KH'RAH!

Teshuvah – I'm returning.

2008-10-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been over two years since my last entry here, and I'm reminded of an article that ran in Oberlin's now-defunct Junk Magazine when I was a freshman. The article was called, "Two Years Ago You Were Stupid" and was about how you should never read things you wrote two or more years ago because you will inevitably cringe.

Maybe I've just failed to mature at all in the last couple of years, but aside from a few minor errors ('Apparata'? Did I really not know how to spell 'Apparati'?) and a style of thought and writing even more navel-gazing than I have now (I was still in college two years ago, mind you), not much about my religious thought has changed.

I noticed this especially because, despite the large gap, the thoughts I logged on today to share seem to integrate seamlessly with my last entry. And it's also a total coincidence that this return I'm making to writing my religious musings down comes during the Days of Awe for this year – my teshuvah, in a sense. Even the medium itself is on point, as you'll see when you read the content I'm about to ~~talk~~ write about. Anyway, enough meta-musing, I'll get to the point.

I've just started reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. I'm in the second chapter, and here's what I can say about the book so far: it's a polemic against the use of television as a substitute for print as the main medium for public discourse. It's well-written in several ways. It puts the transition of public discourse from print to television (he doesn't much mention the Internet; the book was written the same year I was born, 1985) in historical context, discussing the advent of spoken language, writing, typography, and clocks, and how each has fundamentally sculpted the content of our communications. He also manages to use the word "epistemology" and still make sense, which I find remarkable.

Anyway, that's just the context. What I want to share is this:

In the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin there appears a remarkable quotation attributed to Michael Welfare, one of the founders of a religious sect known as the Dunkers [...] Welfare replied that [publication of the articles of belief and rules of the discipline of the Dunkers] had been discussed among his co-religionists but had been rejected [...]

When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors, and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths, From time to time He has been pleased to afford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and that, if we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and leaders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from.

[...] Modesty is certainly the word for it, but the statement is extraordinary for other reasons, too. We have here a criticism of the epistemology of the written word worthy of Plato. Moses himself might be interested although he could hardly approve. The Dunkers came close here to formulating a commandment about religious discourse: Thou shalt not write down they principles, still less print them, lest thou shall be entrapped by them for all time. [...] Their deliberations were in all likelihood a singular instance in Colonial America of a distrust of the printed word.

You might have noticed by now that everything reminds me of something else. This ideology of evolution posited by the Dunkers reminds me very much of those "God is still speaking" signs I've seen around Ohio. I don't know much about the church that prints and displays those signs, but I like the sentiment of them. However, like most people in our print-oriented culture, I was taught to think of religion as set in stone (sometimes literally) and that the idea that it is changeable, evolvable, and forever incomplete is at best a radical departure not only from tradition, but from the very purpose and intention of religion itself. I agree with the reworking of religion, but I'd always been troubled by the idea that, in so customizing it, that I was overruling some fundamental aspect of religion itself and therefore degrading its integrity and purpose.

However, in the context of what Postman puts forth about the written versus spoken word, this issue can be seen in a new light. It is written (and long before that, it was spoken) that God gave the Torah to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, but that the Israelites didn't all hear the same thing. The word of God, therefore, originated not as a static, written document, but as a stream of communication that was heard or perhaps seen or imagined rather than read. The advent of the Torah or Bible or Q'ran as a text, with all its attendant decisions about what makes it in and what is left out, is much more a departure from the original form of the Abrahamic religions than is the modern tendency toward departure from the text, back into the more fluid forms of experiencing God, meaning, nature, and the universal order. The mechanical printing and wide distribution of religious doctrine further cemented the sense of God's word as finished, complete, and static. The presence of God in the world becomes like the presence of the blocks of movable type on the paper, or the scribe's pen on the parchment: unilateral, as the instrument imparts ink to the page but cannot receive any response, and moreover, fleeting. By the time the text gets into your hands and eyes, the writing tool is gone, never to touch the paper again.

Thus, the medium of the great monotheistic texts contradicts their message. The actual content of the words, that our God is a living God, that the words of our God are continually spoken and re-spoken in the world, is lost in the necessarily static, nonliving nature of the letters and symbols. I argue that this is not true religion. The shapes of the letters, the kerning and ligature, the punctuation and diction, these are useful pnemonic devices for learning the word of God, but they are not themselves the word of God, nor of anyone else.

I agree with Postman in finding this of fundamental significance. In the first chapter of Amusing Ourselves to Death, titled "the Medium is the Metaphor", he suggests that the prohibition against making graven images ought to extend to graven images of words (and also of time... there is a very interesting discussion of clocks as a fundamental force in our way of thinking about the world and about eternity).

