humans for forgiveness, this truly is the only appropriate Jewish reaction. As Deuteronomy 21 teaches us, the Torah prescribesthe egla arufa-ritual for a murder with an unknown perpetrator, a ritual which shows that our communities truly are interconnected, that an entire community can be said to have “shed the blood” of even one of its residents by omission, if not by commission.
We can not shed any more blood. A truly interconnected community does not let its suicide rate skyrocket without a fight. It behooves each of us to examine our own communities and do our utmost to counteract — in our own spheres of influence — that which drives people to these breaking points. And it is my hope that lives are saved as a result.
by Y-Love [➚] · Monday, August 20th, 2007
The Orthodox blogger Life of Rubin has an brilliantly insightful article on the recent charedi ban on concerts arm swinging whatever.
The piece is so erudite that even to quote it doesn’t truly do it justice, but it’s definitely worth taking a look at.
Read the Life of Rubin piece here.
All I can say is: my sentiments exactly.
by Y-Love [➚] · Monday, August 13th, 2007
In an interview this morning with Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot, Karl Rove announced his intention to leave the White House by the end of the month.
And it’s about damn time.
Rove chose August 31st as his last day “after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president’s term in January 2009″, the article said.
Rove said he first considered leaving a year ago, that being the first time he consulted with Bush on the subject, but Rove’s friends confirm he had actually been speaking about it longer. (Perhaps the idea crossed his mind for the first time while he was in the hospital during Katrina. But even then, it was Rove who suggested Bush put up money to rebuild the battered New Orleans “against the advice of White House economists”.)
One columnist for the British Times Online said that, with the departure of Rove, the Bush presidency is over. While such a statement may yet prove itself premature, it does say a lot about simply how much of a brain Karl Rove was to Bush all these years. If it can be said that Bush’s entire ability to “win a final, major legislative victory” is completely dependent on Rove’s presence, that shows exactly how much power was vested in this man.
Here’s the email Rove sent “to friends” over the weekend.
No replacement for King Karl has been selected as of yet, but consider this: nothing short of a miracle in Iraq will get Bush’s public opinion ratings out of the toilet completely. Were a salaried corporate crony to be inserted into the cabinet at this point with a similar indifference to mounting public opinion, it could produce disastrous results.
Whether Rove will be remembered as the strategist who engineered political victories for the GOP post-9/11 and won Bush a second term or as the infamous accomplice in Plamegate, history has yet to tell. But one thing is for sure, Rove definitely didn’t want to stick around for the crash-and-burn epilogue to the Bush saga.
by Y-Love [➚] · Friday, July 27th, 2007
So this week’s New York jewish Week chronicles the fall-out over Matisyahu’s revelation that he “no longer identifies” with “the Lubavitch sect” of Chassidus. The revelation, to quote the Jewish Week, “lit up” the Orthodox blogosphere.
Well I wouldn’t call the frum blogosphere “lit up” but there is definitely spirited dialogue.
Rabbi Levi Brackman — a rabbi who I have continuously held in extremely high esteem since I began reading his (often the sole) frum perspectives on YNet — voices his regret for ever having backed Matis:
His lyrics no longer really reflect deep Jewish spirituality and his behavior on stage is becoming increasingly secular. Now that he has publicly distanced himself from Chabad/Lubavitch I am admitting that I was wrong to ever promote Matisyahu. It is my hope that he keeps his faith and does not go off the deep end and thus take others with him.
In his “Life of Rubin” blog, Chaim Rubin, blogging from Crown Heights, writes in his abrasively titled piece “Matisyahu No Longer Lubavitch. Enjoys Jay-Z and Sipping Wine” that he finds Matisyahu’s re-affiliation “alarming” and opines:
It makes it even worse when you hear how irresponsibly he speaks. We don’t want our kids listening to Jay Z and sipping wine to relax. Thats not how a frum yid should act….I think Shluchim might need to reconsider how involved they get with him or his shows. I think we have to worry about what he could still say or do…
I really hope that Matisyahu does well. Both phy$ically and spiritually. I hope and wish him well, but I’m officially OFF the Matisyahu fan club train…because of his comments and his attitude. He may be doing a lot of good for the non religious world and maybe even the goyish world. But for the Frum world I’m afraid that he can only do harm.
