So, by now we’ve all heard about the bust involving political leaders and Syrian Rabbis in New Jersey:
NEWARK (Reuters) – Dozens of New Jersey politicians, officials and prominent rabbis were arrested on Thursday in a sweeping federal probe that uncovered political corruption, human organ sales and money laundering from New York to Israel, officials said.
When they confronted Levy Izhak Rosenbaum with charges that he’d been selling human organs, I wonder what he said. I sorta hope he shot back with “I may not be Sephardi, but I sure am in to kidneyot.”
Jews have been overrepresented in US Government for quite awhile. For instance, currently 15% of Senators are Jewish versus 2% in the general population. Who has the best chance of being the first Jewish President?
In the past few years several leading contenders have had small setbacks, some have had career ending ones.
A couple years ago I would have had Elliott Spitzer high on the list but I think we all know how his fortunes have turned.
Following his rise to prominence in the late 90s, Senator Lieberman was another candidate but his mangling of Iraq resulted in a terrible political response in CT where he couldn’t even win the Democratic Primary.
Governor Rendell is a two-term Governor from a big swing state. He is now about 65 and couldn’t run until 2016. By then he’d be older than McCain was this past run. More vital for sure, but probably has aged out.
Though I’d love to vote for him, I suspect Senator Feingold is too far left.
Though not a pretty man, Senator Schumer is one of the few yidden whose presidential stock has risen since the early 90s. He is associated with Wall Street, from New York City, and it’s easy to see how the religious right might use xenophobic attacks to marginalize him. I suspect they will say he is too “New York” to connect with “real” Americans. Everyone will know exactly what they are saying without them saying it.
Also of note, is Rahm Emmanuel. He’s been successful as a political operative and also as an elected official. If the Obama years are good, could he run on that?
There is only one Jewish candidate I can imagine becoming a serious candidate in 2012 (though this is unlikely). That man is none other than George Allen.*
Who do you guys think is the most likely person currently alive to be the first Jewish President (of the US)?
*Though many would consider Allen a Jew, including anyone applying Orthodox Halachic standards, I tend towards the Recon standard and wouldn’t consider him a Jew. Here is some more nuance.
This article suggests that Mugabe has stolen the Aron Habrit from it’s spot resting in a museum.
The decayed wooden object lying neglected on a shelf in a museum storeroom didn’t look like anything too exciting. But Tudor Parfitt, Professor of Jewish Studies at London’s School of African and Oriental Studies… was convinced that the object, which resembled a damaged, ancient African drum, was in fact the lost Ark of the Covenant.
One of the most holy objects in existence, the Ark, thought to have dated back to around 1200 BC, is described in the Bible as a form of container that once held the tablets on which were inscribed God’s Ten Commandments.
This is wild stuff. The theory rests on a few assumptions.
1) The Lemba of South Africa and Zimbabwer descend from the Ancient Israelites.
This claim has been largely accepted once the evidence came to light that their priestly caste, the Buba, carry the genetic Cohen marker sometimes called the Cohen Modal Haplotype.
2) Rashi and other were correct that there were two Arks, one wooden, and one gilded.
This is very hard to demonstrate but has decent backing in the mythology.
3) The wood object is of the correct age to be the first of the arks.
It has been carbon dated to 1350, when the Lemba say it was rebuilt. This is not conclusive for or against.
There is lots more. Definitely read this article examining the claims and intrigue surrounding the ark and Mugabe.
Chag sameach to all. By now, most of the seders which will occur this year have. I thought this would be a good time for us to share some new insights from these years freedom feasts.* With that in mind I hope people will share such observations in the comments.
Personally, I had never related sample bias with miracles before someone connected them in the seder I participated in last night. We were talking about the process of going towards the Red Sea. One person wondered whether Moses knew it was there before he first saw it. If he did, perhaps he was smart not to mention it. It’s very hard to motivate people to come with you if they know they will be trapped between chariots and a body of water. If he didn’t know, man can you imagine how he would have felt upon first seeing the extent of the problem. We discussed the plan that led to *needing a miracle*. Then someone said, perhaps this isn’t as uncommon as we thought. We just don’t know about the people who get pinned between seas and armies and don’t make it across.