Of course, as a writer Postman finds considerable value in the use of the written word for communication, and presumably also finds value in clocks for such things as meeting with his publishers, if nothing else. But I believe the essence of his argument about text (which he only makes as a means of setting the stage for his argument about television) is that, like all media, it is not a passive representor of human thought and feeling, but rather, that it shapes the content as well as the context of that which it mediates, expanding possibilities in some directions, but limiting them in others.

So, this Yom Kippur, as you contemplate teshuvah, the turning and re-turning of your soul, its evolution and growth and perpetual striving for betterment, think also of this applying to our understanding of tradition and religion. Perhaps in so doing you will be better able to experience God as an actor in the world, as we are told is the case, rather than just a printer having left a few letters on it long ago, and the word of God as a living, growing thing, a tree of life to them that hold it fast.

Agunot and Obsolescence

2007-03-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

Response paper for 19 Sept. 2006

JWST 237

Binkovitz

I didn’t find that many things in the discussion [in class] of Halakah and marriage significantly surprising (the system is glitchy and – gasp! – male-centric.) but it hadn’t occurred to me before the references to modern-day agunot in Israel that the bugs of a sexist system which in the Middle Ages gained its power from the fact that it was the only governing body under whose jurisdiction the Jews fell in everyday life, could, in fact, continue to be problematic despite the added presence of secular governmental authority and civil marriage.

One thing I did find troubling, although it was not specifically related to marriage or even to women’s specific dealings with Halakah, was the near-total inability of Orthodox Judaism to overturn any entrenched rulings, even if they were post-Talmudic and even if there were opposition arguments registered by respected contemporaries of the subsequently accepted authorities. It seems to me that such a fear of contradicting one’s elders severely hobbles Judaism, whose main merits are the tradition of questioning the judgements and values of others and its ability to adapt to changing times and various host culture conditions, especially in light of the fact that many of the post-Talmudic rulings were based soley on what was socially acceptable or even economically viable at the time.

Thoughts on Haskalah: German Emancipation and Now

2007-02-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

English translation follows the German.

German Senior Seminar
Response Paper - 2007.02.14
Binkovitz
Es erstaunt mich immer wieder, wie die alte Sachen von jüdischer Identität, die erst im Haskalah nach Vorne gekommen sind, immer noch anspruchsvoll und deutlich sind. Es hat schon über 250 Jahren gedauert, nicht nur um akzeptiert zu werden, aber auch uns selbstzubejahen. Mit dem Haskalah hat man erst gefragt was eigentlich Judentum ist, und das fragt man heute immer wieder. Es gibt auch neue Nuancen von dieser Frage, und auch damit neue Verschiedenheiten von Vorurteilung, aber immer noch, geht man aus, daß die Juden zum Beispiel (wie Honigmans Erlebnis) Geschäftsinhabern sind.
Auch frage ich mich, was eigentlich für mich Judentum ist; auch habe ich die Werke von Mendelssohn und anderen von dem Haskalah hilfreich und entsprechend zu meinem eigenen Identitätskonstrukt. Man hat auch mir Fragen wie „Wie habt ihr die Medien so gut kontrolliert?“ gestellt.
In Deutschland hat ein wirkliches Dialog stattgefunden zwischen nichtjüdischen Deutschen und deutsche Juden nie (nach Gershom Scholem) stattgefunden, sondern innerhalb jüdische Gesellschaft, und vor allem, in dem Juden, der sich „aufklären“ wollte (damals. Und jetzt in dem Juden, der schon „aufgeklärt“ ist aber weißt noch nicht, noch seit 250 Jahren, genau wie man das, was nicht mehr „Aufklärung“ heißt, in der jüdischen Identität einwickelt.) fand so ein echtes Dialog wirklich statt. Und so findet es noch statt. Die Werke des Herz Wessely errinern mich an den Werken meines Bruders, der Wessely nie gelesen hat. Wir kämpfen noch (wie der bibliche Jacob) mit den Unbegreifbaren.

German Senior Seminar
Response Paper - 2007.02.14
Binkovitz
It continues to suprise me how the old issues of Jewish identity that first came to the fore in the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) continue to be challenging and relevant. It’s taken over 250 years so far, not only to become accepted, but to affirm ourselves. With the Haskalah the question first was raised of what Judaism actually is, and one continues to ask it today. There are of course new nuances to this question, and with those there are also new types of prejudice, but still assumptions linger, for example, (like Honigman’s experience) that all Jews are shopkeepers.
I too ask myself what Judaism is for me; I too have found the works of Mendelssohn and other Haskalah figures helpful and instructive to my own construction of identity. I too have had to answer questions like, "How do you people control the media so well?"
In Germany a true dialog between non-Jewish Germans and German Jews never (according to Gershom Scholem) took place, but within Jewish society, and most importantly, within the Jew who wanted to „enlighten“ himself (at that time. And now within the Jew who is already „enlightened“ but doesn’t know, still after 250 years, exactly how to incorporate that which we no longer term „enlightenment“ into the Jewish identity.) such a true dialog really did happen. And continues to happen. The works of Herz Wessely remind me of the writings of my brother, who has never read Wessely. We continue to wrestle (like the biblical Jacob) with these intangibles.

