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.
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This is somewhat old news but it provides a new way to beat a dead scarf, so why not.
A few days ago I spotted a young German man on the Berlin subway wearing a Kaffiyeh Yisraelit. I mentioned this to a German friend. My friend did a quick google search and turned up this gem: The Kaffiyeh Feygele. It seems a gay or two on the “anti-German” left has now appropriated Rachel Ray’s favorite scarf.
In the place of the classic Levantine pattern, the Kaffiyeh Feygele has hearts, butt plugs, condoms and hammers and sickles. Also, it has stars of David in the corners. This is an article in the German paper Taz on the phenomenon.
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Mobius is giving the blogosphere a reaming in the motherboard over the rightwingosphere’s dive tackling keffiyah-sporting Rachel Ray in the knees. Far be it from me to comment too much further than the grand-daddy of the topic has already done.
But since Mobes made me more aware of the keffiyah trend, I really did a double-take a couple times while in Israel two weeks ago: keffiyahs are for sale everywhere. And not by Arabs in the Christian and Muslim quarters of the Old City, or East Jerusalem, or Nazareth — but by Jews in Jewy places.
I first saw them in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, not too far from the Jaffe Gate. In particular, I stopped to photo and joke about the rainbow-colored keffiyah on sale with the red and black ones. “What is this?” we joked, “the gay-friendly Palestinian resistance?” After a couple jokes about the audacity of a “log cabin” Hamasnik, I moved on.
But what really made me stop and stare was the prominent display of a rack of brightly colored scarves in the windows of fashion boutiques in Tel Aviv’s trendy Shuk HaCarmel! The shop was called “Smash Wear” which nearly made me pee my pants at all the possible and incredibly inappropriate puns.
Mobius can say what he wants about American ignorant hipsters being duped into buying “peace scarves” (I’ve confronted a few friends myself who didn’t know any better), but now we’ve gone muddied the waters when Israelis either (a) wear them or (b) sell them to tourists. Is this irresponsible or have we actually managed to strip the keffiyah of it’s national symbolism?
I’m an advocate of cultural appropriation. Judaism is just a litany of appropriations of other people’s food, clothes, philosophy — latkes apparently are a Polish food, available year-round in Polish shops in Williamsburg, for example. With the exception of matzah, I think very few cultural trappings of Judaism are actually invented by a Jew. So this keffiyah thing doesn’t bother me that way.
But I’ve been considering a line of hipster wear with Chillul who? which smashes a few other borders: a Palestinian flag kipah, for example. Or let’s go all out and make a keffiyah out of little blue Magen Davids! How about a keffiyah-colored tallis? Let’s just say “fuck it” to the sacred cows and have an end to them. Fashion has killed the keffiyah and we can only wonder what other national symbol is next. Is any one taking bets?
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The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ), the congregational arm of the Conservative Movement, has issued a request for proposals from existing or potential independent minyanim that “are interested in developing a relationship directly with a USCJ congregations [sic].” In return, minyanim will receive $2,500. The RFP is extremely vague about what it means to partner with a Conservative congregation, other than that it involves prayer (”or ‘davenning,’” as the RFP clarifies in a seemingly giggle-inducing attempt to speak indie minyan language) and that minyanim “may encompass a spectrum of practices that falls within the Halachic framework of Conservative Judaism.” (More on that below.) While the language of the RFP itself feels clumsy and and a tad self-serving (though no harm there, since that’s their job), it’s probably the smartest thing the USCJ has attempted to do in recent history. I don’t expect they’ll have much success with existing minyanim, but I could see it appealing to a limited set of young people with strong Conservative denominational identities who are looking for more room to do their own thing within the Conservative movement and who want to start new minyanim. Text of the RFP, commentary, and an application below:
PROJECT OVERVIEW AND GOALS
The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ) recognizes that it must be a dynamic and not a static Movement.
My first reaction to the opening line was something sophisticated along the lines of “duh,” but then I realized that, in all seriousness, and snarkiness aside, this may actually be a revelation for institutional Conservative Judaism.
To that end, this initiative reaches out to engage Jewishly committed young adults. During the last 10-15 years many independent prayer or “davenning” communities of young adults have emerged,
The use of the translation, “davenning” (in quotes no less) does make me laugh. It’s really okay just to call it “prayer.” But they’re trying, they really are, and they get points for that.
often generated by those whose commitment to Jewish life grew from experiences in United Synagogue Youth(USY), Camp Ramah and Solomon Schechter Day Schools.
