Jewschool was once just a twinkle in an innovator’s eye. Disenchanted with mainstream Jewish offerings, some guy named Daniel “Mobius” Sieradski started this here blog and gave a soap box to those nearest him who had a bone to pick with the establishment. Jewschool dominated the Jblogosphere (back when there were only a handful of us), spawned competitors, and became the online home of progressive Jewish thought. We continue to be the largest progressive Jewish blog covering the full spectrum of religion, politics and culture, even though Sieradski has moved on.
Sieradski left Jewschool with the intent of going big with his ideas, to no avail. The Jewish community is, like any community, terrified of change. Its institutions reject bold, smart ideas for the safety of orthodoxies. Sacredcows wallow in an abundance of funds, while social incubators and fellowships need one to be a trust fund baby. And the digital age has yet to overcome the organizational/copyright turf wars that keep information segregated, siloed and inaccessible.
There are a lot of bright ideas out there. And they’re dying. How the hell can we spark a conversation about those doomed ideas? With whom can we pitch, share and network to connect around shared ideas? Where can we find our own resources without the institutions and angel funders? And who would care about it all? In essence, can we crowdsourcethis effing revolution?
Sieradski is posting one of his ideas every day for all of January. In February, he and six cosponsors including Jewschool will post 31 more ideas that have never seen the light of public exposure. We at Jewschool join him in hoping this means some bright people with time on their hands will say, “Hey, I want to do that.”
We’re already into Day 3 and he’s already showcased…
Pop-up Parsha, a widget that searches pages for references to Torah parshot and scriptural citations and offers a pop-up window with the Hebrew/English text, plus links to commentaries and discussion boards.
Pop-up Jewish dictionary, another hypertext tool that would offer definitions for Jew-lingo. Sieradski makes a great point that as he increased his Jewish literacy, his friends often stopped reading the garbledigook of Jewspeak. I facetiously engaged the same problem for my non-Jewy friends by defining my nomenclature. If we’re battling low Jewish literacy, then surely we can make it easy on each other?
The Hebrew input widget is neither “striking nor sexy” but allows for simpler typing of Hebrew into any web form or comment box — and offers phonetic entry of Hebrew (H for Hay, G for Gimel, etc.).
Not all these ideas will be winners, he warns, and not all will be totally original:
Most are ideas for web applications, some are web publications, and some are ideas for new organizations all together. And not every one of them is parochial even — some have uses beyond the Jewish community. Yet what connects them, is that each one brings something to the table that I believe to be truly revolutionary and transformative — things that have the potential to alter the Jewish world as we know it. And that’s what I’m in it for: A revitalized, renewed, and refreshing Jewish existence. It’s the only thing I’ve ever truly been for.
Indeed, it’s what Jewschool was created to do. We’ll post a wrap-up here of the last seven ideas every week for two months. Have an idea you want pitched? Email us and you might end up guest posting your idea here.
Editor’s note: The following is a direct response to the recent post publicizing this month’s meeting of the Men’s Havurah at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun featuring the NYC federation’s top dog John Ruskay and Jewish media guru Daniel Sieradski in a dialogue between the establishment and anti-establishment voices in the Jewish world today.
The BJ Men’s Havura is the place to be this Shabbat afternoon. If you identify as male, and not as female. And that’s just fine. I know, I know: it sounds sexist. But let’s back up for a moment; a little context goes a long way.
A year and a half ago Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein, one of B’nei Jeshurun‘s three rabbis, decided that it was time to act to address a growing gender imbalance that had been apparent at BJ for some time, one that mirrors a trend affecting all areas of non-Orthodox Jewish religious life- men just aren’t as interested in “doing” Judaism as women are. In the words of Sylvia Barack Fishman in an important study published last year:
Today American Jewish boys and men have fewer connections to Jews and Judaism than girls and women in almost every venue and in every age, from school age children through the adult years. The descent of male interest is evident not only in domestic Judaism, as expected, but also in public Judaism, religious leadership, and secular ethnic attachments.
Whether or not it’s a direct effect of women’s empowerment in Jewish life, the fact is irrefutable- men are dropping out. The question at BJ was what to do about it.
