Of special importance to all of us in online content creation, Hitler now screams at the inanity of the SOPA and PIPA bills presently under protest by Wikipedia, Google, Reddit and other sites. Learn more and contact your Congresspersons here.
As the new year begins, here at Jewschool we put together an entirely unscientific, completely biased view of some of the best and worst of 2011.
2011 was simultaneously one of the most inspiring and dispiriting years I can think of. From the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords way back at the beginning of the year, to the passing of important greats like Debbie Friedman, to Occupy Judaism’s prominent place in the Occupy Everything movement. Israel has been a roller coaster, between the hopefulness of the J-14 protests to their quiet whimpering away, new settler attacks, undemocratic legislation, and fights over gender segregation. However, it was a mostly great year for the arts, despite JDub Records’ closing. Here’s to a new year with more distillants, and less despirits.
In today’s popular American culture, expecting celebrities often recede from the limelight while pregnant. In her new EP, Beautiful Land, singer/songwriter Chana Rothman actively embraces the opportunity to channel her creative energy into an unforgettable musical journey, specifically during her pregnancy. The result is a celebration of life, brimming with heartfelt empathy, mesmerising grooves, and earthy splendor.
Photo by Elise Warshavsky
In just six tracks, Rothman creates a universe, transporting the listener to a different realm, one in which emotional honesty and whimsical funkiness reign supreme. Rothman’s music resides somewhere between the intersection of pop, folk, and ethnic, but she transcends all of them. As Rothman’s music demonstrates, we live in a thoroughly cosmopolitan, interconnected time, when such designations are essentially irrelevant labels.
The opening track, Shine, offers a life-affirming message to young people, with its light, breezy groove. The title track, Beautiful Land, showcases Rothman’s impressive stylistic and thematic versatility. Inspired by her travels in Jamaica, Rothman wrote this loving, polyrhythmic reggae-infused piece as a tribute to its people. Accented with hints of a West African groove, Beautiful Land conjures up distant times and lands, while insisting on a temporal and spatial immediacy with its hypnotic rhythms and gentle melody.
Of all the pieces on this EP, Inadequate packs in the most nerve and verve, with its brutally honest lyrics, reflecting on body image. Other reviewers likened Rothman’s lyrically-driven Inadequate to Ani DiFranco—and this was my initial association. One could also compare this track to India Arie’s I’m Not My Hair, but Rothman’s upbeat and bluesy piece has much more flavor, political punch, and lyrical colour.
In Come on Home, Rothman shifts gears again, this time offering a poignantly understated elegiac ballad. A modern-day Psalm of sorts, this piece never names the subject of its mourning, but rather evokes a flood of feeling and taps the core of the experience of loss. The following track again radically departs into an entirely different feeling and space. Listening to Baby Do That Dance for Me, one almost expects Django Reinhardt to surface magically and rip into one of his legendary hot jazz guitar solos. This joyful and jazzily ambient piece certainly makes you want to rise to your feet and dance along.
Remember Your Name, the other ballad on this EP, is the final track and mourns the loss of Michael Jackson, while also reflecting on his legacy and memory. Enlisting Soulfarm guitarist C Lanzbom’s help on the slide guitar, this track serves as an apt coda to an album which amply attests to the restorative power of music. Beautiful Land, which is available in stores starting today (and will be available digitally beginning Thursday, December 8), would make a gloriously soulful Hanukkah gift for the music lovers on your list.
'Beautiful Land' cover art: Graphic design by Michelle Nichols; Artwork by Michele Kishita
We’ve alreadywritten about the Kol Nidre service that Jewschool founder Dan Sieradski organized at Occupy Wall Street, as well as the companion services at other Occupy events around the country. Other media took quite a bit of notice as well, including this rather shoddy Commentary piece:
Last week, a self-described “new media activist” posted a Facebook event page for a Kol Nidre service at the “Occupy Wall Street” protests. The turnout the event generated, as well as the discussion it has so far provoked, are deeply troubling trends that all who care about the Jewish future would do well to take seriously.
Aren’t we usually concerned that the Jews of today don’t care about being Jewish anymore? Yet when an event comes along that brings together hundreds of Jews on less than a week’s notice, it gets criticized because it’s too effective?
During the years, those whose politics tend toward the right have had to accustom themselves to the unthinking sanctimony of leftists who rage against any semblance of an alliance of religion and right-wing politics…
“Those whose politics tend toward the right” vs. “leftists.” Notice the difference in language? It’s an attempt to paint “those whose politics tend towards the right” as inherently more reasonable than those crazy “leftists.” Liberals are blinded by their rabid ideology, while conservatives hold informed and moderate beliefs.