Ah, denominational possessiveness rears its head once again. The authors of the RFP seem not to have read the recent indie minyan survey, which concluded that “[t]he presence of alumni of the Conservative educational system… in the more visible leadership of emergent communities has prompted many observers to see the movement as drawing primarily from the Conservative demographic heartland…. However, despite these widely held impressions, the distribution of denominational upbringing among the independent minyan… is not all that different from those found in the NJPS… In short, in terms of upbringing, there is not much exceptional about the emergent communities’ denominational profile, with participants’ backgrounds spanning the denominational spectrum [sic]…” (pp.14-15).
On the other hand, the language of the RFP is at least a welcome a change from the rhetoric of former JTS chancellor Ismar Schorsch, who was famous for statements such as “[t]he Hadar movement could not be mistaken for anything but a Conservative synagogue: It’s fully egalitarian and seriously Jewish. The ritual is neither Reform nor Orthodox; it’s quintessentially Conservative… The young people at Hadar are intellectually Conservative and they are ritually Conservative except they are advanced Conservative Jews rather than entry-level Conservative Jews. They wish to distinguish themselves from the materialistic, bourgeois synagogues of suburbia.” (Did he really say that in print and still manage not get fired for either offensiveness or illogic?)
More »
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This just in:
In a step that marks a major change in gender roles within modern Orthodoxy, women will be ordained as Orthodox rabbis.
Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute, founded by Rabbi David Hartman, himself a modern Orthodox rabbi, will open a four-year program next year to prepare women and men of all denominations - Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and also Orthodox - for rabbinic ordination.
Ordination will be provided within the framework of a teacher-training program that prepares graduates to serve in Jewish high schools in North America.
“For too long now we have been robbing ourselves of 50 percent of our potential leaders; people who can shape and inspire others,” said Rabbi Donniel Hartman, co-director of the institute and son of David Hartman.
“The classic distinctions between men and women are no longer relevant. People who come to the Hartman Institute to study are committed to making gender equality in Judaism a reality.”
…
Rabbi Dr. Haviva Ner-David, perhaps the first woman ever to receive Orthodox ordination (from a private rabbi, Aryeh Strikovsky, on Pessah eve 2006), said she hoped what she termed Hartman’s rabbi-educator program would be “the first step toward full rabbinic ordination for Orthodox women.”
She asserted that the Hartman Institute was “stopping short” of “calling them rabbis” and said this was “annoying.” But, she added, “perhaps it is a political decision to start off with a half-title so as not to be too controversial and only later to give women the full title of rabbi.
“As people get used to seeing women in these positions they will open up to the idea of female rabbis,” said Ner-David.
Ner-David, who has a doctorate in Jewish Studies from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, said she hoped female rabbis would transform the entire rabbinic institution.
“Women’s voices are changing the way we practice Judaism. Ordination of female rabbis will not only bring these voices to the forefront, it will also change the way men serve as rabbis,” she said.
So, who’s applying for next year?
(by the way, they’ll be ordaining men, too)
(h/t to AS)
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Hillel recently released a guide for including LGBTQ students in its campus activities. The guide, downloadable as a pdf, and the press release are available in full here.
At 186-pages, it’s lengthy and fairly comprehensive, touching on topics from the history of the American LGBTQ movements, to resources for coming out, to queer and Jewish content for programming. The guide also includes a glossary of commonly used queer/LGBTQ-related terms.
My concern, however, is that the length will actually be a barrier. Those Hillel staff who aren’t interested in stepping outside the box, or making an effort to include these students in their programming, will be quick to dismiss a document of this length. (I mean, heck, it took me over two weeks since I saw the press release to read it - and I’m interested!) Maybe I’m just jaded by incredibly negative Hillel experiences, but I think this guide is largely “preaching to the choir.”
“Hillel is opening the doors for all Jewish students, of all sexual orientations and gender identities,” says Hillel President Wayne L. Firestone. “The resource guide provides Hillel directors with practical recommendations for welcoming this important population into our Hillels.”
To take off the cynical hat, I hope that Hillel staff are given more than just this guide - that they’re provided with additional resources for understanding what they read, having their questions answered, and ensuring that they do, in fact, make their local Hillel an open and welcoming place for LGBTQ students.
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On a crowded Jerusalem bus, heading towards Ben Yehuda and Kikar Zion tonight, I witnessed a great exchange. The scene: three hareidim, in full black suits, black hats, tallit katan on top of their shirts.
