Bookish

The Faith Between Us is like no other book about religion. Born when Jewish Peter Bebergal asked his Catholic friend Scott Korb if he believed in God, it's less a treatise on spirituality than an ongoing conversation between two friends about their surprisingly similar relationships with the divine. I spoke to them about their book (which is excerpted on Jewcy), their friendship, and their attempt to reframe the way Americans talk about religion. --Amy Guth

A new way of talking about faith: The bookTell us a bit about your writing process.

Korb: What started us thinking about the book was when Peter asked me whether or not I believed in God. The book as a whole answers that question. In short: No. In long: Yes, a lot.

The process goes this way: We write an essay. We send that essay to the other person. We edit each other’s essays.

From this point we diverge. I send my comments to Peter. Peter graciously incorporates my suggestions (to a point) and in a week or so has a finished essay. It’s smooth.

Peter doesn’t even bother sending me my essays back any more. First, he calls. He tells me the essay needs work, often with the structure or my focus. I tell him to read it again because clearly he hasn’t read it carefully enough. He tells me he’s read it twice. I tell him to read it again. He does. He calls me the next day with the same comments. I disagree and yell at him. We get off the phone. I sit for two days thinking I am right and Peter is wrong. I reread the essay the following day and realize that Peter is right and I am wrong. I rewrite the essay incorporating Peter’s suggestions (to a point). In a week or so I have a finished essay.

Bebergal: Scott has laid it out pretty well here. We both had our moments of being very protective of our writing, as if certain sentences and ideas were precious little kittens the other was trying to smother with a pillow. But even when we both agreed on certain things, our editor would see them and be appalled. That was the most humbling part of the process. At one point, after delivering some material, our editor said “I don’t really know what to say.” She said this not with excitement and enthusiasm, but as if someone had just smothered a kitten.

It wasn’t for Scott I wouldn’t be half the writer I am today. He has taught me so much, especially about slowing down and really reading over my work carefully. Scott loves words and sentences, and the way they work together. I get caught up in the intoxication of an idea and an image, and I often forget to make sure my expression of it is as clear and concise as it can be.

It will be a shock to begin our next larger projects mostly independent of each other.

A Jew and a Catholic walk into a bar: The authorsAs the two of you have been promoting the book, do you find that you've each fallen into different roles? Or do you split responsibilities down the middle?

Bebergal: I kind of like to think of us as good cop/bad cop, with me being the good cop. Since I am theist, and Scott really defines himself as an atheist, when we are talking to a room full of believers, I feel like I have to soften the blow a little bit when Scott tries to explain how he considers himself both religious and a non-believer. Also, Scott is more willing to carry a box of books, whereas I prefer to use one those grocery push carts.

Korb: Duty-wise, we've gotten pretty good at seamless tag-teaming. I talk, he reads, I read, we both discuss with an assembled group. Or vice-versa. Although I'm finding that people are just slightly more interested in hearing from Peter of actual encounters with the source of holiness – the God we hear so much about – than from me about how holiness has no source, necessarily, but that we create it (say, through an act of love), or recognize it in something someone else has created (say, in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead) at each new moment of creation. People like good cops.

Peter, what, if anything, has Scott's religion shown you about Judaism? Scott, what has Peter's religion taught you about Catholicism?

Bebergal: Scott has made me want to be a more observant Jew. I find that I take more care on the holidays and on Shabbat, and I can feel Scott's own devoutness in spirit when I practice. Scott has helped me to see the beauty in the metaphor and the symbol when I can't get to the actual meaning. But this has less to do with Catholicism than with who Scott is as a Catholic.

Also, to be honest, working this closely with a Christian and with Christian ideas has only emphasized for me how much I love Judaism, and how much I don't identify with a Christian conception of the world.

Korb: While over the years I've become fairly familiar with Judaism through its myths and rituals and ethics, and while much of this familiarity has come through reading and practicing and studying with Peter and his family, the fact is that Judaism remains a foreign land to me. Today I travel there regularly, but I'm by nature nostalgic, and it always feels good back home. The mystery of Judaism, though, the foreign rituals and the foreign languages, is a constant reminder that God is more than I could possibly say. In other words, the fact of Judaism means that my Catholicism cannot possibly say all there is to say about God.

Interested in more than just halo-gazing: JesusHow have your perceptions of one other's religions evolved through the process of writing The Faith Between Us?

Bebergal: I used to believe that being Christian meant that you accepted the infallibility of the Church and the teachings, and that the emphasis was on the afterlife. Scott's relationship to Christianity has shown me that the Jesus of the Gospels is much more interested in this world. Of course, all religions have their eschatologies, but I understand now that a true Christian life can be concerned with the here and now, with the environment, human rights, social justice.

Korb: There was a time when I might have said that Jews were not going to get into Heaven. The process of becoming a Catholic atheist – a process largely influenced by my encounters with Judaism – has led me to extend this to Christians, too. (That is, there is no Heaven to get into.) But that probably says more about how my perception of my own religion has changed through this process. How about: I've seen no evidence of the blood libel? Jews aren't money-grubbers?

Scott, you've said before, "We learn in the book that I was basically wrong about my whole life of religious disciplines" How have you each changed spiritually through the process of this book, if at all?

Bebergal: My early days of seeking some kind of mystical experience were characterized by drug induced paranoia and superstition, the latter staying with me throughout my life. When I got sober, to combat this, I had mostly put my ideas and desires about mysticism away, because they were too bound up in what had become unhealthy, and ultimately life-threatening, for me. But through the writing and my friendship with Scott I have become much less superstitious. And the lovely irony is that now I feel more capable of exploring mysticism again (this time without the LSD, mind you).