At BJ, where I served last year as the first cantorial intern, the vast majority of lay leaders are female. Whether it’s the Torah readers, prayer service leaders or committee chairs, women dominate. The monthly women’s Rosh Chodesh group and the annual women’s retreat are popular and successful. Until the Men’s Havura was formed there had been no space at BJ for men alone since 1984, when Marshall Meyer became the rabbi and disbanded the congregation’s Brotherhood and Sisterhood. (To be technical, the BJ Men’s Havura is open to all people male-identified, regardless of biology and regardless of sexual orientation.) I think that it’s crucial for there to be female space, opportunities for women to gather with other women and feel proud and safe to express themselves Jewishly, to explore their identity as Jewish women. I think that it’s equally important for male space to exist in our communities. As congregations become more fully egalitarian, opportunities for men to explore together the meaning of contemporary male Jewish identity are increasingly rare.
Traditional models of gender roles in Judaism are responsible for thousands of years of oppression of women and non-heterosexuals. Jewish feminists, both female and male, have, in the past 40 years or so, changed the way that we think about those roles and opened up ritual and social space for women. The concepts of Jewish womanhood and femininity have been critiqued and updated to reflect the needs and values of the contemporary Jewish community. But, to ask a question posed by Sarah Blustain in the current edition of Lilith (entitled “boys are the new girls”): “Did women’s lib by some incredible, ironical twist of fate, leave men confined?” It is time to revisit Jewish manhood and masculinity. This is just what Rabbi Bronstein had in mind when he started the Havura (click on link for an interview in Zeek of the topic).
It’s important to stress that a male critique of masculinity can be a feminist endeavor, as I believe the BJ Havura is. Daniel Boyarin, in his book Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, quotes Tania Modleski to say that such a critique is feminist when “it analyzes male power, male hegemony, with a concern for the effects of this power on the female subject…” The very first meeting of the Havura, after a spirited Mincha service, we engaged in a Torah study, looking critically at models of manhood in the Chumash. Subsequent gatherings included a provocative discussion about sexuality and male-female relations with psychotherapist Esther Perel, author of the international bestseller, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence.
As the cantorial intern at BJ, I co-facilitated all of last year’s Havura meetings, along with Rabbi Bronstein and Marshall T. Meyer Fellow Rabbi Ezra Weinberg, and I was at the committee meetings. As I see it, Marcelo and the Havura committee are seeking to meet the challenges of liberating Jewish men from the confines of inadequate gender roles and to create a spiritually relevant space for men. Meeting these challenges is certainly in the interest of Jewish women as well. To quote Blustain’s piece in Lilith again, “It may be the ultimate feminist undertaking in the coming decades to help men free themselves—and to demand that they do so in the ways that continue to free us as well.”
Now, this week’s event may not relate specifically to the issues raised above, but it serves another important goal: getting the target audience in the door. When asked last year by the Havura committee heads for a program idea that would interest my friends and get them to come to a Men’s Havura, I thought immediately about Dan Sieradski in dialogue with John Ruskay (a dynamic activist in his youth, and a BJ member). I figured it would pique the interest of my friends and like-minded young men – the group that is least represented at the Havura’s gatherings. From the excitement in the 84 responses posted so far, it seems that the program has done just that.
This month’s meeting of the Men’s Havurah at B’nai Jeshurun on December 19th will feature John Ruskay and Daniel Sieradski in a dialogue between the establishment and anti-establishment voices in the Jewish world today. Where are we? What’s needed? What are the generational divides?
John is the Executive Vice President and CEO of UJA-Federation of New York. Daniel was the founding publisher and editor-in-chief of Jewschool as well as blogs Radical Torah and Orthodox Anarchist.
This program will also include davening, schnappsing and socializing. For men only. For more information contact Naomi Goodhart: ngoodhart@bj.org. Saturday, December 19th, 5 pm – 7 pm, in Frankel Hall at the 88th Street shul. (Facebook event here.)
Fritz Silber-Baker and Caroline Rothstein, my favorite Yids of the award winning slam poetry team “The Intangible Collective,” will be performing as part of this Sunday’s 2nd annual Inside the Activists’ studio. (As you may have seen by the prominently placed ad or recent post, Jewschool is a cosponsor – that means we helped plan it and hope to see many of you there! We majorly endorse this event!)
Here’s a taste of Fritz and Caroline from a slam this summer. The recording quality isn’t amazing, but they say so many freakin’ profound and important things about the modern Jew’s struggle with identity and history that you may need to watch it a few times anyway.
I was a little bit late to the game myself, only catching up with the book in September. If you haven’t read it yet, let me tell you – don’t wait. It’s a great window into how one person grappled with the big questions of life, and as you know from reading Danya here, she writes with panache. She also writes with extensive footnoting, which makes for a memoir that has the feel of a great (and very accessible) academic work. We’re Jews, we tend to interpret our lives through text (and interpret our texts through life), and the way Danya weaves in the voices of those who have written before her reflects this ethos in a thrilling way.
