I was deeply upset to hear a few minutes ago that Rabbi Meir (Mickey) Rosen passed away last night. He was a very strong influence on my life at several stages, beginning when I was a high school student. Later, I studied in the Beit Midrash at Yakar, and was even privileged to work there as a teacher for more than a year. He was a gentle person, an original thinker, a learned Talmid Hakhamim, and much more. His book on Hassidut was published recently and the conclusion of his doctorate on the Rashbam was recently defended in the face of its critics.
Here are the funeral details as I received them by email
With deep sadness, we report the news of the passing last night of our friend and teacher, Mickey Rosen. ??? ????? ???? ?? ??? ???? ???? ?"?
The funeral will be held this afternoon at 3:00 pm at Har Hemenuhot, at the Beit ha-Hespedim of Kehillat Yerushalayim.
Marc Gafni hosted me. We shot some video at the national park up in the mountains.
Here are some photos from 8550 feet elevation today:
D. emails: "If the clues from your childhood weren’t enough–the all-too-close "friendship" with young Wayne Cherry, the the incidents with your sister’s makeup, the inability to stand up for yourself like a right proper young man, the time your stepmum caught you inserting some Abo’s filthy didgeridoo up your bum in the dunny–this "lost weekend" with Mark Gafni seals the deal, Sunny Jim. You’re a bloody homo. A ponce, A poofter. A fair-dinkum catamite. I should have staked you out on a termite mound, boy. The Australian sun might have burned the gay out of you, but I fear it’s too late now. Better I should have forced some lye down your throat with a funnel. At least then I could grieve for my departed boy. Now, it’s all I can do to keep my noontime tucker down."
Rabbi Pinchas Stolper — the haredi-leaning founder of NCSY, was a consistent defender of Baruch Lanner. In fact, he was the one who hired the bastard in the first place, and was his superior for many years.
After Lanner was busted by the Jewish Week, Rabbi Stolper was there to explain that these allegations of decades of kneeing boys and touching girls improperly had to be placed in context of an otherwise wonderful career as a kiruv professional. After all, Lanner “had such a magnificent impact” on young people. You know, he made them frum! And most importantly, touching girls and kicking boys wasn’t a sexual problem or anything as sordid as that. Oh, no, no, no. Rather,
“despite some obvious sickness that is not sexual but has to do with needing to be in control.”
Director Robin Garbose is planning protest screenings of her film “A Light for Greytowers” at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Israel on December 13 and 15, coinciding with the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival, which refused to screen the movie for women-only audiences.
Organizers of the weeklong festival at the Jerusalem Cinematheque originally accepted the film based on its artistic quality, but insisted on maintaining the usual policy of inviting the general public.
“Greytowers” is a musical set in 19th century Victorian England, featuring young Orthodox actresses as orphans forbidden to practice Judaism under the menacing rule of the orphanage headmistress, Miss Grimshaw.
Garbose, a theater and television director who became Orthodox 18 years ago, created the movie under rabbinic supervision. Consistent with Kol Isha laws in Orthodoxy that do not permit women to sing or dance in front of men, the film has screened exclusively for girls and women over the past year in New York, New Jersey and Los Angeles.
Graff, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, dropped her pet at doggie daycare on Highland before coming tonight.
Laurie: "It’s my brother’s birthday this Saturday. He has a big party. I was coming out for this party. My book was released last month. How could I come to Los Angeles and not do things? You need to have friends in high places. My really good friend Terry Feinstein’s husband Danny Maseng is the cantor here. I lost my good neighbors from upstate New York. They moved out here in July and hooked up with Stefanie [Steingold].
Laurie: "The origins of this book were born when I lived out here in Los Angeles. I moved out with a bunch of friends… My friend Ellen came out and brought me into a writers group that Susan Mercin (sp?), a member of this synagogue, leads.
"I was having dates out here with some of the identical men I had dated in New York. Everybody moved out [here] to break into television, etc. I had played all the counter girls in TV commercials. It seemed like I was from Pennsylvania. It was very nice. People would say, ‘She’s cute! The shiksa!’ It was always a compliment. Nice. Then I came here and it was like I was wearing a neon sign saying, ‘New York Jew!’"
