Last week, Georgia Gov. Sunny Perdue signed into law House Bill 1345, which fixed the Kosher Food Labeling Act (KFLA) of Georgia, which required that any food sold as kosher had to meet the guidelines of the “Orthodox Hebrew religious rules and requirements.” This law was ruled unconstitutional because it had the government mandating whose standards qualified as acceptably kosher – not a good position for our government to find itself in, and mirrored a similar problem found in New York’s Kosher Law Protection act of 2004. Apparently this problem was later fixed, as New York adopted a law that set them on the same path that Georgia is now treading .
The new law in Georgia requires rather that consumers are informed about the standards under which any kosher food product was certified. I will be interested to see if Georgia can do well imitate New York didn’t‘s path in a matter regarding religion. I’m not really sure how helpful all this will be to the kosher consumer, but I suppose that I would be pleased to know the standards set by any given hashgacha. I wonder, though, if it will really help solve the “this rabbi is rumored to never show up and check” problem
Reading it I was encouraged, sympathetic even. I wish more Orthodox Rabbis, especially Haredim and especially Israeli Haredim, gave as much thought and voice to such sentiments. I wish more of our progressive friends did likewise in the other direction.
The Western Wall, like the Jewish nation, has both visible and hidden dimensions. It seems like a public and open place, but in reality – as anyone who has touched its stones will attest – it is a place of intimacy: intimacy between a Jew and his past, intimacy between man and his God. This intimacy is created during the wondrous moment when a man leans his head on the cool stones of the Western Wall and feels in the depths of his heart that he has returned home.
There’s just one problem here; women sadly appear to be forgotten or omitted. That’s a shame since that attitude is precisely what got us to this point. Thus what is clearly a heartfelt plea against Sinat Chinam and for inclusiveness from the Orthodox, even if it doesn’t mention the non-Orthodox outright, misses the point.
Yes, Rabbi, more unites us than divides us. Except when what unites us is the Western Wall and what divides at it are a mechitza and equal treatment.
We indeed are all brothers- except our sisters, who continue to receive insulting treatment at the Wall for exercising precisely what you describe as an ideal.
It is a place of intimacy: not just intimacy between a Jew and his past, but and Jew and hers as well. It is a place of intimacy between men AND women and our God.
Rabbi, I laud your words and pray that all Jews can come to the Wall and experience this intimacy at Har HaBayit. Until all men AND women can lean their heads on those cool shamir-carved stones and freely pour out their souls to Hashem, it will not feel like a home to far too many of our sisters, wives and mothers than either you or I desire.
And unless those who advocate otherwise heed your words, “ein m’nachem lah.”
I recently heard a favorite rabbi of mine say that the American Jewish community may have made a mistake early on by placing all of its communal institution eggs in the beit kneset, or synagogue, basket. He suggested that the beit midrash, or house of study might have been a better choice.
What the beit midrash has going for it is the potential to do highly diverse learning that will attract Jews from many background to sit together and learn. What it doesn’t have going for it is its format. It’s formal and it brings to mind all kinds of imagery and connotations that will turn off many contemporary Jews.
But what about a third kind of beit? What about the modern institution known as the Beit Cafe, perhaps better known in America as the Coffee House? It’s place where discussions happen, planned or spontaneous, as well as cultural events like readings and musical performances. In the contemporary American mind, exciting intellectual and cultural movements are associated with coffee shops, a definite plus for this model.
I’ll start by describing the place I’m imagining and then I’ll talk about why it makes sense for the American Jewish community today. More »
This article was originally published on InterfaithFamily.com. Interfaith Family is “the online resource for interfaith families exploring Jewish life and the grass-roots advocate for a welcoming Jewish community.” I don’t think I’ve written about my family on Jewschool before, but I thought I’d give it a try by cross-posting.
My brother and I were raised by two Jewish parents. Ours was a liberal Jewish home: mezuzahs on the doorways, Shabbat dinner every Friday, holidays observed and celebrated. I grew up believing that my parents were both equally committed to our family’s level of observance. In recent years, long after my parents’ divorce, and as my father has formed a new family, I’ve learned that my outlook was perhaps naive.
