by biz · Friday, May 16th, 2008
This spring, JDub expanded its work into literature with Adam Mansbach’s novel, The End of the Jews. We took this on because we really loved this book. If you haven’t read it yet, i highly suggest you add it to your spring/summer reading list. It’s a multi-generational Jewish family epic tracing assimilation, family disintegration, and the unending (and sometimes uncontrollable) artistic pursuit.
Its something of a Jewish remix of the American race novel: stoned bar mitzvah DJs coercing people to dance the hora to Eric B & Rakim’s “Microphone Fiend,” a Czech girl passing for black in America, swaggering Jewish geniuses remaking postwar American culture, and grandfather-and-grandson graffiti missions:(caught in part here).
Have you read it? What do you think?
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Week Four, Day Five
Hod Of Netzach
ICED, or I Can End Deportation is a game by Breakthrough a group saying of itself that it is an International Human Rights organization that uses education and popular culture to promote values of dignity, equality and justice.
From the Breakthrough website:
Breakthrough’s video game, ICED, puts you in the shoes of an immigrant to illustrate how unfair immigration laws deny due process and violate human rights. These laws affect all immigrants: legal residents, those fleeing persecution, students and undocumented people.
ICED has been featured in overwhelming amounts of press including: MTV News, Game Daily and has been covered on popular blogs including, Gothamist and The Huffington Post…
How do you play?
THE OBJECT OF THE GAME IS TO BECOME A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES
Game Play:
As an immigrant teen you are avoiding ICE officers, choosing right from wrong and answering questions on immigration. But if you answer questions incorrectly, or make poor decisions, you will be detained with no respect for your human rights.
There is also a downloadable curriculum and a discussion guide. There are also flash animations - on additional topics, like AIDS and gay marriage.
hattip to SepiaMutiny
by Josh Frankel · Thursday, May 15th, 2008
The Rubashkin’s raid made big news earlier in the week, and we were angry. We were furious, filled with righteous indignation, ready to destroy the kosher meat industry, to throw out kashrut, to bash Orthodoxy until the last black hat disappeared from Iowa. But, now, it’s time to help. With hundreds of worker’s arrested, thousands of their family members are now in limbo. They have no money, no income, and no resources. They are frightened to apply for work, frightened to go shopping, and their kids aren’t going to school. Charities in Postville are pitching and do what they can to help these people, and unfortunately not-surprisingly, Agriprocessors isn’t helping out. I don’t often ask people to give tzedakah, and if I do, it’s a casual request. This is different. Anyone who has ever eaten kosher meat in this country has benefited from the hard, poorly compensated work these people have done, and now that they are in desperate need it is our turn to help.
Ari Hart, one of the leaders of Uri L’Tzedek, has been in contact with people on the ground, and he found this church, St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, which is working very hard with the families in town. However, the church’s resources are stretched thin, and they need donations.
Please, send money to:
St. Bridget’s Hispanic Fund
c/o Sister Mary McCauley
POB 369
Postville, IA 52162
Agriprocessors might be a large, unscrupulous company, but to these people, it represents one thing - Judaism. Please give. Please write a letter thanking them. Please let them know that you care.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Week Four, day Four
Netzach of Netzach
Over a year ago, Akiba Hebrew Academy, the country’s oldest day school, changed a long standing policy, and decided that it would accept a $5million gift on condition that it change its name to the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy in honor of the older brother of the donor, who died in a plane crash at age 27. But here’s the turn of the screw: the donor was Leonard Barrack, the newly elected board chair of the Philadelphia federation.
When alumni attempted to object to this change in policy, they were ignored, when they turned to the local Jewish paper, the Jewish Exponent, it turned them down and even contacted school representatives.
More »
by chillul Who? · Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
It’s time to get your tickets for BamatMabat’s newest show. BamatMabat – the experimental Jerusalem theater company founded this year by Talia Weiss and my good friend DeDe — will be presenting “Doubt, a Parable” early next month. You’ll want to act fast, considering how many of their past shows (including the one-page play festival “Teudat Zehut”, and Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant and a Prayer”) have sold out…
BamatMabat Theater Company invites you to come see “Doubt, a Parable,” a brilliant and powerful drama in which a Catholic school principal takes matters into her own hands when she suspects a young priest of improper relations with one of the male students.