Korb: My life of religious discipline – from an early vocation-gone-bad, to severe food and sex proscriptions, to my understanding of a facial tic as a God-given marker of my distinctness – was never a difficult one, spiritually. It sounds counterintuitive, but when discipline shapes your life, when you know what you have to eat everyday and that God doesn't want you sleeping with anyone until you're married, you take great comfort in that. When your face keeps your moral temperature by flashing under the pressure of any contact with sin, there's never any struggle. Eat vegan, no sex (or, no "intercourse" but lots of sex), be good.

As I abandon that life under God's safe protection and my own obsessive control, my spiritual life becomes more of a struggle. I'd always kept myself above the fray of living in the world, afraid of the mess and pain. I'm in it now, and it's good for me. Sex is more meaningful when you risk real relationships and struggle against monogamy (I've recently been engaged). Food tastes better when you pay attention to where the meat comes from (I've recently been hunting).

Reading across the divide: The book has been praised by athiests and believers alike What is the best single bit of feedback you've gotten about the book?

Bebergal: For me, it was when our editor told us that she had full confidence that we were going to write a great book, but when she read the completed manuscript it was better than the book she thought she was going to get from us. But I do also have to say equal to that was when my father-in-law, who is a devout atheist and fierce literary critic, finished the book and said that he could really identify with the idea that faith begins in wonder, and that he understood the power and importance of religious language.

Korb: My mother and an editor friend, both Catholics, said the same thing to me after reading the book and learning of my atheism: "I hope you're wrong." At first I laughed this off, saying, "Yeah, me too." But one night while Peter and I were discussing the book at Harvard Hillel I realized something about their remark that I'd missed in so quickly dismissing it. Neither my mom nor this friend was insisting anything. They have a hope for me and for themselves. A Christian hope. And they're no more, and no less, sure about God than I am.

The Christian hope I have doesn't require – and, in fact, does better without – any actual God or afterlife or judgment. I hope for salvation here. And for my sake, I hope that hope is, as I insisted with my friend, "as Christian as anything."

What do you most hope Jewish readers will take away from The Faith Between Us?

Bebergal: I hope that Jewish readers will identify a bit with the internal struggle of simply being religious. I grew up extremely secular (the old joke, I think Billy Crystal once used it, is "My parents believe in the Ten Commandments but we only had to pick five.") I have been observant, and even that in my limited way, for only about 15 years. I worried that I had nothing to say about Judaism that would be important. But then I realized that my whole life is about being Jewish, with all the struggles, questions, doubts, food, jokes.

I also think that I want to start a conversation, which is not often one discussed in Jewish circles, about the question God. The emphasis is often on observance, law, and Israel. But I want to start talking about what is God to us as as individuals, and how we take those beliefs into our communities and synagogues. Even though I was born Jewish, and culturally this was very important in my home, I came to Jewish practice by way of belief, by way of God.

Korb: Starting with Peter, Jewish readers were a huge help to me in the writing of this book. They helped me to clarify my own thoughts, as I wrote, about what it means to be faithful. And as I considered a potential Jewish audience, I knew I had to be clear in how I told stories and described ideas that, while perfectly familiar to me, might seem crazy to them. And for that, one thing I'd like a Jewish reader to take away from Faith is a "Thank you."

That said, I hope a Jewish reader could find real meaning in the Christian stories I rely on while telling my own story. I hope I'm clear enough. And I hope they're open-minded enough.

What do you each wish was different about both Judaism and Christianity?

Bebergal: Well it depends on if you mean historically or today. My biggest frustration though is with Hasidism. I deeply respect their knowledge and spiritual aptitude, but can't abide by much of their views on the world we live in. I wish there weren't such deep divisions over things like gays, evolution, and Israel. But this is the history of Judaism, these deep divisions. It's amazing to think about Jews having a civil war in the 60s C.E. We still have this same conflict between secularism and religion. But thank God that the Judaism I practice and understand is both worldly and spiritual, rational and mystical.

Korb: God help us. Religions in general would be better if they emphasized belief less and faithfulness more.

* * *

ALSO IN JEWCY: Read an excerpt from The Faith Between Us

To say that we believe means that at the center of our lives is an idea of God.

Now, our embarrassment, shame, nerves and fear around making this very simple claim have had mostly to do with wanting to keep our faiths free of associations with scriptural literalism and religious narrow-mindedness. We haven’t wanted to be misunderstood. And because we’ve been embarrassed and hesitant, our professions of faith, when we’ve made them, have tended to be almost entirely defensive. Yes, we believe, but we’re not like those fundamentalists and the Bible-thumpers. Yes, we believe, but we’re not on the front lines arguing against gay marriage or stem-cell research. Yes, we believe, but we’re not praying to usher in the end of the world. Yes, we believe, but we’re not the Moral Majority. Yes, we believe, but we’re not going to try to convince you to believe what we do.

All this backsliding, all these buts, have often made ours a negative faith. Because we find certain, often very public, religious views not just distasteful but also often culturally blinkered and politically dangerous — arguments for a six-thousand-year-old Earth, for example, turn our stomachs as much as they offend the truths we know about the natural world — until recently, we’d turned inward.

Papa Don't Preach: Faith without a pulpit Before we knew each other, our faiths had been our own private affairs, pilgrimages we’ve undertaken in the hope of both finding and, yes, pleasing God. All alone, unfortunately we could do neither.

Faith is not, we’ve learned, a private matter at all. We’re tired of faith coming between us. God’s will is that it may live between us. Faith is nothing if not shared. And so, over the years, in becoming faithful friends we’ve told each other stories about where we’ve come from, how we’ve believed through our joys and our tragedies, how we’ve faced God alone, how we’ve both sinned and overcome sin, how we’ve both nearly died and overcome death. For us, this storytelling—religious confession, in a way—has become a key to our religious lives. But once we started talking, the important stories of our faith became inseparable from the friendship itself. Not only were we finally opening up about faith, but we also began inspiring and teaching each other to live more faithfully.

