Julia Duin
The first people I saw when I climbed out of the Kingston subway station on Friday were men in long black coats, wide-brimmed black hats and beards. was in Crown Heights, the Brooklyn borough that is the "Jerusalem" of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, in which the black suits are the norm. Founded 250 years ago in what was White Russia, the movement survived under the leadership of inspired rebbes (teachers), the latest being Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994.
The dilapidated brick building I faced as I exited the subway was his movement's headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway. The interior was a rabbit warren of dingy hallways with sheets of paper - tacked onto various doors - identifying various agencies.
I stepped into one room claimed by Jewish Educational Media, where Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkin showed me an array of multimedia archives of talks by the rebbe, plus video of almost every encounter he had had with the thousands of fans who had dropped by to see him on Sundays. He would give each a dollar bill, which they in turn were to contribute to charity.
The rebbe founded an amazing missionary corps of rabbinical couples who established beachheads of Jewish culture worldwide. I met such a couple in South Florida while reporting there in the early 1980s, and I've maintained contact with them to this day. Their synagogue turns 30 years old this month.
Other endings are not so happy. When terrorists attacked Jews in Mumbai in November 2008, it was a Chabad center that was targeted. Nine Jews died there.
I had long wanted to see the nerve center of the Chabad movement. A few hours later, the lower floor of 770, as they call it, overflowed with black-coated men saying prayers in preparation for the Jewish holiday of Purim. Up in the balcony in the women's section, a woman held out a card bearing Rabbi Schneerson's likeness, comparing him to the moshiach, the long-promised Jewish messiah.
A Lubavitch friend and I strolled through the snow up Kingston Avenue, "the Champs Elysees of the Lubavitch world," he told me, with delis, a bakery shop, Judaica stories, flower shops and butchers, all kosher. A glossy tourist brochure at a florist portrays a street map of where 43 shuls, or synagogues, can be found in a 77-square-block area.
Most impressive was the interactive Jewish Children's Museum across Kingston Avenue from the world headquarters. When the little ones enter on the third floor, they go through a walkway portraying the seven days of creation.
There were shofar-shaped microphones in front of an exhibit on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new-year holiday during which the shofar (ram's horn) is blown. There's an olive press to create oil for Hanukkah lamps, a chestful of Purim costumes and a kosher supermarket where children can practice selecting kosher products off the shelves.
Then there is a room devoted to observing the Sabbath, with computers instructing children how to construct a Sabbath menu and a talking wine bottle that describes how to say the kiddush blessing over the wine.
Lots of Christian youth groups visit the museum, I was told, because of its Bible-friendly atmosphere. And certainly, with a surrounding neighborhood and culture geared to making faith attractive, Crown Heights leaves the visitor almost wishing he or she could be Jewish.
Showing posts with label Jewish Educational Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jewish Educational Media. Show all posts
Monday, May 24, 2010
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Jews, God, and Videotape
How media have molded modern Jewish religion
Jews, God, and Videotape
Religion and Media in America
By Jeffrey Shandler
New York University Press.
340 pp. $23
Reviewed by Glenn C. Altschuler
Videotaping bar and bat mitzvahs, many observant Jews maintain, violates Talmudic prohibitions against work on the Sabbath, distracts the worshiper from worship, and transforms tranquil and dignified ceremonies into spectacles.
And yet, as Jeffrey Shandler reminds us, more and more parents - and teenagers - insist on documenting their families' coming-of-age rituals.
In Jews, God, and Videotape, Shandler, a professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, provides a fresh and fascinating account of the impact of technology on the religious life of American Jews during the last one hundred years.
The "new media," he argues, have helped shape a popular Jewish religion, more concerned with consumerism, celebrity, and community than with theology or rabbinical authority. Reorganizing emotion and experience, this "religion in the making" is struggling to identify strategies through which "the People of the Book" can accommodate and/or confront how Jews can (or should) fit in and stand out.
In a richly detailed chapter on The Eternal Light, a long-running radio broadcast, created in the 1940s by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Shandler shows how the medium can affect the message.
