It is easy enough to use the term "half-Jewish" as a mechanism for claiming celebrities as members of the Tribe.

However, what does it actually means when someone identifies or is labeled as "half-Jewish"? From pride, to insult, to an outright denial, there currently exists a vast range of understandings and tensions regarding the term "half-Jew."

It is no wonder then, as Robin Margolis noted in her recent post, that many organizations have been unsuccessful in their capacity to properly engage an emerging population of people that identify as half-Jewish. While there may be several root causes of this issue, the Jewish community could certainly benefit from a close examination of what it might mean to identify as half-Jewish, and how this fits into the structures and understandings of contemporary Jewish life.

As part of this endeavor, for the first time, I am now publicly releasing a research project, on half-Jewish identity, that was conducted as part of my work as the Program Associate for The Samuel Bronfman Foundation. Around two years ago, I utilized Facebook, to survey hundreds of members of "half-Jewish" Facebook groups, such as "Half-Jew," "Jewish? Only half? It's ok," "Asian and Jewish" and "I'm Half Jewish and I'm Proud Bitch!" as well as over a hundred members of other Jewish groups, like "Jew Crew" or "I Bet I Can Find 50,000 Jews" for use as a comparison. The results of the survey, which I will not claim to be overtly scientific, were fascinating on several levels, and a full write up and analysis can be found here.

So what did I learn?

From the survey, half-Jewish respondents appeared to construct their half-Jewish identity among a spectrum of religious, ethnic and familial formations. When asked to define their "other half" answers ranged from: Christian, to their father's side, to Swedish to Hispanic, to "the top half."

These respondents viewed their half-Jewish identity in a positive light, viewing it as "fun" and a "privilege", particularly in regards to their exposure to and/or experience of multiple world/ideas. As one respondent noted:

• Being half-Jewish is mostly a positive thing, and people should try to understand it more. I definitely do not feel like it is a burden or that it alienates me at all. Instead I feel like it broadens my opportunity to learn more about religion and culture. It's a blessing, really.

Conversely, those from surveyed from "Jewish" Facebook groups, generally only understood the term as referring to one's family structure, and not having to do with one's religion, ethnicity, culture or heritage. Further many respondents from this group expressed a clear negativity about the term. As one noted:

• I think they [half-Jews] feel like being Jewish is some sort of feeling a person gets or like a nationality. I feel that people who say they are half-Jewish really don't know what they mean and are like little children using words they don't understand

Half-Jewish respondents seemed to be acutely aware of, and frustrated by these perspectives, with more than 50% stating that other Jews would probably not view them as half-Jewish, (even though a strong majority of half-Jewish respondents thought that their family, friends and peers probably would view them as half-Jewish). As one respondent expressed:

• "I don't understand why the Jewish community feels such a strong need to prevent the half-Jew from having some identification - at least culturally - with Judaism."

Further, while half-Jewish respondents had a low level of connection to their Jewish communities and Jewish organizations, they still had a significant sense of Jewish peoplehood and ethnicity, and nearly the same level of interest in Israeli related activities as the comparison group. Rather than struggling or being confused about their half-Jewish identity, one of their greatest challenges appeared to be finding acceptance and a place of belonging in the two communities that they identified with, and in particular the Jewish community.

The fact that there is a significant, and seemingly well justified, sentiment of frustration among half-Jews that their identities are either misunderstood or rejected by other Jews or the Jewish community, as well as the fact that they appear highly disconnected from Jewish organizations and institutions, signals that much must be questioned and evaluated in terms of how the Jewish community is responding to as well as seeking to engage people that identify as such.

I hope that this post (and study) can both shed some light on this complex and challenging issue, as well as launch a meaningful discussion around it.

A quick glance at the newest studies coming from the Pew Research Center seem to be confirming what all of our Jewish grandmothers have bemoaned for longer than we can remember: the Millennial generation is perpetuating the death of the Jewish people.

Okay, so that's not what the studies say. It's a really loose interpretation. Here are the facts:

The Millennial Generation (18-29) overwhelmingly supports interracial dating and marriage. In fact, 85 percent of all groups asked say they would be fine with a family member's marriage to somebody of another ethnic group. Meanwhile, among the parents of the Millennials, the 50-64 age bracket, that number drops to 55 percent. And forget about our grandparents--they're at 38 percent. Granted, this study refers to ethnicity and race, not religion, but I think it's fair to say that it speaks to a general trend of acceptance within the young adult generation. Read the rest of the study, published last week, here.

This week, there's even more devastating news for Bubbe. Apparently, American Millennials are considerably less active in religious institutions than our older counterparts. Currently, 26 percent of those 18-29 claim they do not affiliate with any religion (or consider themselves "atheist" or "agnostic"), up from 20 percent of those 30-45. So we're all a bunch of heathens, right?

Actually, no. Just because more than half of us approve of the Supreme Court ban on prayer in public schools doesn't mean we're less spiritual or against prayer. Apparently, nearly half of all Millennials still claim to pray on a daily basis, and claim a roughly consistent rate of absolute belief in God as did previous generations--64 percent. Also, two percent of the total population of those 18-29 identify religiously as Jewish, (Yes, I know, this doesn't sound like a lot. Stay with me.) whereas only 1 percent of those 30-49 claim to be Jews. So hey, look at us, young Jews are still coming out on top!

Thirty-seven percent of religiously-affiliated Millennials consider themselves strong members of their religious groups, which is consistent with Generation X, the 30-45 crowd. Though the report doesn't specify how many of these "strong members" identify as Jewish, I would venture to say institutions like Hillel, the Jewish Federation Young Leadership, and other national and regional organizations are still churning out the next Jewish leaders, not to mention rabbinical and cantorial schools across the country. Though many of them are looking for new ways to get young Jews involved, and young Jews are engaging in the Jewish dialogue differently than they did in the past, strong members of the Jewish community in its various forms have yet to go extinct.

Not surprisingly, nearly three-quarters of Milennials believe that there is more than one true way to interpret their own religion. This might even be more predominant in the Jewish world. Think Bu-Jews. Um, or maybe Jews for Jesus, but we're pretty sure they don't actually count. But they think they do, and that's all that really matters, right? Even within Jews for Judaism, there are obviously different accepted traditions, not limited to just the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist movements. Independent minyans are popping up places, like Brooklyn's Altshul, and there are places like Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the traditionally LGBT synagogue of New York City. (Millennials also tend, across the board, to be more accepting of homosexuality, as well as abortion, evolution and pornography. They also support bigger government, because clearly that is related to religious beliefs.)

Oddly, the only specific reported beliefs that are stronger in the 18-29 crowd than in 30+ is that of life after death and, more notably, in Hell. Sixty-two percent of Millennials believe in Hell; only 59 percent of Generation Xers share that belief.

So Bubbe might be kvetching that us crazy young kids are okay with intermarriage and we don't go to shul every Friday night and Saturday morning, but you can tell her to rest assured, because the Nonnas and Lolas and Yayas and Abuelas are facing the same issues. Don't worry, just because we're eating cheeseburgers and dating Catholics doesn't mean Judaism is dying. We're just taking it upon ourselves as a generation to redefine our religious and cultural affiliations, and deciding what matters most for Millennials.

For more analysis the study, click here, or download the full report here. 

Few things have managed to be as consistently funny (OK, minus that "Homer Vs Dignity" episode, but let's just pretend that never happened) and relevant as The Simpsons, which aired its 20th season premiere last night on Fox. In honor of The Simpsons' birthday, here are some of the best religion-centric clips in the show's history. Sadly, it was really hard to find any of the Krusty/Rabbi Krustofsky clips on Hulu.com, so if anyone has better luck or a different link, feel free to email it to us or link to it in a comment.

Editor's note: My ex-boyfriend once told me that the Simpsons character I most resembled was Jessica Lovejoy. I don't think it was a compliment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blogger Israeli Mom made the following comment on a post I wrote about the Yeshiva University gay symposium.

 

“The gay issue is one of those things that prove to me just how outdated and irrelevant the torah is as a text to live my life by. It has good things in it, but it’s mixed up with so much primitive and sometimes barbaric instructions. It reflects a social ethos that was relevant to the primitive tribes that lived here thousands of years ago. Not really relevant to the 21st century. No offense.

Stoning for gay sex is just one aspect of it. Easy enough for me to solve as a secular Jew.”

