JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Oy, my aching feet

By Lisa Hostein · October 2, 2008

I wonder if the London Review of Books knew how timely its review of a new book, Jews and Shoes, would be - coming out during Rosh Hashanah, when we spend hours on our feet at shul, and before Yom Kippur, when we barely get to sit at all. The review of the book, a collection of essays edited by Edna Nahshon, provides a fascinating read on the various links between Jews and shoes - from Freud to flat-footedness to the Wandering Jew, with this introduction:

I supposed that a book called Jews and Shoes was going to be either a bumper book of Jewish jokes about schlepping and cobbling, or a severe cultural studies analysis of the nature and symbolic value of footwear in Jewish society through the ages. Aside from a mention of how Ferragamo got his start by popularising the strappy shoe for Hollywood lovelies after being commissioned by Cecil B. DeMille to make 12,000 sandals for the original 1923 version of The Ten Commandments, there is nothing to be found on high-end modern footwear. Jews and Shoes turns out indeed to be largely about schlepping and cobbling, but is entirely devoid of jokes.

The reviewer, however, displays a bit of ignorance when she starts out by saying she knows of no significant, modern-day Jewish shoe designer. Maybe Stuart Weitzman should send her a special High Holiday pair that will hold up well for Kol Nidre.

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Taking on Chabad

By Ben Harris · September 29, 2008

The latest issue of New Voices, the Jewish student magazine, is devoted entirely to Chabad, whose rabbis are rising in prominence on college campuses and often challenging the hegemony of the local Hillel chapters. As one JTA staffer noted, it’s pretty “ballsy” of NV to take on Lubavitch, though takedown is probably a more accurate description.

The articles – about a Chabad renegade and Iraq war vet, about the subordinate role of the typical Chabad rabbi’s wife, about the controversy surrounding Princeton’s Chabad rabbi, about the movement’s latent messianism, about its role in the settler movement (a topic virtually ignored by the media) – paint a picture of the movement that is almost uniformly negative. There are even two articles about the scandal at Agriprocessors, a company whose owners are Chabad affiliated but otherwise have little apparent connection to Jewish campus life.

As David Samuels contends in the latest issue of New York, Chabad’s success has much to do with filling a spiritual gap left by the existing Jewish communal infrastructure. On campuses, that indictment would extend to Hillel and, yes, the Jewish Student Press Service, which publishes New Voices. If Samuels is right, then the pushback from New Voices can be seen as an attempt to reclaim some of its lost territory – or to de-legitimize the competition.

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Edwin Black and Oil do mix

By Ami Eden · September 22, 2008

Occasional JTA contributor Edwin Black is out with his latest book: ”The Plan: If the Oil Stops, No One Has Plan – Until Now.” Check out the trailer.

Plus, there’s a kickoff column in the Jerusalem Post:

It will come as a shock to most Americans and the media, but as the election reaches a crescendo on the issue of preparedness and energy, neither presidential candidate - nor anyone in local, state or federal government - has developed a contingency plan in the event of a protracted oil cut-off. It is not even being discussed. Government has prepared for hurricanes, anthrax, terrorism and every other disaster, but not the one threatened daily - a protracted oil stoppage, whether caused by terrorism, intervention in the Persian Gulf or a natural disaster. ...

our allies have developed oil contingency legislation and other administrative plans that will permit their nations to survive a stoppage. These measures include severe vehicle traffic reductions, enabling fast alternative fuel production and mass vehicle retrofitting, as well as rush public transit enhancement, and mandated changes in driving habits. Unquestionably, for America to survive such a catastrophe will require a very painful, multilayered program of immediate-term, short-term, mid-term and long-term fixes that will change our society and transform it off oil. The nation has no real alternative fuel or retrofitting infrastructure. But every lawmaker, mayor, governor and every candidate must develop such a plan - and now.

If the country waits until the disaster strikes, until the oil is shut off, we have little or no chance. If we start now, the day before, we can survive. How we start and when we start will define the degree of pain or success of this process.

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Roving Rabbis get wired

By Ben Harris · August 18, 2008

Roving Rabbis, a 65-year-old Chabad summer program that sends rabbinical students out to service remote Jewish communities, has joined the Internet age. This summer, readers can offer the 400 rabbis tips about where to find Jews in the far-flung spots they’ll be visiting. You can also follow their exploits on their blog, which keeps the public appraised of every hung mezuzah, kashered kitchen, and wrapped tefillin. Some of the entries are pretty wild, like visiting a Jewish inmate in a maximum security mental hospital in Connecticut, or finding a Yiddish speaker in Cartagena.

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No math, no science, no English for Israel’s haredim

By Uriel Heilman · August 18, 2008

Why should yeshiva boys need to know the multiplication tables or that the Earth revolves around the sun?

In an 11th-hour measure, the Knesset passed a law last month preserving public funding for haredi schools whose students study nothing other than Jewish studies. No math, no science, no English. The L.A. Times has a decent backgrounder on the debate over state funding of yeshivas.

This reminds me of two revealing conversations I had with Israeli haredim in recent years that evinced their lack of basic knowledge of how the world works. In one, a haredi was surprised to learn that the sun was a star. In the other, a haredi man patiently explained to me that after the sun sets, it warms the waters of the earth because it heats them from below-ground upward.