My father believed that raising the kids with Judaism was the right thing to do. He went along with it. But while our family observed Passover, eschewed bread and other leavened products for the eight days, he would go to the deli by his office for lunch and privately enjoy a sandwich. Once I was old enough to go to synagogue on my own, he no longer went to Shabbat services. And when I wanted to start laying tefillin, he was more than happy to give me his set, which had been stashed in the back of his closet since before I was born.
As an observant Jew, I was taken aback by his deception. In hindsight, I understand, and appreciate, the decisions he made for our family. I was left wondering what type of religious life he would have, especially as he ages and talks about his will and funeral plans. But while I was wondering what his funeral might look like, balancing my future mourning needs with his probable want for a not overtly religious burial, another life-cycle event brought his religious views to the forefront.
My father started dating, moved in with, and became engaged to the woman who is now my stepmother. This raised a whole other round of questions for me. As far as I knew, he had only ever dated Jewish women. My stepmother is not Jewish. I didn’t have much opportunity to spend time with her before they were married; we lived on opposite coasts. My questions went mostly unanswered, and mostly unasked. More »
On January 5th, Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center and one of the leaders of Women of the Wall, was interrogated by the Jerusalem Police. This is, of course, on the heels of Nofrat Frenkel’s arrest at WoW in November. Hoffman was told that she is a suspect in a felony, accused of not obeying a legal order and disrupting the peace at the Western Wall. The interrogation lasted over an hour.
Below is Hoffman’s account of the incident; here’s a piece about it from the Forward.
Hoffman writes,
At the beginning of the session, the interrogating police officer, Rav Samal Bachir (Senior Staff Sergeant Major) Yoram Suleiman, notified me that I was being interrogated as a suspect in a felony: not complying with a legal order and disturbing the peace.
The interrogation took place at the Kishle police station.
The police got my address from the rasham ha-amutot (the registry of non-profit organizations), and I was asked the following questions:
1. Do you know what the Supreme Court decision was?
2. What did the police officer demand from Women of the Wall during
their prayer services on Rosh Hodesh Kislev (November 18) and Rosh
Hodesh Tevet (December 18)?
3. Are you a member of the organizing body of these prayer services?
Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Rabbi Matt Carl. Rabbi Carl serves Congregation Mt Sinai in Brooklyn Heights and teaches and writes independently. His work and projects can be found at www.rabbimoshe.net.
My first Hazon Food Conference was a wonderful experience. Unable to make it due to scheduling for the last three, I was excited to participate this year, especially since my synagogue will be host to Hazon’s Avodah-AJWS CSA in Brooklyn. This year, I believe for the first time, the conference was held over a weekend that included Asara B’Tevet, a “minor fast” day. Yesterday was a strange experience, as the Food Conference ended with a very different relationship to food than it had the first three days.
I came to the conference with my own opinions and practices about the minor fasts. As a spiritual and contemplative practice, I am a big supporter of fasting on these days. As a Zionist and a realist, I question the practice in this era. That being said, I was quite interested to learn about the fasts from the perspectives of those teaching workshops at the conference. As Shabbat was ending, Rabbi Seth Mandel (the OU‘s head of shechita), Rabbi Ahud Sela (of Conservative congregation Temple Sinai in Los Angeles) and Julie Wolk (founding co-director of Wilderness Torah) presented a panel conversation on fasting, moderated by Dorothy Richman. Julie spoke of her experience on a vision quest and Rabbi Sela of his experience doing a “fast for Darfur,” while Rabbi Mandel spoke more generally of the role of fasting in Jewish spiritual life. Yesterday, during the fast, Rabbi Steve Greenberg taught “The Hunger Artist: Fasting as Body Cleansing” with Biblical, Rabbinic and contemporary texts on the experience, meaning and purpose of fasting. More »
Two sharply contrasting views of the secularization of Christmas are presented by Garrison Keillor, writer and stand-up poet (that’s the only way I can think of to really describe the News from Lake Woebegon) extraordinaire, and Michael Feinstein, a Jewish musician who got involved in a tangle about what constitutes a “Jewish” celebration of Christmas.
