by shamirpower · Monday, May 5th, 2008
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!
by masthead · Monday, March 31st, 2008
Some stories have been floating around the media with varying levels of accuracy, but Jewschool has obtained the full (or fuller) story from reliable sources. The real story here isn’t about gay and lesbian rabbis in the Conservative movement (that was last year’s story); it’s about the lengths to which people and institutions will go out of fear, demonizing their own students and losing all perspective.
The story begins a year ago this week, when the Jewish Theological Seminary announced that it would begin admitting openly gay and lesbian students to its rabbinical and cantorial schools. (The American Jewish University, formerly the University of Judaism, is now also admitting gay and lesbian students.) One year later, to mark the anniversary, JTS held a program on Wednesday called Hazak Hazak V’nithazek: Celebrating Strength Through Inclusion, a full day of study, conversation, and celebration.
Several JTS students studying this year at Machon Schechter (the Conservative rabbinical school in Jerusalem where American Conservative rabbinical students are required to spend a year) wanted to participate in the celebration going on in New York in some way, and since they couldn’t attend physically, they organized a small parallel event in Israel. According to email invitations sent to the Conservative Yeshiva and other rabbinical students in Jerusalem, the students invited Yonatan Gher, former Director of Communications for the Masorti (Israeli Conservative) movement, incoming director of the Jerusalem Open House, and a member of Masorti congregations his whole life (and recently profiled in the New York Times because he and his partner are having a child via a surrogate mother in India), to speak over lunch about his personal experiences as a member of a GLBT family in the Masorti movement.
More »
by Kung Fu Jew · Saturday, March 1st, 2008
This couldn’t come at a worse time with the Ashkelon rocket attacks by Hamas, but it’s important nonetheless. Last week, UVDA, Israel’s equivalent of 60 Minutes, dedicated all 28 minutes to a damning set of videoed confessions of former IDF soldiers in the Kfir Brigade who described a litany of abuses, including extorting products from Palestinian electronics shops, tossing stun grenades into mosques at prayer time, and even (Jesus) kidnapping a cab driver and executing shooting him in an abandoned warehouse. The driver was wounded but not killed. The episode features interviews with several soldiers and officers, and follows one around Hebron as he relives his stories, viewable in Hebrew online at Keshet-TV.com.
The testimony is so damning that Haaretz’s leading editorial on Feb 24 opened with a description of Abu-Ghraib and continued, “Last night, the investigative television program ‘Fact’ broadcast pictures of our own Abu Ghraib affair.”
This time, it was regular soldiers in the Kfir Brigade. They exposed their backsides and sexual organs to Palestinians, pressed an electric heater to the face of a young boy, beat young boys senseless, recorded everything on their mobile phones and sent it to their friends. One of their “mischievous acts” was to test how long a Palestinian who was being choked could survive without breathing. When he passed out, the experiment was stopped. The soldiers described activities to “break the routine” that consisted entirely of abuse. It was enough for a boy “to look at us the wrong way” for him to be beaten.
In a separate editorial, Haaretz opined, “But some officers say that the incident, while lamentable, is not unusual; what is different about this case, they say, is that most units involved in such incidents sweep them under the carpet.”
All this follows on the heels of an equally damning internal IDF report in December reported that 25% of soldiers at checkpoints participated in or witnessed “severe abuse”; members of Breaking the Silence claim the percentage is much higher. [Editor's note: link to JTA article on that story here.]
Concluded Haaretz,
Perfectly ordinary people, as the American psychologist said of the Abu Ghraib abusers, are capable of behaving like monsters…Something bad is happening to us, they are saying in the Kfir Brigade. That “something” is the occupation.
Watching the similar footage of “Hawara” a video taken by IDF educational corps of checkpoints subsequently leaked to the press in 2004, where 18 year olds describe how the only way to control behavior at a checkpoint is to beat someone first. They describe to their IDF videotapers the power trip which comes with absolute discretion over other people. “Some people come home really fucked up,” one soldier tells the camera. After being leaked to the press, the IDF court martialed a soldier caught on tape beating two Palestinians and sentenced him to 6 months in jail. 60 members of his unit then sent a letter to the Joint Chiefs saying that his behavior was standard practice at their checkpoint and that all 60 had committed similar abuses. If you want to arrest someone, they said, you can arrest us all.This is not a phenomenon special to Israel, this condition is universal to Americans and Israelis and all other average people given extreme power. This is an unavoidable consequence affecting directly or indirectly all soldiers in the field.
Perhaps we are approaching a tipping point of awareness. There is no way to whitewash the “context” to excuse this kind of behavior. Terrorism may exist, but so does this. Has it become this extreme before we’ve decided take action?
