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This week we talk about the White Stripes, Jewish movements, and the secret to Martian brachot (blessings). Check it out!
PunkTorah Radio: White Stripes and Martian Bread
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Most people basically believe there are only three major movements in the U.S. today: Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. The truth is there are many established and fledgling movements growing all around the world. The differences between Jewish movements today is not so much a matter of theology, rather more a matter of how literally the scriptures are viewed, how much each group thinks biblical requirements can be changed, and whether such requirements are mandatory. Who knows what the NEXT breed of movements will be?
Here is a little on five lesser known Jewish movements:
Reconstructionist Judaism follows substantial theological diversity within the movement. Though in general the movement emphasizes positive views toward modernism. Halakha is not considered binding, but is treated as a valuable. It is a cultural remnant that should be upheld unless there is reason for the contrary. This movement approaches Jewish custom form the view which aims toward communal decision making. The intent is to achieve this “through a process of education and distillation of values from traditional Jewish sources”. For more info visit The Jewish Reconstructionist Federation.
Wilderness Torah explains Earth Based Judaism well in stating the basics. They seek to revitalize Jewish life by reconnecting Jewish traditions to the cycles of nature. Their goal is to facilitate an individual’s spiritual growth, strengthen multi-generational community, and connect them to nature. They strive for this through land-based festivals, rites of passage, and sustainable life skills education. They create programs to cultivate understanding of Judaism’s earth-based roots, inspire appreciation for Creation, and offer skills that empower participants to engage in Tikkun Olam by living sustainably in the modern world.
Drawn from ALEPH one can ascertain some basics of The Jewish Renewal Movement. It is a worldwide, trans-denominational movement. Following in Judaism’s prophetic and mystical traditions, Jewish renewal carries forward Judaism’s perpetual process of renewal. They seek to bring creativity, relevance, joy, and an all embracing spiritual practice to life. It is looked on as a path to healing one’s heart and finding balance and wholeness, thus called tikkun halev. They work to act to fully include all Jews and to respect all peoples. In this ideology this movement seeks to help to heal the world by “promoting justice, freedom, responsibility, caring for all life and the earth that sustains all life” and thus tikkun olam.
According to The Society of Humanistic Judaism this movement embraces a human-centered philosophy. They strive to combine the celebration of Jewish culture with an identity of adherence to humanistic values and ideas. The objective is for Humanistic Judaism to offer a non-theistic alternative in contemporary Jewish life. It was established by Rabbi Wine in 1963 in Detroit, Michigan. His idea was to provide a home for humanistic, secular, and cultural Jews. Humanistic Judaism has become a worldwide movement. Humanistic Jewish communities celebrate Jewish holidays and life cycle events (such as weddings and bar and bat mitzvah) with inspirational ceremonies that draw upon but go beyond traditional literature.
The karaite-korner.org explains well the basics of Karaite Judaism’s principles through The Karaite Declaration of Faith, called Tuv Ta’am. It has been recited in the Karaite Synagogue on High Holidays since at least the 13th Century. An abridged version is now being recited twice daily. It consists of statements read aloud by the Hazan (cantor). The congregation responds by shouting Emet! “Truth!” They belive in the uniqueness, oneness of YHWH as G-d and Creator. For this movement the truth of the Torah given to Moses is central and singular amongst reference works. They hold the concept of an ultimate reward for those who keep the Torah. They also belive in a truth and holiness of the Biblical Holidays and Feasts. They follow that the eternal nature of G-d rules the universe and that there is a “Messianic” Era.
Rivka
I would like to introduce you to a new project by PunkTorah: 3xDaily.org
3xDaily is a resource for Jews who want to begin building a practice that includes daily prayers. It there to show those who may be curious one version of how things can work, to ask questions, and to figure out if and how this could fit into theirs lives. The goal is to get people involved in their own spiritual lives, to take them back from those to whom they’ve handed them over, to wrestle with the big questions, to keep asking those questions, and to stand on their own feet.
