So for the last year, I’ve been working on a series of tests to determine how well some popular and some less well-known web browsers perform in supporting the technology for displaying Hebrew text. In particular, I’m interested to see which browsers are failing to use a web standard called CSS @font-face to properly display Unicode Hebrew fonts that support the full range of Hebrew diacritics and which contain excellent font logic for diacritical positioning. I’m also keen on seeing which browsers might even be failing at recognizing bidirectional (BIDI) and right-to-left (RTL) text, given that Hebrew is read RTL and it’s not uncommon to find עִבְרִית and other left-to-right (LTR) languages written together with one another.

With these tests I also hoped to find some simple way by which an individual browsing the web could troubleshoot whether the problem is in their browser, their browser’s settings, or in a web page, when they find a web page that is poorly displaying Hebrew. I learned a great deal in the process and so I also made a page for web designer/coders to learn the correct way to craft a web page that will correctly display Hebrew.

Cross-posted to the Open Siddur Project.

Even before New Year’s a year past, this blog had begun a mostly uninterrupted slumber beginning in 2009, what with most of my activity focused on directing the Open Siddur Project (2009-present), studying at Yeshivat Hadar (2009-2010), teaching with the Teva Learning Alliance (2010-2011), studying Hebrew and pedagogy in the Experiential Education program in the Davidson School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (2011-present), and currently, studying the complexity of modern Israel along with more Hebrew in the Kesher Ḥadash program of the Davidson School.

Most of these activities were documented publicly semi-privately via my twitter, Facebook,‎ and Google+ accounts, with all the caveats that proprietary social networks provide for archiving and redistributing creativity. Over the next few months, I hope to look back over the last few years and share publicly whatever output I’ve produced privately that might be worthwhile to share.

Through this effort I hope to document and construct a somewhat coherent narrative of my work since I left post-hurricane Louisiana after working there as an urban/environmental/GIS planner 2006-2008. Privately, I tell variations of this story to friends without the benefit of illustrations, but with the benefit of long walks and digressions. I think it’s time I explain myself, in the manner of Italo Calvino’s Marco Polo in Invisible Cities — with pantomime, gesticulation, unexplicated esotericism, and a translation that relies entirely on your patience and interest. Before my Kublai Khan, I have to present endless yarns spun from ever accumulating navel lint, an assemblage of obtuse details the connection of one to the other might otherwise seem ponderous, but I hope not pretentious. So bare with me, please.

I still hope to work and contribute as an urban/environmental planner, public historian and educator. I still harbor sage-like aspirations. I’m still hopelessly entangled in a great vein of string spun by others to document their own progress through the vast labyrinth of psychedelic and gnostic insight. Freedom, compassion, creativity, and awareness remain the touchstones of my intention, the grounding for my empathy and the foundation of my commitment in my work. Twelve years ago I learned some wonderful things while bicycling along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and the consequence of this gnosis is that I now can’t help but see prisons and cages everywhere. Facilitating creative activities, constructing open spaces, helping to recover lost wisdom — these express my intentions. And I’m still searching for that loose alliance of friends who share these objectives in bringing more people into the next age.

Varady's Fabulous Flying Keyboard (Level 1)

Behold my Flying Keyboard!

Ever want a keyboard configuration you could switch to for odd characters‽ You know, so you could add an Ḥ in Ḥanukah without copying and pasting from this page (or your favorite “Character Viewer” program).

Well I made such a keyboard configuration that you can download and install on your very own computer. (Only works for Windows OS, alas.) Download, unzip and install.

The keyboard layout includes glyphs mapped onto the universal and international standard Unicode character encoding schema. You’ll have to use the layout along with a font (e.g. DejaVu Sans) that supports all of these glyphs. Such fonts are installed with the popular, cross-platform, free/libre and open source LibreOffice application.

Varady's Fabulous Flying Keyboard (Level 2)

I was tired of using the Windows Character Viewer to access a number of useful character glyphs including the Ḥ. So I made my own keyboard layout using the proprietary but free-without-fee program called “Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator v1.4.” (Windows only, although it’s also possible to do something similar for Macs and Linux.) If you want to hack the keyboard layout I made, I’ve included the layout in a directory named “source” in the zip which also includes the images above.

Mac keyboard layouts are directly modifiable using a 3rd party free-without-fee tool called Ukelele. Re: Linux, like much of the rest of the configuration on *nix type systems, keyboard layouts for the X Window System are defined in easily editable text files. See this page for more info.)

UPDATE: For Windows users, Steg adds this useful information,

Go to your System Setttings and find the Language/Keyboard settings and add the input method “U.S. Extended”. Then start using it. To type a Ḥ type option-x and then H.

UPDATE: I managed to convince the army of volunteer editors to approve an article I wrote on the GPL+FE (General Public License with font exception clause). This after my initial disastrous foray into wikipedia article posting. For those counting, this is my third approved article on Wikipedia.

<hr />

Lately, for the Open Siddur Project, I’ve been putting together a font package for more easily distributing extant free/libre licensed Unicode Hebrew fonts. These fonts tend to be licensed with SIL’s Open Font License (e.g., EzraSIL and Cardo), or the GNU General Public License (GPL, e.g., Maxim Iorsh’s Culmus Project fonts). Because of the differences between fonts and other software code in their usage, there arose some conflicts which necessitated an exception to the GPL specifically for fonts. Unfortunately, the GPL font exception statement is somewhat buried in the Free Software Foundations GPL FAQ. Because important information on the GPL+FE is nowhere on the Internet included in one single post, I’ve reformatted it and shared it below.

From the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License FAQ, “How does the GPL apply to fonts?“:

Font licensing is a complex issue which needs serious consideration. The following license exception is experimental but approved for general use. We welcome suggestions on this subject—please see this this explanatory essay and write to licensing@gnu.org.

To use this exception, add this text to the license notice of each file in the package (to the extent possible), at the end of the text that says the file is distributed under the GNU GPL:

As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.

The drafter of the GPL+FE statement above, explained the need for the GPL+FE in the following post, “Font Licensing” (FSF 2005).

Font Licensing

by novalis Contributions — last modified May 17, 2010 16:43

By David “Novalis” Turner

There has been some recent confusion about font licensing. Since I wrote the font exception, let me tell you a bit about where we are, and how we got there, and what this all means to you.

First, in the US, the copyright status of fonts is somewhat confused. A font face — that is, the look of a font, is not copyrightable (see Eltra Corp. v. Ringer, 579 F.2d 294 (4th Cir. 1978)). But font “programs” (truetype fonts, for example) are. Another ruling has extended the definition of “programs” to include certain outline data. Why this outline data is not equivalent to a font face, nobody knows. Helpfully, the copyright office has also issued contradictory statements on this. I don’t know how font copyright works in other countries.

What this means is that no font is going to affect the distributability of a printed document in the US. Further, merely referencing the font (as in the CSS font-face: caslon;) does not create a derivative work of that font. So why did we worry about font licensing at all?

The situation we were considering was one where a font was embedded in a document (rather than merely referenced). Embedding allows a document to be viewed as the author intended it even on machines that don’t have that font installed. So, the document (a copyrighted work) would be derived from the font program (another work). The text of the document, of course, would be unrestricted when distributed without the font.

This isn’t an artifact of the GPL; it’s just the way fonts work. Proprietary fonts often explicitly forbid embedding. So, if you want to send your document off to a printing service, the printing service needs to buy another copy of the font.

I was unhappy with even this amount of influence for fonts, because (a) it’s rarely what font authors intend and (b) it’s possible that some applications do embedding behind the user’s back. The situation seemed to me to be similar to the case of the runtime libraries which GCC automatically includes in its output (and which are licensed to permit inclusion in proprietary software). So, I wrote the font exception you see on our web site.

The reason the exception is so limited is that we’re worried about someone extracting a font from a document, and redistributing it. Extraction is, in my view, the major issue that a font license must confront. Because I haven’t been able to come up with a license which correctly handles embedding and extraction in all cases, I’ve restricted this exception to unaltered fonts. This means that someone can’t use embedding as a way to distribute a modified version of a font under restrictive terms. If you have suggestions for how to write a license which better handles extraction, please let us know. We haven’t had time to give this as much thought as we’ve given some of the other issues involved in free licensing. We’re especially interested in hearing from font creators at licensing@gnu.org.

Literally t’shuva means turning, as in re-turning to a forest path after one accidentally loses sight of it, covered in leaves.

T’shuva is something of a cosmically significant concept within Jewish thought. Cosmically, because the concept of t’shuva is used to answer BIG problems. Classically, t’shuva is a response to the problem of how the world remains despite the presence of evil. Said differently, t’shuva helps explain how we can keep our sanity despite the presence of so much suffering caused by intentional wickedness and callous disregard.

For example, imagine a potter creating a pot at a potter’s wheel. What if the form of the pot began to deviate from the vision of the potter. Well, the potter could just as easily smush the pot and start over again.

Now imagine that the pot is imbued with magical powers. Not only can it hold water, but it can ask for water and pour its own water into other pots — even make new pots! New creatures can grow from the water inside the pot too and also be imbued with some of its power. Now what if the some of these creatures come to abuse their power by withholding water from their fellow creatures, or by sullying it, or by mythologizing that they themselves are the source of and reason for all water being. Well, then the potter can still crush the pot and start over again.

Alternately, there could be some sort of safeguard that can protect this pot and its emergent potlings from being so easily destroyed. The answer is t’shuva — a kind of a safeguard for all relationships, protecting creations from their creators, children from their parents, or lovers from indiscretions. Transgressing beyond healthy boundaries invites danger — t’shuva is a way of returning back to the place of safety by healing relationships. Faith in the fact of t’shuva’s existence as woven into the fabric of creation becomes both a guarantee that relationships can be healed and a sign that our relationships are founded on an understanding of loving-kindness (ḥesed in Hebrew) rather than the simply the manifestation of “rules” (or in Hebrew, din).

We can try to lead our lives with consideration for others, expressing our empathy beyond ourselves, beyond our kin and ken, even beyond this world into imaginary realms, but when we fail — when we hurt — all is not lost. The dream of my ancestors was a fragile world balanced on the head of a pin, its continued existence depending on our intentions and actions to suffuse the world with loving-kindness. Without t’shuva the world descends into unmitigated anger, despair, and doom.

Given the history of the Jewish people, perhaps it’s already apparent why this concept could be so important in Jewish teachings… both in the mystical and non-mystical school of Judaism, which assumes the world is continually sustained by a Creative Consciousness but also greatly in need of a tikkun or repair/healing. In the non-mystical schools, t’shuva might only describe an ethical responsibility one has in their relationships to be conscious of their transgressions and humble in submitting their ego in a process of repentance towards aggrieved or possibly aggrieved parties, to heal them. In the mystical schools, t’shuva helps to explain how the world can continue to exist despite an apparent fracture between the transcendent unknowable aspect of creation, and the manifest revealed aspect. The consequence of this fracture is itself reflected in the difficulty we experience in always respecting the beauty of creation and our fellow creatures in our actions. (The meaning of each of our lives is thus in the potential for us to take part in this cosmic healing, by being living, compassionate, aware, and creative bridges between these two aspects.)

Practically then, T’shuva becomes an everyday awareness practice: to be conscious of when a relationship might be transgressed or a fellow creature injured callously or by negligence. As a community, Jews are enjoined to do an intense group t’shuva on Yom Kippur, and in traditional Jewish practice begin preparing for that day more than a month in advance by apologizing to their friends, neighbors and through soul searching. As a mythic ritual, Yom Kippur plays out the concept of t’shuva helping to preserve the world despite the vast lack of awareness which radiates suffering across the myriad relationships that take place between all of its manifest creatures.

Any number of classic Ḥasidic texts can provide additional insight although I’m partial to Raphael Patai’s Hebrew Goddess for a more historical account of the evolving narrative of broken relationships in Jewish cosmology. For those already familiar with t’shuva, I would specifically recommend Philip K. Dick’s novel, The Galactic Pot Healer.

“We must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.” — “Kang for President” (The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VII)

When late last year my friend Dr. Allan Tulchin asked for my help preparing two maps for a book on the history of the Protestant Church in medieval France, I was so happy to oblige. I love maps and I love historical research. Preparing these maps would exercise my mapping skills using GIS software and provide some professionally oriented extracurricular work during my intense program in Rabbinic midrash at Yeshivat Hadar. Six months later and Allan showed me proofs of his book, That Men Would Praise the Lord: The Triumph of Protestantism in Nîmes, 1530-1570 now available from Oxford University Press. I found the maps I prepared in his concluding chapter.

The two maps indicate the distribution of Protestant churches in Medieval France. Allan provided tables in MS Access indicating the location of churches and population groups, and hand drawings indicating the historical boundaries of French territorial expansion. Geolocating the data from the tables was not difficult thanks to ArcGIS. There were a few challenges in making the maps: 1) being limited to black and white illustration, 2) determining suitable icons, and 3) converting images of French territorial boundaries to centerline shapefiles in ArcGIS.

The main challenge was converting Allan’s scanned images of French territorial boundaries to an ArcGIS layer. That way all the layers could be manipulated and rendered within one application. For example, note the shading of the different territories–it would have been much more convenient to have each territory identified in a shapefile and then coded them according to metadata. Unfortunately, converting the raster image to a drawing proved difficult without AutoCAD (which was prohibitively expensive). Ultimately, the process required preparing the maps in ArcGIS without the boundary layer, then exporting graphics  from ArcGIS into Photoshop, where the territory layer could be shaded. Given these limitations, I think the results look very nice in black and white.

If you are preparing a historical map for your research, I’d love to help and my prices are quite reasonable. Contact me.

This is something of a guest post by proxy. My father, Dr. David Varady, is on his sabbatical and working at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. My mother, meanwhile, is working on visiting in person all the Dutch art she scanned from books during her tenure as the visual arts librarian at the University of Cincinnati’s Design School (DAAP) library.

My father began preparing slideshows of his travels around the Netherlands, with a prominent urban planning perspective. He prepares these by using Microsoft PowerPoint and then exporting the presentation as a PDF. The presentations are too large to share as attachments to emails so he asked if I would kindly host them here at Aharon’s Omphalos. So here they are:

• Poptahof (5mb)
• Middleburg (23.5mb)
• Kinderdijk (6mb)
• Schilderswijk and Transvaal in Den Haag (6mb)
• Shopping and Fun in Delft (1mb)
• Oude Delft (5mb)
• Den Bosch (10mb)
• Amsterdam Docklands (25mb)
• Almere (15mb)
• Bjlmermeer in Amsterdam (30mb)

More will be added as they are received.

According to one ancient Jewish tradition, the custom of not eating meat on Shavuot celebrates the vow God made with Noaḥ and his children on Mt. Ararat. Although the vow was witnessed by Noaḥ on Ararat, because Noaḥ’s descendants continued to eat the flesh of an animal with its blood, a suitable partner to the vow wasn’t discovered until Avraham. The covenant with Avraham wasn’t realized until the acceptance of the Torah by Avraham’s descendants, Bnei Yisroel, at Mt. Sinai.

So what was the vow to Noaḥ? In the context of the story of the Flood, the vow was to never again destroy the world with a great flood. But what sort of world existed such that this sort of intervention could even be imagined? According to Biblical myth, the Deluge washed away a world where such primary needs as eating and loving had degenerated into eating other animals and rape. In this mythic view, nature was not created as carnivorous. Rather, the existence of predatory behavior is an undesired outcome of divine/angelic desire in the world. The root of this transgressive divine desire was a mistaken worship of angels/stars rather than their creator.

The story of the Exodus is a retelling of this myth. The exodus from Egypt to Sinai parallels the passage of Noaḥ’s ark to Ararat; the Flood parallels the drowning of the army of Pharoah in the Sea of Reeds. The oppression of the Mitzriim and their influence on the Israelites in the story of the Exodus parallel the actions of the Giants and the “Men of Renown” in their coruption of the generation of the Flood.

Played out in the Jewish calendar and in ritual re-enactment, the passage of time from Pesaḥ to Shavuot, from escape to revelation, is thus a journey from the depths of bondage to the epiphanies of freedom — not just for a people but for all of creation. But what is the context for this sense of freedom? The minhag of not eating flesh on Shavuot represents an Edenic hope for a world of compassion as envisioned in Isaiah 11:6-9:

/11:6 And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. /11:7 And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. /11:8 And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the basilisk’s den. /11:9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of YHVH, as the waters cover the sea.

Having such a hope manifest in the traditions and identity of an entire people is certainly a useful strategy for preserving this vision. The failure of the Israelites in the sin of the Golden Calf, thus provide a rationale for God offering to Moshe a very Noaḥian bargain: with the vow unfulfilled, why not destroy the world with fire and start over with Moshe as the seed of a new humankind. Moshe, thankfully, rejects this possibility, does a t’shuva for the people and brings about the possibility of a greater cosmic tikkun for the world with Israel’s observance of the Torah providing a particular example of universal righteousness.

The source for this idea of Shavuot being a holiday remembering God’s vow to Noaḥ realized at Sinai comes from the Book of Jubilees, a work composed in the second century BCE, and which records a number of the biblical legends surrounding the events before and after the Deluge which are alluded to in the early chapters of Genesis. The tragic story of the introduction of this predatory nature is recorded in a series of related legends concerning the antediluvian age. Jubilees is the earliest source connecting the holiday of Shavuot to the giving of the Torah at Sinai, a link which is not made explicit anywhere in the TaNaKh. Here are a few of the relevant verses from Jubilees:

Jubilees Chapter 5:1-2
/5:1 And when the children of men began to multiply on the surface of the earth and daughters were born to them that the angels of YHVH saw in a certain year of that jubilee that they were good to look at. And they took wives for themselves from all of those whom they chose. And they bore children for them; and they were the giants. /5:2 And injustice increased upon the earth, and all flesh corrupted its way; man and cattle and beasts and birds and everything which walks on the earth. And they all corrupted their way and their ordinances, and they began to eat one another. And injustice grew upon the earth and every imagination of the thoughts of all mankind was thus continually evil.

Jubilees Chapter 6:1-2, 6-7, 13-22
/6:1 And on the first of the third month, he went out of the ark, and he built an altar on that mountain. /6:2 And he made atonement for the land. And he took the kid of a goat, and he made atonement with its blood for all the sins of the land because everything which was on it had been blotted out except those who were in the ark with Noaḥ-¦.

/6:6 And behold, I have given you all of the beasts and everything which flies and everything which moves upon the earth and in the water, the fish and everything, for food like the green herbs. /6:7 And I have given you everything so that you might eat. But flesh which is (filled) with life, (that is) with blood, you shall not eat-because the life of all flesh is in the blood lest your blood be sought for your lives-¦.

/6:13 And you, command the children of Israel not to eat any blood so that their names and seed might be before YHVH your God always. And there is no limit of days for this law because it is forever. They shall keep it for their generations so that they might make supplication on your behalf with blood before the altar on every day. /6:14 And at the hour of daybreak and evening they will seek atonement on their own behalf continually before YHVH so that they might guard it and not be rooted out. /6:15 And he gave a sign to Noaḥ and his children that there should not again be a flood upon the earth. /6:16 He set his [rain]bow in the clouds for a sign of the covenant which is forever, that the water of the Flood should therefore not be upon the earth to destroy it all of the days of the earth. /6:17 Therefore, it is ordained and written in the heavenly tablets that they should observe the feast of Shevuot in this month, once per year, in order to renew the covenant in all (respects), year by year. /6:18 And all of this feast was celebrated in heaven from the day of creation until the days of Noaḥ, twenty-six jubilees and five weeks of years. And Noaḥ and his children kept it for seven jubilees and one week of years until the day of the death of Noaḥ. And from the day of the death of Noaḥ, his sons corrupted it until the days of Abraham, and they ate blood. /6:19 But Abraham alone kept it. And Isaac and Jacob and his sons kept it until your days, but in your days the children of Israel forgot it until you renewed it for them on this mountain. /6:20 And you, command the children of Israel so that they might keep this feast in all of their generations as a commandment to them. One day per year in this month they shall celebrate the feast, /6:21 for it is the feast of Shevuot [oaths] and it is the feast of the first fruits. This feast is twofold and of two natures. Just as it is written and engraved concerning it, observe it. /6:22 This is because I have written it in the book of the first law, which I wrote for you, so that you might observe it in each of its appointed times, one day per year. And I have told you its sacrificial offering so that the children of Israel might remember them and observe them in their generations in this month one day each year.

(Translation O.S. Wintermute in J. Charlesworth’s Pseudepigrapha)

From Jubilees one can more easily see the the parallel between the two stories: the treatment and degradation of the descendants of Yaakov under the Mitzriim in Exodus and the decadence and corruption of the Children of Enosh under the B’nai Elohim in Genesis. The midrashim describing the moral decay of the Hebrew slaves of Egypt and their desperate need for rehabilitation provide even more linkage between the two stories. Given that Moshe and Noaḥ are also related characters, both drawn from the water and preserved in arks, the connection and import of the biblical aggadah as it might inform the story of the Exodus seems quite significant.

A good number of later sources in extra-canonical works: pseudepigrapaha and midrash provide additional details (Sefer Ḥanoch/1 Enoch, the Clementine Homilies, the Adambuch, the Midrash of Shemḥazai and Azael, Sefer Rabbi Ishmael/3 Enoch, Sefer haYashar), but only the Book of Jubilees connects these events specifically to the holiday of Shavuot. Inspired by Raphael Patai and Robert Grave’s Hebrew Myths, I’ve combined details from all of these sources in the following reconstruction of the legend. (Those familiar with Greek mythology will find some pretty wonderful parallels with the story of Merope.) Sources for this story are included in this sourcesheet, The End of Predatory Nature (pdf). (I prepared the sourcesheet to accompany a 20 minute presentation at Yeshivat Hadar entitled “The End of Predatory Nature and the Rectification of Divine Desire.”) It need not be said but what follows is mytho-history, not history. The two should never ever be confused.

On the sixth day of creation, God gave all the herbs of the world to Adam and the other animals to eat. No creatures until the generation of Enosh ate meat at all. (Male descendants of Enosh are to this day called in Hebrew, Anashim (men), and females, Nashim (women).) Enosh, the grandson of Adam and the son of Shet (Seth), was born outside of the garden of Eden. God’s divine presence (shekhina) was strikingly obvious and manifest in the Garden, and Adam’s children pined for such closeness. Enosh’s generation was the first to begin worshiping angelic forces instead of the blessed Holy One, inventing images of these beings, cultivating precious stones in their cults, and inviting the angels through their passion to descend from their perch in the celestial heavens to Earth.

Meanwhile, the angels, being the bnai elohim and firstborn of creation, never understood why Adam and his descendants inherited the earth. Witnessing God’s grief at the decadent worship of the angelic powers, Shemḥazai, the chief of the angels, testified against humans, and made the following request: “‘Master of the world, give us leave, let us dwell with the creatures, and you will see how we shall sanctify your name.” God gave Shemḥazai and his fellow angel, Aza’el, leave to descend but also noted, “It is evident and clear before Me that if you dwelt on earth the yetzer hara (evil inclination) would rule you, and you would behave even worse than children of Adam.”

At this time, despite his great popularity as a tzaddik (righteous guru), Ḥanoch, Adam’s great-grandson, became increasingly reclusive, eventually only appearing once a year, and thereafter, not at all. Climbing a great mountain, he ultimately ascended to heaven where he was transformed into the angel Metatron. All who tried to follow him were crushed by great blocks of ice. As God’s heavenly recorder, the following events were witnessed by Metatron/Ḥanoch.

As soon as Shemḥazai came to earth he came upon Istahar, and overcome with desire demanded the unwed girl to give herself to him. Cleverly, she consented but only under the condition that he first teach her to pronounce the shem hameforash (tetragrammaton). Upon pronouncing it she was at once transported away from Shemḥazai and his uncontrolled passion, and brought up into the celestial heavens and transformed into one of the stars in the Pleiades.

