Choice through knowledge

[UPDATE: Some people were confused about this, so I should clarify that "really" in this post is used in the sense of "actually", not in the sense of "very".]

Mazal tov to Yeshivat Hadar on getting their year-round full-time program up and running! This article in the New York Jewish Week is chock full of things to comment on, but I'll leave the full-scale fisking to someone else. Rather than discuss the inaccuracies in the article ("the entire Hadar movement", "l'shma") or the dreadful framing (do the men wear pants too? it doesn't say), I'm going to focus narrowly on one point, and in the process piss off just about everyone.

Look at this paragraph:

Making decisions about practices that are in accordance with normative Jewish law and with contemporary egalitarianism is “not as simple as opening a Shulchan Oruch,” the Code of Jewish Law that serves as a basic reference for many observant Jews, Rabbi Kaunfer says. The yeshiva’s students, he says, are encouraged to seek their own answers, in consultation with their teachers at the yeshiva, not to simply ask a rabbinic authority to make rulings for them. “Our gedolim [recognized authorities] are the rabbis of the Talmud and the Mishna.”

We'll ignore the "observant Jews" framing, which I'll assume isn't a direct quote from Kaunfer, and the juxtaposition of the reporter's transcription of "Shulchan Oruch" with "not the Ashkenazi pronunciation heard in most Orthodox yeshivot", and focus on the substance.

I've spent much of the last few years fending off the allegation that Kehilat Hadar is "really Conservative" (see, e.g., here and here and here and in the comments here and here and here), so now I'm going to do something truly irresponsible and suggest that, based on this paragraph, one could argue that Yeshivat Hadar is "really Reform". After all, this paragraph provides a succinct formulation of the Reform doctrine of informed autonomy. And even if that bears little similarity to what goes on in Reform communities, a central piece of the "Kehilat Hadar is really Conservative" argument is "They're practicing true Conservative Judaism even if most Conservative congregations and their members aren't", so this is no different, mutatis mutandis.

Ok, I don't entirely believe that myself (not least because I don't think it's useful or meaningful to say that someone or something is "really X" when they don't identify themselves as such, but not only for that reason), and was just throwing it out there to play devil's advocate. But even if it's not true, I think it's still a valuable intellectual exercise to have to argue why it's not true. (And when you're done, I leave it as an exercise to figure out why I don't think it's true, which may not be the same reasons as yours. E.g., it certainly isn't because they daven in Hebrew. See this post for some hints.)

But there's another reason I'm introducing this meme (albeit immediately retracting it). The "Kehilat Hadar is really Conservative" meme, though problematic, is useful for one purpose: it gets Conservative communities to look in the mirror and say "There's no reason we couldn't try that here." Likewise, I hope a "Yeshivat Hadar is really Reform" meme might prompt some Reform communities to do the same. Serious text study to enable laypeople to make informed decisions about their individual practice should be the bread and butter of the Reform movement. It should be an embarrassment to the Reform movement, with all its buildings, staff, money, and longevity, that it's being beaten at what should be its own game by a 3-year-old startup organization operating in rented space. So perhaps Yeshivat Hadar's proof of concept will inspire others to think bigger.

Framing in the Forward

This week's issue of the Forward includes an oped on framing and liberal Judaism:

For liberal Judaism to thrive, it must develop frames to see itself as authentic on its own terms. Orthodox Jews aren’t doing anything wrong by viewing Judaism through Orthodox frames, but we as liberal Jews are missing an opportunity by failing to see Judaism through our own liberal Jewish values.

This framing problem manifests itself in subtle ways. When we refer to Jews of other denominations as “more religious” or “more observant,” we undermine our own standards of religious observance, and judge ourselves on a scale external to our own Judaism.

If you got to Mah Rabu via the Forward, welcome! Here are some other posts that address framing issues.

Outer planets update

(Crossposted to Jewschool.)

Back in January, we posted about the contest to come up with Hebrew names for the planets Uranus and Neptune, as part of the International Year of Astronomy. Some of you may have submitted entries. The finalists have now been announced!!!

