Kesher Talk

Great moments in radio Dept. Lileks remembers Joe Frank. Joe who?

Joe Frank did a radio show called “Work in Progress” . . . The shows unfolded like crumpled origami, their logic apparent only in retrospect. Sometimes they were monologues, sometimes they were playlets. Sometimes they turned comic before you knew what was happening. All left turns, in other words. . . . . They’re not funny in the ha-ha Firesign Theater sense, not dramatic in the Mercury Theater sense. But I find them mesmerizing – they keep turning and turning and turning in on themselves. You’ll see what I mean in the first five minutes – the main story, which sounds like a straightforward enough tale, suddenly plays a wrong note that tells you to forget everything you had expected. It works best late at night, I think, with the lights dimmed.

I used to listen to Joe Frank when I lived in Philadephia in the 80s, and that's an excellent description of the effect he produced. Thanks, James, for finding the Joe Frank website, where you can listen to streaming audio of some of the shows. Check it out.

posted by Judith @ 11/14/2003 04:40:05 PM  

Quagmire watch, cont. Last week I wrote a response to David Rieff's NYTimes Magazine article calling Iraq a quagmire, in which I posted just about every link I have been collecting on the Iraq reconstruction. I have been adding new links as I find them, so check back if interested. The latest is this chart tracking various factors such as restoration of electricity, unemployment rate, number of top Baathists killed or captured, troops killed, etc.

posted by Judith @ 11/14/2003 02:32:27 PM  

More way cool stuff. IDF babes.

17th c. English recipes. Cool - now I know what a "posset" is.

The Great Leap Forward could not eradicate the Running-dog Capitalist Western Decadent Bourgeous manifestation of the "Hippie" so Chinese hippies are flocking to Tibet.

The difference between male and female orgasms. Very cute. Fasten your seatbelt first.

posted by Judith @ 11/14/2003 01:11:37 PM  

Jews in odd places: Lithuania: It never used to be so odd -- my great-grandfather was from Vilnius. But times have long since changed.

The Jewish community of Lithuania is lambasting the private TV channel LNK for "anti- Semitic propaganda" in its programs.

A Jewish community organization sent LNK's managers, Swedish media group Bonnier, which owns the station, and the Swedish media community an open letter saying that "the authors of the humorous program Dviracio Zynios (Bicycle News), pretending to engage in parodies, incites spectators against the Jewish people."

This was especially clear in the program dealing with the September visit of Israeli Knesset Chairman Reuven Rivlin to Vilnius.

"When the humorous issues of this TV channel concern the Jewish theme, a character parodying a Jew is always presented as a swindler or thief trying to get rich in a dishonest way - how long are we going to tolerate this?"

Rivlin's statements in Lithuania "have evoked a tide of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and websites have seen over four thousand anti-Semitic remarks that were beyond any standards of civilized dialogue."

"In this situation, the escalation of negative stereotypes on a TV channel's programs could influence the state of mind in unhealthy people and encourage some politicians to make irresponsible statements or even verbal attacks against Lithuanian citizens of Jewish origin."

Israeli Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, during his September visit, was categorical about the responsibility of Lithuanians for slaughtering Jews during the Nazi occupation, which caused a controversial response. In particular, Seimas Chairman Arturas Paulauskas told Lithuanian radio that Rivlin's visit "was not something that could serve the improvement of our relations or better understanding of our positions."

posted by William @ 11/14/2003 08:23:38 AM  

Weather report. Right now it is extremely windy in NYC. Cold wind. I live in a tall building on a large avenue lined with tall buildings, so there is a tunnel effect. The wind is very noisy and it has been blowing like this since this morning. There is a high-rise luxury apartment building going up on the next block and this morning a huge crane tilted over toward the facing side of my building. I don't know if it actually hit the side of my building since I don't live on that side, and by the time I went out the area was roped off so I couldn't go and look. There's nothing about it in the news so far.

posted by Judith @ 11/13/2003 10:22:30 PM  

National identity, cont. Read Imshin's essay on the Israeli identity, and especially the JPost article she links to, on all the different Israeli sub-identities.

