Shavuot in The Shadow of Isis

dscn0311-copy-1433432006An interesting article in today’s Forward by friend Benjamin Kweskin, who used to plan programming at the Savannah JEA few years back and has moved on to far more exotic adventures:

“Praying at a Jewish Tomb in the Shadow of Isis” recounts his recent trip to the ancient Kurdish town of Al-Qosh to celebrate Shavuot, the holiday that commemorates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai and usually celebrated by eating delicious dairy and praying all night long.

Ben decided to up the ante by visiting an 2500 year-old synagogue in a mountaintop village thrillingly close to ISIS HQ:

This would be my fifth visit to the shrine of Nahum, a prophet of the Israelite exile who famously predicted the destruction of Nineveh, the Assyrian Empire’s mighty capital, in the seventh-century B.C.E….Each time I walk around in this dilapidated structure I graze my fingers over the ancient stones and pillars, and at once I am transported to a different time, when Kurdish Jews still lived here, prior to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

On this most recent pilgrimage to the synagogue, a small part of me was nervous, but not due to fear; I felt that something was pulling me to go to the synagogue on Shavuot and reaffirm some semblance of a Jewish presence in a very Jewish place, 30 miles from the Islamic State — a symbolic act of spiritual resistance.

Read the whole article here.

Fascinating stuff from a brave scholar–though I think I’ll stick with cheesecake and comfortable couches for Shavuot!

#ItWasNeverADress Creator and Former Yenta Youth Group Crony Demolishes Gender Stereotypes

bathroom-sign-gender-equality-it-was-never-a-dress-tania-katan-1Hopefully by now you’ve caught a glimpse of the reworked universal symbol everyone is talking about:

This graphic whipped through the interwebs this weekend with mentions in the New York Times, BoredPanda, the Today Show, HuffPo and about eleventy billion tweets lauding its brilliance.

What better way to “shift perceptions and assumptions about women” than to reveal the ubiquitous bathroom lady as the superhero she was all along?

The campaign was launched last week by Arizona-based software company Axosoft as PR for its Girl in Tech Conference and to promote more female participation in Science, Tech, Engineering, Art and Math, which is always a good thing.

But here’s my favorite kicker: #ItWasNeverADress is the brainchild of a certain Tania Katan, author, activist and the reason why Temple Emanuel youth group meetings in the 1980s were so much fun. She recently left her post as Curator of Performing Arts at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art to become Creator of Code at Axosoft, a surprising switch that shows just how creative and exciting the STEAM world has become.

Super proud to know this woman and watch her genius shine!

Watch Tania ‘splain the campaign here.

Trailer for Amy Winehouse Documentary Makes Me Cry

Back in 2011, Kveller.com reposted “Eulogy for A Hot Mess,” a tribute to not-nice-but-oh-so-talented Jewish Girl Amy Winehouse.

I just watched the trailer of the upcoming documentary about her short life and alcoholic’s death and it made me cry all over again for the loss.

“I don’t think I’m going to be at all famous. I don’t think I could handle it…I’d go mad.”

*sniff*. One of my favorite awards show moments ever was when she couldn’t stop hugging her mama after she won five Grammy’s in 2008; four years later, her parents had to accept their daughter’s award posthumously.

By the way, they are NOT pleased with the doc, due out out on July 3, saying that it’s “both misleading and contains some basic untruths.”

I’ll watch it anyway, just to hear her charming Cockney accent and see what she was like before the fame monster ate her.

In the meantime, I’m jamming to one of Amy’s most amazing concerts, filmed at Glastonbury in 2007, here.

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The Blind Eye Takes Over AZ and Beyond!

stacks_image_1962Shepping HUGE nachas for my mama, Marcia Fine!

Her engrossing and entertaining fourth novel, The Blind Eye: A Sephardic Journey, has been chosen as the winner in the adult category for ONEBOOKAZ, which encourages all Arizonans to participate in one giant book club.

What this means is that basically, my mother is the Oprah of Arizona.

Anyone can download a free copy of The Blind Eye from March 14-June 1, and I look forward to the many discussions about the Jewish history of the Iberian Peninsula with my desert peeps!

Here’s the trailer:

(If anyone is wondering how my dear dad is spending his time these days, how do you think that video got posted? 🙂 )

Also, look for her new book, Paris Lamb, to be released this spring.

Welcome to 2015: Southern Living names Michael Twitty a Changemaker

Listen, when I moved to the deep South from the hippie nether regions of Northern California, I had some serious slaps upside the head.

First, boiled peanuts. Also, the weird thing the South does with marginalizing and often outright ignoring its history of slavery.

And then there’s the secret social code.Other than reading Gone with the Wind when I was 10, I really had no blueprint on how to fit in, and I sure as shit wasn’t gonna make anything pretty to wear out of the curtains.

