Dipping my toes into the SF Jewish water

In my continued quest to explore San Francisco and have adventures, I did a little poking around the 'net and found some great events and such coming up that I'm looking forward to checking out.

1. The Jewish Community Center in SF (JCCSF) is so amazing, with classes and lectures and a pool and a Judaica shop and an art studio and, and, and. . . How to decide between ballet and ceramics? And also the many interesting events they have coming up, including. . .
2. The (I think) unfortunately named "Three Rabbis Walk Into the Room," in which Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis (one each) will be discussing conversion, gender and the "Jew of the future" in April. Although all three rabbis are men, I'm looking forward to hearing what they have to say.
3. I'm really pumped to check out Sha-ar Zahev for a Shabbat service someday soon. They're really close to my house, and explicitly feminist (and also the self-proclaimed "vibrant community of gay and lesbian Jews" in SF). And their siddur (prayer book) is widely published and is available as far away as Boston. Fancy that! Also, if I remember right, their Torah study doesn't start until 10:00 on Saturday mornings, which breaks the usual 9:00 mold I've been seeing everywhere else. I really think the Universe wants me to sleep in on Shabbat.
4. Or Shalom, a Reconstructionist temple, also seems like it would be good to check out, but it's a bit of a hike for me. We'll see. . .

And that's what I've got so far. I'm also still reading Jimmy Carter's book - it took a back seat to some faster paced fiction recently. But I swear, a review will be forthcoming!

Israel: Putting the "(ish)" in my Jew(ish) life

Without a Jewish boyfriend or a plan to convert to Judaism any time soon, my engagement with the Jewish community feels like it lacks a certain validity.  Moriah and I RSVPed for a Tu B'Shevat seder on Thursday organized by Young Jewish Proud, a "grassroots peace group dedicated to reaching a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on the principles of equality and international human rights law."  And, at the end of the RSVP form, there was a box to check to self-identify as young, Jewish and proud.  Am I young?  Yes.  Am I proud?  That, too.  But am I JEWISH?  Well, no.

I'm really excited about the seder because it seems that YJP is tackling the most challenging issue I confront when considering aligning myself with the American Jewish community.  (Israel, of course.)  And I think that spending more time with Jews who share my questions about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians will contribute greatly to my enthusiasm for Judaism as a whole and my vision for my role within the religion.  It's been easy so far to bond with Jewish friends and loved ones at Passover or at services or during Torah study, but I'm always aware of Israel as the white elephant in the room.  I'm really looking forward to hashing this out in ongoing dialogue in a safe space.

I also finally committed to an actual book, without pictures (GASP!) about Israel.  At my friend Muni's suggestion, I've picked up Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter.  A book review will of course be forthcoming.  And a review of Thursday's seder, too.

The Review: Exit Wounds

I had heard a lot of wonderful things about Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan before I bought it. Actually, I think most of the wonderful things I heard were actually READ on the back cover of the book. But, anyway. . . Finally I found it on mega-sale at a used book store and figured, why not?

First, the pictures are totally wonderful and gorgeous. Comparisons by The New York Times Book Review to the style of Tintin are well founded. But, for me, the story left a lot to be desired. In a nutshell:
(1) girl stalks boy for mysterious reason,
(2) boy finds out from girl that (his) long-estranged father may have been killed in a recent bombing,
(3) boy discovers girl had intimate relationship with boy's father,
(4) boy mostly can't stand girl and is mean to her,
(5) girl keeps coming back for more,
(6) boy and girl inexplicably have sex,
(7) boy does some jerky thing to get girl to finally leave,
(8) boy desperately seeks to rekindle tenuous relationship with girl.

Oh, and we never really know what happened to the boy's father, anyway.

Entertainment Weekly called this, "a triumphant book about not-so-quiet desperation," but I don't think the story was nuanced enough to earn such praise. We just don't know enough about the characters to care what happens to them, and so are left disappointed in the end - wanting more, but also a bit bored.

More positively, I just got a free copy of Guilt & Pleasure magazine from, er, summer 2007 (before Exit Wounds came out) and it features a short strip by Rutu Modan that I really like, actually, called "Energy Blockage." Also, G&P is such an awesome magazine. I'm only 22 pages in, and I'm totally hooked.

