Art Installation

original

translation into Chinuk Wawa:

Mitlite nika tumtum siah kimta sun-get-up, pe mitlite nika siah-siah kopa klip-sun.

Howkwutl nika mukmuk, pe howkwutl mukmuk chaco tsee?

Howkwutl nika mamook huihui nawitka, pe

Tsiyon kow Pil lope, pe nika kow Arav lope?

Klah mahsh konaway kloshe Sfarad, kahkwa

Hyas ticky nanitch polallie kokshut Hyas-Tyee-wawa-Home.

Chinuk Wawa, or 'the Chinook jargon,' evolved in the course of the 19th century as a means of communication between the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest and the "Bostons" who began to move to the area.

It is a characteristic, more or less dying, language of the end of the West of this novel continent.

Purim Vinz - 20 Adar -- and its Megilla

20 Adar is the anniversary of the downfall in 1616 of a man who called himself "the new Haman of the Jews," of the foiling of his plans to murder the Frankfurt Jewish community, and of the return of the Jews of Frankfurt under imperial protection and with imperial fanfare.

The community established the date as a sort of mini-Purim, "Purim Vinz," with its own customs, including the reading of a special "megilla" describing the events.

The Frankfurt community continued to flourish for a few hundred years, years that gave us the Maharam Schiff, R' Nosson Adler and his talmid the Chasam Sofer -who mentions the custom of Purim Vinz - and Rav Hirsch's kehilla, which is one of the models for American Torah as we know it.

The Koach Yehuda writes, 'Some rememberance of the Ventz miracle must remain with us. It is a constant reminder to us that we must thank and praise the Almighty who protects us from all our enemies.'


So although the Frankfurt community has been mostly destroyed (so much for imperial protection) I like to tell people about Purim Vinz; and this year I went in search of a copy of its Megilla.

First I called KAJ, the Frankfurt community in America. They told me that Rav Breuer reinstated Tachanun on 20 Adar when the Nazis took over Frankfurt. People remember that it is the "Frankfurt Purim" but that's about it.


But then I found this.
Can we have a round of applause for Professor Ulmer for putting this in the public domain? She went to the trouble to put it together and her book is still in print. SO nice of her.


Megillas Vinz in four languages from Prof. Ulmer. You made my day.


And here it is only in German, but with sheet music and a portrait of the villain, from Goethe Universitat.

Mnogo Bumagi: Experiments in Teaching Medieval Jewish History, Part I

Again, if I could take one resource on medieval Jewish history to a desert island, it would be The Chosen Path, but here are some sources I found and liked (whether or not I shared them with the girls) before I was aware of that textbook-cum-anthology's existence:

General

-A good map of medieval Europe. They can't go through life not knowing what the Iberian Peninsula is.

-One of the Many Chains of Torah Transmission – classic “aha” moment

-It wasn't so long ago – similar idea, more juvenile explanation

-Rav Hirsch's translation of para. 105 from Sefer Hasidim (his Collected Writings, Vol. VIII, p. 176). I like this because many people have a habit of reading mussar from the rishonim as if they're being yelled at. Here Rav Hirsch takes a passage from the Sefer Hasidim that could sound very scary, and translates it softly. I thought it was important for the girls to see this before I started giving them passages from rishonim to read.

-When I was in sixth grade, we each had to research a rishon and present the fruits of our research. I like this idea, and in consequence of it I still feel like the Ramban is “my” rishon – but, duh, you can't give people a research project if they don't have a library to research in.

-I had them make a timeline of world history, from Creation to the present, on which to plot the events of this course. In retrospect I would have them make parallel lines (maybe I'll give them different colors) for the events in Bavel, Islamic Spain and North Africa, Ashkenaz, Provence, Italy, and Eastern Europe.

-I photocopied, but did not get round to, the Ramban on “laasos” in Bereishis, which is a summary of world history, and the Meshech Chochma in Bechukosai about galus.

-I thought about taking a step back to look at how we know what we know, and showing them Rav Hirsch's analysis of Graetz's grievous errors in scholarship, but decided that it's not appropriate yet for this particular class.

Material slipped into various units along the way:

-Music for every unit, representative in some way of that time and place.

-The Routes of the Radhanites.

-The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela – I gave one piece in class, and offered extra credit for the rest.

-A drop-spindle and raw wool. (These are inexpensive.) Every woman in medieval times – I assume Jewish women too – carried one of these around with her and kept her fingers busy spinning. I passed spindle and wool around and let everyone try it. (Halacha: a married woman who can hire servants to fulfill all of her housekeeping duties is nevertheless obligated to spin, because having no work to do can drive a person crazy. Why is spinning the duty singled out as essential? Because it is the role of the married woman to make connections, to take raw material and give shape to it.)

-I made much use of T. Carmi's anthology The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse. He doesn't cite sources, only authors, which is maddening. The anthology is a curious mix of kodesh and treif, but I don't know where else to find the poems of Shmuel haNaggid, the Kalonymuses, anonymous medieval Jews writing about how much they miss their rebbeim &c., &c., much less with some English attached.