Why? Because three daily prayers are something that I think the non Orthodox world are missing out on. When I first began reconnecting to my Jewish-ness, first with a number of Reform/Conservative/”Progressive” (and I use the term as loosely as possible), praying three times a day was almost never brought up. It was like “Oh, yeah, Jews used to pray three times a day and some still do…next question.” I look at Islam, where they also pray a number of times a day. If you ask people how may know a little about Islam, they immediately mention that they prayer five times a day. It is an important part of the religion that every Muslim, practicing or not, knows about. Praying three times a day is just as important to Judaism, it is something that we are supposed to do that has been neglected. What this can accomplish is to provide what Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi called a “Shabbat In Time”, a moment to stop, connect with the Creator, and refresh. To pause during the day and give thanks for what we have and to be inspired to work on our shortcomings.
Two of the things that I see holding back non-Orthodox Jews from praying three times a day are time and learning. A regular Shacharis (morning) service can take an hour or two. We can take this idea of a morning service and bring it to where we are now. What are the necessities? What is it that we really should say? How long could that take? One version that we created takes about fifteen minutes in the morning. Great! If you have two hours to daven through the morning service, also great! Don’t like the version we created? Create your own! Make it meaningful. Otherwise you won’t do it. As for learning, the best way to learn is to do!
Prayer is important because it gives us an opportunity to connect with something bigger than us, and this thing that is bigger than us can mean many things. A Jew who believes in G-d can use the prayers to connect to the Creator. A Jew who may not believe in a literal “god-type” G-d can connect with something larger than themselves in connecting with Jews around the world, participating in tradition, in something that goes back to the time of the temple. Even connecting with those immediately around you in a group or minyan can be important, to form community. Prayer is also important because Jews are not “weekend religious” people. We are Jews all the time. The daily prayers exist to express this at all times. Secluding our “Jewish-ness” to Friday nights or Saturday mornings can limit our identity, or at least for me, not necessarily for everyone.
I think that “taking back” some of these things that are considered “orthodox” are important. These are things that are open to all Jews, and they should be able to participate in something important to our tradition. I would also argue that any Jew who considers themselves Jewish is observant, at least enough so to “observe” that they are Jewish. So in this way we can all participate. And the benefits are described above, we connect with something larger than us, the Creator, nature, community, tradition, and rest for a short period of time, a refuge form the world, if only for a few minutes.
Head over to 3xdaily.org! Take a look around! Try some things out! And let us know what you think!
by Michael Sabani
Should you ignore something just because you don’t believe it? Can you still learn from it?
It was during a recent discussion with some friends about the Torah that I realized something that opened the Torah up for me almost completely.
We were discussing the different interpretations that one can have about things that happen in the Torah. I don’t want to get into specifics, but there was a questions as to what happened in a particular part of the story. Most everyone believed that one “counterculture” interpretation was true. In fact, they felt so strongly that it seemed they were almost offended to hear that a traditional or Midrashic interpretation could even be entertained. I was honestly kind of shocked. Not that they would entertain a view that doesn’t necessarily portray the patriarchs or matriarchs as saints because, let’s be honest, they weren’t! The issue I had was that they almost wouldn’t even listen, and when I did share, I felt like I was viewed almost as an anachronistic, ignorant, orthodox party pooper! And I most certainly am not!
What I learned is this:
We are a tradition full of ideas. You know that old saying, “three Jews, five opinions”. The thing is, when we hold on to one interpretation over another, when we almost outright refuse to listen to something from our own tradition that differs with what we want to believe, we are only cheating ourselves. In order to be informed, in order to be fully aware of what the Torah is trying to tell us, there has to be a balance. Just because you don’t like an idea, DOES NOT mean that you should run from it! Instead, embrace it! Look it right in the face and figure out exactly what you don’t like/believe about it. If, after you’ve listened you still don’t agree, GREAT! At least you learned something. And as people of the book we are called to always learn.