In the years before we met, our faith lives had become compartmentalized. We’d made our ways into and within communities that were at best skeptical, and at worst hostile, towards both religious sentiment and any appearance of belief in some religious truth. We understood why—again, hating literalism and religious sanctimony—and genuinely participated in that skepticism and hostility, while at the same time privately praying and attending religious services. Often alone.

Although they did not start out this way, our approaches to religion had, by the time we met, become largely academic. As undergraduates, we took The Bible as Literature, looked for biblical allusions in literary texts, studied religion and politics, and distributed in creative writing workshops stories and poems loaded with religious themes. Faith, or belief in God, was hardly a matter worth discussing. Skeptical of both the pious-seeming “College Catholics” and the overly studious and insular Hillel groups, back then we existed on the religious fringe, preferring rock shows and girls to Bible study and campus-sponsored Shabbat dinners. We each learned to pray quietly, and anxiously.

Praying: Not as fun as rock concerts and wild chicks Later, though, we both studied theology in graduate school, and largely for the same reason: with the belief and hope that we could reconcile our academic interests, which included the desire for intellectual honesty and integrity, with our admittedly irrational religious devotion. What better places, we thought, to do this than divinity schools attached to major academic institutions?

Scott chose Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, which is affiliated with Columbia University and is the former home of neoorthodox theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, killed in 1945 for his part in an assassination plot against Hitler. Peter chose Harvard Divinity School, onetime home of American religious giants Ralph Waldo Emerson and George Santayana, and studied with Richard Neibuhr, son of the famous Union professor. We found each other after we left divinity school. We became friends.

Of course, after we met, as we’d been with most of our other friends, we were quiet about our faith lives at first, as had become normal among people like us: in short, East Coast liberals with advanced degrees who read contemporary literature and listened to independent music. Relating our experiences of faith had never been easy. Having learned to protect ourselves from embarrassment in public, we rarely spoke explicitly about God, often throwing our hands up when asked to answer one way or another whether God existed or not. Palms turned up seemed a strange gesture for two men with graduate degrees in theology.

Yet fortunately, with each other, our language betrayed us. The tension between a comfortable and acceptable skepticism and our undeniable religious temperaments had created in us the hypersensitivity we needed to recognize each other as kindred spirits. Possessing something like what’s known as “gaydar” in the queer community (but may be even queerer in our world), after a little hinting around, Peter finally asked: Do you believe in God?

With each other we have finally learned to be more expressive about God. Over the same time we’ve grown more comfortable being expressive among other friends and family and, to some extent, in public. Through this effort, we’ve tried to prove that one can have an authentic religiosity and a genuine appreciation of holiness that is marked by healthy questioning and doubt—without needing to ever say anything definitively or universally about God. This was the great discovery of our friendship.

Yet, as much as the language and myths of our traditions often highlight what is unique about our faiths—that God’s covenant is marked by circumcision, say; or that, in Jesus, such laws no longer apply—we share another language, as well, one of art and literature, music and sex, family and friendships, a cultural language that supports a much broader conception of faith. God can never be exhausted by traditionally religious language. Not only does no one tradition ever capture holiness, but from pop songs to birdsong, tics to tattoos, we find it everywhere.

Holy Ink: Even tats can be godly Through our friendship—one based on curiosity, trust and difference in matters of belief—we’ve come up with a moderate approach to faith, one that’s easier to stomach, both for us and, we’ve learned, our communities than the louder, more extreme positions in the culture. We see myth as myth, edifying stories that tell only of the possibility of another world, and always in the service of this one. We see practice as practice, not only in our religious liturgies, but more important, even, through our attentiveness and actions outside of worship, performing the will of God. Being friends takes practice. And we encourage each other to practice being better sons to our parents, lovers to our partners, and even fathers to our children. In the end, we see religion as a way to engage ethically with our commitments to God in daily life, rather than a preparation for a final encounter with God in the afterlife. And all this without any shared belief in what God is, or is not.

The faith between us is a faith in this world. Hastening the end of time, a key idea to many fundamentalist conceptions of religion, is to hasten the end of all we love. It is to hasten the end of practice. It is to do away with the languages we share, and represents a disastrous end of faith. Religious fundamentalism, like its opposite extreme, a vehemently secularist atheism, understands belief instrumentally and reads sacred texts literally. But, to read the scripture literally is to remove it from the world, to hide its frail, yet boundlessly hopeful humanity behind some perfect, almighty hand of God. Lost are its literary beauty, its wonder, and the more complicated ethical and moral teachings developed over centuries by all religious traditions.

* * *

ALSO IN JEWCY: Amy Guth interviews Korb and Bebergal

Excerpted from The Faith Between Us by Scott Korb and Peter Bebergal (Bloomsbury, 2007)

 

Jewish Living Magazine has just released their list of "Hip Hebraic Homepages" and tipped me off once the list was ready. For reasons quite obvious once you reach the end (kvell, kvell, kvell), I just had to share. Taken straight from Jewish Living:

SHUL OF ROCK

www.jewsrock.org Chaim Witz, Perry Bernstein, Jeffrey Hyman. Half the fun of Jewsrock is finding out the given names of pop icons like Gene Simmons, Perry Farrell, and Joey Ramone, respectively. You can also tour the rock ’n’ roll “Challah Fame” or take the “Jew or Not?” quiz. Between the lines, there’s a serious message about pride in Jewish accomplishments, and a dedication to smashing my-son-the-dentist stereotypes. Alas, the Web site appears to have gone static, but is no less rockin’ for it

KOSHER COMEDY

www.bangitout.com When a site bills itself as “kosher comedy for the circumcised,” expect few sacred cows. Part gimlet-eyed news digest, part Onion-like satire, and part self-tweaking Jewish social club, BangItOut mashes raucous headlines (“New Book Helps Rabbis Stay Away From Hot Widows”), amusing photos (the Barbie menorah is a favorite), and see-it-to-believe-it videos (don’t miss the hilarious “jPhone” commercial). As their site promises, “If something’s funny and Jewish on the Internet, it’s either on here or linked from here.”