The Review: How To Understand Israel in 60 Days Or Less

In the time I had allotted to read How To Understand Israel in 60 Days Or Less by Sarah Glidden, I was also able to read Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan. (There's another great reason to love graphic novels. I get the feeling of accomplishment that comes with completing a book FAR more often.) More on Exit Wounds in a future post.

I liked How To Understand Israel. Instead of reading a comprehensive history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it gave me a sense of what specific topics I might be interested in learning more about. Now I want to find a biography of Yitzhak Rabin. Or something on the Six Days War (especially those last few days with Syria). Put another way, I no longer have to commit myself to a feast of reading. I have the knowledge to more carefully select a few appetizers and then see how hungry I remain.

Glidden is convinced that she'll be fed all sorts of pro-Israel propaganda on her Birthright trip, and steels herself with a lengthy and seemingly balanced book list prior to leaving. Ultimately, she experiences plenty of the propaganda she expected to, as well as Israelis who equate sympathies with Palestianians with national (and, oftentimes, personal) certain death. But she's surprised by the number of people who, like her, just don't know what to think or do. If the status quo feels unbearable, and solutions impossible, then. . . What next?

In doing follow up research on some of the topics covered in the book, I've been concerned at the degree to which certain historic events are simplified. (The aforementioned fighting between Syria and Israel during the Six Days War is a great example of this.) However, I think this represents more a challenge with the medium than an intentional bias on the part of the author. I'm a bit surprised that someone who pored through some of the weighty books she did would be comfortable with much of this glossing over, but perhaps, especially when writing a graphic novel on such a controversial topic, the good cannot be the enemy of the perfect.

So, the final verdict? If you know very little about the conflict and want something to whet your appetite, definitely pick up How To Understand Israel. If you already consider yourself well versed in the issues and historic timeline, however, you may be disappointed.

I'm about to start reading. And looking.

A while back, I posted on this blog for book recommendations on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and a few folks chimed in with thoughts. Did I read anything people suggested? No, of course not. These days, my brain refuses to handle anything but great fiction (Freedom!) or graphic novels. That's why I was super pumped to hear about Sarah Glidden's new How to Understand Israel In 60 Days Or Less. In words - and PICTURES - she talks about her preconceptions as a progressive Jew embarking on a Birthright trip, and how her expectations were and weren't met once she was there. I'll post a book review when I've gotten through it.

In unrelated news, my parents got me a record player for my birthday and, in addition to the many records I inherited from their existing collections, I also went and picked up some new ones last night at Amoeba in Berkeley. Among the new favorites is the soundtrack to T.C.B. featuring Diana Ross and the Supremes with the Temptations. It's so great, and ALSO they refer quite frequently to people who are "T.C.B." - taking care of business. I'm going to start slipping that into everyday speech and see what happens. I encourage you to do the same and get in on the ground floor before the trend catches on.

Israel?

Because I admittedly don't know as much about it as I should, and because it's such a polarizing topic, I typically avoid any mention of Israel both in this blog and in my daily life. And that's just irresponsible. Knowing that my non-Jewish friends take a pretty anti-Israel stance, and that I usually agree with them in political matters, I've adopted an ignorance is bliss attitude. I don't want to fight! Can't we all just get along? Clearly, we can't.

So I want to read a book. Or two books, even. It seems there aren't any out there that take an objective stance, perhaps because objectivity is impossible. So instead I will read the highly recommended (if a teensy bit outdated) graphic novel Palestine by Joe Sacco. Any recommendations for an engaging pro-Israel book?

Here's to forming educated opinions!

Oh, and the reason this is coming up now is because there was recently an article in the New York Times about how Noam Chomsky and his daughter were denied entry to the Palestinian territories in Israel for a speaking engagement. It raised interesting questions about free speech in a democracy - Is there a difference between speaking one's mind and being "hostile" to the government? Um, yes. The article also connects Mr. Chomsky's border problems to a string of others involving characters from a Spanish performer to an American journalist working for a Palestinian news agency to a UN human rights investigator.

I want to know more! Maybe you do, too?