These days, I feel pretty good about being a Southerner these days. I write a lot about pervasive and persisting socioeconomic and environmental issues in the Civil Society Column for Connect Savannah. I’ve documented some of my misadventures in Confessions of a Hapless–But Not Hopeless–Southern Belle.

And I have to say for the most part, my experience of the last few years is that the South has as vibrant a progressive and hip momentum as anywhere, only with better side dishes.

michael-twitty-lI mean, when Southern Living — the favorite magazine of steel magnolias for over a century — names a black, Jewish renegade slave historian as one of 50 People Who Are Changing the South in 2015, you know change has already come, nu?

Check it out:

This year you might see food historian Michael Twitty of Afroculinaria camped out at landmarks across the South re-creating historical meals with local chefs—one of the many ways Michael is preserving African-American foodways in the region. Be on the lookout for his forthcoming book, The Cooking Gene, which documents his personal journey exploring the connection between food and history from Africa to America.

I had the honor and joy of hanging around the fire with this visionary a few months ago, and I’m so pleased to see him included on a Super List with The Bitter Southerner, feminist beermakers and an Avett Brother.

Mazel tov, Michael!

 

Watch “The Story of the Jews” on PBS or Your Mother Will Plotz

In the last week, I have received numerous e-mails from BOTH of my parents expressing great concern that the Yenta family watch Simon Schama’s Story of the Jews.

pPBS3-18058099dtParts one and two of the five-part miniseries premiere tomorrow Tuesday, March 25 on PBS (check your local affiliate) and apparently if I don’t put our tushies on the couch for it, there will be hell to pay.

Well, not Hell, since Jews don’t believe in all that. (Unless, of course, they want to.) But my folks only noodge when it’s something fairly important, and I don’t like to disappoint them.

“I know it’s a weeknight, but maybe you’ll let the children watch a few minutes…” writes my mother in a style the rest of the family refers to as her Power of Suggestion tone.

Dad goes for more a direct tactic, as in “Your dead grandparents would be very happy, if in fact there is an afterlife and they could know of such things.”

Actually, I don’t need any guilt trips at all to defer my Parks & Rec Netflix viewing for this epic documentary, although some people I’m related to (*cough cough*) might consider it the T.V.-viewing equivalent of a museum full of Torah pointers.

Lushly filmed at archaeological sites, medieval synagogues, Venetian ghettoes and Palestinian neighborhoods, it promises to present Jewish history in relate-able, relevant terms as well as in the context of modern culture itself.

“What ties us together is a story, the story kept in our heads and hearts,” says Simon Schama in the preview.We told our story to survive. We are our story.”

It’s a salient timing as we’re readying ourselves and our homes for our Passover seders on Monday, April 14, when we will tell one of the most important parts of the Jewish story over five courses, four cups of wine, several songs in Hebrew AND Yiddish and still have to do the dishes. Maybe this will bring a little clarity to the table.

If you need more intellectual coercion, check out Adam Kirsch’s lengthy but insightful review on Tablet.com. He makes the case just upon the visuals alone—even as he points out that as a religion without icons but plenty of tsuris, there aren’t that many grand edifices to revere:

“There is no Jewish Notre Dame,” Kirsch writes wryly.

He is also clear that the series does not “ignore” the Holocaust nor does it let it “dominate” this narrative, which may be a relief for those who are learning—with great respect—to define their Jewish identity as more than Hitler’s victims. Our story—and whether you’re Jew, Christian or Muslim, this is indeed your story, too—is bigger, bolder and more beautiful than that. Plus, it’s nowhere near finished yet.

So, yes, Mom and Dad, we’ll be parking it on the faux leather sofa tomorrow night under the Harry Potter throw blanket. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty excited about it.

And not just because it makes me feel less guilty about abbreviating the seder.

 

 

The Savannah-Slany Torah Connection

I promised you another coincidental Torah tale last week, and this yenta keeps her word. It’s a perfect story to honor all the soldiers who fought in WWII and veterans everywhere:

Mr. Herbert Victor with the Slany Torah

Mr. Herbert Victor with the Slany Torah

We have a Torah in the ark at Congregation Mickve Israel that comes from a trove of over 1500 scrolls recovered from Prague after WWII. Known as “The Holocaust Torahs,” they had been gathered up by Czech Jews as the Nazis made their horrific way across Europe and stored in a “museum” for the Germans. Most of those brave souls perished in Terezin and Auschwitz, but the Torahs survived and were moved to London in 1964.

From there the Holocaust Torahs have been distributed to synagogues around the globe as part of the Memorial Scrolls Trust — “on long term loan,” explains MI matriarch and mameleh Phoebe Kerness in an article she wrote for the temple newsletter. The communities they once belonged to destroyed forever, the scrolls were adopted by their new stewards “with the stipulation that they play a prominent and meaningful part in the religious and educational life of the institutions responsible for their safekeeping and condition.”

