Kesher Talk

Simchat Torah count-up - Day 12 - Erev Simchat Torah. The first anniversary of my uncle's death. Yahrzeit begins tonight. A bit of cognitive dissonance that he died on one of the happiest days in the Jewish calendar.

A wide-ranging eclectic rumination on Simchat Torah.

posted by Judith @ 10/18/2003 04:00:04 PM  

Simchat Torah count-up - Day 11 - Erev Shemini Atzeret.

At precisely this moment, the journey begins again. The curious house is dismantled. The King calls you in for a last intimate meal, and then you set out on your way again.

Read the rest of the excerpt from Rabbi Alan Lew's new book This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared.

Shemini Atzeret is a very subtle observance.

posted by Judith @ 10/17/2003 10:43:14 PM  

Simchat Torah count-up - Day 11 - Hoshana Rabbah. How are your lulav and etrog holding up? My house in Austin backs onto a creek (dry most of the year), with many willows along the banks. The last two years before I moved to NYC I cut willow branches the evening before Hoshana Rabba and brought them to shul at the crack of dawn for the willow-beating ceremony. Here in NYC I have to buy pathetic little bundles for exorbitant prices like everyone else.

In case, your moral self-examination continued past Yom Kippur, the last slips of petition and remorse can be slid through the closed, locked gate on Hoshana Rabbah. Beat them willow branches really hard.

Some thoughtprovoking predictions for 5764.

posted by Judith @ 10/17/2003 01:47:06 PM  

Rutgers inspires, Part III. Evan Coyne Maloney - amateur sociologist and documentor of antiwar protests - took his video camera to the pro-Palestinian conference which coincided with Rutgers' "Israel Inspires" weekend. (The prospect of the conference on their campus is what insired Rutgers Hillel to develop their program.)

Evan now has a report and a bit of footage. (Read the report to find out why he wasn't able to get more footage.) Notice the protestor blocking his camera with a sign that says "Free speech, free Palestine." Well, that's about as much irony as I can stand for one day.

UPDATE: Evan's video is up, and here are some stills from the event, including lots of close-ups of posters and banners.

posted by Judith @ 10/17/2003 01:39:50 PM  

Simchat Torah count-up - Day 11 - Hoshana Rabbah. Sukkot with the troops in Iraq. I love how all those Jewish soldiers and civilian workers are observing our holidays out in the open for anyone to see. And not just the holidays most Americans has been educated about and even secular Jews celebrate, like Chanukkah and Pesach.

It's a nice rebuttal to crap like this.

posted by Judith @ 10/17/2003 08:26:16 AM  

Denial of service. That was interesting. I figured it was Hosting Matters, since Blogspot blogs weren't affected. LGF was the last to come back.

UPDATE: When I heard about the WTC attacks, I wasn't surprised. Horrified, but not surprised. I'm not surprised at this either.

posted by Judith @ 10/17/2003 02:30:55 AM  

Simchat Torah count-up - Day 10 - Erev Hoshana Rabbah. Oy - got to get up real early for this one - it's a long service on a day when people have to go to work. I expect to leave for shul around 6 AM. Unfortunately, a concert I have been looking forward to for months is the night before. (I wonder why Zrihan is touring during Sukkot - he's a practicing chazan back home in Ashkelon.) And I want to be awake for a big Shabbat dinner tomorrow night, too. Not to mention chanting a chapter of Kohelet the next morning. A long chapter.

There's also a tradition of a Tikkun Leil Hoshana Rabba - all night group study preceding the morning service - at the opposite end of the year from the more widely practiced Tikkun Leil Shavuot.

PS This is kind of late, but remember selichot? Well, I was searching for an old post and found this from last year.

posted by Judith @ 10/16/2003 09:41:42 PM  

Meetup.com and Israel: I've been asked to post this by a friend:

Do you watch what is happening in Israel and feel powerless?

Want to talk with other people who feel the same way and want to take action?

Then, join the first ever international Stand By Israel Meet-Up.

This isn’t a rally. It’s not a new organization. There are no dues. There are no commitments. It’s a meeting of like-minded people right from your neighborhood and hometown getting together at a coffee shop, diner, or pub to talk about the situation in Israel and what we can do about it.

This is open to people of all ages and from all backgrounds and political persuasions. What unites us is a belief in supporting Israel’s right to exist and flourish as a Jewish State within secure and recognized boundaries.

The first international Stand By Israel Meet-Up will be on Monday, November 10, 2003 at 7 PM.