Aimed primarily at a non-Jewish audience, the overarching goal of the show, which reached about five million Americans by the end of the decade, was to combat anti-Semitism by demonstrating (through historical dramas and literary adaptations) that Jewish "particularism" was incidental to its "fundamental universalism" and that Jews were anything but anti-American radicals or communist sympathizers.
Populated by actors whose voices were ethnically "unmarked," The Eternal Light, Shandler speculates, allowed Jews, sight unseen, to invite themselves into the homes of their non-Jewish neighbors, confident that they were subjects of "respectful attention."
More often than not, Shandler implies, modern media have marked - but have not made - changes in Jewish attitudes and behavior. The themes of The Eternal Light, for example, reflected the "powerful integrationist impact" of the post-World War II suburban migration of American Jewish culture. When, in the 1960s, concern about anti-Semitism gave way to fears of the "erosion" of a distinctly Jewish culture, the ecumenical, assimilationist Eternal Light dimmed.
Frequently, according to Shandler, modern media provide an arena for contests over appropriate conduct. E-cards, he points out, reflect a range of responses to the "December dilemma" of Jews. Some postulate parity between Christmas and Hanukkah, pairing Santa Claus with Tevye. Others, however, are more hostile to "interfaith" sentiments.
In 1989, Shandler writes, the American Jewish Committee, in conjunction with the National Conference of Christians and Jews, denounced greeting cards that combined the religious and cultural symbols of the two holidays as "an affront to the integrity of distinct faiths."
With respect to religion, Shandler writes, provocatively and persuasively, the notion of "separate but equal" lives on.
Recently, Shandler reveals, ultra-orthodox Jews have overcome an aversion to technology as a corrupting distraction - and begun to use television, video, and the Internet to spread their messianic vision. Under the leadership of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who almost never left his neighborhood in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, the Lubavitcher hasidim have raised millions of dollars through telethons, even as they make sure that the arms, legs, and breasts of the female celebrities who appear on the small screen are covered.
DVDs and Chabad.org allow Schneerson to communicate with his disciples long after his death.
Technology, Shandler concludes, hasn't changed everything. It can - and does - facilitate traditional communal rites, including synagogue worship, as well as more secular practices.
For many, it may be less helpful in forging new links than in renewing, in the virtual world, a sense of belonging to links already established in the "real" one.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
Jews, God, and Videotape
Religion and Media in America
By Jeffrey Shandler
New York University Press.
340 pp. $23
Reviewed by Glenn C. Altschuler
Videotaping bar and bat mitzvahs, many observant Jews maintain, violates Talmudic prohibitions against work on the Sabbath, distracts the worshiper from worship, and transforms tranquil and dignified ceremonies into spectacles.
And yet, as Jeffrey Shandler reminds us, more and more parents - and teenagers - insist on documenting their families' coming-of-age rituals.
In Jews, God, and Videotape, Shandler, a professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, provides a fresh and fascinating account of the impact of technology on the religious life of American Jews during the last one hundred years.
The "new media," he argues, have helped shape a popular Jewish religion, more concerned with consumerism, celebrity, and community than with theology or rabbinical authority. Reorganizing emotion and experience, this "religion in the making" is struggling to identify strategies through which "the People of the Book" can accommodate and/or confront how Jews can (or should) fit in and stand out.
In a richly detailed chapter on The Eternal Light, a long-running radio broadcast, created in the 1940s by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Shandler shows how the medium can affect the message.
Aimed primarily at a non-Jewish audience, the overarching goal of the show, which reached about five million Americans by the end of the decade, was to combat anti-Semitism by demonstrating (through historical dramas and literary adaptations) that Jewish "particularism" was incidental to its "fundamental universalism" and that Jews were anything but anti-American radicals or communist sympathizers.
Populated by actors whose voices were ethnically "unmarked," The Eternal Light, Shandler speculates, allowed Jews, sight unseen, to invite themselves into the homes of their non-Jewish neighbors, confident that they were subjects of "respectful attention."
More often than not, Shandler implies, modern media have marked - but have not made - changes in Jewish attitudes and behavior. The themes of The Eternal Light, for example, reflected the "powerful integrationist impact" of the post-World War II suburban migration of American Jewish culture. When, in the 1960s, concern about anti-Semitism gave way to fears of the "erosion" of a distinctly Jewish culture, the ecumenical, assimilationist Eternal Light dimmed.