Furthermore, what we liberals tend to object to is not the “alliance” of religion and politics. Rather, we object to the use of political power to advance a religious agenda. Occupy Yom Kippur is the opposite of that: it’s a call for political change based on religious beliefs about morality. Having religiously-based opinions on political issues is perfectly legitimate: it’s protected by the free exercise clause. Using political power to influence religious matters is prohibited by the same (or by the establishment cause, depending on the context).
It must be said there is of course justification to be found for specifically economic protests of a leftist variety in the prophets, perhaps most especially Isaiah. But it stretches truth far beyond the breaking point to claim such texts based on conditions in ancient Israel offer much guidance for the policy questions of our day…
Here’s a post on Commentary’s blog that describes Itamar, the settlement where the Fogel family was brutally murdered, as located in “Samaria,” “an area with biblical significance.” I expect Commentary will quickly correct that language, since it’s “based on conditions in ancient Israel” that don’t “offer much guidance for the policy questions of our day.”
Oh, and I found that post by searching “Samaria” on Commentary’s site. It was the top hit. Here are twomore recent articles from the first page of results where Commentary uses or expresses support for the biblical name for the territory now known as the West Bank.
Let their successes be few, and the passage of their movement from the American Jewish scene swift.
Seriously, I just can’t get over the pretension implicit in so much of the Jewish mainstream media. One minute they’re telling us all to stick together in the face of adversity, dire threats to Jewish peoplehood, and (gasp!) anti-Zionism. The next they’re condemning a Jewish grassroots movement that has a lot of people very excited. I understand that they disagree with the movement’s goals. That’s their right. But the condescension with which they approach it is reminiscent of, well, the rest of the mainstream media. In other words, they’re not exactly in good company.
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
+972 Mag is a brilliant idea. Take a dozen lefty Israeli activists, freelance journalists and independent analysts who blog separately in English and then consolidate their personal bloggings together in a sharp, clearly organized portal for the Anglo-speaking world to read first-hand accounts of political action in Israel and the territories. Few blogs on Israel-Palestine are a majority of original reporting and even fewer are as politically diverse as they are. If they blogged about Judaism every once in a while, they may as well be Jewschool’s sibling blog.
Kol Nidrei service at Occupy Wall Street via The Jewish Week
This guestpost is by Mik Moore, a writer and campaign strategist, and the principal partner at Mik Moore Consulting LLC.
This morning I got up, poured myself a bowl of cereal and opened the NYTimes. Eventually I came to David Brooks’ column. A largely forgettable critique of the Occupy Wall Street protests for being insufficiently radical, it included this nugget:
Take the Occupy Wall Street movement. This uprising was sparked by the magazine Adbusters, previously best known for the 2004 essay, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” — an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy.
This is classic Brooks. He writes something that appears innocent enough on its face, but is really underhanded, dishonest, and incendiary.
So, what’s going on here? In short, the right is looking for a way to discredit Occupy Wall Street, and so far nothing seems to stick. Hard to portray them as a mob when they are non-violent. Hard to portray them as just a bunch of hippies when so many different people are participating. Hard to portray them as radicals when their critiques are relatively mainstream.
Brooks has a different idea. Why not call them antisemites? Maybe that will slow them down.
For anyone who takes seriously accusations of antisemitism – and I do – this is dangerous. Crying “antisemitism!” when it isn’t there makes it more difficult to combat real antisemitism. It also makes young Jews cynical and older Jews scared.
Because Brooks thinks he’s slick, he doesn’t come out and say the protest organizers are antisemites. He just implies it. And if the tree (Adbusters) is tainted, don’t eat those apples (OWS)! Because what was the nature of Adbusters antisemitism, according to Brooks? “[A]n investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy.”
An influential elite! Controling policy! Hey, isn’t that what these folks down on Wall Street say they are protesting? It doesn’t take much to connect Brooks’ dots.
Don’t buy it? You must not listen to Rush Limbaugh. On his radio show, Rush picked up on Brooks’ inference. But unlike Brooks, Rush doesn’t beat around the bush. According to Rush, the 99% are the gentiles. The 1% are the Jews. Wall Street bankers is code for rich Jews. It all makes sense!
Brooks is counting on his well tended reputation to enable him to play the antisemitism card and get away with it. He shouldn’t. What he is doing is divisive. It diminishes real antisemitism. And it ignores the thousands of Jews who are active participants in shaping Occupy Wall Street.
This photograph (above) was taken for The Jewish Week during Kol Nidre services, held across from Zuccotti Park in support of Occupy Wall Street. Their presence alone should suffice as a rebuttal to Brooks’ insufferable insinuation.
