This spring, JDub expanded its work into literature with Adam Mansbach’s novel, The End of the Jews. We took this on because we really loved this book. If you haven’t read it yet, i highly suggest you add it to your spring/summer reading list. It’s a multi-generational Jewish family epic tracing assimilation, family disintegration, and the unending (and sometimes uncontrollable) artistic pursuit.
Its something of a Jewish remix of the American race novel: stoned bar mitzvah DJs coercing people to dance the hora to Eric B & Rakim’s “Microphone Fiend,” a Czech girl passing for black in America, swaggering Jewish geniuses remaking postwar American culture, and grandfather-and-grandson graffiti missions:(caught in part here).
It’s time to get your tickets for BamatMabat’s newest show. BamatMabat – the experimental Jerusalem theater company founded this year by Talia Weiss and my good friend DeDe — will be presenting “Doubt, a Parable” early next month. You’ll want to act fast, considering how many of their past shows (including the one-page play festival “Teudat Zehut”, and Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant and a Prayer”) have sold out…
BamatMabat Theater Company invites you to come see “Doubt, a Parable,” a brilliant and powerful drama in which a Catholic school principal takes matters into her own hands when she suspects a young priest of improper relations with one of the male students.
The Pulitzer and Tony-award winning play deals with themes of conviction vs. uncertainty in exploring how a religious community deals with clergy abuse.
Starring Erin Maidan Greenberg, Shimshon Stu Siegel, Shira Katz and Rachel Beitsch.
Directed by DeDe Jacobs Komisar and Jose Portuondo.
Dates and times: Tuesday June 3, 8 pm
Thursday June 5, 8 pm
Tuesday June 10, 8 pm
Thursday June 12, 8 pm
Since yesterday was mother’s day, and today’s sefirotic interpretation of the Omer quirkily translates itself in the book I’m using as “Discipline in Endurance” …
Jewish mothers are a dying breed. Is this good? Is it bad? I don’t know, but I don’t know anyone who qualifies under the stereotypical description. But it’s more than that. As I’ve mentioned before, the Jewish community, for all its frothing at the mouth about continuity, makes it nearly impossible for young Jews to make the parenthood choice in any rational way.
While the Conservative movement recently told us all., yet again, to have more babies sooner, no one is willing to take the step of saying that the Jewish community needs to make a commitment to things like: paid parental leave for every Jew employed by a a Jewish institution or agency. Quality day care subsidized by our communities. Day school for everyone who wants to send their kids to it -and heavily subsidized so not only the well off can afford it- and a much better system of religious education for those who don’t. More truth telling about the flaws of Israel within a context of love for the country and its inhabitants.
But the truth is, that’s not really what the Jewish community wants. It’s far easier to wail and moan about how Jews growing up don’t value Judaism, how we’re all so individualistic that we don’t care about community, and how all the young people don’t care about Israel, and women aren’t having enough babies because they’re busy having careers instead. None of it’s true, but it’s much easier than looking ourselves in the face and doing something hard: changing the way we live.
Oh and while we’re at it, why don’t we throw out nonsensical solutions to problems, like saying that since boys aren’t flocking to liberal Judaism, the best thing we need to do is start having men only clubs and meetings. yes, that certainly will solve the problem, because as we all know the reason boys are leaving Judaism (YAWN) isn’t because boys have much greater pressure to excel at sports, or because their parents let them quit after bar mitzvah, or because Judaism is treated as hobby. Nope, it must be the girls, because as we all know, teenage boys aren’t interested in being anywhere around girls.
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A new graphic novel, “The Rabbi’s Cat,” taking place in Algiers in the 30’s, starring a rabbi and a nameless talking cat.
I haven’t read it yet, but I surely will soon.
The other, longer story in the new volume is “Africa’s Jerusalem,” a zigzagging tale that starts out as a “Tintin”-like adventure and eventually evolves into a love story, graced at its conclusion with bracing flashes of eroticism. (Tintin, in fact, comes in for a drubbing: He turns up for a page as an arrogant, racist reporter, Sfar’s upraised middle finger to French comics master Hergé’s infamous “Tintin in the Congo.”) In an introductory note, Sfar claims that “Africa’s Jerusalem” is “a graphic novel against racism,” which it is, but it’s also another opportunity for him to avoid the risk of the series falling into a formula.
