Everyone’s favorite Yemenite Jewish DJ, Diwon, is almost finished producing his new mixtape, The Tribe Beat Guide to Yiddish. (Yes, we know Yiddish is not exactly a standard accoutrement to the standard Yemenite Jewish family, but who among us can indulge in a little culture-jamming if not a DJ?) Click here to download a song. And let us know if you can (a) understand it, (b) dance to it in your office, or (c) if you happen to speak Yiddish and would like to make a little guest appearance.

It seems like this little doozy from my home state of has flown under the radars of church-state separation proponents:

>Elective Bible courses in Texas high schools received the blessing of the State Board of Education on Friday, but local school officials will have to figure out how to design those classes so they don’t violate religious-freedom protections.

Board members approved the new class, which will be in some high schools this fall, even though officials are awaiting an opinion from the attorney general on whether the state law authorizing the course requires all school districts to offer it. (MORE)

If only they knew that Bible was already being taught in public schools in Texas. My public high school already had about a half a dozen “prayer groups” and Christian-based fellowship groups back in the early 1990s. Held before and after school, they were legal as they were not “school-sponsored.”

But I think it got a bit sticky when teachers’ time, school resources, and classroom space was devoted to learning the love Christ and “being saved by grace through faith.”

I can only imagine what will happen in these new courses.

Dennis Shulman seeks to become the first ever blind rabbi in Congress.

The Jerusalem Post interviews Obama and McCain.
Michael Wissot makes the case that John McCain has earned the support of American Jewry. (Jerusalem Post)

Ira N. Forman argues that some of those “tearing down Obama among Jewish readers” have employed “deceptive tactics”. (Jerusalem Post)

Obama says that his unified Jerusalem speech used “poor phrasing”.(Haaretz)

Despite calls by many Jewish leaders to cut ties with preacher Hagee, Senator Joseph Lieberman continues to back him strongly. (Jerusalem Post)

Gerald M. Steinberg argues that Obama’s trip to Israel “has provided some reasons to re-examine” his image as “inexperienced and naïve, and … influenced by radical Palestinian friends like Rashid Khalidi …, anti-Israel advisors like Samantha Power and Zbigniew Brezinski, and by his ex-pastor, Jeremiah Wright.” (Jewish Week)

Dina Kraft provides coverage of Obama in Jordan and Israel (his “words fell sweetly on Israeli ears”) and how his comments were perceived by the locals.(Slate)

On Wednesday I heard John Ruskay, the executive vice president of the UJA speak at a seminar of 50 college interns who are part of CLIP-Collegiate Leadership Internship Program.

He raised many current issues in the Jewish community. But one stood out to me.

He spoke about brainstorming for what the Jewish community should do when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, returns in September for the U.N. General Assembly.

Should we have a rally?

Ruskay went around the room calling on different people, some suggested an interfaith, multiethnic rally with powerful speakers, but Ruskay replied that this has been done, and is not really effective, as only a small group of people come.

At NYU on Yom Hashoah, I was part of a group of about 50 students who walked around the village in silence wearing all black. Each student had a white placard strung on them that read “Never Forget”, if someone asked “never forget what?” We would hand them an index card with an explanation. We walked single file around Washington Square Park, through dining halls and the Library. People were mesmerized by the silent march.

Yesterday, I suggested to John Ruskay that we should have silent marches all around the city on the day that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes to the U.N. The marchers could wear placards that stated different human rights infringements that Ahmadinejad has caused ranging from women to homosexuals as well as signs about the dangerous dictator and his hateful message against Israel.

Perhaps people are sick and tired of yelling at the top of their lungs, with flailing signs when no one seems to listen.

A different type of silence could be the answer.

I’ve been thinking about what are arguably the two biggest scandals in the music industry right now: illegal downloading and frum Yiddishkeit.