UPDATE: Allison has a portrait of another Israeli subculture.

posted by Judith @ 11/13/2003 04:23:30 PM  

Post update. I significantly expanded my comments on Remler's essay "Judt and Juditism" and added some links. Check it out.

posted by Judith @ 11/12/2003 08:10:32 PM  

Mr. Yesterday. I was wondering how long it would be before someone created a parody of the Tom Tomorrow "chickenhawk" cartoon that is this week's blogger cause celebre. Check it out - it even gives an offhand slap to Ted Rall.

UPDATE: I'm the one who sent the URL to Glenn, and his post has accreted some more links since he put it up this afternoon. Check out the Ted Rall column, but hold your nose. Meanwhile, the blogosphere has lost no time in producing another parody. Here's another examination of the malignant idiocy that is Ted Rall.

UPDATE: Chris Muir gets into the act.

UPDATE: Why We Blog:

The problem I had with this particular cartoon is that he doesn’t seem to be acknowledging that part of this war is a war of words, of information.

UPDATE: Matthew Sinson weighs in on the whole chickenhawk debate, linking to other blog conversations on the topic.

posted by Judith @ 11/12/2003 06:12:17 PM  

Kesher Talk - the blog that peruses comment threads for tasty bits, so you don't have to. From iowahawk:

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Qualified candidates will have a BA in peace studies from Evergreen State, Reed College, Berkeley or similar top-tier asylum, and 2+ years in graduate school or equivalent experience in huffing paint. AltWeekly/NPR experience a plus. Bring portfolio of your giant papier-mache Cheney head puppet projects.

Benefit package includes attractive relocation program, two weeks vacation in Mecca, free kaffiya and madrassa scholarship program.

This is NOT multilevel marketing program - it's your chance to really Rage Against The Machine! Stop being a wuss ChickenDove, and find out if you have the commitment it takes to be a REAL anti-Bush activist!

Send resumes to:
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Iraq Resistance is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Another comment in the same thread is a good description of a certain rhetorical technique:

The point is that calling warbloggers cowards is sort of like calling opponents of "affirmative action" racists. It's the H-bomb of rhetorical ploys, intended to silence the opponent by branding him as a moral leper who is necessarily unentitled to an opinion. What's more, the ploy is a Catch-22: Ignore the charge and it remains stuck to you. Respond and get diverted from the debate into a usually fruitless attempt to defend yourself. (How do you prove that you are not a coward or a racist?) The only reasonable option is to turn the tables again by showing how the attack demonstrates the intellectual and moral failings of the attacker.

And if you are new to the blogosphere and doubt that really daffy antiwar arguments ("Saddam wasn't that bad" "a pro-war stance is hypocritical unless you actually serve") are circulating in the body politic, that thread is also an eye-opener.

UPDATE: Armed Liberal thinks so too.

posted by Judith @ 11/12/2003 05:08:31 PM  

Jews in odd places: Albania: Impressive remains of a synagogue dating from the fifth or sixth century CE have been revealed in the Albanian coastal city of Saranda, opposite the Greek island of Corfu. The synagogue underwent various periods of use, including its conversion into a church.

Initial excavations at the site were conducted some 20 years ago when Albania was under tight Communist rule.

Particularly noteworthy among the finds are two mosaic pavements. One features at its center a seven-branched menora flanked by an etrog and a shofar, symbols associated with the Jewish holidays. The other mosaic pavement, in the center section, contains a number of representations, including a variety of animals, trees, symbols alluding to biblical lore, and the facade of a structure resembling a temple (perhaps a Torah ark). Other mosaic pavements at the site preceded the building of the synagogue.

posted by William @ 11/12/2003 08:45:33 AM  

Jews in odd places: Croatia: On Rosh Hashanna, the Jews of Zagreb, Croatia, celebrated the opening of the Lea Deutsch school, named after a Jewish girl who was killed during the Holocaust.