-The History of Jewish Costume by Alfred Rubens is also unreliable, but has some fun pictures. I gave the girls pictures of what Jewish women were wearing (admittedly at a much later time in history) in Syria, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, &c. and asked them which traditionally Jewish dress (with, like, five layers and cloisonne enamel and gold embroidery and pointy headgear) they think we should make the new school uniform.

-The Wall Chart of World History is a vintage production – as the girls noticed, it is very racist, very Eurocentric, and very Catholic - but very helpful. We got a lot of "aha!" moments out of it. (A Jewish version, the “Timechart History”, does exist, but it is blatantly not in keeping with the mesora, nor is it nearly as interesting, since it follows only one nation.)

One Day

The house next to ours is under construction, so all this week our front hall has pulsed with the bass of the construction workers' radio.
Fair enough; I wouldn't want to rip off siding without listening to lively music, either. Only this station is so not my taste. THUMP, THUMP. thump, THUMP THUMP.

This morning the thumps assumed a familiar pattern, and I went outside to confirm.
They were listening to Matisyahu: One Day.

We're about halfway around the world from Jerusalem, really "the Edge of the West", and here between the firs and high grasses, what are the immigrant construction workers listening to as they toss siding on the ground, a week before Rosh Hashana? A hasid's vision of what the world will be one day.
Mind-blowing.

Daf Yomi

Over this week, some 300,000 people worldwide will attend a siyyum celebrating the completion of a seven-and-a-half year course of study, which covers the entire Talmud.
Last night, there were over 90,000 people at the MetLife Stadium siyyum alone.

This was the twelfth cycle of the Daf Yomi program, which moves at the (extremely swift) pace of a page a day. People all around the world study on the same schedule. It's a gorgeous bit of unity.

I hope someone will put the speeches up online -- it was quite a wonderful event. To hear a rav challenge 90,000 people with words of inspiration, with a and before you leave tonight, make a plan and do it! attached to them, applauded enthusiastically by 90,000 appreciative, newly inspired, focused and committed people - well! It was a thing not to be missed. But all I found to put on the blog for you was the film above.

The thirteenth cycle of Daf Yomi starts tomorrow. In Portland, the Daf Yomi class will be given every morning at Cong. Kesser Israel, in Hillsdale, just before morning services.

A couple of us in these parts with less time on our hands (read: ladies) want to try following it in the Ein Yaakov, which is the non-legal portions of the Talmud: less material, and less intricate, insanely inspiring when understood properly, but opaque without a commentary. Drop a line if you'd like to join us.

Tisha b'Av

"We are twins," said G-d -- in a Midrash, I think. "I am not older than you. You are not older than me." Meaning: G-d and the Jewish people entered the world at the same time.
One of the twins is hiding.

It is curious that G-dliness is obscured in the world, that we mistake people for what they are not. This is an unnatural state for the world to be in.
Tolkien once identified the conflict in Lord of the Rings as between nature and machinery; that will do for an analogy.

Through most of the year, even the Three Weeks -- which so neatly align with vacation season -- it is hard to shake the impression that life, while not perfect, is about as good as it can be.
And then comes Tisha b'Av, which was yesterday, reminding us that there is infinitely more to it.
Tisha b'Av is the day when everyone sits on the floor and mourns that the world is still in this unnatural state, not as it should be. A kumzitz of the shipwrecked.

Tisha b'Av leads up to Elul, when we take steps to see what we can do about it.

Back to the Wilderness!

We might be moving.
We don't know.
We might live in this apartment, where my daughter was born, for another year... or we might be overseas, with our books slowly following by ship like so many jolly right-to-left tars, by the end of the month.

I pick up the ironing pile and realize: it is futile to finish this. In another week it could all be balled up in a suitcase.
Or it might not.
I go to the grocery store and wonder: is it worth buying that much honey? We might not have time to use it.
Or we might.
I continue to recopy my address book, with all its little notes: S likes chocolate, Y likes popcorn, bring a story for the children, 11:00 is the middle of the evening, call us for anything, she won't bite your head off, and wonder: am I ever going to need these addresses, numbers, and notes again? Am I ever going to see any of these people again?
Should I be packing? Or not?

"How are you not short-circuiting?" my friend asked.
I think it's because we have no control over the situation. We don't have to make a decision. So there's really nothing I can do but daven and daydream about the possibilities.
"It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book!" observed my neighbor.
"Right," I said, "but we don't get to choose!"

It's kind of exhilarating, actually.
It's Exile, but no one ever said we weren't still in Exile.

I am reminded of a dark joke I once heard from Rabbi B.
"You know why so many Jews are violinists, right?"
"No, why?"
"Because it's hard to run with a piano on your back."

We are running, but not from Russia to Poland.
We have it so easy.
I feel like... like we are going into Galus on the Atchison-Topeka & Santa Fe.

