Michelle Citrin and William Levin

Dina Kraft, JTA’s Israel Correspondent met up in Jerusalem with singer Michelle Citrin aka Rosh Hashana Girl and her creative partner and friend William Levin. They are the team who brought the world the two YouTube hits “Twenty Things to do with Matzah” and “I Gotta Love You Rosh Hashana” — part of their attempt to bring a touch of the young, hip, and artistic to being Jewish today.

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An interesting spat has broken out over my recent article about how a Brooklyn minyan, Altshul, is grappling with how to pray for Israel.

In one corner, wearing the blue and white shorts, is Ariel Beery (of Blogs of Zion, PresenTense Magazine).

In the other corner, wearing the shorts of many colors, is Daniel Septimus, the force behind Mixed Multitudes, the blog over at My Jewish Learning.

A quick recap:

• Beery fires the opening salvo with some harsh words about how those falling out of love with the prayer (and, one assumes, with Israel generally) are moving away from identification with the Jewish people and becoming more like Protestants.
• Septimus comes back with a post more incredulous that substantive, and the conversation moves to the comments. Beery: Judaism (in its Zionist incarnation) sees the Jews as a corporate body first, then a religious group. Septimus: How can you expect all Jews to relate to the collective in the same way?
• Altshul arrives at a resolution: They will have a moment of silence during which people can say either the traditional prayer for the state or an alternative version (it’s the first one on this page) or presumably none at all. Beery: That’s the worst solution of all, sacrificing “collective purpose for individual comfort.” Septimus: There will be no Jewish peoplehood if it requires that we all agree.

What I don’t get about Beery’s view is this: He has a problem with Judaism as religion because it’s too narrow and limiting (”acts to tear apart our historical community”), but on the prayer for Israel he wants one version for everyone. Why no parallel worry that a prayer for Israel serves to separate the Zionistically Jewish from the spiritually/culturally/religiously/humanistically Jewish?

You think cleaning a kitchen for Passover is tough? The Associated Press reports on the removal of thousands of notes from the Western Wall:

Poking into crevices between the ancient stones of the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, a senior rabbi and his helpers on Tuesday removed thousands of handwritten notes placed there by visitors who believe their requests will find a shortcut to God by being deposited at Judaism’s holiest site.

The operation is carried out twice each year: before the Passover festival which begins this weekend and at the Jewish New Year in the fall. …

“Millions of people place notes here at the Western Wall with their requests, we take them out in order that more people can place these notes,” said the site’s rabbi, Shmuele Rabinowitz. “So that these notes are not defiled and don’t fall out, we collect then in a seemly and respectful way and bury them on the Mount of Olives,” just across a valley from the Old City.

In his column this week, the editor-in-chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, Andrew Silow-Carroll, reflects on his decision to run an article about Dinnersmith, a new community kitchen in Maplewood, N.J., that “isn’t kosher” but accommodates those who “keep a lenient form of kashrut.”

How does a Jewish newspaper write about an establishment that is clearly nonkosher but goes out of its way to cater to a crowd that keeps a personal form of kashrut out of the home? More to the point, how does it write about it without really ticking off rabbinic authorities who demand that clear lines be drawn between what is certified kosher (that is, carries a hechsher from the local rabbinical council or national agency) and what isn’t?

Lets return to the Dinnersmith dilemma. Plenty of Jews go to nonkosher restaurants but observe what some call “kosher lite” — ranging from no pork or shellfish, to no meat or fowl, to eating cold foods only. Many of them keep kosher homes. (They’re the ones who never ask for doggie bags.)

By the Orthodox rabbis and many Conservative rabbis (but not all, as we’ll see) kosher lite is like being a little bit pregnant — or not pregnant, if you want to be technical, and if you care at all about kashrut, of course you do.

Silow-Carroll asserts that the deeper debate is between “Authority and Autonomy, the milk and meat of modernity.” (more…)

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Miriam Shaviv, of London’s Jewish Chronicle, offers her take on a growing trend:

In the past few months, reports have emerged of more than 100 Orthodox Israelis who have taken to wearing a Muslim-style burka, in the belief this will bring about redemption. They can be seen in Orthodox areas of Tiberias, Safed and even Jerusalem, and are mostly followers of Rabbanit Bruria Keren, a mother of 10 from Ramat Beit Shemesh.

According to the newspaper Ha’aretz, she rarely leaves her home and speaks only for four hours a week to offer “alternative therapy” to her followers.

Some wear more than 10 layers of clothing, including dark socks, with the ends cut off, over their hands. They never wear heels, lest the noise attracts attention.

What to make of this?

(more…)

Sarah Gerke/Creative Commons

As Ami mentioned a couple of weeks back, Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman recently celebrated the brit milah of their son Max Liron. Now the SF Gate brings us the juicier and more hilarious details of the event:

Christina Aguilera insisted on turning her baby son’s bris into a big celebration and decorated her home with penis balloons.

Aguilera, a Catholic, has adopted all the customs and holidays of her husband Jordan Bratman’s religion, and admits she now knows how to celebrate the rite of male circumcision.

The pop star refused to allow the sacred ceremony to become a somber affair and turned the bris into a big party.

She says, “I’m not Jewish, my husband’s Jewish … I never really knew a lot of Jewish people growing up either, so I really had no idea about the bris and all the Jewish holidays. It’s all a learning process for me.

“It was a very sweet experience; we had a lot of close friends come over and experience the bris with us.

“We’re such a non-conventional couple, we had a lot of penis balloons everywhere.”

Enough with the bad news from Amy Winehouse and the Spears sisters. Finally a Mazal Tov in celebrity world:

E! News has learned exclusively that new parents Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman held a bris, the Hebrew baby naming and circumcision ritual ceremony, at their Beverly Hills home Sunday.

More than a dozen family and friends attended the gathering. Jewish rituals aren’t new to the Bratman family. In 2005, the couple wed in a Jewish ceremony in Napa Valley, California.

A bris is typically done on a baby’s eighth day of life, and sure enough, son Max Liron was born Jan. 12. He came home from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center earlier this week.

The ceremony formalizes the child’s name; his middle name, Liron, means “my song” in Hebrew. Fittingly, Christina is “already singing to Max,” we’re told.

Hadassah, the largest Jewish women’s organization, wants you to know: it has launched a campaign to circumcise men.

That must be one engrossing pamphlet.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, the campaign (aimed at reducing AIDS in Africa) is a good thing. It was the photo that made us smile (and cringe).