I was reading Virginia Heffernan's article for Tablet about her encounter as a young woman with J.D. Salinger in Cornish, NH.  Salinger died at age 91 on January 28th, 2010.  Heffernan, who is a convert,  reflected nicely on his half-Jewish identity and his troubled family life, but much to my astonishment, she was met with a barrage of comments that Salinger wasn't Jewish because he had a Jewish father, and that he had deserted Judaism as an adult, etc., etc.  Here is my reply:

Dear Commenters:

I never thought in a million years that I’d have to defend J.D. Salinger’s claim to Jewish roots.

I’m the Coordinator of the Half-Jewish Network, the largest international organization for adult children and other descendants of intermarriage (www.half-jewish.net). As a member of Jewish outreach, I was recently informed that one of Salinger’s descendants currently lives as a Jew.

If this information is true, I sure hope that his descendant does not see your thread, filled with ethnocentric attacks on Salinger’s connection to the Jewish people and negative comments implying that the author of the article, Mrs. Heffernan, is unworthy to comment on Jewish topics because she is Jew by choice.  Your negative remarks would likely cause Salinger’s descendant to question the wisdom of affiliating with the Jewish people.  Moreover, you display a profound ignorance of the situation in which many children of intermarriage find themselves, and of Mr. Salinger’s tragic personal history in particular.

Salinger Was Raised Jewish

Mr. Salinger was Jewish as defined by both the Reform and Reconstructionist movements. Both denominations require that the child of either a Jewish mother or a Jewish father be brought up as a Jewish from birth, and given life cycle rituals like a bar or bat mitzvah.

Even though no Jewish outreach to interfaith families existed when Mr. Salinger was born in 1919, he was raised as a Jew and had a bar mitzvah.  Shortly after his bar mitzvah, he was told that his mother — coerced by her Jewish in-laws — had been hiding her Christian identity.  Can you imagine the impact of this discovery on a 13 year old? No wonder the heroes of his fiction display a contempt for adult “phonies” and a suspicion towards all conventional appearances.

Why Didn't He Live As A Jew?

You also resent that he sought spirituality in other religions.  Given your unwelcoming attitudes can you blame him?...and this is the year 2010. Imagine the icy reception Salinger would have received from other Jews, in say, 1936, if as an unknown writer  he had expressed any interest in conversion or living as a Jew.

I know from interviewing adult children of intermarriage who grew up in that era that the American Jewish community, that they were often rejected, which is in stark contrast with the German Jewish community of the 1930s.  There was no organized interfaith family outreach in American Judaism until the early 1980s, when Salinger was in his sixties. And even today, as evidenced by your horrible comments, adult childen and grandchildren of intermarriage are routinely snubbed and rebuffed when attempting to gain entry to the Jewish community.  There is outreach for interfaith couples and Jews by choice, but almost none for half-Jewish people

His Experiences In World War II, The Holocaust

Now, about Mr. Salinger’s personal history with the Holocaust.

With regard to the comment that Salinger, as a trainee in his father’s business, was in no danger in 1938 Vienna, because he had an American passport, please consult any history of the Holocaust, and see report after report of people being killed or injured in the streets everywhere in the Nazi empire from 1934 onward because they “looked Jewish.”  How quickly you forget.  You think the Nazi thugs asked for paperwork categorically?

None of you hostiles appear aware that Salinger spent World War II as a staff sergeant in the Army, suffering through bloody campaigns in Europe against the Nazis, helping liberate a concentration camp, and then serving because of his fluent French and German as an interpreter to American officials rounding up German prisoners of war.  Salinger’s experiences in WWII were so bad that he had a nervous breakdown. I would say that those are substantial services to Judaism and humanity and should be treated with more respect.

Jews By Choice Get A Voice

Now, with regard to your comment that Heffernan is a convert and therefore apparently has no right to discuss Jewish topics: have you read any Jewish texts?  As a convert Ms. Heffernan is considered a Jew and has every right to discuss Jewish topics.

Her perception of Mr. Salinger as a kvetching New York Jew in the utterly non-Jewish setting of Cornish, NH and his momentary kindness to her, is in keeping with what is known of his character and behavior. Irregardless of his adult spiritual beliefs, his early New York Jewish upbringing was marked in his behavior and outlook throughout his life.  Overall, her article is a tiny and precious snapshot which will be greatly appreciated by future Salinger biographers and scholars.

Double Bind Experiences in Jewish Community

In conclusion, I would like to state that your negative comments on Salinger’s connections to Judaism epitomize the double bind experiences that many half-Jewish people find themselves in today when they encounter the Jewish community.  We are often told that we are “not Jewish” and if we attempt to live as Jews, obstacles are put in the way of our converting or entering Jewish communities. Then we are berated, subtly or openly, by some Jews with two Jewish parents, for having explored other spiritualities.

Conversions should not be repeatedly challenged as inauthentic.  Stop.

It my earnest hope, as the leader of the Half-Jewish Network and of the Inclusivist Judaism Coalition that I will live to see a Judaism that is multicultural and multiracial, and where the number and gender of one’s Jewish ancestors will not be as important as one’s spiritual or secular culture ties to them, and that all persons connected to the Jewish people by family ties will see those ties honored.

MaNishtana Fact No. 11: I'm a big fan of Aquaman.

Not so much the costume but the character. I think he's highly underused and has a lot of untapped potential because it's easier to write him off as a third string character. But the dude is the King Arthur of the sea, PLUS he can command fish...Of course while that sounds kickass on paper, it doesn't really work so much in real life. Fish have a memory span of about 3 seconds. That's why they die if you put too much food in the water: they've literally forgotten that they JUST finished eating and so eat themselves to death. So with a power to command fish you'd really end up getting nowhere:

Fish: Hi Aquaman!

