HEY JEWS

my daughter learns about the parsha + stuff at school and she has recently been coming home w/ questions about hashem. like she asked me if hashem has a mouth and i tried to explain anthropomorphism to her, but she's 3 so it was tough. (well, hashem doesn't actually have a mouth, bc hashem isn't like us at all, but he kinda has a mouth like that's how we understand it -- D's expression slowly glazing over as i explain.) she also wanted to know when hashem sleeps and we explained that hashem is always awake but does rest on Shabbos but i think that confused her as well. i chap a ton of nachus when she comes home singing something she learned at school - like "hashem is here hashem is there hashem is truly everywhere" or "hashem gave us a present, do you know what it was, he gave us the torah, so we could do its laws," but i do wonder what the concept of "hashem" could possibly mean to a 3 year old.

"mommy" probably

i guess like adults aren't any better at apprehending the existence of god

Thursday night screening and concert as part of DC Jewish Film Fest

East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem

In 2013, Israeli-born folk singer David Broza crossed into the mainly Arab portion of the city of Jerusalem to record in 8 days an album with Israeli, Palestinian, and American musicians, including guitarist/producer Steve Earle. The process was filmed in and out of the studio and is the subject of the 80-minute movie East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem. The focus of the movie is on Broza’s enthusiastic effort to get Israelis and Palestinians together via song, but despite the nobility of his struggle, his well-meaning spoken and sung platitudes are less interesting here than the other musicians and the fascinating cityscape shots. In the studio, Palestinian singer Mira Awad’s vocal intonation and range is striking, and her description of how her beliefs and duet partner choices aggravate both Palestinians and Israelis conveys some of the impossibility of the situation there. Rapper Muhammad Mugrabi also shines. His wearied tales and the footage of his barbed-wire-topped, walled-in Shuafat Refugee Camp home region are heart-breaking. The film acknowledges extremists on both sides, but with the aid of Palestinian and Israeli youth singers who note the naivety of it, nevertheless figure singing in English the Elvis Costello-popularized song “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love & Understanding,” is a step in the right direction. Broza, Awad, and Earle will do a 45-minute musical set and Q&A after the screening. Feb. 26 at Sidney Harman Hall.

http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-double-life-of-hasidic-atheists

x-post-- the q and a with Broza and Awad provided some additional insight re the movie. Plus, I didn't know they really haven't gotten the movie out there--NY, DC, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and a few other screenings. I'm still not a fan of Broza's music, and his uh hammy folk song delivery (but there were many folks in DC singing along in Hebrew with him), but I do respect that he did this project (despite boycott bds threats that kept some musicians from collaborating with him) and that he keeps bringing music to the Shuafat Refugee Camp

Although I'm not generally a fan of Broza, he was involved in creating Hakeves Hashisha Asar, which I believe is possibly *the* greatest children's record ever made in any language.

fwiw I find a lot of israeli rock/folk/pop singers to be hammy/overly earnest in that particular way. It's odd to me because it seems like the opposite of Israeli cultural attitudes otherwise.

Interesting. Broza sang a kids song last night. I just wanted more Mira Awad, and she mostly sat and only did a few songs. In the movie and in the q and a they kept saying that Israeli Hebrew is very direct, while Palestinian Arabic tends not to be direct and to instead maneuver in a circular yet strategic way, and how both of these aspects get interpreted in political and almost racist ways. I thought some of Broza's hammy ways were just kinda stereotypical folk singer ones-- "Hey audience, sing along with this one..."

Israeli singer/musician Idan Rachel does not seem hammy, but I think he's less of a star. I only saw him in a special collaboration with Malian Vieux Farka Toure

Idan Raichel is good. Arik Einstein (RIP) is also not hammy at all. But there seems to be a big contingent of vaguely spiritual, vaguely "world music", very sincere Israeli singer-songwriters who are prominent.

http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-double-life-of-hasidic-atheists

― the plight of y0landa (forksclovetofu), Friday, 27 February 2015 03:41 (4 days ago)

the hidden fedora beneath the shtreimel

https://scontent-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/11021402_737693419837_6749085109262047544_o.jpg

too much time on ilx

http://www.clickhole.com/blogpost/only-some-people-are-jewish-2150

Hosting our first seder this year

I am going to a Seder at an Episcopal church.

I keep trying to be Jewish, and failing . See also: met husband on Jdate. Dude turns out not to be Jewish.

Now Seder at a church.

Oy.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/man-seders-flow-with-steak-and-scotch-1427320586

Oy veh, Mad Men seders.