COME ON, FEEL THE “OYS”

www.klezmershack.com As this site points out, “klezmer is a popular music form that is no longer exclusively Jewish.” Likewise, KlezmerShack isn’t just about klezmer anymore; it’s blossomed into a one-stop shop for news about Jewish music, hot cultural events worldwide, reviews, even music videos grabbed from YouTube (you haven’t lived until you’ve heard “A Hard Day’s Night” in Yiddish). Webmaster Ari Davidow—an online strategist for a Jewish nonprofit by day—oversees the festivities with charm, wit, and infectious joy.

COOLEST JEWISH RECORD LABEL ON EARTH

www.jdubrecords.org If your knowledge of Jewish music stretches from “Hava Nagila” to… “Hava Nagila,” expand your horizons at the online home of JDub, the coolest Jewish record label on the planet. You’ll impress your kids with casual references to ultrahip bands like Golem, Balkan Beat Box, Socalled, and the LeeVees. Then the whole family can download inimitable JDub videos and songs (like all four segments of Socalled’s mystical sci-fi, hip-hop Claymation opus “500-Pound Planet”). Who says parents and kids can’t agree on music?

SCHMOOZE, SHVITZ, SHOP

 www.jewcy.com What began as a retailer of risqué rags (the “Chai Maintenance” T-shirt was a fave) has become the center of Jewish hipsterism’s new wave. The shirts are still there, but so is smart original reporting and opinion, a vibrant social network, and much discussed blogs such as “The Daily Shvitz” and “Faithhacker.” Brains, attitude, and sheer chutzpah make Jewcy a daily must-read.

 Good Shabbes, all. Mwah.

Girls Write Now: Show a little love, eh?According to the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), low literacy ability leads to low grades and low achievement levels—which can and usually does then ultimately lead to a high drop-out rate. In the same report, it is noted that of high school seniors, way less than half read at a level required to comprehend a school textbook. The focus of curriculum being on standard testing in the US at the moment allows students little time to explore artistic and literary pursuits, and so writing programs are just not available to students. In a 2000 SCANS Report, research showed students with access to music, theater and creative writing all performed better than students without.

So, recently, when I learned about a truly wonderful organization that is doing some really incredible work in this area, I knew I'd found an organization I wanted to support. Meet Girls Write Now, an organization that "provides a safe and supportive environment where girls can expand their natural writing talents, develop independent creative voices, and build confidence in making healthy choices in school, career and life." Sounds great, right? Wait, wait, it gets even better!

Girls Write Now "provides at-risk New York City high school girls with emerging writing talent an opportunity to be custom-matched with a professional woman writer who serves as her personal mentor and writing coach, meeting with her weekly for the duration of an entire school year, and for up to four years. GWN also enrolls each student in a vibrant writing community — all mentees and mentors gather monthly for genre-based group writing workshops conducted at our offices within Teachers & Writers Collaborative in midtown Manhattan. The year is punctuated by three annual readings, college and career prep seminars, field trips to cultural events, and endless opportunities for scholarships and publication. The magic of the program is reflected in a solid nine-year track record, a 75-percent member retention rate, a 100-percent college acceptance rate, an annual anthology of original writing, and the seven-genre portfolios each student emerges equipped with each season. Founded in 1998, GWN was the first organization to ever present this combination of powerful services, and it continues to be the only program of its kind in the eastern United States."

Helping Others: To Do Their Best Girls Write Now has, in addition to mentoring sessions, writing workshops, a reading series, a Life Adventure series of writing and performance workshops, support for students parsing through the rigors of college admissions, events and activities, and scholarships and contests, but they created Girls Write Forever, a program that helps give supporters so many options to ensure the good work of Girls Write Now can continue into the future. (Now, if I can just figure out where they sell those great t-shirts!)

To support this organization with a donation or an in-kind donation please click here. To volunteer, here, and for litty girls in New York City, click here. And, if you find yourself in New York on January 18th, and you do roll on Shabbes, by all means, get yourself to the Winter Pair Reading and see your ten bucks doing a lot of good.

I've been asked to suffix all of my comments that address Limmud as "Limmud UK," which is a giddy curse-turned-blessing-in-disguise -- Limmud NY starts in just about two weeks, and Limmud LA comes right after that. I'm going to be otherwise occupied with being on the verge of giving birth, G*d willing, but oceans cannot contain the amount of jealousy I have for everyone who gets to carry on in the grand tradition of Limmud.