Seeing what they desired and no longer naive, Shemḥazai and Azael simply took what they wished. The children born from their conquests became powerful and mighty in their own way. Powerful yet lacking empathy for the Children of Adam they transgressed all boundaries. Their appetites were unquenchable. Satisfying their wonts became increasingly difficult, and then impossible, and God rained manna down from heaven to feed them and thus safeguard creation, but to no avail. In outrageous quantities they began consuming animals until desiring more they turned on their human subjects and began devouring them. With such titanic exploitation of resources, and so much food all gobbled up, hunger and desperation and conflict appeared. Neighbor devoured neighbor, and animals each other. The world became a frenzy of uncontrolled predatory nature, and Azael was ready to teach men the formerly unnecessary knowledge of warfare and weaponry, and women, the formerly unnecessary knowledge of using colors to manipulate their beauty. Other angels, inspired by this descended and taught other once useless things: the use of plants in medicine, and the reading of omens.

The stench of all this blood and turmoil of suffering grieved God tremendously who determined to wipe the slate fresh, and start anew. Shemḥazai’s gigantic sons, Ḥiyya and Ḥeeva, learned about their impending doom in nightmares that evening. In one dream, a stone table inscribed over with letters was erased by an angel bearing a chisel; only four letters remained. In another dream, an entire forest was felled except for one tree with four branches. Upon waking they came to their father to explain their dream. Shemḥazai inquired above and learned that the world would soon be destroyed. He began to worry for his two sons. What would they eat with the world all destroyed wondered Shemḥazai? Ḥeeva and Ḥiyya accepted their fate upon learning their names would be preserved in the future groanings of men, heaving stones and pulling longs oars on ships.

The nefilim (fallen ones) came to Ḥanoch requesting him to intercede on their behalf and compose a confessional prayer. Shemḥazai, repentant in his t’shuva suspended himself upside down like meat in the heavens as the constellation Orion. Azael, unrepentant, continues to reside on earth, albeit hidden deep in the heart of humankind, in the abyss of existential suffering and unfathomable desires of men and women. Just as Istahar had done, the shem hameforash was pronounced once a year in the Temple on Yom Kippur at the moment the Azazel goat was sent away. A lottery was made between two goats: one offered to God as a sin offering in the Temple, and the other launched off Mount Tzor and dashed on its rocks. Imprisoned under great blocks of stone Azael waits, the sins of humankind piled up on it until the end of this Age.

Upon exiting the Ark, Noaḥ made an offering to God, and God vowed never again to so destroy the world, instituting the holiday of Shevuot to celebrate this vow, and revealing the rainbow as the sign of this promise and as a revelation of the shekhina on Earth. The vow also served as a concession to the yetzer hara in humankind, permitting them to exercise their predatory nature but within strict limits, never to drink the blood of other creatures out of respect for the life force flowing through it, and never to eat the flesh of an animal still alive (ever min hachai). The culmination of this vow would be celebrated when a people might exist trustworthy to follow its command, and so we celebrate Shavuot as both the holiday of this vow and the revelation of the Torah that records this vow. Those who refuse to eat flesh and are mindful of predatory nature, honor the vision of a world filled with the radiant light of the shekhina, a sukkah of peace and loving compassion over the entire world and its creatures.

In these days of massive eco-destruction, over-consumption, hunger, and wont, Shavuot is a time to be reminded of a vision of this revolutionary compassionate worldview. As human beings, we can control our predatory nature. So my plea is that anyone reading this feels somewhat inspired to act in kindness and consideration towards all creatures and help bring about civil and open societies committed to compassion. Choosing not to eat animals processed by factories into processed meats is one single choice one that can greatly lower one’s environmental footprint, save thousands of fellow creatures from ruthless exploitation, and preserve ecosystems from anthropogenic change. For the sake of the world, go vegetarian this Shavuot, and stay vegetarian for the next fifty Shavuots. Let’s do our best to increase joy in this world rather than add to its suffering.

Image of reflection nebulosity near Merope in the Pleiades (Hubble Space Telescope)

Imagine a Judaism in which no ḥanukiah is lit, and only the light of the menorah illuminates a central Temple’s Holy Sanctuary. Imagine a time when the performance of thrice daily service to God was focused only on the Temple offerings. Imagine when it would be absurd to think of the study of Temple offerings as a surrogate for an offering itself. Imagine when our vision of the Temple was of stone rather than comprised of some sort of fantastic light emanating directly from the Heavens. The Temple that we have in our imagination and ritual has been democratized, the result of beautiful and enlightened metaphor.

The Hasmoneans might be turning in their ossuaries, but our rabbis of yor were content with the knowledge that the Temple service would forevermore be non-localized, abstracted, and preserved in the heartfelt spiritual practices of its survivors. Ḥanukah can be seen as the first precedent for this abstraction of the Temple Service. Here we have the during the rededication of the Temple on Hanukah, a memorial for the important Sukkot fertility rituals and ritual offerings not provided. As Beith Shammai teaches in Masekhet Shabbat 21b, the Ḥanukiah is lit on the first night with eight lights, and on the second night with seven and so forth… in memory of the bull offerings that decreased day by day over the eight days of Sukkot. In other words, the ritual of lighting each day is performed as a surrogate offering in memory of the bull sacrifices not offered earlier those years when the Syrian Greeks controlled the Beit Mikdash.

The relationship between Sukkot and Ḥanukah is explained in II Maccabees chapter 10 verses 5-8. Here is the translation from the original Greek as found in the The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha (Augmented Third Edition):

It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the Festival of Booths [Sukkot], remembering how not long before, during the Festival of Booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm [lulavim], they offered hyms of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days each year.

The thirteen lost bull offerings of Sukkot might be remembered as 13 breaches in the Temple by the “Greek kings” in Mishna Middot 2:3.

…the lattice-work fence was ten tefaḥim high. And there were thirteen breaches where the kings of Greece breached. They went and repaired them again, and decreed thirteen prostrations according to [the breaches].

The number 13 here is very odd since there were only seven entrances to the Temple grounds where physical breaches were likely to occur (see Mishna Middot 1:4-5, and Talmud Yerushalmi Shekalim 17a/25b). I think it’s important to consider that any numbers used in an architectural context with the Temple also have a profound cosmological importance.

The memory of Sukkot permeates the laws of Ḥanukah and the juxtaposition of each eight day holiday’s mitzvot is significant. At the end of the dry season, the mitzvah of sukkot requires the erection of a temporary dwelling and stresses the importance of keeping an open sukkah open to the visit of guests. During the rainy season, the mitzvah of Ḥanukah requiring the ḥanukiah lit in a Bayit, a house (i.e., a permanent dwelling) and at the time that gleaners pass through the souq so they can see and perhaps beckoned by the beautiful light. It makes sense that the mitzvah of Ḥanukah cannot be performed in a temporary dwelling when the season is already too inhospitable to allow for it. The relationship between the holidays is clearly alluded to in the choice of measure for the maximum height by which a ḥanukiah can be lit — it is the maximum height a sukkah can be built.

These mysterious associative references are more easily understood if we accept that the symbols of the sukkah dwelling and the light of the ḥanukiah are equivalent to each other. Both represent the peace that will spread out over the entire earth, and perhaps all other worlds too, in a messianic age. In the language of Rashi, it is the light preserved for the righteous. In the language of the medieval piyyutim it is the sukkah of peace, each sukkah a mishkan, a tabernacle, the sḥaḥ (impermanent roof) of the sukkah likened to the luminous skin of the mysterious Leviathan, the cosmic creature that itself represents the primordial light from before creation. (Notably, the ḥanukiah is lit opposite from the mezuzah in its intended location: an open entrance. The ḥanukiah cannot be confused with the mezuzah, the prophylactic memory of the ward against the mashḥit, the mask of God wearing the hood of the executioner, slaughterer of the firstborn one terrible night in Egypt.)

It’s hard to imagine how significant the holiday of Sukkot was to our ancestors when so few of us are farmers, aware and conscious of the natural vivifying seasonal water cycle and how our food resources and economy depend on a good rainy season. Those offerings were important then, and the loss of the Temple and its rituals ensuring rain represented a catastrophic danger. One can imagine how important a surrogate holiday fixed at the time of the Temple’s restoration, critically at the time of the Brumalia following the Saturnalia on the Winter Solstice, Kislev 25. (Ḥanukah retains the celebratory atmosphere of the Simḥat Beit Hashoeva, the Water Drawing Festival, the most joyous day of the entire year as discussed just after the statement above regarding the breached made by the “Greek Kings” in Middot 2:5.  The day was reconstituted after the destruction of the Temple as the holiday of Simḥat Torah, the celebration of the renewal of the annual Torah reading cycle.)

Metaphors liberate us. Sukkot offerings become light offerings. Temple offerings become daily prayers. I’ve just returned from my morning prayers during Shaḥarit, and the entire service is coded to represent the lost Temple Service and its lost Temple Cult. Even though I am not a Cohen, I am standing in for daily service performed by the Kohanim and I am time bound to it. The rabbis also taught that even though I cannot bring a sacrificial offering I can study the offerings brought and in this way the service can be sustained.

But post-Temple metaphors don’t stop there. For most of the history of rabbinic Judaism, the dominant vision of the restored temple in the messianic age was a temple of fire descending from heaven. A celestial Temple remains even when an earthly temple is destroyed. Here again is the echo of the primordial light reserved for the righteous until the end of days. What a danger that some would give up on this vision for a reconstituted Temple Cult and the loss of 2000 years of spiritual democracy.

Considering how Ḥanukah found renewed popularity 150 years ago as the celebration of ethnic national aspirations in Zionism, and seeing how religious nationalist zealots today pine for the construction of a physical third Temple (and implicit destruction of the beautiful shrine that currently preserves that sacred space), it’s time to celebrate, and take pride in our imagination — in our vision of a non-physical Temple rather than any physical, mortar and brick Temple, the aspiration of contemporary zealots.

We are liberated by our metaphors, our abstractions. We have innovated beyond the need to slaughter animals in our spiritual practice, nor to rely on a dedicated caste to preserve it. Just as our third temple is made of enlightening fire, burning brilliantly in hearts illuminating like warm homes in the middle of winter, we might also see that our people’s identity is composed of values and sensibilities, rather than nationalist dreams rooted in hard earth. Realizing civil and open societies that ensure those rights which foster our peace, plurality, and vibrant creative spirits is the realizing of a messianic age. Let us find freedom in our abstractions and communicate them with our wit and language and actions rather than build old bulwarks in mud and stone.

The Sanctuary by Edwin Forbes, 1876

This Friday, the 24th of Kislev and the eve of Ḥanuka, is Heine’s Hebrew birthday. He was born December 13th, 1797.

I first encountered Heine, in Amos Elon’s survey of German Jewry, The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743-1933. Here’s why I love him so much. Besides his sharp wit and poetry, Heine railed against patriotic chauvinism. In 1817 at the age of 20 he witnessed the Hep! Hep! riots and a mass burning of “subversive” books  accompanied by speeches against Jews, foreigners, “and cosmopolitans, et al.” Three years later, he penned the following prescient line in his verse tragedy, “Almansor,”:

Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.
[Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.]

Heine had keen, almost prophetic insight. Elon writes that he “voiced the first, most acute prophecies about German nationalism and militarism.” Heine is famous for having predicted the dangers of Prussian nationalism manifest in a unified Germany. Living as a fugitive expatriat in France in 1834, “he saw the demons lurking under the surface of German life and warned the French:”

Watch out! I mean well with you and therefore I tell you the bitter truth. You have more to fear from a liberated Germany than from the entire Holy Alliance along with all Croats and Cossacks.

A drama will be enacted in Germany compared to which the French Revolution will seem like a harmless idyll. Christianity restrained the martial ardor of the Germans for a time but it did not destroy it; once the restraining talisman is shattered, savagery will rise again, . . . the mad fury of the berserk, of which Nordic poets sing and speak. . . . The old stony gods will rise from the rubble and rub the thousand-year-old dust from their eyes. Thor with the giant hammer will come forth and smash the gothic domes.

The German thunder. . . rolls slowly at first but it will come. And when you hear it roar, as it has never roared before in the history of the world know that the German thunder has reached it’s target.

(H. Heine. “Zur Geschichte von Religion und Philosphie im Deutschland,” Sämtliche Schriften, vol. 3, p.505.)

His  attitude towards Judaism was highly influenced by the difficulty he and other assimilated intellectual German Jews felt in the face of state oppression. But these sentiments were tempered when he experienced Polish Jewry during a trip in 1821, writing:

Despite the barbaric-looking fur cap on his head and the even more barbaric ideas within, I hold the Polish Jew in much higher regard than many a German Jew with a Bolivar hat on top of his head and Jean Paul inside it. In stark isolation, the character of the Polish Jew has evolved into an integral whole; by breathing the air of tolerance this character has acquired the stamp of freedom. . . . As for me, I prefer the Polish Jew, with his grimy fur, his flea-bitten beard, his odor of garlic, and his wheeling and dealing to many others in all their savings-bond splendor.

(Heine. Sämtliche Schriften, vol. 2, p.69.)

This description mixes criticism with a liberal romantic pride in ethnic Judaism born outside the constraints and pressures of the assimilationist Germany he was familiar with. In contrast, his attitude towards Reform Judaism reflects deep misgivings. Elon notes that Heine was “dubious about fashionable modifications like German [Jewish] prayer books and organ music. They were merely imitative of Christianity and offered only a “new stage set and decor.” The new rabbis (Heine called them souffleurs–prompters) wore a Protestant parson’s ‘white band’ in their collars. Reform Judaism was like mock turtle soup, he thought, ‘turtle soup without the turtle.’ Heine was an early precursor of the legendary Spanish anarchist who asked a Protestant missionary, ‘How can I believe in your religion when I don’t even believe in mine, which is the only true one?’” Like many Jews in his circle he submitted to a Baptism that held meaning only in the burden of shame and bitterness he would carry the remainder of his life. Professional life in Germany was entirely closed off to Jews unless they submitted to a Baptism. Regardless, his tragic humiliation has haunted his name ever since.

Fleeing Germany for freedom in France, Heine was quickly attracted to the early socialism espoused by Henri de Saint-Simon, a practical philosophy that espoused a mix of free love, pantheism, technocracy, and meritocracy — in short, liberal ideals anathema to more conservative and traditional sentiments. Meanwhile, he continued to write romantic poetry that drew its imagery from the well of both German and Jewish mythology.

Undeniably, I feel a kinship here. I am one dreaming being even when the catalog of prideful identities bifurcates and fragments my imagination in so many useless ways. I am navigating my religious, ethnic, and national identity when ethnic patriotism and religious demands make claims on the integrity and authenticity of my being Jewish, and often enough seem to distract from more universal truths.

The pity of it all is that the fathomless tragedy of the Holocaust was not only the mass slaughter of our families and the dissolution of our being. It is also in how Germany butchered and mutilated itself, for we were once Germans even if they refused to accept this, and how much the poorer they are for it. Romantics like Heine pined for acceptance as Jewish Germans, a desire absolutely justified by his ancestors cultural identity rooted in the more than 1500 year long residence amidst the misty woods and vales of Ashkenaz. Ethnic narratives profoundly shaped by Zionist self-reliance and a complete rejection of Germany following the Holocaust, conspire as well to obscure the profoundly deep connections Ashkenaz Jewry had in those lands, cities, and shtetls stolen from our grandparents and great-grandparents. Their presence as neighbors was organically entangled in their culture, but they pretended it wasn’t so, and what a bloody mess they left behind when they ripped us out from inside them.

This coming Sunday 2-5pm, December 13th, I’ll be at the Lorelei Fountain in the Bronx reading Heine’s poem Die Lorelei, drinking a toast in his honor, and lighting the third light of Ḥanuka. Anyone who cares to is welcome to join me.

Portrait of Heine by Gottlieb Gassen, 1828

Die Lorelei

by Heinrich Heine

In so far as Jewish lore goes, the virtues of alert domestic household guardians in disposing of wayward lizards was recognized as early as 350-371 CE in the Babylonian Talmud. The source below, Tractate Pesaḥim, Chapter 10, p112b, provides something of a utilitarian justification for the adoption of cats in this regard:

אמר רב פפא ביתא דאית ביה שונרא לא ניעול בה איניש בלא מסני מאי טעמא משום דשונרא קטיל לחיויא ואכיל ליה ואית ביה בחיויא גרמי קטיני ואי יתיב לה גרמא דחיויא אכרעיה לא נפיק ואסתכן ליה איכא דאמרי ביתא דלית ביה שונרא לא ניעול ביה איניש בהכרא מאי טעמא דילמא מיכריך ביה חויא ולא ידע ומסתכן

Rav Papa said: A man should not enter a house in which there is a cat, without shoes. What is the reason? Because the cat may kill a snake and eat it  — now the snake has little bones, and if a bone sticks into his foot it will not come out, and will endanger him. Others say: A man should not enter a house where there is no cat, in the dark [without shoes]. What is the reason? Lest a snake wind itself about him without his knowing, and he come to danger.

Given these concerns, we can only surmise that if Rav Papa were alive today, he might trust his Nehardean home and yeshiva to be free of tiny snake bones thanks to his own autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner, and unselfconsciously walk about in his socks, even in the dark, his tender soles secure. Over here at the Omphalos, we appreciate the common sense of Rav Papa’s colleagues; and we’re rather satisfied with the lap guarding capabilities of our resident felines, Dot, Ivan, and William. We do admit however that in battle with poisonous lizards, our cats would fare far more poorly than Rav Papa or his colleagues assume. If we lived in an area prone to viper attacks, a Roomba might save our cat’s lives as well as our own.

We will just need to remain vigilant. When in viper country we will wear shoes, as the Talmud recommends and wait patiently while DARPA struggles to model the feline brain. When DARPA ultimately succeeds we will upgrade the firmware of our vacuuming robots with the aggressive skills of 4th century Iraqi cats. But unapologetic sentimentalists, we will keep our warm blooded  companions and enjoy their current, if temporary, dominance over their vigilant snake wrestling (and dust fighting) competitors.

I’m here for a few reasons, the first of which is to have a dedicated space and time to invest serious energy and intention in religious practice in general, and Judaism in particular. I want to be able to think about, research, and write about Jewish folklore and cosmology. It’s been impossible for me to feel passionate about this without entertaining how to sustain this interest past the present year, and so naturally I’m thinking of rabbinical school or a graduate program in Judaic Studies, or even a general program in religious or folkloric studies where I can find a specialization. Hopefully by the end of this year I’ll have significantly improved my capability with available sources in Hebrew and Aramaic. If I do this, then I think I’ll have the confidence to continue further and also be a more attractive candidate for a graduate or rabbinic program.

The latter still attracts my imagination since I’m interested in bridging the distance between academic and applied Judaic Studies. If my passion can endure even half a year of this work and lifestyle, then I think I’ll be able to pursue rabbinical school applications with a more clear and grounded intention.

In addition, like PresenTense was, Yeshivat Hadar will be something of a nest for the nascent Open Siddur Project, that is still hard at work developing a web application. Hadar is providing a modest if substantial living stipend for fellows, and besides helping me live within public transit distance of the yeshiva, I’m using this stipend to fund my work on the Open Siddur. (Hadar also provides a $2000 grant specifically for funding a community project, like the Open Siddur.)

By Providence, comrade in code, realazthat, lives only three blocks away from me in Brooklyn. Also nearby is my colleague from PresenTense, Russel Neiss (see MediaMidrash), who along with the Open Siddur, shares my passion for book ripping and scanning (public domain material only). We hope to build a working book scanner by the end of the year!

After a year away from Louisiana and urban planning, this may very well be the turning point in a career shift for me. Or not. Considering the investment in a career in planning it seems almost insane to me to give this up. But there is a freedom that comes from being unsettled, from being suspended rather than grounded. I cannot be sustained too long off of the ground, but I cannot remain either where I’ve been standing. And so this will become my sabbatical year.

I would be remiss if I didn’t finish by plugging a party that everyone who cares about egalitarianism in traditional Judaism might want to turn out for. It’s Wednesday night on October 21, 2009. Hope to see you there. Details below.

“Any Torah study without work will ultimate be lost and lead to sin.” (Pirkei Avot 2:2)

“I am abandoning all practical training for my children and I will only teach my children Torah.” (Mishnah Kiddushin 4:14)

Is life about Torah, or is Torah about life? And what’s at stake in the question, anyway?

Please join me in celebrating the opening of Yeshivat Hadar’s full-year program, come join us as we explore the relationship between our commitment to Torah and our work in the world.

Yeshivat Hadar’s Full-Year Celebration:
Wednesday, October 21
7:30 pm — 9:30 pm
The Schafler Forum at Congregation Rodeph Sholom
7 West 83rd Street
New York, NY 10024

RSVP by email: frank@mechonhadar.org or by phone 212.284.6549

Mechon Hadar is an institute that empowers young Jews to build vibrant Jewish communities through:

• Yeshivat Hadar: the first full-time egalitarian yeshiva in North America
• The Minyan Project: resources, networking, and consulting for more than 50 independent minyanim nationwide

Mechon Hadar is grateful to multiple individual supporters and national foundations. For a complete list of foundation supporters, visit www.mechonhadar.org supporters

To learn more about Mechon Hadar visit our website: www.mechonhadar.org

Happenstance the first: a creative project I proposed to the summer bootcamp/workshop for social entrepreneurs known as the PresenTense Institute was accepted for a fellowship. Now I am in Jerusalem working on this project. More information is available regarding the Open Siddur is available at my developer blog for the project, opensiddur.varady.net.

Happenstance, the second: acceptance of a fellowhsip that will allow me to study at Yeshivat Hadar in Manahattan beginning early September. Concerned friends and relatives are all wondering what this is all leading to. A career in Jewish education? Rabinnical school? Urban and community planning of unbuilt or coalescing intentional communities? I don’t know the answer. But I’m pretty certain the answer isn’t located in Craigslist job listings or the many job posting listserves I’m subscribed to. But maybe it is, (so I’m still checking). I’m still working on that book on magic, art carved furnuture, and obscure Jewish lore, so perhaps this is all an involved research project for what I can only imagine will be my life’s work.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a post for the Omphalos based on a shiur I gave during a Tikkun Leil Shavuot retreat at an exurban development in the wilderness outside East Doylestown, Pa. Stay tuned for it: Azazel, the relationship between Shavuot and Yom Kippur, and why we eat cheese (and not blood) on the Hag Habikkurim.

In October 2008, my friend Will posted on his blog, A Journey Around My Skull, his discovery of a Japanese illustrator, Rokuro Taniuchi. The image of a looming figure on the horizon by Taniuchi reminded me very much of the cover art for a book I read in 5th grade titled Creatures from UFO’s (1978) by Daniel Cohen. On my recent trip back to Cincinnati I fetched the paperback from my old bedroom bookshelf and scanned the cover. Unfortunately, Archway, the publisher, didn’t see fit to credit the cover art illustrator for this book in its young adult series of non-fiction publications. Please comment if you can identify the artist.

The cover artist drew inspiration from chapter 5 of the book, “The Mississippi Fisherman,” that recounts the fascinating tale of two men in Pascagoula, Mississippi on the night of October 11, 1973. Before I continue I should say that I think hypnogogic or hypnopompic states help explain the vast number of encounters with frightening extraterrestrials, angels, demons, ghosts, or molemen depending on the century and culture framing the disturbing experience. Like dreams, these visions tells us more about ourselves and the world of our imagination than the world of nature. Cohen writes,

A door suddenly appeared in the side of the craft. Three strange-looking creatures came out. They didn’t walk. They floated about three feet off the ground.

The two men said the creatures were about five feet tall. They were covered with grayish, wrinkled skin. It was like “the skin of an elephant,” Hickson [one of the two witnesses] said. The creatures didn’t have real faces. Where the nose should have been there was a carrot-like growth. Two similar growths were where ears should have been. The mouth was just a hole. They didn’t have any eyes.

The creatures had two arms, but no fingers. The arms ended in claw-like pincers, like the claws of a lobster. They had what looked like two legs, but the legs seemed to be stuck together. This is why they didn’t seem able to walk. But since they could float they didn’t need to walk…

The story continues to describe how the men were abducted, examined by a machine that resembled a giant eye, and released. I read plenty of books like this when I was in 5th grade, but of all of them, the cover art of this book stuck with me, and so did the story. It reminded me of the tale of the three angels that visited Avraham after his circumcision in Genesis Chapter 18. The fused legs of the UFO creatures reminded me of the idea in Jewish angelology, following Ezekiel’s description of the Ḥayot in Ezekiel 1:5-7,

וּמִתּוֹכָהּ דְּמוּת אַרְבַּע חַיּוֹת וְזֶה מַרְאֵיהֶן דְּמוּת אָדָם לָהֵנָּה. וְאַרְבָּעָה פָנִים לְאֶחָת וְאַרְבַּע כְּנָפַיִם לְאַחַת לָהֶם. וְרַגְלֵיהֶם רֶגֶל יְשָׁרָה וְכַף רַגְלֵיהֶם כְּכַף רֶגֶל עֵגֶל וְנֹצְצִים כְּעֵין נְחֹשֶׁת קָלָל.‏

And out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man. 6 And every one had four faces, and every one of them had four wings. 7 And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot; and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.