The institution is the first Jewish school to open in the former Yugoslavia since World War II.

The Jewish Elementary School in Croatia operated from 1841 until 1941, when the Holocaust began in Croatia. It never reopened.

The Zagreb community has about 1,500 members. Many of the children are the products of mixed marriages, and most of the children in the new Jewish school have only one Jewish grandparent. A few are the children of Israelis living in Croatia.

posted by William @ 11/11/2003 06:45:07 PM  

Jews in odd places: Ireland: It's rough being a Jew in Northern Ireland.

There´s an old joke about a guy in Belfast who is stopped by a ruffian and asked his religion.

Wanting to avoid trouble all around, he responds, "I´m Jewish."

Without missing a beat, the ruffian says, "Fine. A Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?"

With much of the coverage of Ulster (as Northern Ireland traditionally is called) focused on the sectarian conflict between the largely pro-London Protestants and the mainly pro-Dublin Catholics, few consider the conflict´s effects on members of the other religions and ethnic groups who live here.

As the province´s oldest non-Christian religious group, the Jews have been waiting a long time for the sectarian conflict to end.

Jews have been in Ulster since the 17th century. Mainly concentrated in North Belfast, they built their first synagogue here in the 1860s.

Despite its modest size, the Jewish community here is held in high regard. Among its members have been such illustrious figures as the ex-Lord Mayor of Belfast, Sir Otto Jaffe, and the sixth president of Israel, Chaim Herzog.

At its height, in the 1960s, the Jewish community was 16,000 strong. Since then, most Jews have emigrated to mainland Britain, America or Israel, largely due to the "troubles" — the euphemism here for Irish sectarian strife.

Today an estimated 600 Jews live in Ulster, 160 of whom are members of the community´s only synagogue.

This summer, Avraham Citron, a 26-year-old Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi from Los Angeles, became Northern Ireland's unofficial chief rabbi.

"It´s a heavy-sounding title," Citron says, "but, yes, I guess I´m the only one."

In a community that every year sees dwindling membership at the city´s sole synagogue, Citron is the first full-time rabbi in town in a long time.

Before Citron´s promotion — he worked in Belfast for six months on a part-time basis before his appointment — the community´s spiritual needs were met by a lay leader. But Jewish community enthusiasm and numbers were waning.

An estimated 80 percent of the Jewish community in Northern Ireland is elderly.

posted by William @ 11/11/2003 06:36:35 PM  

Judt and Juditism. What explains Jews like George Soros and Tony Judt? What happens when cultural uniqueness confronts universalist humanism? I don't know who E A Remler is, but he nails it in this sweeping examination of a constant factor in antisemitism since Greco-Roman times.

. . . anti-Juditism is hostility traceable to the Jews' unique sense of themselves: the sense which arose, and to a large extent still arises from that of being chosen. Aside from the unity of God, chosen-ness is the Jews' fundamental claim: they are those who have the covenant. Chosen-ness is also fundamental to their extraordinary survival as a people with an unbroken, coherent culture: without it, such a survival is inexplicable.

An isolated culture can survive by transmitting its ways to the next generation with relatively little effort; but in proximity, cultures compete, and survival requires significant effort, which, in turn, can be motivated only by a correspondingly significant sense of self; a culture that does not think much of itself will not make much of an effort to propagate itself.

Ordinarily, most peoples make a substantial effort to survive, but nonetheless eventually fade away. Without geographic roots, this occurs after a few generations. Even when rooted, peoples conquer or are conquered, and their cultures combine and assimilate. We see that virtually every society is a patchwork of smaller peoples in various stages of integration and dissolution. Thus a normal sense of self eventually leads to loss of self; only the Jews' extraordinary sense of self could inspire the extraordinary efforts that have saved them from that fate.

