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I don’t envy future historians who will set out to chronicle modern Jewish life, ca. 2017. Swirling with contradictions, with a “this” for every “that,” it’s enough to make Tevye, Sholom Aleichem’s famously ambivalent character who delighted in routinely invoking “on the one hand” and “on the other,” run for cover.

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim postcard
Moritz Daniel Oppenheim postcard

Consider, for instance, contemporary attitudes towards the celebration of Shabbat, the traditional Jewish Sabbath. An age-old practice that has received a new lease on life of late, keeping Shabbat is increasingly associated with tuning out, with putting one’s smartphones, laptops and iPads to rest. As Reboot’s “Sabbath Manifesto” would have it, we digital devotees would do well to pledge to “unplug from technology regularly.”

Whether encouraged by Reboot or by the rabbinate, the Sabbath is hailed these days as an opportunity rather than a burden. Its latter-day promotion is reminiscent in many ways of the postwar campaign launched by the women of the Conservative movement to honor the Sabbath by pledging publicly not to do laundry, market, head for the golf course or the local museum and movie house on that day.

So far, so good.

On the other hand, there’s this: leading Jewish cultural institutions such as the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia now open their doors on a Saturday — and to paying customers. The decision to “operate normally,” explained a former official of the Philadelphia facility, reflects the “tension between freedom and tradition [that is] at the core of the American Jewish experience.” (The Jewish Museum in New York is also open on a Saturday, but admission is free.)

And this: Just the other day, Israel’s High Court ruled that over one hundred businesses — food stores, mainly — in Tel Aviv, would be allowed to offer their wares on Shabbat, overturning a longstanding municipal interdiction against commercial activity on the traditional day of rest.

Good news for some, especially those who’ve chafed under the heavy hand of halakha (Jewish law), this latest turn of events profoundly upsets others, raising the possibility that the Sabbath, once considered a “national asset,” will come to have a limited shelf life.

The jury is still out — and will undoubtedly be out for some time. We’ll have to await the verdict of history.

Over the next few weeks, those seeking respite from the clamor of talking heads should make a beeline for the Corcoran College of Art + Design where the work of recent graduates of Israel’s storied Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design is on display.

Gil Nahmany. Femme Fractal
Gil Nahmany. Femme Fractal (2011). Source: Corcoran
The exhibition will take your breath away, especially if your idea of Israeli art and craft is that of olive wood plaques and patinated greenware. Holding its own -- and then some -- with the best of what Milan has to offer, the objects on view are the very last word in innovative and sophisticated design.

For nearly a year now, Bezalel has been making the rounds of the United States, showcasing its handiwork and captivating audiences at venues as varied as Sotheby’s in Chicago, the Maltz Museum in Cleveland, and MICA in Baltimore.

This isn’t the first time, though, that Bezalel hit the road. Way back when, in 1914 and again in 1926, the school’s visionary founder, Boris Schatz, visited the United States, hoping to familiarize American Jews with his institution. “I can go about the country making speeches on behalf of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, but there’s nothing quite as effective as an exhibition. It speaks for itself,” Schatz declared.

Contemporary observers agreed, crowding New York’s Madison Square Garden and then, years later, its Grand Central Palace, where displays of hammered copper vases, filigreed silver bracelets, delicately wrought ceramics, and harmoniously colored rugs filled the space and delighted the eye.

But then, the value of these creations resided as much in their ideology as in their aesthetic appeal. Mr. Schatz’s efforts, it was said at the time, “remove from the Jews the reproach that they care not for beauty, that they can only deal in beautiful objects but cannot create them.” Or, as Schatz himself so poignantly put it, Bezalel would make it possible, at long last, for the Jews to “acquire for our art citizenship rights in the arts of all nations.”

The current exhibition proves him right.

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For those of us with a keen and abiding interest in food, there’s no shortage of events to sate our appetites, from cooking classes and walking tours to panel discussions. They abound -- and often in the most unusual of venues. Just the other night, for instance, the Center for Jewish History in New York expanded its typical bill of fare with a salute to brisket, “one of New York’s most beloved dishes.”