In imitation of angels, the Talmud in Berachot 10a explains the Jewish practice of standing with one’s feet together during the standing meditation prayer called the Amidah. The idea of a single leg is also related to that of a pedestal (literally, foot stand), the base of a pillar and the foundations of a philosophy.  Note the challenge spoken by a Roman soldier to the sages Shammai and Hillel the Elder, recorded in Tractate Shabbath 31a: “Accept me as a proselyte on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand al regal achat (on one foot).” (See below in the illustration by Arthur Szyk.)

In antiquity, to ‘stand on one’s foot,’ was a figure of speech.  Horace in his Satires (1.4.9-10) wrote concerning Lucilius, “ in hora saepe ducentos, ut magnum, versus dictabat stans pede in uno.” (In an hour he used to dictate two hundred verses, as a great feat [while] standing on one foot.) But the Hebrew word regal (foot) also sounds similar to the Classic Latin word regula meaning “basic principle.” (Regula is the root of the modern word “regulation”). Hillel’s clever answer reveals the basic principle of the Torah that can be learned by anyone standing on one foot for a short length of time: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah — the rest is commentary. Now go and learn.”

In some way, I think this notion of a single premise provides an added ethical meaning to the mythic idea of an Even ha-Shettiyah, the Foundation Stone — that a geological foundation of the world is synonymous with or perhaps even signifies a basic code of ethical behavior.  What then is the stone that was cast away that shall become the foundation stone? The considerate and sensitive treatment of each other that is lost and forgotten in times of war and selfish struggle.

As a side note, those actually born with fused legs suffer from Sirenomelia, or Mermaid Syndrome, a rare congenital deformity manifesting in 1 out of 100,000 births. It is usually fatal within one or two days of birth due to related abnormal kidney and bladder development and function.

LATE BREAKING UPDATE: Am I channeling some sort of zeitgeist? Less than a month after this post, this lovely new resource, On1Foot :  Jewish Texts for Social Justice was established. Check it out this amazing user-contributable archive of relevant source texts.

In his 1978 essay, “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later“, Philip K. Dick wrote, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” This ontology is challenged by a syndrome recently brought to my attention in a recent post on boingboing.net, “Hallucinations brought on by eye disease,” wherein David Pescovitz writes,

In recent days, both the Daily Mail and Wired.com looked at Charles Bonnet Syndrome [CBS], a disease characterized by bizarre and vivid visual hallucinations. Interestingly, people who suffer from CBS aren’t mentally ill but have visual impairments such as macular degeneration. Even weirder is that the hallucinations often involve characters or things that are much smaller in size than reality.

Read the whole post and follow the link to this article at the Daily Mail on Charles Bonnet Syndrome, and this interview at Wired with neurologist Oliver Sachs. Together, they provide an insight for understanding a particularly fascinating method given in the Talmud for seeing Mazikin (lit. harmful spirits, ie. demons). Mazikin are a class of sheydim (animistic spirits) that pervaded the natural world in the Rabbinic Jewish worldview of late antiquity. From תלמוד בבלי ברכות ו׃א (Talmud Bavli Tractate Berakhot, 6a):

תניא אבא בנימין אומר אלמלי נתנה רשות לעין לראות אין כל בריה יכולה לעמוד מפני המזיקין אמר אביי אינהו נפישי מינן וקיימי עלן כי כסלא לאוגיא אמר רב הונא כל חד וחד מינן אלפא משמאליה ורבבתא מימיניה אמר רבא האי דוחקא דהוי בכלה מנייהו הוי הני ברכי דשלהי מנייהו הני מאני דרבנן דבלו מחופיא דידהו הני כרעי דמנקפן מנייהו האי מאן דבעי למידע להו לייתי קיטמא נהילא ונהדר אפורייה ובצפרא חזי כי כרעי דתרנגולא האי מאן דבעי למחזינהו ליתי שלייתא דשונרתא אוכמתא בת אוכמתא בוכרתא בת בוכרתא ולקליה בנורא ולשחקיה ולימלי עיניה מניה וחזי להו ולשדייה בגובתא דפרזלא ולחתמי’ בגושפנקא דפרזלא דילמא גנבי מניה ולחתום פומיה כי היכי דלא ליתזק רב ביבי בר אביי עבד הכי חזא ואתזק בעו רבנן רחמי עליה ואתסי

It has been taught:

Abba Benjamin says, If the eye had the power to see them, no creature could endure the Mazikin.

Abaye says: They are more numerous than we are and they surround us like the ridge round a field.

R. Huna says: Every one among us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right. [Psalm 91:7]

Raba says: The crushing in the Kallah lectures comes from them.  Fatigue in the knees comes from them. The wearing out of the clothes of the scholars is due to their rubbing against them. The bruising of the feet comes from them. If one wants to discover them,  let him take sifted ashes and sprinkle around his bed, and in the morning he will see something like the footprints of a rooster. If one wishes to see them, let him take the placenta of a black she-cat [that is] the offspring of a black she-cat [that is] the first-born of a first-born, let him roast it [the placenta] in fire and grind it to powder, and then let him put some into his eye, and he will see them. Let him also pour it into an iron tube and seal it with an iron signet that they [the demons] should not steal it from him. Let him also close his mouth, lest he come to harm.

R. Bibi b. Abaye did so,  saw them and came to harm. The scholars, however, prayed for him and he recovered.

Could Raba’s magic recipe for perceiving demons by placing ash in one’s eye create a condition like Charles Bonnet Syndrome? Could Rav Huna’s 10:1 ratio of ubiquitous albeit invisible demons indicate a left-brained dominance when perceiving/hallucinating these creatures? Curious minds wish to know the answer to these arcane questions. Rav Huna’s midrashic reading of Psalms 91:7 in particular might suggest that these creatures are small and recalls the peculiar reduced stature of the persons in David Stannard’s hallucination.

So it came as a surprise to the 73-year-old when he looked up from his television one evening to discover he was sharing his living room with two RAF pilots and a schoolboy. ‘The pilots were standing next to the TV, watching it as if they were in the wings of a theatre,’ he says. ‘The little boy was in a grey, Fifties-style school uniform. He just stood there in the hearth looking puzzled. He was 18 inches high at most.’

Just in case anyone is worried, according to Jewish lore the likelihood of perceiving sheydim and “being brought to harm” is substantially reduced if one avoids ruins, wetlands, and other lonely places — and travels in groups of three or more. According to the following argument inברכות מג ב (Tractate Berakhot 43b):

רב זוטרא בר טוביה אמר רב אבוקה כשנים וירח כשלשה איבעיא להו אבוקה כשנים בהדי דידיה או דילמא אבוקה כשנים לבר מדידיה ת”ש וירח כשלשה אי אמרת בשלמא בהדי דידיה שפיר אלא אי אמרת לבר מדידיה ארבעה למה לי והאמר מר לאחד נראה ומזיק לשנים נראה ואינו מזיק לשלשה אינו נראה כל עיקר אלא לאו שמע מינה אבוקה כשנים בהדי דידיה שמע מינה

R. Zutra b. Tobiah further said in the name of Rab: [To avoid danger while traveling in darkness] a torch is as good as two [companions] and moonlight is as good as three. The question was asked: Is the torch as good as two [people] including the carrier [of the torch], or as good as two besides the carrier? [The first argument would require one to travel in darkness with at least one torch and one companion. The second argument would allow one to travel alone so long as they carried a lit torch with them. -- aharon]

Come and hear: ‘Moonlight is as good as three [traveling companions]‘.

If now you argue, ‘including the carrier,’ [then] there is no difficulty. [The torch carrier will need an additional companion.] But if you say, ‘besides the carrier’ [then there is a problem with your argument]. Why would I need four, seeing that a Master has said: “To one [person] a Mazik may show itself and harm them; to two it may show itself, but without harming them; to three it will not even show itself“? [With the 'besides the carrier' argument, four would equal the traveler plus the additional three virtual companions provided by the moonlight. Meanwhile only three are actually needed per the Master's teaching concerning demons. --aharon]

We must therefore conclude that a torch is equivalent to two [persons] including the carrier; and this may be taken as proved.

In darkness, two people can see a demon but not be harmed. Only without the company of another can one both see and be harmed thereby. However irrational this idea appears on the surface, on deeper reflection I think one can see the logic of it. Rationally, one may interpret the mazikin as outward personifications of ever present danger or as dangerous constructs of one’s own imagination. One can endanger themselves, when stumbling about in darkness alone. When isolated from others, one’s imagination can leave themselves into madness. And in the company of two, one is still vulnerable to the Folie à deux. Only with the reality confirmation (and distraction) of friends can what is real be parsed from what is imaginary. (Perhaps for this same reason, a court of judges in Jewish law must be composed of a minimum of three persons.)

Jorge Luis Borges' Jewish Demons as illustrated by the graduate students in the Department of Illustration and Art of the Book at the Vakalo School of Art and Design in Athens, Greece for Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings.

The image at the top of this post is a painting by Jesse Patrick Martin entitled “Litterbox” and inspired by the defecation of the animals in Borges’ Beastiary. (Used with the artist’s permission. Please visit Jesse’s site for more fantastic work.)

Wonka’s oblique answer references the first stanza of a poem by Arthur O’Shaughnessy, the “Ode” featured in his collection of poems from 1874, Music and Moonlight. I didn’t understand Wonka’s response to Veruca Salt until I read the entire poem. The meaning provided me a key to understanding the story, who the mysterious character Wonka represents, what his motivations are in finding a child to give his factory to, and what Charlie Bucket really means for him. Read the poem below, and I think you might understand too.

ODE.

WE are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;–
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming–
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man’s soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man’s heart.

And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day’s late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we !
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry–
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God’s future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers,
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song’s new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.

The premise of Roald Dahl’s novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) asks: what would an industrial factory engaged in mass production look like if it was built by a fantasist, dreamer, and romantic in a world dominated by pragmatists, realists, and materialists. In this lonely island, Wonka wonders who will inherit his life’s work and hopes that in the next generation of children there might still be romantics. His sampling of youth via the lottery tickets provides a referendum on Charlie’s generation. The selected tourists to Wonka’s candyland are a fools gallery of technocrats, capitalists, hedonists… and opportunists. The latter is what Wonka makes of Charlie Bucket.

Poverty does not make Charlie a finer candidate than any of the others or even more sympathetic to Wonka. But the moral challenge that Charlie meets in the face of his family’s dire poverty does affect Wonka. For Charlie to give back the stolen everlasting gobstopper means returning to Wonka’s competitor Oscar Slugworth empty handed and to his family with only tales of Oompa-Loompas. Wonka is so resigned to the absence of new romantics in the world that he is willing to give up everything to Slugworth by letting Charlie walk out with the gobstopper. By returning the gobstopper Wonka is enlightened to Charlie’s enduring romantic virtue. Charlie’s elevation of an abstract moral good over an immediate material good justifies his embrace of the young lad as the rightful recipient of his vast empire of imagination.

If these insights were intriguing, note that they don’t apply to either Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) nor the screenplay he wrote for the film. Rather, credit is due to David Seltzer, an uncredited Jewish screenwriter who wrote at least 30% of the final script. Seltzer was responsible for all of Wonka’s literary references throughout the film including Wonka’s quotation from O’Shaughnessy’s “Ode” and his quote of Portia from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice at the end of the film, “So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” ( Seltzer later directed another film representing the tribulations of an alienated romantic youth, Lucas (1986).)

Dahl, furious with the casting of Gene Wilder over Spike Milligan and Seltzer’s focus on Wonka rather than Charlie Bucket, later forbid a film adaptation of his Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972). Focus on Dahl’s anti-Semitism often focuses on his 1983 outburst: “There’s a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity … I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” It’s intriguing to speculate that a decade earlier Dahl’s animus might have been expressed in his frustration with Gene Wilder and David Seltzer’s reinvention of Wonka, the romantic industrialist, as a Magical Jew.

On the Quest for Understanding

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land,
Man got to tell himself he understand.

On Life

We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

On God

Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He’ll just smile and nod.

On the Roots of Bokononism

I wanted all things
To seem to make sense,
So we all could be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And I made this sad world
A par-a-dise.

On Love

A lover’s a liar,
To himself he lies.
The truthful are loveless,
Like oysters their eyes!

On Boko-Maru

We will touch our feet, yes,
Yes, for all we’re worth,
And we will love each other, yes,
Yes, like we love our Mother Earth.

The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith

Performed in the Boko-Maru posture, both parties repeat one after the other:

God made mud,
God got lonesome,
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”,
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God!
Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way that I can feel the least bit important is to think
of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honour!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait …
To find out for certain what my wampeter was …
And who was in my karass …
And all the good things our karass did for you.
Amen.

On the Members of a Karass

Around and around and around we spin,
With feet of lead and wings of tin …

Bokonon’s 53rd Calypso

Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a chinese dentist,
And a British queen -
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice -
So many different people
In the same device.

On Granfalloons

If you wish to study a granfalloon,
Just remove the skin of a toy balloon.

Bokonon’s 119th Calypso

“Where’s my good old gang done gone?”
I heard a man say.
I whispered in that sad man’s ear,
“Your gang’s done gone away.”

On Bokonon’s Rebirth

A fish pitched up
By the angry sea,
I gasped on land,
and I became me.

On Growth

Be like a baby,
The Bible say,
So I stay like a baby
To this very day.

Bokonon’s 14th Calypso

When I was young,
I was so gay and mean,
And I drank and chased the girls
Just like St Augustine.
St Augustine,
He got to be a saint.
So if I get to be one also,
Please, mama, don’t you faint.

On the People of San Lorenzo

Oh, a very sorry people, yes,
Did I find here.
Oh, they had no music,
And they had no beer.
And, oh, everywhere
Where they tried to perch
Belonged to Castle Sugar, Incorporated,
Or the Catholic Church.

The San Lorenzan National Anthem (1922, Bokonon)

Oh, ours is a land
Where the living is grand,
And the men are as fearless as sharks;
The women are pure,
And we always are sure
That our children will all toe their marks.
San, San Lo-ren-zo!
What a rich, lucky island are we!
Our enemies quail,
For they know they will fail
Against people so reverent and free.

On Contrast

‘Papa’ Monzano, he’s so very bad,
But without bad ‘Papa’ I would be so sad;
Because without ‘Papa’s’ badness,
Tell me, if you would,
How could wicked old Bokonon
Ever, ever look good?

On the Outlawing of Bokonon

So I said good-bye to government,
And I gave my reason:
That a really good religion
Is a form of treason.

On Torture

In any case, there’s bound to be much crying.
But the oubliette alone will let you think while dying.

I mention Tolkien since one of his intentions in inventing the fairy tale geographies and histories of Middle Earth was to provide a national myth for his beloved England. The Hobbits of the Shire represented the rural peoples and provincial attitudes familiar from Tolkien’s youth. The threat and conquest of the Shire by the evil minion of Sauron were reflected in the terrible trauma suffered by the English people in the first and second World Wars.

It is not an exaggeration to say that for both religious and secular Judaism the past cannot be reached without first crossing the gaping abyss of despair and traumatic survival that describes our storytelling and documenting of the Holocaust. In Defiance, the story of the exodus from Egypt and the travails of the wilderness are retold through the true story of the Bielski brother’s trek through the forests of Belarus. This is the story of Frodo and Sam Gamgee writ large and real. And if the Jews feet aren’t as hairy as Tolkien’s hobbits, they do at least live in earth sheltered dwellings.

True Holocaust stories have assumed the role of epic sagas for the Jewish people. These aren’t the stories imagined for us by 19th century Jewish romanticists. But unlike Tolkien’s fiction, the lived experience of the Holocaust helped drive a national liberation movement to realize a sovereign state in the ancient homeland of its people, revived religious and ethnic roots among disaffected and assimilated Jews, and continues to provide a focal point for secular ethnic identity in both Israel and the Diaspora. It’s not that stories of previous persecutions don’t exist and aren’t revisited often in the Jewish calendar of fast days and period of mourning. What differentiates Defiance is that it revives the tales of defiance to oppression, from Moses to the Macabees to Bar Kohba’s rebellion against the Romans. It’s been almost two millennia since Bar Kohba’s failed uprising. Adaptation to the Diaspora and repeated disappointments from the Spanish Expulsion to Shabbtai Tzvi, put a note of skepticism at the end of every prayer for the appearance of a Messiah. What is surprising is that the film doesn’t overtly link the success of the Bielski brother’s self-reliance with the parallel struggle of Zionism and the creation of the Jewish state. On the one hand, perhaps it doesn’t need to. On the other, the film does such an excellent job of weaving the expectations of Jewish Messianism with the reality of harrowing circumstance that it almost makes sense for the Bielski borthers to live happily ever after growing their trucking company in New York City. Defiance isn’t a messianic fantasy, nor is it ideological. Hunger strips the non-essentials. This forest tale is reality tempered.

If romanticism maps historic and mythic landscapes and practices onto the present, then identifying Defiance as romantic might seem a bit of a stretch. But if it’s hard to see, then one would also be blind to the major romantic themes in Judaism: pining for the restoration of the Temple, for the revelation of the hidden messiah, and the return to the Land of Israel. These are the same themes that enabled a secular Zionism to be so easily adopted and communicated, for Yiddish to be replaced by a rehabilitated Hebrew, for urbanized Jews to embrace the field of the kibbutz. After a century of German mystic antisemites advancing the notion that Materialism was synonymous with Judaism, and convincing many that unlike the German people (rooted as they were in the deep and mysterious old European forests) Jews were a spiritually shallow people without a motherland to nourish them, the ancient desire to be rooted in the land of Israel was freshly revived. Just as Europeans were seeking out and publishing their ancient folk traditions as a historic validation of their new national identities, so Hayyim Bialik and Yehoshua Ravnitzky did the same with the Sefer Ha-Aggadad published in Odess in 1911. But the use of storytelling to derive a single identity within the diverse Jewish communities is an ancient one.

The imaginative exercise to “tell the story of the exodus as if one had themselves fled from Egypt” is what is at play in Defiance. This annual Passover tradition (actually a religious obligation) at the root of Jewish religious and ethnic identity is nothing if not romantic. What makes Defiance compelling, beyond it being an amazing true story, is that it helps the viewer place themselves in the wilderness with these Jewish survivors, as they themselves re-enacted the story of exodus without the benefit of magical interventions or prophecy.

There are other romantic aspects as well. The film presents rural Jews as capable and hardy outdoorsmen, even as it allows for the more familiar trope of urbanized ghetto Jews completely unfamiliar with the rigour of wilderness living. But in this way the viewer (who is also likely to be an unaccomplished survivalist) may experience the Byelorussian winter vicariously through the story of the Jews. The desire to rehabilitate Jews as capable fighters rooted in nature affected all of the Zionist youth movements. The idea drew heavily from the German romantic tradition. That Defiance shows ghetto Jews in the role of resistance fighters and backwoods survivalists makes this a Jewish romantic tour de force.

Simon Schama had already described Jewish familiarity with the rural European landscape in his prologue to Landscape & Memory (1995), but for those who hadn’t read it, Defiance provides some witness to the truth of this. Here is what Schama wrote in Landscape and Memory (p.27-29). It should be read by every Jewish romantic.

I had always thought of the Jews of the Alte Land as essentially urban types, even when they lived in villages: tradesmen and artisans; tailors and carpenters and butchers and bakers; with the rebbe as the lord of the shtetl; microcosms of the great swarming communities of Wilno and Bialystok and Minsk. And so it often was, but the villages we walked through, these picture-perfect rustic cottages with their slanting timber eaves and crook-fenced gardens, had once been Jewish houses. “Seventy percent, eighty percent of the people here and here and here,” said Tadeusz, “-all Jews.” So even if they had not worked the earth with their hands or cut hay in the fields, these Jews had been country people, no less than the villagers of the Cotswolds or the peasants of the Auvergne. And one group among them, people known to everyone in the border country of Poland and Lithuania, had even been people of the forest, the wilderness puszcza.

Among them, somewhere, was my family. My mother’s father, Mark, who did become a butcher, left this region along with three brothers, at the turn of the century, driven by the horseback terror of the Cossack pogroms. But his father, Eli, like many other Jews, made his living cutting timber from the great primeval forests, hauling it to the tributaries that fed the Niemen and floating the logs north to the sawmills of Grodno or, even farther downstream, all the way to the old provincial city of Kowno. The waters were full of these Jewish river rats, sometimes spending weeks at a time on the rafts , sleeping in crude cabins constructed from logs propped on end in the company of chickens and each other. During the brutal Lithuanian winters when the rivers were frozen, he would transport the timber on long sleds driven by big Polish farm horses or teams of oxen. From Kowno or Wilno on the river Viliya the lumber would be sold to the Russian railway companies for ties, or freight wagons, or shipped further downstream in rafts of a thousand or more logs, to the Baltic for export, usually handled by other and grander Jewish timber companies.

Somewhere, beside a Lithuanian river, with a primeval forest all about it, stood my great-grandfather Eli’s house; itself made of roughly fashioned timber with a cladding of plaster, surrounded by a stone wall to announce its social pretensions. My mother, who was born and grew up in the yeasty clamor of London’s Jewish East End, retains just the scraps and shreds of her father’s and uncle’s memories of this landscape: tales of brothers fending off wolves from the sleds (a standard brag of the woodland taverns ); of the dreamy youngest brother, Hyman, falling asleep at the loading depot and rudely woken by being tied to a log and heaved into the river. Was this family as improbable as the Yiddishe woodsmen of Ruthenia I had seen in an old Roman Vishniak photo, poling logs in their sidelocks and homburgs; lumberjacks mit tzitzis?

Jewish lumbermen, Ruthenia (Roman Vishniac)

And just where, exactly, was this place, this house, this world of stubby yellow cigarettes, fortifying pulls from grimy vodka bottles, Hassidic songs bellowed through the piny Poylishe velder? “Where was it?” I pressed my mother while we sat eating salad in a West End hotel. For the first time in my life I badly needed to know. “Kowno gubernia, outside Kowno, that’s all we ever knew.” She shrugged her shoulders and went back to the lettuce.

The history of the country only deepens the uncertainty. For “Lithuania” is not coterminous with the present borders of the shrunken Baltic republic; still less with its language and religion. For centuries it covered an immense expanse of territory stretching all the way from the Black Sea in the south to the Bug river in the west to the Baltic in the north. In 1386 its hunter-king JagieÅ‚Å‚o married the Polish queen Jadwiga, creating by their muon the Great Polish realm. Over time the cultural identity of the south and west of the country was colonized by Poland. Its landowning gentry can1e to speak and write Polish and call themselves by the Polish name of szlachta. In the late eighteenth century Poland was brutally and cynically partitioned and the pieces devoured by its neighbors-the Prussians, the Russians, and the Austrians. The Lithuanian heartland became Russian, and its Polish-speaking poets came to think of it as the captive homeland.

With no formal frontiers to cross, itinerant Jewish traders migrated within the Russian Empire as family connections or economic incentives beckoned, north from the Ukraine or Byelorussia, south from Latvia, magnetized by the great center of piety and cultural passion in Wilno. My great-grandfather and his four boys, like so many other wood-shleppers, were outriders of this Judeo-Lithuanian world, by Yiddish standards, real backwoodsmen, as at home with horses and dogs and two-handled saws as with prayer books and shabbos candles. We drove further north from Giby, past synagogues with drunkenly undulating gables and whitewashed walls (the wooden structures having all been burned by the SS and their local collaborators), cutting through darker woodland dominated by spruce and fir. I remembered someone in a Cambridge common room pestering the self-designated “non-Jewish Jew” and Marxist historian Isaac Deutscher, himself a native of this country, about his roots. “Trees have roots,” he shot back, scornfully, “Jews have legs.” And I thought, as yet another metaphor collapsed into ironic literalism, Well, some Jews have both and branches and stems too.