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NYT: Tattoos fit for Jews

By Ami Eden · July 16, 2008

The New York Times reports today that you shouldn’t believe your grandmother: Tattoos are kosher everything your grandmother told you about tattoos:

Nearly every Jew, from those who go to synagogue only on holidays to those who dutifully follow Jewish law, has heard that adage. It has deterred many from being inked, even as tattoos have become widespread among N.B.A. players and housewives alike.

According to a 2007 poll of 1,500 people conducted by the Pew Research Center, 36 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds and 40 percent of 26- to 40-year-olds have at least one tattoo. Still, even Larry David was so haunted by the cemetery edict that he wrote an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in which he pays off a gravedigger to have his mother reburied in a Jewish cemetery despite a small tattoo on her behind.

But the edict isn’t true. The eight rabbinical scholars interviewed for this article, from institutions like the Jewish Theological Seminary and Yeshiva University, said it’s an urban legend. It was most likely started because a specific cemetery had a policy against tattoos. Jewish parents and grandparents picked up on it and over time, their distaste for tattoos was presented as scriptural doctrine.

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Olmert’s (former) Evagelical Christian friends

By Ami Eden · July 16, 2008

Reuters looks at Ehud Olmert’s ties to Evangelical Christians, and how they’ve suffered due to his peace policies:

An Israeli investigation into fraud and corruption has turned a spotlight on how Ehud Olmert, when mayor of Jerusalem, raised funds from rich American Jews.

Less in view have been fruitful financial ties Olmert enjoyed with evangelical Christians in the United States, a relationship that became strained after the prime minister launched talks with Palestinians that could return parts of Jerusalem to Arab rule. ...

Olmert’s relationship with many Christians has soured.

“I think he’s changed over the years and power can do that,” said one pastor who attended Olmert’s fundraisers in the past.

“I don’t think it’s the same Ehud Olmert that we knew.”

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Escape from the shtetl

By Ami Eden · July 15, 2008

New York magazine has a lengthy story on Gitty Grunwald, who left the Satmar enclave in Kiryas Joel, and is now fighting for custody of her small daughter:

In early 2007, Gitty fled Kiryas Joel for good, taking Esther Miriam with her. At first, they lived in the relatively relaxed frum (Orthodox) community of Monsey, New York, then moved to Brooklyn. “It was just the two of us. I loved it,” Gitty says. Then in January of this year, as Esther Miriam was walked with her class to a Flatbush playground, she was taken, says Gitty. ...

“Some KJ guys snatched her off the street. Esther Miriam said they were wearing masks. All she remembers was crying, crying so hard,” Gitty says, calling it the worst day of her life. “When they told me what happened, I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was being suffocated. I still do.”

Since then, Esther Miriam has been in KJ, at times in the house of Yoely’s parents, as Gitty works through the courts, both secular and rabbinical, to try to regain custody of her daughter. For the time being, Gitty says, “Yoely calls the shots, when I can see my daughter and where.”

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Trouble with Al Hurra

By Ben Harris · June 23, 2008

Both the Washington Post and 60 Minutes have major pieces on Al Hurra, the U.S. taxpayer-funded satellite television station that is supposed to provide a more American-friendly perspective on the world to the Arabic-speaking masses. The channel was intended to be a major plank of U.S. efforts to improve its image in the Middle East and a vital weapon in the propaganda war against Al Qaeda. But as both pieces show, the station has not lived up to its promise.

60 Minutes reports:

The channel got off to a bad start in 2004. After Israel assassinated the founder of the militant group Hamas, Al Hurra stuck with a cooking show.

“They were doing a program on how to make salmon sandwiches for weddings. Well, how can you be credible if you don’t cover one of the biggest stories of the day, in the Middle East?” asks Larry Register, a former CNN executive with 20 years of experience, who was brought in a-year-and-half ago to rescue the channel.

But Register says he found his staff of Arabs, imported from the region, divided along religious, ethnic and political lines. Asked what state the channel was in when he first walked in the Al Hurra newsroom, Register tells Pelley, “Dysfunctional, extremely dysfunctional.”

“Words like militias were thrown around,” he explains. “There was this militia that was in charge of this, and this militia in charge of that.”

“It felt like you were living in the Middle East. It felt like somebody had picked up the Middle East and brought it to Springfield, Virginia, of all places,” Register remembers.

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Al-Dura conspiracy theories

By Uriel Heilman · June 20, 2008

After ridiculing claims by Jewish right-wingers that the iconic shooting of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura was a hoax, the Jerusalem Post’s Larry Derfner responds to a rebuttal by Richard Landes and Philippe Karsenty with a detailed analysis of what is, and isn’t, known about the shooting.

Karsenty is the French Jewish media watchdog who was sued in a French court for claiming the al-Dura incident, which helped fuel the flames of the second intifada, was staged. Karsenty initially was found guilty of defaming the journalist who filed the report, France 2 TV’s Charles Enderlin, but last month a French appeals court overturned the verdict, supporting Karsenty’s right to charge that the incident was a hoax.

The upshot? Derfner agrees with Karsenty, the IDF and Jewish observers who say that al-Dura likely was killed by Palestinian fire, not by Israeli troops, but Derfner says there’s no evidence to show the boy’s shooting was staged:

In short, the French appeals court upheld Karsenty’s legal right to cry hoax. It by no means upheld the substance of his claim. There are light years of difference between the two.

Yet while it’s pure Jewish paranoia to claim that Enderlin and his co-conspirators knew all along that the Palestinians killed al-Dura, and it’s way beyond paranoia to think the Palestinians killed the boy deliberately or that he never died at all.

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