Works that might help you know what I'm talking about:
Mein Vater, mein Großvater, mein Urgroßvater, und ich by Barbara Honigman
Words of Peace and Truth by Napthali Herz Wessely
Judaism as Revealed Legislation by Moses Mendelssohn
On Jews and Judaism in Crisis by Gershom Scholem

Response

2006-12-08T11:15:00.001-08:00

From View message header detail Web_Administrator
Sent Friday, December 8, 2006 2:09 pm
To [name]@oberlin.edu
Cc
Bcc
Subject RE: Comments

Dear Lauren Binkovotz,

Talk Show Host Dennis Prager speaks solely for himself. His statements
do not reflect the position of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, whose
board is not self-appointed.

Respectfully,

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW

Washington, DC 20024-2126

(202) 488-2642

If the board is not self-appointed, how can one of its members speak "soley for himself"? This response doesn't make any sense.

2006-12-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

Reaction paper for class #4
JWST 237
Binkovitz
The two issues that most caught my attention in the first chapter of Women and Jewish Law were the issue of men’s honor being infringed upon by women’s assumption of the commandment to read the Torah, and the question of “how much” a woman’s mitzvah was “worth”.
The issue of honor, when traced back to the root, seems to have no halakhic basis prior to the rulings regarding k’vod ha-tzibbur. I was surprised that Biale let this issue go so easily; after carefully following a convoluted thread of logic back to its non-existent source, she moves onto the next topic without any further speculation as to where this notion of women’s inferiority may have actually come from. Perhaps she didn’t have space or perhaps that question is beyond the scope of her book (being a largely multi-religious problem) but I was dismayed with her failure to at least acknowledge that closer scrutiny of this issue is in order because it seems to represent a disappointingly omnipresent tendency to view men’s subjugation of women throughout history as somehow natural, if not entirely acceptable, due to its thorough permeation of so many cultures.
The issue of the “worth” of a mitzvah on the other hand, is a reaction to the material as well as to its presentation. It seems to me that a lot could be discovered by an examination of exactly why these scholars consider it important to “quantify” mitzvot, insofar as they say that a woman’s fulfillment of a commandment from which she is exempt gains her “less of a reward” than when a man does it. Even if this were true, and there is some kind of quantized spiritual reward system, where on earth do these men get the audacity to act as though they understood and were capable of administering it? As far as I know there is no reference to quantified divine rewards for specific acts in the Torah. Ultimately I would hypothesize that this, too, is a construct devised to support the circular system of gender-based oppression throughout history.

Dennis Prager

2006-12-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

submitted at http://www.ushmm.org/museum/contact/ :

-----

My name is Lauren Binkovitz and I would like to indicate my support for those who feel that Dennis Prager's cultural hostility with regard to the Muslim community is antithetical to what one would hope to learn from a careful study of the Holocaust, and reflects instead a dangerous ignorance and self-preferential absolutism. Please take seriously the recommendation that he be removed from the US Holocaust Memorial Council.

Thank you,
Lauren Binkovitz

-----

May I suggest the following to my readers:

Step 1: Familiarize yourself with the comments recently made with regard to a Muslim public official's decision to be ceremonially sworn in using the Koran rather than the Christian Bible and decide what you think about his controvertial comparisons between that and "Mein Kampf".

Step 2: Formulate an informed opinion in regard to the expressed sentiments and relate that to his suitability to serve on the US Holocaust Memorial Council.

Step 3: Go to the above link and articulate your opinion to them.

my jewish studies classes

2006-10-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

i'm taking a class on women in jewish history (oberlin college fall 2006 jwst 237 with prof. magnus) and since i am doing a lot of writing for this class, i thought i would post it here to make up for the lack of writing on this blog recently. you will be getting my twice-weekly reaction pages as well as longer papers i have to write throughout the semester. these entries will also be cross-posted to pesematology.blogspot.com, my feminism blog that has been languishing almost as long as this one.

i'm also taking a class called "God and the Holocaust" (oberlin college fall 2006 relg 253 with prof. raviv) for which i am reqired to write some stuff too.

so if anyone still reads this, you can get excited about new posts again!

i got stripes.

