Bio: In 1987, writer-guitarist Josh Alan Friedman sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads (the Crossroads of the World–Broadway & 42nd Street) and moved to Texas. He’d just written Tales of Times Square, a cult classic. An Expanded Edition with new chapters was recently released, while the still-unfinished movie of Tales has played 35 film festivals.
Josh also set off satirical fires and lawsuits as writer-half of the Friedman Bros, the most feared cartooning duo of the late ’70s and ’80s. Two anthologies remain in print, featuring the art of Josh’s brother, Drew Friedman: Warts and All, and Any Similarity to Persons Living Or Dead Is Purely Coincidental.
On the music front, as “Josh Alan,” he barnstormed the state of Texas for 20 years, rocking whole arenas with his Guild D-40. Copping three Dallas Observer Music Awards for Best Acoustic Act, he released four albums: Famous & Poor, The Worst!, Blacks ‘n’ Jews (the title of which became a documentary on Josh’s life) and Josh Alan Band.
The only way I passed Chemistry was by “taking advantage of the surroundings” as the smart kid next to me put it in my Placer High School yearbook.
My preacher daddy always warned me about cheating and I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway when I had to (science classes).
Aside from Chemistry, the number of times I cheated in school were less than 20.
I graduated Placer High School with a 3.3 GPA and an 1135 SAT score (brilliant in verbal skills and bad in math).
I basically stopped cheating when I got to community college, except in math. I started out in Beginning Algebra and got a C. Then in intermediate Algebra, I got another C.
When I decided to major in Economics, I figured I had to get serious about math. I started getting up at 4 am every day to study for a few hours before school.
I was taking Trigonometry. I only cheated once in the class and it was the last time in my life that I would cheat in school.
One morning during a closed-book test, I snuck a peak into my textbook and this girl turned around and looked at me.
I think the teacher graded on a curve so she had every reason to turn me in. She didn’t.
I’ll never forget the look in her wide eyes. I decided right there I’d never cheat again.
From where I squint, Josh Alan Friedman is the finest American writer of books. (For you who travel solely on the cyberhighway, books are paper-made collections of text bound by a spine and two covers.) Whether it be Tales of Times Square, his lament for New York before Benito Giuliani and Mickey Mouse made it safe for yuppies and tourists, or Tell The Truth Until They Bleed, a collection of his music journalism, which details popular musicians who still play blue notes and sport track marks, Friedman’s oeuvre chronicles the soulful stuff of American life, currently getting methodically whacked by the fear-filled lackeys of corporate-think who goose-step whichever way required to keep themselves in gelato and Grey Goose. His latest classic tome, Black Cracker (New Texture), dubbed “an autobiographical novel,” is a reminiscence of the author’s childhood in the early ’60s as the only white kid in an all-black school. Friedman splits sides, breaks hearts and always remains ruthlessly honest about the real world, a place that doesn’t conform to the politically correct wishes of liberals or conservatives.
Here are some of the notes I made of things I wanted to discuss (mainly taken from Chabad):
Ascetism leads to purity, purity leads to holiness, holiness leads to humility, humility leads to fear of sin, fear of sin leads to saintliness, saintliness leads to the [possession of] the holy spirit, and the holy spirit leads to eternal life.
(Talmud, Avodah Zarah 20b)
The Hebrew word midian means “strife”. Midian is the essence of divisiveness, which is the root of all evil.
Judaism is not pacifist. And Moses spoke to the people: “Arm yourselves… to take G-d’s vengeance on Midian” (31:3)
G-d said to Israel: It is you who have an account to settle with them, for they caused Me to harm you. But Moses said: Master of the worlds! If we had been uncircumcised, or idol-worshippers, or had denied the mitzvot, the Midianites would not have hated us. They only persecute us on account of the Torah and the precepts which You have given us! Consequently the vengeance is Yours; and so I say: “To take G-d’s vengeance on Midian.”
(Midrash Tanchuma)
“To take G-d’s vengeance on Midian” — for whoever stands against Israel, stands against G-d.
G-d sees the war on Midian as avenging Israel, for G-d’s foremost concern is for His people; the people of Israel see the war as avenging G-d, for they are concerned only with the honor of G-d.
(The Chassidic Masters
The proverb says: “A well from which you drank, cast not a stone into it.”
For it is a man’s duty to be free of blame before men as before G-d, as it is said: “And you shall be guiltless towards G-d and towards Israel.”