It’s been a tumultuous Egg Foo Yung season thus far. Between the House of Representatives taking time from its busy schedule (and, as Steve Benen points out, thus facilitating a gigantic Boehner contradiction [say that one out loud!]) to pass a resolution in support of Christmas (proper political response: WTF?), and the Daily Show’s brilliant exposé of a dastardly attempt by the Obama White House to encourage religious pluralism and (gasp) découpage, the pro-Santa coalition has certainly put up quite a fuss about the War on Christmas. For G()d’s sake, they don’t put up this much fuss about the War on Terror, or the War on Drugs, or the War on Allowing The Senate to Function Normally, all of which claim farmorecasualties, but nonetheless, some interesting content has come out of the Christmas-battles from both sides.
Keillor’s commentary is a notch above the usual xenophobic rants that accompany the defense of Christmas (a phrase almost as vague as Family Values). Calling upon his extraordinary ability to take a complex, subtle, and not-easily-reconciled situation, and reduce all involved to hysterics and/or tears with the sheer power of his snarkiness (“Did one of our guys write ‘Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’? No, we didn’t.”), he also makes some very good points from an intellectual standpoint: that the obsession with the Perfect Christmas (largely, but not entirely, a commercial phenomenon) has had several unexpected and bad results:
that Christmas has become secularized, losing its religious meaning
that non-Christians now diminish from the observance of “legitimate” Christians
that Silent Night has been rewritten so it doesn’t talk about G=d as much (this one’s a real shame, because that’s a beautiful song).
The secularization of Christmas is not new. From a practical standpoint, tt’s hard for me as a Jew to completely empathize, because there really isn’t an equivalent situation for me. Yes, I went through the “Why does everyone make such a big deal of Hannukah? It’s not even important!” phase, but it’s really not the same. Maybe if Simchat Torah got the Christmas treatment, we’d have a comparable situation.
Another thing that might help would be living in Israel. I’ve never been in the majority as a Jew (although I have no illusions about my majority in racial terms [I'm an upper-middle class white guy from the Northeast, just about as elite as it gets], and, okay, okay, I’ll say it; PRIVILEGE [dlevy is applauding in the wings]), and until recently, Jews hadn’t been in the majority at all anywhere for thousands of years. Christianity has been mainstream in the West for so long that something like this was bound to evolve, and I’d predict that if the State of Israel is still around in five hundred years, something similar will be happening to Judaism.
But to the question of whether the secularization of Christmas is “okay”, Feinstein makes the perfect argument: that “…the spirit of the holiday is universal”. Saying that Christians, or, as some of the more crazy defenders-of-Christmas-as-a-purely-right-wing-religious-experience would say, only “real” Christians (read: not pro-choicers, Obama-Socialists, or anyone who favors any kind of government spending [read: red scum]), should be allowed to celebrate the Christmas spirit that those same people are so desperate to define and keep pure, is like saying that only men can wear a tallit. We live in a constitutionally-enforced religiously free society, and that means that we’re also free to do what, by someone else’s definition, constitutes bastardizing religion as much as we want, whether it’s “their” religion we’re “bastardizing” or “our own”.
And that’s important. Yes, this country was founded by Christians. White male landowning Christians (PRIVILEGE PRIVILEGE PRIVILEGE. I said it again!). But in my opinion, the Bill of Rights is designed to keep religious groups from becoming so insular that they weaken society’s ability to function cohesively. If all we had were distinct and warring religious factions, we’d have to abandon representative democracy, dismantle the federal government, and let the South secede again (and if they try, this time I say let ‘em go). Which, realistically, is what a lot of the Christmas-defenders would like. We shouldn’t give it to them. Feinstein offers an eloquent argument for what is really deserving of celebration: the commonalities between us.
So yes, let’s maintain a healthy respect for others’ traditions. I’m not about to affirm that Christ is my lord and savior any more than I expected the a cappella groups performing at Brown Hillel’s Hannukah Bash to daven with us on Friday night; we need to give people their religious space, and take our own when necessary. At the same time, though, I have for many years gone caroling with Christian friends, and attended the Candlelight service at the West Cummington Congregational Church, one of my favorite religious events year-round. One year, I approached the minister there after the service, and told him that as an observant Jew, his sermons were deeply moving. And you know what he did? He bowed, and thanked me for coming.
