HEY JEWS

next pesach I will actually have a table and therefore I intend to have a kickass seder.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_O0F5AaJmk4/UkMHXDs59lI/AAAAAAAAZwo/0vZmdMAhWFo/s1600/st4.jpg

now i sing the title of thread in my head to the tune of the theme song of "the new girl"

http://forward.com/articles/184795/jews-bound-by-shared-beliefs-even-as-markers-of-fa/

This might not really be specific to Judaism, but I don't know where else to put this.

What do people think of this post? http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/time/

I started thinking of what that post is about with relation to irony and sarcasm. Can what this rabbi says be reconciled with living 'ironically' or being sarcastic? It's one of those things which should be obvious, but I'm kind of in a weird mood today.

Is the post Judaic reductionism or does there seem to be some substance to it?

I just want to get people's perspectives, if they have any on it.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/thanksgivukkah

I was just about to post that! Some recipes worth checking out, and wow, t-shirts and stuff too.

Torn between forwarding that along and fuck a Buzzfeed.

Feel a bit bad for sukkotees (is that a word? heh) in my city. cos we have had an awful blast of nasty, gale force wintery weather lately. Cantve been nice sitting out in it.

Wait am I to believe that Jews roll their eyes at noodle kugel? Because that is one of my favorite (and one of my first) Jewish foods!

no way. lokshen kugel is delicious.

Ha! Googled "lokshen kugel" and the first result is from the Shiksa Blog. So appropriate.

one more jew for noodle kugel

i haven't read this review of the pew survey yet but dr brill always has something brilliant to say so i assume must-read:
http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/reflections-on-the-pew-survey/

just finished reading it. tbph it's gorgeous and everyone here should read until the end bc i think the conclusion is very very beautiful + moving.

Mordy can u link to the Pew survey referenced?

Always pleased by an M. Kaplan namedrop, as a Reconstructionist from birth.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/chapter-1-population-estimates/

mordechai kaplan used to learn w/ shlomo carlebach when they were both students in chabad << fun facts

^ not true i was confused when i wrote that carlebach learnt w/ zalman shachter who later said:

"I first took acid with [Timothy] Leary," recalled Zalman in his characteristically deep, warm voice. At 81, his demeanor and energy are those of a much younger man. "That was several years before I knew [Richard] Alpert [a.k.a., Ram Das]. And the Lubavitcher Rebbe gave me a bracha (blessing) before I did it".

ivanka bris pic :)

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1399313_10151980035897682_1314361200_o.jpg

OH NOES THEY CIRCUMCISED IVANKA!

In other news, I was doing that mind-totally-wandering-thing-while-driving-through-the-desert and out of nowhere wondered if you (Mordy) would be upset if your daughters married non-Jews? Personal question and of course tell me to piss off rather than answer, of course.

I care a lot about having Jewish grandchildren. It's near the top of the list of things I care about.

― Mordy , Thursday, September 12, 2013 3:04 PM (1 month ago)

according to matrilineal descent any children my daughters had would be jewish; still i'd almost definitely be upset if they married non-jews. nb i feel like jews should be much more lenient about accepting non-jews into the fold and if their spouses wanted to convert and raise the grandchildren jewish that would alleviate any upset i'd have (even a non-orthodox conversion would probably help -esp combined w/ the matrilineal thing). nbx2 obv i wouldn't sit shiva for a child who married a non-jewish spouse (daughter or son), or denounce them or whatever. i'd just be 'upset.'

on a related note, have u seen this? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/science/ashkenazi-origins-may-be-with-european-women-study-finds.html --

A new genetic analysis has now filled in another piece of the origins puzzle, pointing to European women as the principal female founders, and to the Jewish community of the early Roman empire as the possible source of the Ashkenazi ancestors.

The finding establishes that the women who founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community of Europe were not from the Near East, as previously supposed, and reinforces the idea that many Jewish communities outside Israel were founded by single men who married and converted local women.

i try to keep an open mind about how communities, and particularly the jewish community, evolves + persists over time. in 2013 the orthodox (especially in israel, but also in europe, russia, etc) have gotten a kind of monopoly over ritual judaism*, but that hasn't always been the case, and i can't predict the future. i'd want my children-in-law to be jews bc i think that would create a better chance for an affiliation w/ + practice of jewish ritual/tradition for future generations, but i'm not even really stuck on what kind of jews they'd be. i consider myself very ashkenazi (down to my genetic structure) but i don't really care about the survival of ashkenazi jewry as distinct cultural practice. there used to be a time when ashkenazi families didn't want their children to marry into sephardic families - which i obv think is ridiculous.

did u read that kavannah blog post about the pew survey thing i posted above? it had a piece i thought was really lovely:

Rav Soloveitchik distinguished between the Sinai covenant that teaches what a Jew should do and the Patriarchal covenant (Brit Avot) – the “I’ awareness of the Jew. 94% of the Jews in the entire study had that awareness. Rabbi Soloveitchik clearly stated that precedence goes to the Patriarchal covenant. How do we learn about this covenant? Rabbi Soloveitchik answered that we learn through exemplarity; Abraham was kind to strangers and argued for justice.

so some performance of the mitzvot + some self-identification as cohesive group -- i don't want to be dogmatic about how that looks, tho.

