HEY JEWS

happy jewish bday!

http://www.israelhebrew.com/wp-content/uploads/happy-birthday-in-hebrew1.jpg

mazels on your "j-date"

https://twitter.com/hashtagjewbrag

http://forward.com/articles/176823/reform-rabbi-urges-hebrew-union-college-to-reconsi/

:/

man some of those comments are whoa

I am still not a jew, but I felt this thread may enjoy that a local group was able to register jewishfoodfair.com for their event this weekend. Why would this domain not be in high demand?

man some of those comments are whoa

― quincie, Friday, May 17, 2013 3:52 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah. but i guess i embrace a third position: the sooner we all assimilate and become secular the better.

i just mean assimilate to secularism, not give up all traces of jewish cultural practice & tradition btw

last I checked even Reconstructionist Rabbinical College had a quiet policy of not admitting people partnered with non-Jews, though it's possible that that's been revisited since they merged with JRF.

hm, still extant in the catalog, "An applicant who is married to or in a committed relationship with a non-Jewish partner will not be admitted to the rabbinical program."

I had no idea about these policies, and they make me really sad. Also pissed, and embarrassed.

2 questions for hey jews:

1. should i attend this event?

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/v/960125_10151614880369795_36079337_n.jpg?oh=fd4259584e298c1c530f31ed7e759966&oe=519EFEE8&__gda__=1369385540_406c143860cdd4f5210ffa12c12c300e

2. should i liveblog it???

just made myself some matzah brei with maple syrup. <3

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/birthright-alumni-marry-later-and-are-more-likely-to-marry-jewish.premium-1.529422

His latest findings show that among Birthright participants involved in interfaith marriages, 13 percent had spouses who underwent formal conversions. Among members of the non-participant group, formal conversions were almost non-existent. In general, Birthright participants are far more likely to marry within the faith than are non-participants. The latest research shows that 73 percent of participants in the program ultimately marry other Jews, as compared with just 50 percent among non-participants.

correlation vs. causation

dramatic either way

over-the-top bar mitzvahs, discuss:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g-ByhUDUllM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-ByhUDUllM&list=TLMyknLhRCbP8

My Bar Mitzvah was 30 kids and a DJ on the upper floor of a family friend's Italian restaurant. No one danced.

substituting tackiness for tradition

tackiness has now become the tradition for some

tacky bar/bat mitzvah parties are the jewish community's own personal quid/ag.

At my bar mitzvah, I specifically asked the DJ to play the single edit of "Pump of the Volume," and the jerk played the 12".

Has there been any notable late converts to Judaism? I mean, apart from, say, Sammy Davis, Jr.

Catherine Zeta-Jones! Kate Capshaw!

so whose kid is this kid anyway

Isla Fischer

Ivanka Trump who apparently covers her hair.

if u want to read something really really good:
http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/interview-with-prof-jacob-wright-of-emory-university/

Why would the basic features of the Torah have assumed literary shape from the late 8th century and thereafter? It is because this is when the states of Israel and Judah faced momentous political challenges.

The Assyrian armies conquered the kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE. The earliest biblical authors realized that if Israel were to survive this political catastrophe, it would be in a new form: as a people without a king. Now the kings of Israel may have the ones who originally promulgated accounts of Yhwh’s great deeds, such as the Exodus story. After all, Israel’s kings would have seen themselves as the representatives of the state’s chief deity, as was the case in directly neighboring lands. Yet what sets the pace for the formation of the biblical tradition is a demotion of the king and a shift of attention to the people as a whole (“all Israel”) under the aegis of its God. Judahite authors, already before their subjugation to Babylon in 587 BCE, inherit this “demotic” project from Israel.

The Torah is the beginning of a longer history (stretching from Breishit to Melakhim) that tells how Israel emerged and existed for a long time as a people before its kings established centralized states. The history ends with the demise of these states, affirming the central message: All Israel is in direct covenant with its God. Its kings are, accordingly, not essential to its identity and its survival. What’s determinative is the nation’s corporate adherence to the conditions of the covenant (the mitzvot).

This message, which pervades the Torah and the rest of the history, is the reason why the Torah owes its penultimate form to the 8th-6th centuries, the time when Israel and Judah ceased to be ruled by native kings.

cool. i find this stuff fascinating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00vFNzlXmNU

http://www.theonion.com/articles/jews-to-celebrate-rosh-hashasha-or-something,4532/

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/143410/rosenzweig-yom-kippur-conversion

presented essentially w/out comment except that even the highest intermarriage percentages were smaller than i would've guessed:
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/will-your-grandchild-be-jewish-chart-graph.htm

idgi

what are they using to denote Jewish identity - strictly genetics?

fwiw I married a non-Jew, we're raising our children in I guess what falls under the "Secular" grouping there (ie we don't belong to a temple but we celebrate the holidays and identify as Jewish, when they're old enough for Hebrew school I will probably look around for options etc.)

i don't know what they're using for that particular study by the two metrics i've seen commonly used are self-identification or halachic judaism (matrilineal descent)

It's obvious that that "study" is using "intermarriage = non-Jewish children" as an assumption which is blatantly false.

That's just clear from the numbers.

Or at least it's assuming a pretty low rate of "Jewish" children to intermarried couples.

yeah I don't really understand it, it looks like an intermarried couple that has one kid actually only has "one half" of Jewish child and then if they intermarry their kids are automatically not Jewish... I dunno this runs counter to my experience with intermarried couples, there isn't this strict algorithm involved.

it's also worth noting, at least, that the authors of the study are not demographic researchers by trade, although I'm sure they're bright people, and that if you read their actual article it's pretty clearly agenda-driven and thus requires a grain of salt. Also, their assumptions that birthrates will remain constant are belied by their own statements that birthrates have recently shifted.

Antony (Chanan) Gordon is a Sir Abe Bailey Fellow (1988) and Fulbright Scholar(1989) who graduated with a Masters in Law from Harvard Law School (1990). Mr. Gordon was a SeniorVice President at Morgan Stanley until the beginning of 2001 when he left to launch his own firm and hedge fund.

Richard M. Horowitz received his MBA from Pepperdine University in California. Mr. is the President of Management Brokers Insurance Agency, and Chairman of Dial 800 L.P. Mr. Horowitz also serves on the Board of Triotech (OTC) as well as numerous non-profit organizations. (Copyright 2007)

lol

what the hell is a masters in law anyway

ah ok he was a foreign lawyer who got an LLM, he is apparently from south africa

I think a more interesting question, and a really hard one to answer about whether you will have Jewish grandkids is "why do we care?" I'm not asking that sarcastically or smugly, I just feel like it's the question no rabbi ever addresses in the annual haranguing high holiday sermons. Like why do we care if there are Jews in 300 years? Why do we care if there are reform, conservative, or "secular" Jews in 300 years? I mean even I will admit that I do in a certain sense care about this, but I'm not entirely sure why.

I worry more about the species as a whole than my particular tribe

plus I figure there will always be a few of us around just out of sheer orneriness