[T]here is a Talmudic passage that some rabbis believed the date of the birthday of the trees was the first of Shevat. Women, or women and men, who celebrate Rosh Chodesh together as a sacred time can honor that minority opinion by engaging in a "Rosh Chodesh Shevat seder." The Tu b'Shevat seder celebrates the multiple faces of God, and the fruits of the land – this Rosh Chodesh Shevat seder will revive the facets of our souls as we prepare for spring. Instead of a seder of taste, this will be a seder of fragrances. Just as we smell spices to enliven us at the end of havdalah, we will use our sense of smell to wake us up to the worlds around us and the worlds within us.

We missed the boat this year for Rosh Chodesh, but it's something to consider for next year — or at least something to consider considering.

JOFA also has an interesting take on a Tu B'Shevat seder.

The post A Seder of Scents for Tu B’Shevat appeared first on Jewcy.

The Faith Between Us is like no other book about religion. Born when Jewish Peter Bebergal asked his Catholic friend Scott Korb if he believed in God, it's less a treatise on spirituality than an ongoing conversation between two friends about their surprisingly similar relationships with the divine. I spoke to them about their book (which is excerpted on Jewcy), their friendship, and their attempt to reframe the way Americans talk about religion. –Amy Guth

Tell us a bit about your writing process. Korb: What started us thinking about the book was when Peter asked me whether or not I believed in God. The book as a whole answers that question. In short: No. In long: Yes, a lot. The process goes this way: We write an essay. We send that essay to the other person. We edit each other’s essays.

From this point we diverge. I send my comments to Peter. Peter graciously incorporates my suggestions (to a point) and in a week or so has a finished essay. It’s smooth.

Peter doesn’t even bother sending me my essays back any more. First, he calls. He tells me the essay needs work, often with the structure or my focus. I tell him to read it again because clearly he hasn’t read it carefully enough. He tells me he’s read it twice. I tell him to read it again. He does. He calls me the next day with the same comments. I disagree and yell at him. We get off the phone. I sit for two days thinking I am right and Peter is wrong. I reread the essay the following day and realize that Peter is right and I am wrong. I rewrite the essay incorporating Peter’s suggestions (to a point). In a week or so I have a finished essay. Bebergal: Scott has laid it out pretty well here. We both had our moments of being very protective of our writing, as if certain sentences and ideas were precious little kittens the other was trying to smother with a pillow. But even when we both agreed on certain things, our editor would see them and be appalled. That was the most humbling part of the process. At one point, after delivering some material, our editor said “I don’t really know what to say.” She said this not with excitement and enthusiasm, but as if someone had just smothered a kitten. It wasn’t for Scott I wouldn’t be half the writer I am today. He has taught me so much, especially about slowing down and really reading over my work carefully. Scott loves words and sentences, and the way they work together. I get caught up in the intoxication of an idea and an image, and I often forget to make sure my expression of it is as clear and concise as it can be. It will be a shock to begin our next larger projects mostly independent of each other.
As the two of you have been promoting the book, do you find that you've each fallen into different roles? Or do you split responsibilities down the middle? Bebergal: I kind of like to think of us as good cop/bad cop, with me being the good cop. Since I am theist, and Scott really defines himself as an atheist, when we are talking to a room full of believers, I feel like I have to soften the blow a little bit when Scott tries to explain how he considers himself both religious and a non-believer. Also, Scott is more willing to carry a box of books, whereas I prefer to use one those grocery push carts. Korb: Duty-wise, we've gotten pretty good at seamless tag-teaming. I talk, he reads, I read, we both discuss with an assembled group. Or vice-versa. Although I'm finding that people are just slightly more interested in hearing from Peter of actual encounters with the source of holiness – the God we hear so much about – than from me about how holiness has no source, necessarily, but that we create it (say, through an act of love), or recognize it in something someone else has created (say, in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead) at each new moment of creation. People like good cops. Peter, what, if anything, has Scott's religion shown you about Judaism? Scott, what has Peter's religion taught you about Catholicism? Bebergal: Scott has made me want to be a more observant Jew. I find that I take more care on the holidays and on Shabbat, and I can feel Scott's own devoutness in spirit when I practice. Scott has helped me to see the beauty in the metaphor and the symbol when I can't get to the actual meaning. But this has less to do with Catholicism than with who Scott is as a Catholic.