2006-05-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

at one point in the past few weeks, an email came into my figurative hands from a girl studying theology. it was not addressed to me, but was forwarded to me despite my not knowing the sender because of its particular relevance to a certain tendency i sometimes have toward self-injury as a response to emotional stress.

it contained, among other things, a quotation from isaiah.

"Isaiah 53:3
The punishment that brought our peace was him; and by his wounds we are healed.
(WEB)
Upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are
healed. (NRSV)
The chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
(ASV)

By his stripes, my stripes are healed.

[...]

last night this line floored me. I was silent before it for about 20 minutes
before I could take another breath. Funny how those words hit you sometimes...
like they're alive and changing. Sometimes you blow past them; sometimes they
blow you away. [...]"

she was right about the words. upon reading this email i was glad that she had found something in them, but as for my part, i blew right past them.

yesterday i went to mainz with a group of friends, of whom i was the only non-christian and the only american. (i met them by hanging out at campus für christus because the first real friend i made in germany was a girl whose life completely revolves around this group, and they never tried to convert me, and gave me free food to boot.) we went to the house of some americans there to work for a similar organization and they had invited some other americans too, including three girls from the same city as the girl who sent the email, although they didn't know her. the first girl told me about her struggle with identity issues, depression, and the other typical college student stuff, and how that led her to her current expression of christianity. the second grilled me fairly intensely about my personal beliefs (but in a respectful, intellectual way that i totally enjoyed and appreciated). i ended up discussing minimalist photography of decaying apparata of industry with the third.

the second conversation took up the majority of the time i was there, and i was overall very pleased at how challenging it was, and how well i was able to answer her challenges to my own (if not to her) satisfaction.

in the middle of this conversation, she pulled out her pocket bible and flipped to...

isaiah 53:3

"woah." i thought, and then proceeded to give a complex explanation, that suffering for one's ideals is holy, and a description of the purpose i believe is served by the promise of a messiah yet to come, illustrated by the "moshiach is coming tonight" story. the girl didn't seem to find that very satisfactory, and i found it only partially so, but we got off onto other abstract issues of theology and it was left at that.

later that night, i was laying in bed trying to sleep. i was kept awake by the feeling of being crushed by certain past hurts, and the horrible thought that i had probably perpetrated similar acts of selfish neglect of those who had been close to me. i felt alone. i felt desperate. it was dangerous, and i began mentally groping for something to hold onto. i thought of the passage whose words i had blown past twice in the past few weeks.

and i thought of something i said to shaun a few months ago. that i don't believe God had to come to earth as jesus to experience suffering, because i believe that God comes to earth as every person and experiences all of our suffering.

and it clicked. that is what i think "by his stripes, we are healed." means.

the theology major had said, "by his stripes, my stripes are healed." but for me, by my own stripes, i am healed. because God is not a distant nebula or a man who died two thousand years ago. God is a part of me, animating me, experiencing my pain with me, in real time. how could i even consider hurting this body, when God is inhabiting it with me, and already suffering so much (exactly as much as i do, and more) on my account?

suddenly i wasn't alone anymore. i felt safe. i felt held. still lost, still hurt. but hopeful. healing. better.

as i was leaving the gathering in mainz, the first girl i had talked to came up to me to say goodbye. she also said, "there is... more." i asked if she had read any annie dillard even though i really didn't expect her to know what i was talking about. she said she had.

"there is, God help us, more."

2005-12-13T06:33:00.000-08:00

softly now: i think praying over food makes it tastier and more filling.
softly now: i think keeping the sabbath the week more productive and easier to deal with
softly now: i want to do more traditional jewish stuff because i think it makes life more interesting
shaunxglisten: its fun to hear you talk about it
shaunxglisten: interesting
softly now: it's fun to talk about!
softly now: being jewish is a party!
softly now: lol
3:25 PM
shaunxglisten: HAH
softly now: a lot of my friends have said that knowing me makes them want to convert
softly now: i make this shit look gooood
softly now: hahaha
shaunxglisten: hahahaha
softly now: really though i love it. it's social justice and personal reflection all rolled into one
softly now: and then baked until crispy
softly now: mmmm knishes.

2005-12-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

I just read Mobius' post from whenever about a personified God vs. a pantheistic view. While I agree on the pantheism thing, If there were a personified version of God I think God would play some jokes on us. Maybe the masturbation prohibition is not to be taken at face value?