Frequently, according to Shandler, modern media provide an arena for contests over appropriate conduct. E-cards, he points out, reflect a range of responses to the "December dilemma" of Jews. Some postulate parity between Christmas and Hanukkah, pairing Santa Claus with Tevye. Others, however, are more hostile to "interfaith" sentiments.
In 1989, Shandler writes, the American Jewish Committee, in conjunction with the National Conference of Christians and Jews, denounced greeting cards that combined the religious and cultural symbols of the two holidays as "an affront to the integrity of distinct faiths."
With respect to religion, Shandler writes, provocatively and persuasively, the notion of "separate but equal" lives on.
Recently, Shandler reveals, ultra-orthodox Jews have overcome an aversion to technology as a corrupting distraction - and begun to use television, video, and the Internet to spread their messianic vision. Under the leadership of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who almost never left his neighborhood in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, the Lubavitcher hasidim have raised millions of dollars through telethons, even as they make sure that the arms, legs, and breasts of the female celebrities who appear on the small screen are covered.
DVDs and Chabad.org allow Schneerson to communicate with his disciples long after his death.
Technology, Shandler concludes, hasn't changed everything. It can - and does - facilitate traditional communal rites, including synagogue worship, as well as more secular practices.
For many, it may be less helpful in forging new links than in renewing, in the virtual world, a sense of belonging to links already established in the "real" one.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Mumbai's far-reaching impact
Dec. 29, 2008
dovid eliezrie
THE JERUSALEM POST
Jewish tradition tells us the first 30 days of mourning are the most intense. This week we mark end of this period since the terrorist attack against the Chabad Center in Mumbai. It's been a watershed event for world Jewry and Chabad. It will have a long lasting effect in diverse ways.
It has sparked an existential dialogue within Chabad. "Why have we become a target for the unfathomable." A few days after the attack, a group of Jewish security experts told me, "You guys are on the frontlines, it was only a matter of time." That's the practical perspective you would expect from security gurus. At a farbrengen held last week for California shluchim that question was at the core of the evening. Rabbi Ezra Schochet, rosh yeshiva, dissected the issue. The intellectual inquiry did not bring him, or us, solace. At the end he said, "We have a question, a question without any answer."
FOR MILLENNIA Jews have grappled with the same questions, seeking to pierce the mystery of divine providence. Shluchim were promised special blessings. Years ago a Chabad supporter suggested to the Rebbe in a private audience that he give more kudos to his shluchim. While the Rebbe showed appreciation, it was done in his classic understated style. Hassidim felt it an honor to serve the Rebbe's higher purposes. After hearing the question, the Rebbe's face took an austere look. He told the man, "They all have children."
Out of the close to 4,000 couples, you can't count on one hand those who do not have children. It's not uncommon in Chabad to find a childless young couples in business make a career change to become shluchim to benefit from this unique spiritual blessing. So how could we, who have had our lives so enriched with so many blessings, lose two of our best to evil is a question gnawing at our souls.
While we have no answer, most of us have taken consolation and inspiration from the Rebbe's message to Kfar Chabad in 1956 after five children and their teacher were killed by terrorists. "In your rebuilding you will find consolation." Last Thursday night the parents of Rabbi Gavriel and Rebbitzen Rivka Holtzberg returned to Mumbai to light the menora. Their message was clear terror will not deter us, only prompt us to achieve more.
Around the world many of us have undertaken new projects. Our community in Yorba Linda, California is writing a Torah scroll in their memory. Just down the freeway, the Chabad Center is placing a shaliah at University of California at Irvine, a hotbed of radical Arab activism. Across the world similar initiatives are being launched.
This tragedy touched a deep chord in the Jewish world.
FOR SOME 36 hours millions watched the drama unfolding. Jews were hunted down and killed for being Jews. Chabad was not attacked as a symbol of the West, as J. J. Goldberg attempted to claim in the Forward. Clearly there were more prominent Western targets in Mumbai. Islamic terrorists sought out Chabad as an objective. A nondescript six-story building tucked away in one the most demographically dense cities in the world. The terrorists searched and found the only rabbi living in the city. Chabad may have been the specific target, but it was an attack on the Jewish people as a whole. It impacted all aspects of the Jewish world. The six victims rooted in the world of Satmar, secular Jews, Zionists and non Zionists.