So when Mickiewicz hails “ye trees of Lithuania” as if they belonged only to the gentry and their serfs, foresters, and gamekeepers I could in our family’s memory lay some claim to those thick groves of larch, hornbeam, and oak. I dare say that even the lime tree, worshipped by pagan Germans and Lithuanians as the abode of living spirits, lay on Eli Sztajnberg’s leds and carts waiting to be turned into the clogs and sandals worn everywhere in the Lithuanian villages…

Title 1970 John Cale & Terry Riley Church Of Anthrax 1 Church of Anthrax 1970 John Cale & Terry Riley Church Of Anthrax 2 The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles 1990 Robert Rich Geometry 1 Primes Part 1 1990 Robert Rich Geometry 2 Primes Part 2 1999 Tranquility Bass Steve Reich Remixed 4 Megamix 1974 Laurie Spiegel New Music For Electronic and Recorded Media: Women in Electronic Music 4 Appalachian Grove I 2003 Aphex Twin 26 Mixes for Cash (Disc 1) 5 Heroes (remixed Philip Glass and David Bowie) 1991 Harold Budd By the Dawn’s Early Light 1 Poem Aztec Hotel 2005 dj BC Glassbreaks 1 Einstein on the Beast 2006 Boards Of Canada Trans Canada Highway 1 Dayvan Cowboy 1972 Bill Withers Still Bill 4 Use Me unknown year Ghost Exits Sun EP 3 [unknown title] 1967 Jorge Luis Borges Por él Mismo 6 el gólem 1959 Raymond Scott OHM (Disc 2) 1 Cindy Electronium 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 1 Violez L’espace De Son Réfrigérant 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 2 In A Desert Alambic 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 3 Does East Bakestan Belong To Itself? 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 4 Tatkooz A Roulette 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 5 Pale Violence Under A Reverbere 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 6 Even Silence Stops When Trains Come 1980 Robert Fripp with David Byrne God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manners 4 Under Heavy Manners 1988 Spacemen 3 Playing With Fire 1 Honey 1982 Brainticket Voyage 1 Voyage (Part 1)

(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)

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.)

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.

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.

It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the Festival of Booths [Sukkot], remembering how not long before, during the Festival of Booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm [lulavim], they offered hyms of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days each year.

It can be difficult to imagine how important the pilgrimage holidays were in the Temple eras. Not only did they fulfill the important social function for reuniting families and clans, opportunities for the young to meet and fall in love (or for the arrangement of marriages), they also expressed the real anxieties Jews shared for a good harvest and a sufficient rainy season. The passion of the Sukkot fertility rituals and the joy expressed at the Simchat beit hashoeva (Water Drawing festival) cannot be exaggerated. The Mishnah in Middoth 2:5 exclaims “He who has not seen the rejoicing at the place of the water-drawing has never in his life seen true rejoicing.”  The loss of the Sukkot pilgrimage due to fighting must have been so difficult that the victory inspired a religious innovation: recelebrating a Sukkot, albeit with light! The important bull sacrifices in the Temple on Sukkot that were missed could symbolically be commemorated by offerings of light by all of Israel. (This also helps to explain the symbolism of Beit Shammai’s alternative Chanukah lighting tradition. See below.)

Given that a pagan ritual defiled the Temple on that same winter day (the 25th of Kislev), what can we know about it? Chapter 6 of Maccabees 2 describes a series of defilements including the Temple’s consecration to Zeus and a festival to Dionysus (2 Macabees 6:7). Could this have been the Brumalia, a month long holiday held in honor of Bacchus/Dionysus ending on the winter solstice? (Brumalia is derived from the Latin bruma, or “shortest day.”) The holiday was known for its wine mixing and revelry. Perhaps there was some Dionysian mystery cult that also lit candles on the solstice, but the  ritual lighting of sacred candles on Chanukah, signifying an increase of light both above (with the solstice) and below (with the Temple’s re-sanctification) seems a more relevant celebration of the bruma.

The Talmudic legend in Tractate Shabbat 21b — that undefiled oil found in the Temple, only enough for one day nevertheless lasted for eight — is not found in either Maccabees 1 or 2. Nor is the connection to Sukkot made obvious in the Talmud. In his distinctive poetic form, Beit Midrash shel Melkh Goblin elucidates the connection between the Talmud and Macabees in his latest (brilliant) d’var torah “.” (Check this link for the full drash.) [My translations and transliterations are in brackets.]

In the Babylonian Talmud
in מסכת שבת [Masechet Shabbat, Tractate Shabbat of the Talmud, 21b]
our Sages explain
the holiday of חנוכה
with the story
of the miraculous jug of pure oil
that lasted for eight days
when it should have only lasted
for one.

When the Maccabees
liberated the בית המקדש,
they found the Temple
stained
with spiritual darkness
and impurity.
Everything had been desecrated.
And then,
in the midst
of that thick dark cloud
of impurity and despair,
they found that first small jug of oil —
the first glimmering hint
of holy light.

But we find another explanation —
another layer of significance —
to the eight days of illumination
in the Books of the Maccabees,
which describe the first חנוכה
as a late סוכות,
celebrated by the victorious Jewish warrior-priests
in commemoration
of the סוכות they were unable to observe
when they were busy fighting
for the survival of Judaism
against the Seleucid Empire.

This other layer
of the Festival of Lights
is corroborated
by hints in the על הנסים prayer
and by the opinion of בית שמאי in the גמרא —
who taught
that like the bull sacrifices
of סוכות,
we should count down in candles
for the eight days
of the חנוכה holiday.

Just as the number of sacrifices
decreased each day of סוכות
from 13 to 12 to 11 and so on,
according to בית שמאי
we should kindle the חנוכה lights
8 on the first night
and 7 on the second
6 on the third
and so on,
all the way down
to one.

However
we don’t rule
according to בית שמאי.

Instead,
following the opinion of בית הלל,
we start
at one candle the first night;
on the second night, two;
on the third night, three —
and slowly,
day by day,
work our way up
to eight.
As בית הלל put it, going up in holiness.

We increase light
we increase holiness
and we increase hope.

In מסכת עבודה־זרה [Tractate Avodah Zara of the Talmud, page 8a]
we are told a story
about אדם הראשון.

After he was kicked out of Eden,
Adam noticed
that the days
were getting shorter.
Every 24 hours
the amount of daylight decreased
and the amount of darkness grew.

אדם fasted and prayed
for eight days,
terrified
that it was all his fault —
that because of his sin inside the Garden,
the light of creation
was dwindling away
to nothing,
and the world was returning
to empty chaos.

And then
תקופת טבת came —
the winter solstice —
and אדם saw
that the days
were once again
growing in length.

When he realized
that light
was returning to the world —
that the universe
was not dissolving
back into the primordial darkness —
that what he was so frightened of
was nothing but a natural cycle,
instituted by God —
אדם celebrated
for another eight days,
from the solstice onwards.

אדם celebrated תקופת טבת
for eight days
as hope returned to his dreams
and light returned to the world.

Whatever victory the Maccabees had wrought from Antiochus in 164BCE, the following hundred years of Hasmonean rule described a painful progression from despotism and corruption, to masscares and civil war, and finally to Roman rule over Hasmonean puppet governments. Disturbed by this history, both the midrash cited in Tractate Avodah Zara and the decision to follow the candle lighting tradition of Beit Hillel represent a rabbinic tradition in late antiquity that clearly emphasized Chanukah as a celebration of light. The relationships that connected the Maccabean victory with Sukkot became obscure — but not lost. Through Chanukah, the renewed light of the sun on the winter solstice becomes identified with the renewal of the light of the menorah in the Temple, and as on Sukkot, for the shining light of peace to spread over the entire earth. (This last apocryphal vision is related to the luminous skin of the leviatan and the primordial light reserved for the righteous at the end of time, myths discussed elsewhere on this blog.)

Significantly, the tradition of Beit Shammai is relegated to the manner in which Judaism imagines the candles lit in the messianic age. Until then, Jews follow the tradition of Hillel: increases light each day below in anticipation of the increase in light above, a beutiful example of magical reciprocity. But in the messianic age, when the primordial light will be revealed, Hillel’s tradition will no longer be necessary. (Perhaps the decrease in light will signify the approaching end of the messianic age and the coming of the myserious and unimaginable Olam Haba, the world-to-come (aka, the next epoch of creation).

Before he passed away this past year, Rabbi Zelig Scharfstein of blessed memory, taught me a very special Hassidic vort (bit of Torah) concerning the fifth night of Chanukah. To review it, I sought the teaching online at Sichos in English, a site providing translations of the teachings of the Chabad Lubavitch hassidic tradition. The following is very similar to what I remember Rav Scharfstein teaching me.

The fifth day of Chanukah can never occur on a Shabbat. When Chanukah occurs on days that are even only potentially Shabbat days, the light of Chanukah combines with the light of Shabbat for a powerful illumination. So the fifth night, which can never be Shabbat, represents great darkness relative to the other nights.

Thus, the fifth light of Chanukah has the unique task and power to illuminate and instill spirituality even in such a time of darkness. [source]

To really grasp the intensity of  this tradition, one has to imagine themselves in a time and a place where artificial light and electricity are not as ubiquitous and familiar as they are in our nighttime world. The chassidic teaching  describes a spiritual darkness that can be imagined, but the darkness of the fifth night is one that can also be observed. This is because the Hebrew calendar follows a lunar cycle. The first night of Chanukah always begins on the 25th of the month of Kislev, the fifth night corresponds with the 29th of Kislev, the Eve of the New Moon. While the winter solstice is the longest night of the year, the nights of the waning moon are the longest darkest nights of the year. Without the moon’s illumination, and without the joy of the Sabbath, the 29th would be profoundly dark — if not for the light of our Chanukah lights. Chanukah, aka Chag Urim [Festival of Lights], ends with the light of the sun increasing as well as the waxing of the moon’s strength.

And while I’m wondering, wouldn’t it be interesting if Bond Hill wasn’t named after some apocryphal Bond’s Mill (as George Patmor explains in his oral history) or even after a Colonel Bond who was active in promoting new railroads through Cincinnati and its environs (including the Mill Creek Valley next to Bond Hill). Perhaps, Bond Hill was named after the railroad bonds used that the Cincinnati-Marietta Railroad Company sold in order to aquire the land for its right-of-way? Since the newspapers of the time parrot the Bond Hill developers in stating that the name “Bond Hill” was an older place name the building association had rehabilitated, and since there’s no record on old maps or land title records of that name in use, I’m left with the feeling that Bond Hill was a catchy name that was invented when other new suburban names such as “Pleasant Hill” and “Price Hill” were in vogue. The test of this would be to look at the archives of the St. Aloysius Orphanage (established in 1860) to see whether the name was in use in any of its founding documents. I have a record of calling the current incarnation of St. Aloysius concerning the location of their archives but I failed to follow up before my thesis was due. For folk interested in Bond Hill history, taking a look at what the orphanage might have in is archive should be high on their list of research projects — right next to locating the business records of the Cincinnati-Marietta Railroad Company.

Perhaps you don’t have a significant other or know-it-all child or lucky friend to ask you for your computer help when troubles arise. If so, please feel free to give me call. My parents tell me that while I’m busy looking for work I should also make myself useful by helping people with their computer problems. That, after all, is what I do for them when I return home, so, you know, obviously.

But beyond the esteem my parents beam on their tech-savvy son, I also have some street cred. To note, before I became a planner I was a computer dude in Philadelphia, first working with Windows and Macs at the University of Pennsylvania, and then afterward as an open source programmer on linux servers at a small web hosting company in Center City. I gave up that career when I moved away from Philly to go to grad school six years ago. I never really looked back but my talents were always of use, whether it was repurposing an antique Sun server into a low cost web server for my school’s planning program, or configuring a CMS out of Movable Type or WordPress, or simply teaching my coworkers how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, and Illustrator. I also found myself doing a lot of work using ESRI’s ArcView GIS software in addition to the other familiar research and writing tasks of planners.

But now I’m living in the West Washington Square Park neighborhood of Center City Philadelphia and hunting down job leads (that hopefully won’t take me away from Philly again). And while I’m doing so, I’m taking my parents advice to make my IT consulting services available to everyone. It’s a pretty competitive market from what I can see from Craigslist, but I imagine that plenty of folks looking for computer help in Center City might still find this post and give me a call (513.405.3603) for my competitive rates.

It being the Winter holiday season, I thought it might also be pertinent to advertise that I can also be of service ripping compact discs to mp3 players, and providing all the nice cover art and metadata that modern audio players use to organize the music they contain. Give me a call if you’d like to pay someone else to take over the mind-numbing task of ripping CDs and/or correcting your music’s metadata. I was just reminded to add that I also do freelance editing. Need a second (or third) pair of eyes on your paper? Need someone to help polish your text? References available upon request.

And hey, if you’d like some help preparing your charette, researching your plan, or illustrating your reports with maps and charts, don’t hesitate to nab me before someone else does.

Kitteh Yoga: Exhale arch, Inhale stretch

Last night was my second night in two weeks of yoga with K. Clair and friends at her West Philly loft. I’m even starting to remember some poses for practicing during the rest of the week. But the hardest part, for me anyways, seems to be associating correctly each pose with either inhaling or exhaling — and then keeping aware of where my breathing is as I exercise each position. As a teaching and memory aid, I created the above image macro with the help of icanhascheesburger.

Much appreciation to Kristina and my other fellow Philly yoga friends for making this a fun and instructive part of my week.

UPDATE: Hilariously, I got my (in/ex)hales mixed up in my first attempt at this lolcat. See comments below. Thanks again to Kristina

In light of the McCain campaign’s stinking “idiot wind” gusting over America’s racist dead enders, I also thought that a boing boing commenter’s insight was spot on:

This [murder of McClelland] must be viewed in light of the Ashley Todd incident this week. Todd made up a false story that a black man attacked her and carved a “B” in her face, ostensibly because she supports John McCain. In Paris, Texas, a hundred years ago, a charge like that would get a black man burned alive. Today it doesn’t go quite that far but you could see the shadow of the lynch mob forming in the darker corners of the right-wing blogosphere when the Todd story first circulated. — JWB

Nowadays I’m less concerned with these clowns than with last minute dirty tricks to scare Philadelphia seniors that a vote for Obama is a vote for a second Holocaust. Good grief. Their strategies are just so disgusting.

I’ve been in email conversation with a friend from Louisiana, a philosemite and born again Catholic who believes Obama is a “Muslem” [sic]. He’s a former Huckabee supporter, and I’m concerned for him and all of his like minded fellows who are so overwhelmed with rumours to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt, that they’ve abandoned all trust in the media. Here’s the summary in his own words, after several lengthy exchanges of commentary and links sent in refutation of slander he’s heard:

That is the main problem: lies.  You don’t know who to believe.  Both parties have a degree in spreading them and there is not enough penality for telling them.  The media can be bought to spread their lie of choice, or conceal thereof.  That is the whole reason we had this banking/wall street debockle. Politics breeds them like flies.

For him it’s as if the long feared gnostic world of darkness has finally eclipsed the world of light. Obama may preach the need for change but oh my god, these folk are deathly afraid and distrutsful, and then also, dangerously manipulatable. It is so essential to reach out to them with love rather than with hate or condescension. I am confident we will win today, but if in my exuberance I am blinded to the enduring need to engage with these folks with respect, then it will all have been for nought. The seething domestic insurgents vying for their hate might eventually win it.

It was only three months ago, July 27th, that Jim Adkisson barged into a Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian-Universalist Church with the intent to kill some liberals (and tragically killed two churchgoers). With the election only two weeks away, and supporters of McCain/Palin already beginning to wear the veil of victimhood and martyrdom, I will admit to some fear that the more militant among them will be inspired towards insurgency. It’s not as if the south doesn’t have a long history of fighting insurgent warfare. Normally, I’d consider this sort of associative thinking paranoid… but I guess that recent nearby expressions of hate, like Mike Lunsford’s antisemitic Halloween effigy of Obama, have me concerned.

I pray that Pressly recovers fully I pray for Pressly’s grieving family and that her attacker is caught and that our country soon turns a page for the better. Courage.

(In 1986, a deranged man attacked Dan Rather demanding of the CBS anchorman, “What’s the frequency!? Kenneth, what’s the frequency??!”)

“Is that a kippah on that anti-Obama effigy?” I couldn’t help but wonder while reading this article and watching this story that local Cincinnati station WKRC (Channel 12) aired yesterday about Fairfield, Ohio’s Mike Lunsford as reported on by Shawn Ley. (For those from out of town, Fairfield is a northern exurb of Cincinnati just north of the Hamilton County line.)

Lunsford adorned the tree in front of his house with an effigy of a ghost hung with a noose, (a presumably stolen) Obama sign hung upside down pinned to its chest with “Hussain” [sic] incorrectly spelled above, and a Star of David drawn on its head. Close observers will also note that the two “S”s in “Hussain” are written out in the style of the Schutzstaffel Nazi paramilitary force insignia popular among today’s suburban neo-Nazis. Considering this, I’m kind of surprised that nowhere in the report is this display described as anti-Jewish.

That unapologetic self-described racists like Mike Lunsford are now seeping out of the woodwork doesn’t surprise me. After all, there are consequences to McCain’s campaign stirring fears of Obama as a secret Muslim, pedophile, and terrorist abettor. McCain’s surrogate Rep. Michelle Bachmann call for an investigation of her fellow congressmen’s “pro-Americanism”, Palin’s careless (or calculated) reference to rural America as “real America,” and John McCain’s brother Joe’s description of North Virginia as a Communist Country: these are all statements that cast their opponents as a demonized Other, and embolden the right wing to further explore their most paranoid and primitive instincts under the guise of patriotism.

That Lunsford’s effigy has sparked outrage and is reported on with an air of concern is good, but I am still disappointed to read it described merely as an “anti-Obama display.” According to the report, neighbors describe it as “racist and offensive” and Vicki Crowe now knows that her neighbor is “anti-black.” Lunsford and his ilk might be disappointed that no one reported that his effigy is also antisemitic. I guess that’s where I step in to translate the hate.<groan>

Besides revealing Obama’s hidden secret Muslim identity with his scrawl of “Hussain,” the Star of David on the ghost’s head broadcasts the common trope of antisemitic white supremacist conspiracy theorists. Not familiar with it? Variations of it have circulated among hate groups for decades. The conspiracy has it that Jews will use blacks to overthrow white America in order to install their one world communist government. For these racists, Obama’s presidency is thus the realization of their long held fantasy. And by choosing a ghost to caricature Obama, Lunsford might also be trying to demean him with the racist epithet of “Spook.” By smearing Obama as Muslim AND Jewish AND black, Lunsford’s effigy of Obama scores something of a trifecta of hate.

From Shawn Ley’s article, “Racist Anti-Obama Display Hung From Tree in Fairfield”:

Mike Lunsford hung the ghost in his yard. He spoke to us off-camera, saying his views could hurt his employers business … but he says make no mistake: He doesn’t want an African American running the country.

Lunsford says he believes Barack Obama is not a “full blooded American.” And he says the United States is a white, Christian nation – and only with white Christians should be in power. With Lunsford not willing to share his views on-camera:

“It’s like whoa. He’s definitely anti-black.”

Vickie Crowe lives next door. She’s an Obama supporter.

“What did you think when you first saw that?” Vickie Crowe/neighbor: “Well actually my 5 year old son says Obama’s hanging upside down. He’s what? He’s hanging upside down. It’s the neighbor’s ghost. I took it as a little bit of a racist statement because my grandson’s mixed and it hurt a little bit.”

Mike Lunsford says he got the idea after an Obama supporter in New York put up this display of a Obama mannequin being chased by a figure of John McCain wearing Ku Klux Klan robes.

Another neighbor, Megan Sory says this symbol makes her more than uneasy it scares her. Megan Story/neighbor: “He’s been a really nice neighbor but it’s one of those you question and wonder, you know, if he’s that forward about something will he be forward enough to do something else, too. it is scary at times but we live in a scary world.”

Behold, my Omphalos as digested arithmetically (with some aesthetic treatments) by Jonathan Feinberg’s text cloud application over at wordle.net. Makes for a rather elegant visual poem, no? The wordle engine accepts site URLs, RSS feeds, or giant gobs of text. The latter is what I fed it after copying the source of my ATOM feed and removing all the links, html, and other xml cruft using NoteTab. Hat tip to Jamais Cascio over at Open the Future for sharing the coolness.

The application provides some control over the appearance of the cloud. You can configure how many words appear (I chose 200). There are also settings for the orientation of the words (vertical/horizontal), palette, and font choice.

Some comments. It doesn’t appear as if the wordle engine is context sensitive to words that appear in close proximity to each other; place names like Bond Hill and Baton Rouge are thus not recognized as such. It would also be nice if common words such as “like” and “also” could be filtered out or relegated to the background as glue for more significant nouns like “heierophant” and “cosmogonic”.

Still, looking into the world cloud as a mirror of my writing over the last three years or so is interesting. All those music related terms are surely the result of importing all the posts I made over at mog.com in 2006 and 2007. Should I be as surprised as I am that this blog is so “Jewish”? Probably not.

Joe Lamantia has written more about text clouds here. (A tag cloud with all the tags and catgories of articles posted at the Omphalos appears on the right sidebar.)

In order to see these great women butt heads I had to skip out on seeing Natalie Portman downtown at Fountain Square. Sure my heart beats a little faster hearing her call to vote early, but alas, I already got that done last week. But for all of those who went to see Portman and hear The Nationals perform, no worries, I have you covered. I recorded the entire debate which you can listen to here [m3u streaming link] or download (Part I, Part II), whichever you prefer.

The debate was emceed by Arna Poupko Fisher, JCRC President and moderated by Brian Jaffee, JCRC Director. The stage was set with three living room style comfy chairs; Lingle and Boxer sat at a 60° angle from each other, and Jaffee sat in the center. The first half hour was given over to opening remarks that each delivered from the podium. Afterward, Jaffee took the podium and presented questions delivered from the audience that had been written out on index cards handed out with pencils at the door. Disregarding the introductions and acknowledgments made by Fisher and Jaffee, the debate lasted around an hour and 15 minutes. Part I of the debate (linked above) contains the opening remarks of Lingle and Boxer and Part II contains their responses to the questions posed by the audience and to each other.

In Lingle’s opening remarks, I was struck by a tone that seemed to resonate with foreboding. To be fair, the perfectly measured pace of her statements adds a certain gravitas regardless of the point she makes. But I was still unnerved when she invoked the traditional response to the Holocaust, “Never Again,” raising the specter of a nuclear holocaust in Israel if Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power isn’t met with unqualified opposition.

My Jewish education only recognized the usage of the phrase “Never Again” as a declaration to all of humanity, i.e., never again would genocide be tolerated as a solution in human conflict. In this universal context, “Never again” justifies the intervention of the United Nation’s security council in actions that might prevent a genocide — anywhere.

But Lingle, and McCain, use the phrase “Never Again” in justification of an argument for U.S. military action against Iran (ostensibly in defense of Israel’s regional military hegemony). To hear the phrase used by a politician this way seems to be a fairly transparent manipulation of Holocaust fears. Even with the failures of the world to respond adequately or capably to the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur, I’m not willing to trade in the universal and moral appeal of “Never Again” for the justification of neocon foreign policy objectives. McCain and his surrogate obviously have no problem with taking advantage of the term so long as it holds currency for manipulating Jewish voters.

(To be absolutely clear, in no way am I arguing that the experience of the Holocaust does not partly justify the importance and historic necessity of the State of Israel as a sovereign refuge for the Jewish people. I am only saying that the simple phrase “Never Again” is a strong universal appeal against genocide. I’m opposed to seeing it appropriated for use in stoking Holocaust fears in precipitating a war with Iran.)

In contrast, Boxer made her points without any references to the Holocaust or a future Holocaust. Among  bona fides that included Obama’s high ranking pro-Israel scorefrom AIPAC, Boxer described the foreign policy sanctions against Iran that Obama authored in the Senate to prevent their acquisition of nuclear power.