I had a class last semester at Oberlin with our German writer-in-residence Katja Lange-Mueller. One of the pieces of hers we read was a story about a student studying martial arts and mediation with his master.
One day the master presented the student with a bottle, inside of which was a live duck. The master demanded that the student explain how the duck got in the bottle. The student was at a loss to explain and the master beat him severely for it. The next day the master presented the same bottle with the same question. The student scrambled to think of something, suggesting that perhaps the glassblower had blown the bottle around the duck. The master said he had guessed wrong and beat him severly again. This scenario repeated itself twice more before, on the fifth day, the student decided that his master must have gone mad. When demaded for an explanation of the duck in the bottle, he announced that he was leaving, although the master had been good to him for many years he was now afraid that he had taken leave of his senses and couldn't subject himself to it any longer.
The master began to cry and embraced his student, telling him how glad he was that he had finally learned this valuable lesson, and how difficult it had been for him to be so harsh with the student. He had put the student through senseless questions and beatings to teach him never to blindly accept something so clearly fraught with madness just because the perpetrator was his "master".

v'ho-ikor lo l'fachayd. k'lol

2005-12-06T03:54:00.001-08:00

This NewZionist post about the greenhouses left behind after the disengagement is great because the positive aspects of the Palestinian side of things get practically no press most of the time while unfounded vicious rumors about their capacity for destriction are accepted as fact in the mainstream on a regular basis. All of history is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Matisyahu @ Kalkscheune

2005-12-06T02:22:00.000-08:00

I am going to attempt to write a review of Matisyahu's Berlin show in Kalkscheune without gushing. I don't know if I can though, so be warned.

First of all I had never been to Kalkscheune. It's behind the Kunstlerhaus, which is my favorite place ever in the world. It's pretty small, with a nice intimate feel but some annoying pillars in the way. They make a good, strong gin and tonic there.

The crowd was a mix of German reggae fans who didn't really know what was on the bill for the night and Jews from all over. I saw Davidstern tee-shirts, Hebrew college sweatshirts, tzitzit emerging from bowling shirts and all that jazz. I felt like I was at Oberlin, actually.

The set was great. He only played a few songs off "Shake off the dust... Arise." There was a lot of beatboxing and such. It was fantastic. I was dancing all over the place. I was so into it. At one point (I think it was during "Got No Water") I remember thinking, "G-d is in this room." (I don't normally write god with a dash or even capitalized, but that's what I was thinking at the moment.)

Then came the encore performace. I seriously regret having drank so much before this point because I can't remember exactly what it was he said, but I was totally bowled over by the spiel (song? speech?) he gave about the Schoa not preventing him from being there and not preventing us from being there and the only verbatim quote I remember is "but it couldn't choke me!" (Does anybody know if this was pre-written or freestyled? If he improv'ed that then I'm afraid I might succumb to idolatry and worship him. (oh the irony)

By the time he got to that part I was crying my face off, alternately attempting to continue dancing and standing like I had a pole stuck through me. Max, the non-Jewish Berliner whom I had just met, was standing there looking kind of panic-stricken by my reaction, which I thought was kind of cute.

I was really surprised that, from what I could tell, the rest of the audience wasn't really having the same reaction I was. I felt kind of embarrassed when I realized that but then I thought oh fuck it and went with it. Maybe it was good I had those drinks after all. Maybe other people on the other side of the annoying pillar were doing the same thing. I wasn't really paying all that much attention to what other people were doing by then.

Afterwards I felt like I had just run a marathon, and Max and I headed to the Kunstlerhaus to sit in the rocket and talk about spiders. I am still, a week later, in a daze. It was totally worth the 15 hours of travel time to and from Berlin and the 100 euro it ended up costing to get there and back.

some nut

2005-11-29T04:41:00.000-08:00

I changed my mind about wasting space with this. I also promise never to mention Jewsweek again.

center for jewish breeding?

2005-11-12T03:36:00.000-08:00

"everyone knows someone who fell in love on jdate"?

from the commments of this timely and hilarious post at jewlicious:

Comment #10
"Shtreimel, it’s not immediately clear what, if anything, JDate is for.
[...]
Comment by Esther — 5/17/2005 @ 6:45 pm

Comment #11
Esther,
I know quite a few people who met, slept together and never spoke again because of Jdate. Maybe that’s what it’s for."
Comment by shtreimel — 5/17/2005 @ 6:48 pm

Comment #19
"This was a great post! When I first got my Get after 11 years of living as a “Frum” mother and raising “Orthodox” children, I met a man on Frumster for a date…long story short…he is also on Nerve. com looking for couples sex. So I find all these labels very humorous and I think the Frumster people take their job of cubbyholing people way WAY too seriously. What would they label a guy who lives in Teaneck and keeps Kosher and Shabbos but wants you to pee in his mouth during oral sex? I went out with him too and it really bothered me because he wouldn’t let me order the non-kosher wine at the non-kosher restaurant we went to (he had plain salad). I guess pee is kosher if comes from someone he keeps kosher? Don’t know. Sorry to be so graphic, but this hasn’t been easy on me.