Sadly in death we were all united. It reminded us of our vulnerability as Jews. It wasn't too long ago that armies marched across Europe in search of Jews, now a force based on religious fundamentalism reaches out from the mountains of Pakistan with the same goals.
THE ATTACK was personal; for the untold numbers of Jews who know a Chabad shaliah, their friend was in mourning. Gabi's father had been my classmate in yeshiva, my son with Gabi himself. Chabad may have grown but we are all interconnected. Our personal pain of reached deep into every Jewish community in the world. Tens of thousands attended hundreds of memorials.
It accentuated a reality that challenges the status quo of Jewish life. Today Chabad is the largest Jewish organization in the world. It eclipses in size and scope all other Jewish groups. As Andrew Silow-Carroll of the New Jersey Jewish News noted, the event has "repositioned Chabad as the de facto Jewish vanguard, and made other Jewish groups acknowledge it." The attack has sparked and rekindling of the relationship between Chabad and other parts of the haredi world.
The schism has deep roots reaching back to split between hassidim and mitnagdim two centuries ago. In modern times it has been intensified for a variety of reasons. The messiah issue worried many. The haredi world responded to the challenge of modernity by erecting barriers. Chabad chose to engage it, look for the good and offer its contribution to all. While most haredim stepped back into their own world, Chabad reached out to others.
AT THE funeral, standing together with hassidic rabbis were President Shimon Peres and leaders of Israel's key parties. Their participation was reflective of Chabad's willingness to play a role in larger society while decisively maintaining Jewish principles. Mumbai was the catalyst for the haredi community to seek reconciliation. As the editor of Yated Ne'eman (different than its Israeli namesake) in the US, a paper that historically would not acknowledge Chabad, wrote in article lauding the Holtzberg's self sacrifice, "We are tribes of a same nation." Strangely it's the shluchim around the world who have laid the ground for this rapprochement. At the shluchim convention held in New York a week before the attack, leaders of Satmar sat at tables of shluchim they have become friends with during their business travels. In recent years even the most insular Lithuanian yeshivot have discovered the importance of outreach.
A few days after their passing, JEM, Chabad's producer of film and video released a hastily assembled memorial video on their lives. They had discovered a rare clip of Rivka Holtzberg talking about her life in Mumbai. Her warmth, charm and inner beauty radiate on the screen. One moment deeply touched me, when asked how can you have dozens for dinner every night, she responds in the typical Israeli, "Zeh kef - its fun." Her joy in giving to others was palatable. If only if each of us could capture a part of that enthusiasm and infuse it into our lives, how much better the world would be.
The writer is a Chabad shaliah in Yorba Linda, California. rabbi@ocjewish.com
dovid eliezrie
THE JERUSALEM POST
Jewish tradition tells us the first 30 days of mourning are the most intense. This week we mark end of this period since the terrorist attack against the Chabad Center in Mumbai. It's been a watershed event for world Jewry and Chabad. It will have a long lasting effect in diverse ways.
It has sparked an existential dialogue within Chabad. "Why have we become a target for the unfathomable." A few days after the attack, a group of Jewish security experts told me, "You guys are on the frontlines, it was only a matter of time." That's the practical perspective you would expect from security gurus. At a farbrengen held last week for California shluchim that question was at the core of the evening. Rabbi Ezra Schochet, rosh yeshiva, dissected the issue. The intellectual inquiry did not bring him, or us, solace. At the end he said, "We have a question, a question without any answer."
FOR MILLENNIA Jews have grappled with the same questions, seeking to pierce the mystery of divine providence. Shluchim were promised special blessings. Years ago a Chabad supporter suggested to the Rebbe in a private audience that he give more kudos to his shluchim. While the Rebbe showed appreciation, it was done in his classic understated style. Hassidim felt it an honor to serve the Rebbe's higher purposes. After hearing the question, the Rebbe's face took an austere look. He told the man, "They all have children."
Out of the close to 4,000 couples, you can't count on one hand those who do not have children. It's not uncommon in Chabad to find a childless young couples in business make a career change to become shluchim to benefit from this unique spiritual blessing. So how could we, who have had our lives so enriched with so many blessings, lose two of our best to evil is a question gnawing at our souls.
While we have no answer, most of us have taken consolation and inspiration from the Rebbe's message to Kfar Chabad in 1956 after five children and their teacher were killed by terrorists. "In your rebuilding you will find consolation." Last Thursday night the parents of Rabbi Gavriel and Rebbitzen Rivka Holtzberg returned to Mumbai to light the menora. Their message was clear terror will not deter us, only prompt us to achieve more.
Around the world many of us have undertaken new projects. Our community in Yorba Linda, California is writing a Torah scroll in their memory. Just down the freeway, the Chabad Center is placing a shaliah at University of California at Irvine, a hotbed of radical Arab activism. Across the world similar initiatives are being launched.
This tragedy touched a deep chord in the Jewish world.
FOR SOME 36 hours millions watched the drama unfolding. Jews were hunted down and killed for being Jews. Chabad was not attacked as a symbol of the West, as J. J. Goldberg attempted to claim in the Forward. Clearly there were more prominent Western targets in Mumbai. Islamic terrorists sought out Chabad as an objective. A nondescript six-story building tucked away in one the most demographically dense cities in the world. The terrorists searched and found the only rabbi living in the city. Chabad may have been the specific target, but it was an attack on the Jewish people as a whole. It impacted all aspects of the Jewish world. The six victims rooted in the world of Satmar, secular Jews, Zionists and non Zionists.
Sadly in death we were all united. It reminded us of our vulnerability as Jews. It wasn't too long ago that armies marched across Europe in search of Jews, now a force based on religious fundamentalism reaches out from the mountains of Pakistan with the same goals.
THE ATTACK was personal; for the untold numbers of Jews who know a Chabad shaliah, their friend was in mourning. Gabi's father had been my classmate in yeshiva, my son with Gabi himself. Chabad may have grown but we are all interconnected. Our personal pain of reached deep into every Jewish community in the world. Tens of thousands attended hundreds of memorials.
It accentuated a reality that challenges the status quo of Jewish life. Today Chabad is the largest Jewish organization in the world. It eclipses in size and scope all other Jewish groups. As Andrew Silow-Carroll of the New Jersey Jewish News noted, the event has "repositioned Chabad as the de facto Jewish vanguard, and made other Jewish groups acknowledge it." The attack has sparked and rekindling of the relationship between Chabad and other parts of the haredi world.
The schism has deep roots reaching back to split between hassidim and mitnagdim two centuries ago. In modern times it has been intensified for a variety of reasons. The messiah issue worried many. The haredi world responded to the challenge of modernity by erecting barriers. Chabad chose to engage it, look for the good and offer its contribution to all. While most haredim stepped back into their own world, Chabad reached out to others.
AT THE funeral, standing together with hassidic rabbis were President Shimon Peres and leaders of Israel's key parties. Their participation was reflective of Chabad's willingness to play a role in larger society while decisively maintaining Jewish principles. Mumbai was the catalyst for the haredi community to seek reconciliation. As the editor of Yated Ne'eman (different than its Israeli namesake) in the US, a paper that historically would not acknowledge Chabad, wrote in article lauding the Holtzberg's self sacrifice, "We are tribes of a same nation." Strangely it's the shluchim around the world who have laid the ground for this rapprochement. At the shluchim convention held in New York a week before the attack, leaders of Satmar sat at tables of shluchim they have become friends with during their business travels. In recent years even the most insular Lithuanian yeshivot have discovered the importance of outreach.
A few days after their passing, JEM, Chabad's producer of film and video released a hastily assembled memorial video on their lives. They had discovered a rare clip of Rivka Holtzberg talking about her life in Mumbai. Her warmth, charm and inner beauty radiate on the screen. One moment deeply touched me, when asked how can you have dozens for dinner every night, she responds in the typical Israeli, "Zeh kef - its fun." Her joy in giving to others was palatable. If only if each of us could capture a part of that enthusiasm and infuse it into our lives, how much better the world would be.
The writer is a Chabad shaliah in Yorba Linda, California. rabbi@ocjewish.com
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