"I had a date two weeks ago…and I offered to get some cookies and he said, ‘Don’t be so Jewish!’ Would somebody say, ‘Don’t be so Italian’?"
"There are all these assumptions that happen and they keep people separate."
"When I was out here and noticed this, I started to say, ‘Hmm, maybe this guy has a bissel shiksa syndrome.’ I started to write about it. I wrote a four page essay that turned into a short story that turned into the arc of my first novel, You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs."
"When it came time to write another book, my agent said to me, ‘What do you want to write?’ I said, ‘It’s such a pity. I used ‘Shiksa Syndrome’ in ‘You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs’ as the arc. It would’ve made a great stand-alone piece.’ She said, ‘Do it! Keep the same premise. A Jewish girl pretends to be a shiksa to catch a Jewish guy. And make up a whole new story and a whole new character.’"
"I started to think, what kind of girl would do this, aside from an actress? There’s a certain amount of fantasy in this book where you just stretch because the girl goes deeper and deeper… She digs herself into this lie that happens quite accidentally."
"I’ve been working in PR these past half dozen years. I started to think about branding and back to the assumptions. People buy brands… This girl represents a girl I’d want to be."
"In the original Heartbreak Kid with Charles Grodin, nobody said Jewish but if you watch carefully, when he marries Jeannie Berlin in the first scene, he is wearing a yarmulke and they break the glass, and Jeannie Berlin is portrayed as this awful whiny nasal kvetchy [wife]… Maybe that’s what they had to do to this Jewish woman so that you would buy that he didn’t want to stay married to her. Then he meets Cybil Shepard on the beach [the quintessential shiksa]."
"I pitched this book to Shape magazine last week. I told this editor the title of the book. She laughed. I asked her if she knew what a shiksa is. She said, ‘I sure do. A shiksa is a very attractive blonde woman who likes Jewish men.’"
"I was talking to Luke Ford. He has a great blog. He was interviewing me for Good Frog. We were talking about stereotypes… You can identify. So much of what I write has to do with New York. That’s why I felt like a fish out of water when I lived here… After the traffic here today, I’m never coming back. I can’t handle it."
Laurie talks about her childhood. "We all went to the Young Israel of Sunnyside. It was close. It happened to Orthodox but nobody paid any attention to that.
"We had a very small kitchen. I’m at Young Israel one day and the rabbi said one day, ‘Who has two sets of dishes?’ Everybody raised their hand… I raised my hand to say that we only had one set. He said, ‘You? Star pupil? You only have one set?’
"There was so many cracks like that, I had to leave.
"I went to the Sunnyside Jewish Center. It was Conservative but Rabbi Alber was Orthodox. When it came time for me to be bat mitzvahed, I got a lot of mileage out of this in my books Shiksa Syndrome and You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs. He wouldn’t let me daven. He wouldn’t let me chant the haftorah. He wouldn’t let me sing. I was a show-off. It was very disappointing to me. I’m not over it yet."
"I was a really good girl. I didn’t rebel about anything until I was 15, 16… The orthodontist said don’t chew gum with braces, I stopped chewing gum at 11. I’ve never chewed another piece. The rabbi said you were supposed to come every Saturday, I did it… It became a part of me. I was surprised to find out it wasn’t part of the rest of the family."
"This is my first temple [on The Shiksa Syndrome book tour]. I’ve done bookstores. It’s different."
"There’s a big product launch in this book because she’s [the protagonist] in consumer PR. I got this real guy Romi, who has a cosmetics company, I wrote all his products in, then I had him create a lipstick called Shiksa Goddess that I wrote in fictionally. That was part of the mail-in I wanted to do to give it a more universal appeal."
"People have shied away… The women, it depends where they are in life. If they’re with somebody that they’re happy with, they’re not [happy with the book]. Some of the interviewers I’ve had have been very interesting. This Jewish Book World reporter said, ‘I started your book at 10 p.m. and finished it at 5:30 a.m. I love it but in the end I found it a little hopeless, a little depressing, that I’m not going to find that kind of Jewish guy.’ I don’t know that I will. I don’t feel so bad about it. Out of all the Jewish men I’ve dated, which have been tons and tons, most of them have had little connection and it has been very difficult. I couldn’t even get them to come to Rosh Hashanah for an hour."