. . . Whereas Anti-Semitism exerts an external pressure of rejection on individual Jews that tends to drive them together, thereby increasing group identity and adhesion, anti-Juditism acts from within as well as without, and corrodes that which binds them together. One can destroy people, but the other can destroy the people.

Intrigued? You know what to do.

I understand the impulse to universalism and the discomfort with particularism (given some of its uglier manifestations). But universalism can produce the same kind of ugliness when it tries to destroy the particularism of family and religion in favor of an ideal - Stalinism and Pol Pot-ism come to mind here, as well as Wahabism - just ask the Bosnian Muslims. And particularism does not inexorably lead to aggression against those who are different. In fact, kindness to and acceptance of strangers is one of the most emphasized commandments in Jewish law.

The George Soros' and Tony Judts of the world are uncomfortable with any preference for one group over another, for any reason. At the same time they decry "globalization": bland global commercialism and the disappearance of languages and customs and local control. But to keep a culture going (especially in the midst of strong pressure to give it up) you have to have a critical mass of people who consistently and repeatedly prefer it to another. If the anti-globos were logical, they would be gathering around the Jewish community asking us how we do it, instead of calling us "racist" when we do what they admire and promote for other ethnic groups.

This post on patriotism examines many of the same ideas. (It does not link them to any kind of ethnic identification; however, others have explored the similarities between the Jewish and American "experiments.") It is no accident that those Jews who are the most uncomfortable with religious particularism tend to be equally uncomfortable with national particularism. After all, Judaism is a nationality (with religious elements). In a later essay, Armed Liberal quotes from John Schaar:

To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more accurately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence, which defines life by its debts; one is what one owes, what one acknowledges as a rightful debt or obligation. The patriot moves within that mentality.

I think this is a good description of the kind of Jew who values the Jewish "experiment," as Remler quotes Maurice Samuel:

What, then, is the Jewish people? It is a continuous association of individuals, now some thirty five hundred or four thousand years old, working out an experiment in the relationship to God.

This description encapsulates nearly everything important: the past continuity, the continuous working out, the experimental nature of the enterprise, and the relationship to God, the last being (pace atheists) no more than the traditional name for the central mystery of existence - Why is there anything rather than nothing at all? The Jewish people are an experiment that seeks the best way to focus human attention on that most important question, and the best way to have it inform the conduct of life.

One could say the same about Americans, Tibetans, Bosnians, Bretons, Navajos, or any other self-identified group (and most fo us do have multiple group identities which overlap each other). Then one can ask the question: does my group identity demand that I disrespect others without a compelling reason, or does it include a tradition of goodwill to strangers, and what conditions have to obtain for that tradition to be put aside? At that point - when one has made that distinction - one can condemn aggression based on a group identity.

posted by Judith @ 11/11/2003 06:16:07 PM  

So many anniversaries. Here are my entries for Kristallnacht and Veteran's Day from last year. This year both commemorations were marred by the usual venal idiots. I remember a number of pro-Palestinian campus groups staged demonstrations on the same day Holocaust Remembrance Day this spring.

Winds of Change has a great link roundup on veteran commemorations, and this excellent essay on patriotism followed by a a stimulating comment thread.

UPDATE: If Veteran's Day was a Yizkor service for our fallen soldiers, this would be some of the supplemental readings.

posted by Judith @ 11/11/2003 04:50:58 PM  

Goyish Gal Seeks Jewish Man: This Forward story from a year ago looks at gentile girls would seek out Jewish mates.

JDate, the largest and best known of the online Jewish dating services, has more than 500,000 members worldwide. Of those, more than 5,000 members registered as "from another religious stream" — read: not Jewish.

Egon Mayer, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College who has studied interfaith marriage, said that he is not surprised at the trend. But while he's not "aware that there are any segments of the non-Jewish population that are specifically seeking a Jewish partner," Mayer said that "Jews have a fairly good reputation as marriage material."

According to Mayer, the melting pot has a momentum of its own: "That people search for all sorts of dating possibilities on the Internet doesn't surprise me," Mayer said. "They cross all sorts of boundaries because it's so easy to cross them."