*I keep 1 day of chag, even in the diaspora. Here is an explanation.
The same caveats apply to the Newsweek Vibrant Congregationslist that apply to their top rabbis list. The results of the Rabbi lists are strange and the methodology, insofar as it exists, is opaque and the criteria vague. The same holds true for the Newsweek Shuls list. That said, some good congregations get recognized and I wanted to point out one of them. Among those listed is the shul at which I grew up:
Germantown Jewish Centre, Philadelphia
A model for pluralistic and egalitarian worship and community.
As the short blurb points out it is a model for a certain kind of pluralism. Few, if any, synagogues have such a healthy approach to minyanim. GJC has two regularly meeting minyanim, one Reconstructionist and the other traditional egal. In the past decades these minaynim have been increasingly integrated into the broader synagogue community. The suspicion and competition that surrounds these sorts of multi-option communities has dissipated greatly over time. In addition to religious diversity GJC is actively engaged in social justice work and partnership with other progressive religious organizations in Philadelphia. Mazal tov, GJC, on some well deserved recognition.
Reading TheWanderingJew’s post the other day about Purim porn got me thinking about where Purim comes from. Most people would say, “well, of course, it comes from Shushan (Susa).” That’s only marginally correct.
Isn’t it weird that the hero of our story Esther has a name so much like the Assyrian/Babylonian goddess Ishtar?
We have Mordechai. Sumerian/Babylonian and Akkadian civilization had (has?) Marduk.
The original characters appear to have been Babylonian gods: Ishtar, the goddess of fertility; Marduk, the chief guardian of the heavens; and Haman, the underworld devil. Ishtar and Haman, life and death, vie with each other for supremacy. Ishtar triumphs; spring returns; and life is renewed. YHVH, the Hebrew God, played no part in the celebration, which was filled with theatrical renditions of the contest. Noisemaking and masquerading were necessary to trick the evil gods and to aid the good ones. Sexual orgies promoted fertility. Merriment was the order of the day.
I wonder if this fertility rite, which gave birth to Purim, has left it’s initial meaning with us in the form of tri-cornered yannic sweets full of tiny seeds. The hamentashen, of course, originally were filled with poppy seeds. The yiddish word for these seeds, mun, when combined with the name for pocket, taschen, gave rise to the modern word. I first heard this linguistic history from Marga Hirsch. I suspect though, that it isn’t so simple as being an Akkadian fertility cookie since it seems to have popped up in Eastern Europe. Is there a Sephardi or Mizrachi equivalent?
I should also point out that, as tight as the case may seem there is some substantial dispute on whether our near-eastern holiday with similar sounding characters is, in fact, related to older near-eastern rituals, holidays, etc. I haven’t weighed deeply into the linguistic analysis but my initial read is that most of the blowback is by Jews who are shocked, SHOCKED, to hear that many of our hagim are re-framings of pre-existing holidays. Perhaps they believe that someone else having something similar clouds our specialness or makes it seem less clear that ours is holy and theirs is a corruption of God’s word. I don’t worry about those things. (More accurately I worry about them insofar as people worrying about them is worrisome and damaging to world peace.) The case seems a pretty good fit, so let’s sit back, read megillat Ishtar and enjoy our deeply western-semitic story. Perhaps if you want to get very close to the original Purim, you might want to edge more in the direction of bacchanalia.
Do you have a social justice cause you are passionate about and want to pursue with the NHC Summer Institute community? Apply for the Hollander Social Justice Fellowship. You will receive a $400 scholarship towards Institute fees and up to $100 for materials or preparation, in exchange for planning social justice oriented programming for the NHC Summer Institute community. Your proposal needs to include at least three hours of programming on a relevant and nonpartisan social justice issue. This programming could consist of a daytime workshop (or series of workshops), an evening community-wide program, Kids Camp or Everett programs, and/or a Shabbat program. We expect that the strongest applications will come from people with at least three to five years of professional or volunteer experience in their area. Preference will be given to people involved in an ongoing social justice campaign (or launching a campaign) who wish to bring it to the NHC Summer Institute community.