Cantor Danny Maseng: "I hope you don’t get over the fact that the rabbi didn’t allow you to pray Saturday morning. Maybe Judaism would more relevant to a lot of people if they didn’t get over it. How much of a number do you think that did on the men? If the message is that you don’t count, why would I want to date you?"
Laurie: "That’s very interesting. I told you how brilliant he is. I never thought about that in that way."
"Every week, I wrote this in Frogs, Rabbi Alber came and at the end of Shabbat services there are all these prayers that conclude the services. This rabbi played the guitar, which was a big deal in Sunnyside, Queens. It was very joyful, it was wonderful. They would split up the concluding prayers into eight things. They would always come in and ask people in Hebrew school who’s going to lead Anim Zmirot, Adon Olam… I’d always say me, me, but they’d say, oh, very cute… When my brother was bar mitzvahed, he’d chant the whole Mussaf service."
Question: "Do you have controversy here in this temple?"
Laurie: "Was there? I don’t know."
Danny: "Yes. Yes."
Stefanie Steingold: "There was a little bit of controversy here from a couple ends. An older generation, the word [shiksa]. When the event was brought to me and Terry and I talked about it, shiksa to me as a 25 year old woman is not pejorative at all. It’s funny. It is what it is — a non-Jewish girl. Some of our older staff members did not look at it the same way and immediately saw it as offensive. Then we had people in the congregation who saw it as offensive, one woman said it was offensive to her as a non-Jewish woman. So, yes."
Laurie: "But she didn’t read the book, so she doesn’t know."
Stefanie: "Right. That’s, honestly, based on the cover."
Laurie: "It’s crazy. I thought I was going to write an interfaith thing, which I didn’t. I called the JCC in my neighborhood on the Upper West Side. I wanted to sit in on this inter-faith class. I got a message back from this female rabbi.’A. I’d never let anyone sit in. B. I’d never support any book with that title, The Shiksa Syndrome.’
"I thought, ‘Who’s in her class? Tons of Gentile men becoming Jewish? I don’t think so. It’s non-Jewish women.’ My friend Jamie thinks this is a very feminist book.
"I met this morning with the with agents trying to sell this as a movie and they’re having a hard time, finding it’s too Jewish. The Big Fat Greek Wedding is not too Greek? Angela’s Ashes and Roots, but Jewish? Becomes too Jewish."
Woman in the audience: "A lot of the producers are Jewish."
Laurie: "A lot of the men who would produce this film are exactly the men with this thing."
Danny Maseng: "The amount of Jewish boys I knew in New York who’d say that they’d rather eat nails than date a Jewish girl…"
Laurie: "Most Jewish people I know don’t care [what denomination a non-Jew] is. He’s not-Jewish. Who cares what he is?"
"In the first scene, Peter [her first boyfriend] says, ‘You never ask me how I feel about being Episcopalian.’ And I wanted to write, ‘That’s because I don’t care. You’re just not-Jewish.’
"I had to look at myself and it was horrible."
Woman: "You’re marginalizing someone…"
"You weren’t comfortable here in LA…"
Laurie: "And I didn’t get a TV series. I wasn’t even close. That might’ve swayed me."
Laurie says she’s never been to Israel.
"If you want to be my friend, add me to Facebook. It’s all very very important now to get elected, to sell a book. I will confirm you. If you read the book and have something nice to say, please a review to Amazon. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. That’s an old Jewish phrase. That’s why I’m still single, because I say things like that."
There is a tall slim model named Brandy in the audience.
And there’s a girl, in this harbor town
And she works, laying whiskey down
They say "Brandy, fetch another round"
She serves them whiskey and wine
The sailors say "Brandy, you’re a fine girl
What a good wife you would be
Yeah your eyes could steal a sailor
From the sea."
Brandy, wears a braided chain
Made of finest silver from the north of Spain
A locket, that bears the name — Levi!