Before I went, I asked what Limmud is, exactly, and this is what I've discovered: it's the Hebrew word learning. There's a whole universe of stuff that falls under the arbitrary umbrella we've decided to call the Jewish nation, and

I wish I could be more specific. I wish I could nail down everything that I've learned. I wish I could even give you the highlights. Man -- maybe next year, Jewcy'll sponsor me and buy me a PDA to do instant updates from each session. I started to make a list, and here's what I got:

• Former Speaker of the Knesset Avrum Berg's assertion, while reading I.B. Singer's Nobel address, that Yiddish is a language without words for violence. That, he says, should be our model for building a Jewish state and a model for its future -- with all the corollaries that come with that. (After our session, I pointed out to him that one of the first Yiddish phrases I learned was potch in the tuchus. He said it didn't count.)
• Raz Hartman teaching a room full of young/old/middle-aged hippies/punks/investment-banker-lookin' people how to sing wordless Chasidic dirges. (We came late, and met someone leaving the room, jaw dropped open, who told us, "I just sang for ten minutes straight. And I didn't even know the words.") In between, he taught slices of Rebbe Nachman, who said that the prophets weren't able to give over their prophecy unless there was music playing.
• Shalva Weil's intense sessions on Ethiopian Jewish refugees, and the halachic battle that determined where, ultimately, they landed in Israel's diaspora. The final word came, in the early 1970s, from a young Sephardic rabbi named Ovadia Yosef, who ruled that, based on a 14th-century precedent, they were not Jews -- because Jew implies from the tribe of Judah -- but Israelites; they were the lost children of Dan. (This probably could and will get its own article, if not its own book; but here is a very brief answer.)
• Daniel Boyarin. The most controversial straight queer commentator on the Talmud today. I think I can say that unabashedly: he gave over a three-part lecture charting the course of Chapter 7 of Baba Metzia that started
  with the laws of hiring bricklayers and then proceeded into a discussion of how the size of a man's member corresponds to the size of his desire, and how all the rabbis with the biggest stomachs managed to impregnate their wives (Rav Papa, according to the Gemara, was the size of - if anyone has this in front of them, please correct me - five half-barrels of wine, and some say it was seven.)

This seems like the perfect opportunity to say that, if you don't learn this at Limmud, you will probably have to enroll in a yeshiva for multiple years of your life in order to find out. One more reason to make it to LA or NY (or one of several other Limmuds around the world, from Turkey to South Africa)....and one more reason for me to be jealous of you.

Jewish Book Council: Next year, my books are totally going to be in the running for this. Uh, hello? Anyone?The Jewish Book Council, who is behind the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, has announced this year's five finalists for said prize, basing their selections on a "demonstration of a fresh vision and evidence of future potential to further contribute to the Jewish literary community. The prize honors an emerging author in the field of Jewish literature who has written a book of exceptional literary merit that stimulates an interest in themes of Jewish concern."

This year, the prize of $100,000 will be awarded to a writer of non-fiction, with the winner to be announced at a spring awards ceremony, at which point, the identities of the contest judges will also be revealed. So, while we're waiting to hear the winner, we might as well read the finalists and start a betting pool:

Ilana M. Blumberg for Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books (University of Nebraska Press)

Eric L. Goldstein for The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race and American Identity (Princeton University Press)

Lucette Lagnado for The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World (Ecco)

Michael Makovsky for Churchill's Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft (Yale University Press)

Haim Watzman for A Crack in the Earth: A Journey Up Israel's Rift Valley (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Easter Jewish HeritageI will open by admitting that I haven't yet read this book. But, It was just recommended to me by someone I trust to not recommend crappy reads, so I'm going to put my stamp on it because this is a topic I've been really interested in for some time, the topic of expanding awareness of "Jewish" looks like.

Of The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage, edited by Loolwa Khazzoom, trusted recommend-er said, "I really appreciated the collection of essays, and how they treated struggling with being in the States and figuring out Jewish identity in an environment that didn't realize there were Persian, Libyan, etc. Jews." The publisher, more specifically states:

"Many of us have stereotypes of what 'Jewish' looks like—and for many of us that image is white and European. Yet, with the blossoming Jewish multiculturalism movement, led by the dynamic Loolwa Khazzoom, the myth of a 'monolithic Jewish community' is about to be debunked. Focusing on the experiences of Jewish women of two rich and varied regions, The Flying Camel reveals the hidden worlds of Jewish women often misunderstood or maligned by both the cultures in which they live and the European-Jewish community. Stories include one woman and her family’s flight from persecution in Libya, a writer’s exploration of the category 'Arab Jew,' and a lightskinned, Moroccan-born woman trying to 'pass' in order to gain acceptance among European Jews in Tehran"

Editor Loolwa Khazzoom (if she wants to trade names with me for, maybe a day or so, I would love it) has a more in-depth description of the book on her website, and you can find the book online at Amazon (as we already know), Powell's and the like. 

Disguised As Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero BooksI went into Disguised As Clark Kent thinking it would be about the same book as Up, Up And Oy Vey!: How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero by Simcha Weinstein (Oy Vey is jokier and with more Biblical parallels tossed in), but, despite having nearly the same title and subject, Disguised, I have to admit, is really the leader on the topic with greater contemporary historical detail and wonderful captured social and emotional subtleties. At least in my humble little opinion, it seems to be about Jews first, particularly the immigrant Jewish psyche, and comics we drew second.

A large number of the creators of the most famous superheroes were of Jewish background, secular, religious, or both. Disguised as Clark Kent explores how the Jewish consciousness of these individuals impacted the content of the comics and contributed to making characters such as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and Wonder Woman into the most familiar popular-culture icons of all time... Fingeroth... reflects on the phenomenon of the heavily Jewish elements that, consciously or not, went into the creation of the superhero.

Well-researched, filled with interesting history and interviews, Disguised As Clark Kent:

centers on questions of Jewish identity, which is historically about the push and pull toward and away from that very identity. One sees this immediately and most famously in Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the superhero "disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper." It is also a large part of Bill Finger and Bob Kane's Batman, Will Eisner's Spirit, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Captain America.

Disguised As Clark Kent was released this fall by Continuum International Publishing Group and is available on Amazon, Alibris, Powell's and the like.