To sign up, all you have to do is type in your e-mail address and your zip code at: http://standbyisrael.meetup.com/

Once you’re in, you can decide what the agenda is, where to meet, and what to do. You have the power.

Sign up now. Pass this on to your friends, family, and colleagues all over the world.

posted by William @ 10/16/2003 05:34:24 PM  

The IDF code.

Supporters of Israel pride themselves on the sensitivity and morality of the Jewish army, but can morality overdose into madness? Cantor Moshe Keinan, father of Sgt. Avihu Keinan, asked those questions, accusing the army of “cruelty,” as he stood over his son’s open grave on the eve of Rosh HaShanah. Then, like Israel itself, torn between anger and tenderness, he started singing a Yiddish lullaby that he used to sing to Avihu to put him to sleep, and now to tuck him into the ground.

It was the day after 27 reserve pilots signed a petition that they would refuse to bomb Arab civilian targets. In response, an air force commander defended the Israel Defense Forces as the most moral and ethical army in the world.

Meanwhile in Gaza, where Avihu’s unit was stationed, Israeli intelligence identified a small residential apartment building as a terrorist den. Indeed, the building was later found to contain rockets, rocket launchers, grenades and suicide bomb-belts.

Though it was suggested that Israel bomb the building from the air, the IDF, fearing civilian casualties, ordered Avihu’s unit to search door to door. The soldiers knocked on the first apartment door, asking that the terrorists surrender.

Instead, at least a half-dozen women, children and elderly people emerged from the apartment, filling the vestibule and stairwell alongside the soldiers. The soldiers sent a dog to sniff around on the second floor. They heard a gunshot; the dog was killed. Avihu and his men followed up the stairs when a volley of bullets hit Avihu in the head. Six others were wounded.

It was the last night of the old Jewish year when Keinan, 22, was buried in the West Bank village of Shiloh, as the cantor cried: “My son’s blood was less important to the IDF than [Palestinian] blood. No other army in the world has this policy… Mein yingeleh ... mein tayare (My young one, my cherished one.)” Avihu is survived by his parents and four sisters.

posted by Judith @ 10/16/2003 02:51:15 PM  

Jews in Sports: Anti-semitism and ice dancing:

In March 2002, Israeli ice dancers Sergei Sakhnovsky and Galit Chait won a bronze medal at the World Figure Skating Championships in Nagano, Japan, edging out a Lithuanian pair who finished in fourth place. Within days, a petition was circulating among skaters and judges saying that the Israelis' medal was "not justified."

"How much did it cost you to buy that medal?" another skater reportedly asked Sakhnovsky.

"There is big money involved with the Israeli couple, and you cannot fight against that," Povilas Vanagas, one of the Lithuanian skaters, told the press.

"The stereotype of 'buying' a medal," New York-based skating expert Alina Sivorinovsky told the Forward, is classic antisemitism. And it's particularly ironic considering that the Israel Ice Skating Foundation is struggling financially.

Sivorinovsky — author of "Inside Figure Skating" and "Sarah Hughes: Skating to the Stars" — is doing her part to help, by speaking out against antisemitism in the sport and donating proceeds from her forthcoming mystery novel, "Murder on Ice," to the foundation, which began its new skating season two weeks ago.

posted by William @ 10/16/2003 08:56:16 AM  

Simchat Torah count-up - Day 9 - Chol Ha'moed Sukkot. An article about the little-known "apocalyptic" themes of Sukkot, via Protocols. The author compares this theme to the evangelical Christian "End of Days" scenario, which it resembles in some details, but not in its place in Jewish life - this theme shows up in the haftarah reading for the first day and in some Talmud discussion about the holiday, and that's about it. If you blink you'd miss it.

posted by Judith @ 10/15/2003 03:59:20 PM  

The latest on Israel-hater and former-U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney: I guess I need to stop referring to her that way, given that she hates the U.S. almost as much as Israel...

Our pal Cynthia McKinney, having lost the 4th district Democratic nomination in 2000 to Rep. Denise Majette, is considering a comeback--entering the Democratic House primary for the 12th district. A top target for the Democratic party in the 2004 election, the 12th district leans Democratic and is controlled currently by freshman Republican Rep. Max Burns.

McKinney faces considerable opposition, with a county commissioner and former state senator already vying for the nomination, but don't count her down and out.

