I woke up Wednesday morning with a new bounce in my step. Today was the day I was going to make things happen, I had people I wanted to meet, a networking party to attend and I wasn’t about to let my tired old self back out of the closet. This was made possible by skipping the optional Tuesday night in Tel Aviv and open mic organized by some random ROIers. I went to sleep at 6pm, woke up at 10pm, watched the very emotional movie Hairspray and fell asleep with a pounding head and chills fearing the worst.

I was over the extravagant breakfast and settled for an omelet with mushrooms, onions and tomatoes, some peeled orange and grapefruit slices and a cup of coffee with one sugar packet, I was really looking forward to going back to real Israeli food. At breakfast I sat with Alen Meyer who runs an organization in Chile, called Sttam, It works kind of like a Hillel, but he told me that Hillel failed in Chile, and Sttam also helps its members with finding work. I did learn that Chile has 14,000 Jews and the world’s second largest Palestinian population outside of Israel with 400,000 Palestinians.

After breakfast we did what I would call a Hippie-Bulls**t exercise which was supposed to get us to focus. I wasn’t tired, but the exercise in which we were supposed to focus on an object, then close our eyes and do a bunch of concentrating stuff brought out the Cynic in me, I looked over at my friend Hindy Poupko who is the executive president of the Council for Young Jewish Presidents, in New York and we both rolled our eyes. All I could imagine were a bunch of people who wondered why they were dragged away from breakfast for this. Then of course people had to explain their “feelings.” What now, group therapy?

After that exercise we did another thing which I would consider a waste of time, text study. All Jewish events have to do this in order to pinch themselves and make sure they are still Jewish. There was no talk of God until this moment, which is funny, because Judaism is God-centric, or should be, but unfortunately God is too abstract for many people to throw in the mix of their already idealistic world views. In the mix of this “text study” was a piece written by Bob Dylan in 1951 when he was 15 years old and playing cover songs with his band. This famous wrestler walked past Dylan and didn’t say anything, but Dylan thought his look said - “you are doing it and keeping it alive” - which I understand very well, but what on earth this has to do with biblical text is beyond me.

After this an announcement for optional 7am programming was made for a “unisexual basketball game.” I love Israelis!

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MyJewishLearning prides itself on being a “a trans-denominational website of Jewish information and education geared toward learners of all ages and educational backgrounds.” For the most part, I think we do pretty well on that. We have articles by Orthodox people on why God is great. We have articles by Jewish secular humanists on why God doesn’t exist. And there’s everything in between.

A story ran in New York’s news yesterday about an altercation between a woman with an unleashed dog on the New York City subway and the city’s first Hasidic cop. The policeman tried to make the woman put her dog back in the bag — since, yes, it’s AGAINST THE LAW. The woman, in turn, accused the cop of saying sexist things — horribly sexist things — which, if there’s one shred of truth to this, he should probably be (a) fired, (b) court-martialed, and (c) kicked in the rear end by his rebbe. (Of course, it does seem strange that he’d say such things, given that there’s no record of him ever having said something like that before — and, if he had, it’s not like he’d be hard to track down. The only Hasidic police officer in New York City is just a little bit more recognizable than the average cop.)

Like any story, this could go either way: who to believe, the cop or the woman? In the papers, the results played out predictably. The New York Post ran the headline First Hasidic Cop Was Cursed in Anti-Semitic Rant. Gothamist, meanwhile, has this to say: Woman Says Misogynistic Cop Arrested Her, Punched Her, Grabbed Breasts.

Yes, both are strict news stories. But both reflect wildly different takes on the story.

The bias even comes across in pictures. Check out how the cropping of the photo on the left makes it seem like there weren’t even any other officers present.

I’m all for police monitoring. I’m especially in favor of citizens speaking out when they see injustice being done. But I also don’t think it’s fair to immediately believe one person and not believe the other because the other person’s a Hasid.

Am I oversimplifying? Probably. But check out this thread on Gothamist:

A misogynistic Hasid? Now I’ve seen everything.

Hey Witriol, perhaps you should brush up on your knowledge of shomer negiah. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t allow for boob grabbing.

Oh, wait a second — that last post wasn’t from Gothamist. That was from our own blog post on the topic.

In American law, people are innocent until proven guilty. In the news business, sensationalism sells more than anything — especially sensationalism with anti-Semitic overtones. But we’re above such pettiness…right?

I was thrilled to see Benjamin Greene’s thoughtful article in PresenTense Magazine (“Outside the Bubble: Integration in Education,” Issue 8, 2009) in which he discusses one of the unfortunate realities of contemporary American Jewish education: “Most Jewish youth programs in the United States today place participants in carefully constructed and exclusively Jewish environments.” Given that most Jewish teens attend multicultural high schools and have diverse groups of friends, this approach flies in the face of everything we know about adolescent psychology (did you want to be isolated from your peers when you were a teen?!?!). Yet somehow, we think that isolation is the best approach for this generation of Jewish teens.