Our Torah comes from the little Bohemian town of Slany, about 12 miles northwest of Prague, and was scribed in 1890. Indeed, it has played a prominent and meaningful part of Jewish life in Savannah since it arrived in 1968: The Slany Torah is carried through the sanctuary and read from every Saturday. It’s recently been refurbished and re-koshered in Florida, thanks to the efforts Phoebe and her husband, Jules.

But it wasn’t until last summer that congregant Kerri Rosen actually asked, “Where is Slany, anyway?”

The former synagogue in Slany, Czech Republic, now a police station.

The former synagogue in Slany, Czech Republic, now a police station.

And thus began the adventure: Historian and Sunday School teacher supreme Teresa Victor found that the Jews of Slany has been expelled in 1458 but returned a few hundred years later to build a prominent synagogue in 1865. That part of Europe was never particularly friendly to our kind, and the population declined by 1930. In 1942, the remaining 81 Jews in Slany were rounded up for the camps. There are no Jews there today. The former synagogue now houses the police department.

Ms. Victor also discovered that in March 1945, the Eighth Air Force of the United States fought a bloody battle near Prague, bringing down a B-17 bomber over Slany and killing eight airmen. Here comes the meshuggeh part:

This plane came from a squadron known as “The Mighty Eighth,” founded in Savannah and referred to as “the greatest air armada in history.” The Eighth’s soldiers earned 17 Medals of Honor, 220 Distinguished Service Crosses, 850 Silver Stars, 7,000 Purple Hearts 46,000 Air Medals — and also suffered half of the entire casualty of the entire war. All were American heroes, and eight of them began their last journey from right here in Savannah, Georgia to die fighting in the town of Slany.

The temple contacted Mickve Israel bar mitzvah boy and former El Yenta Man compatriot Jeffrey Young, who defected from Savannah for Prague after college and has been living la vie bohème ever since. Young took the ten-minute trip to Slany and found the memorial built from the wreckage of the plane that reads “In memory of the crew of the American B-17 bomber shot down at this spot on 2 March 1945.”

The Slany memorial to the fallen soldiers of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, based out of Savannah, GA.

The Slany memorial to the fallen soldiers of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, based out of Savannah, GA.

Our rabbi Robert Haas traveled there this summer to see it, and all of us are marveling at the serendipity: Savannah honors its Slany Torah, and Slany honors Savannah’s fallen soldiers.

This Saturday for Veterans Day weekend, Mickve Israel is holding a special Shabbat service at the sublime chapel at the Mighty Eighth Museum (which happens to be one of the most stupendous installations in the land.) The Slany Scroll will be there; reservations are required.

So how’s that for interconnectedness? Some may call it coincidence, others the work of the Divine. All I know is that the next time Little Yenta Girl is called up to undress the Slany Torah, her hands had better not be sticky.

 

 

Don’t F*$# With The Rabbi

nvts12011150357.rp350x350He’s not ordained yet, but Yuri Foreman showed the world what Torah study plus a lot of speed bag training can do:

The Belarus-born, Israeli-bred, Brooklyn-based boxer punched his way to victory over Daniel Santos last Saturday after Shabbos, taking Santos’ title as the Welterweight Champion of the world. Which means that along with Orthodox junior welterweight champ Dmitiry Salita, it’s only a matter of time before synagogues start setting up Las Vegas-style boxing rings on the bima after Havdalah, which would be AWESOME.

For another compelling example of an a**-kicking Jew, look no future than Foreman’s wife, Leyla Leidecker: The future rebbetzin is an amateur boxer herself who directed the documentary “Golden Gloves” – check out the trailer here. She also happens to be GORGEOUS.

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All I have to say is that I hope they have lots of fast-fisted, observant children who form a Maccabean-like army and scare the pants off Iran.

Amy W. To Make Her Mother Proud?

amynmanWell, well, well, for all her boobie tattoos and drunken sailor swearing, could it be that Amy Winehouse is just a traditional girl at heart? The tabloids are aflurry with the news that Judaism’s most badly behaved celebrity is engaged to on-again, off-again beau Blake Fielder-Civil after making him wait 24 hours before accepting his proposal. “He proposed at home a few days ago and I took a day to finally agree. Obviously we are both young and it is frightening.”

Perhaps even freakier is that she’s planning to marry him under the chuppah — Blake has converted to Judaism in what appears to be an instantaneous rabbinical transformation to accomodate this summer’s wedding date. Just s’long as you know ya don’t eat the broken glass after you stomp on it, you crazy kids.

Shenanigans aside, I stand by Amy’s Back to Black as one of the best albums in ages for all ages (um, that is, over the age of 18). I even downloaded it for my father-in-law for his birthday yesterday and let’s just say our musical tastes rarely collide. He was amazed and kept looking at the album cover. “How does this anemic-looking Jewish girl sound like a 300 pound black woman?” he kept asking — and you know you’re thinking the same thing. Just proves that soul knows no color, age or size.