Kesher Talk: 05/11/2003

Saturday, May 17, 2003

Shavuot count-down: Day 31 of counting the Omer. Using Kabbalistic symbology for counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the Tiferet of Hod: Compassion in Humility. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's meditation for this day of the Omer:

Examine if your humility is compassionate. Does my humility cause me to be self-contained and anti-social or does it express itself in empathy for others. Is my humility balanced and beautiful? Or is it awkward? Just as humility brings compassion, compassion can lead one to humility. If you lack humility, try acting compassionately, which can help bring you to humility.

(More on counting the Omer here)

Friday, May 16, 2003

Shavuot count-down: Day 30 of counting the Omer. Using Kabbalistic symbology for counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the Gevurah of Hod: Discipline in Humility. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's meditation for this day of the Omer:

Humility must be disciplined and focused. When should my humility cause me to compromise and when not? In the name of humility do I sometimes remain silent and neutral in the face of wickedness? Humility must also include respect and awe for the person or experience before whom you stand humble. If my humility is wanting, is it because I don't respect another?

(More on counting the Omer here)

Darn - put away the champagne. I spoke too soon. There is some confusion over whether Google News is still taking feeds from Indymedia. At this point we need to find out how long search results stay in the Google News cache, note if Indymedia stories continue to show up in their search results past that point, and write a polite but firm letter if they do. Unfortunately, this issue is only going to get resolved in favor of legitimate news if we keep tabs on Google News for awhile and re-apply pressure when needed.

NOTE: Google is the search engine site which tries to index everything on the web. No one is advocating Indymedia be screened from Google. Google News, on the other hand, is a search engine for recent news stories and takes feeds from legitimate news media. Indymedia is not a news site - it's more of a weblog which posts news stories and hosts comment threads, like the Command Post. Commenters tend to be rabid antisemites who frequently use words like "Zionazi" and claim they are "only anti-Zionist, not antisemitic," and comments with rebuttals to their conspiracy-mongering are often removed.

On Wednesday protests were held around the nation against biased NPR coverage of Israel. Here are a few reports:

Boston.
Chicago.
Cleveland.
Fresno.
Nashville.
Philadelphia.
Seattle.

I really wanted to be there, but the NYC protest was at 6 PM, and I had signed up for a workshop that evening for which I could not get a refund, which started at 6 PM. But I would love to hear how it went. In fact, if you attended any of the protests, comment here or email me a report and I'll post them.

UPDATE: Lynn didn't make it to the protest, but she has some thoughts on NPR's obfuscations about their bias.

French nuclear policy: France has asked Iran to allow stronger international inspections of its nuclear program.

France has asked Iran to allow international inspectors free access to its nuclear program.

And if Iran won't go along ... watch out ... France is threatening to ask again.

(by Mike Sultan)

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Shavuot count-down: Day 29 of counting the Omer. Using Kabbalistic symbology for counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - we have travelled through all of the combinations of the 7 lower sephirot with the the sephira of Netzach, Tonight we begin 7 days of combining these sephirot with the sephira of Hod, beginning with Chesed of Hod: Lovingkindness in Humility. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's meditation for this day of the Omer:

Examine the love in your humility. Healthy humility is not demoralizing; it brings love and joy not fear. Humility that lacks love has to be reexamined for its authenticity. Sometimes humility can be confused with low self-esteem, which would cause it to be unloving. Humility brings love because it gives you the ability to rise above yourself and love another. Does my humility cause me to be more loving and giving? More expansive? Or does it inhibit and constrain me?

(More on counting the Omer here)

Jew TV: Ready or not, here it comes! And not just TV made or acted by Jews, but TV that broadcasts Judaism... I don't know if it runs in DC, but Rabbi Irwin Kula's program on PBS, titled "Simple Wisdom," is bringing Jewish values to a mass audience -- and more than just in the generic judeochristian sense.

Kula: “The whole goal is to bring Jewish wisdom to the public square without it being about Jewish identity and building Jewish identity... I had to grapple with how does this wisdom help us be human, as opposed to Jewish.”

Canada denounces Lebanese refugee for helping Israel, brands him "war criminal": A man who spied on the terrorist group Hezbollah for the Israeli secret intelligence agency Mossad has been branded a war criminal by Canadian authorities, who said his actions helped Israel commit "heinous" atrocities.

In a ruling likely to raise diplomatic tensions between Canada and Israel, a lawyer representing the Minister of Immigration intervened in the Lebanese man's refugee case to argue his claim should be rejected for his role in Israeli "war crimes."