Urgent question: Anyone out there have a concise statement about Occupy Wall Street that would be a show of solidarity with the protesters. I need one suitable for a rabbi to read to his/her congregants on Kol Nidre this coming Friday night. The Collective Statement of the Protesters is a powerful manifesto, but the strong tone of confrontation on a night that stresses self reflection does not feel in the spirit of vidui (confessing sins) and forgiveness. If a well crafted statement that acknowledges the galvanized efforts of people around the country around the issues of economic justice and corporate responsibility exists, it should find its way to many pulpits this Yom Kippur.
In what seems like a development only possible on the satirical pages of the Onion, Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions has just unveiled plans to co-finance a new film about Judah Maccabee, with Joe Eszterhaus of Showgirls fame onboard as screenwriter. This is too good to be true. I mean, who better than Mel Gibson, the man who boldly asserted that Jews are responsible for all wars in the world, to capture the quintessential epic military struggle of Jewish national religious pride versus the lures of assimilation?
In light of this exciting news, I’d like to offer Mr. Gibson some free advice as preparations go underway for this sure-fire blockbuster:
Free Casting Advice to Mel Gibson from a Jewgirl Cinephile:
The first one is a no-brainer: we’re casting Russell Crowe as Matisyahu (if the connection isn’t obvious to you already, here’s a hint: follow the first link and check out 1Maccabees 2:46)
The role of Judah Maccabee is a tough call, but I think our winner is Vincent Gallo.
In his debut dramatic performance, Prince Harry of England will play Jonathan Maccabeus, and comedian Andy Dick will play Simon Maccabeus. John Hyrcanus will be played by Rick Sanchez.
Charlie Sheen needs a role in this cinematic masterpiece as well. Let’s cast him as Eleazer Maccabeus.
We’re going to offer the role of Antiochus to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—an offer he surely can’t turn down.
Oh, and wardrobe will definitely be by John Galliano.
Well, time will only tell what choices Gibson will make, but if he sticks to my above plan, we’re going to have something even greater than The Passion of the Christ (2004). Or, as Reb Yudel puts it, “If Gibson’s Hanukkah film succeeds, can his Tisha b’Av blockbuster be far behind?”
Incidentally, I vividly recall dragging a date to a Sunday matinee screening of his last Jew epic in 2004. We paid for two tickets to see Dirty Dancing: Havana Nightsin the hopes that our tickets wouldn’t profit Gibson’s film, but later, a friend in the industry explained to me that films only benefit from concession stand money, not from actual ticket sales. Alas. The film itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy, aside from its curious subtitling choices. While Gibson promised to cut out any direct implication of the Jews in Jesus’ crucifixion, the English subtitling did not always match the Aramaic dialogue onscreen. (I attended a high school which forced us to learn Aramaic. Now on facebook, I smugly resent that under the languages option, there is an “Aramaic of Jesus” and not also an ‘Aramaic of Rabban Gamliel.”) We, along with busloads of young Christian children, some of whom were as young as four years old, proceeded to watch what amounted to two full hours of Jesus being beaten to a bloody pulp. ::Spoiler alert:: Jesus is killed.
Zak Braiterman has penned a strong indictment of the Tikvah Fund. In a long essay he connects the dots and fisks the public organ of Tikvah—The Jewish Review of Books. Zak’s essay articulates the fear that many of us had articulated in private conversations but had not done the leg work. Here is the punch line:
No one of us is free from ideological bias and no one contests the right of anyone inside or outside the academy to pursue this or any other ideological agenda. The argument is that the Tikvah Fund enters the university without proper respect for the rules of open transparency that a university ideally embodies. The Tikvah Fund acts as an interloper by setting up closed shops inside the university under the guise of misleading mission statements. Surely, any set of principles and practices should be subject to the free exchange of ideas and open argument. The intertwining of money, ideological content, and university life is one that needs to be examined much more forthrightly by all of us who seek to negotiate the creative lines between public political life and the critical and self-critical exploration of ideas inside and outside the university.
Who says there are no paying jobs left in journalism?
By day, I’m the editor of New Voices, the national Jewish student magazine, and the director of the 40-years-young organization that publishes it, the Jewish Student Press Service. Since the JSPS was founded (New Voices itself is 20 years old), we’ve been a home for independent Jewish journalism–written and published entirely by college students.
We operate on the most shoestring of budgets, but occasionally, we get the exciting the chance to actually hire someone. In this case, I’m looking for 10 someones! If you know a student journalist who might be interested in this, let me know in the comments or by emailing me at david(at)newvoices.org.
Here’s my full pitch:
Jewish Student Journalists: We Want to Pay You!
