The Notorious R.A.V.'s DJ Journal - #1

I grew up in a time in which every male believed he was going to be a rock star, even if he had little or no musical talent. My mother, born and raised in the old Jewish west side of Chicago was the kind of typical first generation American, who insisted that I take piano lessons as a child because playing piano was cool when she was a kid [all this was decades before Billy Joel would come along and make it cool again]. And while the piano teacher insisted that I had talent [a good way to keep my parents shelling out money to him], that was not the direction I was going to go [nor did I believe him].

The next step was to get a guitar. I never took lessons, but learned a few chords from books and from friends and was able to occasionally strum a song. But I wasn’t on the way to becoming Clapton.

Time went by, the rabbinate, Jewish communal service and Jewish education beckoned and my musical aspirations went to the back burner.

Fast forward 30 years. My musical tastes had changed numerous times, as had the tastes of the world. And of all things, hip hop music had conquered the world, including the worlds of Jewish and Israeli music. Turntables were back, not to play phonograph records at home on, but to use as a musical instrument to actually create musical blends and fusions.

At age 54 it was time to make a move. Inspired by watching Grandmaster Flash in concert, seeing a display at the concert for Scratch DJ Academy - the school founded by the late Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC, and encouraged by a team of personal enablers who believe that it is their role to encourage every lame-brained idea that pops into my head, I decided that it was time to learn the art of DJ’ing and scratching.

I have only a limited idea of what I want to do with the new skill I will be attaining, but have some beginning ideas. For one, watching Matisyahu and Y-Love, I realize that hip hop and other musical forms have suddenly become important vehicles for transmitting Jewish messages and values to a young generation. Perhaps they, or Miri Ben Ari, the Israeli-born hip-hop violinist, will need a rabbinic DJ. Besides, in today’s economy, what Jewish educator doesn’t need a Plan B? And besides the Jewish connection, spinning records just seems like good fun.

At a wedding, a friend asks me “what are you planning to do with the DJ’ing?” She clearly expects some completely bizarre answer and seems genuinely disappointed when I reply that I would love to use DJ’ing to bring the sounds of old Israeli folk music from the Halutz [pioneer] era to this generation, with some good beats behind it. The fact that I’ve mostly made up my response on the fly doesn’t deter me from deciding that this really could be the way that I fuse my rabbi/Jewish educator identity and my new interest. We’ll see if I can actually do this.

More to follow.

Pilgrimage to the Apollo Theatre’s Michael Jackson Tribute

Tuesday morning, we went to the Apollo Theatre’s free Michael Jackson tribute. That’s right: part of How I Spent My Summer Vacation was standing for nearly four hours in a line at 125th & 6th in Harlem, waiting to get into a Michael Jackson tribute. The crowd outside was friendly, warm, all reminiscing about Michael Jackson and his music. Entrepreneurs were hawking everything imaginable: MJ t-shirts, MJ posters, earrings with sequined gloves on them, sequined hats, bootleg CD’s. Periodically, the crowd would break into an MJ song.

Finally we got in for a 25 minutes event of music, dancing, and a little bit of narration. On stage were a few famous MC types, Al Sharpton (who has never met a microphone or camera that he didn’t love) and Spike Lee (not really sure why). But the real action was on the floor of the theatre – the people who came to celebrate a career and music that entertained and sometimes even inspired a few generations.

Debbie pointed out, quite accurately, that my attempts at dance moves in the theatre betrayed my being a middle aged, Jewish, white boy from the suburbs. I suppose that’s true. There is yet another weird part of my being at the Apollo for this event, though. That would be MJ’s checkered history. The event was, after all, memorializing someone who, at the very least, never recovered from being dragged out of childhood to become an adult performer, threw away hard earned money on nonsense, scarred his body repeatedly trying to surgically become someone else, was a bizarre father who once dangled his kid over a hotel balcony, and invited young children over the his house for pajama parties. And there was always suspicion of more.

So why celebrate his life? Here’s the thing. The biblical book of Psalms (Tehillim in Hebrew) tells us ivdu et Adonai b’simcha, typically translated as “serve God in joy” (Psalm 100:2). But the Hebrew word b’simcha as I understand it could also be accurately translated as “serve God through joy.”

