Life Imitates Hafgonas

In the old Days there was an expression ווי עס קריסטעלט זיך אזוי איד'לט זיך = "As it goes by the X-tians so goes it by the Jews". IOW the inexorable force of cultural osmosis on a minority in the diaspora leads to a lot of monkey-see-monkey-do blurring of Havdala lines. But it seems that in our current Topsy-turvy world  "As it goes by the Jews... so goes it by the X-tians".

Much of the sane Jewish world was shocked and scandalized by images of insane self-styled Kanoim co-opting Holocaust imagery at a protest of theirs a few months back.  They dressed themselves and their family members in Concentration Camp and Ghetto regalia prominently featuring the געלע לאטע (the yellow Mogen Dovid patch with the word "Jude", "Jood" or "Juif" emblazoned on it), had their little children pose in imitation of the iconic image of the child emerging from the sewers of the Warsaw ghetto after the uprising and sat in mock prison cells.  The rest of us were  aghast at their historical ignorance, cynical manipulation and brass/ harlot-forehead-brazen effrontery to the martyrs of our People.

Now, a few months later, I think that we can add "making holocaust trivialization acceptable in polite society again" to their rap sheet.

It seems that a schemata manufacturer called "Urban Outfitters" thought that a T-Shirt with a געלע לאטע theme would be a "hip" product. Had Jews from Central Casting such as the Hafgona organizing Meah Sheorim denizens not already made minced-meat out of the געלע לאטע I don't think that designing and marketing such a product would have occurred to even the most debauched and perverse of fashion designers.

The usual suspects are raising cries of protest and will, no doubt, be criticized in the days and weeks to come as being overly-sensitive and playing into the hands of "Urban Outfitters" in the days to come.  But absent the Meah Sheorim Hafgonos I doubt that the current ADL and Commentary Magazine hand-wringing would ever have been necessary.

Yasser Arafat once infamously employed the following pretzel-like cogency : "How can I be called an anti-Semite when I am a Semite myself?"  Similarly, how can we accuse "Urban Outfitters" of incredibly poor taste, being offensive to Jews and/or marketing an anti-Semitic product when Jews themselves have abused the image even more egregiously?
בא המבדיל והעמידן על אחת 
"Those who cannot tolerate Havdala cannot appreciate Qedusha"

Another Sign of the Coming Apocalypse

Of all the various Havdala laws instituted by Khaza"l few are more overtly Havdala maintaining than the outlawing of סתם יינם. If not for the foresight of Khaza"l in drying up the vintners lubricants of the gears of social interaction that culminate in Jewish sons marrying gentile daughters there would be no such thing as non-kosher wine and no need for kosher wine (except, perhaps, kosher l'Pesakh wine).

I wonder which social scientist could have predicted that just as snobbish kosher connoisseurs are developing a taste for flash-pasteurized cabs and Merlots , non-Jewish hip-hop artists have made sweetish Bartenura  Moscato d'Asti (rated number 1 by Moscato Mom) their beverage of choice.

As reported today in an NYC tabloid "Bartenura, selling for about $15, is a kosher version in a deep blue bottle. It’s expected to sell 400,000 cases this year, a record for any kosher wine.  According to Nathan Herzog of brand owner Royal Wine, 85 percent of Bartenura buyers don’t know or care that it’s kosher, or that it’s named for a 15th-century Italian rabbi. They just know what they like."

I also wonder how khaza"l would react to edgy, at-risk Jewish teenagers concluding that they can now go clubbing and drink along with all the other club-kids since the wine is kosher anyway. I doubt that they'd be extending anyone a Mazal Tuff, not even Nathan Herzog.
בא המבדיל והעמידן על אחת 
"Those who cannot tolerate Havdala cannot appreciate Qedusha"

Modzitz Finally Gets the Treatment it Deserves

Jewish Music officianados of discriminating taste (such as my own) have always made this self-evident havdala:  There is Modzitz and then there is everything else.  Modzitz music is to Neginah what Brisk is to Lomdus; the seamless fusion of the true and the beautiful.