The story begins when the rabbi receives a mysterious crate; instead of the books he expects, it contains a Russian Jewish painter who has tried to ship himself to Addis Ababa to find a rumored Jewish homeland in Ethiopia. (He only speaks Russian, and the Algerians don’t understand it at all; fortunately, the cat understands all languages.) Joined by a rich, arrogant local Russian man and the rabbi’s cousin, a sheik who’s also part of the Sfar family, they drive off to find Jerusalem in Africa.
I’m afraid I’m not up for much tonight, but it is Week four, day one,
Chesed of Netzach.
IN the meantime, here is a review on Salon of what looks to be an interesting book: “A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World,” by journalist Tony Horwitz
Start with this. Ponce de Léon went to Florida to find not a fountain of youth but the same things that drew every Spanish invader: gold and slaves. (He found neither.) The first Protestant refuge in North America wasn’t Plymouth but La Caroline, a fort built on the Florida coast in 1564 by the above-mentioned Huguenots. A year later, their slaughterer Menéndez held what was possibly America’s first Thanksgiving dinner, well attended by local Indians.
On and on it goes: a hemorrhaging of certainty. The first European child born in North America? Not Virginia Dare but, more likely, a Viking boy named Snorri, born circa 1000 A.D. in what the Norse liked to call Vinland. The true founding father of New England? Not Bradford, not Standish, but John Smith, who gave the region its name and actively promoted its colonization.
And what about those flat-earthers who thought Columbus would tumble off the world’s edge? You can blame that little fiction on Washington Irving. The Greeks had long ago figured out the world was round, and for more than 700 years, even the Catholic Church had accepted it. The only thing Spaniards were still debating in 1492 was the distance to Asia. In this, as in so many other matters, Columbus was mistaken.
Just to mix things up a little: A call for subs for an anthology that has nothing to do with either the election race or Israel! Rather, Orthodykes. I don’t know any more than what’s below, so please follow submission guidelines or pass along to potentially interested parties…..
Call for Submissions:
KEEP YOUR WIVES AWAY FROM THEM:
AN ANTHOLOGY OF WRITINGS BY AND ABOUT ORTHODYKES
Deadline: July 31, 2008
Jewish women who are bisexual, transgender, lesbian or queer-identified live lives that can often be fraught with discord. But they have also mined the complexities and contradictions that come with these identities as sources for spiritual change, ritual innovation and community building. Keep Your Wives Away From Them is an anthology of professional scholarly essays and personal journalistic pieces that will document the stories of those who have lived in the meeting-ground of Judaism and queer desire. This anthology, in calling attention to an otherwise hidden or silent population of women, will unravel the puzzle of a seemingly impossible identity. It will also document the rich innovations in Jewish and queer life in the communities of Jewish LBTQ women and female born genderqueer individuals that have developed in around the world over the past 25 years.
In a course at the U of North Texas, R’ Geoffrey Dennis asked his students to offer a kabbalistic commentary on U2’s mysterious ways. He’s posted some of the choicest bits over at his blog.
Johnny take a dive with your sister in the rain
K.Gr. - Water = Divine experience.
A.D. - Go to the waterside and pray. The Shekhinah will reveal the hidden to you and your soul will awaken.
W. Got - [Into] the feminine side of the Sefirot power.
K.F. - Let [God's] glory fall on you; dive as deep as you can.
Let her talk about the things you can’t explain
J.P.H. - The esoteric.
V.I. - Donkey drivers and women can reveal things that are profound, even thought they don’t seem important.
C.D. - A tzadik or rebbe is required to talk about the things you [the hasid] can’t explain yourself.
K.F. - Find the meaning, keep asking questions.
Anybody got any other pop songs with obvious kabbalistic imagery? YehuditBrachah once told me that “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bil Withers is about the departure of the Shekhina. Full story.
There are 613 mitzvot (commandments from God) that all Jews are supposed to follow. Some of them are easy to understand and apply to modern day life, while others seem antiquated and irrelevant. We invite you to ponder the 613 rules and to submit your own (re)interpretation of what they mean to us today.
Just as a sampling, here are a few of the site’s most recent submissions:
Don’t shit in your own backyard. a remix of Mitzvah 609 by Reamworks SKG
Do not commit incest with one’s wife’s sister, unless you want to end up as a character in a Star Wars movie a remix of Mitzvah 100 by Anonymous
Do not repeat the mistakes of history. a remix of Mitzvah 356 by Anonymous
Pick a day to hang out and do nothing but play Grand Theft Auto and get stoned. a remix of Mitzvah 111 by Nathan “The HIGHrophant”
All this stuff is going to get rolled into an art project to debut at the annual DAWN project in San Francisco on June 7.
