Daily Shvitz

On Being Black, White, and Jewish

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:44:47 -0600

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Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr. The news this week has been saturated with issues of race, otherness, and problems of identity in a society that's most comfortable drawing boundaries and lines. On Sunday, the New York Times ran a story on Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr., the first African-American member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. On Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama gave a landmark speech on race relations that took the country by storm. We asked documentary filmmaker Lacey Schwartz to weigh in on ...

Book Club: Jewish Wisdom for Business Success

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:28:15 -0500

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Good Friday Jewcers! We've come to the end of another week-long ride on the Wall Street roller-coaster. Thankfully, this week on Jewcy the authors of Jewish Wisdom for Business Success advised you to sit in the back and bring a bag. Rabbi Levi Brackman graciously included some economic Dvar Torah in each of his posts. He began talking about how the media and other commentators misconstrued the point of his book. He cleared the air with some pertinent facts proving that the ...

What My Book Can Teach Ahmadinejad About Jews and Wall Street

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:00:02 -0500

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The vultures are gathering. In the midst of the carnage of the financial meltdown, the anti-semites are starting to circle. Everyone's favorite carrion-picker, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced to the U.N. General Assembly that "aggressors" who hide behind their "financial, political and propaganda powers, not only escape punishment but claim righteousness..." are to blame for the problems of today's markets. Hamas soon dug in its claws too when spokesman ...

How the Torah Gave Me the Name for My Energy Business

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:00:09 -0500

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A good name tells a story and identifies the named in some memorable way. And I needed one. Fast. It was late in the evening one night this past May. I was going to my lawyer’s office the next day to sign the papers for the incorporation of my business and I found, much too late for comfort, that the URL for the name I had chosen was already owned by a popular web portal in Korea. I did what any God-petitioning Jew should have done in the first place: I picked up a copy of the Torah. ...

Time Mag: What Would the Talmud Do about the Credit Crisis?

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:03:04 -0500

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Between the Jewish establishment's imposition of silence and the loosely coupled throng of Jew-hater's who zealously proclaim conspiracy, the discourse over Jews and money is pure zealotry on either side. The result is a vacuum of alternative perspectives and the absence of any shred of an enlightened public discussion, which only provides fertile soil for a perpetual harvest of rhetorical hate. That's why Jewcy feels it's critical to highlight voices like Brackman and Jaffe, as we are ...

Book Club: Walking Through Walls

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:00:00 -0500

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Smith, an artist and former managing editor of GQ magazine, reflects on his youth in 1960s Miami. He wanted a father who mowed the lawn, drank beer, and fell asleep in front of the TV. Instead, his dad, Lew Smith, was a successful interior decorator, who went through a macrobiotic transformation and began tuning into mystical vibrations. Young Philip was introduced to fasting and yogic diets, while Lew explored esoteric spirituality, reincarnation, Bach Flower Remedies and such metaphysical ...

The Heretic: Stop Whispering, Start Shouting

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 07:00:00 -0500

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Earlier this week, our friends at Agriprocessors, America’s largest supplier of glatt kosher meat, were charged with more than 9000 counts of child labor violations. Named in the Iowa affidavit are Aaron Rubashkin, Agriprocessors owner, his son Sholom M. Rubashkin, and Agriprocessors Human Resources director, and its two HR managers. The New York Times reports that fines could total more than $5 million. Jail time could stretch for years. One of the child laborers was 13 years ...

Does God Care What I Do with My Boobs?

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:51:48 -0500

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Breastfeeding: now we know God's opinion A series of new public service billboards in California, which tout the importance of breastfeeding, are borrowing heavily from the notorious GodSpeaks campaign. If you’ve done any long distance driving in America in the last decade, you’re probably familiar with the GodSpeaks billboards. You know, those big black billboards that say things like, What part of “Thou shalt not…” didn’t you understand? and Have you read my #1 best seller? ...

Hummus vs. Hamas

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:35:52 -0500

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Sacha Baron Cohen is loose in Israel, and he's creating some confusion over the thin linguistic line between hummus and Hamas. Posing as his character Bruno, a gay Austrian rock star, Cohen has been interviewing unsuspecting Israeli and Palestinian political experts, leaving them flabbergasted by his "confusion" between chick pea paste and the militant political organization. This delicate differentiation has been dealt with before, most notably in West Bank Story, winner of the ...

To Spend or To Give: Should You Stimulate the Economy or Give to Charity with That Tax Rebate?

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:23:40 -0500

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Mo Money Mo Problems: so think about giving some of that phat check awayTax rebates are trickling into American mailboxes. Some of us will be getting a pretty sweet chunk of change back, and with the economy going down the tubes, there are plenty of places we can think of to use that money. But if you don’t absolutely need it to pay rent, put food on the table, or pay off some debt, some people think you should give your rebate (or at least, part of it) to charity. A number of churches have ...

Happy Godwin Day, From Our Home To Yours

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:40:35 -0500

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Newsflash: Hitler is dead. In fact, today is the 63rd anniversary of his death. Alas, since World War II, Jewish discourse on absolutely every single matter of import to Jews has been crippled by the rhetoric of comparing perceived enemies and threats to Hitler. Whether it's intermarriage, Israel, matrilineal succession (i.e. "who is a Jew?"), whether Jews should retain their separateness, how America should deal with Iran, or whether we should care about Jeremiah Wright's ...

Jewcy’s Guide to Passover

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:54:10 -0500

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Passover has taken quite a hit this year: First Manischewitz announced that it wasn’t going to produce any Tam Tams this year, and then Charlton “Moses” Heston passed on to that great gun range in the sky. Luckily, Jewcy’s here to help you cope. We’ve rounded up everything we’ve ever run on Pesach, then salted the mix liberally with some helpful links from outside sources. Need something you don’t see here? Leave a comment, and our readers just might be able to help you out. ...

Max Mosley Thought He Was Paying for Discretion, Not Dehumanization

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:29:51 -0500

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Max Mosley: discretion, or dehumanization? Henri is a Jew. He operates a semi-private BDSM bar in Berlin. The first night we met, he wept into my camera. We drank shots of Campari and I promised to keep rolling as he kept talking. The bar was loud, had about a half dozen other kinky people in it flirting and drinking, and some details of our conversation were lost in the classic rock soundtrack. Henri told me, "My parents took part in a mapping project. This was right before the war. ...

Five Famous Sex Strikes, from Lysistrata to the Current Israeli Mikvah Workers' Boycott

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:16:31 -0500

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Pay Up: or pull outIsraeli mikvah attendants—the women who supervise dunks into the ritual baths to make sure they’re kosher—haven’t been paid in five months, so Kolech, an Orthodox feminist organization, is working to organize a mikvah boycott until ladies of the bath get paid. Without dunking in the mikvah after her period, a woman isn’t supposed to have sexual relations with her husband, so the boycott would effectively deprive Orthodox couples of intimacy until the issue is ...

The New Jew Canon: A Tale of Love and Darkness

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:19:37 -0500

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The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or email. Title: A Tale of Love and Darkness Author: Amos Oz Description: I can think of no better book to introduce a reader into the layered, fragile, complex, and painful truth of what it means to be an ...