I started thinking about a new regular feature on KesherTalk a while ago, as a result of Israel and anti-semitism becoming major topics in the political blogosphere. Since Jews are about 2% of the US population and much less than 1% everywhere else in the world but Israel, it was inevitable that Jews and Judaism are often discussed by people who had very superficial knowledge of us until 9-11.
If my perusal of blog posts and comment threads is any gauge, the amount of self-education over the past year has been impressive. However, even with the best will in the world, many people - not only self-avowed Christians but Westerners who consider themselves secular - have unconscious assumptions about what Arthur Waskow calls "food, money, sex, and the rest of life" that are heavily influenced by the Christian-based "background noise" of our culture. Even many Jews, as one book reviewer put it, "are marginal in their Jewish identities [and] often tend (wrongly) to use the dominant culture's translations of Jewish texts as the lens through which to read their own religion."
So this weekly series, Pintele Yid, will recommend what I consider to be quintessentially Jewish works of letters or music or art, not works which purport to "explain" Judaism and Jews to outsiders, but those which transport you inside a Jewish skin and show you the world through Jewish eyes.
Pintele Yid, is literally "Jewish point" in Yiddish, but really means the tiny yet brilliant spark which is the unchanging concentrated essence of Jewishness. (We like to romantically believe that wherever a Jew strays from her people, the pintele yid has the potential to flare up and spark an interest in reviving or deepening the Jewish connection. I am using the phrase a bit differently: this series is for anyone interested in learning more about the essence of the Jewish approach to life.)
Since my dad's yahrzeit is in about a week, I would like to dedicate this series of posts to my father and uncle - practicing yet critical Jews, survivors of European anti-semitism, American immigrant success stories, avid debaters of current events, active intelligent men until their deaths in their late 70s, sons of a moderately secular Polish Jew who became a follower of the Sfas Emes as an adult. (My grandfather Moshe Weiss may have grown up in the Gerer tradition and fallen away from it before returning, but I don't know enough about him to know what his childhood was like. He died before I was born. I do know that he was from Warsaw, not far from Reb Alter's headquarters.)
And who was Reb Yehuda Leib Alter, also called the Sfat Emet (or Sfas Emes in Ashkenazic pronounciation), of the Polish suburb of Ger?
It was 1966, and at New York's Jewish Theological Seminary a rabbinical student was pondering the implications of the student protests heating up just a few blocks away at Columbia. He went into the office of one of his advisers, who happened to be Abraham Joshua Heschel, and asked point-blank: "Professor Heschel, what do you think of radical theology?" Without hesitation, the great man said he thought radical theology was very important, and that it must begin with the Sefat Emet.I hope the Jewish cultural expressions I recommend convey some of that interplay between an awareness of vast spiritual realms and a practical expertise in the mundane. Because, that's pretty much the key to having a pintele yid.
. . . the Gerer rebbes were chasidim in the tradition of Kotsk, a Polish school that advocated sober-minded seriousness and a total lack of spiritual pretension. However, Rabbi Judah Leib departed somewhat from Kotsker this-worldliness and was also influenced by the Chabad tradition of Lubavitch, which definitely embraced mysticism for the masses.
This week's recommendation: In honor of the Iranians who are daily defying their government in pursuit of liberty, and in honor of my beloved Austin TX, my first recommendation is a CD.
Divahn is an all-female band specializing in Mizrachi and Sephardic music in Hebrew, Persian, and Ladino, whose lead singer is the daughter and grand-daughter of Persian cantors. Many of their songs are settings of Jewish liturgy or traditional songs sung during holidays and Shabbat, from Arab and Persian Jewish communities. Although the band hails from my former home of Austin TX and I saw their first public performance, my recommendation is based on their incredible spirit, musicianship, arrangements, and choice of material as well as personal affection. You can preview a selection from their amazing debut CD and buy it on their website, and here's streaming audio of an appearance on New York's WNYC-FM. If you live in the LA area, they'll be performing at the University of Judaism on August 17th.
Week 2.
Week 3.
Week 4.
Week 5.
Week 6.
Week 7.
Week 8.
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