Application
Submit a completed NHC Summer Institute registration form and deposit online. (Deposit is refundable if your application is not selected.) In addition, submit to hollanderfellow@havurah.org by March 30th, 2009 brief answers to the following questions in 2-3 pages:
* What are your project’s goals?
* How will the project be carried out (programming, methods, resources you will need)? Note that your plan needs to include at least three hours of programming.
* How can the issue be brought back to participants’ home communities? How is your project relevant to the NHC Summer Institute community?
* What resources/knowledge/skills do you bring to this project that will make it effective?
* What is your experience or background (professional or volunteer) with the social justice issue your project will address?
* Give an example of a successful social justice project you have worked on and describe your role was in helping make it successful.
I have been hearing about a cool new organization of Jews and Palestinians doing micro-credit work in the the West Bank. They are ready to launch. Here’s the info:
A group of students at Penn, including an Orthodox Jew and a Palestininan American, have started LendForPeace (a wordplay on Land for Peace) a Kiva-type Microfinance loan direct fund aimed at fostering Middle East Peace. It’s a very idealistic mission – that by lending to West Bank women micro-entrepreneurs, hope for the future will trump ideology and despair. They are launching the fund at a talk and event at Penn this Thursday night and the community is invited.
LendforPeace.org is proud to announce that it will launch to the world on February 5th, 2009!
Come be a part of the excitement by joining us at our launch event. As all four of LendforPeace.org’s founders have current or previous ties with the University of Pennsylvania, we thought there was no better place to launch the site than on Penn’s campus in Philadelphia. Here are the details:
LendforPeace.org Philadelphia Launch Event
7:00 PM, Thursday February 5, 2009
Jon M. Huntsman Hall F95
University of Pennsylvania
3730 Walnut Street
The launch event will include a presentation by the founders, an invocation from University Chaplain Chas Howard and a keynote address on active citizenship by Dr. John DiIulio, the first Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.
Our Philadelphia launch is brought to you in partnership with the Penn Israel Coalition, Penn for Palestine, the Penn Arab Students Society, Fox Leadership, the Middle East Center, PRISM, and the Penn Microfinance Club.
We plan to run events in a variety of other cities in the coming months to bring LendforPeace.org to you. If you would like to host a launch event in your city, let us know by emailing Team[at]lendforpeace.org. If you cannot make it to Philadelphia on the 5th, please visit us via the web next week and participate in LendforPeace.org’s mission to promote economic opportunity and political stability in the Middle East through microfinance.
This time of year when I go into stores to buy some groceries, deodorant, etc I am always greeted with that insipid Drummer Boy. When this happens to you, do you wish you could use the music in a Jewish liturgical context? I never had that impulse but LizziRose clearly did and she recorded a version of hallel using Christmas Carols. It’s very well done. She has a beautiful voice. If you like x-mas songs, hallel, or both, check it out.
For folks who are uncomfortable with the use of overtly culturally Christian music in this context, I have three responses. First, much of our “Jewish music” has been gathered non-Jewish groups around us. Secondly, I am not super up on Christmas carols but I suspect many of them were actually written by Jews if identity politics is your thing. Third, years ago, when I was studying Chassidut I came across the idea that many of the Rebbes took special pride in appropriating Polish/German/Russian tunes because then they could raise up the holy sparks contained in the song and move closer to redemption. Jingle Bells was published in 1857, perhaps it’s taken until now to have it’s sparks raised.
I must have missed this amazing onion article last month while I was out of town doing political election organizing.
Title: Area Man Saddened To Realize Short Jewish Women With An Interest In Theater His Type
Money quote:
Unable to deny his physical attraction to them any longer, Simms said that all a woman needed to turn him on was to be a member of God’s chosen people and struggle to reach her kitchen cupboards. In addition, Simms said that women capable of discussing Death Of A Salesman in a thick Brooklyn accent always made him lose his mind.