The two contenders for the planet hereunto known as Uranus are:

• Oron - “The name means ‘little light’ , and it hints at the faint light of the planet as seen from Earth due to its great distance from the sun. The name Oron sounds similar to the foreign name [Uranus] and helps in remembering it.”
• Shahak - “The proposal follows the meaning of the name Uranus, the name of the god of heaven. In Hebrew tradition there is no parallel name for the god of heaven (besides the name of the Supreme God). The word ’shehakim’, in rabbinic literature, indicates one of the seven firmaments, and is also found in our Hebrew, and thus the singular form Shahak is appropriate as a proper name for the planet.”

And for Neptune:

• Rahav - “The proposal follows the meaning of the name Neptune - the name of the god of the sea. The name parallel to it in Jewish tradition is Rahav - the name of the master of the sea. Thus, for example, the Babylonian Talmud explains the verse [JPS translation: 'By His power He stilled the sea; By His skill He struck down Rahab'] (Job 26:12) as describing the victory of the master of the sea. The name Rahav bears mythological connotations like the Latin name.”
• Tarshish - “This is the name of one of the stones of the breastplate [Exodus 28:20] whose Aramaic translation (Onkelos) is ‘the color of the sea’ (among other opinions) — and this is also Neptune’s color as seen from Earth — bluish-green. ‘Tarshish’ is also connected to the sea in its other biblical use: the name of a place on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, whose identification is not certain (recall the flight of Jonah the prophet to Tarshish). And on the phrase ‘the ships of Tarshish’, Rashi says ‘Tarshish - name of a sea’. In rabbinic literature and in liturgical poetry ‘Tarshish’ is a synonym for sea, and also a name of angels. Thus the name Tarshish combines the connection to the sea (like the Latin name) and the mythological foundation (angels).”

I was one of 25 entrants (including an 8th-grade class in Netanya) who submitted “Shahak” for Uranus, and congratulations to ADDeRabbi, one of 15 people who submitted “Rahav” for Neptune!

So the next step is voting! The vote is being conducted online. Unfortunately for those of us outside Israel, the ballot asks for a te’udat zehut (ID number), so only Israeli citizens can vote. If you’re eligible, vote!!! The fate of two planets is in your hands. The winners will be announced in December at the conclusion of the International Year of Astronomy.

Fifteen minutes

The Jewschool version of my last post was linked from the official Talk Like A Pirate Day website!!!

Also, the Howard Dean town hall I went to the other day has been making the news, particularly his harsh words for the ridiculous Baucus bill.

Speaking of Baucus: Today I got to see President Obama at a health care rally at the University of Maryland. (Living in the DC area is great!) As DailyKosTV reports, the crowd wildly cheered the public option, and booed the Baucus bill. I think I was the one who initiated the Baucus-booing! But as you can hear from the video, it took just a fraction of a second to spread around the whole arena, so there is overwhelming sentiment in favor of real health care reform.

Obama's speech at the rally had much of the same content as his speech last week to Congress, but he threw in other stuff specific to the college student audience, including a nod to the bill passed today by the House to fix student loans and financial aid. Obama was introduced by a UMD student who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and was able to receive treatment that has been successful so far because she was on her parents' insurance, but will need expensive medication for the rest of her life and is going to be shit out of luck when she's out in the world trying to buy her own insurance (due to her preexisting condition) if we don't fix health care now. Let's do it!

Shanah tovah, matey!

(Crossposted to Jewschool.)

Here at Jewschool, we have covered many calendrical confluences, from the total lunar eclipse on Purim to Birkat Hachamah on Erev Pesach to Ice Cream For Breakfast Day on Tu Bishvat. But all of those pale in comparison to the big one that we’ve been awaiting for years: Rosh Hashanah on International Talk Like A Pirate Day!!!

The 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah fell on September 19, 2001, but that was before The Onion gave us permission to laugh again, so talking like a pirate was the last thing on our minds at the time. Other than that, this year is the first combined Rosh Hashanah / TLAPD since TLAPD was founded in 1995. The next time will be in 2020.

So, to help us prepare for this rare conjunction, here are 10 ways to incorporate Talk Like A Pirate Day into the Rosh Hashanah liturgy:
1) (the obvious one) sound the shofARRRRR!
2) …made from rams stolen from another ship
3) (in communities that read Genesis 21) read the story of HagARRRRRR!
4) (in communities that read Genesis 22 on the first or only day) …al echad heHARRRRRim … vaYARRRRRR et hamakom meirachok.
5) Apples and honey can prevent scurvy.
6) …et yom hazikARRRRRRon hazeh…
7) Throw your enemies overboard for tashlich.
8 ) The HadARRRRR CD is sold out, so get a PIRATED copy.
9) Show up without a ticket.
10) Who shall live and who shall die, who by sword and who by walking the plank! ARRRRRR!!!