First let me preface everything by saying that I have nothing but the highest levels of respect for Rabbi Brackman, and I love to read Life of Rubin.
Perhaps there’s a kabbalistic term for the emotional source of all these blog posts. Perhaps we could call it “Olam ha’Overreaction.” As Yossi B (future hiphop stage name?) writes on his blog ChaBlog-Lubavitch, Matisyahu is being misunderstood and overly criticized, and Yossi blasts Rav Brackman’s equating Matisyahu with a “secular Jewish” musician saying:
You know, [you're] right. Bob Dylan and Matisyahu are pretty much the same. One barely licked the edge of Torah his entire life, and one says Chitas and Davens every day, but no, your right he is like every other secular Jewish singer. Matisyahu is not made for your little kids in your house, and I hope you don’t have a problem with your teenage ones listening to him because that’s just… odd.
…I think you need to ask yourself who is the good Jew in this situation. No disrespect intended.
I think this entire argument is symptomatic of a far deeper and far more insidious cause — a cause affecting all of us trying to break into the mainstream with our beards and jackets. Matisyahu, as far as I know, hasn’t changed very much. Isn’t he still “very religious”, isn’t he still singing “treif wine clouds the heart”?
I think this is symptomatic of a breakdown in understanding between those religious Jews who were raised religious (FFB) and ba’alei tshuva/converts.
More »
by Y-Love [➚] · Thursday, July 19th, 2007
The Washington Post yesterday let us know about how Bush really feels about the poor, poor children in particular: screw ‘em and let ‘em die.
Quoting “philosophical reasons”, W voiced his opposition to the legislation which would have renewed and expanded the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, put forth by Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program currently costs the federal government $5 billion a year (a far cry from the near-half-trillion we’ve spent on the Iraq War, or the $1-2 trillion we will have spent by 2016) and “helps provide health coverage to 6.6 million low-income children whose families do not qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford private insurance on their own.”
An additional 3.3 million children would have been covered by the Baucus legislation, and the money would have not come from taxpayers en masse but rather from raising the excise tax on cigarettes to $1 per pack.
“I support the initial intent of the program,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post after a factory tour and a discussion on health care with small-business owners in Landover. “My concern is that when you expand eligibility . . . you’re really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government.”…
About 3.3 million additional children would be covered under the proposal developed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), among others. It would provide the program $60 billion over five years, compared with $30 billion under Bush’s proposal. And it would rely on a 61-cent increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes, to $1 a pack, which Bush opposes.
Republicans warned that if the president were to veto this legislation, that the Democrats would make another, more expensive proposal that could affect more taxpayers.
And like blogger Ari Berman writes for The Nation, this is not the only “successful government program” benefiting the poor that Bush opposes: “I believe government cannot provide affordable health care,” Bush said at a recent healthcare roundtable. (Bush also opposed the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid, even “trimming” the programs until 2011, in legislation bundled with an $11.9 billion cut to student loan subsidies.)
Baruch Hashem that the Senate Finance Committee voted 17-4 in favor of reauthorizing and expanding S-CHIP, “in defiance of” W.
What Bush is failing to realize is that someone can not simply walk up with their W-2s and buy medications or health treatments with their “$7,500 deductible.” Rite Aid and CVS don’t readily accept “tax credits” as payment. And the refund checks are slow in coming, unlike medical complications.
Bush says he supports “common sense” health care, health care that puts “individuals…in charge” of their own medical coverage. In other words, you pay for it.
And if you can’t afford it, then, like Ari Berman said in The Nation, just “drop dead”.
by Y-Love [➚] · Monday, July 16th, 2007
So, today, my esteemed rabbi, Rav Avraham Ga’on, shlit”a, whose seal of approval appears on my sefira- and Three Weeks-friendly album “Count It”, made his debut on YouTube. His yeshiva, Yeshiva Etzion sponsored a “post-Lag ba’Omer BBQ and Drum Circle”, which you see here.