Sliced Brisket
Flickr/Another Pint Please...
Organized by the self-styled “culinary curator” Naama Shefi, the program, “Let’s Brisket!” brought together such redoubtable personalities of the food world as Julia Moskin of The New York Times, Mitchell Davis of the James Beard Foundation, and Noah Bermanoff of the critically acclaimed Brooklyn restaurant, Mile End, to extol the virtues of this cut of meat beloved by many Jewish families.

Mine was among them. My mother, trained by her mother, a most excellent cook, made a mean brisket, which she served with great fanfare on the Jewish holidays and on the occasional Shabbat.

But then my parents, together with my siblings, moved to Israel in the 1970s, cutting short our family’s brisket glory days. Much as my mother tried -- and boy, did she try -- a kosher brisket of the kind we enjoyed at 45 Margaret Avenue was not easily to be had. My father, who typically displayed little interest in the kitchen, joined together with her in making the pursuit of brisket a collective project.

With high hopes, the two of them would set off of an afternoon in search of a kosher butcher who, rumor had it, stocked an American-style brisket. Many hours and shekels later, lugging several kilos of the stuff, they would return to 7 Rehov Mendele, where they eagerly attempted to recreate the smells, if not the size, of their American kitchen.

Despite the tenderest of ministrations, the costly hunk of meat shriveled in the pot, from which it emerged a tough, stringy, unappetizing brown mess. My parents’ spirits shriveled, too. Time and time again, they’d come away from the table disappointed, disheartened, and even a bit sorrowful.

My parents’ reaction to these sorry excuses for a brisket struck me as, well, a trifle overdone. But now, for reasons that only became clear in the wake of “Let’s Brisket!,” I see things differently. I’ve come to understand that it was never just about the meat. Rather, the brisket-that-wasn’t bore a larger significance, signaling the incompleteness of their adjustment to Israeli life.

Over the past half century or so, Israel has been associated in the public mind with lots of things, but movie-making has not been among them – at least not until recently. As the Forward observed only last week, that’s about to change. Israel now harbors high hopes of becoming a major production center.

Israel's Ma'ale School of Television, Film and the Arts.
Israel's Ma'ale School of Television, Film and the Arts. Flickr/zeevveez

It’s not the first time. As The New York Times reported way back in May 1960, when Otto Preminger and a crew of 150 actors and technicians descended en masse on Israel to film Exodus, “the experience has immensely stimulated the exalted hopes and plans of many government people and enterprising citizens for the further production of film production here.”

Likened to a “national happening,” the making of the film took the country by storm. Thousands of ordinary citizens eagerly sought out Paul Newman and his co-star Eva Marie Saint for their autographs, took party in a national lottery to serve as extras and consulted their newspapers on a daily basis for information about what scene was being filmed where. Exodus, concluded the Times, was “probably the most publicized entertainment project that has come to this country since its founding.”

In the spotlight – and for reasons having to do with culture rather than geopolitics – Israel warmed to the idea of becoming an alternative to Hollywood. After all, it had much in common with the West Coast, from the availability of dramatic and varied scenery to the prospect of generous financial incentives. These factors, coupled with a reputation for being “the most avid moviegoing nation in the world,” made Israel a natural.

While it’s taken 40 biblical years – and then some – for this possibility to bear fruit, how heartening to see that Israel, someday soon, may be known for its movie magic.

A few weekends ago, while a scholar-in-residence at Temple B’nai Shalom in Northern Virginia, I was privy to a fascinating discussion about the presence -- or absence -- of flags in the sanctuary.

Temple Chai Bimah
Bimah at Temple Chai, a Reform congregation in North Phoenix, Arizona. Flickr/Al_HikesAZ
For years, many American synagogues like this one had featured two flags on the podium or bimah: the Stars & Stripes and the blue & white or “Jewish flag,” which was first associated with the Zionist movement and then with the State of Israel.

Mute but powerful symbols of what historian Jonathan Sarna called the “cult of synthesis” that characterized American Jewish life well into the 1970s, (“The Cult of Synthesis in American Jewish Culture,” Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol. 5, No. 1/2 Autumn 1998-Winter 1999, pp. 52-79) they once stood like sentinels, guarding the dual dimensions of American Jewry’s patrimony.