Of course, if her comeback tour does not work out, and that run for President as the nominee of the Green Party does not come to fruition, Cynthia still has stuff to keep her busy. In August, she found a home at the once-venerable Ivy League institution of Cornell University as a visiting professor:

"Cynthia McKinney is a person of considerable achievement in the political sphere," said Porus Olpadwala, dean of Cornell's School of Architecture, Art and Planning, who served as chairman of the 13-member faculty committee that selected McKinney for the part-time professorship.

"She is an internationally renowned advocate for voting rights and human rights. She has taken clear stands on a number of critical issues and been a strong voice in Congress," Olpadwala said.

Oy! Said Billy McKinney, her father who declared that "the J-E-W-S" sunk her last Congressional campaign, pointed out that "Politics is in her blood..." We've certainly not heard the last from Cynthia McKinney.

posted by William @ 10/15/2003 08:49:13 AM  

I know you're a racist aparthied state, but what am I? Tony Judt says

In a world where nations and peoples increasingly intermingle and intermarry, where cultural and national impediments to communication have all but collapsed, where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel constrained if we had to answer to just one, in such a world, Israel is truly an anachronism. And not just an anachronism, but a dysfunctional one. In today's "clash of cultures" between open, pluralist democracies and belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno-states, Israel actually risks falling into the wrong camp.

So I'm waiting for him to condemn this obvious example of nationalist racism in a "belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno-state."

There are a couple of good rebuttals of Judt's thesis in the LGF comment thread. One commenter points out that Judt doesn't seem bothered by Japan, certainly an ethnically homogeneous country which is literally racist by the standards of the USA, another points out that actually very few ethnic groups around the globe look favorably on intermarriage with other groups, another notes the obvious cases of every other state in the Middle East. Judt can certainly take whatever view of ethnic solidarity he chooses, but to single out Jews and Israel is - well, do I have to say it? We all know how the end of this sentence goes by now. Another commenter says

Judt is wrong about the viability of ethnically based countries. Look at Czechoslovakia, a country which included two major ethnic groups with the same religion, similar languages, and little, if any, history of interethnic violence. Yet they decided that they didn't want to be part of the same country, and so they split up peacefully.

And read this comment in its entirety. This one too.

. . . still waiting . . .

UPDATE: And where's Ed Asner when we need him? asks Roger Simon.

UPDATE: David Frum responds. Yossi Klein Halevi responds. Melanie Phillips piles on. (There's no use pointing out this story to Tony. He'll just enthusiastically agree that, yup, Arabs can be bigoted to each other too, now that you mention it. But he will never write an op-ed about it.)

UPDATE: Apparently, Judt went bad some time ago and Paul Berman called him on it first.

Best summary:

Terrorist maniacs want to kill them, they shit their pants, and rather than make a stand and fight they think they can make the terrorists like them by throwing Israel to the wolves. Because this is too shameful stand to take openly, they try and rationalise it by doing academic backflips to "prove" that Israel is just as bad as those who want to destroy her, and therefore there is no moral obligation to come down on one side or the other. Just a sham to make naked self-serving cowardice more intellectually acceptable.

It's a scary thing to be a Jew on your own, like a rolling stone, without any connection to home, especially these days. I'm not talking about going to shul necessarily, just hangin' with the homies. Every persecuted group has perservered by drawing strength from their community. (Speaking of which, I'd like to see Tony tell an assembled group of African-Americans that they are racist if they don't all want to marry white folk and melt into WASP culture. He wouldn't dare.) The problem with these Jewish academics is that they make their colleagues their family, and then they have no place to stand when their colleagues turn on them. Other ethnic academics don't make that mistake.

(many links courtesy of LGF commenters)

posted by Judith @ 10/14/2003 10:40:08 PM  

Anti-semitism, stupidity, or both? From today's Congress Daily:

Rep. Max Burns, R-Ga., Monday apologized to Jewish leaders three weeks after a supporter made anti-Semitic remarks at a fundraiser, the Associated Press reported. Burns' phone call to a Jewish community group was in response to a Sept. 20 comment by businessman Jackie Sommers, who referred to Democrat Tony Center, who is Jewish, as "that Jew boy down in Savannah" at a rally for Burns in the freshman's hometown of Sylvania. Center was a candidate in the 12th District's Democratic primary last year and is considered a possible challenger to Burns next year. Burns' apology came several days after Sommers' comment was printed in the Savannah Morning News. "We felt he was sincere in his apology and [sincere in] feeling badly that he did not comment at the time," Sharon Paz, executive director of the Savannah Jewish Federation, told the Athens Banner-Herald. But Center said Burns should have distanced himself from Sommers' comments earlier. Burns said Monday he did not respond to the remarks publicly, but immediately confronted Sommers privately about them.

posted by William @ 10/14/2003 03:47:37 PM  

Turning my midlife crisis into a second career Dept. Doug Rushkoff continues to make friends and influence people: By someone who had no negative preconceptions about the book before reading it and is now searching for her receipt: Best. Rushkoff. Fisking. Ever.