Come lend your support to the soldiers who are doing the important work of pushing Israeli society and American Jewry to confront these stories: The Breaking the Silence exhibit opens in Boston with IDF veterans Oded Naaman and Oded Greenvald tonight at 7 pm and is open at the Harvard Hillel on Sundays 12p-8p, Mondays-Fridays 2p-8p, and Fridays 10a-4p.
[Editor's note: Jewschool apologizes for the error in translation above in the first paragraph, that IDF soldiers executed a Palestinian cab driver. The soldiers shot the cab driver but not kill him. Jewschool strives to be factually correct in all of our posts, please email editor {at} jewschool(.)org to bring incorrect facts to our attention. Thank you.]
by Mordy · Thursday, February 28th, 2008
I don’t generally nitpick NY Times editorial decisions, but today’s huge [website] frontpage story has a ridiculous non sequitur too good not to share. The article runs about 40 graphs pertaining to the escalation of the conflict in the Gaza. The big news was the replacement of Qassam rockets with Grad-type missiles. “The Grad missiles have a longer range than the homemade, relatively crude Qassam rockets,” the Times explains. Which is how Ashkelon became a target today (Four rockets. One hit a house. No casualties.).
The final graph of the story, though, dismisses the rocket/retaliations narrative for something entirely different:
Omri Sharon, a son of Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, began a seven-month prison term on Wednesday after being convicted in 2006 of violating party campaign finance laws, fraud and perjury. The sentence had been delayed because the elder Mr. Sharon, 80, had a severe stroke.
I don’t know if this indicates that the NYT is lazy, that the writers needed to pad out their word count, or that they believe all Israel news belongs under one monolithic rubric. But I do know that it’s buried far enough down in the story that most readers will never have the wtf moment I did reading the Times today.
by Kung Fu Jew · Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Yehuda Shaul and Arnon Degani will be interviewed on live radio with Rabbi Bruce Diamond, who served as Military Chaplain for the U.S. Air Force, today at 2 pm EST archived on WGCU’s site.
Listen to the show live by clicking here.
Dial 1-877-GCU-TALK (428-8255) during the show to participate.
More photos related to this broadcast below. More »
by LastTrumpet · Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Today was Shushan Purim Katan here in Jerusalem. That is, in a year with two months of Adar, the first month we don’t celebrate the full holiday, but we maybe drink a little bit, and a day later than non-walled cities.
I wanted to tell y’all about the new Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo Podcast - you can subscribe here, or click here to add the podcast to itunes.
So far, we have a special talk on R’ Shlomo Carlebach’s music with Ben Zion Solomon, probably the world’s most knowledgeable person on that topic, as well as Reb Chaim Kramer of the Breslov Research Institute giving over a teaching of Rebbe Nachman on Purim.
Soon to come, Kabbalistic and Chassidic Insights into Purim with Rabbi Avraham Aryeh Trugman.
I had no idea the depths of Purim until recently - and these talks should help you reach the heights of the highest day of the year.
Last week, one of my teachers remarked to me before class that he’d almost had a heart attack when he looked at my facebook page, due to one of my friends wearing a bikini in her profile picture. He then picked up the theme and taught this Torah from the Mei Hashiloach (at the end of the PDF) all about Purim and nudity. Gevaldt.
Purim sameach to everyone!
(also, there’s a shiur here from Aish Kodesh in New York on Purim Katan that’s probably worthwhile)
by feygele · Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
I was going to post about the earthquakin’ queers, but Rooftopper Rav beat me to it. What I would like to point out, however, is the juxtaposition of two articles currently on the Haaretz home page:
(Would it be wrong to call Haaretz a fence-sitter when it comes to LGBT issues?)
by biz · Friday, February 15th, 2008
Warning: President’s Day is being hijacked by patriots from other countries. and lovers of foreign cultures. luckily for us, this means more interesting shows, events, and projects and less Uncle Sam costumes…
Fri: Soulico w/Onili in Chicago; birthright’s Israelity tour in SD
Sat: JDub celebrates a patriotic holiday weekend with Middle Eastern mash ups, Israeli DJs, and good old American hip hop as SOULICO returns from Tel Aviv for a Brooklyn Loft Party w/Onili, Sneakas & Mazi; Israelity rolls through LA
Sun: Israelity goes Vegas
Mon: Soulico in Austin @ Beauty Bar
Tues: Dan Safer and his troupe, Witness Relocation, perform works-in-progress from his Six Points Fellowship Project, Haggadah, at the Center for Jewish History. They won’t know what hit them…
Wed: Jeremiah Lockwood performs new works-in-progress from his Six Points Fellowship project, Hidden Melodies Revealed, solo in NYC.
