• Jewish singles are more Jewishly engaged than people think (but does the word ‘engaged’ in that sentence make any other singles nervous?). Jewish single: plenty Jew-y A new report by sociologists Steven Cohen and Ari Kelman has found that unmarried Jews in their twenties and thirties are plenty involved in Jewish life, with 42% of singles saying more than half of their friends are Jewish, and 51% saying they talk to their friends about “Jewish matters.” JTA
  

• Josh Martin, an American Jew who went to help rebuild in Israel after the Lebanon war in 2006, made a second trip to help rebuild in Lebanon.  He brought along a group of Christians, Jews, and Muslims to do service projects across the country, including an art project in a Palestinian refugee camp. JTA
  

• A small library of rare and valuable Jewish books and manuscripts has been smuggled out of Iraq and into Israel. Some of the books are more than 600 years old, and had to be spirited out of Baghdad by Iraqi-born book dealer Mordechai Ben-Porat and his emissaries. Many of the books were being held in the Library of Congress in Washington DC, but they’ve all been returned to Israel.  Jewschool
  

• A Orthodox Jewish man at the center of a life support controversy died this week in Winnipeg. Samuel Golubchuk, 84, had been on life support for months, but his family did not want life support to be removed despite doctor’s recommendation to the contrary. Three doctors at Grace Hospital resigned as a result of the case, saying that keeping Golubchuk alive was akin to torture. Golubchuk’s children argues that halachically they were not allowed to do anything that might hasten their father’s death. Golubchuk died while on life support.  Chronicle Herald

• A Lebanese-born man being charged with supporting a terrorist group has asked that the Jewish judge assigned to his case recuse himself. Since Fawzi Mustapha Assi, 48, has already plead guilty to the charges, Judge Gerald E. Rosen refused the request, saying that Assi was “a little late.”  Mercury News
  

• An Israeli-Arab who lectures about the Holocaust at Palestinian refugee camps teaches that instead of denying the atrocities of World War II, Palestinians should recognize the loss of millions of Jews. If the Jewish people could survive losing 6 million, he explains, it will easily survive terrorist bombings and other attacks that kill 20-25. Instead of violent attacks, Palestinians should find other tactics.  Haaretz
  

• In Israel, an American Idol type competition is underway for the Haredi world. This one is called “Upcoming Voice,” only features men, restricts the judges from saying anything mean or embarrassing to the contestants, and is not shown on TV, since the Haredi world frowns on television. Instead, it’s distributed on CDs that members of the ultra-Orthodox world can watch on their home computers.  Haaretz

• In Tajikistan, the only synagogue is being demolished against the will of the community, to make way for the new presidential residence. Officials were going to let the Jewish community dismantle the synagogue themselves so as to maintain as much dignity for the space as possible, but when they weren’t progressing quickly enough, the Chief Engineer had the remaining wall bulldozed.  Religious Intelligence

Hopefully by the time the contest rolls around he'll have some kind of glitter jumpsuit: MaudaI love "American Idol," but there is really only one music competition for me. It's poppy, international, and full of gorgeous ethnic superstars. It is also, criminally, not broadcast in the United States. It’s the annual Eurovision Song Contest, and it’s back.

Briefly, for the uninitiated, Eurovision is the "American Idol" of European countries. Each participating country (which includes our Israeli homeboys – more on them later) chooses one representative to compete. Those representatives choose one song to perform live on television. Then everyone in Europe votes (you can’t vote for your own country’s song). There’s also a semi-final qualification round and a finals round and whatnot – but since they change the rules every few years, it can be hard to keep abreast of the Byzantine rule structure. As of last year there are now two semi-finals, then a grand finale. The Big Four (France, Germany, Spain and the UK) always automatically qualify for the grand finale.

This year, Israel is sending Boaz Mauda, the bronzed winner of "Kokhav Nolad," Israel’s "American Idol," to Belgrade (Serbia, whose native Marijua Serifovic won Eurovision in 2007, gets to host 2008’s competition). Mauda’s music is totally awesome, falling somewhere between Mizrachi crooning and soft, understated acoustic balladeering. And he’s going to Belgrade with a certifiable gangbuster song to sing—“Ke’ilo Kan,” written by former winner Dana International.

As your Jewcy Eurovision correspondent, I’ll be bringing you breathless Eurovision updates, along with some Israel participation history (we’ve won numerous times!), and maybe a liveblogging or two of the proceedings. I feel slightly ambiguous using the term “we,” being that I’m not a citizen of Israel and this is a national contest as much as anything. But it’s not like Americans can root for a USA candidate, and since it’s a lot more fun when you personalize the contest, I’m going to stick with the second person.

So with our fingers crossed and our lighters held aloft, let's toast to May in Belgrade. L’chaim, Boaz!

There's something complicated about the video below.  The media trend Mika Brzezinski is decrying doesn't thrive on those who say, 'Now this is what's really important.'  The Paris Hiltons, the American Idols, and reality television shows exist because the ridicule-and-failure-of-others-as-entertainment serves a purpose.  Nietzsche wrote:

The community feels refreshed by cruel deeds, and casts off for once the gloom of continual anxiety and caution. Cruelty belongs to the most ancient festive joys of mankind.

The Simon Cowells, Judge Judys, Trumps and Chef Ramsays, the bad parents, supernannies, and the bawling Hilton each belong to the canon of America's cruelty spectacle.  Nobody thinks any of it really matters; in fact, one's own ridicule of the story is integral to the ritual.  The moment these dramas become relevant in any serious sense of the word is the moment they lose their value and disappear from the headlines.                              

See Peter Singer's response to this post, here!

I donated $1000 to “Idol Gives Back” the other night. Check it out, here’s the charge on my Mastercard.

Trans Date: 04/28/2007
Post Date: 04/30/2007
Description: IDOL GIVES BACK(Other)Scrambling for Status: Author boasts of past donations, predicts future ones
Transaction Number: 25536067120000001175409
Amount: $1,000.00

I don't want to say this makes me a better, classier person than you, but...well, who are we kidding? A thousand dollars is a buttload of money! And remind me again how much you gave?

When I first learned that the One campaign and American Idol were opening an ambitious new front in the war against extreme poverty, I thought I'd give $250. Then I considered that half the money goes to the most impoverished children in this country (in Appalachia and downtown Los Angeles, where children are undernourished and have little access to education), and the other half to the most impoverished on the planet (in sub-Saharan Africa, where the mortality rate for children under five exceeds 33% in some countries). So I decided to give $500. And still I felt unsatisfied.

How did I became so charitable, so deeply decent? I don't have an answer for you. Was it my quality upbringing? The well-developed social consciousness that came with my fine education? Or have I just been blessed with a natural empathy, that instinctive sensitivity to suffering that seems so essential a part of my nature? I suspect it's a combination of all these things and more. Regardless, I donated $1000. More than all of you combined, I'm sure.

Do you find all this self-satisfaction nauseating? Of course you do. I don't like it either. We encounter arrogance and self-promotion all the time, but it's jarring to hear someone even discuss the dollar value of their charitable contributions, much less boast about it. How could it be otherwise, when we've been indoctrinated with all that insufferable Judeo-Christian twaddle about good deeds being noblest when done quietly, without public display or recognition? It's Jesus's favorite talking point. The Pharisees couldn't walk an old lady across the Cardo without sending the Lamb of God off on another tiresome rant about the hypocrisy of good deeds done for public display.

And it wasn't just Jesus. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides broke charity down into eight forms, and the more selfless your intentions, the more noble the charity.

It's all a bunch of destructive hippy-dippy bullshit. The real hero is the person who gives, and then struts and preens in public like they just fucked the prom queen.

Because yep, verily, the highest form of charity is that which is given in the spirit of smug one-upmanship. The future of the planet will be vastly better if only we can learn to properly exploit the insatiable status hunger of people like us.

In Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen marveled at the middle-class's indefatigable clamoring for signifiers of class and status. So intense was the desire to improve in social standing relative to one's peers that Veblen thought it almost spiritual in nature. No bauble was too useless, no gizmo too costly, if it helped accomplish this. He called this "conspicuous consumption."

And that spiritual drive for status, Jewcers, is the way and the path. Unlike Jesus or Maimonides (or Marx), we live at at time when vast quantities of disposable capital have accrued among middle-class social climbers. So if we wish to end the most grievous injustices on the planet--say, the annual death of six million children from severe malnutrition and associated opportunistic infections--we have three options: We can pray for human nature to change such that self-sacrifice is more natural than self-seeking; we can fantasize about a revolutionary reordering of the global economy; or we can harness our status anxiety in the service of humanitarianism.

When charitable giving becomes a form of conspicuous consumption, when saving the life of a child confers half the social status of, say, a cute pair of shoes, human history will be forever transformed. Another world is possible, and middle-class status anxiety can get us there.

So forget Maimonides' antiquated "levels of charity." Ignore Jesus's tired rants against hypocrisy. We need more Pharisees, and fewer saints. Whether we like it or not, the most effective charity is that which is accompanied by a sneer at the lowly neighbours. Everything else is tied for last.

See Peter Singer's response to this post, here!

[The author futzed around a bit with this post since it was first published, including to make the satire of the opening section more explicit.]

Continue reading...

In mid-march, Washington College Dean Christopher Ames set tongues awag and keyboards aclutter with “Schooled by American Idol,” his spirited paean to “this remarkable reality TV show.” Published in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Chicago Sun-Times (and blogged everywhere from the Wall Street Journal Online to 3 Quarks Daily), the article gushed about the “pedagogical significance” of AI. The show’s great popularity, Ames wrote, indicated that Americans were fed up with talentless showboats and “a world full of people rating themselves highly.” They now “long for the enforcement of standards of taste and judgment.” America, AI proved, had standards.

But in the three weeks since Ames’s article was published, the relentlessly out-of-tune Sanjaya Malakar, regarded by many as one of the worst top-ten contestants in the history of American Idol, has sailed through show after show with America’s support. Has Ames’s theory, so recently minted, already been decisively falsified? Does Sanjaya prove that America has no standards after all?