The whole thing is surely worth a read and also surely offensive, but it’s the onion.
The last several TLS meetings have been in a new location, All Souls Unitarian at 16th and Harvard in DC. This past Friday night was beautifully full of people and harmony. A couple hundred folks showed up, more than we have ever gotten in wintertime. I noticed a plaque indicating that John Quincy Adams was one of the founders of the congregation. What fun, to be davening in Adams’ Shul.
I often took the bus to the subway on my way to high school. In so doing I went through a fairly rough neighborhood. Outside the liquor store adjacent to the subway entrance there was always a congregation of street-dwelling folks. Many had drinking problems. Over time I got to know a guy named Malik. He was black. He always drank Manischewitz. I always wondered why. One day I asked. Malik said, “Manny’s Special is the best. You get drunk, right, but you also get sugar high.” I always thought it was an isolated incident until I read this newvoices article. Apparently, Manischewitz has a special marketing program designed to appeal to African-Americans and they export to Haiti. Who knew?
As an undergrad, I wrote my thesis on the immigration and business patterns of Gujaratis (especially in the US as a way to re-imagine ethnic entrepreneurial niches). Gujarat shares the West Coast of India with a few other provinces including Maharastra (home to Mumbai) and Kerala (home to Cochin and most of India’s native Jews and Christians). As a result of that research, I got the chance to read a fair amount about the long history of Indian Christians and Jews. All this to say, the history is fascinating and there is a great (brief but deep) synopsis of the two thousand year old story in a recent New Republic article. Here is a particularly intense passage:
“The Indian Jewish identity is the only one that hasn’t been created by persecution,” he said. “We’ve never felt scared. This is the first time we’ve been made to feel like Jews.” That, to me, has been among the most tragic casualties of this terrorist attack. In a barrage of grenades and bullets, a part of the Indian dream that’s 2,500 years old has now been buried in a pile of bloody concrete shards.
Check out the story and I hope you’ll share my interest and wonder whiter Indian Jewry.
Stephen M. Cohen is again studying an interesting topic using internet-based survey methodology. It is mostly good with a couple of vaguely worded questions and an unintentionally awkward one.
First, Congratz to Cohen on tackling interesting questions and providing mostly valuable data. Not many folks are doing that and it is to be commended.
The Good
He treats Israeli, American, Zionist, Religious, Secular, and Observant (Religiously) as independent Identities. It’s good to be able to narrow down you identity with several different axes. That said, what is the nuance intended between Observant (Religiously) and Religious?
The Awkward
Have you seen a movie with an Israeli orientation?
“Saw a movie with an Israeli orientation.” What’s the movie’s orientation? Is it into other movies? Plays? Nope. Israelis. Yes. It must have an Israeli orientation. More »
As was noted on these pages earlier today, an important countercultural critic died today. I thought I’d put up some video. Carlin did a lot of religious bits. His exegesis may be suspect but how many people get paid for their analysis of text anyways? Here he is talking about the 10 commandments as a marketing decision:
It’s a sad day for us fans everywhere. George Carlin: Zichrono Livracha.
I believe this is the first, and probably last time I will ever write this next phrase: DailyKos has a really funny post up that is both John McCain and Caves of Qumran themed.
In light of kos’ display of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, John McCain’s campaign has released a rare glimpse of the Republican candidate’s own birth certificate.
Thought lost for the ages, the document was found in a clay jar, in an abandoned cave, on the outskirts of Sedona, by a shepherd boy in 1947. The desert climate and the dry atmosphere in the caves kept the parchment remarkably well preserved.
Unfortunately, the language on the document is in Essene, a language which has been dead for about 1,900 years. So, much like a lot of Senator McCain’s modern-day speeches, press releases, and interviews, nobody can really comprehend what it says.
Well done OWCH. Both the Essenes and John McCain come from the desert, have strongly held eschatological beliefs, and have versions of the “straight talk express”. The big difference, of course, is that the Essenes were ascetic and avoided marriage. McCain likes marriage. In fact he was married to his first wife Carol when he went to war. She got disfigured in a terrible car accident and he soon divorced her and married a loaded beer heiress named Cindy source. I wonder what Josephus has to say about that.