New Voices Magazine, the national Jewish student magazine, is seeking student journalists to do paid reporting from their campuses this fall! More »
This guestpost is by RhetoricWatch. Though operating under a pseudonym here, RhetoricWatch is a professional in the field of Jewish journalism.
Before we go any further, let’s make one thing clear: The Tea Party is not a terrorist organization.
I don’t agree with its ideas, tactics or policy suggestions, and I’m worried about its seemingly rising influence in this country, which seems anti-intellectual, simplistic and detached from reality. Moreover, its rhetoric–which at times seems nativist and racist–is feeding a current of hatred and fear in this country that troubles me.
But none of this makes the Tea party comparable to Hezbollah. Not even close.
Alas, that is the Tea Party… If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the G.O.P. on a suicide mission.
Remember, Friedman is referring to the same Hezbollah that has launched many deadly attacks on Israel, that calls for Israel’s destruction as a state, that advocates extremist Muslim rule in the Middle East and that openly praised the killing of 200 US Marines in 1983. The Tea Party’s rhetoric may be bad, but it’s nowhere near that bad.
It surprises me all the more that it’s Friedman writing this. Friedman, who made a name for himself covering the Lebanese-Israeli conflict. Friedman, who writes about Israel and its terrorist enemies frequently and who focuses his columns on trying to avoid the extreme positions that some in Israel and the Middle East take. He should know better.
It’s not even a good analogy. Unlike the Tea Party, which is (as Friedman noted) a faction within the Republican party – and a small one at that – Hezbollah is a major political party in Lebanon. It is a faction in the ruling coalition, but it has representation in parliament and seats in the cabinet. Oh, and it’s also a violent terrorist organization – if I forgot to mention that before.
A better analogy, I think, would be to Yisrael Beiteinu, a hard-right – and nonviolent – political party. It is also independent, unlike the Tea Party, but like the Tea Party it advocates anti-democratic and counterproductive policy in Israel – combined with extremist rhetoric.
One major and consistent complaint that the left in the US has had against the Tea Party is that it cheapens tragic events like the Holocaust by making outlandish comparisons. This is a valid concern, and one worth caring about. But if we’re going to harshly criticize right-wing pundits for such comparisons, we need to call out left-wing pundits for bad comparisons as well.
Tom Friedman can and should criticize the Tea Party. He shouldn’t compare it to Hezbollah.
I shall now fisk the op-ed “How Israel Unites Us” from the July 15 issue of the New York Jewish Week by David Bernstein, head honcho of the David Project.
He begins:
I was leafing through the pages of several Jewish newspapers on my desk, and was struck that nearly every issue worth debating somehow revolved around Israel.
Which begs the question: Does nearly every issue in the American Jewish press worth debating somehow revolve around Israel? By my count, there are about 25 articles or editorials in the July 15 issues of the New York Jewish Week, the paper Bernstein’s piece appears in. Of those, eight–less than a third–somehow revolve around Israel. And many stories with currency in the Jewish press that are worth debating (what’s happening to Anthony Weiner’s seat or the circumcision bill in California, for instance) actually don’t have anything to do with Israel.
But I’d concede his basic points that Jews argue about Israel a lot.
Sure, there were other articles of interest, such as the Jewish-Korean family raising their children on “Kugel and Kimchi,” but none so interesting or heart-wrenching as whether J Street should be allowed into the local Jewish community relations council or whether the Israeli government should accept the parameters of President Obama’s recent State Department speech.
Does Bernstein think that no one on the Jewish right is debating the merits of raising children in a multicultural home?
On the surface, Israel would seem to be a source of conflict, pitting Jew against Jew. But, I wonder, if it wasn’t for Israel, what would we Jews talk about? Is it possible that on a deeper level, Israel, controversies and all, is the single greatest uniting force among Jews today?
What would we Jews talk about? I guess there’s an argument to be made here, but if the only things that unites us, as Bernstein believes Israel is, only brings us together in shouting matches, I boldly submit that it’s not a good thing. Yes, we value arguing for the sake of heaven, but I don’t think the polarized shouting matches that take place on some campuses and in some synagogues are for the sake of heaven. In an argument l’shem shamayim, I don’t think anyone ought to get accused of being self-hating Jew or denied a seat at the table of the Jewish conversation. Yet, that’s what happens when we start arguing about Israel. If this is unity, it sucks. More »
Both of these articles have a familiar tone: “What a bunch of whiners Jews today are!” And to some extent, there’s something to be said for that. In the shabbat meals article, towards the end, Rabbi Rebecca Joseph comments, “This is a problem of an affluent society and an affluent group within that society.” Again, true. Indeed, homeless Jews, poor Jews and Jews struggling to make ends meet aren’t going to be picky about what is served to them at a shabbat meal – or any other (I was reminded of recently rereading the book Rachel Calof’s Story about a Jewish woman who emigrated from Russia to be a pioneer bride, and while they certainly cared about kashrut, which is demonstrated throughout the book in various ways, when her husband comes home with a tin labeled herring and it turns out to be pickled pigs feet.. well, she doesn’t say that they ate, but she certainly hints at it. When there’s no other food, you eat what there is).