Of a man that Brandy loved
Atid published a new booklet, Teaching Toward Tomorrow: Setting an Agenda for Modern Orthodox Education, that contains essays from a symposium on the current state and future directions of Modern Orthodox education. The essays are fascinating and, I found, somewhat depressing. Basically, educators and scholars sat down to write what they consider the biggest problems. However, there was such wide disagreement that you basically have a long laundry list of terrible problems. The authors were so far apart that there are three different essays trying to sum up the discussion.
In a few sections of my recently published book "The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs: Fundamentalism and the Fear of Truth" I touch upon modern orthodox Jewish education. I think my comments there are relevant to this posting by Gil.
"Does belief in TMS and related Orthodox doctrines have any negative intellectual consequences?
I think that it does…
I…have in mind the educational consequences of the Orthodox approach for the ways in which their children will learn to think about religious and moral questions. The attempt to suppress serious exposure to biblical scholarship is futile with respect to young people who are intelligent, intellectually curious, and who take seriously the professed Orthodox belief in the value of emet—truth. Although some modern Orthodox day schools do expose their students to biblical scholarship, with a traditional ‘‘spin,’’ the bright student will sooner or later see the spin for what it is—an attempt to indoctrinate rather than to educate—and he or she may become bitter at his teachers and school for underestimating his intelligence. Many Orthodox day schools do not even acknowledge the world of biblical scholarship despite the fact that their students are spending years studying the Hebrew Bible. Every so often these youth will encounter in the mass media, in their private reading, or later, in a college course references to and findings of biblical scholarship that contradict what they have been taught in their Orthodox day school." (pages 64-65).
"… Are the tough challenges to Orthodox Judaism from history, archaeology, and biblical scholarship simply to be ignored by Orthodox educational institutions, including modern Orthodox ones?
This is what occurs daily in Orthodox schools, including modern ones…
…is it reasonable to teach Torah as TMS without expecting or encouraging students who are being taught to think critically in their general studies to apply those same critical skills to the assertions of the tradition? And if the students do challenge the tradition because they become aware of biblical and other scholarship, as one would expect of a significant portion of students of high intellectual caliber in modern Orthodox day schools, what is the modern Orthodox response to their critical examination of the beliefs that Orthodoxy is attempting to indoctrinate?" (pages 189-190).
MJ POSTS:
Whatever the year or two in Israel is meant to do is irrelevant. It allows kids a year to grow and mature (or even just blow off steam) without the pressure of grades in an environment conducive to developing an appreciation for learning.
The payoff is that when they go to college they are able to orient themselves and function without having to deal with the "OMG, I’m free" experience at the same time.
From personal experience and talking with others who teach at the undergrad level: more than 50% of 18-19 year olds are not prepared for college. Not simply because they bearley learned to read and can’t write a coherent sentence, but because they are emotionally immature. If nothing else, the year in Israel helps to avoid this problem.
The best thing we could do for higher education in America is to make kids do something else first for a year.
We did this via email. Check out Danit’s website here. Check out these interviews with the author of "Ask For A Convertible."
* How does it affect your happiness level, whether you are living in the US or Israel?
For me, living in the U.S. is physically easier, and having reached adulthood here, I have a much better understanding of how things work and how people function. At the same time, living in the U.S. can feel like wussing out. When I was living in Israel, I felt that I mattered more even though I wasn’t really doing anything differently–maybe it’s the difference between being one in seven million and one in 300 million. It was also nice being part of the majority, being able to take that for granted. I guess the thing I learned, though, is that ideology is nice, but day-to-day happiness hs a lot to do with the connections you make with others, and in that respect, I do much better in the U.S.
* How did it affect your happiness level publishing your first book?
On the one hand, of course it made me happy. On the other, it was nerve-wracking: what would people think? What if no one reads it? What if it just disappears right back into the ether?
* When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a writer and a teacher. And today I’m both. I also wanted to be friends with Michael Jackson, but that didn’t work out, which is probably for the best.
* What were the most interesting reactions you’ve received to your book?
Some people wanted to know if the woman on the cover is me. I wish.
* What do you love and hate about teaching?