The comment represents what I think are the opinions of a large part of the Jewish population at large, and some individuals in the Orthodox community as well. I myself have wondered about the relevancy of the Torah and although I lead a religious and observant lifestyle, ever since I left high school I have been questioning the whole thing we call "Torah Judaism."

Was the Torah merely written from a periodical perspective, or was it written to be, as they say, a living Torah? I am almost positive that if the Torah were written now it would be drastically different, but we can’t just rewrite the Torah, we can just reinterpret it like we have been doing for thousands of years. Besides – didn’t God write the Torah? Someone recently asked me if I believed if God wrote the torah and I said, I wasn't really sure - it is a bit farfetched. Besides, in my mind, believing in God is definitely not rational even though I continue to do so. 

The more I try to explain the Torah and its wacked-out parts, the more I find myself busting out taykoos and halacha moshe misinai, but I can’t just say "we will find out when moshiach comes" for everything (sometimes I just think the moshiach thing was invented so we think we’ll get see our relatives again) and so that the Lubavitchers have something to do when they get drunk.

Even as an Orthodox Jew I struggle with the fact that much of the Torah is irrelevant (and downright offensive, nasty and insane), but what are we supposed to do about this? Maybe it will come to something like the Constitutionalists or the revisionists? What do you think?

 

This video is nice and all, but it's no "The Office" Diwali episode. If only Hulu hadn't taken down the clip of Michael singing the Diwali song.

 

I have to admit, I've been a little emo for the past three weeks.

I can't help it. The roller coaster of Rosh Hashanah dinners, heartfelt atonement, building the sukkah, pretty Jewish girls, the stress of my day job, the spectre of Hanukkah on the horizon, demands of PunkTorah, the pressure to study and pray every day and managing to have some kind of life that doesn't completely file me under a tragically Jewish stereotype...well, it all adds up.

Luckily, my new friend Alicia Jo Rabins, violinist from Golem and the frontwoman for Girls In Trouble (JDub Records) wrote the most beautiful album I have heard since...well, I can't remember. And I've been using my advance copy of the self-titled record (thanks JDub PR!) to help me move into 5770 without having a complete meltdown.

So pardon me if this interview is a little "touchy feely."

I started our conversation with a complaint: that when you have to write a press release about an artist and their material, you can never really capture the emotion behind what they do.

Pretty sentimental, right? OK, let's keep going.

Alicia agreed, saying that emotion is a "big part of [her] art...and that's where [her] spiritual essence is." Alicia wishes that she could just explain her music to everyone, in person.

Continue reading...

[This is a response to yesterday's post by Patrick Aleph, "Why I Believe in G-d, And You Should Too."]

Go right ahead and believe! I tried to believe in G-d, but couldn't take the leap.

First, thank you, Patrick, for not trying to use logic or science to argue for the existence of a supernatural being. Those arguments fail, always.  As your religious experience illustrates, people don't need science or logic to believe in G-d. There is a very good "reason" to believe: afeeling, a powerful emotional connection, a gut-level knowing, a leap of faith.

Human behavior is largely irrational and emotionallydriven about many things -- most things that matter, anyhow. So, keeping that in mind, I see no problem with people throwing logic to the wind and taking a leap of faith to believe in G-d. However, I do have to pick one nit: please give us atheists some credit -- just because we don't believe in G-d does not mean that we "don't believe in something other than bagels and Seinfeld."

Science and faith are not an either/or. It's not just science that I believe in. Science is an amazing tool that we witness the truth of every time we switch on a light, make a phone call, or are helped by medicine.I whole-heartedly believe in the power of science to advance our understanding of the world.

However, science is limited when it comes to understanding what should be. Biology and evolution have a something to say about ethics and morals -- at least, how they may have developed. But as far as helping me determine how I, one human being on this Earth living one lifetime, should live and find meaning in my life -- science does a terrible job.

So what do I do? I choose to believe unsubstantiated things which I feel wholly, in my gut, to be true. Some of things are that people matter, that Jewish people matter, that Jewish peoplehood matters, and that Judaism is a positive force in the world. It is important that I support Jewish peoplehood and have made it my life's work to do so. It is important to raise my child Jewish.

Without G-d I "believe that the world is worth more than what [I] canpillage and rape from it." Way beyond that: I feel connected to the world and humanity and that my life is meaningful. Can any of these things I take on faith be shown through science or reason that they really matter -- as in up in the sky, ultimate truth Matter with a capital M? No. However, I feel these things to be true so I choose to believe. I think it's great that you get a similar sense of connection and meaning through G-d. But when it comes to me and G-d, I'm just not feelin' it.

52% of Jews do not believe in G_d. Apparently, being G_d's chosen people does not preclude actual belief in said deity.

I have to admit that this is a problem for me. And it really shouldn't be. A quick mental check list of my Jewish friends reveals that most of the Jews I know are secular, atheist, "culturally Jewish," or whatever label you want.

I just feel sad that these Jews don't believe in something other than bagels and Seinfeld. Sure, you can connect to Judaism through your family, tradition, a sense of longing, history, culture. I'm not going to say that these things are wrong. They're amazing if they are right for you! I respect everyone's faith or lack of, as long as its genuine.

What I want to do is throw out a crazy idea: that believing in G_d is not as difficult nor archaic as anyone makes it out to be, and that believing in G_d can give you more than you can possibly imagine.

First, I have to tell a story. One that I don't tell a lot of people.

When I was 24, I had a profound religious experience. I was lying in bed, slowly waking up, and I felt this warm glow cover me. I had never had an experience like this before. I felt like I had a gallon of hot tea flowing through my whole body and this radiant spirit came over me. And I knew, despite disbelief in a Creator G_d, an absence of religious upbringing in my childhood and a general belief that this-is-all-there-is-to-life-get-used-to-it, that I had an encounter with the Holy.

I knew this G_d to be the Jewish G_d because the connection was singular. No Jesus, no Mohammed, no anything. It was one spirit, indivisible, that came over me and wrapped me in gentleness and love. I'm not going to explain it any further than that, because most people don't believe me and want more explanations. Sorry, I'm not here to give evidence to that.

As I began to learn my Jewish Path, I came across the Modeh Ani. Our Sages believe that our spirit leaves us in sleep and returns as we awaken. I understood that idea: it was dramatically similar to what happened to me.

So I lucked out. I touched this divine feeling without any work of my own. And I understand why it must be hard for the rational among us to believe in any of this. Frankly, I had my doubts to begin with.

But what I learned, from choosing G_d, is that the world is better when G_d is there. Simple things become easier to deal with, when you know that your life is worth more than what you make of it. Sure, there is still pain and stress, but my burden is not just mine, my families, or my friends to bear. Hashem is there to take it all on with me.

I believe that the world was created with love: that Creation is an expression of a deep, unwavering connection between all of Hashem's creatures and the Divine spark that is within everything. When you believe that the world is worth more than what you can pillage and rape from it, you develop a respect for Life that is profound.

The connection of Humanity to G_d is a relationship: part parent/child, part marriage, part adversary, part friend. And like all relationships, our relationship to G_d changes overtime. The spirituality I have as a senior citizen is going to be radically different that the one I have as a 20-something rock and roll douche bag. Through the revelations of our tradition, we find that our notion of G_d is free to change. We don't have to throw out the baby with the bath water.

The best part about loving G_d is that you realize how pathetic all the reasons to hate G_d are! Science and religion got you down? Believe in G_d, and you will suddenly find that you want to learn more about science, because you can connect to G_d through the tools used to make the world. Legalism and guilt mean nothing when you know that the sum of the entire universe times infinity is looking down on you, not scolding you for breaking the rules, but smiling because you are sincerely trying to do good for yourself, for others, and for Hashem. Tikkun olam is a great feeling: but it's even better when it goes from feeding the homeless, to feeding the Master of the Universe.

This may seem like pathetic dribble from a mindless Believer, pathetic and childish. That's OK. But here's a suggestion: if you don't believe in G_d, then fake it! Pretend like all the things I say are true. Live it. Take it in. Study it. You might find you like it. And when you do, maybe you'll feel a connection to G_d in your own way. And if you don't, what have you lost?

Wherever you are, wherever you want to go, G_d is there. Just reach out.

See that picture attached to this post? Those are the bottoms from the first bikini I ever purchased four years ago after I started to veer from my strictly frum (Orthodox) upbringing. The top is now gone. This is the story of what G-d supposedly don't alloweth, (S)he taketh away.