While it took them a while to get the video online, it was most certainly worth the wait.
Very few frum rabbis sponsor drum circles. Then again, this is not your average rabbi. (Please note the argeela.)
I’m sure all those who attended, as well as R’ Shimon bar Yochai, ztvk”l, received much nachat ruach from the event. Big ups to my rav, and to all dati/charedi rabbanim with forward-thinking yeshiva programming.
by Y-Love [➚] · Monday, July 9th, 2007
An op-ed piece in the JPost today caught my eye — apparently the Jewish People and Policy Planning Institute‘s conference on the Future of the Jewish People was planned and organized to the exclusion of the charedi community.
Granted, many “pluralistic” events often mean “we invite everyone except traditional Orthodox people”, but to exclude the fastest growing sector of the Jewish population from a conference talking about the future of the Jewish people is a horrible oversight at best, a patch in panim (slap in the face) at worst.
Like David Eliezrie, a Chaba”d shliach from Yorba Linda, California, writes:
The conference boasts an impressive array of academics and organizational leaders, but it seems there is little or no attendance from the more religious end of the Jewish world. I am sure there are some there sporting yarmulkes but few, if any, have come from the more haredi sector.
If one takes a look at Jewish life it’s without question that the more Orthodox are succeeding in the crucial area of Jewish continuity. While assimilation chips away at many in the Jewish world, the Orthodox seem to be both retaining the loyalty of the next generation and expanding their numbers. We are far from a utopia – parts of the ultra-Orthodox community are insular and have minimal concern for the totality of the Jewish people, unless it’s on their own terms. And there are internal problems that are acute and need to be met.
Still, even a casual observer will note that we are not doing something right. And around the world, in community after community, traditional Judaism is gaining root and expanding…
Not everyone in the frum community is prepared for this type of engagement. Some see little value in dialogue with more secular Jewish leaders. However, in the interest of intellectual honesty they should at least be invited.
Failing to do that raises a deeper question. Is not the unwillingness to extend such an invitation merely the mirror image of a narrowness found among segments of the haredi world? Shouldn’t the spirit of liberal tolerance prompt organizers to seek partners outside their own world view?
Nu?
And let it not be forgotten — the charedi world (at large, even if Meah Shearim is still not quite there yet) is changing and becoming more diverse. From staunch chardali Zionists to Neturei Karta-niks, from those who make niggunim to those who make hiphop, the charedi world is becoming more of a mosaic as it is joined by various ba’alei tshuva, converts, and a new generation of kids (52% of Israelis under 18, according to the last census, are charedi Orthodox) who have been exposed to varying levels of the secular world and are beginning to incorporate new ideals into tradition.
Many of us are the future of the Jewish people. Continuing stereotypes of the “oppressive white guys with long beards” with 18th century mindsets benefits no one. Open dialogue — or at least open invitations to have such — benefit k’lal Yisra’el.
by Y-Love [➚] · Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
The Los Angeles Times today features an article entitled “Clashing Values Alter A City’s Face”, the latest commentary on the changing demographics of Jerusalem.
Secular and “less devout” residents are moving out, black hats are moving in.
However, as I show on thisisbabylon.net, such assessments, and especially vis-a-vis the sentiments of the secular people leaving the city, overlook another major fact.
The haredi community itself is fragmenting, and a radicalized public is beginning to take form against the will of the haredi leadership, and often, against the will of the majority of the haredi community itself.
Many of the things mentioned in the LA Times piece are unique to ultra-heimish places like Brooklyn’s Williamsburg or Meah Shearim. And their eschewing of entertainment and recreational activities enjoyed by other Torah-observant Jews works beautifully for those in such a traditional framework.
Except now, increasingly, all haredim are supposed to fit into these paradigms. And the “four cubits of halacha” begins to shrink to a painfully restrictive (and quite monolithic and Ashkenazi) square inch.
Full article.
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