Take Keillor’s biting wit with a couple grains of salt (and some challah), and listen to Feinstein when he says that it’s time to stop enforcing differences, and start celebrating commonalities. Then, Jesus willing, we’ll have a new year with a few less of the former, and a few more of the latter.
A little while back, in addressing recent discussions of minyanim and reacting to Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, BZ posted:
Rabbi Kaunfer writes “New self-proclaimed movements sprung up — Reconstructionism, and the Renewal and Chavurah Movements.” The “Chavurah movement” is not now and has never been a “self-proclaimed movement” parallel to the “big three” or the Reconstructionist movement. Rabbi Kaunfer himself has argued for why the latest wave of independent minyanim do not constitute a “movement” in that mold, and the same is true for earlier waves of havurot.
This has led me to think about the similarities and differences between what people tend to refer to as Chavura, Conservative, Independent Minyan, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, and Renewal. (note that I alphabetized them rather than forcing them into a spectrum that doesn’t quite fit). Of course these labels have substantial overlap. Some are parallel. Some are not. They all come about because people want quick categories that they can use to label the Jewish approach of themselves and others.
–This next paragraph can be skipped, it defines a few terms and frames the issue, but some might find it needlessly semantic–Some of these labels are (what I’ll call) institutional, ideological, and/or aesthetic. Institutional groupings are based on a subset of Jews being unified based on connection to an institution(s). For instance, The Conservative movement is an institutional grouping since it’s people are connected through camps, schools, youth groups, an other institutions. It is also an ideological grouping since it has positions on many questions that it endorses. Conservative Jews have tendencies to think about Israel in certain ways, egalitarianism, etc. Of course, some differ and there is some diversity, but certainly, you can see what I mean by ideological grouping. By aesthetic, I mean a preference for decision-making model, prayer approach, or something else which is not explicitly Ideological. In many cases these issues are deeply moral, so I don’t mean to imply that this is in any sense superficial. Minyanim, for instance are united by a desire for lay-ledness and thus “Minyan” is an aesthetic grouping. This is a rather arbitrary nuance but there certainly is a nuance between how people think about the world (ideology) and how they prefer their prayer specifically (prayer aesthetic) that while influenced by the former is a slightly different issue.
Now I’ll take a look at a few common groupings and examine what they are, where they come from, and which they are parallel too, and not. More »
Getting straight to the point, these (NSFW) twoarticles raised some pretty serious questions for me. As a big proponent of personalizing religion (that is, participating in traditions or rituals that have meaning to oneself), it’s challenging to see someone else doing something with aspects of Judaism that I find almost offensive (i.e. it runs sharply contrary to some of the ways I practice). And as a young man who’s written about the ethics of Jewish dating before, it’s also legitimately disconcerting to see someone else sexualizing the religion as it relates to dating to this extent.
The traditional argument for the legitimacy of pornography holds here: that it’s an act between consenting adults, and there is no reason that other consenting adults shouldn’t be able to see it.
So consider this: one of the best ways to test your own, or someone else’s, philosophy or morals on any subject is to stretch them to the extreme. When I’m arguing for a public option in health care, I ask my opponents to justify axing Medicaid. When I’m arguing at the Brown Hillel for the inclusion of prayer alternatives in our Friday night programming, I ask my opponents to justify removing one of the existing services so that other ones won’t have to worry about getting a minyan. And so on.
Is this really any different? If we believe that people have a right to do what they will with their perception of their religion, can we oppose its sexualization in such a context? I don’t believe so. Our religious experience (and that means the way we relate to the religion as a person, not just how we pray, for example) is the sum total of everything we’ve ever learned about it, everything we’ve ever experienced, and all of the influences on our personal beliefs that come from outside the religion.
If someone feels that using or relating to their Judaism in this way is right for them, we have no right to protest. Let’s welcome the definition of new ways of practicing Judaism, new ways for the rest of the world to perceive it, and new ways to offend the status quo. And, both in ourselves and others, let’s welcome the discomfort that this will cause.