I love thinking about how stories are made, and watching writers grow and develop. I hate everything to do with grading, though. I had a writing professor in Israel who assigned grades via lottery; at the beginning of each semester, he’d tell students, "You’re going to get somewhere between an 88 and 92 whether or not you show to class," and then the people who weren’t interested wouldn’t show, and the ones left would be the ones who actually wanted to work. I wish I had the nerve to be that kind of teacher.
* What did your MFA do for you?
It gave me time to write and deadlines for finishing work. And what was especially nice about the MFA at Indiana was that the students seemed to be selected with diversity of writing styles and experience in mind, and so I learned a tremendous amount from my peers.
* What do you love and hate about talking about your book, being interviewed, doing readings etc?
My big worry is being revealed as a fake–that someone will declare, "This is pure crap, and I don’t know why anyone published it." Or that people will get up in the middle and leave.
What I love: when you’re giving a reading and the audience laughs in all the right places, and you really feel that you’ve made a connection with them.
* Are you now friends with any of your blogger crushes?
I tend to lurk on blogs rather than comment, so I’m not sure how my blogger crushes would find me. A couple of my author crushes are Facebook friends with me, however, so I can pretend there’s a relationship there even if there really isn’t.
* How do you like blogging?
I love it. It’s like a diary with feedback, except, you know, when there’s no feedback.
* Did your husband convert to judaism and if not, do Jews give you a hard time, do you give yourself a hard time?
He didn’t convert to Judaism, although we plan to raise our children Jewish. No one really gives us a hard time about it; apparently the key here is to wait so long to get married that your parents are simply relieved that someone wants you. As for me, I worry more about what it means to have American kids–that there will be a whole chunk of experience that comes from having been a child in Israel that I simply can’t share with them.
* How come there are no comments on any of your jewcy posts?
Ouch.
* How has being a wife and mother affected your writing?
Well, I try out my writing on my husband, so that’s nice. But being a mom with young children and also working full time translates into very little time to write.
* Has your husband lived in israel and/or how do you think he’d like living there?
He hasn’t lived there, and I can’t imagine that he’d like it longterm. There’s the language barrier, of course, but there are also all those behavioral nuances. I knew I was finally adjusting to living in Israel when I could shout with the best of them and not get upset. And my husband is from Minnesota and much nicer than I’ve ever been.
* Is it true Israelis are leery of befriending Americans who make aliyot because they expect them to go home to the US?
I don’t know if it’s true, and even if it is, I wonder whether Israelis would be conscious of this, and whether more of this has to do with cultural differences, like not laughing at the same things. When I was in Israel, it did seem as if English speakers stuck with English speakers except for when it came to dating, but again, that’s just my experience.
I’ve never heard of these human rights commissions in the United States and I had no idea they could fine people. What’s the story here?
I read this: "January 28, 2008: Jon and Elaine Huguenin, a young Christian couple from Albuquerque, N.M, were tried before the New Mexico Human Rights Commission after they declined a request to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony, citing their religious beliefs. The same-sex couple filed a discrimination complaint with the commission, which scheduled the hearing. In the hearing, the Huguenins cited their First Amendment rights, but the commission sided with the same-sex couple. The Huguenins were fined $6,600."
This is outrageous. Does anyone have the back story?
Eugene Volokh writes: "Yet the New Mexico government is now telling Huguenin that she must create art works that she does not choose to create. There’s no First Amendment case squarely on point, but this does seem pretty close to the cases in which the Court held that the government may not compel people to express views that they do not endorse (the flag salute case, West Va. Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, and the license plate slogan case, Wooley v. Maynard)."
Running this blog takes time — and a ton of energy! And, despite my own efforts to power through the day and provide more news than any comparable site, I could use a bit more energy now and then. Which brings me to this announcement I found online, a press release from Vroom Foods.
The company manufactures FOOSH® ENERGY MINTS and BUZZ BITE® CHOCOLATE & MINT CHOCOLATE ENERGY CHEWS, a series of caffeinated products that have a loyal following. As their announcement makes abundantly clear – and this is where I heartily agree – people have got to be bonkers to spend a small fortune on designer coffee and other nonsense. That’s right: I’m talking to you, dear corporate overlords in Seattle. Vroom Foods makes sense. Get all the caffeine, with convenience, at the right price.
"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)
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