For Rabbi Adam Jacobs, managing director in New York of Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox outreach program, the trend is a mixed blessing at best. "Since intermarriage is one of the serious problems facing the Jewish community, I am concerned," he said. But "there's something complementary in it, that we're viewed as a valuable population."

posted by William @ 11/11/2003 10:58:07 AM  

Well that makes everything all right: An Iranian defector said the Islamic republic [Iran] mistook a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires for the headquarters of Israel's Mossad in Argentina.

The mistake led to the decision by the Iranian government to order the bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina in which more than 80 people were killed in 1994. The operation was carried out by Iranian agents who arrived in Argentina with the help of then-Iranian ambassador Hadi Suleimanpour.

The accusation came in testimony by a former Iranian intelligence agent in Germany on Thursday. The agent, identified as "Witness C," was testifying in the trial of 20 Argentinians accused of being involved the bombing of the Jewish community center.

The Iranian defector said Iranian intelligence chose the seven-story Jewish community center as a target in the belief that it served as a base for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency in Buenos Aires. The defector said the assessment proved be incorrect. Iran has denied any involvement in the 1994 bombing. [courtesy of Middle East Newsline]

posted by William @ 11/11/2003 10:45:43 AM  

Jews unite to keep kosher? Jews in odd places: Great Britain: A campaign to repeal laws that guarantee the right to practice kosher slaughter, or shechitah, has prompted a rare show of unity among Britain´s Jews. Currently all animals slaughtered for food in Britain must be stunned before their throats are cut, except for those killed by kosher and halal methods, the latter for the Muslim form of ritual slaughter.

Both religions forbid stunning, which they believe causes unacceptable suffering to the animal. And both have been the targets of a campaign by groups that say religious slaughter is inhumane.

The leaders of the newly formed Shechita UK, which brings together representatives of the groups fighting to keep shechitah and the kosher meat it produces legal, say they intend not just to defend the practice against the stunning recommendations but to prove that the kosher method of slaughter is as humane, if not more so, than the methods practiced in non-religious slaughterhouses.

posted by William @ 11/11/2003 10:34:23 AM  

Jews in odd places: Great Britain -- -- Two Jews, Three Synagogues: A squabble is threatening to create a schism between Britain´s main synagogue movements — and with it, some say, destroy the unity of the Jewish community here.
It all started earlier this summer when an Orthodox synagogue denied the British Conservative movement´s spiritual head and founder, Rabbi Louis Jacobs, a call-up — or aliyah — to read from the Torah.

Jacobs, who broke away from mainstream Orthodoxy to establish the Masorti movement, as Conservative Judaism is known in Britain, was attending an Orthodox aufruf, a pre-wedding Sabbath celebration for the bridegroom, Jacobs´ future grandson-in-law.

Acting on advice from the synagogue´s governing body, the London Beit Din — or Jewish legal court — Bournemouth Hebrew Congregation Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld declined to allow the 83-year-old Jacobs the aliyah.

At stake, argued the synagogue´s authorities and the Beit Din, was the ideology behind strict guidelines governing Orthodox relations with non-Orthodox clergy, which are based on the religious divide between the two movements.

But the communal sniping and backbiting that has resulted seems to have as much to do with rabbinical disharmony and decades of bad relations as any underlying theological differences.

Now that denied aliyah on an otherwise uneventful Saturday morning is threatening to destroy a landmark accord signed in 1998 that established new rules of civility governing relations between Britain´s various Jewish religious denominations.

The doctrinal essence — if not political hubbub — of the so-called Jacobs affair is the central Orthodox tenet that every word of the Torah and Oral Law was given directly to Moses from God at Mount Sinai.

The Masorti movement, together with other non-Orthodox movements, argue that while the Torah was divinely inspired, it was not decreed from God verbatim.