Ruth Reichl on Binah

Ruth Reichl, former NYT food critique and author of many food-related books, was interviewed on Binah on KALW today. She talked about her mother (who had a fondness for Fluffernutter), the democratization of taste through Yelp, and what it's like to be a relatively down-to-earth person in a world of food snobs. Not specifically Jewish, but she did speak at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, is Jewish herself, and. . . there you have it. Good enough for me to post!

Enjoy!

Like, OMGoddess!

Last night I went to the second meeting of Introduction to the Jewish Experience, a class I'm taking through Berkeley's Lehrhaus Judaica. (I missed the first meeting when I tried to bike the eight or so miles from my house without the use of a topographical map. Damn hills out here!) This is the second series in a three-series class and this time around we're talking about Jewish history and text. (You can check out Rabbi Adar's website dedicated to the class by clicking here.) To supplement my classroom learning, I just started reading A Short History of the Jewish People by Raymond P. Scheindlin.

So what juicy historical tidbits have I learned so far? First of all, history up to 500 or so BCE is CONFUSING! Maybe it's the abundance of varying sources (the Torah, ancient artifacts, squabbling historians, etc.) or maybe it's just difficult to understand thousands of years of history in just a few hours and a couple hundred pages. Either way - yikes! My original plan was to summarize each chapter of the book here, both for my own memory and for others who are likewise overwhelmed. But I'm SO overwhelmed that I've since nixed that idea.

So! Instead I bring you some of my favorite and most surprising facts. If these facts seem off to any of my (two) loyal readers, please feel free to call my bluff in the comments section.

1. When the Israelites (technically Hebrews at this point?) were fleeing Egypt, God parted the "Sea of Reeds" which is usually translated as the "Red Sea," however this is not the Red Sea that we see on a map today. The exact location of the Sea of Reeds/Red Sea is unknown.

2. The first king of the Israelites was Saul. The second king was David - the same David who conquered Goliath in the story of (who knew?) David and Goliath! (Goliath was a Philistine hero.) This is probably common knowledge to most, but I thought this was such a fun fact! Also, David had his eye on Bathsheba, the wife of one of his captains. So he sent that captain to the front lines to fight, where he inevitably died. Then David was able to marry Bathsheba, who gave birth to Solomon (who would be the third king). Sneaky, eh?

3. After King Solomon died, the Israelites split into two camps: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. During this time, the term "Israelites" actually refers to those living in the north, though Jerusalem and the temple that Solomon had built there were still in the south.

4. If you've read this far, you've really earned this next fun fact. . . GOD WAS A WOMAN! I'm joking. BUT, before Josiah came along and enforced very strict monotheism, there is evidence that Israelites (and others) recognized that God had a wife, named Asherah. In both Israel and Judah, artifacts have been recovered inscribed with blessings that reference "Yahweh and his Asherah." Though she certainly wasn't what one could call a goddess (there was always only one God), she was considered the protector of fertility and lady cycles, and also overseer of matters related to the sea. (I've seen translations of her name to "one who strides over the sea," etc.) Isn't that a really fun fact? I knew you'd think so. I've also read sources that say that near stones erected to God one can sometimes also find "asherim," wooden posts that sometimes "embrace" the stone and are said to be in tribute to Asherah. Can anyone confirm seeing such a thing?

Okay, on to chapter two. . . "Judea and the Origins of the Diaspora." Yippee!

Step into my library

I think it will be helpful to share some of the books I've enjoyed reading thus far.

Living a Jewish Life
By Anita Diamant
This is a great, easy-to-read primer and provides enough basic knowledge to inform future reading of more in-depth books.

The Jewish Catalogs (First, Second and Third)
By Strassfeld & Strassfeld
I was introduced to the First Jewish Catalog by my wonderful friend and former housemate, Hadley. Published between 1973 and 1980, these books tout themselves as "do it yourself kits" for cultivating a personal Jewish practice outside of organized Judaism. They're absolutely fascinating and fun to read - the Jewish equivalent of finding your mom's early edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. They may be out of print, but you can find them used at abebooks.com.

The Jewish Holidays
By Michael Strassfeld
This book has been invaluable! Whenever I have a question about a holiday ritual that no one can seem to answer ("That's just the way we do it!") this book has provided one. It's also a great way to impress your friends with your obscure knowledge.

And, of course, the Torah! I look at contemporary commentary each week (or as often as possible) on chabad.org. It's an especially great place to see what the ladies think.