If my translation works, it means that we not only serve God joyously, but that the joy itself is a service to God. Thus, giving joy to others not only serves a holy purpose for one’s self, but invites others to the service of God through joy as well. And certainly Michael Jackson, performer extraordinaire, has given joy to millions of people the world over.

So, while I cannot ignore the troubled individual behind the performer, I must recognize the joy that MJ brought to us through his singing and dancing. And may we always remember to serve God through our joy.

Gay / Lesbian Shidduchim -- An Idea Whose Time has Come

A few years back, when preparing for the first same-sex marriage in our family, I located a rabbi who gave me her take on officiating at interfaith weddings. She informed me that she will not officiate, in general at male-female interfaith ceremonies, but will officiate at same-sex interfaith weddings, under some circumstances (one firm requirement is that the home of the couple, and all children, will be clearly a Jewish home, with no other religions practiced).

"OK, I don't get it," I said. "Well," she answered, "the Jewish community has provided incredible opportunities for hetero couples to find Jewish mates. At this point, if you're living in any kind of Jewish community, there is no excuse to not be able to find a Jewish wife or husband. The community has not, however, provided such opportunities for gay or lesbian Jews. They are on their own when it comes to finding a mate. Therefore, I will officiate at the marriage of a same-sex couple even if one partner is not Jewish, if they will go along with my requirements and will agree to establish a Jewish family and home."

Having entered the rabbinate (and social work) not long after homosexuality had been dropped from the list of treatable conditions by the American Psychiatric Association, and having been trained as a rabbi to believe that perhaps we might tolerate gay members as long as they didn't push matters too much, her statement was a long way from home. And yet, it was powerfully true. In spite of all the evidence about the origins of homosexuality, despite the fact that openly gay individuals are members, leaders and rabbis in all major movements, and disregarding the large number of Jewish children who are being raised as Jews in same-sex parent households, we have done little as a community to help gay and lesbian Jews to find life partners.


I know the questions that will be raised:

• How can we bring gay/lesbian couples together when most rabbis will not officiate at a same-sex wedding?


• How can we advocate for same-sex couples when the Torah clearly objects to (male) homosexuality?
  
• Are our synagogues and institutions prepared to fully accept same-sex couples and their families?

While these are serious questions, my colleague's challenges years ago continue to resonate for me. At least 5% and perhaps as many as 10% of Jews (and of humans) are gay. Torah commandments will not change their orientation. These fellow Jews will look for love and companionship and will want to raise families, Jewish families.

My proposal: It is time to reinvent the shadchan (matchmaking) profession in the Jewish community. There is a need for Shadchanim (matchmakers) who will specifically help gay and lesbian Jews to find their bashert.

Admittedly some of my colleagues will be aghast. Others will not be too sure what to make of the idea. And others will wildly applaud.

My idea is not intended to put me in the vanguard of any new movement, nor am I sure that the idea has merit. But there is a large segment of the Jewish community that wants nothing more than to find companionship, build Jewish families and contribute to the community. It's time to make it easier for them to opt in. I'm glad to toss another idea out there. If it has merit, I hope someone will pick up the idea and run with it.

The Economy Killed My Great American (Jewish) Novel

I had started to write the plot of what I envisioned as my first novel. Now, I have no real experience in writing fiction; my published work thus far consists of articles that have appeared in journals like Journal of Jewish Education, Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Sh'ma and the like. But I have a good imagination and I've been told that my mind works "differently" from that of other people, so I figured I might just give it a shot.

My projected novel would be inspired by the real-life community in which I live. The story line goes like this:

There is a town on Long Island. We'll call it West Something, NY. Life in West Something is largely uneventful and highly predictable. The community includes a large Jewish community, some 70% of whom consider themselves modern Orthodox. Our story will revolve around their lives and homes.

As our story begins, it is daybreak. We see people waking up. Most are couples with children. There are a few single parents, a few lesbian couples with kids and a few gay male households with nice lawns. Some of the community members are elderly, some middle aged. Some look to be teenagers playing house, but in fact, some of these are homeowners whose parents have generously bankrolled their down payments.