If you can’t wait until 2020 to do it all over again, Talk Like A Pirate Day 2013 is the first day of Sukkot; start practicing your lulav swordfights! Also it will be none other than Yom Kippur in 2018; I totally want to lein Jonah that year.

Marriage in generalized coordinates

As I mentioned, wedding-related posts are coming at some point. In the meantime, some meta notes on the topic: liberal/egalitarian Jewish marriage is in a period of ferment. If our evolving civilization is characterized by punctuated equilibrium, we are very much between equilibria at least in this particular area. In a few decades or so, I think things may settle down, but in the meantime, there's no universal standard of how to effect an egalitarian Jewish marriage, either practically or conceptually, and the options are multiplying. This means that everyone who gets married has significant decisions to make. The other night I was speaking to someone else who recently got married, and they were talking about the decisions they had made about these ritual matters, based on the specific constraints of their situation.

I should note that my day job currently includes thinking about Lagrangian mechanics. That night, I got up to use the bathroom, but was still mostly asleep, and in the moments my thoughts were adrift, with the Kiddushin Variations intermingling with the calculus of variations, I had an insight that seemed profound at the same time, and in the morning seemed less profound but still worth blogging:

Devising an egalitarian Jewish wedding ceremony is a variational problem. We each have different constraints, and the goal is to find a trajectory that gets us from the initial point to the final point and (at least locally) extremizes the action. Part of the task that each couple undergoes is choosing the appropriate generalized coordinates that take these constraints into account, and then formulating their Lagrangian. Unfortunately, at that point there are no Euler-Lagrange equations to simplify the calculations (and in any case, the equations of motion aren't solvable analytically), so instead we just have to choose and compare possible trajectories by hand.

Question

Tonight I got to see Gov. Howard Dean at a health care "town hall meeting" at Busboys and Poets, where he was answering questions about health care from host Kojo Nnamdi and the audience, and signing his book.

This is the question I would have asked, but by the time I thought of it, the line to ask questions was too long, so I didn't bother:

A major argument for the public option is that it provides more competition. Some opponents of the public option have argued that it's not a fair competition, because the government has the ability to subsidize the public option to make it more attractive than private insurance. I want to ask the opposite question: Assuming the public option passes, how do we prevent a future Congress (beholden to the health insurance industry) from deliberately crippling the public option in order to benefit private insurance companies?

Recombobulation Area

Sorry I haven't been posting. My only excuse is that I've been busy with just about every type of life transition. A few months ago I was an unmarried high school teacher living in New York, and now I'm a married graduate student, college TA, and rebbetzin living in Maryland (a few feet, or a few inches, from the District of Columbia, depending on where in the apartment I'm standing). And the last time I spent two straight weeks in one place was in May, and (as weddings give way to chagim) the next time won't be until (at least) October.

Now that relative stability is in sight, life feels like this picture I took on Sunday at the Milwaukee airport (immediately after going through the "security" line):



So more regular blogging may return at some point. I know some readers were hoping for posts about weddings, and at some point we'll write up what we did, how, and why. In brief: bilateral kiddushin bishtar with tenaim making each kiddushin dependent on the other, symbolic shutafut-style lifting of a bag of rings, and bilateral kinyan sudar with the rings to acquire the obligations of the ketubah. To learn what all those terms mean, stick around for future posts.

In the meantime, with the holidays coming up soon, a related update on a topic near and dear to Mah Rabu: Under the chuppah, in addition to the rings that belonged to my great-great-grandparents Natalie (Hamburger) and Rabbi Leo Baeck (who were married in 1899; the story of how the rings got out of Nazi Germany is undoubtedly spectacular, but no one is alive to tell it), we used two family kiddush cups, one that belonged to my wife's grandfather Abe Richman, and one that belonged to my great-great-great-great-grandfather Rabbi Adolf Wiener (1811-1895). (Yes, in my family tree a Wiener married a Hamburger, foreshadowing their great-great-great-grandson's vegetarian home.) I was inspired by this to google Rabbi Wiener. I knew he had written some books, so I thought he might turn up somewhere, and sure enough, he shows up in the old public-domain Jewish Encyclopedia.