I arrived at Camp Kinder Ring early Friday afternoon for the Shabbat preceding the Hazon New York Environmental Ride. (Hazon is the largest Jewish environmental nonprofit in the U.S. and does a significant portion of it's fundraising through long, tortuous, multiday bike rides).  After a lunch of organic, locally grown vegetables and other wholesome fare, my friend suggested a dip in the lake. When we arrived to the lakefront in skimpy bikinis, we discovered that the women's mikvah was about to begin. This friend, a recent convert who had just dunked, was excited to do it again. I had been present at her conversion and submersion but had never taken the plunge myself. I was born Jewish (thus no need to convert) and am not yet married, which were the two reasons I was taught in my all-girls' high school that a woman should immerse herself in the ritual bath.  As seniors we even had a class called "Family Living," which went over the laws of niddah (ritual impurity) since we were expected to be married soon after graduation. As it was the first class of the day on Friday mornings, I usually skipped it to get breakfast at the kosher Dunkin' Donuts on Avenue M where I instead immersed myself in a steaming cup of French Vanilla coffee. I also skipped the field trip to the local mikvah. My religious trajectory should not have been a surprise to anyone.

But nearly nine years after high school, I was persuaded to join. On the shore I stood in a circle with about seven other women as a Hazon volunteer named Rena* explained the process and then the floor, well, the sand, was open to comments. One older woman discussed the women's group at her local synagogue. There, she said, women immersed themselves for crossing all kinds of thresholds- marriage, a new job or even a divorce. I couldn't pinpoint my own reasons for participating in the mikvah so I stayed uncharacteristically silent. Perhaps it was as Rena said- it was Elul, a month of introspection and purification, and the mikvah dovetailed nicely with these themes.

With the men barred from the water, we swam to the deep end of the lake, disrobed and handed our suits to Rena, who would be supervising our efforts to become pure in the murky waters. She put our water clothing on the feather and pigeon shit-covered metal dock. For a few moments we treaded around each other, completely starkers. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, to be in a lake with other similarly unclad and likeminded women, ranging in age from teen to middle-aged. I'm not the kind of person who usually enjoys public nudity. I typically cower in the corner of Loehmann's communal dressing room.

We simultaneously dunked and upon rising, we chanted the Hebrew blessing in unison. I treaded the water and looked up at the clear blue sky and felt a rush of positivity, which was unusual for this New Yorker whose soul is as black as her clothing and dominatrix inspired footwear.

Continue reading...

Paulette Cooper, a journalist based in Florida, wrote the book The Scandal of Scientology in 1971. She was the first reporter to expose some of the unsavory elements of the Church and its teachings. As a result, the Church hounded her for years and tried to intimidate her into no longer challenging them. She didn't give in.

Paulette agreed to respond to some of her frequently asked questions here on Jewcy, as well as discussing her Jewish roots and explaining how the Holocaust led her to take on Scientology.

 

What made you decide to expose Scientology?

My parents and almost all of my family were killed in Auschwitz. As an infant, I was briefly in a camp in Belgium (where I was born), and I spent my first six years in four different orphanages in Brussels.
Then, happily, I was adopted and moved to America.

I have always felt that if more people had had the courage to speak out about Hitler in the '30s, that what happened to me and 6 million Jews might have been avoided. So while I realized as soon as I started researching Scientology that they were dangerous, and that my life would (unhappily) never be the same, I didn't feel that I should let my fears keep me from sounding the alarm.

What was your background?

I never was a Scientologist which gave me more credibility. I graduated from Brandeis in '64, studied comparative religion at Harvard one summer so that I could graduate in 3 years, and later received an M.A. in psychology.

What happened to you as a result of fighting Scientology?

I spent 15 years pretty much the only person outwardly trying to expose them and help their victims, so they aimed their considerable guns trying to silence me. They sued me 19 times all over the world (which I had to support), criminally framed me and had me arrested (they were later caught), sent 5 disgusting anonymous smear letters about me (accusing me, among other ridiculous falsehoods, of practicing sexual perversions with my rabbi), broke into my doctor's office and spread my records around, put my name on bathroom walls so I would get vile phone calls, and much more. You can find the story here.

Continue reading...

Although I am not a believer in gods myself, I do have many religious friends from many different faiths. We who live in Western countries have the luxury of choosing our own level of observance. For the most part, we decide individually how strictly we want to adhere to any religious tradition--we can choose from any of them or make up our own, and in my case, we can even abjure these things completely. This isn't a liberty to take lightly. In many other parts of the world (and throughout human history) this kind of freedom seems absurd and wrong. In fact, I think there are many parts of this country where people think there is too much religious freedom in America (you'll have to check the comments section). Being able to freely choose a religion doesn't mean that all religions are choices, however, or that everyone is being entirely honest about why they chose one.

To put it bluntly, are some people pretending to be more religious than they are to get laid? Or in larger, sociological terms, how many people are just going through the motions in order to belong to a group? (All of them, says the cynic). It's what I think about if I'm ever at a religious ritual or ceremony. I know what the Hebrew prayers mean because I happen to have gone to a yeshivah when I was young, but I think most people who sing along at services don't know what they're actually saying, but they do have it memorized.

When I was an activist helping organize anti-government protests with thousands of people in attendance, I definitely met guys who showed up at the rallies to meet girls, and vice versa. When I was a student I met people who got involved with extracurricular activities for the same reasons. I know people who have moved, taken jobs, changed careers, renounced their families, and so forth to in order to belong somewhere, to meet the kind of people they always wanted to meet and join the circles they've always wanted to be part of. Many of us still recall the great wave of women who came to Manhattan in the last decade intending to re-enact Sex and the City or the crowds of hippies from across the country who flocked to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. The urge to join and be part of something greater than yourself is natural. So how much of it plays into the reality of religious practice? Does it matter if your religious journey ends up at a popular resort, or does everyone have to hike through the woods?

Continue reading...

In Numbers 25:6-13 the Kohain (Priest) Pinchas kills Zimri, a male Israelite, and Cozbi, a Midianite woman, stabbing them with a spear through their bellies while Cozbi and Zimri were having sexual relations in public - in front of Moses and the community at the entrance to the Ohel Moed, the Tent of Meeting of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle.

God gives Pinchas a bracha of shalom (a blessing of peace), and honors Pinchas with the promise that his descendants will form the line of the priesthood. God, it would appear, has rewarded Pinchas for his zealotry. For many of us, this is a difficult outcome to deal with. Rashi's commentary on Numbers 25:7 presents an even greater problem, saying that if a man "commits harlotry with an Aramean woman, zealous people have the right to strike him down."

With the Pinchas story as a backdrop, let's pose a general question. How do we deal with difficult texts in the Torah? Where do we look when certain parts of the Torah provide a stark contrast to 21st century values? How do we as a modern people deal with an ancient text?

First, the Torah is not "ancient." It has been around a long time but it is not ancient in any way. The Torah is as alive and as cutting edge today as it was when it first came into the world. However, for the Torah to be a living text that speaks to us today, we must continue to interpret and reinterpret its meaning. This is something we have always done.

Continue reading...

I do not believe in God. This lack of belief on my part has been a source of contention between my mother and me since I first told her.  She blames my father, of course. While my mother went to Monday night mass services, my father took this hour to teach my sister and me about evolution. With pieces of fruit lined up on the kitchen table to replicate the solar system, and a flashlight as a make-shift sun, my father would cover The Big Bang Theory, the planets, all their moons and their delectable names...my father would tell us there was no God. My father is the Atheist in the family, my mother, the Catholic.

When my mother returned from church, she'd tuck us in our beds, but not without making sure we brushed our teeth and prayed - in that order. Although I doubted the existence of God, I prayed to him until I was inhigh school; I guess one could say I was covering all my bases, because youknow, just in case. I asked God to keep my family and friends safe. I asked him to make whatever boy I was crushing on at the moment adore me back. I prayed that when I grew up, I'd never know pain or sorrow, or loss. I tried to make bargains: if I quit smoking pot, I'd grow up to be a success and make my parents proud.

I've been told by Agnostics that God is a feeling, and not so much an entity; and while I respect that, I've just never felt that sort of presence. I always feel alone, and I know no one is out there looking out for me. How could God be looking out for all us? How could someone or something care that much to have a daily hand in the lives of so many people? Seems like the stuff of fairytales to me. I guess I don't believe in things I don't see -I need to be able to put my hand on an item, pat it, push on it, run my fingers across it before I can believe it's real.