Also, to be honest, working this closely with a Christian and with Christian ideas has only emphasized for me how much I love Judaism, and how much I don't identify with a Christian conception of the world. Korb: While over the years I've become fairly familiar with Judaism through its myths and rituals and ethics, and while much of this familiarity has come through reading and practicing and studying with Peter and his family, the fact is that Judaism remains a foreign land to me. Today I travel there regularly, but I'm by nature nostalgic, and it always feels good back home. The mystery of Judaism, though, the foreign rituals and the foreign languages, is a constant reminder that God is more than I could possibly say. In other words, the fact of Judaism means that my Catholicism cannot possibly say all there is to say about God.
How have your perceptions of one other's religions evolved through the process of writing The Faith Between Us?

Bebergal: I used to believe that being Christian meant that you accepted the infallibility of the Church and the teachings, and that the emphasis was on the afterlife. Scott's relationship to Christianity has shown me that the Jesus of the Gospels is much more interested in this world. Of course, all religions have their eschatologies, but I understand now that a true Christian life can be concerned with the here and now, with the environment, human rights, social justice. Korb: There was a time when I might have said that Jews were not going to get into Heaven. The process of becoming a Catholic atheist – a process largely influenced by my encounters with Judaism – has led me to extend this to Christians, too. (That is, there is no Heaven to get into.) But that probably says more about how my perception of my own religion has changed through this process. How about: I've seen no evidence of the blood libel? Jews aren't money-grubbers? Scott, you've said before, "We learn in the book that I was basically wrong about my whole life of religious disciplines" How have you each changed spiritually through the process of this book, if at all? Bebergal: My early days of seeking some kind of mystical experience were characterized by drug induced paranoia and superstition, the latter staying with me throughout my life. When I got sober, to combat this, I had mostly put my ideas and desires about mysticism away, because they were too bound up in what had become unhealthy, and ultimately life-threatening, for me. But through the writing and my friendship with Scott I have become much less superstitious. And the lovely irony is that now I feel more capable of exploring mysticism again (this time without the LSD, mind you). Korb: My life of religious discipline – from an early vocation-gone-bad, to severe food and sex proscriptions, to my understanding of a facial tic as a God-given marker of my distinctness – was never a difficult one, spiritually. It sounds counterintuitive, but when discipline shapes your life, when you know what you have to eat everyday and that God doesn't want you sleeping with anyone until you're married, you take great comfort in that. When your face keeps your moral temperature by flashing under the pressure of any contact with sin, there's never any struggle. Eat vegan, no sex (or, no "intercourse" but lots of sex), be good.

As I abandon that life under God's safe protection and my own obsessive control, my spiritual life becomes more of a struggle. I'd always kept myself above the fray of living in the world, afraid of the mess and pain. I'm in it now, and it's good for me. Sex is more meaningful when you risk real relationships and struggle against monogamy (I've recently been engaged). Food tastes better when you pay attention to where the meat comes from (I've recently been hunting).
What is the best single bit of feedback you've gotten about the book? Bebergal: For me, it was when our editor told us that she had full confidence that we were going to write a great book, but when she read the completed manuscript it was better than the book she thought she was going to get from us. But I do also have to say equal to that was when my father-in-law, who is a devout atheist and fierce literary critic, finished the book and said that he could really identify with the idea that faith begins in wonder, and that he understood the power and importance of religious language. Korb: My mother and an editor friend, both Catholics, said the same thing to me after reading the book and learning of my atheism: "I hope you're wrong." At first I laughed this off, saying, "Yeah, me too." But one night while Peter and I were discussing the book at Harvard Hillel I realized something about their remark that I'd missed in so quickly dismissing it. Neither my mom nor this friend was insisting anything. They have a hope for me and for themselves. A Christian hope. And they're no more, and no less, sure about God than I am.