Some of the more religiously committed men head to morning services. The community is so large that there are minyanim (prayer groups) beginning every 10 minutes [this part is pretty much non-fiction]. Each minyan has its own particular style, but there is one commonality: their ending times are tied directly to the departure times of the Long Island Railroad, which many of them take to their jobs in Manhattan.

As minyan proceeds, people begin to look at their watches. At times, it looks as if services might run too close to the LIRR departure time. A hook is kept available to remove any ba'al tefillah (service leader) who will take services into overtime [close to non-fiction].

Meanwhile, the women on the home front are getting their kids off to meet the school bus or to carpool. Once the kids are gone, they too will leave for their jobs. A few are business people who work in the city; some are prosecuting attorneys or public defenders. Most however, are physical therapists, occupational therapists, special education teachers, social workers or, in one case, marketing executive for hip-hop radio stations [OK, not really; But it's close enough to what one friend does].

By the time the 8:30 train departs, the characters that we met at sunrise have left the stage for their work. But now a new group of characters emerges to take their places. These are mostly women from somewhere in the Caribbean. They have come to clean house and babysit toddlers and infants. On most days, the transition is smooth. The day goes by without incident as these hard-working women, many of whom are supporting relatives in their countries of origin, take on the work load. Laundry is done, houses are cleaned, food cooked, babies taken to the park.

But on Thursday, everything is different. Like every other day, the West Something residents have left town to go to work, and the household workers have come. But on Thursday, something unexpected takes place. Oh, the laundry is started. But suddenly different styles of cooking are emerging. In each home, rather than the kosher food cooking done for the family, the women are all cooking dishes that involve pork and jerk sauce, thus effectively rendering every kosher kitchen in West Something traife. They fry, bake, and broil the morning away. Soon it is just after noon.

The ladies, along with some men who they have invited, emerge from the homes. They are carrying Gourmet Glatt shopping bags full of the food they have prepared, the aromas filling the neighborhood. Many push strollers with napping infants. All head for the Cohenlevinegoldsteinberg house, one of the largest in the area. There, they reheat the food and also bring out rum imported from their native countries and mixers from the 7-11. Latin music is put on the stereo and salsa dancing begins. It is Thursday afternoon in West Something and the party has begun!

The party continues for hours, with drinking, eating and dancing. The scene is vaguely reminiscent of the children's book, Thursday is Spaghetti Day, except that the celebrants are human rather than cats. As 3:00 approaches however, the mood begins to shift. Knowing the school buses will be returning the kids to their homes, it is time for the partiers to clean up. The last food is devoured or dumped and one last drink "for the road" is offered. The music is silenced and the men return to wherever they came from. Dishes are washed hurriedly and the Cohenlevinegoldsteinberg's house is quickly vacuumed. The guests leave, returning to the homes in which they work.

Back in their homes, dishes are returned to their regular shelves, sorted either meat or dairy. Cooking for the families' dinner begins as children return from school. All is ready as the men and women of West Something return home. A warm dinner and children busy with homework await them.

Good story, huh? Except that I can't write the novel anymore. The world has changed. Instead of a veritable ghost town on weekdays, the streets are now filled with people who are out of work. They are former executives, financial wizards and even some of the PT's, OT's, social workers and special educators. Instead of my imaginary scenario that occurs when the homeowners and their children leave for the day, one can now see those same homeowners walking their dogs, strolling with their children, sitting in the library, going out for pizza, or heading to Starbucks as the day goes on.

It is a tragedy for the families that have been impacted (including my own). Perhaps one day our world will return to what it once was. When it does, my novel will be waiting to be written.

Is the Modern Orthodox Jewish Community Killing Itself - Part 2

When I was recruited for a professional position in New York, a consideration of our move was the vast array of day school options available to us as we prepared to move to Long Island. Since my wife and I view our children as our most precious commodity, visiting day schools and interviewing their principals was an important pre-move activity some thirteen years ago.

What we learned was not just surprising, it was outright shocking. One meeting went like this:

Notorious: So, tell me about the backgrounds of your teachers. Are
they all credentialed, or licensed, or have advanced degrees in education?

