The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Judaism

Who is A Jew

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Sticky post- New Content is found below.

Joe Settler has a guest post at The Muqata that made me think about an ongoing debate I have had with some friends. Actually it is a discussion that has been ongoing for years. In simple terms you could say that the topic of the discussion is matrilineal versus patrilineal descent.

For my non-Jewish readers if you want some background on this topic you might want to try reading this and potentially you might also look at this. And don’t forget that two Jews equals three opinions.

Years ago I was very much against recognizing patrilineal descent. It made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like it at all. To be honest, I didn’t really spend any time thinking about it. All I did was accept the position that had been spoonfed to me by others.

However after some consideration I reversed my position on this. In part I base this upon experiences I shared with my own family. For the purpose of clarity my family consists of Orthodox (Both MO and Black Hat), Conservative and Reform Jews as well as those who have intermarried and are raising the children outside of Judaism.

At a family gathering some years ago I had a conversation with a cousin who had become a BT. I grew up on the West Coast and he on the East so we didn’t get to see each other too often. What I did know was that while both parents are Jewish he wasn’t given any sort of religious training. No Bar Mitzvah, just a couple of summers at a Jewish camp.

Not unlike many BTs he came at me with a lot of energy and fervor as to why falling off of the derech was nothing more than a temporary position and how he could help me get back on. During the course of this conversation we landed upon the question of denominations, authentic Judaism and who was right about this and that.

He didn’t like patrilineal descent. He parroted the opinions of some others about watered down Judaism and told me that we couldn’t pick and choose. I disagreed on all accounts. In regard to the topic of the post I found myself arguing in favor of patrilineal descent because of its inclusivity.

Sixty years after the Holocaust I look around and think that there is no reason for us not to try and embrace all Jews and bring them into the fold. I know so many people whose mother may not be Jewish but father is. What does it hurt to encourage them to look at their heritage and to try and bring them home.

Orthodox Judaism is never going to be for everyone. But it is not the only way. Why shouldn’t we make it clear that we would be happy if they were Conservative or Reform. With all the people out there targeting us for conversion I want to get to our own people first because if we do not we know that someone else will be waiting for them with open arms.

Jewish boy served as Nazi ‘mascot’

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Ynet has an interesting story called Jewish boy served as Nazi ‘mascot‘.

Over 50-years after the Second World War came to an end, Alex Kurzem of Australia revealed to his family that he was a Jew who survived the war by being adopted by the SS at the age of five and becoming a Nazi mascot.

Kurzem, 70, revealed his story to his wife and two children in 1997, and now, 10 years later, a book entitled The Mascot and written by Kurzem’s son Mark, has been published in London.

“Who would have believed such a story?” Kurzem told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper over the phone Thursday night.

“Only after my son decided to dedicate himself to research did we realize that I was documented in Nazi propaganda ads and Nazi press and Nazi newsreels where the photographs appearing in the book were taken from. In newsreels I was nicknamed ‘The Reich’s youngest Nazi’.”

Dressed in a little SS uniform and armed with toy gun, Kurzem looked like a real Nazi.”Only one Nazi knew I was Jewish, and he made me swear not to tell,” Kurzem said, “This was a daily struggle, because I was troubled by it every day. Luckily, I did not look Jewish, but more German than the Germans, and so, despite my fears, no one ever doubted my identity.”

Kurzem’s story begins in 1941, when his Belarusian village was invaded by Germany. The then five-year-old boy managed to escape the massacre, but witnessed the death of his mother and two siblings, along with the rest of the villagers.

The young boy wandered through the woods for nine months, surviving on wild berries and handouts, until he was handed over to the Latvian police brigades, which later became incorporated into the Nazi SS.

The Latvians were convinced Kurzem was a Russian orphan of German descent. “They were sure I was a German orphan, and that’s why I deserved to become their mascot,” he said.

Miss Haveil Havalim & You’ll Look Like This

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See the guy above. His kallah forced him to miss the most recent edition of H.H. Clearly the two of them need a little work on Shalom Bayit issues, but that is a different story altogether.

I am hosting Haveil Havalim again this week. If you want to participate send in your posts via the Blog Carnival entry form. And even if you don’t, make sure that you take a few minutes to review the best round up of the Jblogosphere.

See you on Sunday, if not before.

