Parsha for the Song Folk: Lech Lecha, or Only In Israel

Lech Lecha is the parsha of parshiyot for Israeli folk music. It's about going to the Land of Israel for the first time, for G-d's sake. Nothing else in the parsha--Sdom and Amora, the war with all the kings, brit milah, Hagar and Ishmael--comes close to getting as much press as the sedra's first two words.

So what on Earth was so important about going to this newly-Promised Land? What was in Israel that Avraham couldn't find in Mesopotamia?

Lots!

Kibbutzim, moshavim, orange groves, Jerusalem of Gold and more. Let lyricist Ehud Manor and composer Nurit Hirsch explain what is "Only In Israel":

Parsha for the Song Folk: Noah, Hero of the Mammoths and Shibutahs

Well, folks, it's been a while. But, joyously, we've started a whole new cycle of Torah, as we tend to do.

In honor of Parashat Noah, enjoy this thrilling Matti Caspi-Shokolad/Minta/Mastik collaboration:



The song describes Noah gathering all the animals, and being quite the awesome creature-savior/caretaker. However, once the rain stops, the animals are sick of each other and are all clamoring to exit the ark. Of course, the song wouldn't be as fresh without lyricist Yehoram Tahor-Lev's compelling choice of animals to include in the refrain:

The lion and the mammoth,
The hippopotamus and the shibutah.

So, what the heck is a shibutah?

According to the Talmud, it's an usually tasty fish from the Mesopotamian region. So tasty it tastes like meat. A few years back, the Jerusalem Post featured one man's hunt for the elusive poisson. You can read about it here (hat tip to Prof. Shahak for the link). Enjoy!

Now, I know we missed Bereishit--if you need some closure from last week, I recommend the song appropriately titled "Bereishit":



The wistful lyrics, by master poet Ehud Manor, start like this:

בראשית היו שמיים
בראשית היה הים כחול
בראשית היו לי יום ולילה לילה
שעות הרבה כמו חול
בראשית היתה הארץ
דשא עשב רך כשי לה שי לה
בראשית

גן בעדן גן בלי שער
משמיים גשם טוב ניתך
אלוהים היה רחום עם שחר
ולמשמרת נתן הוא לי אותך לי אותך

In English translation (my own):

In the beginning, there were skies
In the beginning, the sea was blue
In the beginning, I had day and night (night)
Hours numerous as sand
In the beginning there was the Earth, [with]
Soft grass like a gift to her
In the beginning

A garden in Eden, a garden without a gate
From the heavens, a good rain flowed
G-d was merciful with foundation
And as a guardian He gave to me you (to me you)...

However, even in the song, once a certain fruit ripens--it has already become evening, and night.

Parsha for the Song Folk - Bo

Sometimes the haftarah contains linguistic parallels to the Torah portion. With this in mind, I bring you "Emor Shalom"--lyrics by Ehud Manor (who else), music by Mati Caspi, sung by the ravishing "Chocolate, Menta Mastik," whose painfully 70s intro will be obvious from the get-go:



"Bo, bo, bo hayom! Emor shalom!"

Enjoy!

To My Most Illustrious Fan: Amazon

Dear Amazon,

It's been a long time since we last spoke. I am sorry if your feelings have been hurt. Even though I gave you my credit card number when I was researching Jews during the Civil War era, I didn't really expect it to go beyond that. I know I have an account with you and everything, but I actually just joined Barnes and Noble...I appreciate your reading the previous blogpost and offering to sell me Sue Fishkoff's book on the Lubavitcher Rebbe, which I actually have flipped through in the past, but I want you to stop. I get most of my loving at the library.

No hard feelings.

Yaelle

Book Candy: Brain Food for the T.V. Lover

I have discovered a new literary genre. I call it Book Candy. Though I am naturally attracted to quality trash like "America's Next Top Model," "16 and Pregnant" and "Glee" (though Sue Sylvester is NOT trash and never will be), I feel unfulfilled after spending hours of my life on it.

Enter Book Candy. That quick 200 pages of journalism-style biography. Or 160 pages vindicating alternative life choices. It's like reality TV in book form. And I love it. It's quick. It's entertaining. It distracts me from my responsibilities and helps me go over my grammar.