Encounter at Sinai

By Rabbi Rafi Mollot
Thanks!

Springtime for Cynics

When I was a terribly cynical middle-schooler, the choir director taught us a song in four-part harmony, which I could never sing like I meant it:
Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads are playing, fa la la la la la la la la - no, they're not, they're either in math class or doing its homework -
...a-dancing on the grass - what grass? we live in a city, where open spaces are rationed and landscaped,
fa la la la la la la la la. The Spring clad all in gladness/doth laugh at winter's sadness - Spring? Winter? I haven't noticed a change in seasons. I think I need to get out more,
and to the bagpipe's sound/ the nymphs tread out the ground - What era was this composed in, that people had time to frolic in unspoilt meadows, and the peace of mind to do so wholeheartedly?
fa la la la la, fa la la la la la la, la la la la la. Where is that legendary Spring?


And every Pesach, I get my answer.


The air warms up, the earth bursts into bloom, and where are the Jewish people?
Indoors or in the courtyard, scrubbing all the winter's crumbs out of the house, until G-d drags us by the ear out of Egypt, and says, "This month is for you!"
This month is for you the origin of all the months: you are a Spring nation, a people repeatedly revived from the dead.
Go and tell everyone, go demonstrate to all the despairing middle-schoolers (of any age or stage in life), that just as the earth is led each year out of winter, just as the Jewish nation was led out of the slavery of its body, mind, heart and soul in Egypt, so too humanity as a whole, and every individual, are given the Spring.
This month is not the exclusive provenance of things that bloom, creep, or fly; no matter how oppressive your circumstances, this Spring is for you!


Those with better things to read than this blog will recognize that this post is not original material - thank you Rav Hirsch.
And Rabbi Estuary, we'll see if I ever forgive the rav for making me try to paraphrase that :P

The 1912 Project, Titanic Fascination, Numenor, Murasaki, a Niggun and a Sigh.

One hundred years ago, 1,514 people drowned in the Atlantic, and many others were ruined financially.
In commemoration of this event, 400 dressmakers around the world are sewing themselves new outfits.

Does this strike anyone else as an odd memorial for the dead?

Titanic fascination is a very odd phenomenon, when you stop to think about it. It's not enough to say, "We love the glamour of the era." No -- you love the glamour of the era that sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.
It is glamour, depth, and tragedy all at once - like an opera! The clashier Western version of, the next best thing to, the sweet pain of Númenor (Where now are the Dúnedain, Elessar, Elessar?), or Elvish mourning over the swiftness of time, or the Japanese mono no aware (defined here)- which are subtler.

I have been trying to work out whether there is any similar idea in Judaism - that there is something lovely, lyrical, about entropy, the falling of the leaves, the passing of the generations. Sorrow is obviously not the same thing as depression, but I haven't found that we celebrate it in any way, any more than we celebrate any other characteristic of our relationship with the Eternal, knowing that it will eventually be turned inside-out to reveal joy.

Galus, galus, vie lang bist du...
...
!

The Vintage Pattern Lending Library has recruited 400 volunteer dressmakers to test vintage 1912 patterns. And all we have to do is sew and blog.
Although I doubt that this post is what they had in mind.
Free Edwardian patterns? Really? SIGN ME UP!

Thank you to the VPLL for coordinating the project.

If I can see only one thing in London...

A seven-hour stopover gives you just enough time to whizz out of Heathrow, see one thing, and return.

Buckminster Palace? The British Museum?
I went to have tea with Rav and Mrs. Baddiel.
They are most extraordinary people... the number one tourist attraction in London, in my book.

Rav Baddiel is much amused that a lecture of his has been put up on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzn4zdYd7sk  

It is in English, despite the German title (he gave it in Berlin). Do check it out.

Purim, Mishloach Manot, and Fear

One of my favorite insights from R' Shlomo Carlebach is this:

On a regular day, you never go up to a friend, let alone your teacher, and offer him an apple and a banana. Were you to do so, he would wonder, "Why are you giving me food?"
On Purim, however, you can go up to anyone and offer him an apple and a banana. You can bring an apple and a banana to the Queen of England.
The lesson of Purim is not to be afraid: you can do anything.

Every year before Purim, there is some flurry in the mishloach-manos making department: what should I put in them, so that they are nice enough to give out?
And then Purim actually arrives, and the day itself sweeps away the questions. I can send an apple and a banana to the rebbetzin who so intimidates me that I put on heels whenever I have to telephone her, just to feel like a grown-up. I can send an apple and a banana to our local Aikido master, to Ira Glass, and to the Queen of England. Why be afraid? You can do anything.

The story is told that Rav Shlomo Zalman's family, in the impoverished Jerusalem of yore, sent his fiancee's family dried fruit for Purim; and her family, being equally short on finances, baked it into a fruitcake and sent it back.

Don't be afraid; you can do anything.