Thurs: Golem at the Parrish in Austin!
Fri: Golem at the Warehouse Live in Houston!
what else you got?
by Kung Fu Jew · Thursday, February 14th, 2008
by Aliza · Monday, February 11th, 2008
You know things have gotten weird when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) writes an opinion column in The Forward. With a
similar message to Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s letter to the editor last week, Durbin criticized a weak Forward editorial, which managed to simultaneously support and criticize the baseless inflammatory emails about Barack Obama’s supposed secret Muslim life that have been circulating among the Jewish community. Durbin sets the record straight on the truth with certainty, something the Forward editorial board was sadly unwilling to do with its wishy-washy “Is Barack Obama a Muslim? Almost certainly not.”
The editorial board released a clarification last week, claiming that it meant to criticize the defamatory emails all along. But many reading the editorial would not get that impression–would you?
If you still have any doubts, Mobius’s recent blog post reminds us of the true Barack Obama’s speech to the Sojourners conference last summer.
by LastTrumpet · Monday, January 28th, 2008
From Israel News:
An Israeli porn site is proving surprisingly popular with Web surfers in a number of Arab countries, some of which don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel.
After installing software that could detect where users are logging on, managers of the site found they were receiving thousands of hits a week from folks in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, even though the Israeli net domain .il is blocked from some of these countries.
“We were amazed to find a huge amount of our users from these countries,” says Nir Shahar, who manages the site.
…
“Arab people usually see female Israeli soldiers in a bad situation, so there’s a lot of curiosity to see what Israeli girls look like without any uniforms,” says Shahar.
“We don’t make regular porn films. Our films parody the situation in Israel, so we look at issues like the elections here and Mossad.
There is a lot of relevance to the Arab-Israeli situation.”
…
“We are also interested in making films with Arabs and Israelis in them,” Shahar says.
“It’s something we can do to speak about the connection between the two people, but its not going to be easy.”
I don’t even know what to say.
Full story. (Warning = NSFW)
by Kung Fu Jew · Sunday, January 13th, 2008
Courtesy of APN.
by shamirpower · Monday, January 7th, 2008
This past Shabbat afternoon, I enjoyed a sunny walk to the historic Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. While it may resemble your average Conservative shul in stature and empty seats, I was pleasantly surprised that the services were lay lead in the rabbi’s absence, and halfway through the (full kriyah) Torah reading, it was announced that one could opt to join a niggun circle or Torah reading upstairs.
This recent transplant from the upper west side has found quite an enjoyable shabbat community here in Brooklyn. While Crown Heights, Midwood, Flatbush and other neighborhoods toward the east are still primarily occupied by the Orthodox community, I’m pleased to say that egal minyan hopping in the Carroll Gardens/Park Slope area is quaint but sufficient.
After shul I joined a group of 8 folks, half of whom had made it to davening that morning. Following a delicious pescetarian (though vegan-friendly) meal, I retired to the couch to read up on the latest issue of Time Out New York. The theme, “Get Clean” focuses on New Year’s resolutions where a variety of writers (under pseudonyms) reflect on an area of their life they’d like to clean up. Sugar, antidepressants, and lateness make the list. What else would you imagine on this list? And if you saw the headline “No Religion” could you have anticipated that the “How to detox yourself” would prescribe Kehilat Hadar?
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by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
Since we’ve now completed another year, it’s time for our annual, highly idiosyncratic, completely unscientific, best–of round up. Happy (secular) new year from all of us here at Jewschool! More »
by YehuditBrachah · Sunday, December 9th, 2007
Christian Newswire tells us the real meaning of Chanukah, while quoting a rabbi speaking for the charedi Igud HaRabonim/Rabbinical Alliance of America:
Rabbi Yehuda Levin issued the following statement:
Chanukah is not a winter solstice holiday, nor a present exchanging Kwanza lite. The Macabees revolted against the Syrian-Greeks only when they tried to squelch Jewish rituals dealing with modesty, holiness and the service of G-d. It was when the allies of the Syrian-Greeks, upper class socially liberal Jews, known as Hellenists, embraced the attempted abolition of ritual circumcision, Sabbath, and the Holidays and encouraged young Jews to cavort nude in the gymnasiums they built (Gymnos, the Greek word for nude) that the loyal religious Jews defied their “enlightened”, “progressive”, “socially liberal” (read libertine) reprobate brethren and sacrificed their lives to prevent the “Hell”enization of Jewish Holiness. Anyone who is familiar with ancient Greek culture knows about the centrality of homosexuality in their daily lives. It is obvious that what followed the nudity in the gymnasium and the emphasis on the body, was rampant institutionalized homosexuality, which religious Jews have associated with Amalek’s attack on the ancient Jews during their desert sojourn (as stated in the Torah/Bible).
