Translation

Velveteen Rabbi: Translation

I translated a poem by my friend Rachel, and posted it in the comments section of the page where she published the poem (link above). It didn't occur to me that my translation might get a reaction, even from Rachel, who often responds to comments on her blog...

I've never had my poetry translated into Hebrew before. I'm really delighted with the end result, which feels at once like my own poem and like a transformative work which has transmuted my original poem into something wondrous and new.

It's easy to forget that not everybody reads and writes in English and Hebrew, let alone translates between them for fun...

Forward op-ed: Youth to Mainstream Jewish Organizations: We voted for Obama, not for you!

In Machers vs. Obama, the Youth Have Voted – Forward.com

The latest United Jewish Communities report on National Jewish Population Survey data shows we are less likely to give to traditional Jewish organizations than were previous generations. This doesn’t mean we are tuning out from Judaism — we are simply finding different ways to express it. We are finding meaning in an emerging new Judaism of independent minyanim, social justice and alternative Jewish culture. As social media expert Allison Fine wrote in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, if young people are “unhappy with their reception by nonprofit organizations, they will simply start their own efforts — overnight, online, at almost no cost.”

So it's about time that the pre-boomers and older-end boomers running the "Mainstream" Jewish Communal Organizations come to terms with the fact that unlike their younger "siblings" - the younger-end boomers like myself, who have felt alienated but disempowered - the new generation are more willing to cut their own cloth. Just as many synagogues are finding that young people would rather davven soulfully at home (with a minyan gathered on Facebook or Twitter) than go to a synagogue where the prayer is rote, the youth of today are no longer willing to suck up their values in favor of a lunch with Bibi and Yvette!!

The name of the game is generational change, and the ideological distance between the Jewish youth of America and their parallel cohort in Israel is huge. That Israeli cohort is huge, and should someone succeed in bringing them together, they could be a powerful electoral force. Unfortunately, the most recent someone was Lieberman.

Gershom Gorenberg parses Netanyahu's "historic" speech

In every way, Benjamin Netanyahu is NOT Israel's Obama. While it is certainly true that Israel's history is more complicated than Obama laid it out in Cairo, what Bibi fails to understand is that in order to make peace with your enemies, you have to humanize them, recognize them, and respect them for their successes. You can't just say how great you are and expect them to raise their glass in agreement, especially when you don't look so great to them.

Tablet Magazine - A New Read on Jewish Life

Netanyahu’s presentation of the past points to the difference between his speech and Obama’s. Obama, seeking to reshape relations with the Muslim world, traveled to a Muslim city, and voiced respect for Muslim accomplishments. In addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he asked each side to see the other’s suffering—and then to put history in the past and to move forward. Netanyahu chose as his venue the most right-wing university campus in Israel. He called attention only to Israeli accomplishments, and recited a version of history that contained only Jewish suffering and Arab responsibility for the conflict. In the simplest terms, Obama showed that he understands the dynamics of reconciliation; Netanyahu did not.

Jewschool hosts "Love, Hate and the Jewish State" with Makom, NIF, and others

The social justice worldview vs. the Israel worldview | Jewschool

This conflict cuts many other directions: Some who do both social justice activism and Israel activism must compartmentalize their value systems, keeping them separated, balanced. A rare few manage to integrate them fully. And plenty — tragically a great many — do neither.

For the event website, see Love, Hate, and the Jewish State: A Conversation on Israel and Social Justice

This is an event on Thursday, June 18th at 7 pm - 10 pm, at the JCC in Manhattan. But the discussion is much deeper and wider than one event. Too many of us in the 40+ generation are entrenched in stances regarding Israel that we are not noticing that our children and students are just NOT ON BOARD!

Throwing money at them in the form of Birthright tours and MASA grants isn't going to bring them around if the Jewish organizational establishment continues to act as a rubber stamp to Israel's new Right-of-Attila-the-Hun government - EITHER THE KIDS WILL ADOPT OUR VALUES OF SOCIAL JUSTICE AND REJECT ISRAEL, OR THEY WILL ADOPT A HIDEBOUND PRO-ISRAEL JEWISH NATIVISM THAT REJECTS THOSE VALUES.