“We are all mediators, translators.” -Jacques Derrida
There have been three distinct moments since I began learning in the Jewish legal tradition that have significantly altered my perspective on the goals and intent of what we apply the blanket term, Halakhah. It is something that I struggle with on a daily basis and has a direct effect on my faith, my practice and my identity. More »
I don’t like Rosh Hashanah and I don’t like Yom Kipur. There are things I like about them–repentance (see Tshuvot!), shofars (see Where have all the shofarot gone? and Why I used a bullhorn last night) and pomegranates–but I have to admit that I’ve never been satisfied with either, no matter where I’ve been and no matter what my age.
So this year, I’m not going to go the same place twice during the season of repentance.
Though elements of each of these years of RH and YK have been fine, I’ve never been satisfied with the overall experience. Whether it has to do with where I go or with my willingness or unwillingness to repent remains to be seen.
I’ll begin tonight with Erev RH services at Chavurat Lamdeinu, my usual place of davening these days.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be at a Unitarian Church where a certain gospel music composer I happen to know will be helping to lead a service that will incorporate a number of gospel tunes. As far as I can tell, this service is not listed anywhere online. If you’re interested in going, it’s at All Souls Unitarian Church between on Lexington between 79th and 80th at 10:30 a.m. Let me know if you’re gonna bet there so I can we can say hi.
If the gospel crowd isn’t doing a tashlich thing, I’ll head over to the Brooklyn Bridge or something else equally iconic and do tashlich.
On Sunday, I’ll kick off my ten days of repentance by heading into Manhattan for The New Shul‘s “The House of Awe and Repentance Cafe“, part of their new senior rabbi‘s season of installation festivities. It promises to be an art installation involving a variety of media and exploring the concept of repentance. Or something. We’ll see.
And, finally, for Yom Kipur day, I’ll skew more traditional than my norm for a change. As noted, I’ve skewed to the left before when I tried out the Reconstructionist shul, but I’ve never tried something more traditional than what I’m used to. To that end, I’ll be heading back in to Manhattan for Kehilat Hadar‘s traditional-egal take on YK. As one fellow refugee of the Reform mainstream recently told me, “I like Hadar for YK because that’s the one time in the year when I want to feel as frum as possible.” Yeah. We’ll see how I feel about that when I’m still standing around in services trying not listen to my stomach.
Expect posts throughout this season of renewal and repentance chronicling my High Holidays Sampler Plate Adventure.
Isn’t it funny how the most unexpected things bring Orthodox Jews together? Last month, YCT and YU Rabbinical students went on a Christian-Jewish interfaith mission together, and last night (8/10), the senior administrations of these two schools came out with dozens of others to the Manhattan JCC to remember those who were killed, pray for the injured, and recognize the every day pain, suffering, and fear that plagues the queer Jewish world.
Rabbi Yosef Blau, the Mashgiach Ruchani of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Avi Weiss, President of YCT, and Rabbi Dov Linzer, YCT’s Dean and Rosh Yeshiva each spoke at the event. Rabbi Blau spoke in direct, clear words to the evilness of hatred and murder, and to need for all of us to act differently to our neighbors. Rabbi Weiss lead the gathered in Rabbi Nachman’s song, reminding us that though the way is narrow and dangerous – we must never be afraid. Rabbi Linzer lead the group in a unique prayer that he composed for the occasion.
In addition to the Rabbinic leadership, many leaders of the homodox community spoke about their ongoing activities, and we got an update regarding LGBT issues and organizations in Israel.
The unity, and the size of the event was inspiring, as well as the brave personal stories of the many who are struggling to be proud of who they are in all ways. However, I still left with a bad taste in my mouth. While this stuff was great, at the end of the day it was a memorial for two people who are dead, and I still don’t know that much about then. I hardly heard a word about these people. About the only thing I know is what the murderer wanted me to know – they are gay, and they are dead.
I know, I know, “You should never let a crisis go to waste.” And yes, there is much work to be done, and yes, it was very inspiring to see this unprecedented event take place last night. But, I just wish there was a way we could do that while still honoring the memories of these people who were killed. To recognize that Nir Katz and Liz Trubeshi were real people, whose identity went far deeper than the gender of those they were attracted to. I wish I could know them. I wish we could have this rally, without turning them into dead pawns.
