Uncategorized – Page 3 – From Under the Fig Tree

Mixtape

joselitJune 8, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Building a new academic program ain’t easy. There are forms to fill out, deans to convince, donors to cultivate and students to recruit. The number of hoops you have to jump through before you get off the ground, much less succeed, can daunt and discourage even the most energetic and determined of souls.

What lifts the spirit and sustains it is the opportunity to try one’s hand at something novel: to stretch. It’s not quite the same thing as seizing the brass ring, but it comes awfully close. For me, that opportunity took the form of SymPop.

Inspired by the contemporary pop-up phenomenon as well as by the age-old notion of a symposium, I hit on the idea of mixing up both by bringing together a highly select (dare I say ‘curated,’ the word du jour) assemblage of artists and educators to spend an immersive 24 hours in one another’s company. We would eat together, cook together, learn from one another and collaborate -- all with an eye towards enriching one another as well as the Jewish communal landscape.

So many ideas sound marvelous on paper, but land with a thud when it comes to actualizing them. Not SymPop. Thanks to its participants, who were generous, open, spirited and, above all, game, what might have been yet another dutiful exercise in professional development took flight. Deploying all manner of stuff -- paper, scissors, smartphones, musical instruments, images, grids, flowers, their feet, pots & pans -- as well as one another, they buzzed with ideas, infusing Jewish texts, practices, places, foodways and sounds with newfound sparkle and depth.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what the SymPopniks had to say when asked to come up with a slew of adjectives and nouns to describe their experience. First the adjectives: “Awesome, inspiring, thoughtful, fun, satisfying.” Now, the nouns: “sharing, connections, sprouting, whole-making, gratitude, trust.”

Shop talk

joselitMay 30, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

If all you knew about education came from what you read in the New York Times, you’d be right to think it’s in a sorry state, indeed. But if you had the good fortune to spend time in the company of committed educators, you’d come away with an entirely different perspective -- not rosy-eyed, exactly, but upbeat and enthusiastic, all the same.

I’ve just returned from Brandeis, where the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education assembled a diverse mix of professionals to explore how best to approach the teaching of history -- Jewish history especially. Some of us teach or conduct research, others experiment with digital forms of exchange and still others work in museums. What binds us together is our shared fidelity to the enterprise of education and with it, the value of thinking historically.

That’s not to say that differences didn’t emerge. On the heels of screening “Raise the Roof,” a marvelous, inspiring film about the making of the wooden synagogue that now takes center stage at Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, I, for one, got into a lively (read: heated) discussion with one of colleagues. He felt that the project’s participants did not come away with a sufficient understanding of the larger context of Polish-Jewish relations, rendering the undertaking of limited utility. My point, in turn, was that if ever there was an educational opportunity to translate history into an immediate, powerful experience, this was it. Knowledge wasn’t the point so much as sensitivity. Neither one convinced the other, but we had a good time trying.

In the course of our deliberations or “convening,” as the lingo would have it, attendees looked at the ways in which gaming, material culture, theater and the pursuit of heroes might advance the study of the Jewish past. The air was thick with collegial exchange.

We’ll have to wait and see what big-ticket conclusions, if any, will be drawn. In the meantime, it’s heartening to know that fresh ideas await.

Road trip

joselitMarch 1, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

“What brings you to Boca? Business or pleasure?” asks the cab driver. I’m too busy holding on for dear life to answer. No sooner had we left the airport than the car was engulfed in a rainstorm so intense that it’s bucking like a bronco. To add insult to injury, the rain is so thick you can’t see a damn thing. In an attempt to calm his nerves as he threads his way, the cab driver is engaging in what is otherwise known as polite conversation. In an attempt to calm mine, I’ve started to sing quietly to myself -- one of my favorite Hebrew songs. Okay, it’s really a prayer.

Welcome to Boca Raton — Welcome to Boca. Flickr/elpintobeans

Eventually, the storm subsides and after what feels like an eternity, we finally reach my hotel. But the gods have not yet finished with me. It turns out that the cab driver’s credit card system has stopped working. Since I don’t have enough cash on hand to pay the unexpectedly hefty bill, we have to phone someone in the dispatcher’s office to connect us to someone else who’ll authorize the use of my credit card. That takes some doing, too.

After a while, the situation is properly “sorted,” as the British might say. I then make my weary way inside the hotel and approach the check-in desk. Since I’m the guest of a local university, the cost of my lodgings has been taken care of, but not my “incidentals.” I’m asked to furnish a credit card as well as a photo ID and to sign here and there and, ‘yes, once more, please, at the bottom.’ As I do, I see with delight that my room comes with a balcony. I can’t wait to be one with the palm trees, to gaze upon the pool with a restorative gin and tonic in hand.