Principal: Well, of course, we do not hire anyone uncredentialed, other than student teachers, who teach under the supervision of a veteran teacher.

Notorious: I am so glad to hear that. Having lived in communities that were much smaller than New York, it was always so hard to find teachers who had the Hebrew and Judaic background as well as the education background.

Principal: Wait. You were talking about limudei kodesh teachers? I was talking about our general studies teachers.

Notorious: You mean your general studies teachers know their subjects and know pedagogy, while you're Judaic teachers only have to know their subject matter?

Principal: Well, you know there really aren't ways for Judaic teachers to study for licensure in the area.

Notorious: Thank you for your time.

Now, I can tell you exactly how a Hebrew/Judaic teacher gets licensure or other credentials. I've helped teachers to attain it in places that a native New Yorker would consider galut (diaspora). Yet a principal actually tried to convince me that, in the largest Jewish community in the galaxy, a teacher of aleph-bet or Talmud could not manage to get a teaching certificate. Sorry, no dice.

The next school we tried was known for higher academic standards, so we were on to that interview. Thankfully, they were a bit more reassuring in terms of using professional teachers, at least on the elementary school level. We fully expected that this particular school, known nationally as an outstanding modern Orthodox day school, would have teachers who were themselves role models, embedded in the modern Orthodox community and trained at places like Yeshiva University. Wrong again! We were soon to learn that the rabbis teaching there, particularly on the high school level lived, for the most part, in distant communities in Brooklyn, the Lower East Side, or at closest, Queens. And less than a handful had been ordained or trained at what would generally be considered modern Orthodox institutions.

Worse than that, some of the teachers, and even a few administrators, were openly disdainful of the institutions in which they were teaching. One friend of mine sent his son to a modern Orthodox day school. His son was an outstanding student, excelling so much in the study of texts that his rabbi/teacher suggested that he should really leave the school and go to a "real yeshiva."

So the modern Orthodox community, at least in my little slice of New York suburbia, has been its own worst enemy. It has entrusted the Jewish education of its students to teachers who do not live in the community, are role models of a type of Judiasm that does not reflect the school's stated philosophy, and are likely to not even have the educational background necessary to teach.

I know that this is not the case everywhere. My daughter is, thankfully, now in a school in which the educational approach appears to be fully consistent with the stated philosophy of the school and most teachers across the curriculum have outstanding backgrounds. Yet, too often, such is not the case.

By not demanding more of its day schools, and by not asking the right questions of those who direct these schools, the modern Orthodox community has found yet another way to assure its disappearance.

More to follow.

Is the Modern Orthodox Jewish Community Killing Itself? - Part 1

Modern Orthodox Judaism thrives in a few communities today. There are significant communities in large cities: parts of metro New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Washington and the like. There are also interesting pockets of modern Orthodoxy in Canada, Mexico and in medium sized communities across North America.

But will the economic crises help to kill off modern Orthodoxy within a generation or two? Here's what may be emerging:

So-called "right wing" Orthodox institutions -- overnight summer camps, day camps, early childhood programs and day schools / yeshivot -- tend to charge a lower fee. In many cases, these institutions must do so in recognition of the large families who struggle to pay fees for several children at a time. They are able to do this through a number of means: hiring young and/or lesser qualified staff, large class sizes, offering "no frills" programs, extensive fundraising and more.

What can be easily observed, at least in Long Island (where I live), is that the financial crisis that embraces us all has pushed many modern Orthodox parents to enroll their kids in more affordable, but theologically right-wing programs.

In our particular neighborhood, we are constantly hearing of children whose families lead modern Orthodox lives being enrolled in summer camps and even day schools whose religious practices are far to the "right" of them, but whose fee scale allows them to keep their children in Jewish camps and schools.

I have no particular problem with religious "crossover" within the Jewish community. However the impact on modern Orthodoxy may not be fully realized for another 10 -20 years. Children are certainly influenced (as indeed we would want them to be) by the educators and camp counselors that teach them. And when the staffs are outspoken in their attitudes regarding anything from exposure to American pop culture to the Internet to dress codes, dissonance is being introduced when they return to their modern Orthodox homes.