 

Earlier this month, I wrote about Jewish Living magazine, and I was really iffy about it. I was questioning the stated target market of the magazine, among other things. Bon Appetite, Goumet and the like are cooking and food magazines, yet they aren't marketed to women exclusively or even as a majority as far as I'm aware. And, with the magazine's comment about Jewish Living being for those of us in our 30s and 40s who have (supposedly) matured beyond Heeb magazine (Heeb, which is marketed to both men and women, snark, snark)... I was very skeptical of the rag, I'll admit.

Jewish Living: Maybe overlooking potential readers, but a good read, if you ask me.So, as promised, I read it. Cover to cover. Ads for upscale modern furniture. A section called Kvell that includes the kvell profile, the kvell of the book, kvell sound check, a national calendar of events, eco-friendly Chanukah gift-guide, cooking that included various ethnic/regional variations on a basic ingredient, Modern Practices-- a section addressing our traditions with a modern take, a huge styley/upscale Chanukah section, a nice article about that dear A.J. Jacobs, stuff about kids, an decently in-depth article about giving in various ways, Two Jews/Three Opinions, a quick list of notable organizations, a piece about Chinese Jews... I have to admit I really like this magazine.

I still think there's nothing inherently female about the magazine, and maybe an opportunity for a male readership is being glossed over in marketing efforts. Family sure, but female? Nuh-uh. Also, even mentioning Heeb and Jewish Living in the same breath is a stretch, as the irreverent brand of humor in Heeb is not found in Jewish Living. Granted, the proof will be in subsequent issues. That will do more in defining the magazine for what it is, so I might be speaking prematurely. But, on its own, I'm reporting back as I said I would, and I do like it. It covers come good basics-- food, home comfort, celebrations, thoughtful gifts, family, and thoughtful discussion of modern Jewish life. All things I enjoy in a magazine. 

Hey, ho, let's go!: All sorts of Jewish entertainment history to dive into. A lot happened this week in Jewish history, and many of these events have the common thread of being creative contributions by Jews. This week in 1927 the Neil Simon Theater opens and George Gershwin's "Funny Face" opens in NYC, in 1928, Ravel's Bolero was performed in public for the first time in Paris, in 1929 Gertrude Berg makes debut in radio's The Goldbergs. In 1957 Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel appear n American Bandstand as "Tom & Jerry". And this week, we marked the yartzeit of poet Emma Lazarus.

Dig Jewish entertainment history? Here are some of my favorite reads on the subject: In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture by Ted Merkin, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk by Steven Lee Beeber (I really like that book), Something Ain't Kosher Here: The Rise of the 'Jewish' Sitcom by Vincent Brook, Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater by Nahma Sandrow.

I read this book mostly with welled-up eyes, and I cried hard when I finished the book. That heavy, deep cry we do sometimes when moments of the unimaginable and unchangeable are revealed to us. A Wall of Two, is a book of poems written by two sisters, Ilona and Henia Karmel, while first in Skarzysko-Kamienna and then later in HASAG-Buchenwald and recently translated by Fanny Howe. The poems are beautiful, heartbreaking and written with such a sense of care and love, and, in moments, simultaneous selflessness and dread, like in The Mark on the Wall:

Praxia Dymitruk, Praxia, Praxia

why did you write your name all over the walls?

Is this pain written down

or resistance to life’s passing?

Were you, too, afraid to disappear?

Without a sound? No one to miss you

because you belonged to no one?

Is your name all you owned, Praxia?

I understand you, little Russian one.

Such a sweet stem of a name.

For a girl so familiar though never known.

Praxia Dymitruk, Praxia, Praxia.

(more here)

The synopsis goes like this: Ilona and Henia Karmel were 17 and 20 years old in 1943 when they entered labor camps from the Krakow ghetto. The sisters wrote the poems on worksheets stolen from the factories where they worked by day and hid them in their clothing. During what she thought were the last days of her life, Henia entrusted the poems to a cousin who happened to pass her in the forced march at the end of the war. The cousin gave them to Henia's husband in Krakow, who would not locate and reunite with his wife for another six months.

Get A Tissue: and cry your heart out for and with the Karmel sisters. This is the first English publication of these extraordinary poems. Fanny Howe's deft adaptations are presented with a biographical introduction that conveys the powerful story of the sisters' survival from capture to freedom in 1946.

After the war, the sisters immigrated to the United States and continued to write. Henia Karmel is the author of two novels written in English including Marek and Lisa, and Ilona Karmel is also the author of two novels written in English including An Estate of Memory.

When I stumbled across a copy of Erotica Judaica: A Sexual History of the Jews in a used bookstore, I don't think I knew what I was getting myself into. I opened the font cover and read: "Erotica Judaica, A Sexual History of the Jews, views the remarkable role that sex has played in the development and destiny of the most vital, viable, and influential culture in the history of humanity." Hmm. Pretty lofty claim, I thought, but it sounded intriguing, so I picked it up.

Cue Slow Jams: Wanna step into my tent? Aww, yeah. So, you want to discuss sexuality with Talmudic references and with many footnotes? Yeah, I thought so.Bearing in mind that it was written in 1967, and uses a style that is part clinical/academic, part Victorian, and  part giggling envelope-pushing; I was anticipating Jewcy-erotic tales, but what I got instead was, admittedly way better. I say "way better" not to knock a good schtup-tale, of course, but because this book is a buffet of cited sources and of references Talmidic and literary, a hint of intellectual WTF-ism with a similar feel to Codex Seraphinianus' genius-absurdist vibe, with a good dose of bleh, bleh, bleh thrown in for good measure. For example:

"And Y-hweh said to Joshua, 'This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you' (Yahuahu; Midrash Rabbah. The verb galal, to roll away, refers to the removal of that reproachful ring of flesh encircling the glans penis.) 'When Joshuah circumcised the children of Israel,' states Midrashic Rabbi Levi, 'he made a heap of their foreskins. And the sun shone on them and they bred worms, and the odor arose to the Holy One like the odor of incense from the fire offerings..."