It ought to be pointed out, and probably will be at the event, that that is indeed what our generation (late baby boomers, gen x, etc) has done - and this is not a good thing, if you look at the results - rather than moving the Jewish world in the direction of, say, Obama, we have become MORE polarized, MORE divided, and LESS tolerant - not only of our non-Jewish neighbors, but of each other.

I pray that the spirit of listening will overcome us, and we will be able to move from the place of polarization and divisiveness to a place of willingness to share our Jewish identities of pro-Israel and pro-socialjustice. I pray that Israel will once again become a beacon of justice in the world, not a focus of injustice as it is today.

JTA's AIPAC slam and the future of Journalism

Ron Kampeas has a very serious, insightful piece on JTA, analyzing the recent AIPAC convention, and the much covered speech by VP Biden.

Yet, Kampeas and the JTA squad also published this video:

While I very much appreciate the upshot - a deep, abiding, and, IMHO, stinging critique of the negative trope of Jewish Identity - eg. that trope that translates for way to many Jews as "the entire meaning of every Jewish Holiday can be summed up in three sentences: 'They wanted to kill us. We won. Let's eat.'" - I found myself angry that the authors of the piece presented it as journalism.

This montage of "threat" "threat" "fear" "fear" is NOT journalism. It might be good television, and it is reporting on a REALLY annoying phenomenon in an entertaining way, making its point very strongly. But the same day it was posted, The Huffington Post posted a supposed slam on FoxNews that just showed that they (Fox) do like everybody else in journalism: cut and paste dialog to suit their story.

A few years back, in the late 1980s, well before there was digital, there was a trend in photography to print the edge of the frame - to show that the picture had not been cropped, to show that in fact what you were seeing was the WHOLE picture, as if that would somehow present the story with more veracity.

Since then, we've all swallowed the spectacle, and many of us, certainly the editors at JTA, understand that there is only angle, there is no more "news," only "views." But the expectation of journalism in the later 20th Century in this country has always been that it will be frameless.

This montage of the AIPAC event, like the critique of 24hr newsTV by Stewart, Colbert, Olbermann, et. al., has a tongue in cheek quality that undermines its attempt at being "serious" journalism.

I imagine that its authors will say that Stewart IS the future of journalism - and there's something to that... but as Stewart said way back in 2004 to Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on CNN's Crossfire - THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEATRE AND JOURNALISM.

A Final Post on Birkat HaChamah

Astronomical Absurdity Or Spiritual Encounter?

Harvard Astronomer Howard Smith writes in the Jewish Week about Birkat HaChamah, Pessach, and Jewish ritual in the New York Jewish Week.

Cutting to the chase:

But historicity is irrelevant. I do not celebrate Passover because I read in a book or learned from a teacher about a story some 2,500 years old. I celebrate Passover to internalize and propagate its covenantal meaning: that I am free by Divine redemption, part of an existential community of religious relationships, and commanded to respond to the human suffering in the world with empathy, compassion and charity.
Birkat HaChamah is an astronomical absurdity. But like the Passover holiday it inaugurates this year, its significance derives not from its physical character but rather from the meaning it conveys by focusing our attention on our own moral attitudes and ethical responsibilities.

Another short piece about the astronomical details of this coming Wednesday morning can be found on Howard's website

Chag Sameach and don't forget to bless God for giving us the Sun!

(IY"H, I'll be doing it all in Madison, WI)

New Jersey Environmental Policy Leader visits Kibbutz Lotan

NJ environment expert hails Israel’s green side | New Jersey Jewish News

Gov. Jon Corzine’s former policy counsel is back from his first trip to Israel with fresh perspectives on sustainability policies in the Jewish state.

“It was incredibly enlightening,” said Adam Zellner, president and CEO of the New Brunswick-based Greener By Design, of his late-February trip.

One highlight of the trip was a visit to Kibbutz Lotan in Israel’s Arava Valley — a kibbutz dedicated to creative ecology, renewable water supplies, and sustainable living, according to Zellner.

“It was phenomenal — the incredible amount of sustainable techniques they’re using,” said Zellner, a specialist in managing environmental assets and energy use. “If we could take that and expand on it, there are incredible applications in the United States. I can’t tell you how impressed I was.”