Aquaman: You! Fish! Come here!

Fish: Sure!

Aquaman: Black Manta has a bomb. I need you to--

Fish: Hi Aquaman!

Aquaman: Yes, hi, great. Look, you're gonna have to swim down to the--

Fish: Oh wow! Hi Aquaman!

Aquaman: Ok, SERIOUSLY pay attention!

Fish: Sure thing Aquaman!

Aquaman: Good. Now the fuse line is--

Fish: Hi Aquaman!

See? Kind of a useless power. The kind of useless power which is only second, apparently, to being leader of the Jewish people:

Israel: Yay! 10 plagues! You rock Moses!

Moses: Great! But let's hurry cuz Egypt is on our backs right now.

Israel: What? Why is egypt trying to kill us? Why don't you ever do anything GOOD for us Moses? We hate you!

Moses: Uh, what? Ok, nevermind. Quick into the sea that's splitting over here!

Israel: Excellent! Moses you're the best!

Moses: Um...Thank yo--

Israel: Hey you got any water?

Moses: Not...Not on me right now, n--

Israel: You suck Moses! I don't know we ever listened to you!

Moses: What the f...*ahem*...Ok look, I threw some wood into this pond here. Drink.

Israel: Dude! That's why you're the man Moses!

Moses: Are you...Are you guys really okay? Cuz it--

Israel: OMG Moses, can you try to NOT have us die of hunger?

Moses: How are you even---

Israel: Ooh! Quails!

Moses: Okay, I'm really not--

Israel: Seriously Moses, we're HUNGRY!

Moses: You can't be ser--

Israel: Ooh! Manna!

Moses: Honestly, this is just ridic--

Israel: Got any water Moses?

Moses: But you just HAD--

[Punches a rock]

Moses: HERE! Here's your water!

Israel: YAY MOSES!

Gd: Heeeey Moses...Can I talk to you over here?

Moses: Sure.

Gd: Yeah...I'm gonna need you to not do that again.

Moses: No problem.

Gd: Good. Cuz, like, I will seriously kill you if you do that again.

Moses: Never happen again.

[Disclaimer: Please, do not expect "Real Talk" to make actual Biblical sense. If you are looking for a legitimate commentary of meaning and substance, this ain't the place. It's less "Onkelos" and more "Onion", get me?]

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 these two stories by sharing her own parallel experiences as a Black, Jewish woman who is working to incorporate and make sense of her dual identities. Here's what she had to say:

Like any typical upper-middle class Jewish girl growing up in the Eighties, my life revolved around the Bar Mitzvah party circuit, Gap clothing stores, second base, and Madonna. Something was off, though: From a young age, I encountered people who pointed out that I looked different from my white parents because of my darker skin, tightly curled hair and thicker features. From a little boy in nursery school who made me show him my gums because he claimed they determined my race, to my classmates in high school who would verbally accost me in the halls with “What are you?”—an inquiry that they demanded more than asked—questions about my identity were abundant. “Jewish?” I would tentatively respond, afraid of how they might react to my denial of what they saw as my obvious blackness.

My family never seemed to notice or acknowledge the fact that I looked different from them. One overt example of this came at the age of sixteen, when my grandfather strongly encouraged me to break up with my bi-racial boyfriend. Without irony or malice, Grandpa expressed his fear of how people might treat me for being in an interracial relationship. Because of experiences like these, I deeply related when Barack Obama described in a speech earlier this week how he would cringe when his white grandmother uttered racial stereotypes, and yet he could not disown her.

Lacey Schwartz: black, white, jewish? yes, yes, and yes. When I applied to college I left the race/ethnicity box blank and attached a photograph instead. Based on that, I was admitted as a student who was of “Black/Not of Hispanic Origin.” It wasn't until the end of my freshman year that I learned the truth: My biological father was an African-American man who my mother had had an affair with while married to my father. It was quite a shock, but I cherish my university experience as the time and place where my identification with being African-American and my connection to the Black community first began.

Years later, in an attempt to merge my Black identity with my Jewish upbringing, I attended Yom Kippur services at a Black synagogue in Brooklyn. I was skeptical at first: “A group of Black Jews worshipping together?” I thought. On entering the small brownstone converted into a synagogue, I was amazed to find that the entire congregation was Black! I was even more surprised to find the songs, prayers, and Shofar blasts were identical to what I learned growing up. I couldn't help but wonder how someone with two Black parents could possibly be Jewish, but after years of being questioned by strangers about my own identity, I hid my ignorance and didn't ask the questions I so desperately wanted answered.

As featured in last weekend’s NY Times, Rabbi Capers Funnye Jr. embodies both the heart and soul of this community of people. He was one of the first Black rabbis who I came upon in researching other Black Jews, and he has been one of the most inspiring people I have met along the journey. His work, along with others like him, is making the Jewish community more accepting of all Jews and changing the way we all expect Jewish people to look.

For much of my adult life, I have maintained separate cultural identities. Only in the last couple of years, as part of a personal documentary, have I set out to learn what it means to be both Black and Jewish. In recognizing the uniqueness of my situation, I have come to discover that Black Jews are members of a small, but significant minority within a minority: A group of people whose roots are as diverse and dynamic as any other ethnic group or subculture, and who represent the immense complexity of America itself.

This article first appeared on March 21, 2008 and has been republished as part of the series JEWCYEST WEEK EVER.