Both Lingle and Boxer could teach McCain a thing or two about keeping his cool during a hot debate. Their parrying back and forth, clarifying the responsibility of the executive and legislative branches of for the last eight years of financial mismanagement, was intense. Listen for yourself and hear just how sharp a debater Barbara Boxer is. Lingle didn’t pull any punches either. As a liberal partisan, I’m pleased that Boxer got the last word though. Before I provide any more commentary I’m going to have to listen to it again myself.

In general, the “Presidential Forum” was special for having brought so many segments of the Jewish community together at a crucial moment. The last time I saw this togetherness was at the Israel at 60 gathering at Fountain Square in late April when the Idan Raichel Project performed. I’m really pleasantly surprised by the thoughtful and relevant activities being organized here in Cincinnati under the auspices of the Jewish Federation. On the fourth night of the holiday of Sukkot, I couldn’t be happier to see this diverse community gathered under one roof. Events like this help generate respect for our diversity and tolerance for our differences. Call me hopeful, but this can only lead to a more mature and attractive Jewish community in southwest Ohio.

Before they were made famous as one eyed monsters in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, the cyclopes were known as primordial blacksmiths who could fashion the power of the universe into tridents and other weapons wielded by gods. It’s not such a far leap to see La Forge (lit. the forge!) as a current incarnation of the cyclopaean archetype. According to a hymn of Callimachus, the Cyclopes were helpers at the forge of Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths and craft. I can even see La Forge as a reconstituted Polyphemus, once blinded, but liberated from the darkest depths of Tartarus through the intervention of Technology.

The depiction of a cyclops by Odilon Redon (see below, The Cyclops) follows less from Hesiod’s tale than from an antediluvian idyll. The cyclops in this garden to me appears to be modeling a primordial desire: a rather sheepish, male gaze. Is the cyclops of Redon a representation of the Edenic snake, the single eye symbolizing phallus and desire, staring at Eve? Or perhaps the cyclops is one of the mysterious נפילים (Nephilim), who in Genesis 6:1-4 desires of the daughters of Adam? The story is expanded on in aggadic literature both in Rabbinic midrash and in pseudepigrapha. There these Watchers and their progeny are giants that share some of the attributes of the Greek cyclops. In both myths, these divine figures possess useful technological knowledge. In the Book of Enoch it is the sharing of this knowledge with men that leads to the dissemination of evil on Earth. It should also be mentioned that Goliath, the foe of David singularly defeated by a single blow to the head from a slinged projectile, was characterized in midrash as the last of the race of Giants.

The Cyclops (1914) by Odilon Redon

The first modern adaptation of the cyclops must be credited to the robot Gort from the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. Here too, there seems to be some syncretism between ancient Greek and Hebraic myth, except that the technology the heavenly beings wish to share with earthkind is wholly good, and it’s only our xenophobia and paranoid tendencies which cause mayhem. Fear of subjugation and the unknown replaces the earlier myth’s fear of sexual conquest of earth women (a common enough trope in other period sci-fi films).

The slit eyed helmet of Gort seems the obvious root of the robotic fashion leading up to Urs Amann’s cover art to Klaus Schulze’s Audentity (1983). A closer antecedent influencing Amann may have been the design for the Cylon Centurions in the TV show Battlestar Galactica (the original series, 1978-1980). Pictured below, Cyrus, a Cylon from the episode “The Return of Starbuck” (aired May 5, 1980). Battlestar Gallactica was famously rife with biblical adaptations, from the wandering of the “twelve colonies” to the character of Adamah. It’s no surprise that the fecund imagination of the Mormon writer, Glen Larson, managed to stuff so much biblical myth into a show that aired at the peak of 70s fascination with UFOs and new age religion. Larson’s story of war between the civilizations of robotic Cyclons and space faring humans (developed to greater depth in Star Trek’s war withthe Borg) is another shade of the antediluvian battles described in the Book of Enoch and Jubilees.

Come to think of it, the Borg character of Hugh, rehabilitated by La Forge in the Star Trek Next Generation episode “I, Robot” (1992) totally parallels the Cylon character of Cyrus, reconstituted by Starbuck in “The Return of Starbuck.”

No discussion of mute cyclopean monsters would be complete without mentioning Maximilian, Disney’s homicidal robot from The Black Hole (December 1979). (Poor eviscerated Dr. Durant (played by Anthony Perkins), just another casualty of Disney’s adventurous post-Walt, pre-Eisner decade of dangerous entertainment experiments.)

With these antecedents in mind, looking above back to Audentity, note Amann’s translation of the cyclopean cliché from robot to human; Amann is depicting some sort alienated audiophile listening to Schulze’s Kosmiche Musik. This is the cover Schulze should have had for his 1973 album Cyborg. Here is man like machine but not as automaton — rather, man as desocialized being, completely self-centered, and focused inwardly on processing piped in audio and perhaps also visual stimulus. The commercial realization of this ideal has been evolving over the past 15 years with a profusion of (the not-yet-quite popular) head mounted displays (aka video goggles and video glasses).

Early reports of nausea and neck cramps prevented these consumer products from gaining too much popularity. Every few years gadget bloggers report that the technology has improved and that the price has dropped some. (See below, a protoype 360° immersive environment by Toshiba.)

Even as the realization of this dream has (so far) failed consumers, the obverse of this ideal has been realized in the torture of prisoners of war by our horrible Bush administration. Insanity is the natural consequence of sensory deprivation inflicted on these prisoners. (See below Jose Padilla being led to a dentist, December 2006.) Others must endure the torture playlist.

Where once the cyclopean eye represented the focal point of untold and mysterious power in the creature of Gort, in the characters  of Maximillian and the Cylon Centurions the eye is demoted to the unblinking, unwavering madness of automatons that lack free-will and empathy. The bold vision of bringing sight to the blind depicted in Star Trek’s 25th century techno-utopia is perverted at the dawn of the 21st century. In Guantanamo (and presumably elsewhere) our society brings blindness and madness to the sighted and sane (imprisoned under suspicion of terrorism).

Our blinding of presumed terrorists (officially, to prevent communication through blinking) recalls Odysseus’ blinding of the cyclops Polyphemus. But really, who now has become the myopic monster of yor, the blinder or the blind? I write with great hope that we will soon end this era of manufacturing suitable monsters, and suitable blindness.

Hopefully, in three weeks.

Some unanswered questions to inspire further exploration in the labyrinth of myth:

What do the single eyes of the cyclopes of Greek myth symbolize? The sacred inner eye turned outward? The realization and beneficence of inner knowledge expressed and realized in the outer world?

How is the cyclops eye related to the single eyes (and the lost eyes) of Odin and Ra in Norse and Egyptian mythology? Does one eye represent empathy while the other a sort of panoptic embrace of all creation? If so, which eye is lost?

Are the Cyclopes eyes related to the biblical character of Cain and the sign on his forehead? Are the extra-biblical myths of the Nephilim related to the Cyclopes who are renowned for their productive and creative capabilities?

How might the eye of the cyclops be related to the shining light of the Tzohar or the brilliant eye of the Leviathan? Is this a kind of primordial eye that has not yet been divided into two (or more) eyes at a later stage of the cosmogony?

Can the myth that masturbation leads to blindness be rooted in some sort of cyclopaean/phallic conflation? What then would the blinding of the cyclops represent for Odysseus?

Strange questions to ponder in sleep with my inner eye open in dream.

I rode my bicycle over to Ault Park today to hear Barack Obama speak. Navigating the hills and valleys of Cincinnati on a beautiful day, as it was today, is so much more preferable to huffing it to the park from a car parked a mile away. As it happened I was pretty exhausted by the time I made it up that last hill up ot the pavillion and then I had to scout around for a suitable pole for locking up my bicycle. Many folks were still arriving for the 3pm rally and to get in Obama campaign volunteers were passing out white “tickets” for attendees to fill out with their neighborhood so they could be co-opted for possible volunteer work in the next few weeks. But really, no tickets were required for attendance. At the pavillion, police had me go through a scanner and checked me for weapons.

The podium was set up in the lower yard of the park, which was pretty well filled by the time I arrived. In any case, I was on the lookout for some shade, the park goers best friend on a sunny day. I found a little nearby where the event organizers had set up a refreshments table serving water courtesy of a nearby fire hydrant and the Cincinnati Water Works. First Mayor Mallory spoke and he introduced many of the other local and state Democratic party politicians vying for office. Then Governor Strickland spoke and word of mouth spread that Obama was running late. Strickland then introduced a woman from Sharonville named Rockel Haussman (sp?). She spoke of her family’s difficulty finding work and enduring long commutes after her husband lost his job security with Ford Motor Company. A smattering of applause interrupted her story as Obama’s entourage arrived at the park. A few minutes later she introduced Obama.

I’ve heard Obama speak on television numerous times now. But here in Cincinnati I couldn’t help but be struck by his populist message. The speech was definitely oriented towards working hard on reviving the economy and he didn’t shy away from saying that we will all need to make sacrifices and take conservation seriously in order to be more frugal. I cheered when he called for promoting a public educatuion system that funded art and music classes. I remembered that critics have been calling for Obama to make an emotional connection with voters and I feel he did so when speaking about his mother arguing with insurance companies a few months before her death from ovarian cancer at the age of 53. The fight for health care against its obscene corruption by health insurance companies animated Obama.

It’s hard to estimate how many thousands of people were in attendance at the rally. At least 5,000. Possibly twice that. Later on in the day I went to Kroger’s to buy some goodies for my Yom Kippur break fast and saw an employee I had seen earlier at the rally. I said hi and asked him what he thought. He said that he missed hearing Obama speak. Because Obama was running late he said he had to leave the rally early to make sure he got to work in time. Then he told me he’s one of those undecided voters who’ll probably choose who to vote for the day of the election. I suspect that he also thought that Obama would be speaking at 3pm rather than having to endure a half hour of introductions by local pols. In any case, this rally today was a missed opportunity for him. For the rest of those assembled, most of whom were wearing some Obama merch, the rally was already preaching to the converted.

During Golden Week, Vote Today Ohio banked ~3,300 Obama votes, plus 621 voter registrations. Did we hit our ambitious 10,000 goal? No. Did we make a critical contribution in America’s #1 battleground state? Absolutely.

Our 3,300 votes were far more than just a drop in the bucket. Consider this: In Franklin County (home to Columbus), 9,264 people voted early during Golden Week. Vote Today Ohio vans (and cars and marches) moved 1,369 of them to the polls. Yes, we directly moved 14.8 percent of the early vote in Franklin County. It’s safe to assume that thousands more heard about Golden Week directly from our work. That’s powerful. We were THE game in town.

These numbers are significant since Stephen Majors of the Associated Press wrote on October 6th that first indications indicated that turnout during Golden Week was light. Majors writes, “Early returns showed about 3,000 voters in Ohio’s four largest counties took advantage of the disputed policy, a surprisingly low turnout to some elections officials.”

Considering that Monday was our busiest day by far and that Vote Today Ohio was one of only a number of groups in the state helping to turn out the vote last week, I’m pretty confident that the early returns cited by Majors presents a misleading picture of the turnout last week. Moveon and ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) were two other groups working in Hamilton County. Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State for Ohio, reported yesterday that roughly 660,000 voters were newly registered in Ohio. Obviously, only a small fraction of these banked their vote last week but from what I could tell on October 6th, the Board of Elections was busy enough to make the Republican Party here quite nervous. I’m cautiously optimistic for November 4th.

Erik Crew added up the numbers for our efforts in Cincinnati on Monday, by far our busiest day. (Erik is interviewed in this ireport video). We moved 220 votes to the Hamilton County Board of Elections on the final day of registration. Our Golden Week is over but early voting continues. One of our volunteers, Becky from the UK, is staying on and helping make daily shuttle runs from campuses to the Board of Elections. So long as I’m in town I’ll also volunteer to drive and I’m also working on cleaning up GIS data for the Obama GIS working group. Should be a busy three weeks.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to Cathy from the Washingtonrox blog who has a great summary of our effort this last week, and excellent photos of my volunteer colleagues in Cincinnati. Take a look.

]]> http://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/2008/10/vote-today-ohio-till-the-election/feed 0 http://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/2008/10/dawn-after-golden-week?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dawn-after-golden-week http://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/2008/10/dawn-after-golden-week#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:04:08 +0000 Aharon http://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/?p=322 Continue reading →]]> Yesterday the Scion xA and I got some street time shuttling students from Xavier to the Board of Elections building downtown and back. Who knew you could fit six people in that hatchback? From noon to five pm, I manned the “overflow vehicle” because our regular shuttle (a Windstar van donated for the day by fellow Cincinnati Obama supporter) was filled to capacity. (The other Ford Econoline vans rented for the day with Internet donations were operating out of Cincinnati State and the University of Cincinnati.)

While sweating out the afternoon heat parked in front of the Board of Elections waiting for my voters to return triumphant, I relaxed listening to tunes and took in the hubbub of the voters, pamphleteers, and assorted political workers milling about the place. One of these, a slim 40 something blond woman pulled up in front of me in her white sedan. I noticed a plethora of McCain bumper stickers sporting the rear of her vehicle, including the gracious, “Obama for Rockstar / McCain for President.” She zipped into the building and ten minutes later hopped back into her car and took off. She looked irate.

A few minutes later my voters returned to my car, as pleased with themselves as any voter should be this year. I asked them what the line was like and if there were any troubles. Smiling, they told me of this slim blond 40ish woman who was stalking the hall in front of the Board of Elections and shouting into her cellphone in frustration that the Board of Elections was swamped with college students and other Obama supporters.

Mmmmm… schaudenfreude. It is delicious.

This is the last day of Golden Week, the week in Ohio when the periods for voter registration and early voting overlap allowing new voters to register and vote on the same day. Our teams are working hard to make one final push to get out the vote. I made posters like the one above for Xavier University. (If you like it and want to use it feel free. Here’s the download: Election Day Is Now (poster art)).

Friday night our volunteer groups met up at Baba Budan’s Cafe near campus. There I made the acquaintance of Erik Crew, another local Cincinnatian working on this effort. He’s been writing at rubyhornet about Golden Week (“Golden What?“), his experience registering the homeless, and the issue of ex-felon disenfranchisement. Erik and I are an exception. Most of the volunteers have come in from other states (California, Michigan, Kentucky, etc.) and two are international; one traveled from Canada and another flew all the way from the UK. Their efforts are testament to the global concern for the future of this nation’s leadership.

The party at Baba Budan’s was co-sponsored by the Hip Hop Congress. Spoken word artists delivered poetry, some with dj backing. The emcee was the Divine Prince Hakeem. My ears perked up when he mentioned his connection to the Artistic Order of 144,000. The latter was the collective of my friend Obalaye Makaria. (Obalaye helped direct some funding for my research into Bond Hill’s history four years ago.) Hakeem informed me that Obalaye’s since moved to Seattle but calls in weekly to Cincinnati’s black radio station, The Buzz. I’ll be tuning in to hopefully hear from him.

Sunday morning I went with Erik to the A.M.E. Church in Bond Hill. (This is the church built at the corner of Reading Road and Seymour Ave. on the parking lot of what is now Jordan’s Crossing and formerly Swifton Commons.) Our mission: to respectfully offer our shuttle services to any congregants come later today. We stayed for the 11am service. Rarely have I known a warmer and more welcoming community. After introducing ourselves, the congregants were invited to greet us personally. I really felt their love. I also enjoyed the relaxed yet uplifting spirit created by the church choir and its excellent band. The band leader and piano player informed us that the bassist, a young fellow, would be playing with Wynton Marsalis pretty soon and everyone gave him a nice applause. The band leader also announced a group of black youth called the Ritz Chamber Players who will be performing with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on October 9th. He invited everyone to attend the concert and udged everyone to develop an eclectic taste in all sorts of musical styles including classical and hip hop in addition to gospel and rock and roll.

Reverend Alphonse Allen preached about the necessity of striving to improve even when you feel comfortable where you’re at. In developing this idea he used the story in Deuteronomy of God commanding the Israelites to prepare to take possession of the land of Canaan while they camped on the east side of the Jordan after their 40 years of travel in the wilderness. In Jewish circles I think I’ve heard the same idea developed but from the command of God to Abram to lech l’cha l’artzecha, go out to a land that he will show you. Thinking about it, there’s a good parallel between the two stories in Genesis and Deuteronomy. Below is an image I gleaned of their lovely sanctuary.

9/30: 380 votes
10/1: 429 votes, plus 121 new registrations
10/2: 449 votes, plus 306 new registrations
10/3: 776 votes, plus 391 new registrations

That’s 2,034 total votes cast statewide since Tuesday. If we assume that each field team has a shuttle van that leaves every hour from 9am-3pm, and that every van has 7 seats, then 2,034 voters have cast out of a possible 5,880. In other words we’re getting close to 35% of our capacity. The stats aren’t broken down by peak hours but I’d hazard a guess that we’re hitting nearly 60% of our capacity from 11am-2pm.

I’m OK with these figures and buoyed by the upward slope of the stats. I’ll tell you why. Early voting doesn’t commence Monday with the end of voter registration in Ohio (when “Golden Week” is over). Ohioans can continue to vote at Early Voting Centers until Monday, November 3rd. More than directly increasing voter turnout, this week probably did more for simply generating a good vibe among college students (and their friends and families by word of mouth) that they’ve already helped make a difference in this Election.

ELECTION DAY IS NOW. From my own experience talking to folk on campuses, plenty of voters simply wanted to know the address of the Early Voting Center in Hamilton County (it’s the Board of Elections office at 824 Broadway Street in Downtown Cincinnati, 2nd Floor) so that they could get down there on their own at their convenience. I also heard the best reason for voting early when a voter (pictured above) convinced a friend to vote at our table, “Vote today ’cause November 4th might be cold!” Word.

In these stats, we may also be seeing the outcome of the intense new voter registration efforts by groups like moveon.org. From the stats above, it looks like a little over half of the voters we’ve shuttled had already registered. There is plenty to be enthusiastic about in this race but from the level of enthusiasm I saw among our college students at Cincinnati State University this week, I’d wager that many of these were newly registered voters.

Yesterday, I finished the t-shirts I promised the Cincinnati early voting teams. This is the first stencil I’ve made and below is the result. What do you think? We didn’t have enough teams or volunteers to justify a silk screen, thus these lo-fi spray painted shirts.

For those wondering how to do this

I didn’t have a frame to reduce splatter around the stencil, so I wrapped the t-shirt over a slightly smaller cardboard sheet I cut from a box. By laying the t-shirts flat over the backing I was able to adjust the shirt for where I wanted the image and then wrapped the sides and back of the shirt around and underneath the cardboard. By the way, if you’d like to download this stencil and make your own shirts, I have it available for download. Link: VOTE TODAY OHIO T-SHIRT STENCIL ART.

Vote Today Ohio at Cincinnati State University

Today I met with my field team at Cincinnati State University where I was put to work politely asking passing students, custodial workers, faculty, and staff whether they’d like to “Vote Today” and explaining the advantages of early voting and submitting an absentee ballot in person (rather than by mail). Quite a few signed up for our shuttle service to the local Early Voting Center at Hamilton County’s Board of Elections Office (824 Broadway St., google map link). When our 11am van filled to capacity I was thrilled.

For sure there’s no way to know how folks will vote once they are given their absentee ballot to fill out, but Vote Today Ohio is hoping that they’ll vote for Obama. Thus the focus on frequently under-represented voting blocks: college students, the homeless, and ex-felons (who are forbidden to vote in Florida, among other states), to help swell Obama’s numbers in this key swing state. (See here, for more on Ohio’s voting rights and regulations.

Can you tell how pleased I am to be working on this project? I was hoping to do something for this campaign. This summer I was hoping someone would respond to my invitation to do GIS work for Obama gratis. Some of my proudest work in Louisiana involved the canvassing maps I drew up for David Brown, a Baton Rouge lawyer and progressive candidate for the State Legislature’s District 67. But even before I learned GIS, I’ve tried to help wherever I could. Back in 2004, when I moved to DC and began working at the Trust for Public Land, I was happy to find a little volunteer niche at the DNC party HQ regularly sorting giant binders of scanned and copied checks for their donation vetting department.

(A digression. Amazing the friends you make working shoulder to shoulder for these races. At the DNC I met Chris Kinsei, a Zen Buddhist monk who had recently left the Mt. Shasta monastery that had been his home for the previous 25 years. Twenty five years of contemplating peace gave him a hunger for pursuing peace in our world. In the last four years since Bush won, Chris has gone on to build a life teaching folk, getting married, and studying to become a nurse. A great guy if ever you should meet him.)

In 2000, I worked as a citizen reporter for the IMC covering the (unfortunately now typical) police abuses of political demonstrations at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia and nearly got arrested while talking on my cell phone and delivering this story from Market Street. My work on national political campaigns began by canvassing to elect former California governor Jerry Brown President in 1992.

Besides watching the VP debate, tonight I get to make some snappy t-shirts for my fellow volunteers to wear. My hope is that they’ll be good enough to become a budget conscious hipster’s proud thrift store discovery.

I want to thank Linda Everhart and Helen Goodman for helping me to volunteer work and attend the conference. Linda’s son Ian, recently returned to the States from Honduras, had pretty much everything under control from the technical side, so besides session monitoring, my job was pretty easy. I mostly backed him up at critical moments. (Looking forward to seeing Ian at work registering Ohio voters in the next couple of weeks.)

Back in Cincinnati, electricity is restored but the cable feeding our house Internet access is still down. So I’m writing this from Sitwells, my favorite coffeehouse in Clifton near the University of Cincinnati, rather than from my usual hermitage in the wilds of North Avondale. This will put a cramp in my blogging up my notes from the rest of the conference but I hope to complete this by the end of the week. Here’s just a brief rundown of what I’ll be writing about:

The No Child Left Inside Act, and the movement that links childhood recreation, nature education, parks, and open space conservation. One of the exciting themes I found at this conference was the search for a driving issue that promotes better park funding and resonates across a broad and bipartisan constituency of voters, interest groups, and politicians. That issue seems to have been discovered by linking parks with the desire to give children the freedom to explore their childhood outside, and a genuine fear rooted in nostalgia, that too many kids are absolutely disconnected from nature. (Unfortunately I didn’t hear enough talk linking this issue with Smart Growth and land use, since the pervasive sprawl of low-density housing subdivisions has forced children to constantly rely on their parent’s cars, and thus their parents, to meet friends and visit places.) Have you read Rosa Park’s article at the LA Times on “the erosion of free, unstructured outdoor play”? This issue connects with the parenting movement to nurture more independent minded children unshackled from media conditioned fear of their absuction by strangers. Back in April of this year Mark Frauenfelder and Cory Doctorow began posting about this parents movement. See Mark’s post on Lenore Skenazy’s article on her letting her 9 year old ride the subway alone here and Cory’s post on Free Range Kids here. Luis Acosta, Richard Dolesh, and Richard Louv all remarked on this topic. I’m excited to be seeing the dots connected.

On the Economic Value of Parks. The search for better ways to communicate both the tangible and intangible values of urban parks continues. Besides the critical importance of nature awareness in benefiting the process of childhood maturation, park professionals and advocates are still struggling to realize a common set of instructions for calculating the economic benefits of parks. We need absolutely need a more academically oriented conference that brings together consultants and academic park researchers to begin nailing down some industry standards and doing some peer review on this topic. In general I want to see more rigour attached to this question since park departments are already looking for someone to provide this analysis. Luis Acosta proposed the idea of a “Green Line” akin to the Poverty Line, to determine the minimal amount of greenspace needed to live healthfully. How can this be studied by psychologists? It seems more practical to first nail down the Green Line in terms of the seven economic benefits already proposed by Peter Harnik in his work at the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence. The issue of economic values for parks is regularly published on in academic journals. Since academic journals are not easily accessible (or their indexes easily searchable) by non-academic professionals, I believe there is a dire need to bridge the practitioner-academic divide here.

On the trailblazing park work being done in NYC. I had the fortune of monitoring the session moderated by Peter Harnik entitle “When the Rubber Meets the Green: Cars in Parks.” Harnik gave an overview of worst and best practices across the country, shining a light on his exceptional and broad grasp of the diverse solutions park architects and transportation planners have wrestled with when visioning the best use of available open space. Barry Bessler of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park Commission provided the specific example of the road closures along the Schuylkill River Park greenway. Lastly, Andy Wiley-Schwartz, fomerly of Project for Public Spaces, gave an amazing presentation on the new work initiated by NYC’s Department of Transportation in reclaiming the open commons and asphalt of city streets into plazas and parks. Wiley-Schwartz’s work frankly blew my mind. Looking forward to researching and writing more on this. He’s only been there a little over a year and so many good things to show for it.