(Midrash Tanchuma; Mishnah, Shekalim 3:2)
I admit that as a single man, I often want to say, I’m gonna do what I think is right, who cares what other people think, but what other people think is very important. Prager says married people, parents, talk differently.
The forty-two “stations” from Egypt to the Promised Land are replayed in the life of every individual Jew, as his soul journeys from its descent to earth at birth to its return to its Source.
(Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov)
Rebbe: Thus the people know that they were never simply “passing through” or “biding time” at a particular juncture in their journey. Their every encampment, no matter how short or temporary, was to have its center, its focus, its objective: its own distinct way of making G-d at home in their lives.
Pauses, interruptions and setbacks are an inadvertent part of a person’s sojourn on earth. But when everything a person does is toward the goal of attaining the “Holy Land” — the sanctification of the material world — these, too, are “journeys”. Ultimately, they are shown to have been the true motors of progression, each an impetus to the realization of one’s mission and purpose in life.
The great desert we each must cross in the journey of life is the product of what the Kabbalists call the tzimtzum (“constriction”): G-ds creation of a so-called vacuum within His all-pervading immanence, a bubble of darkness within His infinite light that allows man the choice between good and evil. For in order that our acts of goodness should be meaningful, there must also be the choice of evil.
Six cities of refuge shall they be for you (35:13)
The Torah includes six hundred and thirteen mitzvot (commandments)…. Of these, the mitzvot that can be observed today [following the destruction of the Holy Temple and our exile from the Holy Land] number, altogether, three hundred and thirty-nine. Among these are mitzvot for which a person becomes obligated only under certain circumstances, so that it is possible that never in his lifetime will these circumstances come about and he will never have the opportunity to do them–e.g., the mitzvah to pay an employee on time… The number of mitzvot that every Jew is obligated in is two hundred and seventy… Many of these, however, are binding only on certain days of the year or certain times of the day.
There are six mitzvot whose obligation is constant, and does not depart from the person for a single moment throughout his lifetime. These are: to believe in G-d, to avow His oneness, to renounce idolatry, to love G-d, to fear Him, and to avoid temptation to sin. They are symbolized by the verse, “Six cities of refuge shall they be for you.”
(Sefer HaChinuch)
Furthermore, the day on which “the tribes of Israel where permitted to marry into each other” was proclaimed a national holiday. In fact, this holiday–the 15th of Av–is declared by the Mishnah to be one of the two greatest days of the year! (the other being none other than Yom Kippur). There are a number of reasons given as to the specialty of Av 15th, but this is one of them. In other words, the merging of tribes is not only tolerable, but something to be celebrated.
Sometimes it is good not to intermarry with another tribe, and sometimes it is fine. The Torah does not worship inclusivity or exclusivity.
Many commentators and the Midrash itself found deeper meanings and moral lessons lurking behind the recitation and spelling of the name of the place itself. Such names as kivrot hataavah – the burial place of desire and lust – certainly bear out such understandings.
(Rashi)
Josh Alan Friedman, a talented Dallas writer and musician, spent his early years in New York, where he was the only white kid attending the last segregated black school on Long Island. Now he’s written an “autobiographical novel” about the experience called Black Cracker. So last night Dawn Rizos, owner of The Lodge gentlemen’s club, hosted a dinner and book-signing there for Friedman and 75 or so of his friends, plus assorted media types like the Dallas Observer’s Robert Wilonsky (that’s Big Bob just below Friedman’s left arm in this photo by Scott Mankoff) and Alan Peppard of The Dallas Morning News.
When Josh spots me, he says, “You look like a Hasidic rabbi!”
I think my beard has grown two inches since he saw me last summer.
During his reading, a young black man in his twenties gets very unhappy. “How are people allowed to write this way?” he protests. “I believe in freedom of speech and everything but this is too much.”
He yells and wave his arms around and then goes out on to Sunset Blvd and keeps yelling about Black Cracker.
Scott Huffines posts to my Facebook: “I’m about halfway through “Black Cracker” – hilarious book and his Jewish childhood wasn’t a whole lot different than my redneck Baltimore childhood.”
As American trial attorneys, we are highly educated professionals who are dedicated to the highest of ideals of justice, the pursuit of truth, & the zealous advocacy of our clients’ rights. We rely on factual evidence, historical accuracy, and persuasive arguments to champion our clients’ interests. We flush out bad arguments that are devoid of fact and reason, and impeach the lying witnesses. We are not intimidated by our adversaries. We come to the defense of those causes are righteous. We apply these ideals and trial skills to our staunch defense of the State of Israel.