Continue reading...

G-d told me to go on tour with a punk band called CAN!!CAN.

No shit, I wish I were making this up.

I'd love to wake up in the morning, eat a bagel, go to work in a cubicle Office Space style and fly under the radar for the rest of my life. But I can't. As The Blues Brothers said, "we're on a mission from G-d".

It came to me like a flash in the dark; like a warm feeling in my stomach after eating hot tomato soup on a cold day. I need to go on tour with my band. I need to sing about spirituality, G-d's love for humanity, tikkun olam, olam haba and all the things that drove me crazy-in-love with my creator.

And I needed to do it through indie punk, hipster metal and noise pop. 

So I started messaging some friends; frum-punks, hippiedox kids, tattooed Reform rejects...anyone who would listen to what I was trying to do. 

It worked out. My tour is being guided by the great people at Shemspeed, Artists4Israel, ModernTribe.com, Frumsatire.com, HeebnVegan, Bahay Shalom, Birthright Israel - Next, PresenTense...you name it! And I get to work with some awesome cats like Y-Love, Matthue Roth, Diwon, DeScribe, Stereo Sinai, Juez, Darshan and others.

The greatest thing that ever happened to me was waking up and realizing that my life was no longer about me anymore. Luckily, G-d saw it fit that the one thing I'm good at, playing in a rock band, is the thing he needed me to do the most.

I'm one lucky guy. Shalom...and I better see you guys rocking out with your cocks out!

TH Aug 13 Louisville, KY @ Derby City Espresso

F Aug 14 Louisville, KY @ Adath Jeshurun Synagogue Patrick A Dvar Torah!!

SN Aug 16 Chicago @ Empty Bottle sponsored by Birthright Israel, PresenTense, Shemspeed

M Aug 17 Indianapolis, IN @ The Vollrath

T Aug 18 Teaneck, NJ @ Shemspeed Summer Music Festival - Mexicali Live

W Aug 19 Baltimore, MD @ Sidebar

TH Aug 20 Philadelphia, PA @ Shemspeed Summer Music Festival -The Raven Lounge

F Aug 21 Providence, RI @ AS220

S Aug 22 Trenton, NJ @ Millhill Basement 

SN Aug 23 Amityville, NY @ Broadway

M Aug 24 Asbury Park, NJ @ The Saint

TH Aug 27 NYC @ Shemspeed Music Festival - The Bellhouse

F Aug 28 Hickory, NC @ Drips Coffee House 

 

www.punktorah.com

www.myspace.com/cancanband 

Although Matisyahu’s musical and religious interests have expanded since he began his musical career, he continues to be labeled a Hasidic rapper. Whereas early profiles concentrated on the strangeness of that coupling, more recent ones have tended to emphasize that he is no longer a “novelty.” Yet in making that point, they reinforce the impression that his music must be understood as an expression of his cultural identity. Whether he wants to talk about other matters or not, his interviewers relentlessly force him back to the subject of his religious convictions.

And Matisyahu, as someone who cares deeply about his faith, takes the responsibility too seriously to play the rock star who brushes off difficult topics. It’s clearly a good thing that his music is helping to educate previously oblivious Americans about what it means to practice his kind of Judaism. At the same time, though, one gets the nagging sense that he will soon weary of pieces that wrap discussions of his music inside discussions of his religion.

A recent feature in The Aspen Times states that, “Matisyahu's faith appears to be more fundamental to him than the particular style of music he makes.” Nor does the musician argue with his assessment. How could he? Any true believer is bound to confess that, yes, religion takes precedence over art. But whereas country or soul singers who are practicing Christians are permitted to have that fact tacitly acknowledged, Matisyahu is forced to declare his priorities openly.

Tellingly, although the piece notes that his “high-energy stage presence” is “mostly untouched by his religion” – a significant point, given the fact that his commercial stature rests heavily on his reputation as a great concert performer, as made evident in his 2006 album Live At Stubbs – it still concludes by exoticizing him: “One aspect of his performance, however, has been limited by his religion. Matisyahu, who is married, no longer stage-dives, for fear of being touched by women other than his wife – something forbidden in Orthodox Judaism.”

While such trivia may be old news to those who have followed Matisyahu’s career – he has repeatedly been asked about the challenge of keeping faith on tour – it still carries a hint of sensationalism targeted at those unfamiliar with his work. Just as the few Jewish, Hindu or Muslim students in otherwise homogeneous suburban or rural schools tend to be assigned the awkward task of explaining why they don’t celebrate Christmas or Easter like everybody else, Matisyahu becomes a figure here for a cultural difference that intrigues people to the precise degree that it remains foreign to them.

The irony in all this is that Matisyahu’s music itself represents a fetishization of difference. The affection that Jewish young people have for reggae has often been noted, sometimes wryly. One persistent joke holds that this appeal derives from the frequency with which the name of “Israel” is invoked within the genre. What Matisyahu did, whether consciously or not, was to turn a taste for otherness into a way for others to get a taste of his otherness.

It didn’t hurt, of course, that reggae is inextricably bound up with a religious practice that is simultaneously conservative and countercultural. The faith that the genre’s greatest stars professed has roots in Christianity and African spirituality, yet adds up to something distinctive. From one perspective, it looks a good deal like the Lubavitchers take on Judaism. In Matisyahu’s able hands, the reggae that serves as the foundation for his musical approach provides a means, both of breaking with tradition and asserting the importance of becoming reacquainted with its essence rather than perpetuating the “broken” traditions of the modern world.

The release of Matisyahu’s new album Light, now due in late August, was put off at the behest of his record label. Significantly, it’s a major label, Epic, even though the trend in the music industry has been for many long-established artists to migrate to independent labels. That confirms the commercial potential that his work is deemed to have. But the decision to expand and revise the record’s contents suggests that there may be trouble ahead. Such delays are often a warning sign, suggesting that the artist has failed to produce the sort of music that label representatives expected, that they have deviated from the form that made them a desirable commodity.

So far, Matisyahu hasn’t conveyed any displeasure at the label’s decision. Yet if we read between the lines of the interviews he has been giving on his current concert tour, originally intended to accompany the album’s release, it’s not hard to see that he has been struggling with the burden of expectations. Although he continues to confirm his religious devotion in interviews, he has parted ways with the Lubavitchers in favor of an approach more open to kabbalistic Judaism. And although the album contains plenty of reminders of his music’s reggae roots, it also takes bold steps in the direction of rock and electronica.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that Epic wanted him to work with reggae legends Sly and Robbie, whose contribution will make it more likely that Light reproduces the formula for success – the familiar rhythms of reggae and its offshoots – that made its predecessors unexpected hits. Although the label couldn’t very well ask him to return to the religious beliefs that underpinned that success, one almost gets the sense that insisting he bend his new musical directions back towards their roots was tantamount to the same thing.

 

 

Charlie Bertsch is Zeek's Music Editor. Prior to joining Zeek, he held the same position at Tikkun. He was also a longtime contributor to Punk Planet, and was one of the founders of the pioneering electronic publication, Bad Subjects: Political Education For Everyday Life. He is working on several book projects, as both a writer and an editor. He welcomes your feedback whether in comments posted here or by e-mail.

At a glance, there really aren't that many "movements" in Judaism. Orthodox, reform, reconstructionist and conservative. That's pretty much it. Sure, there are some variations on this, but compared to the Christian world, Jews like to keep it simple.

Or do we?

I decided to jump into the proverbial rabbit-hole of Jewish Denominationalism and discovered that there are more ways of being Jewish than there ever have been before.

Secular-As-Balls:

You still don't understand WHY Jews believe in G-d. Frankly, you think the whole "G-d Thing" is irrelevant. There's nothing about being Jewish that requires religion, customs, beliefs, worship, a love for Israel or the Jewish People. But if anyone DARES to slam the Jewish People or pretend that the Holocaust didn't happen, you'll be the first to kick their ass. It's like being an older brother: you can torture your siblings all you want to. But the minute some other kid tries to pick on your kid brother/sister, you're going to pound them into the ground. You express your faith (or lack thereof) by reading Heeb Magazine and going to the opening of the new Jewish Museum in your neighborhood. Just try to avoid the rabbi at all costs!