So far I've read "Unchosen: The Secret Lives of Hasidic Rebels" and "Chicken Soup With Chopsticks: A Jew's Search for Truth in an Interfaith Relationship." What will be next, you ask? Well, I'm hoping to continue with "Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers" (about the lives of Hasidic girls), and gently ease myself into good old Jonathan Safran Foer and Franz Kafka.

Indeed, my friends. This rocky mountain kreplach fiend has paused from prowling Megavideo. She's grabbed her library card by the bar code and shall consume Book Candy forever more. Or, at the very least, until "Glee" and "America's Next Top Model" return to prime-time.

Parsha for the Song Folk: Vayetzei

All who know me know my biggest weakness: Israeli folk music. But 'tis not a weakness, gentle reader! Last year, I wrote an editorial about my spiritual-intellectual connection to the genre. Israeli folk music, at its most dazzlingly haunting, captures a peculiarly Jewish, Zionist spirit of resilience, spirituality, nostalgia and love. Song lyrics are often laced--sometimes saturated--with biblical references, as becomes quite evident to the lucky listener making even the briefest foray into this alternate, better world.

It struck me that I could put this blog to good use by posting a new, parsha-themed Israeli folk song each week.

Two years ago, I was having a conversation with one of my favorite people about tragic Tanakh figures, and all the obvious characters came up: Iyov, Yirmiyahu, Shimshon. Then, I suggested an individual that took my companion aback: Leah.

Leah. Yaakov's first wife; the older sister of Jacob's second--and favorite--wife, Rachel. Leah. The one who is fertile, who bears six of the twelve tribes, the only wife of four who is buried next to Yaakov in Ma'arat HaMakhpelah in Hevron.

Yet Leah is also the despised wife, the one who is never quite able to capture a share of Yaakov's love equal to that he harbors for Rachel. In this week's parsha, Leah gives each of her newborn children names that symbolize her anguish: "G-d has seen I am unloved"; "Now my husband will surely love me"; "Now my husband will praise me, for I have given him six sons". The names of the Tribes of Israel are charged with unrequited love.

Apparently, I'm not the only one haunted by Leah's story. "Ani Ohev Otakh Leah," written by Ehud Manor, one of Israel's greatest lyricists, is the love song that never was--the love song from Yaakov to Leah. Our sages tell us that Leah and Rachel were identical in every way but one: Rachel's eyes were prettier than Leah's because Leah used to spend so much time crying over her expected marriage to Yaakov's older, evil twin, Esav. By a stroke of luck (and deception), however, Leah too ended up married to the righteous Yaakov. This interpretation finds expression in the chorus of Manor's wistful masterpiece:

הנה ימים רבים חלפו
ושתי ידי עייפו
ועינייך מה יפו
כעיני רחל.
אני אוהב אותך לאה
אוהב אותך גאה
אם אשכח אותך לאה
שמי לא ישראל

"Many years have passed
And my two hands have grown tired;
And oh! how your eyes have become beautiful,
Like the eyes of Rachel.
I love you Leah,
Love you, proud.
If I forget you, Leah,
My name is not Israel."

Below is a clip of the whole song. Enjoy, and Shabbat shalom!

Love Potion Number Nine

If you had the power to create a love potion, would you use it? Who would you use it on? Would you share the recipe?

...Come to think of it, have you ever done any of these things?

Proper Use of Teddy-Bear Stickers

There's no way to sugar-coat it; I was a hoarder child. I collected everything: Beauty and the Beast pogs, beanie babies, plastic animal-shaped beads, and, most passionately of all, stickers. And oh, what a sticker collection it was! Sparkly puppy dogs and butterflies, dozens of world flags, rainbow-colored happy faces, even a fuzzy sticker of Klondike Mike, the mascot of Edmonton's summer Klondike Days festival (from long before Klondike Days was renamed "Capital X").

I was so good at saving my sticker collection for when I would need it most that it outlasted my childhood, my high school years, and, yes, my bachelor's degree. In a purple tin, my papery treasures became relics of a slipped-away reality.