Besides these topics I also want to write about my experience in Pittsburgh, on my bicycle adventure along the Ohio River last Sunday. I also enjoyed a dérive of downtown Pittsburgh Monday night with Bernard Luyiga, a city councilman from Kampala, Uganda. He was at the conference in order to learn more about parks and preserving public space. With Google Earth, Luyiga showed me acres of public park land in Kampala that had been appropriated for private development by government officials in league with developers.

I’ve taken bunches of pics so I have to upload them first now available here.

Luis Garden Acosta, founder of El Puente, a community based human rights and environmental organization in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, and recipient of the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, provided a rousing keynote address, “Parks: The Common Ground for Democracy and All Human Rights.” The speech was notable for spurring the largely non-Latino audience of park advocates and professionals to stand up and chant “el pueblo unido jamás será vencido.” Acosta stressed the importance of creating broad alliances between diverse community and ethnic groups in order to effectively advocate for community health issues. He honestly described the challenges of reaching out to Chasidic community leaders in Williamsburg and was surprisingly blunt in describing the tensions between the Latino and Chasidic communities there. More detailed notes of his speech are below.

Tupper Thomas, administrator for Prospect Park, president of the Prospect Park Alliance, and board chair of the City Parks Alliance introduced the speakers. Thomas credited Meg Cheever, founder and president of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, for the genesis and vision behind the conference five years ago. She then introduced Gary Saulson, Director of Corporate Realty Services for PNC Financial Services Group, noting approvingly Saulson’s disapproval of using pesticides in his home lawn care. PNC is a major philanthopist for city park facilities in Pittsburgh and internationally touts the most LEED certified buildings of any megacorp. It’s nice to see a corporation that sports its plumage by way of showing off its LEED certifications and aesthetic sensibilities in landscape architecture. Saulson was particularly proud to show off two downtown “gateway” parks in Pittsburgh that it has designed, PNC Firstside Park (completed) and PNC Triangle Park (still in its design phase).

PNC Firstside Park (image below) was developed on the site of the former Pittsburgh Public Safety Building, an “insignificant building of no historical importance” according to Saulson. PNC purchased the site from the city for an undisclosed but admittedly exorbitant amount after negotiations. Saulson was pleased to describe the deconstruction of the building, where rather than conventional demolition, the building was taken apart and its constituent building materials (steel, cement, etc.) recycled or repurposed. I had only previously heard of this sort of process occuring in Japan so it was wonderful to know that PNC was promoting this best practice as well.

PNC Firstside Park, Pittsburgh, PA

The 1.5 acre, PNC Firstside Park looks amazing, but I also think that the desire to have a corporate park, albeit public park, in front of their downtown building speaks to me as a way of incorporating a bit of an suburban office park image within the city. But hey, they can afford it, and so long as it is a truly public park, freely accessible as a public commons, why should anyone complain. On the contrary, this sort of expensive park planning by a private entity is extremely laudable.

PNC Triangle Park (rendering below) was also billed by Saulson as a “gateway” park. I’m never really impressed by the use of these buzzwords, but again, no one can really argue wth the public asset that PNC will be providing. Kudos to them.

PNC Triangle Park (rendering)

After Saulson, Thomas introduced Richard Dolesh, Director of Policy, National Recreation and Park Association. Dolesh provided a brief historical summary of the organization, and in particular I noted that the NRPA is just the latest incarnation of an org with roots in the late 19th century. The current NRPA was created in the 1960s and I’m interested to note how the focus of the org has changed over the last century from urban to suburban. Dolesh pleaded with the conference attendees to recognize the dire need for more park advocacy and lobbying noting that the federal Urban Parks Recreation and Recovery Act (1978) that provided matching funds for urban park maintenance has been dead for the past seven years. He did note one recent success, the No Child Left Inside Act, passed by the House of Representatives last week. This call for urgent advocacy from the leading umbrella org for park professionals and friend-of-park advocates, provided a good segue to Acosta’s keynote address.

Below are my casual notes from his speech. Personal commentary is in brackets. More substantial criticisms follow.

***

Acosta brings greetings from “the People’s Republic of Brooklyn and the ‘hipster capitol’ of Williamsburg.” While recently in Beijing, Acosta is surprised to find a Chinese news report about Williamsburg. The news report does not mention how the neighborhood’s diverse population also includes a substantial number of Chasidim and Latinos. [Acosta is a community activist who has been active in the neighborhood since the late 70s, way before the influx of hipsters in the 90s.]

Acosta talks about the late 70s when south Williamsburg was an extremely dangerous and largely Latino neighborhood. A teenage gang capitol. A crack capitol. [Crack in the late 70s?]. The organization Acosta created, El Puente (The Bridge) initiated a program to bring gang members on weekend retreats boating down whitewater rapids. After experiences like this, gang leaders wanted to do more with their life than market drugs. [Acosta's work in El Puente during this period is what brought him recognition though the Heinz Award in 1984.]

Acosta brings three examples of neighborhood coalitions that have made an important difference in health, youth and family service and crime.

1) Outward Bound. Simple objective: playing touch football in George Washington Plaza park. Major problem was that the park was a major venue for drug dealing and thus dangerous for recreation, [least of all because of all the scattered glass vials littering the park]. Question was how to confront the problem but avoid violence with the drug dealers. Outward Bound organized protest days for three straight years that combined community shame with having this drug park with a call to city action to clean up the park. They used the symbolism of the statue of George Washington’s horse, the ass half of which faced the park center, to make the case that the city’s attitude towards the park was disrespectful and the park needed redesign. Newspaper photos of the ass also showed the graffiti and crack vials on and below the statue. After the thrid year, the park commissioner consented and the park was redesigned. [Significantly, the most important design change was not the reorientation of Washinton's horse's ass but the removal of the high walls surrounding the park that made the park feel unsafe. Clear sight lines remain an important design component for both the psychological perception of safety and functional application of surveillance and law enforcement in a public commons.]

2) Apologies for not capturing enough detail on Acosta’s second example, the clearance of a vacant lot (I think ) piled with two stories of garbage. Not clear on the name of the coalition or group responsible. The site is now a public park and community garden, but first the garbage had to be cleared by community volunteers and the toxic topsoil completely removed and replaced. Veggies grown in the garden are now sold at local corner groceries and bodegas.

3) [Acosta's third example was by far the most sensational as well as the most recent.] A group called the Toxic Avengers fights NYC and the state for the removal of a neighborhood storage facility for chemical and nuclear toxic waste owned by Radiac Research Corpoaration. Since the 1960s, Radiac had housed the waste onsite in barrel storage. The design of the facility was not up to code — jst one example of many, the only door out of building in case of a fire was through nuclear side of storage buidling. Folks living on block didn’t know this facility even existed and to what degree they were at risk in case of an accidental fire and explosion. There was no bureaucratic lever to close it down and the facility seemed grandfathered into its current location. According to officials the facility could never have been licensed today. The Toxic Avengers mobilized much of the community and especially its church leadership. They made note on the sidewalk and roadways in a growing radius around the facility how many seconds they had to live before being engulfed in a toxic cloud if an explosion were to occur. The Toxic Avengers achieved success in getting Radiac to give up license. They successfully lobbied the state legislature to sponsor legislation to disallow toxic storage in the manner that had been permitted.

The success of this action led to an important grassroots effort to oppose a large garbage transfer station envisioned by former mayor (Guiliani?) along their waterfront. The community wanted a viable park there instead, and the community got this park approved. Acosta  was especially proud to note that even the Chasidim love to use this park. [This seemed to relate to tensions later described between the Chasidim and community activist groups in Williamsburg that Acosta goes int o detail a short time later.]

Acosta returns to the general theme of his speech. [When community activists make a case before city and state government they need to pose the issue as representing a holistic response to numerous problems, rather than as a "parks issue" because doing so will translate very quickly into a parks budget versus health services budgetary question by bureaucrats. Community activists must dodge this sort of categorization.] The issues is not parks vs. health or parks vs. education funding. Acosta says “green and open spaces is the fundamental connection. It is what makes us human.”

Acosta calls “a fundamental human rights issue: to be one with nature.” Acosta’s mother was “ripped” out of rural, idyllic Puerto Rico in the 1930s and dropped into concrete Fort Green the most concentrated and dense housing project in the world. Having been one with nature in Puerto Rico, she managed to remain one with nature in her housing project despite her poverty. Filled her apartment with plants. Acosta says “the earth is within us, we have to connect all the time.” We must oppose “the insatiable force for brick and mortar development.”

“We are living in a crisis but not of financial systems: it is a crisis of our humanity.” Acosta asks, “what kind of a human being are we becoming? Come to NYC and see what the future of the country is today!” [This remark perplexes me. The country is in more peril from unrestricted urban sprawl, not the exceptional population densities of megacities like New York. The transformation of rural countryside into privatised lawn space of low density disconnected automobile-oriented housing subdivisions is the most present danger to an accessible open public commons. This is not to say that residents in concentrated urban neighborhoods do not need more greenspace. They need more absolutely, and they need their existing parks to be well maintained to preserve them as facilities from the stress of their overuse. They also need many many more greenroofs!]

Those of us who work to reclaim brownfields are part of a “green resistance, championing connecting to the earth.” Acosta proclaims, “we are radicals. we need to become revolutionaries!” [This is a call to arms. I am surprised by the tone of this language and wondering how it will go over with my colleagues.] Acosta continues, “(parks) are essential to our humanity. We need to reinvigorate our movement.” Acosta calls for standards for how much greenspace a human needs to live healthfully. He compares this with the issue of poverty. “From Presidents JFK and Johnson we learned that we are as strong as our weakest link.” After researching the issue of poverty, policy makers introduced the idea of a poverty threshold. If you don’t obtain a certain amount of money you cannot sustain your life in this society, and this became known as the poverty line. Louise suggests a “green line” or minimal daily requirement for open space. “Demand it!” he exclaims to applause.

[Acosta returns to the coalition to remove the Radiac facility from Williamsburg and how it led to a a coalition to oppose a toxic waste incinerator in the neighborhood.] Explains Acosta, there was a “No talk protocol between Chasidic leadership and Hispanic leaders.” The chasidim in the neighborhood controlled key community assets from housing to public schools. Acosta brings up corruption among Chassidim. 6 million dollars stolen and documented. Vigilante Chasidim beating up Blacks in the neighborhood, even Black cops. [Could Acosta be referencing the recent shameful beating of a Black policemen by Chasidic vigilante thugs in Crown Heights??? Crown Heights is not Williamsburg! Also the Chasidim of Williamsburg are Satmar and in Crown Heights they are Lubavitch. But whatever. For Acosta, this nuance may be irrelevant for this speech. Acosta later explained to me that the Satmar vigilantes had beaten up a Black policemen in the early 90s and that he wasn't referring to the recent assault on a black patrolman in Crown Heights by Lubavitch vigilantes.] Acosta continues, “They (the Chasidim) controlled the housing, controlled the schools regardless of there being no Chasidic kids in the schools.” Really dangerous tensions existed  between the communities. And no communication on any level. But for this issue with Radiac there was a dire need for a broad representative coalition that included the Chasidim. What to do?

Acosta went to the Jewish Community Relations Council and its associate executive director and director of government relations, David M. Pollack. [UPDATE: According to The Activist's Handbook: A Primer (p. 86), El Puente contacted Rabbi David Neiderman and the Jewish org was United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. David Pollack emailed me to clarify the story today: Pollack was the one who introduced Neiderman to Acosta. Pollack writes, "I brought Garden Acosta and Niederman together using the argument that Hispanic and Hasidic children would glow in the dark equally if  there should be a mishap at Radiac. I also managed to bring Rabbi Niederman and David Pagan of Los Sures together in a joint development project."] In Acosta’s telling, when the Rabbi arrived at El Puente’s headquarters after asking “will I be safe?” from violence visiting a largely Hispanic community forum, Acosta ensured his safety and the rabbi was welcomed by the Latinos with overwhelming love. (The work of Pollack and the arrival of Neiderman signaled a sea change in relations between the Chasidim and Latino groups in Williamsburg. [More on this in a 1994 article in the New York Times.]

The outcome of this coming together was a Community Alliance for the Environment. The coalition to stop 55 story incinerator (that was already legislated, designed, and planned) included Chasidim and Latinos and Italians and Poles. Then Governor Pataki was lobbied to overturn the law to build the incinerator. The coalition succeeded. Acosta is effuesive in describing his joy in watching a 15 years old Chasidic youth chanting in broken Spanish El pueblo unido jamás será vencido alongside a 15 year old Latino youth who was very patiently teaching him how to pronounce the words.

Acosta concludes, “This (Park advocacy) is a struggle and not a delicate matter. We must be militant! We must be radical.” We all stand up and say El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.

***

Thus ends the first evening of the conference. Just a few notes on Acosta’s address. First of all, I believe that Acosta’s important community work needs to be celebrated and extolled as a banner for bridge building between disconnected communities. I also wish he prefaced his examples with the year that these coalitions took place. It was only the occasional detail, like the fact that they were lobbying former Governor Pataki, that clued me in that the example he had mentioned took place over a decade ago.

Besides Acosta’s concern that the future of the U.S. will look like Lewis Mumford’s 1950s dystopic vision of a concretized necropolis, I was taken by surprise by Acosta’s call for park supporters to think of themselves as “Green Militants.” I just don’t understand how appropriating the term militant to describe even an idealized passion for our advocacy can help the parks movement. I understand that in the context of his speech he was trying to rev up the audience in how they perceive themselves. I just don’t think that sort of language even helps park advocates and professionals identify their own work as environmentalists in a useful way. Yes we are environmental professionals and some of us even share his particularly romantic environmental perspective. I think I understand where he’s coming from but I don’t share in his call for identifying as radical or militant. I want environmentalism to be completely and totally mainstream, and the perception of environmentalism as a fringe philosophy plays into the politics of the enemies of environmentalism. And in any case, I believe the idea of environmental work as radical is at odds with current public perception — especially after Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq raised awareness of the related issues of overreliance on fossil fuels and global climate change.

I’m excited to be going and especially to see some of my old colleagues from the Trust for Public Land that will be attending. But in a deeper sense, working at this conference and networking with other folk passionate about parks will be a return for me to an intention that motivated me to change my career six years ago.

Rewind the cosmic clock and half a decade ago you’ll find me riding a bicycle along the Schuylkill River Park greenway in Philadelphia and wondering how I could possibly reciprocate for the wonderful space that anonymous civic philanthopists, city planners, and landscape architects had provided for me to re-create myself on that beautiful day. The answer I came up with was studying to become a city planner myself, and two years later after writing a thesis and finishing a ton of work, I was awarded a degree in city planning. Still focused on parks I found a job with Peter Harnik at the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land, a research internship that last a year.

But for the past two and a half years I haven’t been focused on parks. Following the hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, I moved down to Louisiana to cut my teeth as a planning practitioner, first for a FEMA contractor in rural southwestern Louisiana, and afterwords for an engineering firm in Baton Rouge. During that time I gained enough experience to apply to take the AICP exam and passed. And now that I’ve returned from Louisiana, I’m once again looking to get back into working for city parks, as a city planner in a parks department, or in some other capacity as an open space or trails planner.

I’ve also been looking into programs that focus on green building and construction. What I discovered in Louisiana is that experience matters. However exciting green technology or environmental best practices sounds to a young planner, the tried and conventional modes ossified in regional expectations are a nearly impossible barrier if you can’t speak with firsthand experience to how practical a different approach might be.

A moment of transition and opportunity. This next year should be interesting. I’ll keep you informed.

This rang true for me on a personal level. A digression. I know close relatives who tacked towards Orthodoxy because for them it represented a more authentic experience of a Jewish identity they had not known or assimilated when they were younger. I can understand how for initiates, playing by the traditional conventions and standards makes more sense than playing some other variant of the game adapted by heterodox reformers or revolutionaries. This is what an “authentic experience” is after all. First, you learn to play by the regular rules. After a few years of getting used to the imaginary world and its rules, you can maybe make up your own rational mind whether the game play is lacking or needs some tweaking. Some other cats take this role playing so seriously that rather than stop playing they actually do try and adapt the game. This of course raises the ire of the old gamers and creates real tension between practitioners adapted to one of the now forked rulesets. So long as no one gets hurt, there should be nothing wrong with these typical frustrations. So long as no one gets hurt, there should be nothing to worry about with this sort of role playing.

There’s more to say about religion as role playing game. About preoccupations with identity versus more relevant concerns. About the search for meaning and the role of myth and fraternity in ferrying a mediocre simulacra thereof. More to say than I can or want to in one post, so that is all for now. The same can also be said alas for Mind Flayers.

Ghost Recon begins in 2008, with civil unrest in Russia. Ultra-nationalists have seized power in Moscow, with plans to rebuild the Iron Curtain. Their first step is clandestine support of rebel factions in Georgia and the Baltic States.

During the first few missions of the game, the Ghosts battle South Ossetian rebel forces from the north of Georgia, who are harassing the legitimate government and its allies. The Ghosts fight in the forests, on farms, and in villages while assisting their NATO allies in fighting the enemy. Unfortunately, the Russian government complains to the United Nations that the Americans have interfered in their affairs, and eventually they send in their army to aid the South Ossetian rebels. The U.S. cannot hope to stop the Russian Army from invading Georgia, so the Ghosts slow down the invading forces so that their allies can evacuate. Eventually, the Ghosts are all that’s left of the U.S. forces in Georgia, and they evacuate by SH-60 Seahawk helicopter on the rooftop of the American Embassy in T’bilisi, just barely avoiding the Russian forces. The Georgian government flees to Geneva and sets up a government-in-exile. Sadly, with the fall of T’bilisi, Georgia surrenders and is forcefully incorporated into the RDU.

We can only hope that this war doesn’t continue to play out as the game writers imagined it might. I’m no expert on these matters but I suspect that regardless of Georgia’s invitation to NATO membership earlier this year, the U.S. won’t be fielding special forces in Georgia that are already deployed in the Middle East and the Hindu Kush. Read more of Ghost Recon’s plot summary at the wikipedia.

UPDATE: From Russia’s perspective, Georgia is a proxy power of the U.S. on its southern border, so it might be something of a propoganda coup to capture U.S. Special forces or NATO troops fighting in the interests of Georgia. Thinking of this, I’m unsure what to make of the following story which has so far not been picked up by Western news media outlets (as of Sunday night 10PM EST):

Russian news media site Rosbalt (Google translation) is reporting that Russia has captured a U.S. citizen among a group of Georgian sabatouers that had “committed a group suicide.” Another news site Izvestia (Google Translation) identifies the American as a NATO instructor and reports that “among the corpses in Tskhinvali was found several bodies of black people who fought on the side of Georgia.” According to Rosbalt, the citizen is currently being held for interrogation in Vladikavkaz (capitol of Northern Ossetia). (There is a photo of a soldier in this article, but it looks like a stock photo lifted from somewhere else.)

Do sabatouers commit group suicide upon fearing capture? Should the bodies of “black people” be assumed to be the bodies of U.S. mercenaries? This all seems very suspicious to me.

Then I noticed that the ipods had album shuffle. The new players from Cowon and Archos did not, nor any others that fancied themselves as ipod competitors. But I still wasn’t convinced to buy an ipod yet. My trusty if heavy and slow Archos had a (then enormous) 100gb hard drive that I had installed myself and the largest ipod then available was 60gb. Ahh, but just before my birthday Apple announced their release of a new 160gb ipod. I was won over. Soon I gifted myself with a new Ipod Classic 160gb.

iPod Management

When it arrived, the ipod’s hard drive came formatted with Apple’s native file system, HFS Plus (HFS+). As the Windows operating systems cannot natively read HFS+ drives and my Thinkpad runs Windows XP, iTunes reformatted the ipod with FAT32, a file system engineered by Microsoft. At the time I didn’t think too much of HFS+ vs. FAT32, I was just happy that the ipod was working. And so, I put all concerns about file fragmentation and the need to periodically defrag FAT32 volumes to the side, and got to work filling the ipod up with good music and videos.

Over the last year I’ve learned how to corrupt my ipod’s database (and how to fix it painlessly) by avoiding iTunes as much as possible. iTunes had the advantage of supporting Album shuffle, but I preferred to use Winamp with the Album List plug-in for listening to albums on my computer. I had some success using Floola (which does not support Album shuffle) and Floola is my choice ipod manager on my Linux boxen. But on my Thinkpad running Windows XP, I was more interested in whether there were any plug-ins for Winamp that could suffice as a fully featured alternative to iTunes.

Looking at Winamp I discovered that it supported iPods through a plug-in bundled with the Winamp installer called pmp_ipod. Trying it out I was underwhelmed by its poor support of album cover art on the ipod, a feature I had really come to love. Then I discovered ml_ipod — an open source winamp plugin written by independent developers that could do (almost) everything pmp_ipod could do but better. The only thing I would need iTunes for would be for occasional firmware updates. ml_ipod support was fairly well documented on an online wiki and any further questions could be pursued on an active support forum hosted at Winamp. I’ve been using ml_ipod since January and have donated money to the further development of the plug-in.

File Fragmentation in FAT32 vs. HFS+

A few weeks ago I began to wonder again what my ipod’s FAT32 volume file fragmentation looked like. Unsurprisingly, after tens of thousands of file transfers, the ipod’s music, video, database and artwork files were critically fragmented according to Diskeeper, a windows defrag tool. A fragmented file system meant that my ipod needed to work harder and slower than it should have to. The answer to a fragmented ipod file system isn’t defragging it though. Ever wonder whether you should defrag your ipod? Don’t waste your time. Defragmenting an ipod over USB takes a LONG time. It is much much faster to simply do a full restore from your computer’s existing archive of music. (Before doing so, make sure you have an archive of all your iPod’s music.)

Even after I initialized and reloaded my FAT32 ipod, I found that the the iTunes database of music files as well as the artwork database of cover art were still fragmented — just less so. I began to explore what benefits there might be to manage the ipod with its original HFS+ over FAT32. I was impressed to find that HFS+ drives do not suffer from the same fragmentation problems as FAT32 drives. As this comparison of file systems shows, the main reason for the lack of fragmentation in HFS+ is because unlike FAT32, HFS+ supports Extents. Wikipedia explains:

An extent is a contiguous area of storage in a computer file system, reserved for a file. When starting to write to a file, a whole extent is allocated. When writing to the file again, possibly after doing other write operations, the data continues where the previous write left off. This reduces or eliminates file fragmentation.

Additionally, because HFS+ was specifically engineered to minimize disk access and quickly access individual files, its specific utility for the iPod seems obvious. This specific advantage of HFS+ over FAT32 was summarized well by the user, “Millenium,” over on the macnn web forum in a 2006 thread on HFS+ vs. FAT32:

You may hear that HFS+ is slower than FAT32. That’s true in some cases, but not in others. In particular, HFS+ does not do very well in tasks where you need to access many small files at once…

For looking up individual files, however, HFS+ is actually one of the fastest filesystems out there, and has been for a long time. This all comes from the way that HFS+ stores its data: when you’re working with relatively few files it’s better, but when you’re working with many files at once it isn’t as good. It’s a design tradeoff, and whether it will be better or worse for you in this regard really depends on how you use your computer.

The original Macintosh File System (MFS, from which HFS and then HFS+ directly descend) was created in an era when most people used floppies to store all of their data. The same is true of FAT16, which is where FAT32 comes from. Apple’s engineers decided that since floppies were so slow, people and applications would try to minimize disk access in general, and so they optimized their filesystem to work best under those conditions. It worked extraordinarily well for the time, and even today there aren’t many better filesystems for people who work under those conditions.

In other words, one of the best file systems available for the iPod is HFS+ (especially compared with FAT32). Unfortunately, FAT32 is not a comparable alternative to HFS+. FAT32′s presence as an alternative file system for the ipod simply reflects the lack of support in Windows OSes for the more advanced HFS+ file system.

Perils of FAT32 to HFS+ Conversion

As a result of learning this, I became increasingly interested in converting my FAT32 ipod to HFS+. Besides fragmentation and reliability, I also wondered if a change in ipod file systems might affect the file transfer speed over USB 2.0. File transfer speeds over USB 2.0 with my FAT32 formatted ipod averaged around 6000 kB/s. Would HFS+ perform worse or better?