On one hand, music is becoming more readily available, conventional means of turning a profit are no longer working, and the Big Men in Black are trying to get everyday folks in trouble for illegally acquiring songs on the Internet. On the other, many Orthodox Jews are becoming more and more rigidly obsessed with squeezing all the secularity out of our culture–canceling a the New York Times subscription today and demanding that Hasidic singers stop performing live and making “idols” out of themselves the next.

Okay, okay–admittedly, these might not be *the* two biggest music scandals. But there’s a common moral therein: there’s a paradigm that’s been broken, and something needs to change in order for the simple equation of music + listeners to keep happening.

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Jack Nash, a hedge fund pioneer and important Jewish philanthropist, passed away yesterday at the age of 79.

Mr. Nash was one of the founders of the New York Sun and the newspaper published an editorial today in his memory.

After the jump, I’ve pasted an email that Nigel Savage of Hazon just sent out, remembering Mr. Nash’s indispensable role in helping Hazon get off the ground.

Baruch dayan emet.

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When Barack Obama met with members of the Democratic Caucus to speak about his tour of the Middle East, he had a feeling.

“Nobody said this to me directly, but I get the feeling from my talks that if the sanctions don’t work, Israel is going to strike Iran,” Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, was quoted as saying, according to ABC News, which cited multiple sources. (MORE)

Hmm, I know Barack had the best intentions when he said this, but is it really a good idea to say you have a feeling about nuclear warfare?

(HT: Matthue Roth)

In Black Orthodox hip-hop M.C. Y-Love’s song State of the Nation, he reels off statistics gleaned from the National Jewish Population Survey. After listing the number of Jews who become Orthodox, change their last names, and buy trees from JNF, he lets loose with the line: “One out of 44 looks like me.”

He’s talking about Black Jews. Traditionally a small slice in the pie of American Jewish life, the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco reports that there are over 150,000 Black Jews living in the USA alone. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution does a survey, from ATL to Silver Spring, looking at how Black Jews blend in–or don’t–to congregations.

It doesn’t look at predominantly Black synagogues, nor does it delve into the Black Israelites in Chicago and Atlanta, nor does it focus on Ethiopian Jews–which, given how many people are quick to relegate the existence of Black Jews to Israel and crazy Bible-thumping folks on the street corner, is actually kind of a relief. (Nor does it discuss the awesome and venerable Rabbi Joshua Nelson, the progenitor of kosher gospel…but he’s probably worth a post all by himself.)

Chabad is nothing if not well-organized. Each year, they release a set of uniform lesson plans to literally hundreds of tiny synagogues, learning groups, and D.I.Y. rabbis, covering holidays, the Jewish life cycle, texts, and other little nuggets of information…basically, it’s like Hebrew School for adults. Or, really, anyone who shows up.

As part of their curriculum for Tisha b’Av and the Three Weeks, a period of time which marks the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Chabad put together some learning about the Temple.

This is not sitting well with some people, according to the Jerusalem Post.

“We view this as a serious and drastic move toward the fruition of extremist organizations to establish a temple in place of al-Aksa Mosque,” said a spokesman for the Islamic Movement (I don’t know if this is a name for a specific organization, or a wider platform, like “the Conservative Movement”). “This represents a real danger to al-Aksa.”

So, uh, they must be learning about how the al-Aksa mosque was, some might say unjustly, constructed on the site of the Temple, and how now, just as unjustly, Jews are only permitted by the Waqf authorities to ascend the Temple Mount a few days a year….right?

Well, no. The JPost article goes on to explain:

The courses, which are being attended by “tens of thousands” of young students, include a “virtual tour” of the Temple Mount and explanations of daily Temple life, as well as the job of the kohanim (priests), [Chabad spokesman Menachem] Brod said.

In contrast to members of the modern Orthodox Zionist rabbinical leadership, Chabad hassidim [sic] do not even ascend the Temple Mount, he said.

Oh, yeah. Knowledge is dangerous.

What a waste of a pickle. Probably a full sour too, by the looks of it: