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Kabbalistic Kirtan: Just Replace Hindu With Hebrew
f you’ve ever been to a yoga class, you’ve probably performed kirtan, an ancient Hindu call-and-response chant practiced by Hindus and Sikhs. Now imagine that the phrases you were chanting were not Hindu, but Hebrew. Welcome to the newest rung in the Jewish spirituality ladder: kabbalistic kirtan. The genre — which features chanting Jewish names…
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California Case Contains Claim Jews Will Refuse To Impose Death Penalty
OAKLAND, Calif. — The San Francisco Bay Area’s legal community is abuzz over a death-penalty appeal that claims a respected late Jewish judge advised a prosecutor to exclude Jews from a jury because, since the Holocaust, “no Jew would vote to send a defendant to the gas chamber.” Former Alameda County prosecutor Jack Quatman, now…
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‘Center’ing Around Jewish Culture, Arts and History
The Curtain raiser for the December 15 Center for Jewish History’s Board of Governors and Board of Directors annual dinner program was emcee Joel Chasnoff, a comedian whose reservoir of Jewish-Christian humor included references to “Jewish guilt” and a chuckler about the “Conservative Jew” who was “the Shabbos goy at an Orthodox building in Riverdale.”…
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Canadian Group Sides With Muslims on Law
TORONTO — In a move that is angering Jewish feminists, B’nai Brith Canada is supporting the demands of conservative Muslims in the province of Ontario who wish to have the right to use private arbitration based on Islamic law for the resolution of their marital, custody and inheritance disputes. A report prepared for the Ontario…
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Jewish Groups Offer Aid After Tsunami
With the death toll in Southeast Asia surpassing 70,000, Israeli aid workers and Jewish organizations are racing to support the international relief effort following this week’s tsunami disaster. Israeli psychologists, forensics experts, and rescue and recovery officials were set to fly to the region to help relatives locate and identify their loved ones, according to…
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Preschool Teachers Unionize
A group of early childhood educators at the Cherry Hill, N.J., Katz JCC voted on December 17 to ratify a union-organized contract, making them the first employees of a Jewish preschool in the state to secure a labor agreement through collective bargaining. The product of nearly two years of negotiation, the newly formed shop, the…
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Nursing Home’s Labor Dispute Simmers
OAKLAND, Calif. — A holiday-season labor strike at San Francisco’s Jewish Home was canceled at the last minute, but the strife is far from over — and the well-being of 430 elderly residents hangs in the balance. About 380 workers, including vocational nurses, certified nursing assistants, dietary aides, housekeepers, porters and drivers at the nonprofit…
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CAMPAIGN CONFIDENTIAL
Food Fight: A fund raising letter signed by Rabbi David Saperstein, head of the Religious Action Center, the Washington-based policy arm of Reform Judaism, is raising the hackles of some Orthodox officials. “Thanks in large part to the aggressive tactics and ‘take no prisoners’ approach of the reactionary right, reasoned political debate in America has…
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2004: A Year of Scars and Stars
‘American Jews,” wrote the late novelist Ilona Karmel, “have scars, but no wounds.” The year just past, 2004, was a year to prove that point. We experienced some pain and anxiety, but as usual, we were surprised at year’s end to find ourselves as safe as ever. Indeed, it might best be called a “year…
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Waters Rage. We Are Afraid.
Catastrophe strikes each of us differently. The wise among us withhold judgment on our fellows’ first responses, knowing there is no right pathway through grief. (Those who lack such insight tend to end up in politics or the clergy.) And how do the grieving respond? Some lash out angrily. Some babble foolishly. Some sink into…
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Oy, gevalt!
William Lasser writes from the political science department of Clemson University to ask where the expression “Oy, gevalt!” comes from. This is a reasonable question, because the literal meaning of the Yiddish word gevalt (or gevald, as it is sometimes spelled) does not explain the expression. “Oy, gevalt!” (or just plain “Gevalt!”) has the sense…
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