The Christian hope I have doesn't require – and, in fact, does better without – any actual God or afterlife or judgment. I hope for salvation here. And for my sake, I hope that hope is, as I insisted with my friend, "as Christian as anything." What do you most hope Jewish readers will take away from The Faith Between Us? Bebergal: I hope that Jewish readers will identify a bit with the internal struggle of simply being religious. I grew up extremely secular (the old joke, I think Billy Crystal once used it, is "My parents believe in the Ten Commandments but we only had to pick five.") I have been observant, and even that in my limited way, for only about 15 years. I worried that I had nothing to say about Judaism that would be important. But then I realized that my whole life is about being Jewish, with all the struggles, questions, doubts, food, jokes.

I also think that I want to start a conversation, which is not often one discussed in Jewish circles, about the question God. The emphasis is often on observance, law, and Israel. But I want to start talking about what is God to us as as individuals, and how we take those beliefs into our communities and synagogues. Even though I was born Jewish, and culturally this was very important in my home, I came to Jewish practice by way of belief, by way of God. Korb: Starting with Peter, Jewish readers were a huge help to me in the writing of this book. They helped me to clarify my own thoughts, as I wrote, about what it means to be faithful. And as I considered a potential Jewish audience, I knew I had to be clear in how I told stories and described ideas that, while perfectly familiar to me, might seem crazy to them. And for that, one thing I'd like a Jewish reader to take away from Faith is a "Thank you."

That said, I hope a Jewish reader could find real meaning in the Christian stories I rely on while telling my own story. I hope I'm clear enough. And I hope they're open-minded enough. What do you each wish was different about both Judaism and Christianity? Bebergal: Well it depends on if you mean historically or today. My biggest frustration though is with Hasidism. I deeply respect their knowledge and spiritual aptitude, but can't abide by much of their views on the world we live in. I wish there weren't such deep divisions over things like gays, evolution, and Israel. But this is the history of Judaism, these deep divisions. It's amazing to think about Jews having a civil war in the 60s C.E. We still have this same conflict between secularism and religion. But thank God that the Judaism I practice and understand is both worldly and spiritual, rational and mystical. Korb: God help us. Religions in general would be better if they emphasized belief less and faithfulness more.

* * *

ALSO IN JEWCY: Read an excerpt from The Faith Between Us

The post Q&A with the Authors of “The Faith Between Us” appeared first on Jewcy.

Of course, I'm still going to give tzedekah. In addition to the usual JNF Plant-a-Tree program that I often use, as most of us probably have (I do appreciate the environmental work JNF does, among other things) I've unearthed (no pun intended) a few other opportunities for you to love trees if you're thinking of adding another tree, in addition to perhaps an Israeli tree, to your tzedekah this week.

The post Tzedakah We Love: Trees, Trees and More Trees appeared first on Jewcy.

SHUL OF ROCK

www.jewsrock.org Chaim Witz, Perry Bernstein, Jeffrey Hyman. Half the fun of Jewsrock is finding out the given names of pop icons like Gene Simmons, Perry Farrell, and Joey Ramone, respectively. You can also tour the rock ’n’ roll “Challah Fame” or take the “Jew or Not?” quiz. Between the lines, there’s a serious message about pride in Jewish accomplishments, and a dedication to smashing my-son-the-dentist stereotypes. Alas, the Web site appears to have gone static, but is no less rockin’ for it

KOSHER COMEDY

www.bangitout.com When a site bills itself as “kosher comedy for the circumcised,” expect few sacred cows. Part gimlet-eyed news digest, part Onion-like satire, and part self-tweaking Jewish social club, BangItOut mashes raucous headlines (“New Book Helps Rabbis Stay Away From Hot Widows”), amusing photos (the Barbie menorah is a favorite), and see-it-to-believe-it videos (don’t miss the hilarious “jPhone” commercial). As their site promises, “If something’s funny and Jewish on the Internet, it’s either on here or linked from here.”

COME ON, FEEL THE “OYS”

www.klezmershack.com As this site points out, “klezmer is a popular music form that is no longer exclusively Jewish.” Likewise, KlezmerShack isn’t just about klezmer anymore; it’s blossomed into a one-stop shop for news about Jewish music, hot cultural events worldwide, reviews, even music videos grabbed from YouTube (you haven’t lived until you’ve heard “A Hard Day’s Night” in Yiddish). Webmaster Ari Davidow—an online strategist for a Jewish nonprofit by day—oversees the festivities with charm, wit, and infectious joy.