That's all well and good, but just because we're talking about a sex organ does not erotic history make. Fortunately, keep reading and you get your fill of lit-schtup in the very next chapter, a chapter called "Sexual Hospitality":

"...the ancient Arabian traditions of hospitality. Jeal, Heber's comely wife, gave Sisera to drink of the milk of refuge, she invited him to share her carpet bed in physical rest and restorative emotional release. Talmidic Rabbi Johanan deduced, from the text of Judges 5:27, that Sisera had seven sexual connections with Jael: Between her legs he squat, he lay he spurted; between her legs he squat, he lay; where he squat, there he lay stiff."

(Original Shoftim reads something like: bayn ragliyeh kara' nafal shakab, bayn ragliyeh kara' nafal, b'ashr kara' sam nafal shadud.) And with footnotes like:

"The verb kara' (to squat) expresses a coital posture common to Easterners... the pregnant verb nafal (to fall, to lie prostrate) is used in the sense of a man allowing a woman to mount and ride him, which in the patriarchal East is indicative of feminine domination.... Shakab (to lie with a woman) is literally the Arabic sakab (to pour out, to ejaculate... Bayn ragliyeh, consistently mistranslated as at her feet, is too clear for comment."

...it's not, you know, hot-and-bothered, but it's a fascinating, geekin'-on-the-freakin' read.

Jewish Living: Awesome Martheleh goodness or feminist party foul?I'll probably read this. I mean, I am mostly in the demographic, it covers stuff I am into, but... what is it that's got my knickers in a twist? Is it that Heeb is selling itself short? Is it that I feel like I'm being told I'm too old to play with Heeb and that it's time to grow-up and read something more grown up? Is it that Martha, while her subscriber base probably is largely female, I can't say I've heard her ever specifically address her readership as female? Is it that I'm not too keen on the hearth and home magazines being addressed to me (I'm pretty sure that like that sort of thing because I like it, not because I'm female, etc.)? All of the above?

In any case, here's what's up. Ex-ad exec Daniel Zimmerman is set to launch Jewish Living magazine next week, a "thoroughly modern magazine" that covers the "Jewish home, family and cultural life":

The bimonthly magazine, boasting "How-To" features on Chanukah parties, Friday night diners and something entitled "Stop Coddling Your Kids", will launch with a rate base of 100,000-- part newsstand, part pre-launch subscriptions sold to Jewish associations-- targeting Jewish professional women ages 25-34 with a median household income of over $125,000.

(Full story from Folio)

So, maybe I'm iddly because it's dangerously close to promoting itself as the reader for the second-shift syndrome (when both parties of a couple are employed, and one, usually female, assumes the household responsibilities, or the bulk thereof)...? Would I feel differently if it billed itself as being aimed at Jewish professionals, rather than Jewish professional women? Or, am I coming to the table with a a notion of what women's magazines are and assuming this is just a Jewish Redbook? (Oy, can you imagine?) I mean, maybe it's a Jewish Bitch or Jewish Bust? Right, that would be cool. I could dig that.

Eh well, I have to reserve judgment until I've read it, to be fair. And, I will read it. And, maybe I'll keep a copy of it next to my copy of Heeb and read them both.

I'm not too old to read Heeb, right?

Okay: So this soldier is actually Canadian. Sue me.An exhibit opened in West Hartford, CT this week honoring Jewish veterans of WWII at the George J. Sherman and Lottie K. Sherman Museum of Jewish Civilization at the University of Hartford. Over 500,000 Jews served in the U.S. armed forces during WWII, and can be credited with such contributions as rebuilding synagogues, conducting weekday and Shabbat services, and assisting a reconstruction of the Talmud for Army issue:

"From two sets of Talmud brought from New York...a special Army edition of 500 sets were made in 1948. They are the only sets to include the English language, in a preface dedicating it to the U.S. Army for its "major role in the rescue of the Jewish people from total annihilation."

The return of the Jewish GIs to the U.S. directly influenced a dissolution of the bigotry against Jews that had been prevalent nationwide, and opened doors that had previously been shut or barely opened. Jews, previously subject to quotas at many colleges and universities, attended schools en masse under the GI Bill.

"Seeing Jewish GIs seizing the opportunity to fight for their country, there's something entirely empowering about that," Patt said. "It's only after the destruction of European Jewry that U.S. Jewry rises to a position of prominence on the world stage."

Superior Court Judge Referee Jerry Wagner, featured in the exhibit, agrees.

"America at the time of World War II was a country of considerable bigotry. There were openly anti-Semitic senators in Congress," Wagner said. "I'm convinced one of the greatest forces for changing that was the influence of Jewish vets coming back."

(Hartford Courant.com)

The exhibit is on display through February 24th and contains portraits of the 24 local veterans (then and now) and various items they each donated to the exhibit. The exhibit was primarily sponsored by family of Navy veteran Jack Rosenblit (A"H), who passed in 2006 and whose portrait is featured on the exhibit catalog. "He was so proud to be in the Navy and so proud to be an American GI," Rosenblit's widow, Elka, said to the Hartford Courant. "This is my way of celebrating his life."

Related link: Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford.

Related reads: Ours to Fight For: American Jewish Voices from the Second World War and G.I. Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation.