See: anyone on the Tattoo Jew Facebook Group

Hippiedox:

The product of Orthodox or immigrant parents, you voted for Obama because he's cool like the new iPhone. Your tone of voice moves between stoner and yiddishkeit, and your love for Matisyahu at times rivals the Lubavitcher Rebbe. You're more comfortable at Whole Foods than you are around your conservative in-laws, but you still feel a sense of sadness when a non-kosher restaurant opens near your shul. Kabbalah is your favorite pastime, because it's like being on a permanent acid trip.

See: Shemspeed, FrumSatire and "that guy" on the Birthright Israel trip.

 

Chabad-Could-It-Be: Thanks to Chabad's supply chain of eager rabbis, your small town of approximately ten Jews just got an Orthodox shul. Too bad for you that you have a shaved head, love bacon and still don't know what a mezzuzah is. But because you feel a cultural connection to Judaism, you decide to start attending services. You really hate the religio-political attitude of Chabadniks, but because this movement offers you the "real" Judaism that you cannot muster for yourself, you keep going back as an atonement for all the Friday nights you spent playing X-Box instead of reading the Good Book.

See: any Jew living west of the Mississippi river and east of Phoenix, Arizona.

 

Trans(gender) Denominational: You're an activist within Judaism. You want to reform (no pun intended) every corner of the Jewish World. Your obsession with Tikkun Olam really has nothing to do repairing the world as a whole, but instead concentrating on key issues within Judaism. Such examples include gay/lesbian rights, trans-inclusion, gender feminism, environmentalism and animal rights. You can't settle on one shul because they just don't address your "issues". Like a serial monogamist, you fall in love with one synagogue/rabbi and work the hell out of it until there is nothing left, then move onto another hot affair.

See: Union For Progressive Judaism, Barney Frank, and Kosherveg.com.

 

PolitiKosher: You love Israel. In fact, you're IN LOVE with Israel. There's something about the desert, the ruins, the graffiti and the bombs that just gives you this tingling feeling in your stomach. You think the Palestinians are secretly plotting your death and that if Netanyahu could just get his act together, the Messiah will surely come. Hopefully that person is you. Just in case, you've got your passport and a duffle bag filled with tallit ready to go.

See: Friends of the IDF, the Libi Fund and anyone wearing an "I Love The IDF" T-shirt.

 

Deconstructionist Judaism: Innovation is the tradition of the Jewish faith, and you are its greatest champion. You believe that G-d has a great sense of humor and personally marvels at your creative thinking skills. You pioneered such moments in Judaism as the chocolate seder, dog and cat bar mitzvahs, and menorahs hacked together from leftover Ikea stuff. You express your Judaism by taking Jewish ideas and making them better.

See: Moderntribe.com, Rabbi Laura Baum, Mel Brooks.

Many religions approach their movements like a ladder: the higher up you climb, the more "authentic" your faith. And generally speaking, the more conservative practice is usually what you're striving for. Judaism has a motto of horizontally-intergrated faith. A belief that Judaism is not a climb to the top, but rather a continuum that you place yourself on. More liberal? Slide to the left! More Orthodox, then move to the right.

Judaism, for me, is more like a spider web. A spider web starts by having a few pillars to hold it together. From these platforms, the spider is able to weave its web to the center. The purpose: to catch what the spider needs in order to survive. If one of the pillars that the web is connected to simply cannot hold the web, then the creative little spider finds a new anchor. If someone breaks the web from the inside, then the spider repairs it, differently than it was originally created. Still, the web stays intact. And every spider web is different, just like everyone's Judaism.

Jews don't seem to care as much about Judaism as they used to.

This smacked me on the head recently when I learned that a friend of mine's step-father (born to a Jewish family) recently "accepted Christ" and attends an Evangelical Christian church.

Based on history, the two best ways to destroy Jewish populations are to kill or convert. Outside of extreme Islamo-Facsist nations, we really don't have to worry too much about Holocaust Part II. 

Conversion, on the other hand, is our own damn fault, and marketing is the only way to stop it.

Marketing has a principle called the Four P's: product (what you're actually selling), price (cost), promotion (what you use to convey your ideas) and placement (where your product stands in the market). For a company or movement to be successful, it has to have the right product, at the right price, promoted and placed well in the market.

Jews are leaving the "Jewish lifestyle" for three religions: secularism/atheism, Christianity, and Buddhism. So how does Judaism fail to meet the Four P's and how have these other religions been successful? Let's compare:

PRODUCT

Atheism: you get to be just like everyone else, living for yourself and nothing more. No rules, no responsibilities, just fun!

Christianity: you get to be like everyone else, only you get to go to Heaven, too! You have to go to church on Sunday, but there's one on every corner and every flavor you like.

Buddhism: if you're introspective and want to sit on your ass and learn the nature of everything just by chilling out, then you're in!

Judaism: you get to eat a restricted diet, can't go out Friday night or shopping on Saturday, and all your rituals seem quaint and mysterious, like a cult.

Continue reading...

In this week's parashah, Tzav, we witness a beautiful ritual undertaken by Moses and the entire tribe in preparation for the sacrificial duties of Aaron, the head priest (Kohein), and other priests serving the tribe. As revealed within the Torah, Moses gathers kol ha'edah ha'kahal (everyone in the tribe) and dresses each priest in a special outfit consisting of, "a tunic, sash, robe, ephod (loincloth), choshen (breastplate), cap, and showplate" (Lev. 8: 9-10). Afterwards, Moses sanctifies the sanctuary where all of the priests will complete their sacred rites in addition to the objects inside of it. 

Within the somewhat grim and graphic contents of Vayikra (Leviticus), Moses' dressing of Aaron and his priests stands out as a strikingly warm moment. Moses, the leader mainly responsible for the tribe's religious and spiritual education, steps aside to allow Aaron and his priestly cohorts a chance in the spotlight.  Adding further depth to this point, the commentators of our Midrash note that the Tent of Meeting (the place where Moses performed the ritual) miraculously expanded for this special occasion. As our sages describe, it enlarged to accommodate the large body of Israelites during the priests' clothing ceremony. This way, all individuals from the tribe could participate actively in the ritual by showing support for their fellow priestly tribe members.    

In reflecting upon the special "clothes" ceremony within the induction of the priests, we learn an important lesson connected to our own professional lives: preparing oneself on the outside for a job/duty is just as important as  being ready on an intellectual basis. For example, have you ever gone shopping right before a big interview to purchase an item (i.e. business suit, new shoes, tie) because you felt that this piece of clothing would give you an advantage in your interview?  Think back to your first day at a new job. Did you ever select a special outfit ahead of time for a boost on your first day? Adding further insight to this point, our Torah instills that having properly fitting clothing is an essential part of any job.  Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak), the medieval rabbi par-excellance renowned for his Torah and Talmud commentaries, points out that each priest's linen garment was specifically made according to his exact measurements and dimensions. This is also important within our professional settings. As any clothing designer/maven would concur, having well-made clothing and appropriate attire disseminates a sense of respect and honor from fellow co-workers, friends, and family. When we wear the right clothing, we signify that we are ready, willing, and able to get the job done.  

Within our own lives, we can connect ourselves back to the times of our ancient ancestors by helping to clothe those who might not be able to afford the proper attire. In the spirit of Passover and spring cleaning, we should take the time to look through our closets and donate clothes to a reputable organization such as Dress for Success, or another like-minded organization which provides professional clothing for those in need.  Additionally, we should patronize dry-cleaners and Laundromats which provide cleaning services free of charge to those who cannot normally afford those services for job interviews. 

As parashah Tzav teaches, spaces, such as an office, home, or special location known only to us, can only be sanctified when individuals enter into those environments with a positive self-image and healthy respect for their appearance. When we have the means to help someone achieve confidence in this capacity, we should model ourselves after Moses and the Israelites and gather the necessary materials and energy to do so.  Shavua Tov!

If someone were to come up to me and ask the question "Do you believe in G-d," I think I would say, "What's G-d?" To that response, the confused random questioner would ask me while staring down at my tzitzis, up at my yarmulke and into my deceptive Jewish eyes, "Aren't you religious?" To that I'd reply, "Am I?" Pardon my seeming ethnocentrism or somewhat limited knowledge of other religions and art but Christianity and Michelangelo have messed up the original Jewish conception of G-d. Here's how it goes. Now if this person were to ask me about G-d, I'd say, "Do I believe in a giant smiling and angry bearded man in the sky pointing fingers to create a man or waving his arms around? No I don't believe in that." Then that random questioner would probably walk away.

