Pirated episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy featuring a member of the Tribe. Quasi-illegal content, Judaism, LGBT-affirming culture…what about this doesn’t scream PunkTorah? Enjoy the show!
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Jerry Springer and Maury Povich Bring Me Closer To God
2 Av 5771 - August 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Every person in the Hebrew Bible is fundamentally screwed up. Abraham had sex with his wife’s slave, then banished her and his son Ishmael…then, he tried to sacrifice his other son Issac. Jacob and his mother Rebecca lie to Issac and steal Esau’s birthright. Moses was a stuttering menial laborer who killed a man in Egypt. Noah was a drunk…and so was Lot. Lot also had incestuous sex with his daughters, which makes Noah look like an angel.
I’m shocked when I hear people talk about the “trash on TV”. Jerry Springer and Maury aren’t showing us anything that is any more perverse than our holy text. Except for maybe this video (Not Safe For Work)…
The Biblical narrative, read literally and without much examination, is not a very good moral guide. No one can take a person from our spiritual history and say, “wow, if only my children could be more like that guy!” Unless of course you want your kid to be the kind of person who burns his enemies bodies like Joshua or uses sex to trick someone into marrying her like Tamar or Ruth.
Everything we read in the Torah is subjective: the Torah can be used to support or oppose slavery, to promote interfaith alliance or religious warfare, to subject women and children to torture or to uplift those who are downtrodden.
But the one thing the Torah teaches that no one can deny: anyone can be holy.
While I can criticize the characters of the Hebrew Bible for their terrible behavior, I have to remember that God chose these people. God not only chose them, but God made them! God also made the guests of Jerry and Maury. Their problems are no worse than the problems we read about in the weekly Torah portion.
So if I can see the attempted felon Abraham, the liar Issac and the slave holding Jacob as holy, then I have to see Pancake, the Maury Povich guest, as holy too.
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Portlandia and the Jewish Obession With Organic Farming (Parshat Behar)
7 Iyar 5771 - May 11, 2011 By 3 Comments
“Why do the Jewish farming projects get all the grants?” A friend of mine asked me over coffee one day.
I did that thing where I sound like I know what I’m talking about but I’m really just pulling it from out of thin air. “Oh, because of Parshat Behar.”
“What’s that?” She asked.
“Oh, you know it’s about how the Hebrews are tied to ha-aretz (the land) and how we have to give the earth time to heal itself after the harvest and how we have to leave the corners of our field for strangers and the poor. Stuff like that.”
“OK, but what does that have to do with locally sourced turnips in urban neighborhoods?”
This conversation about locally sourced, organic and free range-ness reminded me of a sketch on my new favorite TV show Portlandia…
I don’t think that Parshat Behar’s original intention was to make us work at a food co-op and get masters degrees in eco-psychology from hippie liberal arts colleges. Remember, this parshah was written by people who survived on subsistence farming and herding animals. The ancient Israelites weren’t shopping at Whole Foods and blogging about genetically modified corn.
But Behar does tell me something important about the Jewish People: we’re ahead of the trends. Our strength, whether its in farming, learning, praying, surviving, fighting, or what have you, is that we look ahead at the future to try to figure out the right way to do things. The Torah is filled with things that the Jewish people rejected (child abuse, idolatry, needless animal cruelty) and replaced those “pagan” trends with something better.
So while I laugh at nerdy kids from Brooklyn trying to grow radishes on land that once was a crack den, I have to check myself and realize that they are a lot smarter than I am. One day, I hope to be the kind of person who will lend a hand.
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Cookie Monster Is Jewish
11 Cheshvan 5771 - October 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment
This week features Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. To give a d’var, please email patrick@punktorah.org
Let’s think of things in this week’s Parshah that start with C. Cookie starts with C. But we need to think about Parshat Vayeira.
Circumcision starts with the letter C. Abraham circumsized himself at age 99. Ouch that must have really hurt!
City, that starts with the letter C. Abraham plead with G-d to spare the wicked city of Sodom. Two angels came to his nephew Lot’s house and an angry mob tried to hurt them. Lot protected the angels and the angels protected him.
Cave, that starts with the letter C. After fleeing the city, Lot and his two daughters took shelter in a cave. They thought they were the only people left in the world…so they slept with their father and got pregnant. Gross.
Conceive, that starts with the letter C. G-d remembered his promise to Sarah and she gives birth to her son Issac.
Crying, that starts with the letter C. Sarah banishes her slave who’s also the mother of Ishmael, Abraham’s other son. Ishmael is dying the in desert and cries. Sooo sad. And G-d saves his life.
Commandment, that starts with the letter C. G-d commands Abraham to sacrifice Issac. But before he can do it, G-d stops him and replaces Isaac with a ram.
Just looking for the letter C in this week’s Torah portion helped me find many important lessons. You should look through the Torah and find your lesson! But be careful…it’ll make you hungry for more coookies!!!
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True Blood and The Bible
1 Tamuz 5770 - June 13, 2010 By 3 Comments
OK…what’s NOT Jewish about this? Four ways that True Blood is using images from the Torah to sell you vampire sex.
(1) They’re in the Garden of Eden. But obviously, if you look around, there’s some crazy stuff going down. The idea that human beings (I use the term ‘human’ loosely for some of the characters) can be in a state of perfection, and somehow screw it up, is about as Biblical as it gets. Humanity’s failure to be in co-existence with malevolent peace is a constant theme in the Hebrew Bible, whether you’re talking Adam and Eve, or even the Exodus, where G-d throws down miracle after miracle, but the Hebrews still won’t stop complaining.
(2) There’s a freakin’ snake. Enough said.
(3) The snake’s head is near Anna Paquin, who represents purity (hence the white dress). She’s in danger from all this, and is being sacrificed, hence the altar-like broken tree. But the snake’s tail is between the legs of Jessica Hamby/Deborah Ann Woll. This falls in line with “blame the victim”, that although the serpent is the tempter, the woman is the one that ate of the tree and is really the one to be at fault. The snake coming from her body shows that she, not the serpent, is at fault. Also, Anna Camp (Sara Newlin) is wearing red, like Woll. The two faces of the feminine are shown here. The woman who commits the sin (Eve) is shown in the submissive form (aka ‘spread eagle’), reflecting the idea that her curse is the pain of child birth. The woman with power, however, stands upright (Sara Newlin) and is the feminine power of Lilith, the woman who does not have pain because she did not submit in the first place.
(4) Two white characters, and two black characters. Notice the two guys standing together. Their legs are in the exact same position, one knee sticking out. But the legs are opposite: like the contrast of the color of their skin. The couple in the background are looking in the same direction, but their legs and arms are going in opposite ways. This is duality: another common theme in the Bible. Good versus evil, right versus wrong, G-d and Mankind, tree of knowledge and tree of life, the natural world and the supernatural world. Through their skin tones, the artist is making a nod to this overwhelmingly large issue.
Or maybe I’m over thinking this…
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