The faithful Jews, willingly martyred themselves to defeat the debauchery of that time both heterosexual and homosexual. Thus Chanukah represents the first ever defeat of a world power’s homosexual agenda!
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by LastTrumpet · Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
Banksy, my personal favorite graffiti artist (sorry, Mobius), is holding his annual “Santa’s Ghetto” show (”a loose collection of the great unwashed hawking their artistic wares”) in Bethlehem this year, across the street from the Church of the Nativity. From the show’s site:
Bethlehem is one of the most contentious places on earth.
Perched at the edge of the Judaen desert at the intersection of Europe, Asia and Africa in the state of Palestine it was governed by the British following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. After World War II the United Nations voted to partition the region into two states - one Jewish, one Arab and there’s been fighting ever since.
It’s obviously not the job of a loose collection of idiot doodlers to tell you what’s right or wrong about this situation, so you’re advised to do further reading yourself (this month’s National Geographic has an excellent article all about Bethlehem).
We would like to make it very clear Santa’s Ghetto is not allied to ANY race, creed, religion, political organization or lobby group. As an organisation the only thing we’ll say on behalf of our artists is that we don’t speak on behalf of our artists. This show simply offers the ink-stained hand of friendship to ordinary people in an extraordinary situation.
Every shekel made in the store will be used on local projects for children and young people. Not one cent will go to any political groups, governmental institutions or, in fact, any grown-ups at all.
Who wants to go?
by LastTrumpet · Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
In non-Annapolis news, the Times this morning reports:
Without a building and budget, Tikkun Leil Shabbat is one of the independent prayer groups, or minyanim, that Jews in their 20s and 30s have organized in the last five years in at least 27 cities around the country. They are challenging traditional Jewish notions of prayer, community and identity.
In places like Atlanta; Brookline, Mass.; Chico, Calif.; and Manhattan the minyanim have shrugged off what many participants see as the passive, rabbi-led worship of their parents’ generation to join services led by their peers, with music sung by all, and where the full Hebrew liturgy and full inclusion of men and women, gay or straight, seem to be equal priorities.
Members of the minyanim are looking for “redemptive, transformative experiences that give rhythm to their days and weeks and give meaning to their lives,” said Joelle Novey, 28, a founder of Tikkun Leil Shabbat, whose name alludes to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or repairing the world. It is an experience they are not finding in traditional Jewish institutions, she said.
In my mind, there’s nothing in the article most of us don’t already know, but hopefully publicity on this level will help the broader Jewish institutional world wake up a bit. That being said, while the Havurah movement has had notable impact on institutional Judaism, it is still around, and still countercultural. So who knows what the future will hold.
Full story.
by YehuditBrachah · Sunday, November 18th, 2007
Okay, so this new magazine just came out. It’s called Jewish Living.
Over here at Jewschool we had a little debate about the magazine, because we got a press release about its launch from the publisher. And frankly, the release makes most of us cringe. Noteable quotables from it:
For the first time ever, a smart, stylish and thoroughly modern magazine will celebrate Jewish home, family and cultural life. *Jewish Living* takes the focus off of religion and places it squarely on the cultural. And in doing so, it seeks to acknowledge and enrich the changing lives of modern Jewish women and their families.
Er… wait, modern Jewish women don’t want to get all bogged down in stuff like religion and politics, so let’s give them recipes?
The concept came to Zimerman, a former senior creative advertising executive at Foote Cone Belding, one wintry Toronto afternoon while making what would prove to be a life-changing stop by a newsstand. “There was an abundance of red and green magazine covers touting the joys of Christmas. I thought ‘Where are all the dreidels? Where are the latkes?’” said Zimerman. “It wasn’t the first time I felt like the only boy without a Christmas tree, but it was certainly the first time I decided to do something about it.”
Wait, the magazine is in response to being jealous that there isn’t a bunch of Chanukah crap all over North American consumer outlets to the same degree there is Christmas crap?
Relocating to New York with his family, including wife and *Jewish Living* Creative Director Carol Moskot, Zimerman designed the magazine to offer inspirational style ideas and practical, how-to information on a wide range of topics. *Jewish Living* aims to make each day more meaningful, functional and beautiful for its targeted demographic of affluent and influential readers…. Headquartered in New York City, *Jewish Living* targets a well-educated urban professional woman between the ages of 25-54 with a median household income of over $125,000.
Ohhhhh, it’s about living a beautiful rich mildly Jewish life without being bogged down with religion or politics. I get it. How narrow-minded and ridiculous!
Or at least, that was the general take on the press release.
BUT. More »