Apparently, some other people got nominated too. I have neither read their books nor shared webspace with them, so I offer their names and titles without further comment:
Lila Corwin Berman – Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity (University of California Press)
Ari Y. Kelman – Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in the United States (University of California Press)
Kenneth B. Moss – Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Harvard University Press)
Sarah Abrevaya Stein – Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce (Yale University Press)
Mazel tov to them too, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m rooting against them. (Look, I don’t watch sports, so ever since America’s Next Top Model stopped being good, this is about as invested as I get in any kind of competition.)
For a somewhat less biased and more informative take, read the press release from the Jewish Book Council.
The switchover is complete. A slight change in expected behavior: the old feed automatically redirects to the new one. So if you’re subscribed to the old feed, you’re going to keep getting updates for the next 30 days, rather than what we had originally written about a placeholder article. Please change your RSS subscription to point to: jewschool.com/feed, because after 30 days, the old one won’t redirect anymore, it’ll just stop working.
This is an announcement for you readers who follow Jewschool through our RSS feed. Tomorrow afternoon, we’re going to be changing a few settings on how the feed is published, with the result that its location will change. There are a bunch of reasons for making these changes, like that we’ll now be able to offer per-author and per-category feeds, but what it means for you is this: once we update those settings, the next time you try to access the feed, you’ll see that it’s empty except for a single article, which will give you the new location. This bears repeating: if you don’t switch your subscription over to that new location, you will not get Jewschool posts through RSS. The placeholder item will remain in place for 30 days, at which point the old feed address will cease to function altogether.
Let us know in the comments if you have any questions. It should be a pretty painless switch.
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Jewschool has 999 followers on Twitter. Quick, somebody put us over the top! And if you’d like to follow the tweets of some of Jewschool’s contributors, then you can follow 14 of us at once right here.
If your Facebook feed looks anything like mine, then surely you’re aware of UJC’s Jewish Community Heroes campaign. In case you’re not, here’s what I’ve gathered strictly from the barrage of “Vote for X!” messages I’ve been receiving.
UJC, aka The Jewish Federations of North America, aka The Jewish Establishment, sponsored an online popularity contest that sent dozens (if not hundreds) of Jewish Non-Profits scurrying to mobilize their social networks to garner votes for their candidates. The winner(s?) get some kind of cash prize for their organization.
A disclaimer: I am generally much more positive about UJC than many of my compadres here. While I don’t always love every decision the Federations make, I think the good they do outweighs their missteps. And a big honking chunk of the good the UJC does is making thoughtful allocations of communal funds to ensure that worthy causes can thrive. The whole point of federated giving is to protect the less-sexy charities (like elder care facilities) from losing the popularity contest of philanthropy.
So what are we to make of the UJC’s current effort? To be fair, I am not going to pop over to their website to see if my impressions from Facebook accurately reflect the campaign. Here’s a video they’ve made that you can watch while I do that, announcing the twenty semi-finalists:
I’m going to refrain from thinking too hard about who made the semifinals except to point out two things:
First, there’s a disproportionate number of Chabadniks among the group, which is a testament to how far ahead of the rest of us Chabad is when it comes to social networking. This should surprise no one.
Second, I want to congratulate two Jewschoolers among the final twenty: Aryeh Goldsmith (aka Aryeh) and William Levin (aka Jewish Robot)! Okay, those congratulations may seem a bit weak coming at the end of this particular rant, but they both do good work, and each got more than 12,000 votes, so either they’re both skilled organizers or making positive impacts on many people’s Jewish experiences or both. So kol hakavod.
Okay, so reviewing the rules, it looks like I got it about right. Anyone could nominate. Voting narrowed the field to 20 semifinalists. A panel of judges will narrow that group down to five finalists. (The judges span from people who are experts in the running of nonprofits to a comedian and two athletes… I’m not really sure what the thinking is there, but I’ll write that off as being mostly harmless.) It’s not clear how the ultimate winner gets chosen, but the winner will be announced at the General Assembly in Washington, DC next month. Whoever he or she may be, the winner will receive $25K to put towards their project, and the four runners-up will receive some kind of undisclosed smaller investment.
This strikes me as so contrary to the idea behind Federation, I just don’t know what to do with it. Okay, here are the potential upsides: some Jewish organizations, in their scurrying to win, might learn a thing or two about how to utilize social networking to get their message across. And I suppose if someone went to vote and actually bothered to look at the nominees other than the one who sent them to the site to begin with, then some lesser-known Jewish causes might get some publicity. Oh, and I guess UJC might get some publicity in certain corners of the Jewish world that might not already be familiar with them.
