PunkTorah

Independent Jewish Spirituality

#ThowbackThursday: Converts, Cheesecake, and Other Reasons To Like Shavuot

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My Letterman-style Top Ten Reason To Love Shavuot:

10. Cheesecake Brownies. It’s like shooting heroine and cocaine at the same time..only a lot healthier and legal. Dairy and Shavuot go hand-in-hand, and since I seldom eat meat this holiday glorifies everything I love that makes me fat.

9. You get to remember who Ruth is. Ruth is the national symbol of Jewish feminists. I kinda wish we read her megillah instead of Esther’s: instead of booing Hamen, we’d be applauding the Moabite.

8. Everyone stays up late studying Torah. Or just rockin’ the kiddush. If you’re an early to bed, early to rise type, just read our backlog of Shavuot articles.

7. Converts get some respect…for about six hours. On Shavuot, you’re the most Jewish person in the room…even if you were born with the name Christopher Jesusman. And converts are generally the only people who know what Shavuot is in liberal circles, so you get to feel like some kind of tzadik for your intense knowledge.

6. Work restriction. This year is the best because it falls middle of the week, then it’s over, then it’s Shabbat. It’s like taking a week off, since you mentally check out from work a day before any holiday anyway.

5. It has that kinda made-up feeling. Shavuot is a fairly minhag heavy holiday, in the sense that Ruth, studying and milchig is pretty much all there is to it and the rest is just customs to fill in the time. I like that because you never have to worry about doing the wrong thing on Shavuot. Hanukkah is like that, too.

4. Weird conversations. I like Shavuot chavrutah with eccentric people, because the combo of staying up late and heavy religious discussion always goes in strange directions: people passing out, talking in their sleep, stoner-like debates about whether or not Boaz’s foot was actually a foot or a euphemism for…ya know…the male part.

3. Energy drinks. When I was in the rockabilly punk band The Love Drunks, I used to slam energy drinks laced with vodka. I found the combination helped me stay up really late, and mellow out at the same time. I’m not into that kinda thing anymore, but Shavuot is my one time a year where I gorge myself on Red Bull.

2. The diversity of Jewish events. If you really want to pull an all day and all nighter, find a small child and force them to chaperone you to a Chabad family event. The ice cream sundaes are always incredible. In the afternoons you can generally find some JCC-type of place doing a late afternoon event catching after school/before dinner crowd, and then you can party with the grown ups all night.

1. The Torah!!!!!!!!!!! Come on, forget all that cultural junk. It’s all about the Torah, people.

Adam Yauch’s Death Poses Jewish Question

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Adam Yauch, rapper in the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 48 from cancer. Yauch had been sick since 2009, after the discovery of a tumor in his salivary gland.

All over the internet, music fans are reposting articles about his tragic illness and death, as well as the incredible contribution he made to music and human rights, especially the cause of the Tibetan people.

And that’s where we hit a bump in the road: do we say Mourner’s Kaddish tonight for Adam, who left Judaism for Buddhism?

Some people believe “once a Jew, always a Jew” (see the Chabad picture above as evidence). But in the case of Yauch, is that really true? Yauch was definitely a Buddhist…and not in a meditate-then-drink-a-beer kind of way. He took it very seriously and frankly, in many circles, is know more for founding the Milarepa Fund than License To Ill.

Here at PunkTorah, we make a point of creating mourner’s kaddish YouTube videos when prominent Jewish people die. But in Yauch’s case, would that have been the right thing to do? Yauch was a Buddhist and we want to respect the fact that this is the spiritual path he took. We have no judgements of that. Would we then be judged if we made a YouTube video with the kaddish overlaying a simple hip hop beat? Would this be us Bible bashing Yauch’s choice to convert? We didn’t want to go there…so we wrote this article instead.

Either way, Yauch was an incredible musician, philanthropist and activist, and we send our condolences to his family. May his memory be a blessing.

Dafna Steinberg: Does Being Religious Make You Jewish?

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEf8ETY8d4g

Dafna Steinberg talks about a college Chabad table encounter. Does being religious make you a good Jew?

Filmed at Washington, DC JCC. Visit us at www.theg-dproject.org

The Chabad Rebbe and Jewish Marketing Strategy

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Today is the yahrzeit (anniversary of the passing) of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, aka the Chabad Rebbe. Whether you think that Chabad is the greatest thing ever or that Chabad secretly thinks the Rebbe was the messiah, you have to admit that Reb. Schneerson had a gigantic impact on how religious Jews engage with secular Jews…and frankly, how Jewish people deal with the outside world all together.

In his honor, I give you the three things that I learned from Chabad:

Don’t Call It Outreach, But Make Sure To Do It

The Rebbe taught that Chabadniks should never use the term kiruv, or outreach, to promote their work in the Jewish community. Outreach implies that there are insiders who are (duh!) “reaching out” to those on the outside. The Rebbe explained that this hierarchy was wrong: that it puts one set of Jews as higher on the Great Jew Ladder over others, and that everyone was equal in the eyes of God. I like that.

Don’t Judge, At Least Not Openly

In my conversations with Chabadniks, the one thing everyone says that they love about Chabad is that they do not judge. Frankly, that’s a load of nonsense. Everyone judges everyone all the time! What people really mean (and what Chabad really does) is to set aside open judgement of others. The motto of Chabad can be best summed up as: we don’t get in the way of you being Jewish incorrectly, but if you ever want to do it right, we’re here for you.

Technology Is Everything

Chabad was the first Jewish org to radically embrace the internet. I will be the first to admit that a major amount of my research for articles starts with Chabad’s website. While PunkTorah goes further with using technology and the sacred with OneShul and The G-d Project, it must be said that Chabad laid the groundwork.

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