In contrast, organizations like The Curriculum Initiative (TCI) strive to meet teens where they are—in their schools—and help them to use Jewish wisdom and culture to navigate and find meaning in their multicultural world. But meeting students where they are is more than a reference to location; it also implies meeting them where they are intellectually, cognitively, socially, and emotionally. Therefore, we partner with the people they know and trust most intimately including their teachers, diversity directors, service-learning coordinators, school counselors, deans, chaplains, and non-Jewish friends. Thus, when a Jewish student club at a TCI-partner school recently held a “liberation Seder” in partnership with the gay-straight alliance club, the students applied meaning from the ancient Passover narrative and rituals to the very contemporary experiences of their gay peers (lest we think that all Jews are heterosexual, note that some of the students were members of both clubs).

And what have we found? Attendance in our programs has risen, and the number of Jewish teens in our programs who are not involved in youth groups, synagogues, Jewish camps, and other Jewish institutions has also grown. In interviews and focus groups, students report that our open approach to Jewish learning and our student-centered perspective create a comfortable space in which they can wrestle with questions of identity.

The reality is that today’s teens are fully integrated into their multicultural communities and will continue to live in such communities into adulthood; yet Jewish educators at best have buried our heads in the sand and at worst, view this reality as a threat, rather than an opportunity. We have convinced ourselves that the purpose of Jewish education is to stave off assimilation and intermarriage, but fear is never a great motivating factor in education. Furthermore, we have decided that the way to prevent assimilation and intermarriage is to encourage young Jews to adopt particular Jewish behaviors. We want them to host Shabbat dinners, advocate for Israel, marry a Jewish partner, and become federation donors. Are these really meaningful ends?

The kind of end I believe in is when one of my students says to me that she now celebrates Shabbat because it provides for her a meaningful framework in which to rest and reflect together with friends and loved-ones. In short, she is telling me that the purpose of Judaism is to live a more meaningful life. That is an end that speaks to me. Jewish education should be about creating meaning that helps us to live more fulfilling lives. If it doesn’t, then what is the point?

Guest blogger Adam Gaynor is the Executive Director of The Curriculum Initiative.

I’m a big proponent of making the Torah relevant for modern society and everyday life. Maybe it’s my whole Orthodox Jew trip of believing that Torah was given to us as a gift. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer, and I want to believe that the stories we tell have life beyond when we tell them, and that they can pertain to different people in different circumstances — and that the Torah, as the greatest story of all, can apply to anyone, anywhere.

But I don’t think I have any excuse for loving this video as much as I do. Except, possibly, that I have dreamt all my life of someone turning my book into the next Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

OK, so the addition of Samuel L. Jackson “as Principal Firebush” at the end is a bit of a stretch, and doesn’t at all fit with the tight-as-anything leitmotif that the rest of the video established. But who doesn’t love themselves some Samuel L.? He didn’t even totally suck playing a one-eyed black Nazi in The Spirit.

(One more note: yes, it is creepy that the narrator says “we’ll see who can get the girl” just as Basya — otherwise known as Moses’s freakin’ ADOPTIVE MOTHER — comes onscreen.)

I can’t believe I have to say this, but please do not bring you sick pugs onto the subway, where they might vomit. However, if you do such a thing, I don’t think you deserve to be subject to misogynistic comments and boob-grabbing. Gothamist reports:

Greenpoint resident Chrissie Brodigan says she was riding on the L train between Bedford and First Avenue when her pug, who has health problems, overheated and began vomiting in the tote bag she was carrying him in. As she was leaving the subway station with the dog in her arms, she says a police officer’s attempt to issue her a ticket turned ugly, and when she became upset the cop began saying, “If you’re going to act like a woman I’m going to treat you like a woman.”

According to Brodigan, the arresting officer’s name is Witriol (badge number 942838). After seeing a photo, she identified him to us as Joel Witriol, who in 2006 became New York’s first Hasidic cop. Brodigan, 32, says Witriol would not accept her explanation that she was carrying the pug because it was sick, and she believes that the disturbed crowd that gathered to witness the arrest only made him angrier. She tells us, “He punched me in the back (there are bruises), he handcuffed me, and in the scuffle grabbed my breasts and pinched them.“

Emphasis theirs.
Hey Witriol, perhaps you should brush up on your knowledge of shomer negiah via our article on the subject. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t allow for boob grabbing. And our article on tikkun olam, repairing the world, might help clarify your job description a little bit. Note, said article does not contain any mention of ticketing the owners of puking dogs.