Nope. That’s not to be. While the room does have a balcony, it overlooks the parking lot and the garbage disposal area. Someone is having a very good laugh at my expense. I go to bed.

The next day is full. There’s breakfast with a friend, a quick stop at the beach so that I might gaze longingly at the water, followed by lunch with the cousins at “the club,” and then two speeches in quick succession, one for the “academic community,” at 4 p.m. and the other for prospective donors at 7. To accommodate both audiences, my host and I have dinner at 5 o’clock.

The place is jammed. With sportily-attired people. And walkers. And wheelchairs and some newfangled form of locomotion that I’ve never before seen. The energy is both palpable and familiar. Though I’ve only been to Boca once before, I recognize the scene. Perhaps from a “Seinfeld” episode. It’s sad -- but gallant.

I deliver my second talk of the day, which has to do with the destruction of the Torah by the Nazis. I feel a profound disconnect, a fundamental incongruity, between my chosen theme and the setting and wonder if I’m the only one.

Travel, I know, is meant to be broadening. It’s often unsettling, too. I can’t wait to return home.

Not so fast. My plane is delayed: a fitting coda to my brief stay in South Florida.

In full flower

joselitJanuary 31, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Many moons ago, while a graduate student, I first came across references to the alleged cultural impoverishment of the Jews whose languages, it was said, lacked a vocabulary of botanical terms.

That notion has stayed with me ever since. Most recently, it piqued my interest in attending “Songs of Sacred Time,” a concert of Jewish music at Manhattan’s JCC to mark Tu B’Shevat, “Jewish Arbor Day,” the “New Year of the Trees.” I didn’t expect much.

Boy, was I proven wrong. Wide-ranging in subject and in musicality, the songs presented at this concert were drawn from Yiddish and Ladino, Hebrew and Arabic and spanned the centuries as well as the globe. Some took the form of lively, upbeat folk songs, others were far more rueful, contemplative, even yearning.

Every one was performed with exquisite skill and sensitivity by the singers -- Hazzan Ayelet Porzecanski, Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer and Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon -- and the musicians -- Daniel Ori on bass, Uri Sharlin on accordion, Shane Shanahan on percussion. Under the skillful music direction of guitarist Dan Nadel, chestnuts such as Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “It Might As Well Be Spring,” and Naomi Shemer’s “Horshat HaEkaliptus,” came vividly to life, while little-known treasures from Afghanistan and Libya, among them “Shochanet BaSadeh,” held us rapt.

Mesmerizing and heartening in equal measure, “Songs of Sacred Time” highlighted the richness and variety of Jewish musical expression. What’s more, the sight of a young generation of artists in thrall to its textures and rhythms was marvelous to behold. To all those doomsayers out there, to all those who insist that contemporary Jewish life is on the decline, look again. And listen.

Jewish culture is in full flower.

Bright spot

joselitDecember 7, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

In the weeks leading up to Hanukkah, my inbox was filled with multiple invitations from a diverse array of journalists to talk about the holiday. A writer for The Atlantic wanted to know more about Hanukkah’s history in America; a reporter for Time plied me with questions about contemporary practice, while her counterpart at the Wall Street Journal, appropriately enough, zeroed in on Hanukkah gelt.

Much as I appreciate, and am even flattered by, the burst of interest in my perspective -- after all, the last time I experienced such a show of popularity was back in 10th grade -- I’m curious about the media’s attentiveness. Surely, it’s not for want of other newsworthy stories; we’re hardly experiencing a slow news cycle. What’s more, near as I can tell, there are no new and startling developments in the way in which American Jews mark the holiday, apart, say, from substituting crème fraiche for sour cream atop potato latkes. This latest dollop of culinary innovation may have the traditionalists among us all riled up, but it hardly qualifies as journalistic fodder. What, then, might account for the current expression of interest in the Festival of Lights?

I suspect it has something to do with persistence. Though of ancient vintage, Hanukkah hasn’t bit the dust, as have so many other equally hoary festivals. Instead, it keeps chugging along, accruing new meanings and new practices along the way, especially in the United States where a host of factors over time -- consumerism, the rise of the State of Israel and intermarriage, among them -- have endowed the holiday with a new lease on life.

In the 1920s, the availability of new foodstuffs such as Crisco allied “latkes and modern science,” contemporizing the traditional tuber dish. In the immediate postwar era, American Jews increasingly associated the ancient Maccabees with modern-day Israeli soldiers, heightening Hanukkah’s relevance. Today, intermarried families make a point of celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas, extending its reach and giving rise to a new genre of humorous greeting card that takes the sting out of the so-called “December dilemma.”