The Pulitzer and Tony-award winning play deals with themes of conviction vs. uncertainty in exploring how a religious community deals with clergy abuse.
Starring Erin Maidan Greenberg, Shimshon Stu Siegel, Shira Katz and Rachel Beitsch.
Directed by DeDe Jacobs Komisar and Jose Portuondo.
Dates and times:
Tuesday June 3, 8 pm
Thursday June 5, 8 pm
Tuesday June 10, 8 pm
Thursday June 12, 8 pm
Location: Kibbutz Ramat Rachel Auditorium
For tickets and information call 054-789-7144 or email bamatmabat {at} gmail(.)com
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Today, May 14, 60 years since the founding of the State of Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights – North America (RHR-NA), placed an ad on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times in support of the rights of Israelis and Palestinian and launching a year long campaign, In Pursuit of Justice, to support the work of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel .
The ad begins, “On this day, 60 years ago, the founders of Israel declared the State of Israel …will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel “, a quote from Israel ’s Declaration of Independence . More »
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., conservative legal-advocacy group is attempting to provoke a new legal challenge to the rule that requires nonprofits to refrain from intervening in political campaigns. To be clear, it is llegal for nonprofits, including churches and synagogues, to endorse or publicly oppose political candidates or to intervene in candidates’ elections, although they are free to take sides on issues.
Alliance fund staff hopes 40 or 50 houses of worship will take part in the action, including clerics from liberal-leaning congregations. About 80 ministers have expressed interest, including one Catholic priest, says Erik Stanley, the Alliance’s senior legal counsel.
“The government should not be telling the church what it should or should not be saying,” says the Rev. Steve Riggle, senior pastor of Grace Community Church in Houston, who hopes to take part in the Alliance effort. Mr. Riggle says he told his congregation from the pulpit, before the Texas primary in March, that he was supporting former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee for president. “As a pastor, a private citizen, I can speak for myself. The IRS cannot quench my voice,” he says.
In recent years, attempts by members of Congress to change the law have failed. “Tax exemption is a benefit, and it comes with conditions,” says Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit that has filed more than a dozen complaints in the past year with the IRS, accusing nonprofits of tax-code violations. “So if any pastor out there feels he is gagged or can’t speak on partisan politics…forgo the tax exemption and say what you want.”
Personally, I think this is a crock. The “Alliance” is attempting to get some liberl clergy involved with it’s attempt to overturn this rule, but the rule is there for a good reason; to prevent the kind of nonsense we see in Israel with rabbis giving out amulets to vote for this one, or cursing people who vote for that one, and telling people who they must vote for or be booted. It’s not like if your minister/rabbi/preacher/ priest has an opinion on the candidate it’s likely to be a big secret (although I did once have a conversation with a rabbi who told me that their congregation couldn’t guess who they would vote for. They were proud of it, I thought it a sign that that person never engaged in real advocacy; IMO a problem if you actually believe in the words you read in our texts), which is, IMO okay. I think that clergy should have opinions - and I don’t limit it to those whose opinions agree with mine (although if they don’t they’re wrong, of course)- and act on them, but I don’t want to see the pulpit devolve into an opportunity to socially coerce the votes of their followers . As we all know, there are clergy who may not be perfect out there, and I’m just as happy for them not to abuse the privilege.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Week Four, day Three
Tiferet of Netzach
Another New York Event. Sponsored by the UJA, and sounds like it could be quite the conversation - any panel that includes both Judith Plaskow and Blu Greenberg has got to be worth hearing:
In anticipation of Shavuot, UJA-Federation of New York’s Task Force on the Jewish Woman presents the third part of a series on women and politics
Gender and Justice:
How Activists Integrate Judaism and Politics
Thursday, May 15, 2008
5:30 – 9:30 p.m.