Then, a wonderful thing happened. I became a first grade teacher. And not just any teacher, but a Hebrew School morah, responsible for nine very beautiful, very different neshamot for five whole hours a week. One boy, when he sees "Israeli dance" written at the bottom of the day's schedule tells me with a decisively pitiful pout, "I don't want to dance, I want you to read a Torah story" (very frum!); one little girl can concentrate only if she knows that art is in the first half of the lesson, while a different girl brilliantly answers every question I ask about morality in Genesis and asks me more questions of her own; still another little boy, who wears glasses just like mine, refuses to do art projects like the other children and instead writes out the whole aleph-bet on a blank sheet of paper. This three-foot linguist is always the last to relinquish his marker for snack-time.

But though my charges have unique strengths and preferences, there remains one common motivating force behind their actions: the sticker. Stars are a big thing; with every ten stars by each of their names on the Star Chart they get a big sticker--a googly-eyed monkey, a sea animal, a 3-D fish. (After four rounds of this star collecting, voila! a bigger prize.)

I also have a rather popular sheet of teddy-bear stickers not part of the Star Chart system, which I award the children at various intervals for positive performance. These teddy bears are as different as my students. Some hold balloons, others roses or tulips. A few of them cradle other, baby teddy-bears. Every time I look at them it crosses my mind to save a few for my purple sticker tin, stashed in the top drawer of my white childhood dresser in my parents' basement. Instead, I give them away freely, not only to my students, but to their little brothers and sisters, if they happen to be nearby, or to other boys and girls who happen to stare at them hopefully during dismissal time as they wait for their mommies and daddies to take them home. I realize when I let go of my stickers--strange that it's so easy, after all these years--that I don't need them anymore for myself. And yet I've never needed or loved them more.

I Am A Jew: Tisha B'Av 5670

After the walls came smoldering down and the prophets proved true, once the compassionate women, starving, ate the corpses of their own children and the "face" of G-d went into hiding for two millenia, a new age of Jewish history began: that post-biblical mess of pogroms, expulsions, clubbings and gas that, despite finally having our own army and sovereignty in our eternal Homeland after 2,000 years of exile, continues to influence Jewish consciousness--and probably will until the Temple is rebuilt.

It's not like the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash should have come as a shock to Am Israel--Isaiah and Jeremiah had spent decades warning the people and their kings to cease their immoral, idolatrous ways. However, a shock the destruction undoubtedly was. Judah and its leadership had thought that the merit of the Beit HaMikdash in Jerusalem would protect the nation from subjugation indefinitely and unconditionally.

There have also been many post-exilic points in our history that Jews have felt secure, safe and accepted in their host countries, such as Spain, Poland, Germany and Iraq. Of course, one of the saddest--and scariest--aspects of Tisha B'Av, on which an eerie number of tragedies have occurred, reminds us that there is no such thing as guaranteed security.

The prophetical writings in Tanakh accuse the Jewish People of acting disloyally to G-d prior to the destruction of the Temple. Ironically, Megillat Eicha, which poetically describes G-d's abandoning the Jewish People to the cruelty of their enemies, simultaneously works to repair the gulf between the Jews and G-d. It is G-d that the people must turn to in their distress, G-d who allows this catastrophe to happen, G-d--and not former political allies--who is begged to save His people, to renew their days of old so that they may return to Him in turn.

Tisha B'Av reminds us that regardless of nationality, minhagim, ethnicity or religious denomination, we are one people with One G-d. This day marks not just an event or several events in history, but highlights the interminable desperation and optimism that defines the experience of being a Jew.

I would like to end this post with a simple, but poignant, poem written by Franta Bass in the Terezin ghetto, Czechoslovakia, sometime between the ages of 11 and 13 years. Franta was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944, shortly before his 14th birthday.

~ ~ ~

I AM A JEW
by Franta Bass

I am a Jew and will be a Jew forever.
Even if I should die from hunger,
never will I submit.
I will always fight for my people,
on my honor.
I will never be ashamed of them,
I give my word.

I am proud of my people,
how dignified they are.
Even though I am suppressed,
I will always come back to life.

~ ~ ~

השיבנו ה אליך ונשובה, חדש ימינו כקדם

"She Never Calls, She Never Writes": Here's to You, Marc Goldman

On the 12th floor of the Midtown Sy Syms building sits an executive director, Marc Goldman, blond-haired, photos of his wife and child adorning his desk, available for a friendly conversation or a kind word. For he is not just any executive director, but the executive director of The Career Development Center.