Jewschool would like to congratulate our colleagues at Jewcy and Zeek on their new partnership:
Zeek, an online journal that has helped shape modern Jewish-American culture, today announced that it is joining forces with Jewcy.com, one of the web’s most innovative and rapidly-growing online communities. Beginning today [May 1], Zeek’s online content will be published at www.jewcy.com/zeek.
Zeek joins Jewcy as the first content partner in Jewcy’s initiative to create a publishing network of editorial sites serving the YoCo psychographic – young, culturally omnivorous Americans looking for meaning and community.
“We are joining strength with strength,” said Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, chief editor of Zeek and formerly the managing editor of Tikkun magazine. “We’re a leader in Jewish intellectual, cultural, artistic, and spiritual life, and Jewcy is the largest and most dynamic Jewish community on the internet.”
“Zeek is the first of many partnerships to come in our effort to assemble an all-star team of the nation’s most original, creative voices,” said Tahl Raz, CEO and founding editor with Joey Kurtzman. Kurtzman added: “Zeek consistently publishes daring, groundbreaking work. This had to happen.”
Zeek will retain its editorial independence and continue to publish its print journal. Its most recent issue, published last month, is a 120-page anthology of Russian-Jewish art, fiction, and poetry.
The venture is the first such merger among the publications and organizations collectively known as the ‘new Jewish culture,’ and represents a joining of two of the leading forces in independent Jewish media. Said Kaiser, “This is a natural evolution of the work all of us have been doing, and we’re thrilled to be joining forces.”
We applaud the proliferation of indy-Jew-media. Mazal tov!
Netzach of Chesed William Shatner doing the Exodus story. Yes, I think that qualifies for a post about endurance in mercy, if only in the lack thereof. OTOH, maybe it’s fabulous. A new movie coming out too … about crashing a Shivah.
On New Israel Fund’s Yom Haatzmaut season line up: instigator Bernard Avishai, satirist Sayed Kashua, NIF’s first International Town Hall web cast, and a benefit dinner celebrating out going NIF chairman Peter Edelman, featuring Seymour Hersch Calvin Trillin of The New Yorker and friends.
I highly have to recommend Sayed Kashua — writer and producer for the Israeli sitcom Arab Labor, Haaretz columnist, and author of two books of great Israeli fiction – at the JCC in Manhattan on May 16. A full Shabbat dinner, a little irreverent humor about being brown and Israeli, and the folks of New Israel Fund’s New Generations plus the JCC’s Other Israel Festival. RSVP here, $36 $28. A sample of Sayed’s satire posted here.
Honor Killings. Hayv Kahraman. Iraq/Italy/Sweden/USA. Kahraman’s work, inspired by Asian motifs, explores minority discourse in the Middle East and Kurdish and gender identity in a region wracked by war.
An extremely complicated policy of religious conservatism and cultural experimentation coexists in Dubai, where wealth allows the multinational population a unique ability to explore, experience and purchase postmodernity in a region long known for its old-fashioned ways. Hayv Kahraman, a Kurdish Iraqi artist living in the US, is currently showing her work in Dubai and Turkey.
Whatever you think about the 37 billion dollar economy in Dubai, the cultural flowering taking place in the Gulf is breathtaking. With galleries and museums sprouting by the day, the gilded emirate is becoming the place where young Middle Eatern artists show, and sell, their work. Jewschool will be introducing the work of artists working in the Middle East in the coming months. In an effort to expose our readers to contemporary Near Eastern visual culture we hope we can be a springboard for new Jewish imaging as well.
Pixish, this site that does image contests and peer review stuff, is posting a contest for the best representation of a friendly cartoon rabbi. Predictably, the threesubmissions up (at the time of this posting; all by the same guy) are of typical white-haired, bearded males, reinforcing all the stereotypes of Jewish authority as solely in the hands of wizened old men.
Isn’t it time for some new images of rabbis? Why do the creators of cultural output still so often presume that they’re male, or white, or old, or straight or stodgy?
I encourage all of you cartoon-oriented people to have at this contest–and to post your submissions here, too, in the comments. Let’s see what kind of shaking up can be done, hmm?
Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Jewish poet, feminist, has written another book that should sit on all our bookshelves. For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book is Ostriker’s most recent book of essays addressing the and re-interpreting six of our richest biblical texts: Song of Songs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Jonah and Job. Many of these are wells from which modern midrashists and feminists have drawn much water, but Ostriker is able to revisit many drawing new inspiration and showing how many of our traditional readings of these texts leave out a great deal that lies as subtext, and from which we can draw new strength and meaning.
Some of the readings address battles which have largely been fought, and which younger feminists, even younger Jewish feminists may feel are over. Yet, the truth is we keep revisiting them: in the secular world, when new movements form to try to make contraception illegal once again; in the Jewish world,women are still outnumbered as institutional leaders, presidents, and rabbis, in both worlds, getting paid less and receiving fewer benefits, being penalized for having children, and being constantly bombarded by bad science about how we ought to go back to the home. And of course, the battle is not won: not in Judaism, where there are still branches of Judaism in which women do not count, communities in which women have been so under pressure as those who lead men astray that against their rabbis’ wills, they have taken on wearing clothes that cover them more thoroughly than any Muslim full-body covering, some even covering their eyes and being led about inthe street by children.And of courswe, there is a world full of other traditions, religions and societies in which women remain bound, hand and foot by men to whom they did not wish to wed, where they live only to serve, to husbands (in the sense of that word: one who dominates or cultivates) to whom they remain property.
From her essay on Song of Songs:
“Open to me,” Says the lover, but women understandably hesitate to do so. “I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?” Better to stay safely in one’s place, not make waves. For what happens -according to respected Jewish tradition- to a woman who goes public with her spiritual need, whose yearning is larger than a kitchen, who does not hide behind a mehitza? What happens to the learned Beruria…Her devoted husband Rabbi Meir instigates one of his disciples to seduce her in order to prove that women are flighty. When the disciple finally overcomes her resistance, she kills herself for shame, but no one seems to think Rabbi Meir should be ashamed….What happens to women at the Wall? We are not speaking of allegory here, but real life. Women who dare to pray aloud with Torah in hand at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jeruslem, have been spat on, cursed, called whore. They have had chairs thrown at them, they have been beaten up and hospitalize, and they - they, not their assailants- have been arrested. ….As it is uncannily written, “The Keepers of the walls took away my veil from me. More »
I produced this event last year but this year am excited to attend as a pure consumer…come with?
The Young Adult Feast of Jewish Learning
Sunday, March 30 - 4:00 - 9:30 pm
at the JCCSF at 3200 California Street in San Francisco
This event is free and incredibly welcoming. It is one of the only times during the year that in the Bay Area, Jews of literally every stripe come together to learn Torah. There are workshops for those with huge Jewish backgrounds as well as for those who are just beginning an exploration. There will be 22 classes on everything from comedy to Yiddish to cooking to prayer to social justice to kabbalah to Maimonides to lust. The food is kosher, there will be free beer and a reggae act.
This is a really, really good way to get a taste of what’s up Jewishly in the Bay Area, and probably to meet some people too. I really can’t recommend it highly enough. Check out the lineup and logistics here
My former classmate Matt Bar is the founder of The Bible Raps Project, “a holistic educational venture centered on rap music, aimed at creating a sense of wonder and appreciation for Biblical Jewish texts and Midrash.” He has an album due out this summer which integrates original pieces with online curriculum.
This won’t be the last time we get to enjoy Matt’s entertainment/education excellent-ness. This independent video was produced in Jerusalem and we now bring it to you here:
The two photos above, shot by Dotan Greenvald, are part of the Breaking the Silenceexhibit, supported by your very own Jewschool, which remains open for guided tours at Harvard Hillel in Boston through through March 16th. My recent visit to the exhibit was intense, eye opening, and almost magical in its ability to cut through all of the rhetoric and illustrate humanity.
These photos, like much of the exhibit, seek to demonstrate the realities experienced by many IDF soldiers serving at checkpoints, on patrols and fulfilling other tasks in the Occupied Territories, as told through the narratives of soldiers giving tours of the photo exhibit, and testimonials available at the exhibit and online.