During the holiday of Shavuot, we celebrate receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai by engaging in all-night study.
In preparation, we will come together for an evening of study and performance, exploring ideas of Judaism, activism, feminism, and politics.
Featuring:
* Texts That Inspire Lives of Activism, a panel discussion with scholars Blu Greenberg, Miriam Margles, and Judith Plaskow, moderated by Dianne Cohler-Esses
* Text-study sessions presented by scholars Elana Stein Hain, Joy Levitt, and Stephanie Ruskay
* Becoming Israel, a Storahtelling performance by Shira Epstein and Naomi Less
Storahtelling brings us an abridged, staged reading from their newly debuted play Becoming Israel. Biblical and modern characters are intertwined in this piece to discover their shared story and their common name, Israel, “The One Who Struggles with God.” After the performance, Naomi and Shira will engage us in a discussion regarding the performance and theatre itself as a medium for text and activism.
Light supper will be served at 5:30 p.m.
Program will start at 6:00 p.m.
Cost: $25* or $15* for students and young professionals
UJA-Federation of New York
130 East 59th Street
New York City
R.SV.P. to Emily Loubaton at 1.212.836.1710 or loubatone {at} ujafedny(.)org.
*The cover charge represents the cost of the event and is not tax-deductible
by shamirpower · Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Wednesday night May 14 at the JCC in Manhattan: 334 Amsterdam at 7 pm there will be a panel discussion on the topic: Israel, Jews and the Media: Exploding the Myths.
A distinguished panel will discuss the various notions about how the media treats Israel and Jewish related issues.
The evening has been organized by Jerome Chanes and will include:
Clyde Haberman of The Times, Sam Freedman of Columbia School of Journalism, and Gary Rosenblatt of The Jewish Week.
If you want to register you can do so at 646-505-5748 or at www.jccmanhattan.org.
Jewschoolers - if you get a chance to attend, share your thoughts here.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, May 12th, 2008
But what the heck would I call it?
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner has ruled that it is forbidden for girls to enlist in the army. “It is forbidden! Forbidden like kashrut! Forbidden like Shabbat! And especially forbidden like modesty!”
And while you’re at it, go get me a coffee, purity girl.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, May 12th, 2008
Week Four, Day two,
Gevurah of Netzach
Since yesterday was mother’s day, and today’s sefirotic interpretation of the Omer quirkily translates itself in the book I’m using as “Discipline in Endurance” …
Jewish mothers are a dying breed. Is this good? Is it bad? I don’t know, but I don’t know anyone who qualifies under the stereotypical description. But it’s more than that. As I’ve mentioned before, the Jewish community, for all its frothing at the mouth about continuity, makes it nearly impossible for young Jews to make the parenthood choice in any rational way.
While the Conservative movement recently told us all., yet again, to have more babies sooner, no one is willing to take the step of saying that the Jewish community needs to make a commitment to things like: paid parental leave for every Jew employed by a a Jewish institution or agency. Quality day care subsidized by our communities. Day school for everyone who wants to send their kids to it -and heavily subsidized so not only the well off can afford it- and a much better system of religious education for those who don’t. More truth telling about the flaws of Israel within a context of love for the country and its inhabitants.
But the truth is, that’s not really what the Jewish community wants. It’s far easier to wail and moan about how Jews growing up don’t value Judaism, how we’re all so individualistic that we don’t care about community, and how all the young people don’t care about Israel, and women aren’t having enough babies because they’re busy having careers instead. None of it’s true, but it’s much easier than looking ourselves in the face and doing something hard: changing the way we live.
Oh and while we’re at it, why don’t we throw out nonsensical solutions to problems, like saying that since boys aren’t flocking to liberal Judaism, the best thing we need to do is start having men only clubs and meetings. yes, that certainly will solve the problem, because as we all know the reason boys are leaving Judaism (YAWN) isn’t because boys have much greater pressure to excel at sports, or because their parents let them quit after bar mitzvah, or because Judaism is treated as hobby. Nope, it must be the girls, because as we all know, teenage boys aren’t interested in being anywhere around girls.