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Shavuot count-down: Day 28 of counting the Omer. Using Kabbalistic symbology for counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the Malchut of Netzach: Nobility in Endurance. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's meditation for this day of the Omer:

Sovereignty is the cornerstone of endurance. Endurance that encompasses the previous six qualities is indeed a tribute and testimony to the majesty of the human spirit. Is my endurance dignified? Does it bring out the best in me? When faced with hardships do I behave like a king or queen, walking proudly with my head up, confident in my G-d-given strengths, or do I cower and shrivel up in fear?

We have now moved through all of the combinations of the 7 lower sephirot with the the sephira of Netzach. Tomorrow begins the week of the sephira of Hod.

(More on counting the Omer here)

Anti-Semitism Conference - wow. I spent the past 3 days at Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-semitism in the West, a conference sponsored by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. Presenters included Ian Buruma, Abraham Foxman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Todd Gitlin, Daniel Goldhagen, Deborah Lipstadt, David Pryce-Jones, Leon Weiseltier, Simon Schama, and many other journalists and intellectuals from the UK, the US, Canada, Israel, Iran, France, Germany, Poland, and Mexico.

(Focusing on the "new antisemitism" meant that the conference was actually about world terrorism, the new meanings of left and right, Islamism, totalitarianism, national sovereignty, globalization, international law, and every other juicy and pressing issue in our new global reality - but you knew that.)

It was gratifying to find that about 80% of the information and analysis was not news to me (due to blogs, circulated emails, various pundits and reporters, and sites such as MEMRI and Honest Reporting). It was even more gratifying to find the audience (not professional pundits, journalists, or activists) just as up to speed. I deduce this because troll-type questions or comments were few, and there were few gasps of horror or amazement from this mostly Jewish audience at nasty anecdotes or statistics. I assume their personal news-filtering mechanisms are similar to mine.

The remaining 20% of the information and analysis was very illuminating. All the presentations and Q&A sessions were simulcast as web video, which I hope will be permanently available in their archives soon, so you can view them yourself. I also took tons of notes and I plan to post some highlights over the next few weeks.

Customary behavior in synagogue:

A young scholar from New York was invited to become Rabbi in a small old community in Chicago. On his very first Shabbat, a hot debate erupted as to whether one should or should not stand during the reading of the Ten Commandments.

Next day, the rabbi visited 98 year-old Mr. Katz in the nursing home. "Mr. Katz, I'm asking you as the oldest member of the community," said the rabbi, "what is our synagogue's custom during the reading of the Ten Commandments?"

"Why do you ask?" asked Mr. Katz.

"Yesterday we read the Ten Commandments. Some people stood, some people sat. The ones standing started screaming at the ones sitting, telling them to stand up. The ones sitting started screaming at the ones standing, telling them to sit down... "

"That," said the old man "is our custom."

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Shavuot count-down: Day 27 of counting the Omer. Using Kabbalistic symbology for counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the Yesod of Netzach: Bonding in Endurance. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's meditation for this day of the Omer:

Bonding is an essential quality of endurance. It expresses your unwavering commitment to the person or experience you are bonding with, a commitment so powerful that you will endure all to preserve it. Endurance without bonding will not endure.

(More on counting the Omer here)

THE GREAT DEBATE: The Pope takes on a Rabbi.

I love the Forward Dept. It's been a while since I've compiled some of my favorite stories from the Forward. Here we go:

The best Jewish music store in the world is on Fairfax Avenue in LA, Where Music Aficionados Debate Who's the Elvis of the Cantorial World.

Not just Jan Peerce and Yaffa Yarkoni, but Bessarabian drinking songs. Ladino and Arabic. If chasidic CDs ain't the party, there's always Mexican klezmer — or Guns 'n' Charoses and Doc Mo She. Would you believe there's even a "Lambchop's Passover Surprise" from Shari Lewis?

. . . Elliot Gould and Theodore Bikel are customers. Carl Reiner comes in. "Leonard Cohen always buys the same cantorial music," Rutberg said with a grin. "Shalom Katz." Hollywood has called too, when a movie ("Mr. Saturday Night") or TV show ("X-Files," "Brooklyn Bridge") or Jewish-themed documentary needs an appropriate track. . . . "Nobody in the world has ever tried to market Ladino music," Rutberg said. "First of all, the market is Jewish, which is [as] big as the end of your finger. And Ladino is like a microbe in that. Which means that nobody wants it. But I really dug it. We have over 200 Ladino CDs, which is like having antique automobiles. I import them from Spain, Germany, Austria, France. They're my No. 2 seller, bigger than cantorial, Israeli and klezmer."

Did someone mention Ladino? After decades of domination by klezmer, popular Jewish music is being permeated by Sephardic and Mizrachi influences. But yo! Jewish hip-hop is not far behind.

Enter Sneakas, ne Yoni Ben-Yehuda, a 22-year-old budding hip-hop artist who is striving to take Jewish hip-hop out of the novelty category and into the ears of serious rap fans. . . . He and his mother emigrated from Israel to the United States in 1993, when he was 12. His deep voice still bears a faint trace of an Israeli accent. As a teenager on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Sneakas discovered underground New York hip-hop artists like Mos Def and Talib Qweli . . .