I'm not sure of the back story to these clips.  I don't know who is responsible for scoring Modzitzer compositions for performance by a full symphony orchestra but whoever did it I'm thankful.The Imrei Shoul was prolific composer and referred to many of his own creations as operas.  Not only was he a great composer but a fabulous singer (in the bombastisha [that's a compliment] style) as well. I heard from survivors who had heard him at the height of his powers in Warsaw and Otwock as having possessed א גאנצע ארקעסטרא אין זיין האלץ = "a symphony Orchestra in his larynx". And while this may have been some Hagiographical  hyperbole it's wonderful to see his works performed by a true symphony Orchestra at last.

I have yet to view the entirety of the clips myself and my only critiques so far relate to the song selection (the first number is hardly one of the greatest hits) and the conductor with the kipah, tzitzit and pained expression.  Having a frum Maestro conduct the Orchestra makes it look like a novelty act.  they should have gotten Zubin Mehta.  o well.

When a Survival Mechanism Turns Destructive

As Jews in the uber-hospitable Goldeneh Golus of the USA and many other post-modern western democracies we are, for the most part, unconscious of just what tiny ephemeral blips on the historical screens we are. Our historical myopia leaves us blind to many of the "default settings" of the Golus experience. We know little of the "Gulis Yids" trials, tribulations and (the point of this post) survival mechanisms and, on a visceral level, we feel these even less.

We live under the aegis of a Constitution that has erected a high and impregnable wall between church and state. In the tolerant society that has, forgive the expression, evolved under this document everyone is more or less, allowed to do their own thing unmolested. Over the last several decades we've evolved to a point where very few people insinuate themselves into their neighbors religious beliefs and practices, much less pressure them to convert to their own. Other than slamming our doors in the face of the occasional stray Mormon or J-Witness door-to-door missionary the most severe proselytizing most of us have ever had to experience was at the hands of a Lubavitcher or Schicknik Breslover. Even those encounters are throw-it-back-in-their-faces-and-live-to-tell-the-tale mild.

But it was not always so. There were too many Golus episodes to recount when Jews were faced with the stark choices of either adopting Paganism, X-tianity or Islam or suffering expulsion, ghettoization and/or death. Even when shmad and public disputations were not the active policy of the Church-State governmental authorities there was an ongoing ambiance of oppression expressed in confiscatory taxation, blood-libels and exclusion from universities, guilds and land-ownership. The Goyim always provided the Gulis Yid with plenty of both carrot and stick incentives to drop their Yiddishkeit and adopt the dominant religion.

Among the Gulis Yids survival mechanisms was an ingrained, hard-boiled, skeptical, snarky cynicism about the fundamentals of the dominant religion. Deep in the marrow of their bones the Gulis Yid recognized the Big Lie of the dominant religion. This bone-marrow sensibility lent him/her the strength to withstand both the fear of punishment inherent in rejection and the love of reward concomitant with accepting the dominant religion. After all, conversion was tantamount to living a lie and actively participating in a farce for a lifetime.

Whereas contemporary frum Jews are, in the main, ignorant of the fundamental concepts of X-tianity and Islam, the historical Gulis Yid was well aware of them and, among their own, mocked them mercilessly in the spirit of "כל ליצנותא אסירא בר מליצנותא דעבודה זרה" = "All jesting is forbidden except that which mocks idolatry."

Such delicious facetious Yiddishisms as נישט געשטויגען און נישט געפלויגען =" it doesn't rise and it doesn't fly" grabs the X-tian belief in Jesus YM"S alleged resurrection and ascent to heaven by the lapels and pokes it in the eye. רייד מיך נישט איין א קינד אין בויך אריין = "Don't try to talk a child into my belly" gives lie to the X-tian belief in virgin conception and birth. As the Rambam referred to Muhammad as a Mishiginer I am certain that there are cognates for these witticisms in Ladino or other Sepahrdic lingua francas that savage the Iqarei haDat of Islam . (I would much appreciate if any readers familiar with them would relate them in the comment thread.) Until the mid nineteenth century most Jews lived in homogeneous communities in which almost all Jewish residents practiced the same kind of Judaism. As all Jews held the same deeply cherished beliefs it would hardly occur to any of the Jewish snarkmeisters to mock the fundamentals of faith of another Jew.