COOLEST JEWISH RECORD LABEL ON EARTH

www.jdubrecords.org If your knowledge of Jewish music stretches from “Hava Nagila” to… “Hava Nagila,” expand your horizons at the online home of JDub, the coolest Jewish record label on the planet. You’ll impress your kids with casual references to ultrahip bands like Golem, Balkan Beat Box, Socalled, and the LeeVees. Then the whole family can download inimitable JDub videos and songs (like all four segments of Socalled’s mystical sci-fi, hip-hop Claymation opus “500-Pound Planet”). Who says parents and kids can’t agree on music?

SCHMOOZE, SHVITZ, SHOP

 www.jewcy.com What began as a retailer of risqué rags (the “Chai Maintenance” T-shirt was a fave) has become the center of Jewish hipsterism’s new wave. The shirts are still there, but so is smart original reporting and opinion, a vibrant social network, and much discussed blogs such as “The Daily Shvitz” and “Faithhacker.” Brains, attitude, and sheer chutzpah make Jewcy a daily must-read.

 Good Shabbes, all. Mwah.

The post Jewcy Makes Jewish Living’s “Hip Hebraic Homepages” appeared first on Jewcy.

There are some cringe worthy factors in her situation– drinking and driving, icy weather, speeding– at .11 she wasn't sober but she likely wasn't completely wasted, either, and it's not uncommon to drive over the speed limit, and certainly not unusual in the least for a parent to step on the gas a little in anticipation of time with their children. Fair enough. And, Rabbi Bernstein wrote a very humble and, I thought, beautiful letter to her congregation stating, “We have got to be really attentive to our own inner lives and our own best practices and the need to slow down in general — the need to stay centered and whole so that we don’t get careless. Because that’s what happened — I got careless. Those of us who teach about that need to take our own advice.’’ Rabbi Bernstein, who has been planning to take a three-month sabbatical in Israel since before this incident then wrote, "“This incident has shocked me into awareness that there are several important things that need my careful attention right now. I promise to make my time in Israel a time of real inner work and careful reflection on the meaning and direction of my life.’’

I like her letter. Her congregation is standing behind her, and I think that's honorable and I would hope I would and could do to same if my own rabbi was in Rabbi Bernstein's shoes. Also in her letter, she wrote, “… This has been a traumatic wake-up call for me and I can only beg your forgiveness and promise that it will, of course, not happen again.”

Personally, I hope she means what she wrote, which I'm sure she does. I'm sure she's a fine person, a wonderful person, even, and I don't think she's a bad person for what she did. But more than anything else, I hope her congregation was listening, and I hope with everything I have that her congregation took her words personally, and took them in and will think very hard about their own actions.

You see, that is my hope because, I have a little bit different perspective on DUI. I lost a beloved family member to a drunk driver when she was only twenty-four years old. The driver responsible for her death was, like Rabbi Bernstein, driving with honorable intentions, eager to reach family on the other side of his drive. He was certainly a fine enough and well-liked person in the community, certainly not meaning to hurt anyone and, I honestly believe, absolutely not intending to kill anyone, but, in his case, tragically and quite accidentally, did.

If you have a problem with alcohol and you are ready, please consider talking to your Rabbi or family, or whoever, or maybe touching base with JACS, or checking out many of the meetings that are starting to be held in shuls now, instead of just churches. A lot of us, and I'll be the first to admit I've caught myself thinking this, have this thinking that we, Jews, because of reverential feelings for kiddush or for whatever reason, are somehow exempt from alcohol-related issues, but it's just not true and I've got to think that we're doing ourselves a major disservice by not recognizing members of our community who need our support.

But, let me be completely clear. I only mention substance dependency because we're talking about booze, but I do not, under any circumstances, think that people who are driving under the influence are alcoholics. Some probably are, but, honestly, I worry more about the casual drinkers. We all keep our eyes on the big boozers in the circles we run in and we know not to let them drive under any circumstances. But, the casual drinkers who just catch a nice buzz then decide to head home seem like they're not doing too terrible of a thing, as if surely the "don't drink and drive" slogans aren't talking about them, surely not, but let me tell you under no uncertain terms that it only take a moment of lapsed judgment or a second of delayed reaction to make everything horribly different. And, let's be honest, we've all probably, at one time or another in our lives, driven or started to drive and only then realized we maybe were a little in the cups. We've probably all driven at one point when we probably should have not.