Comment by Chutzpah — 5/17/2005 @ 11:54 pm"

Judaism is complicated. Dating is complicated. Jewish dating is insanely complicated. Check out the article and the rest of the comments and I promise hilarity will ensue.

a taste of things to come.

2005-11-09T01:41:00.000-08:00

this post is sort of a note to myself. it's sort of a list of things i have to say that i don't have time to say now.

1. being in middle germany
a. do i look like a walking memorial or something?
b. pro-arab/muslim/palestinian/whathaveyou mood here - not sure what to make of it.
c. is feeling isolated because of your religion a rite of passage for diaspora jews?
2. iran - why even if it were plausible, kicking them out of the UN would be fucking stupid.

here's a link to keep you busy in the meantime: (only tangentially related to judaism.)
Can Any Good Come
Of Radical Islam?
A modernizing force? Maybe.

BY FRANCIS FUKUYAMA AND NADAV SAMIN

from newzionist

2005-11-09T01:36:00.000-08:00

JTW: Like I said, Identity Politics is the way things are going in the world so Jews will just fall into line. I think that the Jewish communities that started to grow in the Red States during the 19th-20th centuries will dissolve due to lack of retention. The older folks will stick around but the young ones will flock to the coasts or urban centers where other Jews are. J-Date will replace the JCCs as the primary organizer of Jewish social interaction, and the movement to ban circumcision in the USA by those liberal uppity Jews will dissociate American Jews from the global Jewish community. I hope that in fifty years the Deep Space Jew project is underway as the Jewish people head off into Diaspora II and spearhead deep space exploration. We’ve proven competent in thriving in an isolated society and Asimov, Captain Kirk and Spock will become the new figureheads of Jewish Tradition as we leave the Jerusalem below in search for the Jerusalem above!

click the newzionist link on the link bar to read the whole interview!

Conversations with Felix continued...

2005-10-26T03:22:00.000-07:00

"So you speak Hebrew?" Felix asked after I explained to him that Hebrew wasn't the one that sounds similar to German, it's Yiddish.
"A tiiiiiny bit." I held up two fingers a penny's width apart.
"I only know how to say one thing in Hebrew." he said, and I waited for the inevitable "Shalom".
"Lilah tov. That's Hebrew, right? It means guten abend?"
"Yeah," I said, a bit mystified. "Where did you hear that?"
"My mother used to say it to me every night."
Wait, what? "How did your mother know it?"
Felix shrugged his enigmatic shrug. "I guess my grand-grand-grand-grand father or somebody was a Jew. It wasn't enough for Hitler to count us" (and here, he said "us" even though he is only 23) "as the one-quarter Jewish or whatever was the cutoff, but we always knew about it."
I felt the way you feel when you find money on the ground, times a thousand. I felt like the words "lilah tov" from his lips were a gift meant just for me, kept safe through many perilous generations. I had recieved a treasure.

My Letter to the Mujahideen

2005-10-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

This is a response to this letter: Letter to the American People

Dear Mujahideen Organization,
I am impressed with the eloquence of your letter to the people of America. As an American I feel that I should apologize deeply for the unimaginable suffering in Iraq that we are making worse, if not causing. I personally stood in line for 5 hours in the rain in order to cast a vote against Bush only to have it thrown away, along with those of my friends. We protested and marched and traveled to recount locations but in the end the republican conspiracy was too strong for us. This is not an excuse, just an explanation of the situation now.
You might suggest that we assassinate Bush or something. This wouldn't do any good. You know that this problem is much bigger than just one man. He has hijacked the minds of America. We don't know how to fight for minds. You suggested making a third party. You may not know it, but there is a Green party, a Natural Law party, a Communist party, a Socialist party, and a bunch of other ones too. The problem is the Bush-controlled media tells people who is "electable". It's very insidious. So what should we do?
I have also noticed that you seem to be a little bit confused about the position of Israel in this matter. I really doubt that the US tried to make the flag of Iraq look like that of Israel on purpose. That wouldn't benefit anybody. It's bad that they changed the flag though. I agree that it was much more representative of the people before. That is an arrogant and stupid thing to do.
However, I think I should point out to you that not all Jews are Zionists, and that not all Zionists are the kind of Zionists you think they are. Many, many Jews, especially young ones, want the Palestinians to be treated fairly and have economic and political independence. Many Zionists are cultural Zionists who don't believe in political oppression any more than you do. There are Israelis who smuggle food and supplies into Palestinian camps to try to help. There are Israeli soldiers who sit in prison rather than obey orders to oppress Palestinians. Israel is in a similar situation to America with the leaders tricking the people and trying to scare Jews all over the world into anti-Arab feelings. I know better than to believe these bitter lies, and so do many Jews, but the media tries to hide us. But the generation that loves peace more than money is growing up, and soon we will be in charge. Please don't hate all Jews just because some of them are too selfish or too scared to do what is right.
I am very glad I got to read your letter and hear about your opinions. I think that even though I am from a very different world than the one you fight to defend, that we have a lot of the same wishes for the future. I think that most Americans, Iraqis, Jews, Muslims, Arabs, men, and women wish for the same things for the world, such as everyone being able to live, work, grow up, get an education, and be free. If you can at least hope that we have this in common, then there is hope for all of us.