The following email was sent to Noah, a secular Jew about to marry his non-Jewish fiancee Sheila, by Noah's baal teshuvah cousin Moishe. By an odd and fortuitous chain of events, the email found its way to Jewcy HQ. The people in this exchange are all real but have had their names changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty. In other words, we could not have made this shit up if we tried. That includes the spelling and grammar errors.

Subject: hi noah

So I have some very bad news that EVERY Torah observant Jew shares (not just Moishe) Regarding your plans: You may already know that you Childen will not be Jewish, but I think you are not really aware of what that really means... That means that while biologically you will have children, spiritually you will not. Furthermore, besides it being a punishable (in heaven) prohibition to marry a non-jew, you will not be married spiritually (under heaven.) In other words, you will have a secular marriage, or an invalid fradulent 'religious' marriage, but in any case you will not have a wife, therefore you will not fulfill the commandment to take a wife and as well you will not fulfill the comandment to have children.  Furthermore you will not be able to cook for your goyishe wife or children on Shabbos or on Festival days.

If your goyishe children convert, then they will still not be your children as they will receive new souls, not connected to you.

If you were to lend her money (for even a day, or even an hour) you must charge her interest.
As first and foremost she is a non-Jew, second she will never be your wife in heaven, never.

You will be pretendng to married and it will be to a stranger, ultimately as your souls are truly incompatable in ways you do not experience, because you are distracted by where you have compatability, namely your acting like a King who is enjoying the company of a peasant, which is obviously a very lowly king and so your compatability as the opposite of holy and extraordinary.

Furthermore by going through with this you are thus sending not only yourself but your true Jewish soulmate into Alone-ness

And you will feel it, eventually, mark my words, and when you do, if you disregard everything I am writing and go through with it than G-d help you realize before you ave children, for then you will begin to see what you have done, as they reject you and your mother.  It is said that anti-semintism goes through Mothers Milk, so I pray these Goyishe children, G-d willing that you never have, but if you do that she'll feed them formula for your sake.

Not for the worlds, because they will be weak.

First generation goyishe children off of a Jewish father are always weak.

They are psychologically strong as the Mind goes by father and their ideas can corrupt whole cultures, due to the inherent distortions in their composition, nevertheless they are weak.
Your wife will eventuallly hate you also, or should Moshiach come, as he will very soon please G-d, she may be one of your Goyish slaves and when she is on all fours, not allowed to walk as a human you will see the animal you married.

Continue reading...

So, after Pharaoh's back and forth yo-yo game with Moses, Egypt gets hit with the last of the plagues, including Death of the Firstborn.  Not sure if anyone realizes, but Death of the Firstborn is quite possibly the most devastating plague anybody can get hit with. And I say this not because of the obvious "death" part [or b/c im a firstborn myself--shout-out to all my Erev Pesach siyum heads] but because Death of the Firstborn is the plague that just keeps on giving:

[Audience applause]

Maury: Welcome back. Now this is Imhotep and Anck-su-namun. Imhotep says that he feels his 3 yr old son Mathayus may be child of another man.  But his wife Anck-su-namun denies ever having an affair and claims that little Mathayus is his.  Let's hear your side of the story Imhotep.

Imhotep: See, I'm an overseer, right? I spent a lot of time out of the house whipping Hebrew slaves.  It's my job, y'know? I'm just tryna take of my family, so I'm out of the house a lot.  Then Moses comes along and turns all the dust to lice, so now there's nothing for the slaves to do and I'm out of a job. So I come home early and I see this Ardeth Bay dude creeping out the back of my house.

Anck-su-namun: Oh you STILL on that? It ain't even like that. You just need to care of yo responsibilities. This is YO child!

[Audience applause]

Imhotep: Whatever! Whatever! You don't KNOW me!

Maury: So Imhotep, look at little Mathayus there.

[Picture of Mathayus appears on screen]

[Audience "awww"s]

Maury: Why would anyone wanna deny that child?

Imhotep: Well, see, I THOUGHT he was my son.  But then I come home after that whole Death of the Firstborn plague, all depressed, right? And Mathayus is still alive. What the [bleep] is THAT [bleep] about?

Anck-su-namun: Look, I don't even know why we here. I told you Horus was watching over him.

Imhotep: Please, that's that [bleep].

Maury: Well I've got the paternity test results right here and we're gonna get to the bottom of this.

[Audience applause]

Maury: Imhotep...In the case of  3 yr old Mathayus...You are NOT the father!

[Imhotep jumps up, Anck-su-namun runs offstage in tears]

Imhotep: I TOLD you! I TOLD you!

 

see? keeps on giving.

[Disclaimer: Please, do not expect "Real Talk" to make actual Biblical sense. If you are looking for a legitimate commentary of meaning and substance, this ain't the place. It's less "Onkelos" and more "Onion", get me?]

When Dubliner Dan Walsh removed Garfield from the classic Jim Davis cartoons, drawing attention to the peculiar life and mind of his owner Jon Arbuckle, he created an internet phenomenon which has drawn between 30,000 and 300,000 hits per day since February. Without the fat, waggish, sarcastic, star of the cartoon, all we are left with is Jon Arbuckle, Garfield's owner. Walsh would have us believe that this results in "an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and the empty desperation of modern life" of which Jim Davis, himself, is a fan.

In Walsh's distilled version, Arbuckle still says and does all he did in the original cartoon, when his life was made tougher (and often funnier) because of Garfield. He wishes for love, struggles with maintaining the house, waxes philosophical, makes dumb domestic mistakes, and tries to find joy in the everyday. Garfield no longer wryly responds to any of this because he is no longer there. And it's true, Arbuckle does seem off-kilter, lonely and unstable at times without the cat making any appearances.