You are correct if you thought I believe in G-d. I believe in that oneness that I've come to understand as being everything that we can and cannot comprehend. The oneness that Jews proclaim twice a day, Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokainu Hashem Echad, Hear O Israel; the Lord is our G-d, The Lord is one. G-d is the infinite oneness of everything that is all that is, was and will be. That's right G-d, the infinite Hashem. Am I preaching? Maybe a little, but I feel I need to. And how does this "fairytale like idea" fit into reality. Please, just let me explain before thinking of me as a weak individual who gives into "organized religion" because I can't cope with "real life" and need to comfort myself with the one of the great "opium[s] of the people."

My family and I have had too intimate an acquaintance with illness.  Leaving out parents and extended relatives, my wife survived cancer at 31 (she is fine now, thanks) with the result that we are fortunate to have one child, but could not have more. I suffered a seizure and had brain surgery for (an ultimately benign) brain tumor, and two years ago was diagnosed with lymphoma.  After chemo etc. (yes, suddenly, dramatically bald, tough to keep a kippah on) I am now in remission.

Do I blame God?  Given the surfeit of blessings I have had in my life, it seems ungrateful, to say the least.  Do I deserve to be showered with blessings and never suffer?  It would be nice.  But I think the idea that we are owed only good is theologically childish.  Most of us - not all to be sure - are extraordinarily forunate.

I am not going to enter here the contentious question of why bad things happen, but I do want to say a word about prayer.  It isn't to get stuff.  It isn't magic.  True prayer, deep prayer, should be for relationship, intimacy, so that we are not alone.  Prayer has roots in the temple, with korbanot (sacrifices) from the Hebrew root "karov" - to draw close.  In prayer we draw closer to God and to the praying community.

At least we hope to, we try to.  In illness we come closer to God less because of sudden fear than because illness cracks something open inside us and God - and others - can slip into the cracks.  When we heal, we tend to heal inside too, leaving fewer or smaller openings.  Someone once said of the poet William Blake that he was cracked.  Blake's friend, a preacher, answered, "Yes, but it is the kind of crack that lets in the light." 

Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

 

Last Sunday, Victoria (my Catholic, Latina partner) and Tashi (our 5-year-old) and I had lunch with Victoria's friend Rita. Rita was born in Cuba, but moved to Miami 48 years ago when she was eight years old. Rita speaks English without an accent. She wore black pants and a black shirt and ate a tofu and avocado salad.

We were talking about religion and identity, which we think about often because Victoria is about to have a baby and because religion for her is about God. For me religion is not about God, it's about culture and being part of a group. Rita said that religion and cultural identity have been the cause of adversity and war since the beginning of time. "We're all mixing anyway. Some day we'll all be the same. Don't you want to teach your children that we're all part of the HUMAN tribe?"

 

Rita is smart and I saw her point. Sometimes identifying as a Jew seems as un-evolved as identifying as a Miami Dolphins fan. (I like sports, but the way people paint their faces orange and baby blue is a little crazy.) And like every sports fan, our team vilifies the other team: we are good, they are bad. When nations do it, it breeds hatred and violence. But I argued the importance of preserving culture. I said, "I'm part of a culture I'm proud of. If we became just like everyone else, who would make the latkes?" Rita said, "Ok, you have cultural pride. But then there's the flip side. Where there's pride, there's shame." Rita said she's just from Cuba. She's not proud or ashamed. It just is. I asked if she'd be proud of a great Cuban the way we're proud of Albert Einstein and Barbra Streisand? She said, "Not really. What's the big deal?" Well, what is the big deal? Why do we have Jewish fraternities on college campuses and websites like Jewcy and magazines like Heeb? Why do we gather in groups of like kind?

A few weeks ago, I was one of seven people invited to tell a story at an event sponsored by Heeb at the Miami Book Fair International. The only rule was that the story be Jewish. I had some Jewish pride that night, but also some shame.

My story, To Snip or Not to Snip, was about my struggle with circumcision. One woman's story was Jewish because her mother was a neurotic mess. Another woman spoke with a New York accent and said, "Oy vay," twenty times. There were jokes about sleep-away camp, playing shuffle-board with grandparents in Florida and small penises. The Holocaust was mentioned, of course, and getting discounts and ha, ha, we're the chosen people. We were caricatures of Jews, at least that's how we looked to me.

Six high school students sat in the front row. I'd met them earlier that day and I told them I'd be telling a story from my book, My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy (I see that Jewish is missing from my title). They laughed when I told them my title and so they came. I don't think the kids were Jewish. They looked like a Miami mix of Latinos and gringos and I wondered what they thought and why we perpetuate these ideas, especially when they're really not that funny?

Last Sunday night, hours after lunch with Rita, Victoria, Tashi and I were invited to dinner by a new friend named Nighad, who had a boss many years ago who told her to go by Niki. He said people were calling her Nigger. She didn't know why that was a problem. Now she knows.

Niki is from Pakistan and came to Miami 37 years ago when her husband (an arranged marriage), came to school here. Niki speaks English with a strong accent. She wore a silk, red and purple blouse draped with a scarf. She had a nose ring.

When we walked into her house, Tashi held her nose. The air was thick with unfamiliar flavors. Niki made rice with chicken, beef kabobs, chick peas, and the most delicious goat stew. For the second time that day, we talked about religion and identity.

Niki is Muslim. She told us that being friends with a Jew in Pakistan is impossible. I asked which would be more taboo, to be friends with a lesbian or with a Jew. She said Jew because lesbians are so underground no one would know.She said, "Religion is everything in Pakistan. You are your religion."And I thought how stupid and how sad. I thought about Rita and how really we are all the same. But are we? If so, we wouldn't have enjoyed the goat stew.

Call it my dark and seedy Straussian neoconservatism at work, but in my downtime I like to collect instances of atheism or agnosticism, especially in those credited for the supposed strength of their religious fervor. The worst aspect of Barack Obama's former troubles with Jeremiah Wright was how they arose from his desire to amass "street cred" with black Chicagoans rather than from some burning sense of piety and Christian brotherhood.  He may put stock in God and the Gospels (though my suspicion is otherwise), but a regular churchgoer he is not.

John Judis and Isaac Chotiner at the New Republic are weighing the merits of various reports on Obama's consistently secular Sundays since Nov. 4, and I tend to agree with Chotiner: it's not about the Godlessness, it's about the hypocrisy:

If Obama had only talked about his faith when he appeared on CBN, or visited churches in Iowa, that would be one thing. But it was an issue he chose to highlight. In fact, his only joint, public appearance with McCain--after the nomination fight and prior to the first debate--was with Rick Warren, if I remember correctly. And Obama's religious life also takes up (the weakest) sections of his excellent first book. If politicians want their religious lives to remain private, then they can do the rest of us the favor of not talking so much about them.

Too busy building a cabinet to attend services? He's had no problems making time for the gym, holding press conferences, and shopping for a puppy. What else you got?

Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity in an election celebrated for its risk and originality is that we might have actually been spared the purple overtures to the faith-based. Instead, even before announcing his candidacy, Obama spoke repeatedly of the importance of liberals' embracing religion in the public sphere, and he did so in in language barely distinguishable from that of George W. Bush. Now why do I suspect that these disclosures of his own apostate-like behavior will do nothing to change the minds of those who defended him reflexively during the Wright controversy, citing his commitment to an eccentric, racialist church as a recommendation of his character and his sense of "community"?

If and when it becomes noticeable enough to warrant redress, we should expect plenty of beamish photographs of the new president installed in the pews next to Pat Robertson, Jesse Jackson and the rest of old, familiar national clerisy. Also expect to hear rationalizations that the change agent is, and always has been, steadfast in his loyalty to the divine. Except when his abs need working on.

Here is a scenario and question for you: You wake up tomorrow morning and to your utter astonishment your paper's front page reads: "Religion Ceases to Exist in the Middle East." Will this increase or decrease the chance for peace between Arabs and Jews?

A common charge in the discourse over the Arab-Israeli conflict is that religion plays a central role in exacerbating and perpetuating the conflict. This position has been taken up by a number of atheistic best-selling books. The conclusion being that removing religion from the scene will go a long way in solving the century old conflict.

Others disagree, arguing that since at base the conflict is a product of economic, political, and social forces, the question of religion is irrelevant. Religion, this group says, is an epiphenomenon - born and determined by conditions on the ground. End the state of occupation and alienation, bring an end to the violence, give people bread and dignity - and religion will no longer matter.