Salaam,
Beth Binkovitz

a real-life parable

2005-10-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

"my grandfather met hitler once." said felix with an uneasy chuckle.
"really?" i said, mirroring his laugh, hoping that the story would make it appropriate.
"yeah" he said, "one day my grandfather was riding on his bicycle and hitler was going by. everybody did the greeting," here he made a tentative half-gesture with his arm. it was clear that he was not comfortable imitating this motion even for the purposes of his story. "and my grandfather did not do this. he did not greet him. so hitler came up to him and said, 'what is the matter, don't you know how to do this greeting?'"
there was a long pause. i cocked my head expectantly.
"and?" i finally demanded.
felix shrugged.
"and my grandfather rode away on the bicycle."

Who writes this shit?

2005-10-18T04:04:00.000-07:00

From Jewsweek (NOT Jewcy anymore - I can't believe I made that mistake!):

"10/16/05 09:30

New German chancellor has an "excellent" track record on Jewish issues

The first woman and former East German to be elected chancellor in Germany's history, Angela Merkel, brings a hopeful time for Germany's Jews and relations between Israel and Germany. The Chairman of the World Jewish Congress and president of the Claims Conference, Rabbi Israel Singer, spoke confidently of ties to the new German chancellor saying, "There's no 'getting to know you,' no breaking-in period needed." He added that Merkel, "frequently finished a sentence that I began when we talked about Jewish issues." Michael Wolffsohn, a history professor at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich said, "Jewish-Israeli matters are close to her heart," as well as her party in general. Looks like the woman filling Hitler's shoes is spinning Germany's policy on its head!"

I have been wincing at Jewsweek's (Non-Jewcy!) turn towards the more reactionary for some time now, but this is bad even for them. Filling Hitler's shoes? Either they are equating Gerhard Schroeder to Hitler, or they are wiping the most dynamic 60 years of Germany's history off the slate. I didn't live through the Holocaust. I can only imagine that it would be difficult to forgive a country whose government and people have done such horrible things. But it's been 60 Yom Kippurs since the end of WWII and Germany has made an honest and efficacious attempt at repentance for its grave sins. It's time for us to stop holding these horrible events against a country that has changed governments several times since that time, and whose population grew up in a place that embraces multiculturalism.

The people of Germany deserve more respect than to be called by the names of the ghosts of their past.

2005-10-13T07:32:00.000-07:00

Today is Yom Kippur, and I spent all morning and part of the afternoon in an interminable service that for all I know is still going on.

I have been thinking all day about forgiveness, partly because
today, Yom Kippur, is the end of the Days of Awe and those are all about repentance and giving forgiveness and recieving it, or at least asking for it. You're supposed to do all this so that your name gets inscribed in the Book of Life and not the Book of Death for the year to come. I find all this kind of weird and creepy.

However! I still like the High Holy Days and I have also been thinking
about forgiveness because I have just read "Everything is Illuminated"
three and a half times. And the more I think about it, the more I relize that the true theme of the book is forgiveness. I think Jonathan Safran Foer really sums up what every Jew has wondered on some Yom Kippur or another when he describes the
shtetl of Trachimbrod after one of many pogroms to be leveled at it over time. He says that the people all go around like it's Yom Kippur, begging for forgiveness, without knowing who it's for. Is it, "God, forgive our attackers for the atrocities they commit`.", or is it "God forgive us for the things that we allow to happen to us.", or is it, "God, forgive You, for being so inscrutible."?

There's also the part about the couple that divorce and remarry on a regular basis from the time they are children until they get old and die, and every time they remarry their vows get longer and less relevant and they love each other more.