Guy 1: “You guys gonna get crunk tonight?!?”
Guy 2: “We’re gonna get shit-faced!”
Amazing.
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One of Lilith Magazine’s EcoUshpiztin, Betsy Teustch (yes, ZT’s mommy) celebrates one year of her new blog, Money Changes Things. Here are a few highlights of her anneversary post:
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As a new member of the Park Slope Food Coop, I am just barely starting to learn about the world of cooperatives. The Park Slope Coop, which originally did not sell meat or alcohol, now to carries kosher organic meet and imported gourmet beer. As I have spoken to many long time members about these hot issues, though I heard about a great deal of controversy, no story I have heard comes close to this one.
Personally, one of the reasons I joined the coop is that they have many local products, particularly vegetables. While I see some of the political reasons for boycotting Israeli products (even when I was in Israel it was often difficult to tell when certain products had come from the occupied territories), for me, the ecological footprint of any overseas product is so high, I can easily “boycott” most Israeli (and other imported) products by eating seasonally and locally whenever possible. Of course olive oil comes to mind as one that is particularly difficult to come by in the northeast US…
Last week, a food coop in Ann Arbor officially voted against a boycott that was to prevent the coop from selling products made in Israel or the occupied territories:
After a month-long polling period - culminating nearly eight months of discussion and petitioning - members of People’s Food Co-op in Ann Arbor voted against a proposed boycott of Israeli goods.
The referendum was initiated by a co-op member, then a member of the group Boycott Israeli Goods (BIG).
In addition to boycotting all Israeli goods, the referendum also asked that the co-op “purchase no goods made, grown or originated in Israel or in Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.”
The co-op carries fewer than a dozen Israeli-produced items, which co-op president Linda Diane Feldt said is merely “one-tenth of 1 percent of sales - less than $5,000 per year.”
Among the 6,000 members of the co-op, 1,128 valid votes were cast, with 262 members voting in favor of the boycott and 866 opposed.
Jewschool readers: please share any news you may have from your local coop regarding Israeli imports.
Editor’s note: Did anyone else know that one could get a *.coop web address? So cool!
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I was walking near my office earlier this week and overheard a conversation between two bikers. Both were riding fixed gear bikes and wearing vintage hats. One of the two bikers had on a keffiyeh with the PLO/Arafat keffiyeh worn as a scarf.
This is what i heard:
keffiyeh guy: so, lunch?
non-nationalist symbolism guy: yeah let’s grab falafel.
kg: [several second pause] falafel, what’s falafel?
nnsg: you know, it’s, like, made of chick peas. it’s really fuckin’ good.
kg: whatever man. i’m always up for some new shit.
thank god for urban outfitters and amateurish hipsters. a winning combination if ever there was one.
in related food news, today i got some takeout and they threw in a fortune cookie. I got back to work and ate at my desk while trying to hit a deadline. the fortune:
“there is a true and sincere friendship between you both.”
Both? Me and my computer? In bed?
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From David Basior in the new media source, Jew-ish Seattle:
The oppression of Jews here is about our invisibility. Much of this is internalized, and we as Jews find ourselves not expressing our Judaism publicly — to our co-workers, neighbors, volunteer/activist organizations, for example. How it is experienced by those of us as “out†Jews is often by being tokenized or by confronting workplaces, communities, individuals, or educational institutions as entirely unaware of any Jewish culture, holidays or history in general, thus making it even harder to show ourselves.
Seattle Jews, weigh in!
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So I’m waiting for the Lucky Star bus at South Station to get to New York City for Yom Kippur (I just love Hadar’s davenning for YK), and this extremely tall dude with blond dreads and two Big Brown Bags of stuff takes a seat next to me. We start talking; he’s been in Boston visiting a friend. He mentions he’s a healer.
“Wait a minute,” I say; somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I conjure a Jewschool post from December. The vivid image of him on the street in New York City, energy healing passersby, was hard to forget. (You should watch the video if you haven’t yet.) “Do you have like a YouTube video?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“I’ve seen it.”