An exercise in adaptation, Hanukkah has stayed the course -- which, come to think of it, might well explain its appeal to the Fourth Estate. At a time of wholesale and rapid change, the holiday’s endurance is something to write about.

Spin on, Hanukkah!

Social climbing

joselitNovember 23, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

This week marked the passing of Stephen Birmingham, the author of the 1967 best-seller, Our Crowd, an account of the German Jewish elite in America. With its "frothy" tales of the rich and famous within the American Jewish community, Birmingham’s book, as one reviewer put it, fell somewhere between "social history and elevated tattletale," generating lots of interest among those who fancied both.

Jacob Schiff (seated, bottom right with white mustache and beard) and family. Source: New York Public Library — Jacob Schiff and his extended family figured prominently in "Our Crowd." Source: NYPL

A novelist before he turned to history, Birmingham had a keen eye for the telling detail and the revealing anecdote. Story-telling rather than scholarship was his métier, prompting several prominent members of the academy to take him to task. Writing in Commentary, Marshall Sklare, the Brandeis University sociologist, publicly chided Birmingham for the casual way in which he documented his findings -- his footnotes left a lot to be desired -- as well as for his limitations in wrestling with the "serious implications of his material." Still, Birmingham's subject, the sociologist grudgingly conceded, was "certainly ripe for exploitation."

Sklare was right about that. Even so, it’s been nearly 50 years since Our Crowd first saw the light of day and near as I can make out, the book has yet to be superseded or seriously challenged. Perhaps we're due for another look. Any takers?

In the meantime, Birmingham’s lavishly detailed account of the tightly knit culture of America’s German-Jewish elite holds its own. That his book also imprinted the words, “our crowd,” on the contemporary Jewish imagination is an accomplishment to which few writers can lay claim.

Integration

joselitNovember 15, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

It’s not often that what goes on within my classroom is of a piece with what goes on outside of it, but this week proved to be an exception. Context and curriculum, current events and history, came together in a timely convergence, making for animated discussion.

Exhibit installation/New York Times — Harlem On My Mind installation/New York Times

As recent and ongoing instances of racism on college campuses across the country came to light, prompting the resignation of a number of high-ranking university officials, the students in my graduate seminar were grappling with "Harlem On My Mind," the 1969 exhibition that embroiled the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a series of confrontations with New York’s African-American community. Some argued that the Met was guilty of white privilege, and had no business exploring the history and culture of its neighbors to the north. Others adopted a more conciliatory posture, casting the exhibition as a gesture of reconciliation and rapprochement. And back and forth it went, generating more heat and irresolution than usual.

The very next day, the students in my undergraduate seminar on American Jewish history came face to face with a number of documents from the 1920s in which the powers-that-be at Harvard gave voice to animadversions against Jewish collegians. Lest a "surfeit of pansies," as well as too many "decadent esthetes" and "precious cosmopolitans" call themselves Harvard men, quotas were instituted to curb the number of prospective Jewish applicants. It wasn't easy to make our way through this material, a disturbing and sobering read under the best of circumstances, much less in November 2015. Nor could we take comfort from the notion that racist expression was a thing of the past when, clearly, it is not.

Most of the time, I'd like my students to leave my class with a spring in their step. This week, though, I'm hoping they left with a heavy heart.

The conversation

joselitNovember 2, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

These days, we’re apt to pride ourselves on our communicative abilities, pointing to our continuous tweeting and texting. I don’t doubt for a nano-second that multiple and meaningful forms of exchange do take place, but honest-to-goodness conversation ain’t among them. I mean the old-fashioned kind of give-and-take, the sustained, lively, impromptu, generative discussion that entails two or more people actually talking to one another, face to face and with words, intonations and physical gestures.

Last Juan Munoz. Conversation Piece (1994-5). Flickr/cliff1066

You had only to be in the crowded room last week, when GW commemorated the centennial of Leo Frank’s lynching, to see for yourself the evocative power of conversation. Moderated by Blake Morant, the Dean of GW Law, “Reckoning with the Ghosts of Leo Frank,” as this event was called, featured David Kendall, the renowned Washington lawyer, and Steve Oney, author of the And the Dead Shall Rise, the definitive account of this tragic moment in American history.

The rise and fall of their voices held the audience spellbound, as did the high intelligence with which they addressed the many complicated issues at hand. Bringing passion and urgency to the proceedings as well as smarts, the three participants made history and the law come alive.