**************************************************
A new graphic novel, “The Rabbi’s Cat,” taking place in Algiers in the 30’s, starring a rabbi and a nameless talking cat.
I haven’t read it yet, but I surely will soon.
The other, longer story in the new volume is “Africa’s Jerusalem,” a zigzagging tale that starts out as a “Tintin”-like adventure and eventually evolves into a love story, graced at its conclusion with bracing flashes of eroticism. (Tintin, in fact, comes in for a drubbing: He turns up for a page as an arrogant, racist reporter, Sfar’s upraised middle finger to French comics master Hergé’s infamous “Tintin in the Congo.”) In an introductory note, Sfar claims that “Africa’s Jerusalem” is “a graphic novel against racism,” which it is, but it’s also another opportunity for him to avoid the risk of the series falling into a formula.
The story begins when the rabbi receives a mysterious crate; instead of the books he expects, it contains a Russian Jewish painter who has tried to ship himself to Addis Ababa to find a rumored Jewish homeland in Ethiopia. (He only speaks Russian, and the Algerians don’t understand it at all; fortunately, the cat understands all languages.) Joined by a rich, arrogant local Russian man and the rabbi’s cousin, a sheik who’s also part of the Sfar family, they drive off to find Jerusalem in Africa.
by Ruby K · Monday, May 12th, 2008
Looking down at my “No Person is Illegal” shirt and getting angry and sad. While I’m here, anyone got any news about that Tsedek Hekhsher? Good thing I’m only eating Wise Organic these days:
Postville, Ia. – At least 300 people were arrested today at the Agriprocessors, Inc. meat packing plant, federal officials said. The operation, which targeted people who illegally used other persons Social Security numbers and were in the U.S. illegally, was the largest of its kind in Iowa, Claude Arnold, a special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Four Homeland Security buses with U.S. Immigration and Customs tags on them were a the plant this morning.
–snip–
Immigration officials told aides to U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley that they expect 600 to 700 arrests. About 1,000 to 1,050 people work at the plant, according to Iowa Workforce Development.
and snip again
The Agriprocessors plant, known as the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, is northeast Iowa’s largest employer.
Hat tip Des Moines Register. It doesn’t take a slide rule to do the math here. My frustration is that it will be the folks who risked life and limb to support themselves and their families will take the blame, and not the people exploiting the labor. Is it too much to hope for that Jews who are so machmir about some commandments actually check out all of them?
As documented here and elsewhere, these are not Rubashkin’s first problems. And I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of them.
by Danya · Monday, May 12th, 2008
If a community lacked a synagogue and a shelter for the poor, it was first obligated to build a shelter for the poor.
–Seder Hasidim
When you give food to a hungry person, give him your best and sweetest food.
–Maimonides, Mishneh Torah Hilchot Isurei Mizbayach 7:11
The NYT has a story about a kosher tamchui–soup kitchen–in Borough Park that’s got something right, it seems:
The storefront, on 14th Street in central Brooklyn, in one of New York’s largest Hasidic communities, serves only hot kosher meals. Its operators say it is the only soup kitchen of its kind in the city,…
Thursday was more crowded than usual because the kitchen was serving steaks–juicy, 16-ounce kosher shell steaks. Seconds were even available.
…
Masbia, the Hebrew word for “satiate,” serves 160 meals five nights a week. “We wanted to make it look like a restaurant,” Mr. Rapaport said, “because people in our community don’t want to be seen going to a soup kitchen — it’s highly embarrassing.
“But we’ve had people come in and eat and ask where they pay. We have to tell them, ‘No, you don’t pay.’ People here are kosher so they won’t go to any other soup kitchen. It’s come here or starve.”….
Two men at Table 6 would give only their first names. “I don’t want people in my synagogue to know I come here,” said one of the men, Meyer, 55, who lives in Flatbush. Meyer said he had been unemployed for six months and recently went back to work as an optician. He enjoys the camaraderie at the soup kitchen.
“They treat you like a mensch, not a second-class citizen,” he said.
Full story here.
And here’s your bonus link, to Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger.
(Bloggy thanks to Justin.)
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, May 11th, 2008
I’m afraid I’m not up for much tonight, but it is Week four, day one,
Chesed of Netzach.
IN the meantime, here is a review on Salon of what looks to be an interesting book: “A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World,” by journalist Tony Horwitz
Start with this. Ponce de Léon went to Florida to find not a fountain of youth but the same things that drew every Spanish invader: gold and slaves. (He found neither.) The first Protestant refuge in North America wasn’t Plymouth but La Caroline, a fort built on the Florida coast in 1564 by the above-mentioned Huguenots. A year later, their slaughterer Menéndez held what was possibly America’s first Thanksgiving dinner, well attended by local Indians.
On and on it goes: a hemorrhaging of certainty. The first European child born in North America? Not Virginia Dare but, more likely, a Viking boy named Snorri, born circa 1000 A.D. in what the Norse liked to call Vinland. The true founding father of New England? Not Bradford, not Standish, but John Smith, who gave the region its name and actively promoted its colonization.
And what about those flat-earthers who thought Columbus would tumble off the world’s edge? You can blame that little fiction on Washington Irving. The Greeks had long ago figured out the world was round, and for more than 700 years, even the Catholic Church had accepted it. The only thing Spaniards were still debating in 1492 was the distance to Asia. In this, as in so many other matters, Columbus was mistaken.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Saturday, May 10th, 2008
Week Three, Day seven
Malchut of Tiferet
Week Three, Day six
Yesod of Tiferet
This past weekend, Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), a project of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research sponsored a conference in San Francisco of Jews and Jewish identified ethnic groups from around the world. Many of these groups are not formally Jewish, the descendants of anusim and xuetas. Some are Jews officially, although not always accepted with open arms by the so-called “mainstream,” such as the Ethiopian Jews, or the Abayudaya. And then there are the Jewish communites whose faces and color don’t fall within the stereotypes of what a Jew looks like - as if there was any such thing: the Jews of India, Jews who are of color who converted, or whose parents did.
“The Jewish community keeps talking about the crisis of intermarriage and the crisis of declining numbers, but meanwhile you’ve got people with Jewish heritage, spiritual seekers, Jewish communities of historical significance, and the Jewish community is doing nothing to help them,” says Gary Tobin, the institute’s president and a longtime advocate of greater openness to those outside the Ashkenazi mainstream.
According to institute research, at least 20 percent of American Jews are racially and ethnically diverse. But old stereotypes about what “real Jews” look like persist, Tobin says.
“Instead of worrying about people being ‘lost’ to intermarriage,” he wonders, “why aren’t we extending our ideological borders to include all these people who are so interested in joining us?”
Personally, I think it would be completely fabulous if the descendants of the anusim made a formal return, and the Ibo and Lemba formally converted. Welcome! Join the party!
And of course, for those that are us, we should move mountains to bring them close and help them.
On a humorous note:
Safed’s Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu wrote in an article … “it turns out that Olmert is more corrupt than we thought.”
“So what shall we do? Elect another prime minister without faith? Another one without credibility? Another one without values?…when will we wake up and realize that we need a prime minister with a kippa?”
“We need a prime minister who acts based on genuine faith and values.
Um. Hey, I’m a rabbi myself, and I even occasionally wear a kippah (rather than a hat), but I’m just not quite sure this would solve the problem. Especially since I’m pretty sure that Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu wasn’t promoting say, Rabbi Andy Sacks, or R. David Golinkin, as a solution to the problem.
I dunno. I could be wrong. PM Sacks, has a kind of a nice ring to it….
Yeah, okay. A PM with a kippah. That would definitely solve all our problems. No more corruption. (Anyone want to do a quick google on rabbi, Israel, corruption charges?)
by Danya · Friday, May 9th, 2008
Just to mix things up a little: A call for subs for an anthology that has nothing to do with either the election race or Israel! Rather, Orthodykes. I don’t know any more than what’s below, so please follow submission guidelines or pass along to potentially interested parties…..