Still a third group holds that far from being the source of the problem, and far from being a mere epiphenomenon, religion contains within it the solution to the conflict. Properly understood, this group contends, religion calls us to recognize the sacredness of all humanity. Moreover, the moral claims of religion jolt us out of our individual and group ego-centricism and challenges us to act with compassion towards our fellow human beings.

The question of religion and the Arab-Israeli conflict gets the juices flowing. When I posted my hypothetical scenario and question on Facebook - to groups such as "We Support Israel," "I Support Hassan Nassralah," and "Free Palestine"- I got a number of interesting and amusing responses.

Have a read (and voice your opinion):

"Shalom Roi, The scenario you describe would be the perfect setup for a false "peace" that would merely become "the calm before the storm", and then with every one doing "what's right in their OWN eyes" outside of moral guidelines, there truly would be hell on earth such as has not been seen since the days of faithful Noach just before the Flood....."

"If there is no more religion in the Middle East then there definitely wouldn't be any problems between Arabs and Jews .. and that only because Jews will cease to exist .. since Jews refer to people who follow Judaism.. which is a religion and thus doesn't exist.."

"I do think religion plays a major role,I think the Jerusalem and the settlers issues would be easier to accept for both sides, there would be no groups like Hamas and Islamic jihad, hence much less terrorist attacks...."

"This is my view. The whole conflict is based around the concept of religion. Time and time again you see Jewish settlers and Muslim Palestinians over the news. Religion, if one believes init, is supposed to be peaceful, the whole Palestine/Israel conflict seems to contradict that notion....."

"I think if anything it would cause more violence. These people believe in the religion so much, I think if they found out that it wasn't real they would probably lash out against their counterparts whom they already hate...."

"In my opinion, I think religion doesn't play a great role in the conflict. Jews and Muslims lived together under each others rules in Medina with the prophet (pbuh)....."

"The issue here is tolerance, not religion. No matter what you call your creator, if you call it God, Jesus Christ, Allah, Science, Mother Nature, or a host of other names.. the simple fact is that we are all brothers and sisters of the SAME creation. Jews and Arabs weren't created by different forces. We all have the common brotherhood of humanity and should peacefully work toward achieving more tolerant societies. Neither religion preaches intolerance and hatred yet it [hatred] exists. So I think without those guiding forces a similar conflict would still exist.

"I'm a Christian, but I believe God gave Israel to the Jewish people. Although he took it away at times throughout history, he always returned the Jews to their land, because it is rightfully theirs...."

"The conflict has very little to do with religion anymore- yes Judaism always yearned for a return to Zion"and Jerusalem is a Holy City for the Muslims too. But I think the conflict has moved beyond religion. Its about land, power, racial supremacy and pride."

So Jewcers, what do you think: Could the Middle East use a little less religion?

Martin Samuel Cohen, author of The Boy on the Door on the Ox, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy.  Much like his book, Cohen took us on a journey through the Mishnah, beginning with some words on the text's true significance, followed by advice on how to put all those college reading assignments to good use.  Then he talked about what makes "great" literature great, gave us the inside story on Aviv Press, and parted with a gracious farewell. Did Martin give you Mishnah mania?  Then go buy his book!

It is a problem that will not speak its name. We all know that there is bigotry, prejudice, and intolerance in the American Jewish community; that much is inevitable, and that's not the problem I'm talking about. The problem I'm talking about is this: how do we react when we encounter those things among our Jewish "friends"?

I am thinking about this because I recently had a troubling conversation with a good friend; let's call him Bob. Bob has another friend who is an Orthodox Jew (of a certain kind), and they have a mutual acquaintance who is transgendered. Bob is struggling with the moral problem of determining his appropriate response. Does he allow his Jewish friend to spout homophobic garbage, or call him on his bigotry and stand up for the dignity their transgendered acquaintance at the risk of losing a relationship that he values deeply? This is not a new conundrum, of course; it is a basic problem that arises from living in a community marked by value pluralism. But as I listened to Bob's description of the situation, I couldn't help but think of the particular form that this conundrum takes within the community of American Jews.

We may pride ourselves on our cosmopolitanism and our open-mindedness. We cringe at the kind of question I was once asked by my grandfather on meeting two of my school friends: "are they Jewish?" We would never dream of insisting that our community of friends be limited to members of a certain religion or nationality or ethnicity. Except that when American Jews go to Israel they are often heard to say something like what a friend of mine once said: "Here, they're all Yidden. Good Yidden and bad Yidden, but all Yidden." He assumed that would mean something to me, and of course it did. Life is easier, more comfortable, when we have common bonds with the people around us. "Birds of a feather flock together,"lunchroom tables self-segregate. It's only natural.

Against that impulse there is a kind of politically correct lip-service to diversity. In America right now, it's politics. Many of us would be appalled if people thought we only had conservative or liberal friends, or that we only talk to members of a certain political party. I recently heard the chair of the College Republicans on my campus express dismay at the idea that anyone would ever vote a straight party ticket. Sure, out there in the blogosphere there are the Dailykos.com's and the Redstate.com's, but we are more sophisticated, more open. Some of my best friends voted for the wrong candidate.

The problem, of course, arises when the discussion of differences in political affiliation or religious background or historical identification are understood to be something more than the equivalent of rooting for different sports teams. What happens when these differences reflect fundamental differences in human values? A friend is someone whose feelings I care about, whose thoughts I value, whose well-being is important to me. A friend can rely on me to come to their aid in a time of need. Can I have a true "friend" who denies the humanity of other friends? Who is a homophobe or a racist, an uncaring laissez-faire capitalist or a theocrat? How -- no really how?, through what set of discursive maneuvers and exercises in rationalization? -- can I have a "friend" whose respect for me is diminished because of others who are also my friends?

It is always easy, of course, to turn this into a kind of moral relativist ju-jitsu. "You see?," cries the homophobic religious zealot, "you claim to be tolerant and open-minded but here you are rejecting my beliefs!" There can even be a point at which this move carries some substance: am I more comfortable with the raving atheist who derides all religious believers as naifs than with the religious believer who accuses atheists of (as another old friend puts it) "epistemic blindness? Maybe. Ultimately, to quote yet another old friend, we choose our hypocrites, starting with ourselves. But that answers nothing. We still have to choose among our hypocrisies, and those choices require justification, if only to ourselves.

These are universal challenges. But among Jews they take a particular set of forms. I have friends - I think they're "friends" - who say things that go far beyond ignorance or wrongheadedness, the kinds of things that if one of my children said them I would immediate sit that child down for a long talk. "There is no such thing as the Palestinian people" is a good one. "Arabs have plenty of countries, it's only fair that we take this one,"there's another. This is not simply Jabotinskyite Revisionism (Jabotinsky understood very well that his Zionist project involved the displacement and defeat of a people). This is something later and uglier, a manifestation of an intellectual cancer that degrades historical memory in the service of recrudescent tribalism.

The Zionist version of the disease, like many others, goes beyond the basic symptoms of the disease by virtue of its selectivity. Curious that the same people never make the same argument about the Protestants of Northern Ireland, or propose that because there is no Gypsy nation residents of Romania should be forcibly displaced to create one. Fascinating - as writers on this blog, among other places, have noted - that genocidal violence fills us with existential horror when and only when it is directed against Jews. That same selectivity appears in the willful blindness, the resolute refusal to know what goes on in Israel and in the Territories. Is that in the same category of moral corruption?

I could go on, we could all go on. An American Jew who says he or she has not encountered this kind of ignorance and prejudice among their fellow Jews is either in denial or a liar. From my own experience I can quote examples of pure, outright racism: "Arabs only understand violence" and "Muslims don't have Western rationality" were popular for a time. Then there was the woman, my hostess for lunch, who simply described Palestinians as dirty. Followed, brightly, by "shall we bench, now?" I know what you're thinking. What did I do? Did I stand up self-righteously and howl in outrage? Make a scene? Refuse to join in prayers in the house where I had just been a guest for lunch? Actually, yes, and I have not spoken with that person since that date. But that's not very satisfying. And in other, less obvious cases I have remained silent.