Here are the potential downsides: organizations making their first steps into social networking alienate their supporters (or would-be supporters) by using the contact to say “vote for me!” rather than something meaningful. Organizations that already have a robust network in place can stuff the voting box, so smaller, newer, or poorer organization (aka those who might need the money even more) are at a disadvantage. (See note above about Chabad.) The idea that Federations distribute money based on a strategic plan for maximizing the impact of that money becomes a laughingstock. Kids are taught that being popular comes with a financial reward. Presumably, someone in each of these organizations took time out of doing the actual work they’re supposed to do in order to organize and mobilize the voters. And somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 or more is given out as a reward for… well, it’s not really clear now, is it?
Last night, my Motzei Shabbos plans took me to the cinema, where I saw Julie & Julia. For those of you living outside the world of popular culture, this is a film based on a book based on a blog. The blog was started in late 2002 – just around the time I stopped blogging my first time around – right around the moment when blogging jumped from being a niche phenomenon to a zeitgeist. (Coincidentally, Jewschool launched in December 2002, just a few months later.)
There’s a moment in the film in which Julie’s husband, despairing at the state of their marriage (crumbling under the weight of her cooking/blogging project), asks Julie why she blogs, why this has become so important to her. Julie’s answer had a lot to do with a search for individual identity and voice at a moment in her life when she risked dissolving into her bland, repetitive workaday existence. Last night, listening to this conversation on the big screen, I found myself reflecting on the same question relative to this here blog that you’re reading.
It just so happens that it was the second time in two days that the question had come up for me. On Friday, I had coffee with Ally Berenson, program director of Gesher City Boston. There were two purposes to this meeting. Ally and I were in USY together, so it’s always a pleasure to see each other and catch up. Since we both work in the Jewish community, we inevitably have a lot to talk about, but since I work primarily with teenagers and she works primarily with the 21-35 crowd, our professional lives don’t intersect as often as I might like. However, at the last Jewschool powwow (about a dozen of the editors & contributors got together for a real-life in-person meeting last month), Team Jewschool talked about exploring potential connections Jewschool could and should be making with other organizations out there in the Jewish world. I immediately thought of GesherCity. Now before all you bleeding edge anti-establishment hipsters vomit all over your netbooks, let me explain… More »
Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, blogger of Ima on (and off) the Bimah, pointed out recently that Haveil Havalim, the so-called Jewish Blog Carnival, has become a rather conservative affair. With the grand exception of a few progressive regular Haveil Havalim submitters (like herself and Benji Lovitt of What War Zone?), most of the folks submitting their blog posts to the carnival are at least a little to the right of those of us here at Jewschool. Rabbi Phyllis even called us Jewschoolers out by name, asking why we didn’t participate.
So in answer to her call for progressive voices in Haveil Havalim, here we are. And to those of you who are regular readers of Haveil Havalim, but first time visitors to Jewschool, bruchim haba’im l’Jewschool. Welcome.
Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs — a weekly collection of Jewish & Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It’s hosted by different bloggers each week and coordinated by Jack. The term Haveil Havalim, which means Vanity of Vanities, is from Kohelet, (Ecclesiastes) which was written by King Solomon. King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other excesses and realized that it was nothing but hevel, or in English, vanity.
You can also check out films and original TV series.
The first-ever Jewish television news broadcast was recently launched by The Jewish Channel. Because we need discerning audience members like those who follow every detail here at Jewschool, TLC is offering the entire Jewschool readership a free month of TJC to get your feedback. If you don’t like TJC, you can cancel at the end of the month.
For the free month redemption, simply call 1-866-769-2297 and follow the directions, using the coupon code “JSC.”
The Jewish Channel is available on the following systems:
iO Optimum Cable Channel 291
Time Warner Cable Channel 528
Cox Cable Channel 1
Verizon FiOS Channel 900
The social justice agenda and the Israel agenda overlap awkwardly. They are kept separate in our activism, our communities and often in our own thoughts. When they do, we are left with conflicted thoughts, bruised feelings, and shortcomings of priority, loyalty, knowledge. Rightly so, they’re described as two separate “worlds” of Jewish life.
Do they need to be separate? How do they impact our communities? Are the two issues incompatible? Do we end up choosing one over the other, when and why? And can we envision a future Jewish community which integrates social justice with Israel, Israel with social justice, together and elsewhere?