But for those who can't shake the knowledge that Arbuckle is interacting with someone, his irrational behavior can actually appear profound and poetic. Another possible reading is not that he is mad and melodramatic (although I'll admit, sometimes he does seems a bit mad....), but that Arbuckle is seeking a relationship with God. Like Arbuckle sans Garfield, religious people attempt to have relationships and interact with something that cannot be seen or heard. (One can already anticipate the catcalls, "All this suggests is that religious people are also schizophrenic, bipolar, depressives!) Pleading with this intangible thing, fearing it at times, religious people occasionally find a companion, albeit one with fierce independence. Like Arbuckle in this new version, religious people incorporate this seemingly absent thing into their lives, for better or for worse.

Arbuckle's life takes on a chaotic and meandering tone. He talks to himself constantly, cannot grasp the reins of his life, and acts just plain oddly at times. If by removing Garfield from the strip, Walsh is suggesting that the cat never existed, and was just a figment of Arbuckle's imbalanced imagination, then this, too, parallels a modern notion that people manufactured God in order to have a pretext for social control (or a context for their madness). Why all the mumbling into books? Why the unscrewing of refrigerator light bulbs?

But for those who have had experiences of or deeply sense the divine, the kind of conduct that Arbuckle exhibits makes a whole lot of sense: Despite the discombobulation that Arbuckle might feel from having this "absent-Garfield" in his life, he also seems to feel a whole lot more. His paradoxical relationship with "that which isn't" expands the kinds of experiences he can have in the world and enlarges the map where he can take his extraordinary range of emotions.

In Walsh's revised strips, Arbuckle's relationship with that-which-is-absent presents a window into the complex, challenging, and beautiful relationships modern religious people build with God. It also shows us a bit how these relationships can appear loony to others. Who knew such a rich meditation on relations with the divine could be achieved with photoshop and in pastel?  Here are eight religious readings of Garfield Minus Garfield.


In this strip, Arbuckle is experiencing some kind of joy. It's rare for him to be so pleased—perhaps he just booked a ticket to go back to the farm or was successful in landing that elusive comic date. But when encountering the Other wanting to share his joy, he is clearly rebuffed. This portrays the independence of the intangible God who cannot be summoned at will or manipulated into giving comfort at all times.  Arbuckle would like to universalize his experience, or influence something larger with it—if I am feeling good, then all must be good. But try as he might, he realizes that his emotions do not determine the state of the world.

By attempting to hear the dreams of the Other, Arbuckle is attempting to make a more selfless connection with the world. It is unclear whether he actually hears any response to his question, but he understands that relationships require listening—or at the very least a place for the Other to assert itself. To try to listen to the dreams, specifically, of the Other—if that Other is indeed God or if that Other is another being—is to try to be commanded towards a vision of the world not yet established. Arbuckle is opening his own existence to include the will of another.

One of the things that religion focuses on is an understanding of death. Some, full of hubris, might believe that it can be controlled or intimidated, but that can only lead to futility, as is portrayed here. Since he appears the next day, one can surmise that his disappearance only served to remind him of his mortality, something that perhaps encourages him to live and feel more fully, as he seems capable of doing.

For a modern person, all religious expressions and moments of relationship with God do not lead to disappointment or absurdity. Here, Arbuckle seems to have found a space for his contentment.  His suggestion that he and the invisible Other “think nice thoughts” is accepted. One can imagine God appreciating the sentiment. Jewish texts portray God as responsive to the suggestions of others, even allowing people to sway God's emotions.

Truth be told, most people, even religious people, are not always satisfied by religious worship or ritual. And even though one might imagine that doing things in a special or different (read: religious) context would make things improve, it doesn't always. A boring Shabbas morning shiur is still boring with or without a flashy kippah on one's head. And sometimes one just needs to admit and accept that.

Sometimes religion entreats people to do seemingly irrational things—like walk to shul a mile in a snow storm, spend too much money on a citrus that one won't eat, cut off one's circulation with funny boxes on one's arm and head, or take off one's clothes in a marketplace if it turns out one's garment contains a mixture wool or linen. The experience, although not always pleasurable, usually leads to a good amount of deliberation about why a religious person does what one does, or why one is required to do what one does......

When humans fail, people often turn to God for comfort or understanding. Given the free will that God allows, these moments of communion do not entail asking God to change things. Jon is not asking God to cut a hole for him.  Rather, the experience of the Other is a way to have companionship in these moments when other people disappoint us.

Arbuckle's intense excitement about his three-weeks-from-now date would be cause for concern for his human friends. But here it comes across as reflective gratitude, especially given that no person is there to tell him otherwise. It almost feels like his next move is to say a bracha..... And I am sure I am mistaken, but doesn't that look like payos tucked behind his ear?

This article first appeared on July 7, 2008 and has been republished as part of the series JEWCYEST WEEK EVER.

Are we witnessing a new vogue in restoring Jewish sites in the Middle East? The renovated Maimonides synagogue in Cairo will be officially inaugurated in March to much fanfare. The Maghen Avraham Synagogue in the heart of Beirut is being rebuilt. Across Morocco and Tunisia, holy sites and synagogues are getting a facelift.

What is going on?

Nobody can pretend that these restored sites are ever going to be working synagogues. Like Hitler's project for a Jewish Museum in Prague, they are monuments, perhaps not to an extinct race - most Jews escaped from these countries with their lives - but an extinct Jewish civilisation and way of life in Arab countries, predating Islam by a thousand years. Once spruced up, these synagogues will be nothing more than symbols. They will never again become the beating heart of a revived Jewish community. Fewer than 50 Jews live in the whole of Egypt; mostly old ladies married to Muslims or Christians. Ditto in Lebanon, the home of Hezbollah and Bourj al-Barajneh, where anyone openly identifying as a Jew risks life and limb.