Trial attorneys should be at the forefront of the battle defending Israel.
If we were in a court of law and had to defend Israel against her enemies, we know we would win because the law and the facts are on our side. Courtrooms do not entertain propaganda. They entertain justice.
Short of defending the State of Israel in court, we have the opportunity to defend Israel against her enemies in the court of public opinion. Our tool is the internet and we disseminate pro-Israel articles to our colleagues via this newly-formed Linkedin group. Please join and make a difference.
Why does it cost so much to be Jewish? At a time when American families are tightening household budgets, does it really make sense to continue to charge thousands of dollars to participate in Jewish life? “Sheer institutional survival now preoccupies the heads of Jewish institutions,” wrote Jack Wertheimer in Commentary in March.
American Jews are always worrying about the fate of American Jewry, of course. Intermarriage rates, hovering around 50 percent, are perennially cited as the prime factor in Jews’ inevitable extinction; and in The New York Review of Books last month, the journalist Peter Beinart argued that unless “establishment Jewry” made room for Jewish dissent about Israel, it would wake up to find “a mass of secular Jews who range from apathetic to appalled.” But on the day-to-day level, the high cost of the basics—synagogue membership, in particular—is troubling, both outdated as a business model and onerous to families having to choose between Hebrew school and math tutoring. A 2005 study put the average yearly synagogue membership at $1,100—but in big cities, fees can be twice or even three times as much (and, anecdotally at least, higher than churches, which often depend on voluntary donations rather than dues). At the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue (italics mine) on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch says dues are “consistent with everyone else’s,” about $3,100 a year. (He, like virtually all rabbis, vows never to turn someone away for an inability to pay.)
Beinart’s piece created major blogosphere buzz, but Wertheimer’s gave chills to professional Jews everywhere. It focused mostly on the plight of the Orthodox, more likely to be poor than Conservative or Reform Jews, and who, because of their strong commitment, often pay more. According to his calculations, an Orthodox Jewish family with three children could expect to spend between $50,000 and $110,000 a year on school fees, synagogue dues, summer camps, and kosher food. He argued that the fate of American Jewry rested on increased and enthusiastic support from philanthropists and activists to enable these families to live, as he would say, “Jewishly.”
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager says: “The life of Lindsay Lohan does not rivet me. The collective works of Lindsay Lohan would not rivet my attention. The only reason I mention this is because of her mother. Lindsay Lohan is a troubled person and my heart goes out to any troubled person. My heart goes out to her less because she was convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol twice. I don’t have any sympathy for people convicted of DUI. Frankly, I hate you.
“It is simply a matter of roulette whether or not you maim, paralyze, brain-damage or murder another human being or yourself. I have deep anger at such people. This woman was given a light sentence after missing seven mandated court appearances. You’d think a DUI conviction would humble you, that some part of your conscience would say, wow, this is bad.
“How many people do they murder each year? Whole families are killed. In the vast majority of cases, the drunk driver is hurt less than the people the drunk driver hurts. Apparently the body that is intoxicated is far looser in its limbs and can take a crash better than a person who is not intoxicated.
“Thirteen thousand people a year are killed by drunk drivers. I want to cry. We are worried about staying in Afghanistan where all the losses over ten years are 1,000. It’s a national crisis whether we stay in Afghanistan, the home of 9/11.
“This mother has the chutzpah to cry on television that it’s unfair that her daughter… You should’ve heard the prosecutor. She was eloquent.
“Both the lawyer for Lindsay Lohan and the prosecutor are black women. The judge is a woman.
“If I were Lindsay Lohan’s parent, I’d say, I expect better from my daughter. What my child did is wrong. How many parents can say today — my child was wrong? They’re called conservatives.
“Parents who are willing to criticize their children publicly over wrongdoing are more likely to vote Republican. How do you think Lindsay Lohan’s mother votes?”
“This is so not fair to do this to my child,” a flabbergasted Dina Lohan told Popeater.
Dennis: “When I go to Popeater, you know I’ve done research.”
A friend had to send his car into the shop, so every day I’d pick him and we’d ride together to school.
We ended up loving this arrangement and kept it up even after his car was fixed. We enjoyed our daily one-on-one chats.
I never get together with guys just to talk. There always has to be some activity. We might do Alexander Technique or yoga or study Torah or go to lunch or go for a walk.
I think I’d only suggest to a girl getting together solely to talk. Or to look at my etchings.
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
