The latest issue of Glamour magazine has Christina Aguilera on the cover, but the publication’s contributors are not only concerned with matters of the flesh.

Check out the last great book read by photographer Daniel Gabbay.

A look at PresenTense, “a Jerusalem-based hub for a social entrepreneurship training institute, a magazine on Jewish and Israeli culture, a consulting and education service and a network of entrepreneurs, activists and professionals from around the Jewish world.” (Jerusalem Post)

A look at the success Hadassah is having in attracting women under age 50. (Jewish Journal)

Noam Neusner argues that the “Jewish community, convinced that mere ideas will transform the community, routinely turns to young talent for fresh thinking but rarely puts that talent to work in meaningful ways. Which is to say, nobody ever lets the geniuses actually run the show.” And for good reason. (Forward)

A look at the organization Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. (Washington Jewish Week)

Here at MyJewishLearning, we’re always looking for new ways to serve you better…See that? My first week here, and I’m already saying “we.” It’s been a flurry of activity here all week, and we (see? “we” again) have a bunch of new articles. I just thought I’d give them a shout-out and some excess verbiage here.

• The Eichmann Trial details the heroic capture and subsequent public trial of the “architect of the Holocaust,” and the only death sentence ever to be carried out by the State of Israel.
• Daniel Soyer lays out the foundations for Jewish Socialism in the United States, 1880-1920 as he expounds on the first huge wave of Russian and German Jewish migration and talks about how factory jobs led Jews to organize and start groups like the Arbeter-Ring and papers like the Jewish Daily Forward.
• The Jewish Socialist movement reaches its climax and heaves its dying sigh in Jewish Socialism in the United States, 1920-1948 as anti-Communist fervor peaks, the split between Socialists and Communists draws a wedge in the movement, and, let’s face it, some Jews start to get richer.
• The Fall of Communism elaborates on the rise of glastnost and the airlifting of hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews to Israel and America…and the culture that was left behind.
• Patrilineal Descent lays out the Reform Movement’s landmark 1983 decision to follow either the mother’s or father’s lineage when deciding whether a child needs to convert in order to be considered Jewish.
• David Ben Gurion - the late-first-wave Zionist settler (he arrived in Palestine in 1906) who became a workers’-rights activist and, eventually, prime minister of Israel. (Quick question: who has the more iconic hair: Ben Gurion or Einstein?)
• American Jews at the Turn of the Century finds the Children of Israel landing in the USA–taking part in the early-1900s agricultural and industrial settling, finding their niches and neighborhoods in urban centers, and establishing what would become the century’s three main Jewish denominations.
• American Jewish Life, 1980-2000 asks the question: once Jews are fully integrated into almost every aspect of the US life, now what? Shlomo Carlebach reaches out to a generation of spiritual seekers. The Lubavitcher Rebbe makes sure that Jews will have a helping hand nearly anywhere in the world. Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, becomes the first Jewish vice-presidential candidate. The Conservative movement ordains its first rabbi, and Blu Greenberg starts the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance.

Estelle Getty, the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia Petrillo on TV’s The Golden Girls, has died. She was 84.

She was born Estelle Scher to Polish Jewish immigrants who worked in the glass business. Getty got her start in the Yiddish theater and also as a comedienne in the Catskills borscht belt resorts, and her most important stage role was playing Harvey Fierstein’s mother on Broadway in the play Torch Song Trilogy. (MORE)

Today on his blog, Frum Satire starts a discussion about whether women could be Orthodox rabbis. It’s interesting, less in the light of women actually being ordained as Orthodox rabbis (which some people say could happen, some people say shouldn’t happen, and some people say is happening) and more because this is what Frum Satire–a thoughtful, sardonic, and off-the-beaten-path twentysomething kid living in an ultra-Orthodox enclave in Monsey–is thinking. Yes, it’s funny, and yes, it’s incredibly right-wing…but it’s a good-natured, open-minded right-wing, which is what those of us in the world outside Monsey never really see.

Among other things, he offers a list of thoughts to ponder:

• Who would shake people’s hands for random yasher koachs?
• What do we call the husband? Rebetz?
• What would all those men who pray in the women’s section of shuls when women aren’t there do?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that, tonight in Brooklyn, Frum Satire is hosting an open mic tonight for poetry and comedy. If you’re in New York, why would you be anywhere else?

It’s an embarrassing fact that Jewish women trying to get a get (writ of divorce) from recalcitrant husbands are often better protected by secular courts than they are by Jewish batei din.

According to Haaretz, a court in Israel has taken another major step forward in relieving agunah issues.

A husband who refused to divorce his wife was ordered to pay her NIS 550,000 in compensation for the mental anguish he caused her.

Moreover, though the wife held a rabbinic ruling ordering her husband to grant her a get - a religious divorce - the Jerusalem Family Court ruled that a husband’s refusal to do so could entitle the woman to compensation. That applied even if the wife lacked a religious ruling.

MORE…

Recently, I read — and very much enjoyed — Keith Gessen’s fiction debut All the Sad Young Literary Men. Tonight, Gessen will lead a discussion with Adam Mansbach, author of The End of the Jews, at the Jewcy offices

Over on his blog, Gessen mentioned the talk with some interesting words:

One of the strangest events in American cultural life during the Bush years has been the explosion of Jewish-themed magazines, online and off. Heeb, Zeek, Guilt and Pleasure, Habitus, Nextbook.org, Jbooks.com, Jewcy.com… am I missing any? Some of them are better than others, and more hereterodox, but as a “trend” taking place in a highly assimilated, extremely successful community — I find this odd. And regressive. I could be wrong.