I have no simple answers, particularly when the economy is what it is. But modern Orthodox leaders (rabbis included) must realize that an educational challenge is emerging that will impact its community down the road. As kids attend some of the more stringently Orthodox camps, rather than the modern Orthodox and/or religious Zionist camps, and study in more stringently Orthodox schools because of affordability, the modern Orthodox world is in danger of not being able to effectively raise the next generation of modern Orthodox leadership.

This is part one of a few postings about the potential dangers that modern Orthodoxy has created for itself. More to follow.

Reconsidering "Off the Derech"

A few years back, my son introduced me to the latest East Coast Yeshiva Almost-English-ism: off the derech. From what I can tell, it is used by some Orthodox rabbis to refer to youth people who grew up Orthodox and, at some point, moved away from Orthodox observance. Over the past few years, the phrase has crawled into common parlance in the Orthodox world. It has even become the topic of professional discourse among Orthodox rabbis and a small but limited number of Orthodox Jewish educators. An intelligent young writer, Faranak Margolese, even published results of interviews with "off the derech" young people and with rabbis who have built careers out of bringing them back to Orthodoxy in a book called (of course) Off the Derech.

The phrase is built on certain assumptions with which I disagree (albeit to varying degrees):

1. Orthodox Jewish observance is the only acceptable form of Jewish observance, or at the least, is the only ideal form. This is a belief that I cannot accept. It also oversimplifies Jewish history, taking a leap of faith that says that the "Orthodoxy" practiced today used to be the only Judaism before the Enlightenment. Knowledge of fractionalized religious life in the Talmudic era, the burning of Maimonides' books by the rabbis of France in his day, or the excommunication of the Hasidim by Rabbi Elijah of Vilna (aka, Vilna Gaon) all testify to diversity as well as to (unsuccessful) attempts to reign in religious pluralism.


2. Jewish observance is, and should be, constant over the course of a person's lifetime. The research study Connections and Journeys by Bethamie Horowitz (http://www.jewishdatabank.org/Reports/Connections_And_Journeys_2003rev.pdf) documented that Jewish identity and behaviors are fluid throughout a person's lifetime. And while her study dealt primarily with those outside of the Orthodox community, there is every reason to assume that her findings are true to some degree for Orthodox Jews as well. The Amish practice of rumspringa, in which a young adult is given the freedom to digress from strict religious behavior for a year before decided who s/he wants to be religiously is an interesting model. While not advocating for it in the Jewish world, we need community support for an understanding that young people -- Amish or Jewish -- need time in which to explore and experiment with identities that have been handed to them.


3. There are commonalities between"at risk" behaviors and"off the derech" behaviors. Problems of drug use, sexual promiscuity and alcohol abuse do not belong in the conversation about young people who have left Orthodoxy (particularly since there are plenty of observant Orthodox youth who engage in all of the above). At risk behaviors are not simple problems of halacha or theology; they are physically and psychologically dangerous behaviors.


4. There are commonalities between those whose religious behaviors were impacted by physical and sexual abuse at the hands of rabbis or parents and others who have left orthodoxy for less traumatic reasons. There is plenty of malpractice among rabbis and plenty of family dysfunction out there. But the only commonality between those who've left Orthodox practice because of trauma and those who have left for more mundane reasons is that both groups are not in currently practicing Orthodox observance. The other dynamics are completely different from one another.


5. So called "off the derech" young people are failure stories for the Orthodox Jewish community. We do a disservice by assuming that the community or families have failed and therefore created a young person who is a Jewish failure. Ms. Margolese's interviews show most of these young people still believe in God, still value their Jewish identity, still engage in Jewish behaviors on some level. While these young people are not maximally engaged, they are still on the radar screen of the Jewish community. With the exception of the "at risk" or the "trauma" groups, off the derech young people have not burned their bridges behind themselves.

My suggestion: It is time to declare the expression "off the derech" to be off limits. It is insulting to young people and their families and is being used to describe so many different phenomenon that it is a useless characterization.