When I think about these things, I always remember a little girl named Aisha whom I met in Bethlehem twenty years ago. I was staying with her parents - her father, J, was a journalist. He spoke Hebrew so we could communicate, but with Aisha I had only my 50 or so words of Arabic. She would not believe that I was Jewish for the longest time; everyone knows Jews are vile, horrible monsters who kill children and blow up houses and torture people, and as a guest in her house I didn't quite fit that mold. Eventually, though, we found a way to pass the time. You know the clap-slap-clap game American children play while reciting "Miss Mary Mack/All dressed in black," etc.? So I showed Aisha that game. After a while we starting making up more complicated versions; we got up to sequences of eleven and fifteen precise moves. When we demonstrated for the rest of the family she would shout out a number -"t'maanye"! "tish'a!" - and we would run through that particular routine to the cheers of the audience. I loved that household; full of love and warmth and commitment. Oh, and spotlessly clean, of course; on my best day I have never been able to keep a house as sparkling as that apartment.

It comes down to the children. To sacrifice a child on an altar was supposedly a Canaanite practice of Moloch worshippers; the story of Isaac is supposed to tell us not to follow those ways. So . . . can we have"friends" who would sacrifice children on the altar of their self-righteousness? Can I have a "conversation" with someone who would relegate Aisha to the ash heap of history for the sake of gratifying their own sense of tribal superiority? How about friends who would insist that the children of same-sex couples do not deserve families secured by the same legal protections as those afforded to the families of children born to mixed-sex couples? How about "friends" who relegate women to a second order of rationality and therefore deny education to girls? Are any of these things made more tolerable just because the people involved are Jewish? That question surely answers itself.

This was not a slip of the tongue. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, speaking at the GA (that is the boring annual gathering of the Jewish Federations no reader of Jewcy’s cares about), chose her words carefully, and got the cheers she expected:

"Israel is not a monopoly of rabbis," the Kadima chairwoman noted. "Israel is a Jewish state, but a Jewish state is not a religious state but mainly a nation-state."

The crowd was quite happy, quite impressed. Is this the beginning of a new era? Look at recent developments concerning conversion:

Cabinet Secretary Ovad Yehezkel, Diaspora Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog and Jewish Agency chairman Ze'ev Bielski, all outgoing as the country goes to elections and Bielski takes a leave of absence to compete in the Kadima primary, said the conversion process was too inflexible and harmed aliya and society.

And this happens as the Jewish Agency has passed a somewhat revolutionary resolution calling on the Israeli government to establish “an independent conversion authority which will facilitate and assist in the conversion process”. No, it will not be an institution free of Orthodox influence. But it will be much more tolerant than its predecessors. And it will be one lead by people who understand the urgent need to reform (even if not Reform) the conversion process.

Why is all this happening now?

Here’s the cynic’s explanation: Livni, for one, is angry with the Haredi Shas Party for refusing to join her coalition and forcing new elections. “Not a monopoly of rabbis” is her way of saying: if I’m Prime Minister, you’re going to lose influence. It’s also her way of telling Israelis: vote for me if you want Haredi influence reduced (implying that a vote for Netanyahu will have the opposite outcome).

But here’s the more profound explanation: Israeli leaders have heard many times that Israel’s conversion process is unacceptable and intolerable as far as the US community is concerned. Heard – and ignored. As often happens, a crisis was needed for the attention to be drawn to the broken conversion system, and this came last May when “High Rabbinical Court of Israel severely censured the head of the country's Conversion Authority for performing” what they thought was “conversion in a non-kosher way”:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wasn’t happy with the court’s decision: “Conversion in Israel is a national priority”, he said. “I am determined to resolve the current conversion crisis and improve the process of conversion in Israel.” This was a moment in which the truth about conversion crystallized: it’s not the rabbis, but rather the politicians, who make the important decisions. Olmert can’t hide behind a rabbi’s back. Livni can’t. Netanyahu – the leading candidate (by far) to be the next Prime Minister – can’t.

Earlier this month, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews waved live chickens over their heads in a ritual known as kapparot, or "atonements." They chanted solemnly:

"This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my expiation. This chicken shall go to its death and I shall proceed to a good long life and peace."

As the Orthodox Jews watched, each chicken was ritually slaughtered, then donated to the poor.

Kapparot is of questionable origin. There is no mention of kapparot in the Bible or in post-Biblical Jewish literature until the Middle Ages. And many great Jewish legal scholars, including Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the Shulkhan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law), believed it to be of pagan origin and forbid it. According to many rabbinic opinions, kapparot can be done with money. Chickens are not necessary. But kapparot was promoted by the Hasidic movement, which these days is primarily responsible for keeping kapparot, as opposed to kapparot chickens, alive.

If kapparot was done carefully and humanely, the only argument against it would be theological. But often kapparot are neither carefully run nor humane.

Continue reading...

You know Tevye's song from Fiddler on the Roof, "If I Were A Rich Man?" I would be a rich man if I had a buck for every child of Bar or Bat Mitzvah age who has said to me, "I don't believe in God. I believe in the Big Bang."

Invariably, I answer, "That's interesting, so do I." This is what I mean by that statement.

Some time around 13.7 billion years ago, our universe began as an infinitesimally small, incredibly hot, dense "something." The term often used for this something is singularity. How is this singularity defined? No one really knows. Where did it come from? No one knows. Why did it appear? Again, no one has a clue.

Yet, as support for those who believe in the Big Bang, most scientists now believe that there was a beginning. This singularity appeared rather suddenly, apparently expanded, then cooled, turning into the universe as we know it today. Notice I didn't say anything about an actual "bang" because, apparently, no such explosion occurred. Think of a balloon that started to expand and never popped.

My question is why did the universe not completely self-annihilate an instant after the Big Bang? Given the wide swings in temperature, how did Earth come to have an environment hospitable to life? Even the slightest variation of temperature would have made any biological existence on this planet impossible.

Just think what had to happen within seconds of the Big Bang. Nuclear forces were needed to bind proteins and neutrons to the nuclei of atoms. Electromagnetism was needed to keep atoms and molecules together, and gravity was needed to keep all the ingredients for life anchored to the surface of Earth.

In the creation story at the beginning of the Torah, God sends forth energy in the form of sound (God speaks) and light, which generates heat. In the subsequent cooling process, the earth congealed, discrete bodies of water emerged, and the slow process of life began. Evolution of countless species developed over the course of time, millions of years, with a crescendo into humankind. The only way that the biblical story and the Darwinian theory seemingly part company is that the latter sees all this coming about through random mutation and natural selection. Thus, man appears on the world stage as a survivor.

In the Bible, man appears as a God-ordained miracle to be a partner in the ongoing work of creation. In the religious worldview, we don't have dominion over Earth because we are still standing, survival of the fittest. Rather, we have dominion because we were created in God's image, and, therefore, our power must be mitigated by moral responsibility for the stewardship of the Earth.

So there's a remarkable confluence between these two stories. We need to recognize that religion and science need each other now more than ever.Religion needs science to understand how all that God put into place actually operates in the world, to understand the rational basis for what many still regard only with awe and wonder.

Religion needs science to help us come to realize our place in this galaxy and amongst so many others. Science must help us answer awesome questions: Does life exist elsewhere, and if so, can we form a relationship with other life? What do we do with the resulting knowledge that our galaxy is one of many?

Religion needs science to help us harvest stem cells so that we can live longer and in greater health and dignity.

Religion needs science to help us continue the sequencing of the human genome to know our genetic tendencies and help us, therefore, combat the diseases that destroy our bodies, our minds, and ultimately our lives.

At the same time, science needs religion to understand why the earth was created from nothingness.

Science needs religion to understand the purpose of evolution, the meaning of the survival of human beings as the dominant species on planet Earth.

Science needs religion to understand the ethical boundaries of scientific inquiry, when does too much knowledge make us less human than we ought to be, than God intends us to be?

Science needs religion to clearly state that God created us to use our minds in order to stretch the frontiers of scientific knowledge as far as they can go and to use that knowledge in the service of all of God's children.

Science needs science to be science, and God to be God.

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the national Human Genome Institute, has said: "You'll never understand what it means to be a human being through naturalistic observation. You won't understand why you are here and what the meaning is. Science has no power to address these questions-and are they not the most important questions we ask ourselves?"(Dr. F. Collins, "Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science," New York Times, 23 Aug. 2005)[1]

I hope I made the case my B'nei Mitzvah students. Have I made it with you?

---

[1] Dr. Francis Collins, "Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science," New York Times, August 23, 2005.

Rabbi Robert Levine, author of What God Can Do for You Now, is guest-blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.