The same thing happened when, a few days later, Steve Oney visited my undergraduate seminar in American Jewish history. I’m not exactly sure what it was -- his nonpareil descriptive powers, his easy interaction with the students or a combination of the two -- but something about Mr. Oney’s presence and voice not only had everyone mesmerized but encouraged their participation as well.

Conversation, as many of us discovered or rediscovered this past week, is good for the soul.

Speaking of which, you may have noticed that my posts have not been as forthcoming as they usually are. It’s not that I’ve run out of things to say, heaven forfend. It’s that a series of seemingly intractable digital snafus have made a hash of things. Here’s hoping that you’ll bear with me, and the IT boys, as we seek a solution.

Holy week

joselitOctober 16, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Editor's note: Due to technological disruptions, the blog was not up and running for a couple of weeks.

It’s been a big week for religion, what with Yom Kippur and the Papal visit. Those who had put their faith in contemporary polling data, which pointed to legions of the unaffiliated and the disinclined, were in for a surprise. Religious expression, it seemed, has not withered away under the impress of rapid and wholesale modernization, but remains rather resilient, even buoyant.

World’s Parliament of Religions Chicago Meeting, 1893/Wikipedia (Click to enlarge)

One of the most fascinating indices of religion’s contemporary hold on the body politic is the way in which religious practices once associated exclusively with the Orthodox Jewish community are now widely embraced by those outside of its immediate precincts. I have in mind here the Yom Kippur ritual of prostration, which accompanies the recitation of the Aleinu prayer, or what some call the “Great Aleinu.” An exercise, quite literally, in submission and humility, it calls on its participants to lower themselves to the ground.

Sounds weird, I suppose, yet another one of those curious, age-old practices in which Judaism abounds. But there’s something about the physicality and historicity of the act that renders it immensely powerful. Little wonder, then, that when encouraged by the clergy to “go prostrate yourselves,” large numbers of congregants obliged. What a sight!

Equally compelling from a visual perspective was the parade of faiths on display during the Pope’s memorial service at the World Trade Center. Clad in distinctive religious garb, representatives of the different faith communities that make up New York took center stage in a show of ecumenism and good will.

The last time so many different religions shared the stage was way back in 1893, at the opening ceremony of the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. As the Liberty Bell struck ten times, each strike representing one of the world’s great religions, a column of religious leaders filed into the hall.

Taking careful note of their “strange robes, turbans and tunics, crosses and crescents, flowing hair and tonsured heads,” one enraptured eyewitness went on to point out how “Jews, Mohammedans and all divisions of Christians seemed to be a rainbow of promise.” Some participants went further still, heralding the gathering as the “beginning of a new epoch of brotherhood and peace.”

Nothing came of those predictions. Let’s hope that this time around, something just might.

Take note

joselitJuly 12, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

While some of my colleagues are currently improving their backhand or in pursuit of the perfect bottle of rosé, I’m whiling away my summer hours ransacking my files in search of the elusive footnote. You see, I’ve come to that point in the writing process where I need to account for myself. It’s footnote time!

Cartoon by Dave Carpenter, carptoons.com

Citing chapter and verse -- Jenna Weissman Joselit, A Perfect Fit (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001), p. 7 -- is easier said than done. You would think that after so many years of writing and publishing, I’d have gotten the hang of it by now, or, at the very least, that I would have learned my lesson and immediately filed away a footnote once I insinuated someone else’s bon mot among my own.

If only. Sacrificing accountability to the all-important “flow,” I kept writing away rather than stopping to take note. Besides, I told myself, everything, from the index cards tidily arrayed in neat, little boxes to the Xeroxes housed in different color folders, was clearly marked and well within reach. When the moment was right, all I had to do was to pluck the appropriate source from its container and the deed was done. No muss, no fuss.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. There’s nothing but muss and fuss as I upend the contents of one folder after another in search of a newspaper article from 1895 that I’m sure -- absolutely, positively, unhesitatingly sure -- that I Xeroxed or printed out. ‘Turns out I was mistaken. Instead of creating a hard copy, I had actually taken notes on said article, whose contents were now to be found, and fading fast, on an index card, one of several hundred in the black box that looks awfully like the 12 similar black boxes housing the other handwritten notes I had assembled over the many years on which I’ve worked on this project.

Repeat this procedure 20, 30, even 40 times a day and it’s no wonder that at its close, my digs look as if they’ve been hit hard by a tornado and I’m in desperate need of a drink (perhaps a glass of that rosé).

But I soldier on and keep at it, day in and day out, bearing in mind, as Anthony Grafton reminds us in his salute to the footnote, that these little, hard-won nuggets of information are what binds one historian to another and the past to the present.