Jews United for Justice is proud to partner with the Progressive Jewish Alliance to bring an exciting new social justice training program to DC! The Jeremiah Fellowship educates and trains a select cohort of young adults (ages 25-35) to become the next generation of Jewish social justice change makers.
* Empower yourself through in-depth training in professional and leadership skills .
* Expand your knowledge of what Jewish text, tradition, and history have to say about putting ethics into action.
* Acquire tangible organizing and activism skills within a Jewish context.
* Explore pressing social, political, and economic issues facing our region.
* Become a member of a lasting community of vibrant and engaged leaders.
* Access a dynamic network of organizers, advocates, rabbis, artists, and renowned scholars.
During the nine-month course, Fellows come together twice monthly to learn different models of putting ethics and values into action, for intimate conversations with leaders in Washington’s Jewish and social justice worlds, and for intensive study of Jewish history and texts. Two Fellowship retreats during the year offer in-depth training in professional and leadership skills, study of Jewish tradition and history, and intensive community-building activities. Participants leave the Fellowship with concrete skills in community organizing, activism, and grassroots fundraising, better equipped to pursue their own volunteer work and careers in the social justice field.
We are seeking creative, dynamic, and engaged young Jews who are: already volunteer leaders or have leadership potential, passionate about making our community better, actively interested in building community, and committed to using the skills gained through the Fellowship. The Fellowship is committed to the diversity of each cohort, and believes that a breadth of experience adds to the richness of the program. People of all Jewish backgrounds are encouraged to apply, and prior knowledge of Hebrew or Jewish texts is not required.
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, with a final deadline of September 8th. Submit your application as soon as possible for the best chance of acceptance. Applications and more information here.
Driving back from our Shavuos retreat weekend, BZ and I were talking about the [false] theological practice of substituting names for HaShem. BZ cited that the tetragrammaton has many alternates, which are in turn substituted with HaShem, which in turn is substituted in some frum communities with H’Sh’m.
This parallels the English practice of not writing the “o” in God. Then some use G-d, which is already a substitute name for the tetragrammaton, so it’s really not necessary. I, and many others in the pluralistic, “fruity,” liberal Jew circles in which I hang, like the G!d. It shows excitement and awe, and I find it aesthetically pleasing as well.
Despite the one foot I still have somwhere in the Reform door, I think it would be safest these days to call myself a Limmudnyk. I’ve been to the last two Limmud NY conferences, spent the last six months or so working for Limmud NY, attended the first Limmud Philly, and I’m taking off tomorrow for Limmud Colorado.
A question has been floating around in my head as I’ve been gearing myself up for LCO in the last few days. In North America, we have several Limmud groups now (NY, LA, CO, Chicago, Atlanta-SE, Toronto, and I know of at least one other in development). Only three have been able to achieve the critical mass necessary for a multi-day event–NY, LA, and CO.
In NY and LA, it’s unsurprising that these groups have blossomed the way they have, given the sheer size of the Jewish populations in the area. Colorado, however, baffles me abit. Denver and Boulder are both known to have sizable Jewish populations, but even combined they can’t be comparable to NY or LA.
So I’m throwing my hypothesis as to how this conference has achieved the size it has out here on Jewschool for y’all’s thoughts and I’ll make sure to follow up on it after or during the conference.
Here’s my hypothesis: Pluralism is a hard word to swallow for American Jewry and Limmud, in all of it’s forms, depends on its participants buying into pluralism for it to work. In LA and NY you can find enough people to buy into it for a weekend because of the sheer number of Jews that live in the area. In Colorado, it would have to hinge on a significantly smaller community of Jews already being predisposed toward pluralism.
Given what I’ve heard from people who’ve spent time in Colorado’s Jewish communities, this sounds like the case. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow afternoon.
For those Jews of us under 30 years old, fully half of us have only one Jewish parent. Our identities incorporate differences of perspective due to family ties, shared loyalty, and the dubious benefit of suffering from not only anti-Semitism but anti-whatever-else-we-are.
Previously, someone told me I couldn’t be both religiously Jewish and culturally Catholic. Never was there a clearer moment of “who the hell are you to tell me I can’t be what I am,” and I say that with all respect. But it was an example of the confusion towards us mixed.