There are two main reasons why Arab countries might suddenly show an interest in their Jewish heritage.

First, synagogues are good public relations for the regime in power. The unsuccessful candidate to head UNESCO, Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosni, played on the restoration of the Maimonides synagogue to distract from his antisemitic slips-of-the-tongue about burning 'Israeli' books.

No matter if the country has no more Jews, a synagogue restoration project advertises 'Arab tolerance' and pays lip service to pluralism. "Look, we even have Jews here!" it proclaims. "Tolerance of Jewish cultural remains can be exchanged for Western goodwill and aid without necessitating any messy engagement with actual Israelis," as one journalist puts it.

Continue reading...

There has been a lot of talk about the Tefillin bomb scare, and quite frankly, I understand where these people are coming from. Imagine some bearded individual whips out a strange device that looks like it could either be a weapon or something out of a BDSM party, and then starts mumbling to himself and swaying. Now imagine that he's in the middle of the amidah and he cannot talk.

One of my roommates during Birthright thought that my tefillin were just straps to tie my arm in order to shoot up. This was a non-affiliated (albeit educated) Jewish kid from Colorado who was in school at NYU. If someone who attended NY Jew and still not be informed about tefillin – imagine what those passengers from Kentucky thought. I would have freaked out as well.

Kiddush Levana: A bunch of Jews are gathered on a street corner looking up at the moon.

What they think: Wow, I didn’t know the Jews prayed to the moon God! I always thought they were monotheistic.

Lulav: People are walking down the street with lulavim on Sukkot.

What they think: So this is when the Jews celebrate Palm Sunday... wait a second, it’s not even Sunday. Maybe they are doing it now because palm branches cost less when no one really needs them, those cheap bastards.

Shabbos: It’s a frum community and everyone is going to shul.

What they think: Look at all these people wearing black! There must be a really big funeral going on somewhere. Wait, why is everyone walking to the funeral? They must be trying to save on gas, or maybe it’s a green funeral.

Burning of the chometz: There is a garbage can in the street and the Jews are gathered around throwing their chometz into the fire.

What they think: I wonder if this has something to do with commemorating Kristallnacht. Are they burning German books or something?

Megilas Esther: Everyone is dressed up and it’s time to boo for Haman.

What they think: Why is everyone cheering every time they mention that man Haman?

Purim: Everyone is delivering gift baskets and most of the kids are dressed up.

What they think: Look, the Jews have their own Halloween, but instead of waiting for people to ask for candy they go and deliver it.

Simchas Torah: In some places, Jews take to the streets to celebrate the giving of the Torah.

What they think: It’s an Orthodox Jewish gay pride parade... but why are all the lesbians just watching?

 

Note: This post sparked an interesting discussion on my Jewish comedy blog that is 105 comments long.

Former Sexiest Man Alive Mel Gibson has gone through somewhat of a life crisis over the last few years. He divorced his longtime wife (and the mother of seven of his children) to knock up an aspiring singer from Russia. He also, perhaps more infamously, got pulled over for drunk driving in 2006 and launched into a tirade that involved antisemitic comments like "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" and calling a female police offer "sugartits." Now, with the release of his new movie, Edge of Darkness (his first starring role in almost eight years), he's back on the press circuit. In an interview in Hello! magazine, Mel says of his anti-Jew comments:

It’s said that I went into a rant, but I think it went on for about five words. I was drunk. It just turned into a big thing. I apologized profusely — not once but three times. So what’s the problem? It’s four years ago. Do I need to apologize again?

Aww, poor Mel. It's so unfair how those meanie Jews who control the media keep asking if you regret your boneheaded behavior. Life is so hard for you. This is like when the six-year-old older brother gets in trouble for hitting the four-year-old younger brother, and when Mom orders him to apologize he sticks his tongue out and says, "I'm sorry." In that case, the six-year-old at least makes it clear that he doesn't mean his "apology" and is just doing it because someone made him. You, on the other hand? Not only will you fake-apologize to make other people happy, you will bitch about the audacity of someone expecting you to fake-apologize. But you'll still ask them to buy tickets to your movies! You know what, Mel? You should just go on with your big old antisemitic self. Own that. Wear it on a T-shirt. And then see if anyone keeps giving you interviews, watching your movies, or giving a shit what you have to say about anything. Go ahead. Start now. We'll be right here.

As these things go, Israeli and Jewish publications have been arguing furiously over a... history book. Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People alleges that a historical "Jewish people" does not exist and that the bulk of Jewry today descends from converts, rather than from the inhabitants of pre-Roman Judea.

Sand, in writing the book, has placed himself in a proud tradition of Jewish contrarians. Given that us Jews are the most self-mythologizing and status-quo doubting people this side of the Irish, it's not a real surprise.

Every ten or so years, after all, there is another intellectual who sparks eager fights among university professors and journalists through a new reading of the historical record. Norman Finkelstein's potshots at "the Holocaust industry" in the nineties. Benny Morris' deconstruction of the Israeli War of Independence in the 1980s. Before that, Arthur Koestler's Khazar hypothesis (which Sand resurrects) and Immanuel Velikovsky's attempt to reconcile Biblical events with the space race. Some of these writers, of course, were much more successful than others.