The Shvitz implored Ames to tell America’s many millions of Idolaters whether his theories have survived the rise of Sanjaya. And he manned up. Below, Professor Ames explains to Shvitzers how Simon, Randy, and Paula have let him down, and why he still believes that AI is a fine expression of American meritocracy.

-- Joey

******

American Idol begins with the judges having the final say about the fates of the contestants. It then shifts to audience voting. The judges continue to comment and try to influence the voting, but they no longer render the final verdict. Usually, the judges are quite effective in shaping audience opinion, but at times they fail. Often, interestingly, they fail with the pre-teen or young adolescent audience, and an untalented but cute contestant with junior high appeal outlasts his time. Thus it is with Sanjaya, who clearly is a poor singer.

What's discouraging is that the judges have given up on criticizing him, perhaps recognizing that he's the phenom of the moment and is helping their ratings. So, yes, that's a different current from what I discussed in my article, where the audience relishes seeing talentless swell-headed would-be artistes get cut down to size.

One aspect of American Idol discourse that fascinates me is the competing languages of judges and contestants. The contestants, without variation, speak the trite "follow your dream and nothing can stop you" and "we are each individual in our talents and strengths" myths; the judges talk about good and bad performance, intonation, phrasing, song choice and so forth. Poor Ryan Seacrest tries to straddle the line between these incompatible discourses. Ultimately, it's the two sides of the American meritocracy: a belief that talent or hard work will eventually win out, versus the star-is-born belief in the miraculous transformative power of fame.

--Christopher Ames

I only watch the show because my wife forces me to, so if last night I was absolutely knocked out of the box by Sanjaya’s best-yet hairdo, brokenhearted by Melinda and Paula’s tearful meltdoSanjaya Malakar: Last night's hair was best ever!wn of I-Thou intimacy, enchanted by Lakisha’s talent...well, I can't be blamed.

Anyway, American Idol is now respectable. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Washington College dean Christopher Ames plumbs the “pedagogical significance of this remarkable reality show” (yep. Direct quote.). See, Ames has had it up to here with grade inflation and indolent, ignorant twits who spew rubbish in seminar. And American Idol proves that the Red-state hoi polloi feel the same. Ames stops about a dime short of saying that the show has restored his faith in this country.

What lessons about popular attitudes toward grading and evaluation emerge from American Idol's auditions? First, a belief in genuine standards: We may at times disagree about whether a performance is good or bad, but extreme examples remind us that those differences in taste exist within that shared context of what counts as "in tune," an agreement about what ultimately is a credible performance…

Second, the show reveals a respect for expertise. Along with the estimable pop credentials of the regular judges, celebrity guest judges demonstrate how skill and training inform good evaluation. A similar respect for professorial authority characterizes the academic landscape. Amid all the attacks on higher education today, America remains a culture that puts great stock in expert opinions.

Third, the auditions reveal that individuals are often not good judges of their own ability. Again and again, the judges mirror audience incredulity at poor performers who think they are great. The simple reality that professors encounter all the time emerges with clarity: People aren't objective about themselves. But more than that, most people are not astutely self-critical or even open to constructive appraisal. Learning how to learn from coaching and criticism can be a challenge — and, ultimately, the most successful contestants (like successful students) do just that and improve notably in the course of the season or semester. We call it education.

Unfortunately, Sanjaya’s still around. So Ames is wrong. Great hair and a winning smile still trump talent every time.

Bend It Like Aiken: Sanjaya MalakarJody Rosen makes a good point in his Slate blog about American Idol:

Seventeen-year-old Sanjaya Malakar is doubtless the most ethnically exotic [Idol contender], at least by Middle American standards. In fact, a decent case could be made that by reaching the Idol knockout stage, Malakar instantly and automatically becomes the most well-known South Asian in the United States. (Who else is there? Gandhi? Salman Rushdie? The girl from Bend It Like Beckham?)

There's also Padma Lakshmi, Kal Penn, and Naveen Andrews. But the point remains: teeny, adorable Malakar might just be the country’s most famous South Asian next to Salman Rushdie.

Which reveals an interesting contradiction in the flow of fame. On the one hand, being a writer isn’t usually the most straightforward way to become a household name. On the other hand, there are more well-known South Asian authors in America than there are movie stars, musicians, politicians or, um, sports figures. (Those who pay attention to the demographics of Jewish celebrity might find this statistic familiar.)

There are two explanations for this, one micro and one macro. In the nineties, the publishing industry fell in love with Indian and Indian-American authors, leading to a small boomlet of novels by people like Jhumpa Lahiri (whose first book is about to become a movie starring the aforementioned Penn.) But it’s also just much easier for ethnic minorities to break into fiction than any other field of entertainment. Why is that? Commenters, I’m looking at you.

Elliot YaminLast season's American Idol third-place finalist Elliot Yamin aka "Snaggletooth" has a new reason to smile. He just spent $50,000 on extensive cosmetic dentistry procedures, including porcelain veneers all aimed at helping him "express [his] emotions better."

According to Yamin's Beverly Hills dentist:

The changes aren't just cosmetic, either. It is going to help muscle function, it is going to increase the volume (of his voice) maybe. So if anything, he could become an even better singer."

If my memory serves me correctly, here's hoping.