But somewhere along the line, the flags vanished altogether, as they had at Temple B’nai Shalom. What happened to them?, a couple of congregants, their memories jolted by our exchange about the visual identity of American Jewry, now wanted to know. Where did they go? And why?

“We still have them,” responded the congregation’s founder and longtime rabbi, Amy Perlin. “They’re in storage.” She gently explained that changing notions about the separation of church and state on the one hand, coupled with heightened concerns about the policies of the State of Israel, rendered them less and less attractive to those in the pews.

In other instances, near as I can tell, it wasn’t ideology so much as interior décor that prompted the removal of the two flags. As more and more congregations redesigned their sanctuaries and reconstituted the bimah to accommodate the needs of their handicapped members as well as a different, more intimate vision of community, the flags went the way of all things.

I’m not sure what any of this says about contemporary American Jewry, but it’s certainly worth contemplating as the Fourth of July swings into view.

Ever since the late 19th century, much of what we know, or think we know, about the Middle East is derived from photography, whose images run the gamut from ancient ruins to latter-day landscapes scarred by conflict, from scenes of renewal and affirmation to those of despair and anguish.

For years, the American Colony Photo Department in Jerusalem was the source of many of those images. The stereopticon slides, postcards and souvenir albums that bore its imprint, and which can now be found at the Library of Congress, focused on the seeming timelessness of the region’s landscapes and the people who inhabited it, on continuity rather than change.

The work of Sharon Ya’ari, one of Israel’s leading contemporary photographers, is something else again. Like his predecessors, he, too, trains his sights on the landscape, but where they saw only stasis, Mr. Ya’ari sees movement. Reverence was the stock-in-trade of the American Colony photographs. Sharon Ya’ari’s body of work, in striking contrast, places a premium on irony.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress's collection of American Colony Photo Department.

Currently in residence at GW, where he has the distinction of being its very first Schusterman Foundation Visiting Artist from Israel, Mr. Ya’ari will be giving a talk next week – on October 18th, at noon, at the Library of Congress – in which he will be interpreting a number of American Colony photographs against the grain of his own work.

The juxtaposition of these two compelling, but markedly different, aesthetic and cultural perspectives should make for an illuminating experience and one that I hope many of my readers in the DC area will be able to attend.

As we’re sure to discover, when it comes to the Middle East, there’s always more than meets the eye.

Now that grades have been submitted, the seniors have graduated and cap and gown have been returned to the back of the closet, it’s time to take stock of what the Program in Judaic Studies has accomplished over the course of the past academic year.

Whether exploring the millennial history of Jerusalem, taking the measure of Israeli culture, learning about the making of Jewish books, reckoning with the American Jewish experience and the challenges of memory or meeting weekly with contemporary Jewish writers, our classes have deepened our students’ critical encounter with the richness and complexity of Jewish arts and letters, geopolitics and philosophy.

report card
Flickr/AJ Cann
The faculty, too, has been energized by a wide array of informal, work-in-process presentations given each month by its colleagues on topics that encompassed art, politics and the self, the ancient Near East, medieval England, late 19th century Germany and contemporary Latin America.

Public programs, meanwhile, have enlarged our audience as well as our opportunities for partnerships with neighboring institutions. From the Cedar Film Retrospective, which was held on campus as well as at the D.C.-JCC, to “Tough Guys,” a cooperative venture with American University and the Foundation for Jewish Culture; from the annual Fleischman Lecture at The Phillips Collection to a behind-the-scenes tour of the new National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, the Program in Judaic Studies has made a point of extending its reach into the community at large.

As we close the books on this academic year, we look forward to expanding our repertoire of courses and public events for the fall term. For starters, GW will welcome its very first Schusterman Visiting Artist from Israel -- Sharon Ya’ari is his name -- who will offer a very special honors course, “Eye on Israel: Photography of the Middle East,” as well as deliver a public talk hosted by the Department of Fine Arts and Art History.
...continue reading "Report card"

When people talk of travel as broadening, they usually have Paris in mind, not Toledo, Ohio. But as I discovered recently, travelling to the heartland of America can be just as eye-opening.