As an unrepentant history geek, I wanted to read the book when the English edition — translated ably by Yael Lotan from the original Hebrew — was released in late 2009. The press trail was intriguing. Among others, the New York Times, Times of London, Guardian, BBC and al-Jazeera English all featured the book, along with the usual blogosphere suspects. Then there was the fact that Tony Judt, Simon Schama, Tom Segev and other prominent historians had all taken the time recently to weigh in on Sand's book, whether pro or con.

So I put an order in to Amazon. My book arrived.

I was disappointed.

Here's the thing. Sand, a professor of modern French history at Tel Aviv University, could have written four very good books. Unfortunately, he mashed them all together into one ungainly mess of an incediary device.

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In November, Gallup did a poll of 1,002 Americans, asking them their feelings on three "minority religions" - that would be the Muslims, the Buddhists, and us. This week, they released the findings. Among them:

• 71 percent report having a "positive" opinion about Jews, including 25 percent who have "very positive" opinions. (Does this remind anyone else of the bit on the final Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien where Steve Carell came out in character as Michael Scott to do Conan's exit interview and only gave him the choices "positive," "very positive," and "extremely positive"? Just me then? Okay.)
• 15 percent admitted to having some negative feelings about Jews.
• 19 percent of respondents do not actually know any Jewish people.

Somehow, I don't find these results terribly shocking. What I'd really love to know is whether those 19 percent of people who don't know any of Teh Jooz had positive or negative opinions of us. My guess is actually going to be that the people who don't know any Jews presumably live in rural areas in places like the Deep South and therefore love Jews in theory because they're evangelical Christians and therefore think the Jews are the Chosen People. Obviously, my own experiences growing up in the South around evangelicals are influencing me on this one, but I'd love to see a more specific breakdown of the study with an emphasis on geographical regions.

Anyway, the next time Abe Foxman goes on yet another one of his "everyone's an antisemite!!1!#@!" rages, someone should be ready in the wings to hand him a copy of these survey results.

 

 

With all this talk about non-dual Judaism, whether or not Orthodoxy is the "true" Judaism that Progressive Jews are just too damn lazy or stupid to accept, or whether G-d even exists, I like to propose an idea. That G-d can be explained with a simple, straight line.

Take a look at this image and ask yourself, "what is this?" It could be a letter: a lowercase "l" or an uppercase "I." It could be the number "1" or part of "11."

Imagine this image, from the perspective of a person walking through the woods. If you saw this image, say stapled to a tree, what would it be? Perhaps a sign pointing you in the right direction toward a walking path? Maybe it's a walking stick? Maybe it's some kind of warning or a piece of graffiti left behind?

Flip the image horizontally. What do we have? a picture of the horizon, a "negative" sign or a dash mark.

Now, let's take this line, and put it into a new context:

G - D

This single, straight line is now a part of something that philosophers, scholars, rabbis, priests and every day people have struggled with for thousands of years. It is everything for some, and nothing for others. It's the being so close that you can touch it, or something so remote that you can never truly know it.

With one straight line, we can find a million different perspectives. So what makes any of us vain enough to believe that something as huge as G-d can ever be agreed upon or argued in any way that isn't mental masturbation?

What is? G-d is! G-d is, is! And if for you, G-d is nothing, then G-d is still something. Thank G-d for that! 

I gotta tell you: Pharaoh is probably the worst person in the world to order lunch with. Or do anything with really.  So Moses comes and is like "Dude, I'm gonna hit you with blood." Pharaoh's like "bet". Moses hits him with blood. Pharaoh's all like "Whoooa, this ish is real! Make it stop and imma let your people go." Moses makes the blood go away. Pharaoh's like "Nahh, not really though."

Now take this and rinse, lather, and repeat for frogs, lice, wild beasts, pestilence, boils, hail, and Jonas Brothers.  If this is how annoyingly indecisive he was with the craziest supernatural bad mojo known to man happening to him, imagine how maddening he would be to deal with for something as mundane as, oh, ordering a pizza with friends or something:

Imhotep: Yo Pharaoh, we're ordering pizza. You in?

Pharaoh: Sure. Lemme get some pineapples on my side.

Anck-su-namun: That sounds good. I'll get pineapple too.

Pharaoh: Pineapple? I want extra cheese.

Anck-su-namun: But you just said pineapple.

Pharaoh: Yeah, well, I changed my mind.

Imhotep: And here we go. You always do this!

Pharaoh: Do what?

Imhotep: Every four seconds with you, you're changing your mind.  The hell, man?

Anck-su-namun: And before the food even get here lemme tell you: Yes. I want all of my food. Not some of it. I'm not gonna eat the pizza and fries and you take the soda. I am eating it all.

Pharaoh: So what do I get out of this then?

Anck-su-namun: What do you get out of not trying to get some of my food? You get me not kicking your ass. Does that work for you? Not getting your ass kicked?

Imhotep: Ok, look, let's not even get into that right now. The total is $27.85, so that's like $9.30 a person.

Pharaoh: Well I don't have anything on me right now, but if you pay for it for me, I'll promise to pay you back.

Imhotep: ...Right. Just like you promised I could borrow that Black Eye Peas album if I helped you move, right? But then I did it, and you were like you changed your mind?

Pharaoh: I don't know what you're talking about.

Imhotep: You don't know what I'm talking about.

Pharaoh: I don't know what you're talking about.

Anck-su-namun: Hey, how bout if you shut up I promise to not kick your ass, but then I kick it anyway?