Here is a recounting of a seder in Mali complete with lettuce hanging from trees, torrential rains, mango-based charoset, and several haggadot shipped from the united states. Jess and Ari, our seder-leading beacons of light, can make just about anything accessible to anyone by identifying the core themes and creating gateways while staying true to the source. It’s really amazing.
It is fairly well known that, in Israel, many recognize and observe seven days of pesach and a single seder whereas, outside of Israel, many recognize 8 days of pesach and two seders as proper observance.
Where did the extra day come from?
A piece over at my jewish learning does a good job explaining:
The Jewish calendar is lunar. Over 2,000 years ago, a council of rabbis from the Sanhedrin, the ancient legislative and judicial body, held special sessions in Jerusalem at the end of each lunar month to receive witnesses to the first sliver of the new moon. Because a lunar cycle is approximately 29 days long, it was no mystery when the new moon should appear, but the Sanhedrin still declared months and holidays only on the basis of these witnesses. …
Once the sighting was legitimated, the rabbis declared the next day Rosh Hodesh, the beginning of the new month. Originally, beacon fires would be set on mountaintops to spread the word to distant Jewish communities already living in far away places such as Egypt and Babylon. Watchers on faraway hills set their beacon fires as soon as they saw them, continuing the relay “until one could behold the whole of the Diaspora before him like a mass of fire” (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 2:4)… Celebrating festivals for an extra day would ensure that, regardless of whatever confusion reigned about the exact start of the new month, at least one day of their celebration would be on the correct day.
Okay, that makes sense but we started to switch to a rule-based fixed-arithmetic lunisolar calendar system after the destruction of the second temple. That made the days designed to prevent error obsolete since everyone everywhere in the world used the same system and derived the days similarly. It no longer mattered how close one was to the Sanhedrin so why keep the extra days?
At the end of Beitzah 4b that issue is addressed. “Now that we know the fixed new month, what’s the reason for doing two days?” The answer there is hizaharu b’minhag avoteichem (be careful about your ancestors’ minhag), because in the future there might be a decree preventing us from keeping the calendar…And we can even agree on the value of minhag avoteinu (see Beitzah 4b), and you can follow the minhag of your ancestors who kept 2 days, while I’ll follow the minhag of my ancestors who have been Reform for at least five generations.
The other common answer is given by a Rabbi from Aish here:
So why was a second day Yom Tov added? In order to make a distinction, to add to the Jewish awareness that one is living in the Diaspora and does not claim permanent residence in the Holy Land.
BZ’s answer to Minhag Avoteinu is compelling as is the issue that there has ceased to be a consistent mihag in the diaspora. The Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist, and Conservative movements have all offered decisions permitting the use of a 7-day pesach. Here is some CCAR (Reform) analysis. The Cons and Recon movements both provide flexibility for local congregations but the result is that a majority of American Jews, and nearly all Israeli Jews fall under a 7-day authority. Many have been in such a situation for generations.
Now to respond to the idea that we should have an extra seder to remember we aren’t in Israel…
Was anyone really confused? In case you were here are ten ways to conclude you are in the US rather than in Israel that have nothing to do with extra days of passover.
10:The falafel is overpriced and underspiced.
9: Municipal services are transparent and efficient.
8: Sunday is for football not school.
7: Teacher strikes are generally limited to a few days, max.
6: People talk slowly and get uncomfortable with interruptions (supreme court excepted).
5: Holocaust jokes are rare and usually generate discomfort.
4: People have difficulty making political and religious assumptions based on the type of kippah a person is wearing. Many can’t remember the word and use “beanie” or “skull cap” instead.
3: Though people talk about God non-stop in government there aren’t religious parties associated with single religious approached.
2: Nation’s founders where individual rather than collective farmers.
1: Look around. No occupations and settlements for miles in any direction? You probably aren’t in Israel.*
The last several 
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