Meanwhile the working class folks making matza at the Streit factory on the lower east side in NYC will be be moving their place of business to a new locale soon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/century-old-nyc-matzo-factory-faces-a-high-tech-future/2015/03/30/84ced4a2-d69b-11e4-bf0b-f648b95a6488_story.html?tid=ptv_rellink

http://www.amazon.com/Everymans-Talmud-Major-Teachings-Rabbinic/dp/9562914356

This book just arrived in the mail. I am not Jewish but I have always wanted to read about the Talmud and a search on Amazon led me to this book. Has anyone read it?

like the new testament, the talmud is the thing we use to cover up the despotic iron age horrors of the hebrew bible, even though we go along with it just the same when push comes to shove.

a good read though. if you can stomach it.

^ someone who has never learnt any talmud

drek is about to get real in here

anyone ever had "spelt matza". kosher for Passover but a different grain

^ someone who has never learnt any talmud

― Mordy,

secular people learn life from life, mistakes etc. not an advice book on how and when to do things. sorry.

I can tell from yr posts that you literally know nothing about the Talmud

maybe stop embarrassing yourself and keep to things you actually know about

is that a special power it gives you?

No I can tell bc you think a) that it has something to do with looking better than the OT and b) that it's an advice book. Neither are remotely accurate

A thing we use to cover up iron age horrors- please say more bc afaic you pulled out of yr ass

have you not read the torah?

I'm not suggesting you know nothing about the OT. I'm asserting that you know nothing about the Talmud.

My question to you is give me some examples of how the Talmud covers up the "horrors" of the OT.

I already stated I haven't read the talmud. I was talking about the old test/torah in my other post.

Just for clarity you did write: "like the new testament, the talmud is the thing we use to cover up the despotic iron age horrors of the hebrew bible" my pt is that this is an embarrassing misrepresentation of the talmud

I said that because the torah is full of horrors, and like the xtians, it is preferred to study the gospels, or the jews, the talmud, because it is largely more moral by todays standards. Sorry if this wasn't clear.

You are continuing to misrepresent. The OT is read in synagogue every Saturday and is studied by many many Jews. The Talmud is a compendium of legal arguments (w some aggadatah- weird stories) studied mostly by yeshiva students and scholars. It has nothing to do w being a substitute for the OT (unlike the NT which yr right was theologically intended to supersede the OT)

If you've studied the Talmud you are intimately familiar w the Torah, no less bc the authority for almost every argument in the Talmud comes directly from Torah scripture

ftr I cannot think of a single "horror" in the Torah that isn't discussed in the Talmud- making it a very poor document for avoiding those narratives

You are continuing to misrepresent. The OT is read in synagogue every Saturday and is studied by many many Jews. The Talmud is a compendium of legal arguments (w some aggadatah- weird stories) studied mostly by yeshiva students and scholars. It has nothing to do w being a substitute for the OT (unlike the NT which yr right was theologically intended to supersede the OT)

― Mordy,

As it is in church and by millions of xtians. Still, plenty of more, er, conscientious modern types like to try to pretend OT doesn't exist as best they can, because they have read it. Much better to focus on the largely more positive gospels.

No one who studies the Talmud is pretending the OT doesn't exist. That would be insane.

And I am fully aware of the importance of the torah in judaism, as everyone should be, when one looks at the mentalities of settlers in the west bank, it is of course fueled by the stories in the tanakh.

ftr I cannot think of a single "horror" in the Torah that isn't discussed in the Talmud- making it a very poor document for avoiding those narratives

― Mordy

Yes, but that is the same as the gospels. The gospels were probably an attempt by later writers to "soften" and expand and improve on the morals the stories in the OT somewhat.

I'm not going to get into what percentage of settlers are theologically motivated and what % are secular but yr statement is a little reductive. My entire point is that you shouldn't misrepresent things you don't know about particularly vis-a-vis the Talmud. If nothing else hopefully this conversation will give you more accurate things to say the next time you feign knowledge on the topic

Also I'll let someone with a stake in the NT educate you about that but the gospels are not an attempt to soften expand or improve the OT law but specifically to replace it and replace its laws w faith in christ

I have re-visited the OT since briefly reading the first two books when I was a kid, and was kind of surprised at how bare and plain the writing was. It will be good to read commentary on what those stories mean or have to say, particularly from a non-Protestant perspective.

As for horrors in the Bible, I can take it. It's not like the past has a monopoly on horror.

If your primary interest is in the OT I wouldn't recommend the Talmud. Look into a series of texts called Me'om Lo'ez that has a wonderful super readable translation by iirc Aryeh Kaplan

Basically a compendium of midrash and Jewish folklore and wisdom centered directly on the week by week Torah portion

My primary interest isn't the OT exactly just brought that up due to conversation. But thanks for the recommendation!

drash if you're reading this thread I think that might be a good option for what you were looking for too