I re-met Marla Bennett at Pardes in 2001.  We knew each other through friends as teenagers, but developed a relationship and shared a tight social circle during my Junior Year abroad in Jerusalem.  After she and fellow Pardes-nik (and DJ) Ben Blutstein were killed in the Hebrew U bombing in July 2002, we were just getting JDub off the ground.  We shifted gears and our first event was a memorial concert for them called Zachor, which raised $25K for scholarship funds in their memory at Pardes.

Seven and a half years on, we maintain close relationships with Marla's family and that social circle from Jerusalem.  We've grown up, gotten married, some of us have had kids.   Tonight, reading this challenging article about her parents' lawsuit against the government of Iran (which awarded them $13 million), I was particularly struck not just by her picture, but her age: 24. As the youngest of our crew, to see that, on the cusp of my 30th birthday, brought back fully the devastation of her loss.  Visiting with the Bennetts this summer, they said nothing of the lawsuit, of their efforts to put a lien on the Iranian embassy, or of their hopes for the good use the $13 million could be put to.  If and when conversation turned to Marla, it was not about the bombing, blame, or foreign governments.  It was about Marla, the sweet, young, caring friend and daughter.  The final line of the article perfectly sums up how the Bennetts, and Marla's friends, remember her: "‘I always tell people she was the best person I've ever known,' said her father."

 

Read the full article at LATimes.com

Jewish outreach professionals complain constantly that younger Jews with two Jewish parents are bored with Judaism and are constantly wandering off to join Buddhist zendos and Hindu ashrams, conjuring up an image of disobedient and insolent young lambs scattering defiantly in all directions, proudly wearing nose rings, tattoos, and baaing defiantly at very expensive programs designed to lure them back into the Jewish communal sheep fold.

I have assured Jewish outreach workers that many adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage would be "cheap dates." We could be coaxed into the communal fold.  Many half-Jewish people would like to join the Jewish community. I have suggested that the Jewish outreach workers do simple brochures for us and start small monthly discussion groups, just as they currently do for interfaith couples and Jews By Choice (converts).

But both I and other half-Jewish people have noticed that these modest suggestions are largely ignored.  At the present time I do not know of a single Jewish institution that has created a pamphlet for us or is currently holding a discussion group for us that directly addresses our needs.  Most Jewish outreach workers have even been unwilling to include the words "adult children of intermarriage" in website welcoming statements that comprehensively welcome every other Jewish minority on the planet, including interfaith couples and Jewish gay frogs (just kidding about the rainbow-colored, Star of David-bespangled frogs, OK?).

Now, in a previous post, I discussed how some of this rejection and neglect is partially rooted in a disastrous "lost generation" policy instituted by the tiny Jewish outreach networks of the 1980s, in which a tacit policy decision was made to abandon all teen and adult children of intermarriage raised outside of Judaism and focus on the much smaller group of half-Jewish people "raised" as Jews by interfaith couples who were able to find welcoming Jewish groups.

But it is 2010 - can't we drop the failed policies of the past? Short answer: apparently not yet. The members of the Half-Jewish Network (www.half-jewish.net) complain to me in large numbers that they are repeatedly rebuffed or ignored by Jewish outreach workers. Why? We brush our teeth regularly and are often employed. We don't even bite!

Why Are Jewish Outreach Workers Ignoring Half-Jewish People?

Last year, I realized that I was operating from logic -- Judaism needs more Jews, therefore, we should welcome half-Jewish people -- but Jewish opposition to reaching out to half-Jewish people is tenacious, deeply-rooted, and emotional -- even among some Jewish outreach professionals!

These feelings that many Jewish outreach workers have about us are deeply buried and often confided to me privately.  

Jewish outreach workers are frequently overworked and underpaid, charged with outreaching not only to interfaith families, but all kinds of Jewish groups that need special outreach, including disaffiliated Jews with two Jewish parents.

Jewish outreach workers are generally very nice people -- they care about interfaith couples and Jews by Choice -- they often go an extra mile to help an interfaith couple find a rabbi to marry them -- or locate a conversion class for a potential Jew by Choice.

Here is what is preventing some of them from showing the same kindnesses to half-Jewish people, in a list of reasons confided to me over the last two decades:

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Another day, another purported terrorism scare at a New York City-area airport. Today, it's out of LaGuardia, where a flight to Louisville had to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia after a passenger's use of a religious item caused flight personnel to fear a bomb scare. What was that religious item, you may ask? Not a Koran, like you might guess. According to CBS, "a Jewish male removed a "tefillin" for prayer purposes after takeoff. The removal of the "religious item" prompted a bomb scare aboard the plane." (Please note that that is an exact quote, including all the scare quotes.) Yes, guys, it turns out that a tefillin box totally looks like a bomb. Thank goodness nobody tried to bring a tzedekah box on board with them.

The man in question was removed from the flight and is probably being questioned by the FBI. However, this is the second incident this month that makes it seem it's less safe to fly while obviously being Jewish. The first, of course, was comedienne Joan Rivers being denied access to a flight because her passport carried two names - her stage name (Rivers) and her much Jewier-sounding legal name (Rosenberg).

Through his brother, "Joseph," Jewcy spoke to "Caleb," a passenger who was sitting near the Jewish man on this flight. Speaking under condition of anonymity because he and several other passengers are still being questioned by the FBI, he said that "There was no problem with [the Jewish passenger] at all," and added that the flight attendant who reported the 'suspicious activity' was biased against the Jewish passenger because she was African-American and did not understand Judaism or the significance of tefillin. The flight attendant in question is based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. [Editor's note: I just want to point out we're not hating on Southern people or saying they're all racist. I mean, dude, I'm from Raleigh. We're just relaying how Caleb and Joseph described the situation to us, and Caleb drew his own conclusions about the situation. Jewcy does not necessarily share or endorse his opinion.]