But not to rely on my own experience, I put the question of identity to my Catholic university friends. Sitting in a Seattle coffee shop with Mary, David and Joe, I posed the question — “Can you be just culturally Catholic?” Their answers varied: Mary is Catholicly religious in a deep and spiritual way, but doubts the divinity of Jesus. David doesn’t believe he’s Catholic anymore because while his theology and values are Catholic, he doesn’t participate in the Catholic community. Joe is a serious agnostic and has left Catholicism behind entirely but would like to raise his kids with something similar, like in the Episcopal Church. I am a Jew but my father’s family is Catholic.
Each of them agreed, to different extents, that they were “culturally Catholic.” Their values and early religious schooling was in Catholic schools and the four of us attended and were highly influenced by the open theology of our Jesuit Catholic university. For better or for worse, we were influenced by the most severe doctrines yet are inspired not by Jesus’ message and his many saints, but by so many humble and serving adherants and priests.
I am a Jew. But part of me is Catholic: certain values, certain approaches to God, and certain Biblical quotes, not to mention certain aunts and cousins. And whoever wants to rag on Catholics can meet either my hunger to shame the prejudiced or my foot to the face. Nothing is more hypocritical than Jews who like to tell other Jews who is and is not a Jew, or who can’t have what identity. Considering especially how throughout Jewish history, Jews have been outsiders precisely because we suffered dual identities — French and Jewish, German and Jewish. (Not unlike orthodox and modern, Reform and halakhic, I might add…)
So if you’re a half-Jew/whole-Jew from an interfaith, multifaith, mixed, dually-loyal, or other less-than-pure background and want to explore faith, observance, discrimination, and our changing place in the North American Jewish community, then please join us in Philly for a workshop designed by fellow mudbloods below.
Here’s to freedom from those who oppress us, tell us we cannot be Jewish, or have no idea what they’re talking about. Hag Pesach sameach!
Half Jew/Whole Jew A workshop for adult Jews from interfaith families
Sunday May 17
10 am – 5 pm
Gershman Y, Philadelphia
The Jewish community has a wide range of reactions to intermarriage, and a wide range of programs currently reaching out to interfaith families. But what about us Jews who already did grow up in an interfaith family? Our goal in this workshop is to understand our own and each others’ experiences more fully, and also ultimately to make recommendations to Jewish leaders on issues of intermarriage, interfaith inclusivity, and outreach. This workshop will take place in Philadelphia. There is no cost. Travel stipends may be available.
For those of us who live in the U.S. and who, at least in this country, are committed to the ideal of separation of church and state- it is odd to see our own religion so deeply intertwined in the workings of a Democratic Jewish state. In her first documentary, Amy Beth Oppenheimer explores the role of the Rabbinate in Israeli life, mostly in terms of what it means for marriage. Her Film, Faces of Israel raises provocotive questions- What is the role of the Rabbinate? Who should be included in it? What are the alternatives to it? Should Israel allow Same-sex or secular Civil Unions? Her presentation, in the form of a series of interviews, is surprisingly evenhanded, and broad in scope. She allows her subjects, who range from rabbinic leaders to average Israeli citizens, to speak for themselves. That even-handedness is the strength of this movie, and I hope it will inspire viewers to hear the many disparate voices in this conversation.
Faces of Israel opens Tues. March 24th at the Riverdale Y and will be followed by a panel discussion. Tickets can be purchased in advance at www.facesthemovie.com, or at the door.
I recently heard a favorite rabbi of mine say that the American Jewish community may have made a mistake early on by placing all of its communal institution eggs in the beit kneset, or synagogue, basket. He suggested that the beit midrash, or house of study might have been a better choice.
And, finally, for Yom Kipur day, I’ll skew more traditional than my norm for a change. As noted, I’ve skewed to the left before when I tried out the Reconstructionist shul, but I’ve never tried something more traditional than what I’m used to. To that end, I’ll be heading back in to Manhattan for 
administrations of these two schools came out with dozens of others to the Manhattan JCC to remember those who were killed, pray for the injured, and recognize the every day pain, suffering, and fear that plagues the queer Jewish world.
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