I first met Marc Goldman when I decided to give an informational speech on requesting a kosher meal for a business function. Marc Goldman became my interviewee. I had no paper with me; Marc Goldman supplied some.

Fast forward a few weeks later. It has been weeks since I last promised to write Marc Goldman a friendly email, just to say hi. I promise to write an email that day, the same day I see him at the Career Fair, presiding over the Career Fair domain as only an executive director can. For some strange reason, I get the impression that if this were any era before the 1980s, he'd be carrying around a thick cigar and glancing at a gold pocketwatch every now and then--simply because, as executive director, he could.

While the promised email may not have come on Friday, I am making it up to Marc Goldman with not only an email but a blogpost, even though I use this blog rather infrequently.

So here's to you, Marc Goldman. Every conversation with you inspires me to want to put on my H&M suit jacket and find steady employment.

Smiley Ice

Even though I've never followed sports, watching the Winter Olympics tends to bring out the Canadian patriot in me. As a young child, I learned to figure skate, ski and appreciate the beauty of televised curling tournaments while noshing pistachios alongside my father. Living in a city known for its approximately 7 months of winter, I never really questioned the importance of such activities in the life of a growing girl.

Looking back, every Canadian winter is a kind of everyman's Olympics. In elementary school, we were only allowed to spend recess indoors if the temperature dropped below -23 degrees Celsius, and our 15 minute breaks were preceded by a mandatory period of snowpants, mitten, toque and scarf-donning. Once outside, we made snowmen, licked the metal climbing bars--I only remember getting my tongue stuck once--and played "freeze tag." Our field trips, all of which I took for granted, included skating on the pond at a nearby park and snowshoeing at a nature preservation center.

High school ushered in a new, recess-free era. I vowed I would never go outside again in winter unless I had to, as the temperature (without the windchill) could (and did) easily reach -30 degrees Celsius. In the morning, my father would start the engine of his 14-year-old car about 15 minutes before we left the house. The car was plugged into the house via an extension cord all night to keep the engine from freezing, but without this brief heating-up period, my dad and I might freeze over ourselves before work and school.

Now that I live in the U.S., homeostasis is certainly easier come the winter months. Yet sometimes, when the wind blows warm in February or I find myself having to turn on the air conditioner in a stuffy, inexplicably sweltering building, I miss that coldness that made me so aware of the beating heart struggling to keep me warm; that snuggling under the comforter for another 5 minutes before shivering into the kitchen for hot chocolate and a kiss good morning from my mother; those drives with my father to school in his crumbling vehicle before sunrise, MBD or Shlomo Carlebach songs filling the darkness, driving over the river that divides the city, only the road visible in the streetlamp light, thinking to myself that the world really is a very narrow bridge.

Hiatus Interruptus

Today was double exam day: U.S. History Since 1941 and American Literature II. They both dealt with the same time period and overlapped in a way I would describe as magical.

So now the question of what to do with my evening--start researching my exit thesis, get out the old watercolor pad, drink milk-based Ghirardelli hot chocolate until I moo...

Journalism Meets Jewish Lit

Ah, the magnificence of not having to choose paths. For the last little while, I've been agonizing over two roads less taken: journalism and Jewish literature.

Today I attended the 2009 Harold U. Ribalow Prize ceremony at the UJA's Manhattan location. The book prize this year was awarded to Peter Manseau, a French-Canadian Catholic--whose parents met while his father was a Roman Catholic priest and his mother a nun--who became interested in Yiddish and even helped collect and preserve old Yiddish books of mameloshon speakers across America's East Coast.

I was invited to attend the Hadassah Magazine-sponsored event by the publication's editor in chief, Alan Tigay, a beloved professor of mine. The man understands his student, that's for sure.

The speeches sparkled with fascinating anecdotes--Prof. Tigay's trip to Israel 35 years ago, during which his elderly female relative, Yona, insisted on translating a Hebrew episode of The Defenders to him in Yiddish, despite there being English subtitles; the Forward Association Director Samuel Norwich's announcement that the first Yiddish-English dictionary since 1968 will be published in the next few years, complete with technological terms (did you know that email in Yiddish is "plitzpost"?); and, best of all, Meir Ribalow's description of growing up in his illustrious, talent-seeker father's house: "I grew up in a home where making a lot of money was perfectly respectable--if you didn't have any real talent."