General information on converting the iPod from FAT32 to HFS+ was plainly lacking and specific recommendations advised iPod users to accept FAT32. I was on my own. To access HFS+ formatted drive volumes on Windows I’d need to install special software like MacDrive by Mediafour. So to begin, I downloaded the MacDrive software and formatted my ipod to HFS+. So far so good. I wanted to make certain that my firmware was installed correctly so I proceeded to initialize my ipod with iTunes, and then re-transfer my mp3s and mp4s to the newly formatted ipod with winamp + ml_ipod. This seemed to work fine (although I didn’t see any discernible change in file transfer speeds). But afterward, I was surprised to find that my ipod was still formatted with FAT32! I soon learned that as part of its restore sequence, iTunes for PC will automatically format HFS+ formatted ipods with a FAT32 file system. It also copies ipod for PC firmware that seems tailored specifically for FAT32.

In my next attempt, I reformatted the ipod to HFS+ with Macdrive, ignored iTunes altogether, and did a full restore with ml_ipod in winamp onto the Ipod. ml_ipod recognized the drive and transferred the files. This time the file transfer speed was much higher: 9500 kB/s vs. 6000 kB/s. I was impressed but once the transfer completed, I found the ipod would not recognize any of the files that had been transferred. The itunesDB database was not corrupt and the actual data files were all present so what could be the problem? Was it a problem with the iPod’s firmware not being able to read HFS+?

I found the answer on a wiki page written for Gentoo Linux users on how to update ipod firmware. Simply formatting the ipod’s drive to HFS+ would not work because HFS+ formatted ipods have three partitions: the first partition contains the partition table, the second partition the ipod for mac firmware, and the third partition the media files and databases. (FAT32 formatted ipods have two partitions: a hidden one for the ipod for pc firmware, and the other for the media.) The ability to create these HFS+ partitions on the iPod aren’t available on Windows, even with MacDrive. MacDrive can format a disk to HFS+ but does not provide the ability to create three separate partitions on the disk. And to make the ipod work, I would also need the correct ipod firmware installed in its respective partition. Could iTunes solve the problem? iTunes for PC will neither create the three HFS+ partitions nor copy anything but ipod for PC firmware to a FAT32 partition. The only solution I could imagine for copying the correct firmware and creating the correct partitions would be by connecting my ipod to a computer running OS X and restoring my iPod using iTunes for Macintosh.

So iPod USB cable in hand, I visited my friend Isaac S. and his Macbook, and soon afterward I had a functioning ipod with the correct HFS+ partitions and firmware. (Thanks Isaac!) Back home, I found that with MacDrive installed on my Thinkpad, ml_ipod and winamp had no difficulty recognizing the HFS+ volume. Transfer speeds hovered mid 8000 kB/s. Success!

The conversion did not come without any caveats. After the full transfer was completed I did notice that there was less free space available on the ipod. The ipod with HFS+ used approximately 5% more storage for the same files than when it was formatted with FAT32. (116gb/FAT32 vs. 122gb/HFS+ out of 148gb total.) I don’t know why, but perhaps it has something to do with the extents allocated for each file in HFS+ (described above). (See update below on this weird problem.)

Because ml_ipod was designed to restore fat32 formatted ipods, I don’t think I’ll be able to use ml_ipod’s “restore or initialize ipod” feature anymore, nor will I be able to rely on iTunes for PC for the occasional firmware update. Rather than buy a whole new Apple computer for this task, I’m looking at vmware workstation, an emulation environment that I can run OS X on within Windows. Another option is to use another piece of software by Mediafour called Xplay.

Conclusion

I hope this story helps anyone else out there wondering whether to get their FAT32 ipods converted back to HFS+ (and how exactly to go about doing that). I think it’s a worthwhile project because of the advantages that HFS+ provides in speed and reliability over FAT32, the lack of file fragmentation in HFS+, and some moderate file transfer speed advantages. The disadvantages  are the need to purchase HFS+ software for Windows like MacDrive and no longer being able to depend on iTunes for firmware updates or ml_ipod for occasional full restore and ipod initialization. (You can probably get around the latter problems by installing Mac OS X in a vmware emulation, but then you’d need to buy a copy of vmware workstation and OS X as well. Or you can buy a mac mini, macbook, or other Apple computer.) If this doesn’t faze you, then you should also expect that due to differences between the two file systems, that HFS+ will utilize more storage space on your ipod than FAT32. On my ipod, HFS+ used 5% more drive space with the same files loaded onto it.

If you want to run an HFS+ formatted ipod on a PC running Windows, follow these steps:

1. If your ipod is formatted FAT32, restore it using iTunes for Mac on a friend’s Macintosh computer. (iTunes for PC will only format your ipod to FAT32.)
2. Install HFS+ reading/writing software for Windows like MacDrive by Mediafour.
3. Optional but recommended: Install ml_ipod for winamp and transfer your files to your HFS+ formatted ipod.

In the comments please let me know if you’ve found other ways to partition ipods correctly for HFS+ without using iTunes for Mac. Besides file transfer speed changes and degrees of fragmentation, I’m also interested in documenting any other reported benefits of using HFS+.

UPDATE: A week later and I’ve reloaded my ipod once more under slightly different conditions. The important difference is that this time, the strange 5% storage space loss from my earlier adventure didn’t manifest. Instead of restoring the iPod using ml_ipod, I used XPlay (ver. 3.0.2), another piece of software by Mediafour. I’m not exactly certain what made a difference… but my iPod certainly seems happier having been reformated with MacDrive and restored with XPlay. XPlay has a trial period of 30 days or 20 times running, and I’ll be curious to know whether the software makes any difference to managing an HFS+ formatted iPod besides using its restore feature. I’ll provide another update to this post when I do.

Upon moving to Philadelphia in 2007 I bought a copy of Commercial Entertainment Product at the Digital Underground, a music store at 5th and South where I was making friends with local scenesters, and it was there that I probably learned the following year of the Spooky tour with EBN coming to the TLA. I had a mixed experience at the show. I think I got there late but was quickly impressed by EBN’s visuals. They had set up a double screen with a mirror image of the left on the right side, so there was some very cool if simple effects of action in the videos blending towards the center of the two screens. The visuals they provided for Spooky’s set were again very aggressive and I thought kind of childishly masculine, with lots of quick cut edits of men in race cars, spies, guns, and things getting blown up. EBN had made their name for videos that parodied the manipulation and dissemination of propaganda for the first Gulf War through mainstream media. For example, in their video “Syncopated Ordinance Demonstration #1″ (see below) they contrast the war footage of tanks getting bombed, with GI Joe’s cartoon battles, and scantily clad women shooting uzis in gun manufacturer advertisements, and so present the different ways violence on TV is presented in one single grotesque.

EBN’s viduals for dj Spooky’s sets were much more superficial. Without depth, EBN’s art was merely being used to complement the aggressive and masculine tone of Spooky’s presentation of illbient in relation to hip hop.

But I wasn’t dissapointed during EBN’s solo set. I saw videos that were works of art in and of themselves, and not being used to complement some other message. One of them featured a manipulation of Frank Sinatra from a short TV clip that would phase in and out of itself in audio and video. Seeing it made the entire evening worthwhile. Following the show, I searched in vain for anyone who had recorded the show. I wrote to dj Spooky asking for more information. I asked friends who new folks that regularly bootlegged shows at the TLA. Nada. And to make matters worse, I soon learned that EBN disbanded.

Fast forward to 2006. EBN videos were all over the place on youtube, and I did some exploring and found that the EBN project has been revived somewhat. All the members had gone onto other things, mostly in media production work, and EBN frontman Joshua L. Pearson had become a family man. But he had also created an official web page for EBN and posted a few videos, mostly quicktime files from Commercial Entertainment Product, for download. I still couldn’t find the Sinatra video but I was excited that it probably wasn’t lost. Hopefully it would be posted on youtube or somewhere else. At the time, looking for it would have to wait since I was terribly busy in Louisiana doing urban planning following the hurricanes of 2005. I would follow up on this later.

And so when I had some spare time earlier this year I sent out emails to all the EBN project members on whether the group had any plans to make an official release of the old videos on DVD. Greg Deocampo (currently of Mediatronica) was the only one who responded, but wow, what a response. He pointed me to his pesonal project Eclectic Method (EMN) and his portfolio of EMN videos. On a separate page of the EMN project, Greg had all the videos that had been made for the CD album Telecommunication Breakdown in 1995 but hadn’t been released due to there not being enough space on the CD for all those videos. (Only “Electronic Behavior Control System,” “3:7:8,” and “Homicidal Schizophrenic (A Lad Insane)” were released on the data side of the CD.) Mediatronica was also hosting a mirror of the videos on their video distribution site televis.es. Among the flash videos was a copy of the Sinatra video entitled “Frank”; I was overjoyed! (See “Frank” below.) A great interview of Deocampo is available in the episode archive of the public radio program, Some Assembly Required.

Having become a collector of EBN videos, I was dismayed to find that quite a few were no longer accessible on youtube or anywhere else. For years, a site called GNN (Guerilla News Network) had hosted a series of seven EBN videos it called “The Lost Tapes.” A few had surfaced on youtube, and one or two on file sharing networks, but the others had since 2004 when GNN stopped hosting them, become truly lost. Another video, “Banjo Lesson,” was made inaccessible when a youtube user named Nomeus had his account suspended. And so last week, I went looking for Nomeus, and finally caught up with him on his urban exploration site flurbex.com. I’ve since been able to get copies of all the missing files and repost them on youtube. Here’s “Banjo Lesson”:

Zohan fits well within a pantheon of fantastic He-Man stories of the bible beginning with a fugitive young Moshe (Moses) defending Midianite women and ending perhaps with Moshe “Muki” Betser’s largely successful IDF hostage-rescure mission at Entebbe. Zohan is a “Golden Boy,” capable of near miraculous feats of perfect timing, detail, dexterity, strength and endurance. In the Torah, as in other Mediterranean mythologies, the source of Zohan’s talents would have been identified early on as Divine; that Zohan’s are not, points to the story being couched within a modern and secular worldview.

Zohan is really a new take on the story of long-haired Israelite strong man, Shimshon (Samson), and his clever Philistine lover and hair cutter, Delilah. Just to make sure you don’t miss the parallel, Robert Smigel named Zohan’s Palestinian love interest Dalia (played by Emmanuel Chriqui).

The connecting motif is hair. For Samson, hair represents his Nazirite status and by extension, his divinely given strength. This is a critical point since in his story both Samson and the Philistines make the mistake of perceiving his hair as the actual source of his strength, while in reality it is just an outward, if sacred, symbol. In Zohan, this understanding is implicit, since Zohan’s strength isn’t his curly Jewfro (or much discussed giant bush of genital hair). Rather, Zohan’s strength is his passion to fulfill his dream of self-becoming (a hair dresser). This is impressed in the film so many times when he tells the Paul Mitchell hair salon, and afterwards, to Dalia that he’s ready to cut hair in his salon, not because he has any prior experience but because he has the passion and desire to do so. For Samson, his strength is ultimately given to the selfless call to war and ultimately, martyrdom. Zohan’s sacrifice of what his mother calls his “safe career” as a macho war hero for his “faygele” dream of becoming a hair dresser turns this theme of sacrifice on its head. It is through his striving to realize his personal dream that Zohan discovers, achieves, and in the end help to safeguard a place on earth where Israelis and Palestinian Arabs can live together in peace and love.

Just as Jonah learned, Zohan can’t really run away from his calling; he is a born leader, a defender of his people, and his past does catch up with him. But significantly, Zohan has given up on Israel as the place where his dreams can be realized. And this is why You Don’t Mess With the Zohan has been called post-Zionist. The film speaks to the frustrated desire of many Israeli Jews to make peace with their neighbors and get on with the fulfillment of the Zionist dream to achieve self-determination within a land of their own. However, the peace that must sustain the reality of this self-determination is shown to be shallow and fleeting. The leisure of Zohan’s parade through Tel Aviv’s beachfront, through its myriad of beautiful hedonistic people, is shown to be just so fragile and fleeting. Without warning, an IDF helicopter comes to break the peace of his ocean side BBQ.

But in America, the dream of simple success trumps all nationalist and ethnic division. And here we see the difference in worldviews between Zohan and the Hebrew Hammer (2003). Only a few months ago, for the first time, five years late I watched Jonathan Kesselman and Adam Goldberg’s Hebrew Hammer . Here was a film that speaks to a diaspora Jewish identity struggling with assimilation and acculturation. Just as with the Zohan’s unapologetic clownish macho sabra-ness, the Hebrew Hammer has no interest in arguing with stereotypes. The Hammer appropriates guilt and angst into a rubric of traits that include badass decidedly non-Orthodox Jewish tattoos and pre-marital sex. In embracing tattoos and sex, the Hebrew Hammer not only presents an alternative take on Jewish identity, it arguably reflects the reality of not a few proudly Jewish hipsters.

The difference between Zohan and Hammer, however, is in the attitude towards America as either an immigrant’s dream or as the continuing challenge of diaspora Jewish identity. As a first generation immigrant, Zohan is self-confident in his identity as an Israeli Jew. As a fourth or fifth generation descendant of European Jewish immigrants the Hammer represents the insecurity of diaspora Jewry as the angry defender of a cultural world under attack. If buffoonish and over the top, Goldberg’s Hammer and Sandler’s Zohan are archetypes (if not role models) for relating to Jewish identity in the US. While the Hammer took some plenty of identity from religious Judaism, it took none from Israeli secularism, and the reverse is true for Zohan. The difference points to real divisions in Jewish diaspora and Israeli Jewish ethnocultural identities.

I promised myself I wouldn’t think too hard about this film. It’s totally enjoyable if you’re Jewish or Israeli and I’m hopeful that for all the non-Jews I saw this with at the AMC theater in Northern Kentucky it delivered a bit more nuance and sophistication into their understanding of Jews and Arabs. (After all, we can all agree that the real problems in this world are caused by greedy capitalist WASP real estate developers. Right?)

The UK release date for the film is August 18th, so Israeli cinemas can’t be too far behind. I’ll be very curious to hear how Israelis receive the Zohan.

[crossposted to Jewcy]

I’ve reposted Lavie’s poem below.

“Jeer at them” with apologies to William Blake

And did the Rebbe’s feet in recent time
Walk upon Iowa’s fields of green?
And were the illegal Mexicanos
On Iowa’s pleasant pastures screened?

And did the ICE helicoptors
Hover over our well-paid shills?
And was Crown Heights builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my public relations flack!
Bring me my homeless men of Texas!
Bring me my army of wetbacks!
Lie to my critics that afflict us!

I will not cease from PR fights,
I will stick it to the goyishe “Man”
Till we have built Crown Heights
In Iowa’s green and pleasant land.

Adapted from “And did those feet in ancient time” by William Blake from the preface to his epic poem, Milton: a Poem. In 1916, C. Hubert H. Parry composed music for the poem to be sung as a hymn called “Jerusalem” (thus Lavie’s “Jeer at them”). Wikipedia notes,

The term “dark Satanic mills”, which entered the English language from this poem, most often is interpreted as referring to the early industrial revolution and its destruction of nature.^[1] This view has been linked to the fate of the Albion Flour Mills, which was the first major factory in London, built in 1769 by Matthew Boulton and James Watt. It was powered by Watt’s steam engines, and produced 6,000 bushels of flour a week. The factory could have driven independent traditional millers out of business, but it was destroyed, perhaps deliberately, by fire in 1791. London’s independent millers celebrated with placards reading, “Success to the mills of ALBION but no Albion Mills.” ^[2] Opponents referred to the factory as satanic, and accused its owners of adulterating flour and using cheap imports at the expense of British producers. An illustration of the fire published at the time shows a devil squatting on the building.^[3] The mills were a short distance from Blake’s home.

The Romantic movement which Blake helped invoke began in response to the dehumanization of industrialization, environmental devastation wrought by the intense exploitation of nature, and the loss of culture resulting from the alienation of artisans and craftsmen in the production of goods. The purpose of industrialization is to use efficiencies to lower costs, but often enough, industrialized mass production simply shifts costs away from the consumer and industry and onto the workers and the environment. Resources, both natural and human, are ruthlessly exploited resulting in environmental and social ills that ultimately cost more money to rectify than that incurred in the expense of a more humanely produced consumer good.

Lavie focuses on the exploitation of “illegal workers” and “wetbacks” (terms I’d never use) to describe just one corruption within the Rubashkin enterprise. Rubashkin’s business ultimately aims to satisfy Jewish Americans insatiable and unhealthy appetite for (kosher) meat through the mechanism of industrialized mass production. The exploitation of undocumented workers is one method of lowering the costs to the consumer. Unfortunately, lowering costs doesn’t come without a price — the true costs of environmental and social ills caused by pollution and labor abuse are simply passed onto the health and welfare of society and the environment we depend on.

With all the attention on Rubashkin’s disgusting labor practices, it’s also time to remind folks how Rubashkin has regularly sought to lower standards whether it be in food safety, worker safety, humane treatment of animals, and the pollution of the environment.

Might the Rubashkin travesty revive the nascent Jewish movement that aims to place renewed emphasis on Jewish and humane values in the Kosher Food Industry? You can do your part by supporting hekhsher tzedek.

In the context of Jewish mysticism, this sentiment might already tag me as a neophyte (correctly) since the majority of my ancestors and the most famous kabbalistic works not only unapologetically gender their god — the use of the dual male/female Gender system is made an essential allegory for describing the Godhead and the relationship between it and the created world. I have bunches more to read here including Elliot R. Wolfson’s Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination, but I’ve read Raphael Patai’s The Hebrew Goddess. I am convinced by his thesis that a perceived feminine aspect of god can be traced back from our current neo-hasidic revival of interest in the Shekhina (the Divine Presence) to the medieval kabbalistic Matronit to imaginary depictions of the shekhina in exile in late antiquity following the destruction of the second temple, to biblical depictions of the shekhina and association with cherubim and clouds… and yes, to the Asherah. Patai having made his point, I was left struggling with its relevance for my religious imagination, even entertaining the thought of breaking with this ancient well formulated tradition that uses gender allegories to describe aspects of our god.

Influenced as much by the synthesis of Greek Philosophy and Jewish mysticism (inherent in movement like Sethianism), I’ve been more eager to describe God by what my god is not. The description Ein Sof, or god “without end,” is so much more useful to me than the distraction of gender. If I must think of the philosophical meaning of a cleft in the Godhead in the cosmogonic myth (as I often do), I will think of an illusory division between an unknowable transcendence and an intimately knowable immanence — and refuse to describe transcendence as male aloofness and immanence as female sexuality. I refuse!

I mention this all in passing to Jay Michaelson during a break at the recent New Voices conference in NYC. (I’ve been a fan of Michaelson’s writing since Paul Serici first introduced them to me, so meeting him was a thrill.) Michaelson is thinking about the gender of God taking into account the different gender identities we are only now coming to terms with in Gender and Queer Studies. In reacting to my points, Michaelson was more accepting of a gendered God in mystical experiences. He differentiated between (at least) two different kinds of mystical experiences, one of which, catalyzed by use of an entheogenic plant, would inspire a much more intimate and sexualized experience of divinity. Then he invited me to Nehirim, the shabbat retreat of LGBTQ Jews and their allies, to learn and talk some more. (Despite the suggestion of cosmic serendipity, first meeting Eli K-W also on his way to Nehirim and then to be invited by the organizer himself, I chose not to spend the full registration out of pocket to attend, and instead spent much needed time in reunion with my cousin Una.)

This brings me to introduce Rima Turner, now interning for Nehirim (congrats!). I first met zir* at Jews in the Woods: a bespectacled, diminutive, giant of a spirit whose haftorah reading one Shabbat morning managed to draw down tears from eyes that had for too long been dry. We’ve been in communicating for the past three years, sharing what we’ve learned in our respective wanderings. Rima also invited me to Nehirim, but whatever I missed there I’ll make up in responding to the interesting and personal d’var torah, “Sacred Spaces: The Tabernacle, Women’s Work, and the Body as Sanctuary.” Ze just recently shared zir essay over at Jewish Mosaic, the national (Jewish) center for seuxal and gender diversity.

On Parshat Naso (Numbers 4:21 – 7:89), Rima writes:

In Numbers 7, we read about the sanctification of the tabernacle (the Mishkan). Moses anoints the tabernacle and its components, and then the leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel each bring offerings: silver, gold, incense, oxen, sheep, and goats. The offerings function as a dedication, after which the tabernacle is anointed again. Moses goes into the tabernacle, and the Divine speaks to him.

What does it mean to create a holy space? The Divine is not your dinner date—Ze won’t come over to your apartment just because that’s where you live. You can invite Zir in, but that doesn’t mean Ze is going to come. Those of us who pray or meditate regularly are familiar with this reality. Some days we enter into prayer and prayer enters into us—but sometimes prayer takes a day off, no matter how hard we try (or try not to try, or try not to try not to try—well, you get the picture).

I love what Rima’s done with gender-neutral pronouns. I had heard these neologisms used in referring to people (at Jews in the Woods, where else?) but never before had I seen them in discussions about divinity. So useful!

The use and innovation of gender-neutral pronouns in English has a long history summarized in a FAQ here. Gender-neutral pronouns currently in use have roots extending back at least into the early days of USENET in the 1980s, where they found popularity in nascent gender queer usegroups. The earliest use I could find of the pronouns zie and zir on USENET are in this post by a Lynn Dobbs in the soc.bi newsgroup from December 1993. (Fair warning, the subject matter is erotic.)

Richard Creel, a philosophy professor at Ithaca College, may have been the first to specifically use  gender-neutral neologisms in discussing divinity in his philosophy of religion classes. This is what Creel wrote in “Ze, zer, mer,” in the Fall 1997 issue of the American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy:

“Ze,” “zer,” and “mer” may seem awkward now, but if we use them regularly and the usage becomes widespread, they will soon seem quite natural. Meanwhile we will have enriched the categories of our language and improved our ability to communicate clearly, precisely, and grammatically. “She,” “her,” “he,” “his,” and “him” should, of course, continue to be used when appropriate. “Ze,” “zer,” and “mer” will supplement them, not supplant them.

To close on a personal note, in my philosophy of religion courses I explain these terms to my students, then I use them when I speak of God, which, of course, I do a lot. My students are not required to use these terms yet many of them are intrigued, attracted, and choose to do so, at first with self-conscious good-humor. My women students seem especially appreciative of an opportunity to speak of God without being forced to use a gendered pronoun or an awkward strategy designed to evade the use of pronouns altogether. Similar benefits accrue for general discussions of the nature of a person, whether in philosophy of religion or not. Hence, even if “ze,” “zer,” and “mer” do not enter into common usage (obviously the odds are greatly against that), nonetheless they can be very useful in philosophical discussions.

* As evidinced by her bio at Jewish Mosaic, Rima is exploring the use of the neologisms ze and zir to refer to zirself. I can hardly imagine what it must be like to be at war even with language in determining for society what your gender identity is. But I do know a hint of a shade of this struggle from thinking about gender and god, and so I’m hopeful that in using the language that my friend Rima chooses for zirself, I will also be that much more mature in wrestling with a god that defies easy gender delineations.

UPDATE 6/15: Rima posts more at her blog.

If you look at the code and see what I added (in the section commented “wigetized” [sic]), you’ll notice that I’m shunning CSS markup for good old table formatting. I also changed a line under “switch display type”to make the widget look pretty in the sidebar. I’ve got it working in the sidebar here if you’re looking for an example of how it will look.

After you ftp the plugin into your wordpress install, you’ll still need to change the Netflix plugin settings in the wordpress backend. To make the table formatting work I have each entry start with a [tr] tag and end with a [/tr] tag. See below:

Also, you’ll need to go to the widgets menu to add the Netflix widget that should appear there.

Maybe you’re thinking that somebody should already have done this by now. You’re right. Except it’s missing. Back in 2006 Chris Stanley over at ongoingprocess.net announced he had made a widget to work with Albert Banks’ as yet unwidgetized Netflix plugin. I searched for it in vain at his site but the link he provided had become broken at some point and was never fixed. Perhaps Stanley will dig it up someday and make it available again. Until then, you can try this out. Hope it works for you.