Enter massive immigrations from all over the Jewish world to North America and pre-state Palestine, the dislocations and upheavals of two World Wars, the Holocaust, the rise of the State of Israel, The Kiruv Movement, the liberation of Soviet Jewry etc. Now you've got heterogeneous communities in which Jewish residents practicing many kinds of Judaism predicated on diverse fundamentals live cheek-by-jowl with one another. As these Jews hold of assorted deeply cherished beliefs, a few of which are mutually exclusive, is it really surprising that the Jewish snarkmeisters would now begin training their mockery sniper-scopes on the fundamentals of faith of other Jews?

Something akin to this has always been the difference between monotheists and atheists. It's not that all committed monotheists are Hofferian True Believers. Having rejected and repudiated every religion but their own most monotheists are also great scoffers and skeptics. An atheist merely believes in one god fewer than a monotheist does.

IMO a good part of the rancor and divisiveness of Kharedi/ Ortho Judaism derives from our innate national/ cultural iconoclasm and skepticism. While this skepticism helped us survive as Jews through a long blood and tear soaked exile it's not a faucet that we can turn on and off at will. We spent millenia as a minority religion and honed our scoffing/ skepticism stilettos to a sharp, hard, serrated edge. Once unsheathed it's hard to put the blade back in it's scabbard. And now that the X-tian menace has mostly vanished, we have no problem turning it on one another.
This is why there is precious little intra-Jewish ecumenism. Most Jews who are not themselves MO, RWMO, LWMO, Young Israel, Chofetz Chaim, Kharedi, Khardal, Khavakuk, Yeshivish, Brisk, Satmar, Lubavitch , Ger, Belz, Yerushalmi, Chazon Ish-nik, Breslov, Sha"s, TIDE-Yekkish,Vizhnitz, Slonim, Stolin et al feel very strongly that adherents of the above mentioned stripes-in-the-spectrum have completely missed the boat, are krum as pretzels and in some cases down-right apikorsish.

What was once a purely defensive weapon has now become an instrument of offense, division, control, vituperation and marginalization. The revolution in Jewish demographics and migratory patterns, like Saturn, devours its own children.
The Satmar Rebbe ZY"A was down on Chasidus, pronouncing it a forgotten art. (Apparently he viewed himself more as a Kehila builder a la Rav Breuer rather than as a Chasidic master). He once quipped to the Square Rebbe ZY"A "We're not so different you and I. We are really very close. It's just that I believe in one Rebbe fewer than you do." That is to say, none at all. As for humble me, I believe in one anti-Zionist, Chasidus-bashing ideologue fewer than the Satmar Rebbe ZY"A i.e. I am an agnostic about the one that he ZY"A believed in.

While I usually rail against anyone and anything that glosses over the הבדלה בין ישראל לעמים to ameliorate the societal problem described here I think that it would be worthwhile to practice a little ויתערבו בגויים וילמדו ממעשיהם . The dominant culture today does not merely tolerate Jews well, it tolerates everyone well. It glosses over differences and emphasizes that we are one big happy family of man, that there are many more points that we have in common than there are dividing us, that everyones beliefs are worthy of respect and dignity, that no one has an exclusive patent on the one and only truth.

Growing savvy to our unique place in the history of the Diaspora wouldn't we be wise to co-opt these attitudes and retrofit them to Jewish specs? I have a dream that one day my children, big and little, will live in a Jewry that does not merely tolerate other Jews in identical garb well, but tolerates ALL Shomrei Mitzvah well. A Jewry that glosses over differences and emphasizes that we are one big happy family of the Avos and Imahos, that there are many more points that we have in common than there are dividing us, that everyones shitos, deos and minhogim are worthy of respect and dignity, that no one derekh has an exclusive patent on the one and only truth.

Who knows maybe to do so would be some kind of העלת ניצוצות and יתוסף עליהם גרים.
Qedusha-Havdala...Have you glossed over YOURS today??? Hmmm???

Whetting the Appetite...

... of my three regular readers let me say that there's some meat-an'-potatoes a' cookin in the kitchen. While the blog is comatose, not having posted in 20 days and counting, it is not quite dead yet.

Bl"n at 12:05 EST a new essay will post that is typically long-winded yet succinct, profound yet insulting-to-everyones-intelligence בבחינת פשיטא מאי קא משמע לן and circuitous yet straightforward. I also hope to include some dandy images.

I hope that my loyal following will find it to be worth having waited for.