In literature anthologies, Harold U. Ribalow liked to publish then-unknown authors such as Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick and Henry Roth--in other words, the gems of Jewish creativity that have made the last year of my intellectual life worthwhile.

I can't wait to read Manceau's book, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter, a novel about a Boston Catholic student's friendship with an elderly Yiddish speaker, as well as fascination with the Yiddish language and a Yiddishe maidel.

Because the Time Has Come

It recently came to my attention that I'm not biologically predisposed to pen and paper. It's also becoming clear to me that I might have more to say than can fit into a Facebook status; hence, the blog starts churning again--for the first time, like Disney's Bambi coming out of its vault.

So what is it that I have to say to you, who happen to have mistakenly clicked on me?

Well, there's the problem that I'm graduating and have been stone-shopping so I can engrave my future at the end of May (I hate shopping).

That I don't own a single pair of high heels.

That Bernard Malamud and I have had a date for the past 5 months, but I keep standing him up (sorry, The Complete Stories).

But no matter. The re-churning of this blog, originally created for a class I hated, can be a tikkun for the things in life I could be pursuing at this moment, like working on my honors thesis, reading Shir HaShirim or researching how many q's there are in "tikkun."

I think this is the dawn of a new era I can get along with.

Thoughts on Theater in the Orthodox World

Orthodox Theater

The difficulties faced by Orthodox Jews hoping to pursue a career in theater can be disheartening. On Friday nights and Saturdays the show cannot go on, and women do not sing, dance or, in some cases, even act in front of men. Still, pockets of individuals in North America’s Orthodox Jewish community have chosen to pave their own paths in the performing arts, with mixed results.

November 7-10 was the third conference of ATARA, the Arts & Torah Association for Religious Artists. The all-female conference featured hour-long workshops in voice and drama, as well as musical performances by volunteer, professionally trained Orthodox women (most of whom—of course—received training before becoming religious).

Miriam Leah Droz, 32, the conference organizer, says she wants to send the message that there is no conflict between art and Torah. “You have limitations,” she says, acknowledging restrictions like Shabbat and kol isha, the prohibition of a man hearing a woman sing. “This is what our given circumstances are and we’re going to work within those given circumstances to create something beautiful.”

Yes, Droz poured tremendous effort and enthusiasm into the project. Yes, the performers consciously chose to take on the religious statutes that limit the scope of their art. And yes, conference attendees seemed to have enjoyed themselves. Yet it’s hard to not feel depressed watching former opera singers and trained stage actresses confined to ten-minute gigs for a couple hundred women at a—sorry to say it—disorganized bi-annual event. Sure, there is a smattering of events throughout the year. But the Orthodox woman—especially one who won’t even act in front of men, let alone sing—who makes performing her full-time career must be prepared for one hell of an arduous, poorly-paid journey.

That’s not to say there haven’t been some bright lights. Manhattan’s fledgling, family-friendly Mesaper Theater—which features men and women acting together but not singing—recently put on a successful theatrical reading of “Out of the Apple Orchard,” and Rivka Lomiansky’s Toronto-based Orthodox musical theater summer camp for girls aged 7 to 13 will enter its third year in 2009.

There is also hope that New York’s mainstream theater industry might give way to religious concerns if it wants a certain actor badly enough. Reuven Russell, a drama professor at Stern College for Women, recently starred in a three-and-a-half week run of “The Quarrel” at off-Broadway’s Daryl Roth Theatre, which ran on a Sabbath observant schedule.

Familiar with the challenges of an acting career combined with an orthodox lifestyle, Russell encourages his students to write their own material. “Writing your own material,” says Russell, who has traveled with his one man show “Gathering the Sparks” to over 120 cities in the past 20 years, “puts you in charge of content and your audience and how you want to do it.”

Russell believes that trained artists who join the growing ba’al teshuvah (one who adopts orthodoxy after leading a secular lifestyle) movement will increase theater opportunities in the Orthodox world.

The sooner the better, or else the sea of Torah risks quenching the creative fire of its artistic followers.

-Yaelle