* eg if you want to get married in israel and you're a convert, you need a 'reputable' orthodox conversion

Thanks, Mordy! I have a halakha question about matrilineal descent. Lise Meitner, one of my women-in-science heroes, was a Jew who converted to Christianity later in life. She did not have children, but if she did, could they claim Jewish status even though she converted? Does the timing of the birth/conversion matter? What happens to one's Jewishness (halakhally speaking) when one starts believing in the Trinity or gets baptized or publicly renounces his/her Judaism?

Shabbat Shalom!

Halakhically you cannot convert away from Judaism, so her children would still be 100% Jewish.

And I'm glad you responded bc I was starting to worry that I tl;dr'd above.

On a different note - my wife's cousin's synagogue got tagged by Banksy!

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/964181_456811174431156_624066635_o.jpg

The Hebrew says Rambam - aka Maimonidies - whose popular image the sketch is drawn to depict

nb maybe a photoshop

hahahahaha shop or no, that is nuts

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/366364/Screenshots/ku1z.png

i consider myself very ashkenazi (down to my genetic structure)

there's an easy way to figure this out definitively you know

nbx2 obv i wouldn't sit shiva for a child who married a non-jewish spouse (daughter or son), or denounce them or whatever. i'd just be 'upset.'

I am confused by this part

What is confusing you?

http://blogs.forward.com/the-shmooze/186192/sex-shop-with-a-mezuzah-on-the-door

why wouldn't you sit shiva?

I mean, they are still your Jewish son/daughter - you wouldn't sit shiva for one of your dead progeny, just because they married a non-Jew? that seems kind of harsh.

Oh, I see. That was a reference to a tradition (now mostly fallen out of practice) among certain Orthodox jews to sit shiva when their children marry gentiles - as if to say that the child is now dead to them. I was saying that I wouldn't sit shiva for them for the marriage.

ah! okay gotcha.

Were I to convert, I know exactly what I want the mezuzah at my front door to look like. I asked a Jewish friend if this was weird (that I had a strong aesthetic preference for a hypothetical mezuzah) and she said no, "ask any Jewish woman how she would decorate her Christmas tree and she will tell you *exactly* what it would look like."

So hey I am thinking that I will try to read each week's parsha and then blog it here in under 140 characters or something. Anyone with me? By all means do more insightful parsha commentary; I'm just gonna set the bar reallllllly low for myself.

In other news, I hung out with a tiny Jewish posse tonight (3.5 plus me) talking 'bout Jewish stuff and it was v. fun and gratifying.

This week is uuuuuugh *googles* Genesis 23:1-25:18.

GO!

brother gave me a copy of this to read. pretty interesting so far.

aryeh kaplan has a bunch of cool stuff. if you're into it, check out these two volumes too -
http://www.amazon.com/The-Aryeh-Kaplan-Anthology-Illuminating/dp/0899068669
http://www.amazon.com/The-Aryeh-Kaplan-Anthology-ll/dp/0899068685/

http://transjews.com

pretty much most exciting news of the year to me is that eric andre is jewish + on his next show is making kiddish over wine

"ask any Jewish woman how she would decorate her Christmas tree and she will tell you *exactly* what it would look like."

there is just.... nothing true about this in my experience

well of course it was hyperbole, but in context it was like "oh, so I am not alone in knowing exactly what tallit I would purchase from that place in Safed were I Jewish"

A Yiddishe Momme of Music, Chana Mlotek, Dies at 91
By JOSEPH BERGER
Mrs. Mlotek was a sleuth and archivist of Yiddish music whose song collections allowed thousands to imbibe the mirthful and mournful melodies of the shtetl, ghetto and Yiddish theater.

^RIP Chana. What a curator.

It so happens I came to post on a music-related query, namely: does anyone here have any favorite versions of the song "Erev Shel Shoshanim" that you could recommend? It's a song that my mother cherishes, in part because she strongly associates with my father (who passed away a couple of years ago).

associates it with my father, that is