A tale of two cities: Daniel Libeskind, the architect chosen to rebuild the WTC, was a Jewish kid from the South Bronx,

immersed in an environment in which progressive politics, Yiddish literary debates and a community spirit thrived. "It shaped me completely," Libeskind told the Forward.

It's that same universalistic, secular Jewish attitude that underpins his work today, Libeskind said. "Most architects are concerned with buildings — actually, I'm concerned with people," he said. "There's a big difference. Most architects are concerned with technology. I'm much more interested in the story a city tells, a story a building tells, a story a space tells."

There was an old Jewish community in Medina when Mohammed arrived there, all excited about his new religion.

. . . whoever settled in Yathrib and gave it its non-Arabic name of "the Medina" or "the city" were originally Aramaic speakers from elsewhere. At first this was just a local usage employed by these immigrant Medinians for their town, just as New Yorkers, when talking among themselves, call New York "the city," too. (If you come from Philadelphia, on the other hand, you call New York "New York," just as other Arabians went on saying "Yathrib.") This usage must then have spread to the Arabic-speaking population of Yathrib, which attached the Arabic definite article to make it "Al-Medina" (as Arabs call Medina to this day), a form then adopted by the Aramaic speakers when they eventually switched to Arabic themselves. And it is highly likely that these immigrants were Jews from Palestine or Babylonia, both Aramaic-speaking areas in the early centuries C.E., because we also know from Arab historians that, in Muhammad's time, three large Jewish clans — the Banu-Nadir or "Sons of Nadir," the Banu-Korayzeh and the Banu-Kainuka — dominated the city. In addition, there were in Medina two large non-Jewish clans, the Aws and the Khazraj, whose origins were in Yemen.

Eskimos have many different words for snow, Hebrew - born in a climate with well-defined wet and dry seasons - has several different words for rain.

The yoreh falls in October and November, before the heavy winter storms set in, and the malkosh in March and April, which is the Israeli springtime.

Monday, May 12, 2003

Shavuot count-down: Day 26 of counting the Omer. Using Kabbalistic symbology for counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the Hod of Netzach: Humility in Endurance. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's meditation for this day of the Omer:

Yielding - which is a result of humility - is an essential element of enduring. Standing fast can sometimes be a formula for destruction. The oak, lacking the ability to bend in the hurricane, is uprooted. The reed, which yields to the wind, survives without a problem. Do I know when to yield, out of strength not fear? Why am I often afraid to yield?

Endurance is fueled by inner strength. Hod of Netzach is the humble recognition and acknowledgement that the capacity to endure and prevail comes from the soul that G-d gave each person. This humility does not compromise the drive of endurance; on the contrary, it intensifies it, because human endurance can go only so far and endure only so much, whereas endurance that comes from the Divine soul is limitless. Do I attribute my success solely to my own strength and determination? Am I convinced that I am all-powerful due to my level of endurance? Where do I get the strength at times when everything seems so bleak?

(More on counting the Omer here)

Some cool stuff I bookmarked over the past few months: Enjoy:

Stalin World, a real theme park in Lithuania.

A very short science-fiction story about each element of the periodic table, by incredible writer and former neighbor Michael Swanwick. (If you haven't read his Dickensian steampunk fantasy The Iron Dragon's Daughter go buy it now. One amazon.com reviewer calls it "a wonderful mixture of 'Oliver Twist' and 'Europa, Europa.'" I would say Tolkein channelled through Don DiLillo.)

Satellite photo of the earth at night.

Ancient Scripts is a site about ancient writing systems, from Khmer to Futhark to Syriac to Oscan to Linear B, including history, phonetics, alphabets, and lots of links.

The former Mossad spy who captured Adolf Eichmann was born in British Palestine, fought with the Haganah, speaks seven languages, and now writes and paints in a studio in Manhattan. Fascinating portrait of a unique individual.

Interplanetary internet. Unfortunately not FTL. Yet.

The Passover Knight:

A Jewish doctor makes a great medical discovery for which the Queen has decided to grant him knighthood. At the ceremony, as she touches his shoulders with the sword, he is supposed to recite an ancient Celtic blessing.

However, for all his medical genius, the doctor cannot seem to memorize the required Celtic words. On the day of his investiture, the nervous doctor waits his turn as several others are being knighted before him. As he listens to one after another correctly recite the Celtic blessing, he grows more and more nervous.

Finally, when he kneels before the Queen of England and she taps his shoulders with the sword, the good doctor completely forgets the Celtic words, and substitutes the first foreign words that pop into his head: "Ma Nishtahnah Ha Lailah Ha Zeh."