This is why Jewschool is co-sponsoring Love, Hate, and the Jewish State: A Conversation on Social Justice and Israel on Thursday, June 18th at 7 pm. This evening dialogue is brought to you by the folks you trust: social justice leaders who have grown frustrated at being unable to discuss this conflict openly. This is this first attempt at creating an open space where we can hear each other, air our personal qualms, celebrate our similarities, and perhaps think anew about what to do.
This agenda-free, apolitical, open and non-persuasive conversation has one goal: to hear you, to hear each other. Come and leave your mark — full sponsors list below the fold.
Dear readers, Jewschool has a new home! Our friend and tech guru Aryeh Goldsmith has moved us to a new host with vastly more appropriate resources. This means faster loads and no downtimes! Hooray!
We’ve also begun revisiting our contributor list and rebuilding our editorial team. If you’ve ever wanted to guest post to Jewschool, become a regular contributor, or help guide the direction of content and recruitment, drop an email with your credentials to editor@jewschool.com.
Thanks for sticking with us during our bumpy past few months — we’re due for smooth sailing now.
Jews, as you may have gathered, often have opinions. And it is my opinion that certain ideas in circulation have gotten so warped through vapid repetition that they have entered the domain of lies. Yes, you heard me. LIES.
We, as a people, value education and text. So, in the coming weeks, I am embarking on an occasional series here at Jewschool entitled Lies We Were Taught in Hebrew School. I will be attacking, head-on, the sorts of alleged truisms that get repeated and repeated so often that they have become utterly divorced from anything resembling truth. It is my hope that by debunking some of these commonly-propagated myths, we can elevate our discussions with knowledge, rather than resort to pithy aphorisms.
“What,” you may be asking, “is he talking about?” Well, dear readers, I’ll give you some examples. The first post in this series is entitled 613 is a Meaningless Number. Bold? Absolutely. An overstatement? Perhaps. But are you intrigued? Read on. More »
In case you didn’t notice, you can now easily browse each author’s archives by clicking their byline! The little arrow beside our byline will now take you our personal blogs.
This is not a post about Facebook’s latest redesign.
However, thanks to the redesign, last Thursday I noticed my “highlights” column announced that four of my friends had joined a group called “Young Jewish Leaders.”
I thought to myself, “Hey, I’m a young Jewish leader! Why wasn’t I invited? Maybe word finally got out that I am now 31.”
I clicked on the group and saw that my four friends who had joined weren’t people I generally think about in the category of “young Jewish leaders.” (For example, one such friend was Alan Ronkin, Deputy Director of JCRC of Greater Boston. He turns 42 today. Happy birthday, Alan! I’m not calling you an Alter Kocker, but it’s stretching most organizations’ definitions of “youth” to include people on the other side of 40.)
At the time, the only information on the group page was the following description:
We’ve just started this group! Please join and enjoy the virtual camaraderie of other folks like you!
Next, I noticed the group administrators were four (self-labeled) researchers, including friend-of-Jewschool Steven M. Cohen. So the gears naturally started turning in my head. I sent an e-mail out to the Jewschool Teen Brigade, essentially saying “I have a hard time believing four researchers would start such a group without an ulterior motive of trying to research us.”
True to form, one of our trusty Jewschoolers contacted the researchers, and we got some clarification. Apparently, this is part of a research project funded by AviChai and headed up by Jack Wertheimer. To quote the researcher, they “are studying young Jewish leaders who are influential among their peers. The facebook group is a way for us to get in touch with large numbers of leaders.”
They’ve since updated the group page to give a little more information:
A place for young Jewish leaders (self-defined in terms of “young” “Jewish” and “leader”) to share ideas, announce events, and generally be in touch with one another.
This group was created as part of a research project by the Avichai Foundation, but we (the researchers) are not monitoring the group like it’s some kind of petri dish.
Rather, it seemed like the easiest way of getting in touch with young Jewish leaders — both inside and outside the organized Jewish world — and that it could also serve as a common meeting ground for said leaders.
Even with the added information, that’s still a big cup of vague for my taste. Given that facebook (and the internet in general) is already littered with groups in which Jews (young and old, leaders, followers, and others) can meet and share ideas, I’m not sure what this adds to the mix. And since the research agenda is still obscure, I’ll opt out, thank you very much.
This month’s meeting of the Men’s Havurah at B’nai Jeshurun on December 19th will feature John Ruskay and Daniel Sieradski in a dialogue between the establishment and anti-establishment voices in the Jewish world today. Where are we? What’s needed? What are the generational divides?
If your Facebook feed looks anything like mine, then surely you’re aware of UJC’s 
Last night, my 
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