Jacobs, once considered a future candidate for Orthodox Chief Rabbi before his break with the movement, set out this position in his acclaimed but controversial 1957 book "We Have Reason to Believe." The publication of that book led to his breaking with the mainstream Orthodox group, the United Synagogue.

Many point to this split as the real crux of the current squabble.

posted by William @ 11/11/2003 09:09:41 AM  

Raise our voice and sing — NOT! On Friday night, I went to the opening of the "Only in America: Jewish Music in a Land of Freedom" conference, a multi-cantored, hundred-odd-chorister performance during Shabbat services.

Services were to start at 6; when we got there a few minutes after 5 the line stretched back almost to Broadway. The services had been widely advertised, and the line was swollen by people who had read about the event that day in a long, admiring article in the Times.

The place was a zoo. People guarding seats, begging seats, stealing seats. People gawking, pushing, greeting, waving, stepping on coats, stepping on toes. It took forever to get people seated. Rumors wafted back into the sanctuary that even after the room had filled the line was still up to Broadway.

Then the services started, and I realized why it was that I had hated to go to shul when I was a child. I realized why generations of Jews had fled synagogues in droves, going back only when it was absolutely necessary. The Jewish Theological Seminary had chosen in its wisdom to recreate the crushing boredom, alienation, and situational existentionalism ("What the hell am I doing here?") that used to define being in shul.

The cantors no doubt had lovely voices, although I prefer to listen to such voices when I am sitting down. But they seemed to vie with each other in the how-many-syllables-can-be-fit-into-this-one-word, how-long-can-each-syllable-be-drawn-out, and how-many-times-can-this-line-be-repeated-before-some-maddened-congregant-gives-me-the-hook competitions that I used to think of as the essence of hazzanut. Their performances changed us, normally a congregation of dovveners, of participants, into passive listeners. We were turned from a kehillah into an audience.

Part of this, of course, is a direct reflection of my own shortcomings. Just as I was born freakishly missing genes that would have allowed me to enjoy football or gambling I am missing the opera gene. I love reading about divas' lives far more than I enjoy hearing them sing.

But I know that if in order to go to shul I would have to listen to that interminable noise, I would find something else to do on Shabbat mornings. Like, say, washing my hair. Or feeding the cats.

posted by Joanne @ 11/10/2003 10:31:42 PM  

More way cool stuff. The Brick Testament.

Ray "Bubba" Sorensen II thanks our veterans on a rock in rural Iowa.

Pretty Iraqi bank notes.

Best. Tom Friedman. Parody. Ever.

posted by Judith @ 11/10/2003 06:22:46 PM  

Jewish Republicans are losers, says JTA: The Jewish Telegraph Agency rejoices that moderate Jewish Republicans did poorly in last week's off-year elections.

However, I would retort that: (1) as Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JTA, most of these guys were first-time candidates--you need to lose a few to learn how to win; but more importantly, and unmentioned in the article, (2) squishy moderates, Jewish or not, are not likely to inspire enough turnout among the Republican base to win an election in an off-year.

posted by William @ 11/10/2003 09:01:30 AM  

Explosion in Saudi Arabia;missile test in Israel carried on Arab TV: What appears to have been a car bombing blew through a residential compound yesterday in Riyadh. Figures on dead and wounded vary, but it seems to have been pretty nasty. Luckily, no Americans appear to have been involved...

Meanwhile, portions of a secret Israeli missile test were seen on televisions across the Arab world recently when the company conducting the exercise apparently failed to encrypt its video transmission. The broadcast from the supersecret control room conducting the test — including the range and performance of the missile and the discussion among top officers — was available for 48 hours to anyone with a satellite television dish.

posted by William @ 11/09/2003 08:21:02 AM  

Mad Mel yet again. Trust Professor Naomi Chana for some scholarly background on the obscure Christian texts Mel Gibson has stirred into his Passion pot.

UPDATE: Want to make a movie about the life of Jesus scripted from the Gospels word for word, but isn't antisemitic? Here's how to do it.

posted by Judith @ 11/09/2003 12:19:05 AM