So, it's my hope that we all really think very carefully of Rabbi Bernstein's words, not only on this issue, but in many areas of our lives, and that we take them very personally and really hear them:

"We have got to be really attentive to our own inner lives and our own best practices and the need to slow down in general — the need to stay centered and whole so that we don’t get careless."

The post Rabbi Arrested for Drunk Driving Apologizes appeared first on Jewcy.

But, I realized nobody really touched the anonymous comment that not only missed the point of the comment it was in response to, but named Conservadoxy invalid Judaism, and rather boldly marched into the territory of what movement of Judaism one feels they are a part of versus being declared unfit to be in the movement of Judaism one feels they are a part of. While there is a lot to discuss there, well, there is something not-quite-right to me about declaring an anonymous comment the comment of the week (Oh, I'll catch it right in the face for that, I'm sure).

Hang on, hear me out. I don't mean anything mean by it– anyone has the right to post anonymously if they'd like, but I think there's something to be said for leaving your name. In a way, when I see an anonymous commenter leaving something really ballsy, I feel for them. I can't help but wonder if the commenter is able to be assertive in their real life. Unfortunately, in my experience a lot of us take anonymous comments rather lightly because somewhere, we're thinking, "Forget it. If s/he really meant that, s/he would have claimed it." It's easy to say something potentially volatile if nobody knows who you are, but some part of me questions the motive for posting anonymously. Do you not really believe in what you're saying? Are you afraid someone will be angry with you if you say what you really think? Just things I wonder about, because I can't possibly fathom the motivation for posting both aggressively and anonymously. I'm mean that. What's the worst that could happen if we all just said what we thought, you know, as ourselves? Really, I'm trying to nudge/encourage more than I am out to rag anyone.

But, I'm getting off task here. The real shocker to me, and thus, the Comment of the Week is that it was not until the eleventh comment that someone inquired about the Shomer Negiah panties. Respectful, eyes-averted, modest hat tip to Soccer.

The post Comment of The Week: I Think We All Know This Is Going To Be About The Shomer Negiah Post appeared first on Jewcy.

So, recently, when I learned about a truly wonderful organization that is doing some really incredible work in this area, I knew I'd found an organization I wanted to support. Meet Girls Write Now, an organization that "provides a safe and supportive environment where girls can expand their natural writing talents, develop independent creative voices, and build confidence in making healthy choices in school, career and life." Sounds great, right? Wait, wait, it gets even better!

Girls Write Now "provides at-risk New York City high school girls with emerging writing talent an opportunity to be custom-matched with a professional woman writer who serves as her personal mentor and writing coach, meeting with her weekly for the duration of an entire school year, and for up to four years. GWN also enrolls each student in a vibrant writing community — all mentees and mentors gather monthly for genre-based group writing workshops conducted at our offices within Teachers & Writers Collaborative in midtown Manhattan. The year is punctuated by three annual readings, college and career prep seminars, field trips to cultural events, and endless opportunities for scholarships and publication. The magic of the program is reflected in a solid nine-year track record, a 75-percent member retention rate, a 100-percent college acceptance rate, an annual anthology of original writing, and the seven-genre portfolios each student emerges equipped with each season. Founded in 1998, GWN was the first organization to ever present this combination of powerful services, and it continues to be the only program of its kind in the eastern United States."

Girls Write Now has, in addition to mentoring sessions, writing workshops, a reading series, a Life Adventure series of writing and performance workshops, support for students parsing through the rigors of college admissions, events and activities, and scholarships and contests, but they created Girls Write Forever, a program that helps give supporters so many options to ensure the good work of Girls Write Now can continue into the future. (Now, if I can just figure out where they sell those great t-shirts!)

To support this organization with a donation or an in-kind donation please click here. To volunteer, here, and for litty girls in New York City, click here. And, if you find yourself in New York on January 18th, and you do roll on Shabbes, by all means, get yourself to the Winter Pair Reading and see your ten bucks doing a lot of good.

The post Social Justice Tuesday: Girls Write Now appeared first on Jewcy.

A smoking ban just went into effect in Germany and opponents of said ban have been selling t-shirts online that feature the ol' Judenstern we had to wear back in the day. Only, instead of "Jude", the star on the t-shirts said "Raucher" (smoker), to suggest that discrimination against smokers is not unlike anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.