That part is also about forgivenes, I think. Something unforgivable happens, it's awful, it can't be tolerated, but then after a little while it turns out that not tolerating it is worse. There is no point in not forgiving something just because it was unforgivable. Forgiveness isn't something people who've wronged you earn; it's a gift you give yourself.

As I was riding the bus to the computer lab, I was feeling kind of guilty for skipping out on the service. With so few people, they're bound to notice that I beat a hasty retreat halfway through. But really, I wasn't getting it. Struggling to stay awake and listening to old ladies' stomachs growl is only a small part of the High Holy Days experience.

So instead of feeling bad, I asked myself what I would do if I knew I were being inscribed in the Book of Death, and it was too late to do anything, and I would die in the next year, and I would not go to heaven when the Messiah comes and I would never be a good person, period, the end. Knowing all is lost and my little window to the world was about to shut forever, would I make the most of the "no consequences" thing?

Not really. I think I would go home to spend my time with my family and my boyfriend nd the plces I love to be. I think I would just do as much as possible of what I have been doing for most of my life right up until the end. I think that's what most people are doing right now.

dirty gold

2005-08-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

I find very interesting the admonishion to avoid even the appearance of treyfness in judaism (isaac, help me out and leave a comment with the source of this!) such as, not going into such an establishment as say, hoggy's, or hooter's, or any place that would, if one were seen there, lead people to believe that one was willing to partake of pork ribs, or titty-ogling, or what have you. This is a powerful and often-overlooked duty, especially among assimilated reform jews (like me, for example). It intrigues me not because it helps one avoid temptation ("The kohen whose job it was to empty the charity box in the Temple, did so dressed in a simple shift, without pockets or sleeves and barefoot so there should not be any temptation to steal or the appearance of misbehavior regarding what was in essence, holy money" (BavaBatra 8b)) or because one leads others by example, or because it is wrong to appear to condone something that is wrong, if only by tolerating its proximity, but because it is all of these things. like so many things in judaism, the rules help enforce other rules (staying away from pork-serving restaurants makes it easier to avoid eating pork) on their most pragmatic and mundane levels, but they also contain a greater wisdom as reminders of higher causes, such as social justice. if one must keep one's distance from pork and not be thought to partake it, to buy it or to eat it or to enjoy it, one must then a thousand times more have an obligation to distance oneself from, for example, war and warmongers, neither supporting war nor rejoicing in any so-called "victories" nor profit off it or enjoy any of its death-tainted side effects.

reform jews may say, well we eat pork anyway, we get tattoos, we break those little statutes left and right because their meaning isn't literal. i agree with this. i have enjoyed pork (although i am now a vegetarian) and i have a tattoo (albeit a jewish one) and i go into unkosher restaurants and attend parties where there are some activities going on that i don't particularly approve of and i don't believe in ignoring the evils of the world and shutting them out because they don't go away. in this way, i could almost be a christian, so much do i admire jesus in his willingness to get into the depts of sin to drag the sinners out.

however! if you feel you can ignore the letter of the law with the excuse that it's detatched from the spirit, don't cop out on the spirit then! don't use the excuse that wars will be fought and you might as well profit; don't use the excuse that people will buy sweat-shop produced clothing and that there will always be sweat-shops so you might as well buy their clothes or work in their store. or, even worse! don't steal from the till or shoplift with the justification that you're ripping off the bad guy. you're profiting from not only theft, which is obviously morally dubious as well as illegal, but what is really worse, you are profiting from human misery. judaism teaches that even when we can't stop injustice, we are absolutely forbidden to support it, cheer it on, and under no circumstances may we profit from it.

for those who skipped to the last line for the recap: judaism teaches that even when we can't stop injustice, we are absolutely forbidden to support it, cheer it on, and under no circumstances may we profit from it.

Nachamu

2005-08-18T18:46:00.001-07:00

As everyone not living under a rock in Azerbeijan may remember, two things happened Sunday. It was Tisha b'Av. It was also technically the first day of the disengagement.

I want to take this opportunity to remind everyone this Friday night is Shabbat Nachamu.

"Comfort, comfort, my people!"
(Nachamu, nachamu, ami!)
(Isaiah 40:1-2)

So here's some comfort from NPR with some Orange-on-Blue kindness:

"But, overall, the exchanges were civil. I've been sort of following one family through this, and when the soldiers came, he actually started to cry. He was one of the founders of the Gadid settlement, where I am right now, and--but, then, within a few minutes, he brought out cake for the soldiers and they helped him dismantle his air conditioner."

Indeed, man is but grass.

2005-08-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

"A voice rings out: Proclaim!"
(Kol amar, 'kh'rah!')
"And I said, 'What shall I proclaim?'"
(V'amar, 'ma karah?')

(Isaiah 40:6-7)