Tags: Philadelphia,radio,wkdu
Categories: Aharonium, Ambient Music and Ears
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Tune your legacy radio sets and etherwave monitors to 91.7 on the FM spectrum Monday mornings 7am-10am EST for the next few months and you will once again hear dj Magical Adventures of Duffy Moon (alter ego of dj spaceling) presenting your breakfast and commuting audioscape in typical wonderful entheogenic fashion.

(Also available via streamin’ Internet audio, the programme “Amplified Harmonic Resonance,” is brought to you by Heavenly Music Corporation brand cigarettes and Ubik brand reality cleansers.)

On hiatus for the last six years, dj spaceling has been on academic retreat, whiling away his years in hermitages and think tanks, and more recently, battling leviathans off the coast of Louisiana. His heart as broken as a thrift store fiddle and mind as sharp as a kite racer’s glass string, you can expect morning musiks that aim to temper and wrastle the caffeinated raging  mania that fuels our modern Empire.

In other words, yours truly shall be on the radio and live on the Internet Monday mornings for the next semester on Philadelphia radio via WKDU, Drexel University’s student run radio station, 91.7FM 7am-10am. (Noon-3PM London, 2pm-5pm Haifa)

Tags: Philadelphia,radio,wkdu
Categories: Aharonium, Ambient Music, Ears and ‽
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Although the day, month, and season Brian Eno met Laraaji Nadabrahmananda in Philadelphia’s New York’s Washington Square Park in 1979 is unknown, their meeting led directly to an important album, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance (1980). In commemoration of this creative encounter, the Philadelphia Ambient Consortium is at the beginning stages of organizing an outdoor music festival, tentatively titled Day of Radiance, to take place in Philly’s own Washington Square Park on the day Laraaji and Eno met. Over the coming months, Philadelphia ambienteers and space music enthusiasts will be working to realize this event which we hope will become an annual celebration of Philadelphia’s long thriving experimental music scene.

Washington Square Park is perhaps Philadelphia’s loneliest park, so any celebration there is bound to cheer the space up. And in return, the space will bring us cheer and inspiration for further creative encounters. Please contact me if you would like to help plan and participate in this project.

(Image of Washington Square Park, Philadelphia, modified from Flickr user chingers7’s original image. Used with permission via creative commons share-attribution non-commercial license.)

Tags: Ears,parks,Philadelphia
Categories: Ambient Music, Art History and Urban Planning
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It is the eighth and final day of Chanukah, Chag Urim, festival of lights. It is the day after the world comes to grips with the latest horrible spasm in the terrible saga playing out between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinians in Gaza. Gershom Gorenberg of South Jerusalem, always conscious of terrible ironies, shares this:

Last week I received a press release from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel about a sharp increase in child burn victims in the Gaza Strip. This was before the Israeli air campaign began. After what’s happened in the last couple of days, PHR’s email now seems like a message from another historical era, a time so calm that it was a major concern that

“In December alone, 16 Palestinians were hospitalized who were burned while trying to heat their homes. Most of the cases reported to the NGO were of children playing with fire, following attempts to light bonfires for heating and cooking and lighting candles in order to illuminate homes.”

The fires, that is, were the result of the siege of Gaza, which included fuel shortages and power outages. The head of the burn unit at Shifa Hospital in Gaza reported that his unit was collapsing under the strain. I can only guess that Dr. Nafed Abu Shaaban is having a much harder time this week. [read the full post]

This news hits home for me. This weekend I learned that my youngest nephew, a resident of the occupied West Bank, received first and second degree burns after his clothes caught on fire, the result of his grasping for a Chanukiah (chanukah menorah) candle. Everyone is in shock, exhausted, and thanking God that at least he wasn’t wearing a polyester shirt, oy, he was wearing polyester Tzizit. Thank G!d  he wasn’t hurt even worse than he was.

For all the negative attention given over to the Cult of Molokh in the Torah, one would think that any fire ritual in Judaism be undertaken with many precautions to preclude even the possibility of fire related injury, especially of children. According to M’lachim Bet (2 Kings 23:10) and Sefer Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah 32:35) the fire ritual of Molokh seems to involve the passage of the first born male child through fire. The Jewish tradition finds it obscene to create situations in which children, any children, are subjected to such danger.