I’ve said before that as far as I’m concerned, atheists are like people who wear leggings. I disagree with their choices, but it doesn’t keep me up at night. We’ve had some pretty fascinating discussions about atheism here at at Jewcy, but what we’ve learned is mainly that atheists who don’t walk around spewing their version of fire and brimstone are a lot easier to listen to and engage with than, say, the kind of person who just keeps telling us that only weak people believe in God.
Atheists: giving God the finger
I was thinking about this whole debate over the weekend because my new favorite book there’s a brief scene where the protagonist, who I love, pretty much rolls her eyes and sighs about those dumb religious people, and consequently makes my blood pressure rise about sixty points.

On the other hand, I’ve been reading all about this new book coming out in February, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer by Bart D. Ehrman, and even though I doubt it will change my life dramatically, I can already tell it’s going to make me think and reexamine things and almost certainly keep me up at night.

But I can tell you right now that even if Ehrman makes an un-convert out of me, I’m not leaving the Jewish world. The thing is, even if Judeo-Christian understandings of God or theological laws is flawed or even completely unfounded, the people who think it’s great are still the people who I go to when I’ve been having a rough time. They’re the people visiting my mother when she’s not feeling well, and raising money for charity and watching each other’s children and just generally acting as a wonderful and impressive community. I’ve yet to see any atheist—angry or otherwise—address this issue seriously.

Maybe it is weak to want your friends to come help you and be with you when you grieve, or dance and sing with you at a wedding, or join in welcoming your child to the word, but honestly, that kind of weakness is fine with me.

In this week's lead story, Rebecca Diliberto visited a town of mediums to test her belief in the spirit world. She came out a skeptic, which might not be a surprise to scientific-minded readers. In the last ten years, though, several respected academics have asked the same questions, and not all of them found that psychics and spirit mediums are quacks. A brief reading list:

The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age
By Michael F. Brown

Synposis: Brown, who teaches anthropology and American Studies at Williams College, looks at the art of contacting the dead as a form of faith, a psychological phenomenon, and a profession. He’s less interested in validating or debunking the idea of the spirit world than in studying why it’s so appealing.

Supernatural or scam? The Journal of the American Academy of Religion called it “eminently readable and also exemplary for its brand of scholarship.”

 

 

The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death
By Gary E. Schwartz

Synposis: University of Arizona psychology professor and director of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory uses the scientific method to “prove” that spirit mediums were really talking with the dead.

Supernatural or scam? An unconvinced Publisher’s Weekly called it “a splendid infomercial.”

 

 

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
By Carl Sagan

Synopsis: In his last book, Cornell astronomer Sagan investigates paranormal phenomena from the Loch Ness monster to famous spirit channeler JZ Knight, who believes herself to be in touch with a 9000-year-old Sufi warrior named Ramtha.

Supernatural or scam? Booklist said “Sagan has devoted himself to the noble mission of rousing us from our stuporous neglect of science.”

I’m generally a big fan of Jonathan Sacks. I read his To Heal A Fractured World—The Ethics of Responsibility during the high holidays, and thought it was brilliant. As the Chief Rabbi of the UK he’s certainly got my respect (the six different colleges where he’s studied help, too) but I’m not sure I can be on board with his latest cause: Sacks has come out against multiculturalism.
Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks: he wishes we could all just get along
He has a book coming out in January, The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society and apparently the first sentence is "Multiculturalism has run its course and it is time to move on."

According to the Jewish Chronicle

It had been designed to make ethnic and religious minorities feel more at home. But there had been a price to pay, “and it grows year by year”. It led not to integration but to segregation: “It has allowed groups to live separately with no incentive to integrate, and every incentive not to.”

Multiculturalism had made societies “more abrasive, fractured and intolerant”. British politics, he said, had been poisoned by the rise of identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed for rights.

The effect, he said, had been inexorably divisive. “A culture of victimhood sets group against group, each claiming that its pain, injury, oppression, humiliation is greater than that of others.”

Sir Jonathan continues his theme in today’s JC, in the first of a series of exclusive essays on “the challenges facing British Jews today”. He talks of a split between the universalists, who want to save the world, and the particularists, who want to save Judaism.

Dr Richard Stone, head of the Stone Ashdown Trust, which backs race-relations organisations, including the Jewish-Muslim Alif Aleph group, said he was “staggered” by the comments.

“My initial response is that he has been reading the words of journalists, who are known enemies of multiculturalism and who are trying to undermine the concept. In my view, multiculturalism is the only hope for the future of this country and we must promote it.”

Full story

Apparently Sacks thinks that things like cell phone and email have made it too easy for immigrants to stay embedded in their home cultures and never learn about Western values.

I have to think more about this, but basically, I think we have to accept that in a world where people hop from country to country they’ll want to stay at home in some spiritual way, and that that’s a valid feeling. Multiculturalism isn’t the villain here, it’s poor bureaucratic response to immigrants. When there isn’t any outreach to immigrant communities, what do people expect? And when immigrants are treated poorly, of course they’re going to react in ways that make sense to their home cultures, but perhaps don’t coincide with western values.

Forced assimilation is a bad plan, and so is segregation, be it self-imposed or mandated by the state. But I don’t see how multiculturalism got the short end of the stick here.

Oy, I know I promised you guys a lovely, thoughtfully-written, intellectual discussion of a book last week in exchange for my giddiness over Jewish Origami . Howevah, because it is about to launch its rocket, I thought On The Nightstand Thursday would be a delightful place to mention Celebration of Jewish Books, a festival happening in Los Angeles November 5-11.

People of the Book: It's on. In a big, big way. Sponsored in part by the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, American Jewish University and Borders, the festival started when a 2002 Jewish Journal story sparked an idea of Gady Levy, head of the adult-ed program at American Jewish University. A story in today's Jewish Journal (erm, actually, it's dated for tomorrow) reports:

The void certainly wasn't for a lack of trying, the story noted; the Jewish community centers had hosted a fair, but the budgets were low (generally $3,000 to