Tisha B’Av- Redemption

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We humans are a superstitious lot. If you think about it you can probably come up with a list of ten superstitions that are relatively well known. And if you really concentrate you can probably come up with a list of personal superstitions. I know that I have my own and in spite of what others may claim it has nothing to do with OCD.

Some of my fellow MOTs find the three weeks to be terribly distressing. They expect and anticipate that bad things will happen to them during this time. I can think of more than one conversation in which someone explained the real reason behind the car breaking down or a summer cold.

It all culminates on Tisha B’Av. On Tisha B’Av we see the end of this cycle and the beginning of a new one. In my mind I always like to think of redemption as being the second and in some ways more important part of the day.

I can attribute this attitude to how we observed Tisha B’Av at camp. The evening was always somber. We’d gather on the tennis court and listen to the chanting of Eicha. Under a star filled sky I’d try to imagine what had happened with varying degrees of success. It is not hard to remember heading back to my tent with a myriad of thoughts running through my mind.

In the morning we’d wake up knowing that although it would be somewhere between 90 and 100 degrees outside there wouldn’t be any food or drink. It was a fast day that often moved slowly. Sometimes it was tough to be living in a place that was designed for so much fun on a day that was supposed to be so somber. But that was only for part of the day because in the afternoon we’d start to think about redemption.

And redemption is something that I find quite interesting. I am not speaking of the days in which moshiach comes. The truth is that I have kind of mixed emotions about that. It is a hard concept to wrap my brain around. It is hard for me to imagine that time and what life will be like. It is not that I can’t do it, but sometimes it is just hard to let go of the concrete realities of the life I have now and picture that particular future.

So when I think about redemption I think of it as a time of growth. I picture it as being a time in which things can and often do get better. Life improves because we make it improve. For me it is a particularly salient point because lately life has been very tough. So now I am doing whatever I can to make that happen. And the thing is that I do feel like a weight is lifting off of my shoulders.

Perhaps that is just my own superstition or perhaps there is something more. All I know is that perception is often a major part of the battle and my own perception is that a positive change in the air. Redemption is here.

Jew Talking To Me

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New Orleans — ‘DO you have a pioneering spirit?” read the recent ad in the Jewish Week newspaper of New York. “Are you searching for a meaningful community where YOU can make a difference?”

To generations of American Jews, the pitch had a familiar ring. But this was not an invitation to settle the Promised Land. It was a call to repopulate New Orleans, a city known less for its Jewish culture than for its shellfish, sin and pre-Lenten carnival.

New Orleans’ Jewish population, in fact, has long been a subtle but important ingredient in this curious dish of a city. But its numbers, though always small, have declined precipitously since Hurricane Katrina. Of the 10,000 Jews in the area before the storm, 7,000 remain.

With fewer dues-paying members, some synagogues and Jewish service agencies have been kept afloat by donations from Jews around the country. But the bulk of that largess, provided by the nonprofit United Jewish Communities, dries up at the end of the year.

The Jewish community is by no means New Orleans’ most afflicted demographic. But Jewish leaders do not want to see a single Jewish institution closed. They don’t wish to consolidate any of the seven synagogues and two Chabad centers that offer a full range of religious observance.

The issue is plain.

“We need people,” said Jackie Gothard, president of Congregation Beth Israel, a modern Orthodox synagogue that has seen more than 40% of its members move away.

So Jewish New Orleans has cooked up a novel solution: a recruitment drive. With an ad campaign crafted by an Israeli public relations firm, the city’s Jewish leaders are hoping to attract at least 1,000 Jews to the city over the next five years. They will appeal to potential pilgrims’ better natures, stressing the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, Hebrew for “healing the world” — or, in this case, healing a broken city.

They also plan to lure them with cash. Starting next month, any Jew who has relocated to the city since Jan. 1 will be eligible for up to $5,500 for moving and housing expenses, interest-free loans of up to $30,000, half-price tuition at Jewish day schools, and a year of free membership at a synagogue and a Jewish community center.

I first read about the plan last week but what really caught my eye was this:

In the late 1990s, during one particularly uninspiring football season, local poet Andrei Codrescu remembers watching with astonishment as a rabbi marched through Jackson Square with a handful of congregants. He was playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” on the shofar.

Now there is something that you don’t see every day.