The shirts went on sale online in the days before the smoking ban in ten out of Germany's sixteen states, which went into effect on New Year's Day. Dennis Kramer of DPM, the marketers behind the shirt said citizens needed to be aware of "disgraceful discrimination against smokers" in bars and restaurants and called the shirts "the most aggressive smokers' resistance shirt available" but added he only "wanted to show that smokers are being discriminated against in bars". The website has since been shut down, but a couple of websites seem to still be selling the shirts.

Germany's Central Council of Jews called the t-shirts "crude, brainless and tasteless" and added that anyone who "compares the plight of the Jews during the Third Reich to smokers who are thought to be discriminated against" to be people who have learned "absolutely nothing". Dieter Graumann, the deputy president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany said, "This is an absolute abuse of the Jewish genocide… It is a scandal to exploit the murder of the Jews in order to symbolize the people's desire to smoke." But, it might be more than just a matter of taste– In Itzehoe, where DPM is based, prosecutors confirmed a formal investigation has been launched to establish whether they could prosecute, being that the display of Nazi symbols is prohibited under German law. Obviously.

The post German Smokers’ Rights Group Brings Back The Judenstern appeared first on Jewcy.

In November, I remember reading about a Jewish cemetery near Baltimore getting vandalized and thinking, "What if surviving relatives can't afford to restore the headstones?" and only paragraphs later reading a spokesperson's statement:

For gravestones that cannot be traced to a family, Mr. Cohn said the congregation will likely absorb the cost of repair, which he said will be about $125 per stone. He said the cemetery – which likely dates back to the mid-19th century, according to the congregation—is not insured for vandalism, and perpetual care only covers the upkeep of the grounds.

“Morally and ethically, it’s our responsibility. But legally, it’s not. Families will have to pay for it, and we feel very, very bad about this,” said Mr. Cohn, who noted that the congregation plans to install high-intensity lighting at the cemetery. “It will cost us, it will cost the families, and we’ll absorb what we can. But it’s limited. Where are the funds? It’s not like, bingo, we have the funds.”

On Jan 1st, a Jewish cemetery back east in New Brunswick, NJ was vandalized, and I quickly found mention of a restoration fund in an article reporting the arrest of the teenagers responsible for the damage.

About a week ago, here in Chicago where I live, someone, or a group of someones probably, broke onto the grounds of Westlawn Jewish cemetery and vandalized gravestones with swastikas, line-slashed Magen David symbols, threats, slogans… the usual hate graffiti schtick.

Anyway, the price tag on getting things back in order is estimated to be between $100,000 and $150,000 and thought there are some unclear bits of information floating around here, it seems that the financial responsibility is falling upon surviving families. I haven't heard anything official from the JUF, as far as funds being used to offset their expenses, but I'm sure it's either forthcoming, or I've just yet to track it down. In any case, the cost is going to be considerable, every bit will surely count, and my feeling is that because hate against some of us is hate against all of us, and so responsibility also falls equally.

I'm sure earmarked donations would be welcome here:

Westlawn Cemetery and Mausoleum (Vicki Pulido, General Manager), 7801 W. Montrose Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60706 (773) 625-8600

The post How to Respond When Jewish Graves Are Vandalized appeared first on Jewcy.

As I was considering this, just a bit ago, I got a pretty respectable (and entirely unrelated) headache and, thus, got sidetracked from thinking about Jewy-related products, and thinking instead about a great buckwheat pillow I used to have that felt fabulous to rest an aching head upon. So, I Googl'd, to see if such a thing still existed, and look at the way things come together:

Not only do buckwheat pillows still exist, and in fact, might even be more popular now than they were a decade ago when I had one, but they exist in organic and kosher form. But not only as pillows, but also as mattress rolls. Who knew? Okay, probably a lot of you, whatever. Point being, not only do I not have to live without this fabulous pillow any longer, but I don't have to worry about sleeping in a pile of pesticide-ridden treyf, either.

To find out what on earth would be so great about sleeping on buckwheat (the kernels, not the guy), read this.

The post Sweet (Kosher, Non-GMO and Organic) Dreams! appeared first on Jewcy.