All of the photos were from the personal collections of soldiers who served in the territories- they took pictures as part of their daily life, and to document their experiences serving their country. According to my guide at the exhibit, Oded Naaman, a former IDF soldier affiliated with Breaking the Silence, one of the behaviors mastered quickly by soldiers serving in the territories, is the practice of pointing one’s gun ahead of one’s body before moving in any direction, in order to “show presence” and be ready for danger. Greenvald, who is the other former IDF soldier who has been giving tours of the exhibit in Boston, was interested in capturing some of the nuance of this behavior–the degree to which one ends up viewing everything through the scope of his weapon. In the first shot, he views an innocent thirteen year old boy tending pigeons on his roof in the West-Casba. Juxtaposed with this, he photographed two of his friends talking, also through the lens of his gun, with his nigh-vision scope. Oded explained the quickness and ease with which humans adapt to the many behaviors necessary for these soldiers carrying out the work of the occupation–such as pointing your gun at children and your friends.
This is one of several visual memories which stand out as ideas and feelings which can never be captured in a policy briefing paper, newspaper editorial or email. They are the very real experiences happening each to day to adolescents barely old enough to vote, in whose hands the day-to-day necessities of the occupation are held.
When we [rightfully] consider the lives of innocent Israelis killed in bombings or innocent Palestinian children killed by IDF fire, this exhibit asks us also to consider the toll that the occupation takes on those who carry out its essential functions, and the effect these experiences have on Israeli society more broadly. For those in the Boston area, I highly recommend a visit to glimpse the images and hear the stories of the occupying soldiers.
A short video clip from this past weekend’s first-ever Limmud Southeast:
A little self-promotion: This is part of the “Moses in a Megachurch” speech about a Jewish journalist who spent a year immersed in Christianity. For the complete speech, please see http://myjesusyear.com/limmud2008.mov — And to pre-order your copy of the book, please visit http://myjesusyear.com.
There were many times when we worried that one move too far into the mainstream, one step beyond the very traditional bounds of the Orthodox world, could bring a ban on a certain very tall Hasid. We took a lot of questions to the Bet Din at 770 and respected the answers they gave, but always, always, I had this concern. Seems in another part of “the Jewish music jungle” (Thanks frumhouse, i love that term), just such a ban has been decreed. Does anyone care? Will anyone follow it? I just find this too intriguing not to share…
Have you heard of The Big Event? If so, for the love of Hashem, write a comment and chime in. I love how the Ultra-Orthodox world can randomly swing into Madison Square Garden and it flies totally under the radar of the rest of the Jewish world. Apparently, it is/was a concert planned for March 9th featuring frum music favorites headlined by Lipa Shmeltzer. Lipa really is a King. A wedding singer and simcha entertainer, he gained prominence with his lighthearted rewrites of secular tunes as newly Kosherfied hits in both Yiddish and English. He performed at a friend’s wedding and while his “Yo Ya” was good, he really got me with version of Melanie C’s “I turn to you.” Apparently you can make it Jewish simply by adding “Hashem” before the phrase. ANYWAYS…
I’ll let the frum bloggers explain from here: Frumhouse:Basically, the current king of the Jewish music jungle, Lipa Schmeltzer, has been deemed too wild by certain factions of the orthodox community. Furthermore, these factions believe that current Jewish music has become goyified (my word, not theirs). Songs that stem from non-Jewish melodies, even if the words and taam have been changed to elevate their kiddusha, are deemed inappropriate for kosher Jewish entertainment.
This concert and future Jewish music concerts have been banned by a group of about 35 rabbanim. They also prohibit people from hiring any performer who participates in the Big Event Concert.
Lipa speaks out: I have recently started learning Bichavrusa with a leading Rosh Yeshiva, and I promised him that I will never sing any songs which were composed by non-Jews. Being true to my word, I have sang at more then a dozen Chasuna’s since I made that decision - and I have not sang “Yidden”, “Abi-Mileibt”, or “Numa” (Rabbi Nachman M’uman) or any other song that is questionable as to its origin.
The really ironic thing to me about this is many Hasidic niggunim, and most Jewish music in general, doesn’t come from exclusively Jewish sources. We are a people with a tradition of song as a vital form of expression in our lives. But with the exception of Torah cantillation as a system of musical notation and musical modes of prayer, as a Diaspora people our appropriation of the culture of our various host communities is inevitable. What makes Klezmer more Jewish than pop songs about Hanukkah? What makes pining for Hashem to the tune of a French Revolutionary War March more Kosher than pining to Hashem to the tune of an ex-Spice Girl?
There were many times when we worried that one move too far into the mainstream, one step beyond the very traditional bounds of the Orthodox world, could bring a ban on a certain very tall Hasid. We took a lot of questions to the Bet Din at 770 and respected the answers they gave, but always, always, I had this concern. Seems in another part of “the Jewish music jungle” (Thanks 