Call for Submissions:
KEEP YOUR WIVES AWAY FROM THEM:
AN ANTHOLOGY OF WRITINGS BY AND ABOUT ORTHODYKES
Deadline: July 31, 2008
Jewish women who are bisexual, transgender, lesbian or queer-identified live lives that can often be fraught with discord. But they have also mined the complexities and contradictions that come with these identities as sources for spiritual change, ritual innovation and community building. Keep Your Wives Away From Them is an anthology of professional scholarly essays and personal journalistic pieces that will document the stories of those who have lived in the meeting-ground of Judaism and queer desire. This anthology, in calling attention to an otherwise hidden or silent population of women, will unravel the puzzle of a seemingly impossible identity. It will also document the rich innovations in Jewish and queer life in the communities of Jewish LBTQ women and female born genderqueer individuals that have developed in around the world over the past 25 years.
More »
by chillul Who? · Friday, May 9th, 2008
Remember when Yom Ha-atzma’ut used to be easy?
Nowadays it seems like you’ve got three choices..
You can follow our co-blogger Chorus of Apes and go all Nakba on us. You can go all “neo-Zionist” instead and lose yourself in congratulatory paroxysms of pride and militaristic extremism. See here for example. Or finally, you can waffle and prevaricate between the other two alternatives, watching any tribal joy you once felt drain out through myriad cuts of national guilt and historical revision.
The last option seems most popular in progressive Jewish circles these days. My roommates objected to my proposal for a Yom Ha-Atzma’ut House Party by saying they wanted to avoid propaganda or the appearance of it. “Maybe we should have something about the nakba too.” “We don’t want to look right wing.” “How about we go to a Brit Tzedek talk instead.” Something about Independence Day made us uncomfortable.
Yom Ha-atzma’ut looks a little funny these days. Between the alliance of Electronic Intifada and Kahane Chai to forever tarnish the word “Zionism,” and the casual abuse of patriotism by fear-mongering Republicans in the US, the idea of “national pride” has become suspect. Every 60th Birthday congratulation needs a “but..”, and every praise of the Jewish State re-born in the Jewish Homeland comes with a “however..” We’re cynical and jaded, and don’t want to buy into anything that smacks of conservative forces or creeping 21st century totalitarianism.
So we want to kill the myth of the Third Comonwealth, scuff the shine on the Zionist dream, give us nothing-but-the-facts-ma’am and add another social justice cause to the bottom of the list.
But I’m thinking that Yom Ha-atzma’ut is not something to do half-assed. Righteous foundation myths and tribal pride aren’t just kids’ stories: they’re the moral stories that give us our ideals.
Remember (if you’re American) when you first learned what really happened when the Pilgrims hit Plymouth rock. When that cartoon fantasy of harmony and shared wealth dissolved into the broken treaties of the colonists, and the cold hard earth they dug into to rob Native graves. I think that a large part of that sting, that rage, (that righteous indignation, if you will) was the disappointment that the reality did not live up to the myth.
People we’d been taught to honor had let us down. The founding parents of institutions we’d be taught to respect and identify with had behaved in despicable ways. Which is sort of ironic, I guess. Or at least depressing.
But the real, glorious irony is that the myths never did let us down. These lies are the tales that taught us what to believe in. The myths are the prosecutor’s finger. When we hear about Israeli crimes and mistakes, whether during the War of Indepedence or today, it’s the myths that shout loudest “this was wrong. This must be remedied.” It’s the Declaration of Indepedence which was never fulfilled which kicks us in the gut and demands more effort on our part.
Our myths are our moral foundation, and I believe, something to celebrate whole-heartedly. So this is a (slightly belated) Yom Ha-Atzma’ut Same’ach from me to you, with no ifs, ands, or buts. Happy Independence Day. Make the dream a reality.