According to his article there, "he advocated ... the abolition of all second days of festivals". So it turns out that, in past posts when I explained my practice of one-day yom tov as minhag avoteinu by describing myself as a "fifth-generation Reform Jew", I wasn't telling the whole truth. I am actually (at least) the seventh generation of my family that has held one day of yom tov!

Overheard at Institute

"What are we going to do on Thursday night?"
"Rock the fuck out!"
"Pshita! But..."

Jeremiah was a fellowship, he was a good friend of mine

If you're in the DC area and meet the qualifications, this new fellowship, named after one of our greatest prophets, is a fantastic opportunity! Here's the blurb:

***

Jews United for Justice is proud to partner with the Progressive Jewish Alliance to bring an exciting new social justice training program to DC!
The Jeremiah Fellowship educates and trains a select cohort of young adults (ages 25-35) to become the next generation of Jewish social justice change makers.

• Empower yourself through in-depth training in professional and leadership skills .
• Expand your knowledge of what Jewish text, tradition, and history have to say about putting ethics into action.
• Acquire tangible organizing and activism skills within a Jewish context.
• Explore pressing social, political, and economic issues facing our region.
• Become a member of a lasting community of vibrant and engaged leaders.
• Access a dynamic network of organizers, advocates, rabbis, artists, and renowned scholars.

During the nine-month course, Fellows come together twice monthly to learn different models of putting ethics and values into action, for intimate conversations with leaders in Washington's Jewish and social justice worlds, and for intensive study of Jewish history and texts. Two Fellowship retreats during the year offer in-depth training in professional and leadership skills, study of Jewish tradition and history, and intensive community-building activities. Participants leave the Fellowship with concrete skills in community organizing, activism, and grassroots fundraising, better equipped to pursue their own volunteer work and careers in the social justice field.

We are seeking creative, dynamic, and engaged young Jews who are:

• Already volunteer leaders or have leadership potential
• Passionate about making our community better
• Actively interested in building community
• Committed to using the skills gained through the Fellowship

The Fellowship is committed to the diversity of each cohort, and believes that a breadth of experience adds to the richness of the program. People of all Jewish backgrounds are encouraged to apply, and prior knowledge of Hebrew or Jewish texts is not required.

Applications for the Jeremiah Fellowship will be considered on a rolling basis, with a final deadline of September 8th. Submit your application as soon as possible for the best chance of acceptance. For more information and to download an application, go here.

You can also call the JUFJ office at 202-408-1423 or email jeremiah at jufj dot org.

Desperate measures

One solution to not having the kitchen fully set up yet:

Fast for 25 hours!

Goodbye New York, hello Maryland!

This is Mah Rabu's first post from its new home just a few feet away from the District of Columbia!

Michael Jackson tribute

I would be remiss if I didn't link back to this.

Still no Bacon number, though

Today's xkcd inspired me to investigate my own Erdos number, and I have determined that it is at most 7!

According to this site, Rudolph Marcus (winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) is 4.
Therefore, John R. Miller is 5, Andrew R. Cook is 6, and I'm 7!

Cesspool on the Potomac

This summer, Mah Rabu is relocating its base of operations to the DC area! More precise details on when and where are still to be determined.

על ידי חופה וקידושין

Assuming an egalitarian* Jewish paradigm, what do you see as the conceptual differences between kiddushin (eirusin) and nisuin? Should there be a difference?

* defined here as one in which there is no substantive distinction between same-sex and opposite-sex marriage

Oops!

The new Koren Sacks Siddur (which is, apart from the nitpicking in this post, an impressive work) has a section in the back entitled "A Halakhic Guide to Prayer for Visitors to Israel". Among other things, this includes the various opinions regarding what 2-day-yom-tov observers should do about yom tov when they're in Israel. One of these opinions is (in part):

On the day after Shemini Atzeret (Simhat Torah in the Diaspora, Isru Hag in Israel), one abstains from labor, but says weekday (or Shabbat) prayers (putting on tefillin in the morning, if not Shabbat).

5 points to the first person who catches the error.