Samantha Baskind is Associate Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University. Her first book, Raphael Soyer and the Search for Modern Jewish Art (2004), studies the life and works of a major American artist and considers how his work reflects his Jewish background. Baskind’s more recent publications include the Encyclopedia of Jewish American Artists (2006), a pioneering reference work that presents short essays on 85 figures, and, co-edited with literary scholar Ranen Omer-Sherman, The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches (2008). Engaging fascinating artists in a range of media, Baskind’s scholarship grapples with the vexing questions of how works of art can be considered Jewish and what that Jewishness means.

Josh Lambert: What is “Jewish art”?

Samantha Baskind: Some scholars define any work of art by a Jew as Jewish art while others believe that the artwork must divulge something about the Jewish experience. But what is the Jewish experience? There are polymorphic Jewish experiences—both religious and cultural. Jewish art is far from monolithic in style, form, and subject because the Jewish experience is vast. Jewish history differs in each country or continent, not to mention that each generation has a different experience. And what of different levels of Jewish worship? There is no sole definition of Jewish art and over the years I have found many art historians reluctant even to try to discern one. In my classroom, an examination of the controversies around the question “What is Jewish art?” serves a valuable purpose in setting up the poles of artistic identity to be discussed.

In what ways does Jewish art require scholarly approaches that differ from those that would be brought to other traditions in art?

On the most basic level the discipline of art history attempts to discover how art influences and is influenced by cultural, religious, and sociopolitical events. This approach would not differ for the subject of Jewish art. However, it is important not to analogize the study of Jewish art to the study of Christian art. Christian art describes artistic endeavors from Carolingian manuscripts and Byzantine icons, to a French Gothic church like Chartres Cathedral, to famous paintings of the Italian Renaissance like Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. In other words, art made for Christian worship.

So if Christian art provides our model then Jewish art would mean all art made in the service of the synagogue. In actuality, what we think of as Jewish art encompasses a wide variety of subjects, including secular images, while Christian art is identified primarily by religious iconography. That is to say, comparing Judaism and Christianity can be slippery because of the Jewish people’s peculiar position as a religion and a culture.

What does Jewish art tell us about Jewish history?

Like art as a whole, Jewish art tells us about the past as well as the present. By examining why a work of art was made we can learn about religious practice or politics or sociological issues associated with a particular time and place. For example, by looking at a painting of Queen Esther done in the 1960s by a Jewish American female artist, we might learn about the Jewish position in the feminist movement. Understanding the artist’s attraction to the subject of Esther and her approach to it, or the patron’s motives and ideas, if there was a commission, as well as the public’s reaction to the canvas, reveals more about Jewish motivations to create than a mere retelling of the Bible story.

Are there particular challenges facing students of Jewish art?

In the United States, as opposed to Israel, the biggest challenge is finding a mentor and then an institution that offers a wide variety of classes in this subject. Jewish Studies programs might have one faculty appointment in Jewish culture, as opposed to multiple historians, and that slot might be in music, not even art. An art historian specializing in Jewish art would most likely be placed in an art history department and maybe teach one Jewish art class a year—designated as a specialized interest—while more frequently teaching basic classes like an art history survey spanning the Renaissance period to the present or 20th-century art.

How did you find yourself attracted to this field?

As an art history graduate student I discovered that, comparatively speaking, there was little scholarship on Jewish art and I recognized that lacuna as a great opportunity to make a contribution to both art history and Jewish Studies, one of the newer disciplines in the academy. As a Jew, there is a personal component, too, that compels me to study, teach, and write about a history and culture that is dear to me.

What do you see as the future of the field?

There are still many Jewish artists that need to be discovered. Also numerous well-known artists, who explored their Jewish identity but are better known for their non-Jewish work, require further attention. For instance, some of the greatest American photographers are of Jewish descent but how that background played out in their work has either not been explored, or only briefly discussed. I am thinking, for instance, of Diane Arbus, Alfred Stieglitz, Richard Avedon, Weegee, Robert Frank, Irving Penn, and Arnold Newman, to name only some!

If someone wanted to know more about where Jewish Studies and art history are going, what would you recommend she read, or see?

Gabrielle Sed-Rajna’s Jewish Art is comprehensive but expensive. My Grandparents, My Parents and I: Jewish Art and Culture, a slimmer volume by Edward Van Voolen, has good plates and discusses some major accomplishments, especially from the modern era. I am currently working on a coauthored project, with Larry Silver of the University of Pennsylvania, titled Modern/Jewish/Artists (forthcoming in 2011). It will provide a cultural setting for the artistic output of the Jews from the 19th century to the present in both an introductory and critical manner.

Move over Rechov SumSum. Get out of the way Barney. Your time is up.