Hatzalah, an international volunteer emergency response organization serving mostly Orthodox Jewish communities provided a safety guide this year  to help prevent Chanukah related accidents. It reads

• Remove curtains or any other flammable objects from the area around the menorah.
• Keep the menorahs away from the reach of small children and make sure the menorah is on something solid and leveled.
• Children bring home beautiful projects on Chanukah. If they are flammable, either paste them on the wall or place them away from menorahs.
• When making latkes, keep ALL children away from the hot oil.
• Turn frying pan handles away from the edge of the stove and try to use the back burners.
• House fires tend to occur more often during the winter months. Prepare an escape plan and frequently rehearse it with your family.

It adds this helpful information in small print:

First Aid for Burns – this is for immediate care only.

• Skin continues to burn for a while after the heat source has been removed. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to begin cooling the burn as soon as possible. A first-degree burn that is left untreated can quickly become a second or third degree burn.
• Cool a burn by running cold (not freezing) water on the affected area, or by covering the area with a wet towel. When using the towel method, it is important to occasionally re-immerse the towel in cold water as the burn warms the cloth.
• Burns, regardless of the cause, have to be cooled for a minimum of twenty minutes. The hotter the skin, the longer the cooling process.
• It is advisable that any burn to an infant, child or the elderly that affects the face, chest, abdomen, or back should be considered an emergency.

This information needs to be more widely disseminated. And if we consider the safety of our children to be a priority and a religious obligation, then we should also find obscene what has been happening to the children of Gaza under Hamas and the past year’s siege.

It’s amazing to me that its easier to find information on fire related injuries to Gazan children than statistics on how often Jewish children are injured due to Chanukah related accidents. I can’t find anything online. I’ll post them on my blog as soon as I can find some.

In the meantime, I pray that we all become mindful of each other’s health and safety, and act accordingly to increase light in all of our communities, to preserve each other against callous disregard and aggression, and find shelter under a common awning of peace. This is my humble and sad wish on the last day of Chanukah.

We come to chase the dark away
In our hands are light and fire
Each individual light is small
But together the light is mighty.
Flee, darkness and night
Flee, before the light.

Tags: chanukah,Fire,Hate,hypocrisy,light,Safety
Categories: Aharonium and Yiddishkeit
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Ari, at his serendipitynow blog, points out this article at Haaretz on the naked bigotry the Muslims of Yaffo (Jaffa) recently endured at the hands of right wing Israeli extremists (of the national religious settler variety). Yaffo is a mixed ethnic Jewish and Arab town in Israel just south of Tel Aviv, a place that lives and breathes to the extent that tolerance and peace persists. On this holy Chanuka, some wicked zealots would destroy this peace, and in so doing they curse both the holiday and the religious identity that they ironically believe validates their ethnic and political aspirations.

Extremists spray-painted “Mohammed is a pig” and “Death to Arabs” early Sunday on the walls and doors of the Sea Mosque in Jaffa, sparking the fury of the Islamic Movement in the mixed Arab-Jewish city.The hate slogans also included “Kahane was right,” a reference to the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the outlawed anti-Arab Kach movement, and “No peace without the House of Peace,” alluding to the Hebron structure from which dozens of far-right activists were evicted earlier this month. Two Stars of David were painted on the entrance to the mosque. Worshippers discovered the graffiti when they arrived for early morning prayers on Sunday. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajweh, head of the Islamic Movement in Jaffa, condemned the acts. He blamed settlers for the graffiti, saying that similar offenses had been committed in the West Bank.

The activities of these criminals must be denounced, and they must be apprehended and punished. The irony of this sort of wickedness taking place on the holiday of Chanukah just boils my blood, but unfortunately, I’m not surprised since I know these people too well. They have been tolerated for way too long and peace, as usual, is the victim. As Ari exclaims, “It’s Chanukah. Banu choshech legaresh. We have come to chase off this darkness.” From the Chanukah song, Banu Choshech Legaresh (sung by the US Navy Band with the Hebrew Academy Choir of Greater Washington (1980)).

Every letter and word on which I obsess on the myths and beliefs of Jews in ancient Israel and Late Antiquity is constantly under threat by the cursed actions of these zealots who would willfully cast all of the humane Jewish values into a pit so long as their hegemony and romantic pride were appeased. Intolerance is a basic existential threat to our peoplehood and our culture. It makes a lie out of everything we hold to be relevant: being a positive example for other people and bringing healing tikkun to this suffering world. We have thrived all of these thousands of years because we have intelligently and with kindness lived as mensches side by side with our neighbors. To throw this all away, in twisted threats… it is just so deplorable. I will light the candle of the fourth night of Chanukah tomorrow with the intention that this light renew and enlighten our yearning for peace and goodwill. G!d help us and forgive us.

Tags: chanukah,Fascism,Hate
Categories: Yiddishkeit
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