Te’ De Van tells me how he went to U Michigan for philosophy and now lives by choice on the streets of New York, travels the country by bus or ride, visiting, healing, freestyling. We talk about energy and spirirtual healing, the Chi Gong master he learned with, his Jewish roots, Ram Dass, philosophy. I’ve just finished Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, and sitting there, I think to myself, here is a real dharma bum. And, some things do not change. The impulse to separate from material culture, to find an existence below the radar of marketing, individualism, consumerism, to forge an existence based on generosity, good will, and relationship has always walked beside our Western culture, whether in the 50s or today. Reading Kerouac, I recognized the lifestyle, the people, the impulse–from an intimate space of knowing, not by stretching to create analogous situations I could relate to.
“The secret,” Te’ De Van says, “is to not care how you end up. If you don’t care how you end up, no one can harm you.”
I know a lot of people, perhaps myself included, who practice Vipassina, talk kabbalah and hitbodedut and Buddhism, follow festivals, have opening heart experiences, wander in and out of cities and countries, aim for freedom. But few of us, I think, are really unincumbered with the material objects of our culture. (When I say material, I do not mean we should shun experiences of this world for transcendent ones of a “higher,” because spiritually I am in this world and awareness and gratitude for it, but rather it’s the object-owning-consuming that’s the problem.) I have my nesting impulse, the one that collects and owns, the one that needs stability and my own stuff, the one that likes costly clothing and electronic conveniences. And then I have an impulse to drop all my objects, my succcess-based goals, and follow the path the universe or God lays out for me moment to moment–strengthened when I’m wandering through Jerusalem’s streets or when I meet people like Te’ De Van.
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“They’re a little insistent, but that’s the way Jews are.” - Bouncing Baby, on Chabad’s presence at the Rainbow Gathering.
Like a lot of you on this page, I go to a lot of festivals, gatherings, hoedowns and whatnot. The one big festival I’ve never been to is the Rainbow Gathering, that annual summer celebration of peace, love, and shared food in the national forest. I was pretty curious for a long while, but never got it together, and then I met E, my next-door neighbor on East 12th Street in the Village. (This was back in 2000, before I made the Westward Migration.)
E was born into the “Family,” raised in Yogaville and bringing light and music to the world with Doofus and other NYC hobos. She went to every Rainbow gathering in New York and tried to bring me along. But I was having my baalat teshuva moment at the time and all I wanted to do was gather with my newfound family…down on Grand Street. All of E’s friends seemed like mooches that wanted to eat all her food and stink up the the hallway with patchouli.
So years later, it was with interest that I today watched Under the Rainbow, Ryan Lifchitz’s documentary about a group of Lubavitchers who go to the 1998 Arizona Rainbow gathering to set up a kosher kitchen and basically, do the Chabad thing. They Bar Mitzvah people, wrap tefillin, share their food, upgrade some neshamas and so forth. They also get their minds opened a little bit about the counterculture. Our heroes have varied experiences of the scene - some are more interested and accepting than others, who see the nudity, drugs and seeker vibe as a symptom of our greater ailing moral culture.
This is a fun little documentary, and a good glimpse of a world many haven’t had the chance to see in person. The film is a bit heavy on crazy old hippies talking shit, and far too few women doing anything, but still, if you’re at all interested in Rainbow, or in Chabad, it’s worth a peek.
San Francisco seekers will get a special kick out of an adorable young Yoav Potash, who’s excited to see the Chabadniks in the forest and what the event will do to them, as well as how they will elevate the event.
Under the Rainbow (three clips of about 20 minutes each)
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For a minute there I thought the world had come to an end.
According to The Forward, on Rosh haShanah at The North Eastern Jewish Centre, an Orthodox synagogue in Australia, the largely conservative, middle-class congregants were “forced to face a Jewish choirmaster named Bram Presser”, who just happens to be the lead singer of Australian punk band Yidcore!
Nothing wrong with that - but I was having a hard time imagining an Orthodox synagogue here in New York ever appointing someone like Joey Ramone as choirmaster.
Not that there wouldn’t be an Orthodox synagogue open-minded enough to do so, I’m sure there’d be many - just I’d find it hard to believe that Joey Ramone would show up in time for services that routinely start as early as 6:30AM - at least in my neighborhood! What kind of a punkster could Bram Presser be with that kind of early morning schedule!?
So I googled North Eastern Jewish Centre and then I understood. At North Eastern Jewish Centre Shacharit during Festivals begins at 9:15AM!
Not bad Bram, and I’m sure you did a bang-up job, but you and I both know that even at 9:15AM Joey would’ve overslept.
———
[Note to God: In deference to the 10 days of Teshuva I have made no mention whatsoever of the fact that North Eastern Jewish Centre is Chabad in this post; no judgments or innuendos, not even an oblique reference to 'zman krias shma' - I hope that counts for something!]