Aerial View of Toledo
Aerial View of Toledo. Source: Flickr.
I had come to the University of Toledo to deliver an illustrated lecture about the Ten Commandments and to participate in a Jewish-Christian-Muslim conversation about religion in contemporary America. By the end of my 24-hour stay, I had learned a lot.

For starters, I was exposed to the debilitating, corrosive effects of de-industrialization on the urban landscape. I then discovered that despite a first-rate women’s basketball team, the lecterns in the university’s student union are not equipped with digital technology. I subsequently drove all over town in search of a laptop as well as a clicker and, in the process, visited Corpus Christi Church where an interfaith dinner was being held.

While in church, I met a Jewish student clad in a yarmulke as well as a tallit, a ritual garment customarily worn only in the morning, much less in a Catholic house of worship. I found a laptop, too, courtesy of a professor of Islamic studies.

If this didn’t set my head spinning, the Q & A session that followed my formal remarks certainly did.
...continue reading "Holy Toledo!"

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Word from on high is that the Walt Disney Company is planning to open a theme park in Israel. Talk about bringing coals to Newcastle!

For years, religiously-minded Americans had created facsimiles of the Holy Land on American soil. As early as 1881, a "miniature representation in relief and color" of Jerusalem graced Ocean Grove, N.J., a Methodist summer colony.

The organizers of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis did the residents of Ocean Grove one better. "Jerusalem comes to you," they proclaimed, replicating the Jaffa Gate, the Dome of the Rock, the Tower of David and the so-called Wailing Wall on the grounds of the fair and importing 1,000 honest-to-goodness inhabitants of Palestine to populate the site.

Holy Land Experience
Holy Land Experience.

Meanwhile, in Orlando, Fla., just a few miles away from Sea World and Walt Disney World, contemporary evangelical Protestants throng the Holy Land Experience, which boasts of transporting visitors "2,000 years back in time to the land of the Bible."

Much like an old-fashioned amusement park but better, the Holy Land Experience contains the "Temple Plaza," the Shofar Auditorium, a Scriptorium, the "world's largest indoor model of Jerusalem," and a laser show in which the Ten Commandments are etched in fire atop Mount Sinai.

The idea behind the Holy Land Experience, explains Joan R. Branham (PDF), is to create a "complex theological landscape" that blends Judaism with Christianity.

...continue reading "Promised lands"

Three cheers for Tel Aviv! Recently, the Lonely Planet travel guide singled out the Mediterranean entrepot as one of its top 10 cities for 2011. "Tel Aviv is the total flipside of Jerusalem, a modern Sin City on the sea," it noted, adding that "hedonism is the one religion that unites its inhabitants."

Sun City or Sin City? Credit: Flickr; Ville Miettinen

For those more accustomed to associating Israel with the Holy Land than with hedonism, Lonely Planet's endorsement may set tongues wagging and eyes rolling. And yet, it's hardly the first guidebook to steer prospective tourists towards the beach or the café and the carefree pursuit of pleasure and away from holy sites and the cultivation of responsibility.

As early as the 1930s, texts such as Samuel Sharnopolsky's Guide to Palestine: Land of Health Resorts made much of its natural delights. For one thing, it likened the country to the "California of the Orient," where the ozone-rich air was a blessing and every day a sunny one. For another, it sang the praises of the "firm and manly" character of its inhabitants, highlighting their "elasticity and sinuousity." The place had something for everyone, enthused the guidebook's author. "To the pilgrim, to the tourist, to the archeologist, to the seeker of sunshine and health, Palestine stands open-armed, beckoning all to come."

In the years that followed, El Al picked up where Sharnopolsky left off. In the wake of the runaway success of Leon Uris' 1958 novel, Exodus, and the ensuing popularity of the Hollywood film that was based on it, Israel's national airline promoted a two week trip that was heavy on popular culture and light on ancient history. Taking out full-page advertisements in the New York Times, it invited would-be travellers to experience their very own "sixteen-day Exodus," where they would "go on location to the same places where Otto Preminger took his film crew."

So much for walking in the footsteps of the matriarchs and patriarchs.

Still, I suspect that Herzl would be heartened rather than dismayed by these interpolations. After all, wasn't it he who said, "When we journey out of Egypt once again we shall not leave the fleshpots behind?"