Of course, Jews aren't being profiled in airports the way that Muslim or Arab-looking people are. At least not yet. But how likely do you think it would be for a Catholic passenger to get kicked off a plane and investigated by the Department of Homeland Security for deciding to pray a rosary before the beverage cart went around? I'd bet the person would be able to pray without incident. And that's something we should be concerned about.

If you are shomer shabbos and buy a Sweet Million lottery ticket, you can't check to see if you've won on Shabbat, right? Well, no big deal, because the chance of winning that lottery are about as good as an elephant showing up on your doorstep.

Now imagine if your chance of winning 1 Million is 1 out of 5! That's what the Orthodox folks at Friendship Circle are facing. This non-profit that helps special needs kids is in the top five to win the Chase Community Giveaway of 1 Million dollars. Votes are accepted through Friday and the winner will be determined on Shabbat. So imagine what will happen when Chase calls or knocks on the door and no-one answers because everyone is in shull?!

ModernTribe fan Pinny Gniwisch called me to pimp his ridiculous video (in which he stars) to help spread the word about the very wonderful charity Friendship Circle. Instead of the video, I find the Shabbat conflict much more worthy of sharing.

Friendship Circle is a non-profit dedicated to enriching the lives of individuals with special needs through play-therapy based programs that pair teens and special friends together to form a life-changing bond of friendship.

You can help confuse Chase (and tempt the Orthodox) by casting your vote for Friendship Circle through Friday, January 22 at http://votefc.com/

"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
- Western sage Steven Wright

Anyone involved in new age spiritual Judaic practice has probably heard of Jay Michaelson; his influence extends to books, articles, publications, spiritual retreats, speaking tours and the like. He was even recently named as one of the Forward 50, an annual list of important and influential Jewish figures in America. In Everything is God, his magnum opus on the nondualistic Judaism Michaelson promotes, he attempts to bring "Jewish Enlightenment" to more traditional consumers. I assume.

His sources are not strictly Jewish; by "mapping" Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, and other religious traditions onto traditional Judaism, Michaelson and his ilk are syncretizing a new Judaism, more as compatible with mystical Eastern traditions. I'm many years out of yeshivah, but I recognize avodah zarah when I see it.

Traditional Judaism posits a anthropomorphic god, with human characteristics, who intervenes in the universe and gave positive commandments. Nondualism on the other hand sacralizes, well, everything, insisting that the whole universe is in the process of "godding." That is to say, that all existence is God's existence, that there is nothing that isn't god--and therefore God encompasses all existence--good and bad, pleasure and suffering--but does not necessarily have discrete characteristics or a personality (except when it does). God isn't just in everyone and everything, it is everyone and everything. The Kabbalistic name for this phenomenon, Michaelson tells us, is "Ein Sof," meaning "without end."

In Michaelson's universe, nondualism is a pervasive and obvious truth, but don't look to the book to make too much sense out of it. The true nature of God is constantly being described as both knowable and unknowable; ineffable but universally understandable. Nondualism, the focus of this book, is the idea that God is the universe. "Nothing is excluded," Michaelson writes early in the book. (It turns that out this is false, but not in the way you're probably thinking). Nondualism stands slightly apart from monism (everything is one) and dualism (there is a difference between the mental and the physical) by being unable to commit to either view to the exclusion of anything else: separateness (for example, the mind/body split) is an illusion, a series of masks God wears because he loves to play tricks on us, or something like that. Nondualism, the author tells us, is not exactly pantheism (all gods are the same god, who is within all of us) or panentheism (pantheism plus a bonus extra god outside of all of us), but encompasses both in a characteristically equivocal fashion.

Atheists call this kind of argument "conversion by bear hug" -- you don't have to believe in god, god is already inside you, therefore you can't realy disbelieve in god, QED. "Neither oneness or twoness, neither yesh nor ayin, but both, and thus neither. It's not quite paradox--it's enlightenment," explains Michaelson. "The Kabbalistic math of this reality is that 2 = 1 = 0. Fortunately, I don't have to be good at math anymore."

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I have long railed against the Orthodox Union and its double-headed outreach group, NCSY and the JSU, for funneling public school teens to haredi places whose trajectories, if followed properly, will lead the indoctrinated to poverty.

The problem is that the Orthodox, even the Modern Orthodox, do not see that as a problem. 

From their P.O.V., they may be correct. 

In regards to a new national survey, the OU declared,

Baalei teshuva, those who do not grow up religiously observant but become so later in life, face added challenges in their marriages; more affluent families run a greater risk of marital stress from at-risk or “off-the-derech” children than Orthodox Jews of more modest means

The Orthodox Union will not relinquish recruiting ties to haredi insitutions that preach poverty to our youth (but not to their own) precisely in part because affluence itself is rightly seen by the Orthodox Union and by Big Kiruv generally as enhancing an already "at risk" population: the newly Orthodox.

 

 

 

Congrats (i.e. big mazel) to failedmessiah.com blogger and frequent Jewcy contributor Shmarya Rosenberg on The New York Times profile piece today (January 9, 2010 pg A17).  The Times reports Shmarya has "transmuted a combination of muckraking reporting and personal grudge into a must-read digest of the actual and alleged misdeeds of the ultra-Orthodox world."  We likey.

Truth be told (and please keep this quiet) the Jewish population is not that large and the Jewish media world is even smaller.  The fact that any of us penguins can make the real news by addressing stereotypes, ethics, and insider nonsense is remarkable AND important.  Keep fighting the good fight...and on that note WTF Fresh Direct!  Take down this page already!