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A few days ago, the New York Times ran an article describing the apparent renewal of kibbutzim in Israel. After years of decline, beginning inthe 1980’s, recently, people are again lining up to get into kibbutzim.
The article points out a couple of interesting things, one of which is explicit: that the renewed kibbutzim are not quite (for the most part) run inthe way that traditional kibbutzim were run, but rather as, “a kind of suburbanized version of it.”
The article continues, explaining,
On most kibbutzim, food and laundry services are now privatized; on many, houses may be transferred to individual members, and newcomers can buy in. While the major assets of the kibbutzim are still collectively owned, the communities are now largely run by professional managers rather than by popular vote. And, most important, not everyone is paid the same.
Now, granted the old, purely socialist system didn’t really work all that well. We all know human nature, and in Israel, as anywhere else that this particular ideology was exercised, all kinds of unfortunate consequences resulted, the mildest of which is the obvious: that many people just didn’t pull their weight. Not to mention all the later reported problems with the communal children’s houses: the bullying and sexual abuse that sometimes resulted.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder about some things that weren’t said: the recent changes in Israeli (following American) society such as the “greed is good” mentality of the 1980’s resulting in the dismantling of Israeli social support systems - and how that process perhaps actually contributed to the current revitaization of the kibbutzim, as people tire of a society in which everyone is completely out for themselves, and the future is economically very uncertain. I also wonder if the suburbanization of the kibbutzim is any kind of success story. Aren’t there other ways of attracting people into a community?
In some ways, it seems to me that this question is the exact same one facing Jews in communal institutions all over the place: how do you entice people into building communities in which people are actually part of a community and not just a fee for service relationship? The sad thing is, that this is indeed what most people are craving, but at the same time, our societies are currently so individualistic that we see any kind of responsibilty to others over the long term as inconvenient. And let’s not even get started on the subject of intergenerational responsibilty. Of all the various shuls and independant minyans out there, how many are genuinely welcoming of people of very different backgrounds and places in their lives?
How have we come to this? -”young professionals” minyans, 20 something minyans, old fart minyans, whatever… where is the sense that we need to sacrifice having things our way some of the time? And I am not targetting any particular group when I say this. In my opinon, there is no one who isn’t a culprit. From wealthy older folks holding onto services which barely anyone attends, to younger groups who are unwilling to make any kind of provisions for people who might not love the all-Carlebach channel. I suppose I could list on forever all the different niches who aren’t talking to one another. And lest I leave it out, that includes the various “movements” as well.
I suppose I have wandered a bit astray from the point of the article, but I often wonder, when we talk about renewal, if the things we are renewing have the value and the solidity to really be communities for the long term, because what I don’t see in many of these renewed communities, is obligation, love, or community.
xp to Kol Ra’ash Gadol
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From a friend:
As for not hiring you…dude…think about it…a big professional firm needs to look professional. Big bushy frum beards don’t portray that image. Granted, we aren’t suits, etc….but it is business casual. Beards are out of fashion in the professional world. Not to say you wouldn’t get the job…but it’s the equivalent of showing up in jeans and a t-shirt.
You know — when Brando* was cast in Streetcar Named Desire, they told him he had to grow three days’ worth of stubble. He refused because he said it’d make him look trashy. He said, “I’ll act the stubble.” And, so the story goes, he did.
I guess that’s how I’ve been in the business world. Three-piece suit, tie in the straightest Windsor you ever did see, and my wedding shoes, and I’m set. I wasn’t getting jobs when I first moved here, and I thought that was why, and then it turned out the companies I applied to just weren’t getting jobs — 2 out of 3 of them went out of business. My new temp company is great. They’re like “you can type fast, and you look good” and that’s all they need.
Yeeah…I look good.
In Chicago, people are much more upfront about staring at you when you’re obviously Jewish — I haven’t been around that in a while. Everyone’s so whitebread and middle-American. I thought I was losing it, “it” meaning whatever I had, and then today this dude in a bar was like “Are you a Jew? I thought that was what y’all look like!” and everyone started becoming friends with me. I didn’t pay for a drink for 2 hours straight.
________
* edited — & many thanks to Shlomo.
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Boy, I’m feeling cranky today. Is it the news, or just the weather?