Nevertheless, there’s a certain oddity about these two articles. For example, let’s take the shabbat meals article: The title is, “With increasingly particular eaters, Shabbat meals get tough.” And yet, that isn’t actually the sense I get at all from the actual content of the article – let alone from my personal experiences. More »
Founded 1897, The Jewish Daily Forward is the only publication that I can safely say that I have read with the same regularity as my grandfather. Of course, when he read it, it was in printed on broadsheet, published daily and had a local Chicago edition. In Yiddish.
100 years after he landed on America’s shores and picked up a copy, I read at least one article from it daily, sent to me in e-mail or via rss and viewed online or via tablet. I read it in English. Suffice it to say, The Forward is still relevant, and since I read it daily, can once more safely be called a daily.
It has a new look online (Lookey lookey) and the publication has a new blog focused on news analysis called, cleverly, Forward Thinking, which I plan to check out regularly. Kudos. Oh, and if you want to read Forverts in Yiddish on your iPad, you can.
Zeek, the journal of Jewish culture and thought, a source of insightful articles and art from the emerging generation of Jewish thinkers, has announced that it is going through some transitions. (Read on after the jump) More »
Meet Les Gold. Mr. Gold is the patriarch of American Jewelry and Loan in Detroit. His family business is the subject of Hardcore Pawn, a new reality television show on the TruTV channel. The show is a window onto the type of Jew we’ve come to associate with the Rhineland in the 17th century more than the American Midwest in 2011. The family that runs the shop is Jewish, not only in the plain meaning of the word, but also in the symbolic, nasty sense of the idea – The Golds are sometimes benevolent, sometimes nasty moneylenders serving a predominantly impoverished, black clientele in the middle of Detroit.
With over two million viewers, Hardcore Pawn is often compared to Pawn Stars, a History Channel reality TV show that, like a blue-collar Antiques Roadshow, presents a gang of Vegas hacks appraising antique soda machines and the Civil War currency. Yet, in reality, Hardcore Pawn isn’t really interested in appraising anything but the fraught relationship that one Jewish family has to the black ghetto in America in our own times. It’s ethnic and racial antagonism presented in documentary style, where the Jews try to pay as little as they can for gold and electronics from a population mired in stress and aggression, with a little bit of tenderness if the need arises.
The show demonstrates a few scenarios. An angry black woman arrives to pay off her interest, only to find out that after waiting 45 minutes in line, she doesn’t have enough money to retrieve her child’s video game console. In another, a poor, elderly black man brings in a ring so he can pay his rent, only to be told that his last valuable possession is worth about ten dollars to Les Gold’s son, Seth. In another, an aryan-looking white woman brings in what she says is Eva Braun’s swastika-bedazzled bracelet. Les Gold says he’ll buy it if its authentic, stating that he’ll use it to teach his grandkids what the Gold family endured during the Holocaust. (Nevermind the bracelet is a fake.)
For at least two millennia (maybe more?) people have felt as though the end of the world is upon them. Apocalyptic literature appeared on the scene around the 2nd century BCE and continued in the Jewish world until the middle of the Middle Ages and continues to this day in the Christian communities. Certain streams of contemporary Christianity are so immersed in eschatology that the Left Behind series are still the best selling novels in the United States.
It is no wonder then that radio host and self-styled biblical scholar, Harold Camping, has made so many headlines in the last few days. Starting a year ago or more, Camping, who runs a number of Christian radio stations and two television stations, spent millions of dollars advertising May 21, 2011 as the beginning of the End of Days–needless to say, May 21 came and has almost gone. No word has yet been heard from Camping, who had previously predicted the apocalypse would commence in 1994.
Many have called him a false prophet, and I think that is too generous. There are two possibilities, in my opinion, as to what’s going on with this man. 1) He is an utter fool and a moron; 2) he is a brilliant marketer who has set himself up to increase his personal wealth from over $17 million to God only knows how much he might make. There is a difference between a false prophet and someone who is just plain wrong or an idiot. Unfortunately, there are far too many idiots out there. More »
Which is why these couple sentences from 
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