Big news for people living in Israel with children. The Disney Channel is coming to Israel. Not a satellite version. An Israeli version, in Hebrew.

The channel is the home of such shows as Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. I’m sure Mickey makes occasional appearances as well. Beyond that, I know nothing.

Also, I’m ashamed of myself for posting this video. It’s that bad.

I love food movies. Like Water for Chocolate? Hot. Eat Drink, Man Woman? Steamy. Mostly Martha? Phenomenal. Chocolat? Luscious. Big Night? Huge. But you know what occurs to me? There are no movies about Jewish food. Italian food, Chinese food, French food, yes. Mostly Martha is about a German woman, for God’s sake. But I have yet to see a movie about Jews and their food fetish.

And isn’t that weird? Have you ever been at a Jewish event that wasn’t smothered in bagels and matzah balls or their ilk? The way Jews all over the world obsess about food, it seems rife with cinematic possibilities. Okay, so maybe the making of gefilte fish isn’t going to look particularly awesome when shown on a screen the size of my house, but a nice golden kugel? A platter full of stuffed grape leaves? A tray of buttery and crispy borekas? That would make for an amazing spread on the big screen.

Okay, here’s the pitch: We’re in Israel. Dalia is an attractive but sharp-tongued daughter of a Ashkenazi Modern Orthodox rabbi. She spends her days learning in a seminary, but she’d rather be making challah with her mother, and teaching her sisters how to make matzah balls. Uri is an attractive Hesder student at a yeshiva near Jerusalem who comes from a traditional Yemenite family. One weekend he comes home to visit his family who have a falafel stand in the shuk, and Dalia walks in to buy…something.

They meet and fall in love over some hummus, but have to find a way to bring their varied backgrounds and food traditions into harmony. At one point there’s a hot make out session where she’s pushed against the wall next to the wood burning oven that’s used to make pita. The movie ends with their delicious wedding feast. Subplot: argument in shuk about who makes the best hummus gets political.

This would be good, right? Any other ideas for Jewish food movies that should be made?

For one day at the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, writers, and poets take the place of journalists in covering the news and providing commentary. (Forward)

Sami Michael discusses the “takeover” of Ha’aretz, asking, “Is the author’s point of view necessarily different from that of the reporter, directly touching the live flesh of exposed reality?” (Ha’aretz)

A look at “the largest public collection of Jewish cookbooks” in the United States–1,500 volumes. (Forward)

An amazing collection of photos on the theme of Jews and books.  Scroll using the previous and next buttons, or use the pull-down menus for dozens of titles, such as Ben Gurion or Yemenite Jews. (Promised Book Land)

A talk with Lesléa Newman, author of “Heather Has Two Mommies,” young adult novels about a young boy whose favorite uncle has AIDS, and a teenage girl struggling with bulimia, and of Jewish children’s books, including “Matzo Ball Moon,” about a Passover seder, and “Runaway Dreidel,” a Chanukah tale set to the cadences of “The Night Before Christmas.” (J-weekly)

Four current Jewish authors are asked “What Jewish Book Changed Your Life?”, and only one actually manages to answer the question. (Jbooks)

I wouldn’t call myself particularly patriotic. I think that outward patriotism is a finite object. In other words, you can only have so much pride for your country. Being that I’ve lived my life in both Canada and the United States, my patriotism has been split into two. I love American television. I hate Canadian television. I love rooting for Canada’s hockey team. I root for American soccer. You get the idea.

Today is Canada Day. I honestly haven’t ever really cared about it. The same goes for the 4th of July. But this year, I’m trying to make a bit of an effort. And I was hoping that you could too. Here is a reading list, both Jewish and non-Jewish related, that should put you in the Canuck spirit.

- In today’s New York Times, famous Canadians living in the United States talk about the things they miss most about their country to the North. What do they miss the most? Health care, hockey, and the spelling of colour, just to name a few.

- Right now, on the MJL homepage, there is a fantastic article about arguably the greatest Canadian Jewish writer of all time, Mordecai Richler. He was your stereotypical Jewish writer. Why? Because every Jew hated him.

- Speaking of Montreal Jews, Leonard Cohen went to my high school! Also a couple of years ago, my roommate was at this small klezmer concert (50 people or so in the crowd), and he was standing next to Cohen. The man stays true to his roots.

- This stuff a bit advanced? Don’t know the first thing about Canadian Jews? Here is our article on Canadian Jewry.

- Alanis Morissette. Just because I can.

- Avril Lavigne. See above.

- When I was a little kid, I found out that my uncle was the accountant for Sharon from Sharon, Lois and Bram. This was one of the most exciting things I had ever heard. Plus they are Jews.

-Finally, I gotta give a shout out to the nerdiest Canadian Jew out there, Rick Moranis.

Happy Canada Day!