HEY JEWS

Slow dance songs less useful if men and women are not allowed to mix at the event--though Mordy doesn't say whether this is the case, it would def shoot down a lot of music if it was!

yes, no mixed dancing

Oh, intimate ORTHODOX Jewish wedding. Is klezmer allowed?

yes, i'm including some klezmer

i haven't yet determined if kol isha is okay or not

play the bit from the Fiddler wedding where someone invents feminism

x-post--Sounds like you better ask whether they oppose having women voices. I don't want to see an article (or do I) "DJ Mordy thrown of out Wedding reception for playing woman singer"

lol i already asked. just waiting to hear back.

Or play all women singers because fuck it. Probably not good for the reception tho.

hey has anyone here seen Sylberberg's "Our Hitler" and if so is it worth sitting through?

a friend of mine wrote this about his experiences converting to orthodox judaism and being gay - i thought it was pretty moving: http://hiphopactivist.com/politics/an-open-letter-to-yeshiva-world-news/

i don't care what this rabbi says, you can't keep kosher by eating pork:
http://portland.thephoenix.com/food/151086-jews-wrestle-with-pork

lol. I mean okay you made some dietary laws for yourself, but they aren't the old laws.

(I don't keep kosher personally, always struck me as silly)

(I don't keep kosher personally, always struck me as silly)

Unlike just about every other aspect of any religion and its rules?

~whoa~

Don't know what to make of your whoa, just saying that once you/I/anyone starts cherry-picking religious rules, or especially dismissing any particular one as silly - and I agree that keeping kosher is an extreme example of a rule with no basis beyond "because I said so" - there's no good demarcation as to where you should stop. Don't keep kosher - do you keep the Sabbath? Don't keep the Sabbath - do you keep the High Holy Days? Etc. I identify as Jewish, but it's honestly something I've struggled with over the years, the fact that I can barely make it through any service or ceremony without questioning the contradictions, things I disagree with, the inconsistencies and the horrors ("God said to Abraham, kill me a son...."). Every religion is rife with prima facia silliness, things that don't make sense or don't bear scrutiny/logic, but that doesn't mean they lack value. Fortunately, a lot of Judaism seems to encourage this sort of stuff.

hey yiddish speaking jews, is this wrong?

http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2013/02/02/news/web_photos/koch_mensch042410--480x180.jpg

its usually spelled 'mensch' but is 'mench' an acceptable alternate spelling

I don't think I've ever seen it spelled "mench." Not sure if even has anything to do with proper transliterated Yiddish or no, it's part of the common vernacular. Like putz, which would never be spelled putts, or chutzpah, which would never be spelled xootspaw.

seems wrong

generally i'm pretty relaxed about transliteration but mensch has been used enough in english that it doesn't set off my browser spell check and mensh does

mench* does too

Plus Morbs and others would say that he was not one, no matter how you spell it

morbsh

so i just found out action bronson is an mot???

Don't know what to make of your whoa, just saying that once you/I/anyone starts cherry-picking religious rules, or especially dismissing any particular one as silly - and I agree that keeping kosher is an extreme example of a rule with no basis beyond "because I said so" - there's no good demarcation as to where you should stop. Don't keep kosher - do you keep the Sabbath? Don't keep the Sabbath - do you keep the High Holy Days? Etc. I identify as Jewish, but it's honestly something I've struggled with over the years, the fact that I can barely make it through any service or ceremony without questioning the contradictions, things I disagree with, the inconsistencies and the horrors ("God said to Abraham, kill me a son...."). Every religion is rife with prima facia silliness, things that don't make sense or don't bear scrutiny/logic, but that doesn't mean they lack value. Fortunately, a lot of Judaism seems to encourage this sort of stuff.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, January 31, 2013 2:48 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this is a pretty classic Jewish thing, but it bothers me nonetheless. I think it's very hard in the modern world to stay committed to a "way" (if you will) that doesn't proclaim itself as the one true way, and we partly remain connected to it out of guilt and fear. There have been times when I've genuinely asked myself "why have this identity at all?" In the end I think it just boils down to having some familiarity and sense of security in a chaotic world, maintaining a connection to what I grew up with, etc.

Which is why I don't care that much about proclamations about what is or isn't "real" judaism. Although I still can't stomach a guitar-playing rabbi. That's just wrong.

yeah guitar-playing is the cantor's purview

as a cantor's son I take offense to that

you shouldn't! I don't know if I've been to a shul service where the cantor didn't play guitar

well maybe a couple. But the cantor I grew up with plays guitar. And is a really talented soprano.

daddy don't play guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZPRVmsA3hs

Have you been to the Nat'l Yiddish Book Center, Mordy? It's on the campus of my erstwhile college and is very cool.

I haven't been, but when I was in grad school I borrowed a bunch of their materials through the mail. They've got an amazing collection.

The genius of Judaism is that it transfers via mom. The reason 99.9% of anybody is the religion they are is because when they were born their parents decided to raise them that way, but in Judaism you're Jewish at birth whether you want to be or not. Is that true for many/any other religions? Certainly accounts for its cultural (rather than strictly religious) traits.

Doesn't account for cantorial guitar heroics

Our cantor plays guitar. Though the best family service night was backed by this awesome almost accidentally surf-rock quartet.

So like does yr guy make a power grab now or what

what the

i know, i saw that!

See, that's yet another reason why I say fuck an Israel. My wife wondered out loud if this would be a good year to take the kids to Israel, and I told her there were a million places I'd want to go to a first time before I ever went back there.

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/156760/Analysis:-Why-the-Frum-Community-Lost-A-Seat-in-the-New-York-City-Council.html

Charles Katz is an attorney practicing criminal law in New York, and above all a “god-fearing Jew”.

woo http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/after-delay-yiddish-writers-papers-will-be-made-available-to-public/

Lew, who was White House chief of staff while Obama’s campaign was pummeling Romney over his pay and taxes, received a $945,000 bonus in January 2009 after a brief tenure at Citigroup — just as the bank announced huge losses and took a taxpayer bailout. Lew also invested $56,000 in a Citigroup venture-capital fund registered in the Cayman Islands — registered in the very building, in fact, that Obama labeled “the largest tax scam in the world.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-senators-turn-the-tables-on-caymans-investor-jack-lew/2013/02/13/d01cac80-7631-11e2-95e4-6148e45d7adb_story.html?hpid=z2

An orthodox Jew, and likely next US Treasury secretary, whom I think is not a mensch

i think obama just called registering in the cayman islands "the largest tax scam in the world" not the particular investment lew was involved in. that paragraph makes it ambiguous.

Sounds like there was something special about the building.

Oh gotcha. I had heard about it on NPR and thought it was referring specifically to Cayman Island investments.

Grassley also asked Lew to justify investing his money in one of the 12,000 businesses based in Ugland House, a five-floor building in Grand Cayman.

...

Obama frequently mentioned Ugland House on the campaign trail in 2008. Baucus held a hearing on it that year, saying that the place had “a lot to do with tax evasion” and the $345 billion gap “between the taxes legally owed and the taxes timely paid.”

"This is the most Jewish thing I've ever seen in_my_life."

And later

"So this director's not Jewish but he obviously wishes he was. Everyone else who made this must be Jewish." - my friend's 60-something year old mother, about four minutes into "Moonrise Kingdom"