The Queen, clearly confused, looked to the gathered crowd, and says, "Why is this Knight different from all the other Knights?"

Sunday, May 11, 2003

Shavuot count-down: Day 25 of counting the Omer. Using Kabbalistic symbology for counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the Netzach of Netzach: Endurance in Endurance. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's meditation for this day of the Omer:

Everyone has willpower and determination. We have the capacity to endure much more than we can imagine, and to prevail under the most trying of circumstances. Ask yourself: Is my behavior erratic? Am I inconsistent and unreliable? Since I have will and determination, why am I so mercurial? Am I afraid of accessing my endurance and committing? Do I fear being trapped by my commitment? If yes, why? Is it a reaction to some past trauma? Instead of cultivating endurance in healthy areas, have I developed a capacity for endurance of unhealthy experiences? Do I endure more pain than pleasure? Do I underestimate my capacity to endure?

(More on counting the Omer here)

Rob's Amazing Poem Generator takes in your blog's URL and outputs a poem based on the contents. Voila! - the quintessential Kesher Talk poem:

function well. They said Although these
have their way I got into Mongolia
these days between what blocks unless
the #old Demons, New York. For the
ear of the
UK, in order
to create something
of Jerusalem Post
May 02, 26:34 PM
David Janes Dawson Speaks Dean Esmay
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with handles they
on Terrorism
and civil liberties Union Latin America,
and Star
reporter who Should be
an independent judiciary
which Tam Dalyell complained
of counting the Japanese reporter had bronchitis all of
a
Rabbi Simon meditation for
this terminally geeky unutterably
breathtakingly cool site. Think
this Palestinian
banker Omar
Karsou, was rejected, and
the hard as they are
voluntarily entered and business
people moving in compassion as the Baghdad museum looting. Add a much or UN handouts .

Hmmm.

Break out the champagne! Google News has decided to drop Indymedia from its list of news sources. This doesn't mean Indymedia sites will no longer show up on Google. it just means Indymedia will not be considered as a creditable source for news stories for Google News. Which is as it should be.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon.

The land between the two rivers. This site has a number of links to and abstracts of articles about the archeological looting of Iraq, and about archeology in the "cradle of civilization" in general.

Archaeology, antiquities smuggling, nationalism, colonialism, politics and related issues have always been closely intertwined in the Land Between the Two Rivers. This site serves to explore, expand and encourage the study of and dialogue about these issues. First come the most interesting articles (I.) and sundry bits of info that I have gathered recently. . . . Second, I include a list of professional organizations' (II.) appeals to the powers that be. Third, I review the relevant web sites (III.). On a separate page, The 2003 Iraq War & Archaeology. Satire & Humor, I have gathered some of the subtle and less-subtle examples of satire and cartoons on the subject.

Professor Deblauwe also links to The Baghdad Museum Project web site which

seeks to (1) establish a comprehensive online catalog of all cultural artifacts in the museum's collection, (2) create a virtual Baghdad Museum that is accessible to the general public over the Internet, (3) build a 3D collaborative workspace within the virtual Baghdad Museum for design and fundraising purposes, and (4) establish a resource center within the virtual Baghdad Museum for community cultural development.

This site has up-to-date news about the search for stolen artifacts, a museum walkthrough, a database of cuneiform tablets, and many photos of the artifacts that were in the museum.

Many people first heard of present-day Assyrian Christians from this confessional article by peace activist Ken Joseph, who went to Iraq as a human shield and had the courage to not only admit he was wrong about the need to depose Saddam, but managed to smuggle out videos of Iraqi testimony to Saddam's brutality. Joseph is an Assyrian by ancestry, although he was raised and resides in Japan.

Here's some more information about Assyrian Christians, another minority group persecuted by Saddam. They have much in common culturally with Jews (especially speaking Aramaic, the chief language of Jewish liturgy and sacred text after Hebrew).

"Who's related to the Israelis in the Middle East more than us?" Atto said. "We have a prayer in church, "Allah barech la bnei yisrael" — "God bless the people of Israel." When asked about the policies of Prime Minister Sharon, George Khoshaba, a factory worker, said: "I support him 100%. He is doing the right thing. To protect his own people, his country."

Such views are common in the Assyrian community, said Peter Dagher, a former White House aide and Assyrian activist. "Many Assyrians are not pro-Arab," he said. "Their views and those of Arabs are not the same. In that part of the world they look at Israel as an example of what to do, rather than what not to do."

. . . Assyrians this week celebrated their New Year, Kha B'Nissan, the first day of the month of Nissan, a date described in the Mishna as one of four New Years of Judaism. And while neo-Aramaic is much changed from its ancient counterpart, many words remain the same.

Kesher Talk

Saturday, May 17, 2003

Friday, May 16, 2003

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Monday, May 12, 2003

Sunday, May 11, 2003

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