Rushkoff gains yet another fan: I was talking to someone at Rosh Hashanah services who had also attended the Lishmah "day of learning" 2 weeks before, where Rushkoff was one of about a hundred speakers and teachers. She started describing a panel she had attended with 3 congregational rabbis and "some really annoying guy, Rush something . . . ."

"Doug Rushkoff," I said.

"Yes! What an obnoxious, condescending . . . " And she was off and running. Same reaction, same criticisms. This woman converted very recently. She doesn't know Jewish theology, history, contemporary American Judaism, or the NYC community in particular, all that well. She had never heard of him before. But just from his comments on one panel he pissed her off enough for her to rant about him.

posted by Judith @ 10/14/2003 02:29:41 PM  

Simchat Torah count-up - Day 8 - Chol Ha'moed Sukkot. If you're in the Northeast and want to eat in a sukkah this week, Protocols is collecting recommendations.

posted by Judith @ 10/14/2003 12:08:46 PM  

Rutgers inspires, Part II. While Rutgers' "Israel Inspires" event last weekend brought thousands out to rally for Israel, the extemely-extremist wing of the pro-suicide bomber group ISM held their pathetic conference at a Ramada Inn in New Brunswick.

Evan Coyne Maloney - who has a hobby of going to rallies and filming the protesters saying the dumb things they tend to say - took his video camera to the NJ ISM conference. Of course some protesters tried to stop him from filming.

For a while, they surrounded me and hit the front of my camera with signs to stop me from filming the rally's speakers. Eventually, they backed off after realizing that cameras from several other media outlets--including NBC News, WCBS-TV, and Channel 12 New Jersey--were capturing their actions.

I'm really looking forward to the video of this one!

UPDATE: "Israel Inspires" rally report from former Rutgers student Steve Silver.

UPDATE: Oops! Steve says he has never been nor is he now a Rutgers student. Sorry, Steve! But I know he has friends there who confirm everyone's worst impressions of Charlotte Kates. . . .

UPDATE: Recent ISM antics. (You can track ISM antics here.) And someone at LGF posted this classic - I had been looking for it a few months ago. It's pretty funny, check it out.

posted by Judith @ 10/13/2003 03:12:18 PM  

Jewish political donors feeling torn in different directions: With so many liberal Democrats running for President, how can you choose between them? JTA looks at the giving patterns of Democratic Jews:

Faced with a plethora of candidates and a complex set of political issues, many Jewish Democratic political contributors have chosen to support more than one candidate in the 2004 presidential primaries.

While it’s impossible to know exactly how much of each candidate’s war chest comes from Jews, Jewish donors traditionally have been active political givers to Democratic candidates.

Fund-raisers in the Jewish community for several Democratic candidates report that some donors are offering small donations but are reluctant to give the maximum $2,000 individual donation to a single candidate, while others are giving the maximum to two or more candidates.

Among the famous names giving large amounts to multiple candidates are entertainment magnate Haim Saban and Daniel Abraham, founder of the Slim Fast Foods Company and an activist for Middle East peace.

Donors say that they support the policy positions of more than one Democrat hopeful, and have formed relationships with people on different campaigns over the years, creating a sense of obligation to several candidates.

posted by William @ 10/13/2003 10:10:37 AM  

Another unwanted anniversary. Today is the anniversary of the terrorist attack in Bali which killed 202 people.

posted by Judith @ 10/12/2003 01:27:29 PM  

Simchat Torah count-up - Day 6. Today is the second day of Sukkot, and the first day we get to wave our lulav and etrog. And here's some information about another agricultural ritual, the Simchas Bais HaShoeva, the water libation ritual performed in the Temple in Biblical times. On Sukkot, it is said, the world is judged for water. At least the Middle Eastern world, where it has not rained all summer and the maturation and harvest of the fall crops is dependent on the punctuality of the early fall rains. Jews all over the world, from Latvia to Brazil, for the last 2000 years have celebrated the same rituals, on the same dates on the calendar, as did our forebears in Eretz Yisrael, and Sukkot is a very good example of that.

posted by Judith @ 10/12/2003 01:23:22 PM