There is a saying from the sages that the Torah has 600,000 letters, and each represents one Jewish neshama, one Jewish soul. This means that there are as many ways to read the Torah as there are Jews who read it!
The sages also say that every letter of the Torah, down to the smallest yod ( ‘ ) is there to teach us a lesson. It would seem to me that in order to get the most out of the Torah, especially today, we should pay attention to even the smallest letters, especially when we disagree with it. Only through that friction can we release the Light, and only through that struggle can we brighten the world.
By Patrick Aleph
I was thrilled when my friend Russell from the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival told me about an Israeli hip hop/reggae group he was helping called Axum (named after the Ethiopian city which folklore says holds the Ark of the Covenant).
The duo features two MCs, Tedros (of Ethiopian descent) and Judah, whose family is from Yemen. And their music is just as diverse. The dancehall goes techno filtered through a hip hop pop aesthetic is electric.
America has been good to Axum. A tour with Soulico (JDub Records), and a residency in Georgia sponsored by Emory University’s Hillel. Atlanta has given them the opportunity to collaborate with Slade da Monsta and Mr. Fish, hip hop artists Jarrod and Rusky, reggae/dub artists Dubconscious, and rockers Nick Edelstein and Darin Seldes. They’ve also spent several nights at the Apache Cafe, performing with Dubconscious and their local band, attending open mic nights and hanging out.
When I asked the group about their connection to Judaism and Israel, their reply was, “[We] live an Israeli experience, not a Jewish one in particular. Like many Israeli’s…religion is not a point of emphasis. [The] main tie to Judaism is the language, not the content.”
What you will hear is the bigger message of Axum: a peaceful, “One World” view through the eyes of the global hip hop community. The power of music to unite people, all people, under one banner.
Axum did have an opportunity to jump into America’s Jewish space. Emory Hillel hosted the band at their Passover seder. Congregation Bet Haverim, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Decatur, Georgia, asked the duo to perform at a Shabbat service. The guys were uncomfortable as they approached the stage to perform a few sacred songs with CBH’s lay cantor and choir, but enjoyed seeing the “new forms of worship” that congregations like this have.
There’s no rest for Axum. The group performs the evening they land and have shows in the following weeks in Tel Aviv. They are currently working on new material for their second album produced by the Soulico family.
Check out Axum at www.myspace.com/axumisrael
The whole concept of being off the derech bothers me because in my opinion there is no right derech, if we call those who aren’t observant or don’t follow the ways that they were brought up in we feel the need to belittle them. Oh he or she is off the derech sounds really crappy and I decided to put in my two cents on this situation.
I am constantly questioning and have my moments, but I am orthodox and it suits me well, but unlike many orthodox Jews, I don’t think that orthodoxy or being observant is for everyone. Like many people I know, I was brought up to believe that orthodox Jews were right and everyone else was wrong, but I think that belief is wrong, I have met many people that aren’t orthodox anymore and are great people, they are good Jews and I am cool with that, but many people aren’t.
I know some of you are already screaming blasphemy and the off the derech crowd (I use the terminology because it works best – but I don’t like it) are cheering for joy. I don’t even like the term authentic when combined with religion, religion itself has evolved so many times that we don’t even know if we are practicing the right thing anymore, hence the reason that I don’t have a hashkafa, I work on things I think are important (good thing the sages view most of these things as important too) but the second someone calls me a Torah Jew or Authentic Jew I cringe – seriously – it makes me feel that all of the other Jews out there practicing in ways foreign to the average yeshiva bochur aren’t real Jews and that is wrong.
I guess I never really learned how to be such a fundamentalist that I discard everything else as hogwash when my own religious practice is built on some pretty shaky ground and I am sick of having it proved to me from the 600,000 person revelation stuff, I believe but don’t think everyone should have to or be disregarded and treated harshly because of their varying beliefs.
By Heshy Fried