Yes, indeed, we are all to stand in awe of another Bronfman project to lead the Jewish world into the Future. According to JTA, “three dozen Jewish intellectuals are put in a swank ski resort for 48 hours and let loose on the question ‘Why be Jewish?’”
From July 29-31 the Samuel Bronfman Foundation ran a conference hosted by the foundation’s managing director, Adam Bronfman, son of philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, that “included French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion President David Ellenson, writer Anita Diamant and other rabbis, professors, artists, philanthropists and communal professionals.”
But even JTA itself noticed, “These rarefied, all-expenses-paid gatherings beg the question: ‘So what?’ What does it matter if a bunch of smart Jews sit around talking? Some in Park City wondered the same thing. ‘The take-away is there’s no take-away,’ said former Under Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim of Washington. Some participants questioned the top-down premise. ‘There’s a presumption that we get to answer the question “Why be Jewish” on behalf of the “amcha,” ‘ or Jewish people, said Idit Klein, executive director of Keshet, an advocacy group for gay inclusion.”
In other words, even the grand old daddies (well, not Keshet, exactly) of institutional life are beginning to wonder, along with the rest of us, why there are all these conferences in which “important people” chosen by other “important people” sit around yakking about what the rest of us ought to do. I suppose it’s news that, at least in this case,
If some participants grumbled about the conference’s lack of tangible goals, organizers insisted that was the point.
“We’re not looking for ‘an answer,’ ” explained the foundation’s executive director, Dana Raucher. “We’ve gathered a rather eclectic mix of people, each of whom has something to offer. Each of these people has influence somewhere. Each of them will hopefully have been enriched by this and will take the conversation home with them.”
In other words, they didn’t come out of the conference with another program that doesn’t change anything, or more instructions that have nothing to do with actually living a Jewish life that we’re all to fall in behind with cash in hand. Perhaps that’s an improvement. Although I do have to draw breath at such pronouncements as, “In fact, as more than one conference attendee pointed out, the Talmud, the seminal text of rabbinic Judaism, emerged out of just such open-ended conversations among Jewish leaders.” Wow. I think our old friends the Greeks might have referred to this as hubris.
I think, though that the most important comment in the article is this:
Arthur Gross-Schaefer, a professor of business law and ethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said the American Jewish community “needs a new myth” that can appeal to the younger, largely unaffiliated generation. That’s something this group, and others like it, can realistically tackle, he said.
It seems to me that this nicely sums up the attitude that hasn’t shifted amongst the cohort that is failing to engage those whom they ostensibly wish to engage. In other words, there’s you young people out there, not doing what we want you to do; we need to make up a nice story for you (yes, I’m aware of the Gillman idea of myth, eh.), so that you’ll fall in line with our priorities. Instead of actually talking to the young, affiliated, engaged people in their teens, twenties, thirties and forties - and even older folks who have helped build these alternative organzations, groups, minyans and institutions- who have built an entirely different way of relating to Judaism, just as vibrant (actually, IMO, more vibrant, and also healthier and more Jewish) as the old Holocaust, peoplehood, anti-semitism emphasis of the last thirty-five years.
There’s no shortage of young Jews engaging as “more observant” than their elders, of independant minyanim, trichitzas, potlucks for eating habits across the spectrum, social justice Judaism as an outgrowth of halachah, and organizations that are helping build these new foundations out of what are really, the old bricks that we had forgotten about for oh, so long while we were busy becoming American: how about JFSJ, JUFJ, JFREJ - well, you all know the drill, we talk about them all the time here.
Bronfmans: we’re waiting on you.
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Dan Wanders, pastor of Aldersgate United Methodist Church, Juneau, Alaska:
The religion that Karl Marx knew was indeed embodied in institutions that maintained oppression of the people, and it is cause for anguish to see how forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are oppressive. It is painful to see how much religion is little more than an approval of narrow ethnocentrism and dreaming of the good old days when ignorance is remembered as bliss.
But all of the spiritual movements I have mentioned above - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Baha’i - really are intended to be transformational rather than conformational. No expression of any of them should be a confirmation of the status quo or a cultural buttress. All of them are intended radically to move our world toward greater mercy, kindness and justice. All of them are true to themselves only when challenging societal values and practices.
Though some might be uncomfortable with the language, many of us see that it is from God that come the calls to a greater sense of kinship among the world’s peoples; concern and compassion for the downtrodden, oppressed, and outcast; wariness with institutions and systems of power; and opposition to appeals to the baser human predilections.
Amen, selah.
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