A Conspiracy Unmasked

For the last four years, I've been certain that my students had never discovered this blog. The reason I was so certain was that I figured if the students had seen it, they wouldn't keep quiet about it (but, rather, would be quick to show off their sleuthing). Therefore, by the contrapositive, since I hadn't heard any students talking about the blog, I could be sure they hadn't found it. QED.

Then today, my last day teaching high school for the foreseeable future (last day of classes, that is; we still have exams and such), two students (graduating seniors) told me that they had been enjoying my blog. As in, they've been aware of it for some time (they may even be reading this post) and hadn't mentioned it until now. So I had underestimated their self-control, and/or forgotten that seniors aren't the same as freshmen.

There isn't actually anything incriminating here. As I've said from the beginning, there has always been a possibility that students would find this blog, and even though I don't use my real name on the blog, it's not particularly anonymous (there are plenty of places elsewhere on the Internet that connect my name to this blog). So I don't talk smack here about my students, colleagues, or supervisors, and I don't discuss anything personal that I would worry about falling into the wrong hands. So the biggest consequence of this discovery is that it means the students will find out that teachers have lives outside of school. But it's ok, since they're about to graduate anyway.

Lesson for teachers: Never underestimate your students.

Soon by you

Being engaged means that, at family weddings, when people say "You're next!!!", it doesn't come off as obnoxious anymore, but just as factual.

Phish 6/4/09 Jones Beach: commentary

So first of all, my predictions were completely off. It seems that my whole premise (picking songs that hadn't been played since the second hiatus) was off; I only got 3 songs right, and 2 of them were among the 3 I chose that had been played since the hiatus. In the actual setlist, the only songs that hadn't been played since the hiatus (besides Drowned, which I nailed) were Dirt and Meatstick.

Even my realtime predictions were wrong; during Ghost, I could have sworn that they were teasing Seven Below, but they didn't go there.

I was right about the ocean/beach theme, though wrong about the specifics. In addition to Drowned ("Let me get back to the ocean / Let me get back to the sea"), there was Squirming Coil ("Tried yesterday to get away and hitchhiked to the beach"), NICU ("A slipper of sand dollar day at the shore"), Punch You In The Eye ("I come from the land where the oceans freeze /
Spent three long months on the open seas", etc.), and Water in the Sky ("Rising tides and ocean walls"; this song was also no doubt connected to the rain that fell throughout the first set, though by the time they played it to open the second set, the rain had stopped).

Anyway, beyond this little game, it was an amazing show. Phish is really back! Since they've been gone for almost 5 years, I wasn't sure what to expect as far as the scene. I've always had an arm's-length relationship with the scene. I'm into veggie quesadillas, but I don't use drugs or alcohol. (Though if I had to choose between being surrounded by drunk people or stoned people, I'd definitely pick the stoned people. And I'd choose the smell of pot smoke over the smell of cigarette smoke.) The people who changed our flat tire at Coventry get a thumbs up; the people who push and litter get a thumbs down. Anyway, as soon as we arrived in the parking lot, I couldn't get over my shock. It was as if the last 5 years had never happened -- everything was back as it always was (for good and for ill, though probably not as much for ill). I was sort of expecting everyone to be 5 years older (and certainly, many of us are), and figured that the 18-year-olds wouldn't be there, since they were 13 when Phish last played and wouldn't have heard of it. Nope - they were there, and fully acculturated. How did that happen? Have they been selling grilled cheese in the lots of other bands during the interim?

As far as the music, my relationship is not so arm's-length. And all five members of the band were really on. They went to 11 on Divided Sky, which seems to be continuing to develop in that direction - that was how I felt about the "last Divided Sky ever" at the Tweeter Center 8/11/04. Drowned is by The Who, which already went to 11 on everything, so I'd have to say that Phish took it to 13. (So much that the Live Phish release split it into "Drowned" and "Jones Beach Jam". This seems arbitrary, since Ghost also had a Type II jam, but is just listed as a single track. I think it's for copyright reasons -- Drowned is a cover of someone else's song, but Phish can claim Jones Beach Jam as their own composition.) I approve of the two new songs (Ocelot and Time Turns Elastic), and I'll have to listen to them more (especially the latter) to really get them.

Next stop Maryland 8/15/09!