Though I won’t be able to make it to the talk tonight, I am curious to hear what Gessen has to say — and how he justifies partaking in this regressive activity (or at least an event sponsored by a regressive publication).

In fact, I think Gessen’s comment may highlight a mini-trend within the greater Jewish pop/cultural-retribalization movement (a term I just coined, by the way).

The mini-trend I speak of: Participating in the New-Jew renaissance, while at the same time looking down on it.

Another example.

Nearly every panel about contemporary Jewish American fiction that I’ve been to seems to conclude with the young Jewish writer-panelists expressing complete disinterest in the concept of contemporary Jewish American fiction.

Which of course begs the question: Why agree to be on the panel?

Which begs another: Is there a masochistic element to participation in New-Jew culture?

Just to be clear, I’m not dismissing the possibility that there is, indeed, something regressive about the New-Jew renaissance. Perhaps it is a step back toward a more unfortunately parochial past.

And perhaps skepticism about the New-Jew project is an integral — and thus interesting — aspect of it.

But there must be some cost to participating in a project one finds morally dubious. No?

The Aggadah is the non-Jewish Law-intensive part of the Talmud–that is, the part with all the cool stories and lasers shooting out of people’s beards. Our friend BZ writes on his blog that, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Hayim Nachman Bialik and Yehoshua Ravnitsky’s compilation of their favorite aggadot, people will be starting a two-year effort to read a portion of the book every day….and, no surprise, there’s an official accompanying blog, Sefer Ha-Bloggadah.

Yes, we know–some of you are doing Daf Yomi, taking seven and a half years to read the whole Talmud. But this is a massive effort, too. And the Bloggadah kids are more than prepared, with a daily schedule, a launch party, and the best discounts on the book…and, oh yeah, their own blog.

See you there.

Four years ago in Athens, Gal Fridman (whose first name means wave) took home the first gold medal for Israel in the men’s windsurfing competition. Fridman’s victory spurred celebrations around Israel and empowered Israeli’s and Jews around the world.

He started a wave of pride as well as a long overdue tribute for the 11 athletes and coaches who were murdered at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. An article in USA Today captured the moment on that glorious day in August, 2004.

Fridman won it Wednesday…emerging to say that he won the race for countrymen who died before he was born, countrymen taken by hooded and masked Palestinian terrorists who would fly them out of the Games and into their graves. “I hope that they are happy up there,” Fridman said. “When I return to Israel, I’ll go to the memorial place to show them the gold medal.” (MORE)

Israel has undergone many tragedies and hardships in the past four years. The ailing health of a prime minister, the Lebanon War, the internal conflict of Gush Katif, threats from Iran, and most recently the prisoner swap and bulldozing rampages.

Although that all might have sounded very depressing, the 2008 Olympics are on the horizon and the JTA has just reported that there is Gold Medal hope in the air.

A female taekwondo champion will fight for Israel at the Beijing Olympics. Bat-El Gatterer, a 21-year-old resident of Kochav Yaakov, a Jewish settlement near Ramallah, is among 42 athletes Israel is sending to go to this month’s Games in the Chinese capital. (MORE)

Bat-El Gatterer is possibly the first settler to have a shot at a medal and hopefully her presence will rally the Israeli people. I believe Gal Fridman said it best when he spoke about winning gold.

I don’t get into politics, Fridman said. “I don’t understand that stuff. … The only thing I can want is, I would love to bring peace to Israel. The fight (should) stop in the water. If you fight someone, fight him in sport to prove you are better, not in different ways. This is our job as athletes, to show the other side of the Israeli people. We want peace. All of my friends I know want peace.” (MORE)

Hopefully this taekwondo champion will show the other side of the Israeli people.

It would be interesting for a settler to bring Israeli people together.
Let the games begin!

Another bulldozer attack in Jerusalem, this one a few hundred meters from the hotel where Barack Obama will be staying during his upcoming visit. According to the Jerusalem Post, 16 people were wounded, including a mother and a baby, and another man’s leg was partially severed. No reported fatalities, as yet.

Proximity to tragedy always creates a stir of really weird feelings in me. A totally irrational pride that this attack wasn’t as severe as the first one, and no one was killed. A not-totally-irrational pride, that, thank God, someone was close enough to stop the bulldozer driver before someone was killed. Another reminder that, as long as East Jerusalem Arabs are relegated to petty, low-paying jobs, those are the places they’re going to strike out–and, ironically, petty, low-paying jobs are in places where you find heavy machinery and easy vulnerability (waitstaff in lavish restaurants, anyone?).

Relatively innocuous coverage on Al-Jazeera. On the NZ Times, one rambler, one sardonic “We are willing to take up bulldozers …. Doesn’t have the same ring about it,” and one “I’m glad to be living in South Africa.” That was the most striking to me: Yes, crazy murderous rampages happen all over the world. Yes, it’s more likely to happen in Israel. But it doesn’t speak at all to the fact that Israel is filled–to the brim, actually–with people who make a conscious choice every day to live there, not because of the violence but in spite of it, in order to live in a place where God matters more than, say, getting to work on time. (And, um, hello? Senseless violence never happens in South Africa??)