Here is how Solomon has Cain describe his relationship to his brother with special attention to his eponymous name, Hevel, which has the literal meaning of “breath” connoting a sense of his “fleeting” and impermanence:

I would sometimes prod him to see if he would dissolve into vapor at my touch. You have to understand, it wouldn’t have seemed so odd. In those times, things were as they were and we, the first three, were discovering a newly created world. We were each so different from each other, would it be so odd to have a man who was flesh and a man who was not? Well he was solid enough- solid enough to bleed, solid enough to kill- but though, as it turned out, he could be killed, he did not truly live. Hevel was not Named. Hevel did not speak. I was given to Mother Chava to be Man after Father Adam. Hevel was added. Added to be My Brother.

To see what I would do.

Read more. (link, Beyond the Near)

With the essential role Cain must play in the narrative, can he actually have free will. This is a playful suggestion Solomon makes — but from Dwayne Hoover’s revelation in Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions to Nobusuke Tagomi’s epiphany in Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle, the self-awareness of imaginary characters is a postmodern trope that resonates. As Authors we can give our characters a tselem elohim (an image of their creator) — and our characters in turn reflect whatever creative spirit we possess to our readers. When we write, when we dream we are in a state of communion with those that we are dreaming. Our imagination gives them life and if the myth of their life can be transmitted, it can endure long after we’ve ceased dreaming them.

Solomon’s reading of Cain also reminds me of the sympathetic reading of Judas Iscariot in the second century Gospel of Judas. In that second century work, Jesus asks Judas to turn him into the Romans, since “betrayal” is not really possible for a supposedly living god whose determination of all events must preclude the free will of betrayal. In the Gospel of Judas, Judas is the most beloved since only the most trusted lover of a god could be entrusted with the most painful job of assuring his capture and execution. In this reading popular with early Christian Gnostics, Judas is written in a sense similar to Abraham ready to offer up his son Isaac.The theme of child sacrifice within biblical and post-biblical christian narratives is more fully explored in Jon D. Levenson’s excellent Death and Ressurection of the Beloved Son: Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity.

Strangely enough, the gnostic sect that appreciated and possibly authored the Gospel of Judas were Sethians – a sect the predated Christianity and traced the lineage of their spiritual authority to Adam and Eve’s third son, the one born to replace the murdered Abel — Seth. In Sethian traditions, aspects which in other common traditions are seen as failures (e.g. the transgression of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden) are seen rather as necessities in an unraveling emergence of divine transformation.

Solomon doesn’t make mention of Seth in her midrash, though his absence could I think easily be remedied with a perusal of the extant midrashim on the significance of Seth, as well as the more recent discoveries of ancient lost gnostic works such as the Apocalypse of Adam.

I was having a conversation with a mathematician, Yaakov, at the University of Maryland recently, and he was struggling with aesthetic questions on what is good or bad art, so I suggested an alternative more useful question as rather, “what is this art good for?” recalling Marcel Duchamp’s 1957 essay, The Creative Act:

What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.

The verdict of the spectator is separate from the activity of the artist. The spectator might very well take umbrage if the art object, the object of fascination (or boredom) had been or had not been toiled over, had or had not been the expression of a theory or movement, had or had not been the work of an artist at all. As a spectator, my verdict is not whether art is or is not art, but whether the art is useful — and useful only in the sense of whether it has opened my eyes and expanded my conscious awareness as to the existence of wonder in the world of relationships and things outside of frames and pedestals, galleries and museums — whether appreciation of the art object has brought me to appreciate everything else in the Everything Else room in the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum.

In a related sense, as much as I ponder myth in Judaism specifically, and religion in general, I return to this concern, that these ideas, while interesting to me, while stimulating and enriching an emerging creative expressive innerverse within me, that these ideas should also hopefully be useful for others. That if they are not, that they are trivial, and that this whole project is a delusion of self-indulgence. I will be honest with you, that I am not wholly convinced that this is not, but I am writing — with the intention that these labyrinth of ideas I’m exploring and sometimes getting lost in — that I will bring back along my wayfinding thread/trail of breadcrumbs/umbilical chord, something useful.

I’m hopeful that just as art becomes useful by revealing to an observer the greater wondrous reality outside the frame of (framed) Art, that my insights into myth and religion might also be useful for helping to reveal a greater wondrous imaginary world only hinted at within the source text of religious doctrine and dogma. Myth and storytelling thus convey the promise and potential of enduring creative liberty and the subversion of religious control to generations of eager children and aging heresiarchs.

Having said this, let me share with you something totally weird that I just found (on wikipedia, where else) that blew my mind. An Arabian myth of a creature called Bahamut (بهموت-Ž) which unlike the Behemot is not terrestrial, but like Leviatan, inhabits the endless depths of the ocean. This is mind blowing to me because the tradition in Sefer Chanoch, that the Leviatan is the mate of the Behemot seems much more plausible (in a sort-of mythic taxonomy) if we imagine both of them as sea dwellers rather than as opposites on a terrestrial/aquatic scale.

Just for review, I’ve written about the Behemot in Jewish myth, how it seems to relate to Apsu, the ancient ur-deity in Babylonian mythology, the personification of heavenly fresh water. I’ve written how the Behemot is imagined as a cosmically large hippopatamus dripping with condensation, and referred to in midrash as the “Ox of the Pit.” I’ve wondered whether the Pit was a reference to the t’hom, the primordial abyss, the abstraction of the other Babylonian ur-deity and personification of saltwater, Tiamat. How Leviatan seems to be synonymous with Tiamat in biblical writings. How Behemot/Leviatan are mated to one another in Sefer Chanoch. The Talmud also prefers the notion that Leviathan and Behemot were each created like all other creatures, male and female. So the existence of a myth where Behemot takes the form of a non-terrestrial sea creature like the leviathan seems significant.

From the wikipedia article on Bahamut:

Bahamut (Arabic: بهموت, Bahamūt) is a vast fish that supports the earth in Arabian mythology. In some sources, Bahamut is described as having a head resembling a hippopotamus or elephant.

If that’s not enough of a teaser, here is the entire fantastic entry on Bahamut written by Jorge Luis Borges in his Book of Imaginary Beings (translated by Margarita Guerrero, Norman Thomas di Giovanni). I want to point out that I find it significant that similar to the Behemot tradition, the Bahamut myth describes the creatures with hippopotamus features.

Behemoth’s fame reached the wastes of Arabia, where men altered and magnified its image.

From a hippopotamus or elephant they turned it into a fish afloat in a fathomless sea; on the fish they placed a bull, and on the bull a ruby mountain, and on the mountain an angel, and over the angel six hells, and over these hells the earth, and over the earth seven heavens. A Moslem tradition runs: God made the earth, but the earth had no base and so under the earth he made an angel. But the angel had no base and so under the angel’s feet he made a crag of ruby. But the crag had no base and so under the crag he made a bull endowed with four thousand eyes, ears, nostrils, mouths, tongues, and feet. But the bull had no base and so under the bull he made a fish named Bahamut, and under the fish he put water, and under the water he put darkness, and beyond this men’s knowledge does not reach.

Others have it that the earth has its foundation on the water; the water, on the crag; the crag, on the bull’s forehead; the bull, on a bed of sand; the sand, on Bahamut; Bahamut, on a stifling wind; the stifling wind on a mist. What lies under the mist is unknown. So immense and dazzling is Bahamut that the eyes of man cannot bear its sight. All the seas of the world, placed in one of the fish’s nostrils, would be like a mustard seed laid in the desert. In the 496th night of the Arabian Nights we are told that it was given to Isa ( Jesus) to behold Bahamut and that, this mercy granted, Isa fell to the ground in a faint, and three days and their nights passed before he recovered his senses.

The tale goes on that beneath the measureless fish is a sea; and beneath the sea, a chasm of air; and beneath the air, fire; and beneath the fire, a serpent named Falak in whose mouth are the six hells.

The idea of the crag resting on the bull, and the bull on Bahamut, and Bahamut on anything else, seems to be an illustration of the cosmological proof of the existence of God. This proof argues that every cause requires a prior cause, and so, in order to avoid proceeding into infinity, a first cause is necessary.

The story of Bahamut is thus a variation in a wide tradition of cosmic creatures said to be supporting the world. In Hinduism, the creature is Akupara, a ginormous tortoise. Or elsewhere in the Vedas, as the turtle being Kurma, second incarnation of Vishnu. In Greek myth, it is the titan, Atlas. If you’ve read any Terry Pratchett, you might also be reminded of the turtle that supports his fictional Discworld.

In modern Western philosophical debate, an anecdote relating the myth of Bahamut or Akupara is sometimes referred to as “Turtles all the way down” (explanation below). The anecdote has been used by enlightened moderns lampooning the logical fallacies of irrational belief systems since the 17th century. Or as the wikipedia describes it, the anecdote is used “to humorously illustrate both infinite regress, in cosmological imagery, and the perils of religious/mythic myopia.” This is how Stephen Hawking relates the anecdote in his A Brief History of Time (1988):

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Russell probably wasn’t the scientist to have been the recipient of this retort. Most identify the scientist in this popular anecdote as the 19th century psychologist and philosopher William James. But Hawking can be forgiven for thinking so since Bertrand Russell, said the following in his lecture Why I Am Not a Christian (1927):

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, “How about the tortoise?” the Indian said, “Suppose we change the subject.”

William James’ godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, may very well have been acquainted with the story from his peer, Henry David Thoreau who wrote in his journal in 1852,

Men are making speeches-¦ all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.

So whether the Turtles anecdote originated with Russell or James, it is clear that myths representing cosmological proofs were useful arguments of ridicule for enlightenment rationalists and other freethinkers. In 1690 John Locke may have been the first western philosopher to refer to this myth in a philosophical argument on what the substance is of an object being empirically investigated. From book 2, chapter 23 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke writes,

If anyone be asked what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say but, the solid extended parts; and if he were demanded what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before-mentioned who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on, to which his answer was, a great tortoise; but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad backed tortoise, replied, something, he knew not what.

Perhaps the Indian said, “Bahamut.” Bahamut, the imaginary foundation of the world of myth.

Above: illustration of Bahamut for The Book of Imaginary Beings by the graduate students in the Department of Illustration and Art of the Book at the Vakalo School of Art and Design in Athens, Greece.

UPDATE 6/5: It is something of a testament to my interest (obsession?) over the Leviatan myths that I realized only today that I had provided something a fuller treatment in a post I wrote already over two years ago, “Rejoining Tetragrammaton.” You can read on below for a good enough summation of my thoughts but it lacks source references and quotes. So please go to the earlier post first if you’re interested in these myths. What appears below is a rewritten article I wrote originally as the about page for this blog when it was called — guess — “The Leviathan and the Behemoth.” In the post below I write with some more detail on what I find relevant in the Enuma Elish and I do mention Hermann Gunkel as the source for the idea that Tiamat is a cognate for the biblical hebrew Tohu/T’hom, and I should have mentioned this in that earlier post. So besides being topical, these posts will help me in a later synthesis I need to write. I think what’s important to note in any case is that all of this has been written about with greater academic rigor, sophistication and nuance in scholarly literature — what I’m trying to do is articulate how this myth may still be relevant (read: useful) in a Judaism that is both mythically and environmentally conscious. The Leviatan/Behemot myths ARE interesting specifically because they are so well linked to an ancient natural cosmology that seems to have identified and personified aspects of what we now call the Water Cycle.

——

The Leviathan is one of the oldest and most obscure creation myths in the Torah. For me, the myth must be understood in the context of other midrashim concerning the Behemot (Behemoth). Together, I believe the Leviatan and Behemot represent two aspects of the ancient Israelite cosmology: the snowy pure waters above shamayim (the heavens) and the sweet waters below the aretz (the earth). The origins of the Leviathan myth are old and can be traced even into Sumerian mythology thousands of years before the birth of ancient Israel.

Being so old, the meaning of the myth has morphed over time. In perhaps its oldest known incarnation, the Leviatan (Kur and Tiamat in Sumerian mythology, Tiamat and Rakhab elsewhere in the TaNaKH) is a primordial chaotic force which must be defeated or tamed by wisdom in order to allow for creation to proceed. According to Hermann Gunkel, the primordial mother deity Tiamat (representing chaos in Sumerian myth) is abstracted in the Torah’s Genesis as T‘hom (the abyss). Following from Raphael Patai’s reading in his Hebrew Myths (with Robert Graves) the body of the Leviathan forms the earthly depths and is alternately represented as a tremendous underwater mountain, as a dragon, as a cosmic serpent (sustained by fresh waters flowing underground from terrestrial streams), as the abyss of the cosmos (the blank slate before creation), or as purely abstract chaos.

Meanwhile, midrashim represent the Behemot as an impossibly ginormous hippopotamus or water buffalo, supported on earth by the four pillars of its gigantic legs, dripping with condensation from the fresh waters above the earth, or simply as the primordial Void. The esoteric Sefer Chanoch preserves the ancient tradition that the Behemot and the Leviatan are each others mates. If we accept Patai’s reading, then Behemot, in his earlier Sumerian incarnation, was the ur-deity, lover of Tiamat, the fresh water god, Apsu.

In the Enuma Elish, Apsu, is killed by the newborn God of Wisdom, Ea (an early cognate of the YHVH) in order for creation to proceed. After this, Tiamat, and Kinghu (her new lover) and their children (representing the chaotic unstructured waterworld) battle with Ea to return the world to its chaotic state. The two lovers must be separated (violently in the myth) in order to be defeated (this time by the hero of Ea, Marduk) and a new age to begin.

Besides the explicit tradition preserved in Sefer Chanoch, the relationship between Apsu/Kingu and Tiamat, Leviatan and Behemot was all but lost. Whispers of it, however, remained in the two creatures relationship to fresh water, their below and above relation to the world as giants, and the Leviatan’s enduring association with the chaotic Ocean and saltwater despite her reliance on fresh water.

The Talmud alternately presents the notion that to preserve space in the world, God slaughtered the male counterparts of the created Leviatan and Behemot and pickled them for later feasting by the righteous when the sukah of peace is spread out across the world at the dawn of the messianic age. The idea that the primordial deities needed to be slaughtered for creation not to be filed with cosmic monsters also recalls the motivation of Ea’s fratricide in the Enuma Elish.

Much much later, Hobbes invoked the image of Leviathan to represent the gigantic nature of state bureaucracy. The Behemot and his relationship to Leviatan was forgotten. This past century, fundamentalist Christians have revived the Behemot as textual proof for the existence of dinosaurs during the age of Man.

Putting aside Hobbes and the creationist ideas, when I think of the leviathan and the behemoth, I can’t help but join the ancient mythic ideas in my mind with Andy Goldsworthy’s observation of serpentine forms in the movement of water on the surface of land, as well as the ancient Jewish mystical belief that all forces must be reconciled and unified for their to be a cosmic healing, a Tikkun Olam.

In contrast to the midrashim describing a final battle at the end of days when God slaughters the surviving Leviatan, Behemot, and Ziz (another ginormous birdlike creature), I imagine Behemot and Leviatan as once close, inseparable friends whose love for one another was so profound it excluded the possibility of any other relationships forming. While the midrashim imagine the Leviatan slaughtered and skinned with the tzakkim (righteous) feasting on her flesh of the Leviatan and sheltered under her luminous skin, I imagine a peaceful unification after a tragic separation spanning the history of all creation. In this way as well, I can reconcile the aspiration to be righteous with my practice of not eating the flesh of other creatures

This binary relationship expressed in verticality (above/below), or terrestrial vs. marine, or inner vs. outer expansiveness (depth/void), also helps me imagine two other invisible reactives, thought of at odds: the invisible hand of the market, and the complicated ecology of nature. As a planner, my power derives from my position as an expert to provide intelligence for people making market decisions, decisions that will have wide repurcussions on an environment (that in turn impacts the market). I am a mediator between two invisible forces, surrogates for the hand of God: the Market and Nature.

Moderated by Marissa Brostoff (New Voices contributing writer), the panel consisted of Sam Freedman (Columbia U. Journalism Professor, NY Times columnist), Jonathan W. Gray (John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY, Assistant Professor of English), and Ari Berman (writer for The Nation). Dr. Gray filled in at the last minute for Ta-Nehisi Coates, who couldn’t make it. In this discussion, the age, ethnicity and race of the panelists matter. Sam Freedman is a middle aged white Jewish academic with experience in political campaigns, Gray is a thirty-six year old African-American academic (with impressively long dreads), and Berman is a twenty-something white Jewish journalist.

The long auditorium was largely filled by the time the discussion started and the audience consisted of mostly CJH members, the general public including many young Jewish Obama supporters, and fellow New Voices conference participants. The discussion was videotaped and the recording should be available on the New Voices website, I’m told by the conference organizer, Elizabeth Alpern.

With Brostoff’s introduction, the discussion at first centered on the question, “Why is this a story?- – why is the story of Obama’s reception with Jews, a small minority, being covered with such enthusiasm in the media (mainstream and otherwise). From this starting point, the discussion hit on some very important points.

1. Politically liberal support in general and support for Obama specifically is very strong in the American Jewish electorate. Ari Berman quoted Atrios’ post “Writing the Script- on Eschaton (5/11/2008): “Approximately 12,000 articles will be written between now and November about how Jewish voters have a problem with Obama, and then they will go to the polls and overwhelmingly vote for him. Despite this, no articles will be written about how Jewish voters have a problem with McCain.”
2. The idea of building or (perhaps) restoring a Jewish-Black alliance is distracting when Jewish-American and African-American support of a liberal Democratic party candidate is in reality quite certain. Within the realm of inter ethnic political alliances, more attention needs to be developed between Jews and Hispanics, and between Jews and European-American (i.e. White) Catholics. (Samuel Freedman)
3. In media discussions, “when Blacks are in the room, Jews are allows to stand in for Whites.” — we need to think of how Jews are being used in terms of “Roveian Politics- (Jonathan Gray). I think Dr. Gray is saying that the media will not comfortably ask whether White America will vote for a Black President, and so instead, news media looks to the opinion polls of a useful ethnic minority so as not to suggest that all of White America is racist. If the observers of this set-up are in fact racist but unwilling to admit this (they won’t vote for Obama because he is a Black president), then they can more comfortably excuse their prejudice if they have a positive feeling towards the useful minority that is allowed to represent their prejudice. Jews may fulfill this role for white gentile philosemites.
4. The organized smear campaign against Obama that is being spread virally (and effectively) in certain parts of the Jewish community makes use of Israel as a wedge issue. The engineers of the smear know the wedge will not divide Jews because our Democratic support in November is predictable: we will vote for Obama. Rather, the engineers are using the wedge to manipulate Jewish reaction. Once again, the nature of our reaction is important to the observers of Jewish sentiment – namely, white Christian Zionists philosemites — the true target of opinion for the smear campaign. (Ari Berman).
5. The wedge issue of Israel is effective among American Jews because of our chronic concern for existential threats to Israel. (Samuel Freedman). Amazingly, surveys show that this concern for Israel does not translate into hawkish views among most American Jews. Most Jewish-Americans do not favor preemptively attacking Iran were Iran to acquire nuclear power or weapons.
6. The Jewish electorate constitutes a liberal “silent majority- because most (powerful) American Jewish organizations are politically conservative. (Ari Berman).
7. Concern that Obama is a secret Black Nationalist or that he is Muslim has its roots in political disagreements between Jews and Blacks in college student unions in the 1980s. Jewish college students of different backgrounds found solidarity in identification with Israel and Zionism while Black students became cosmopolitan by seeking identification with the apartheid struggles in South Africa. Tension between the two groups arose when black student leaders on campuses were convinced that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza constituted a similar parallel to the hegemony imposed in S. Africa and in the experience of Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. (Jonathan Gray)
8. Tom Freedman of the NY Times and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, not exactly Progressives, are presenting a vision of a new vision of being pro-Israel that is at odds with the established pro-Israel lobby. (Berman) What Freedman and Goldberg have written about is the necessity for Israel to marginalize the settler movement and enable a two-state solution within the next three or so years, after which the demographic reality will give truth to the canard that Israel’s occupation is apartheid, and the call for a binational state with an Arab political majority will begin in earnest. Goldberg predicts that when this occurs, American Jewish organizations will withdraw their support for Israel.
9. It was left to be inferred from the discussion, but we can speculate that powerful Jewish conservative organizations are helping to manipulate the liberal Jewish public. Jews are being used as pawns in influencing the opinion of the much larger Christian Zionist electorate in order to elect Republicans into office and to continue developing a vision for a safe and secure Israel imagined by right wing Jewish organizations whose powerbase depends on all the conservative political alliances they’ve cultivated over the last thirty or so years.

Sam Freedman started with some context on Black and Jewish relations making the point that Jews entertain a “sentimental mythology- that once upon a time Jews and Blacks were allies in the civil rights marches 50 years ago, while in reality this alliance was a progressive Christian and Black alliance with small and short lived participation by certain Jewish progressives. Freedman hit on this a number of times throughout the discussion. Sam Freedman also mentioned the obvious — that since there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, it is an insult to Muslim-Americans to call Obama a Muslim suggesting he is therefore un-American or worse. Freedman wished this point was made in Jewish circles. He might not have seen Ali Eteraz’ excellent post in Jewcy, “Calling Obama ‘Muslim’ Isn’t Accurate, But It’s Not an Insult Either.”

Jonathan Gray pointed out that in contrast to Jewish cultural memory, Blacks don’t think of Jews as long lost allies in the Civil Rights movement. Rather, Blacks perceive Jews as a “model minority- having achieved material success and social acceptance in the US despite a long history of rejection and non-inclusion. While Freedman would prefer this “sentimental mythology- debunked, Gray considers the (re)establishement of a “liberal consensus- as synonymous with the building of common cause between Jews and Blacks. Obama understands the trajectories of young Jewish and young Black intellectuals and social advocates and believes that common cause in racial and social justice can and should be forged.

Gray also visibly winced at the term post-racial arguing that Obama has self-consciously constructed his identity as Black, regardless of whether he will be recognized as Black by Whites simply because of his appearance. Freedman considered the loss of focus on Obama’s bi-racial identity to be unfortunate — Obama’s “hyphenated- identity seemed to be something that young people really got. For Freedman, this pointed to a future of racial identity politics that is really substantially different than it has been, and so the refocus on Obama’s Black identity, Rev. Wright, etc., is a shame.

The discussion trailed off into questions and answers with Ari Berman making the point that Cory Booker and Obama are new Black leaders who will, for now, continue to be asked, “will X ethnic group (White, Hispanic, Jewish, Black) vote for a Black man.” Meanwhile, young Jewish leaders have yet to emerge and are still overshadowed by Joe Lieberman’s (strangely) evolving playbook. Berman fantasizes of Obama delivering his AIPAC speech at Howard University and vice versa as a more interesting window into Black-Jewish relations.

UPDATE 5/30: This discussion was a good start to what has so far been an excellent journalism conference. Just a shout out to Una Osato who patiently listened to me digest these points over breakfast while she was attempting to prepare a performance piece later that evening. (Her piece at the Bowery rocked!)

CORRECTION 5/30: The first version of this post misnamed the panelist Dr. Jonathan W. Gray. This has since been corrected. Thank you very much for the correction.

UPDATE 6/9: While Ta-Nahisi Coates couldn’t be at this discussion, I found his recent 6/8/08 blog post to back up some of the points Dr. Gray made — notably how the political discourse of Black students in elite college campuses in the 80s and 90s has distorted the actual voice and opinion of most Black Americans. Worth reading.

Here’s the blurb from the adoption page at CAAWS, written in faux-first-person.

Mariah
Like so many others I too have Hurricane Katrina to thank for bringing me to Baton Rouge. I spent several stressful days at the LSU emergency shelter where I lost my litter of kittens due to sickness and stress. If that weren’t bad enough, I then found out that I am FIV positive. Like humans with HIV, cats with FIV can live many healthy years. So far I am totally symptom-free.

Because I am contagious to other cats, however, I will have to be isolated from other cats for the rest of my life. But that’s enough bad news. Let’s talk about the good news: I am young, healthy, up-to-date on vaccines, spayed, and friendly. I have not slowed down for a second to complain. I love playing and chatting with people so much that I don’t miss other cats one bit. The best news, though, is that you are still reading my profile and considering taking me home — and that’s about the only news that will turn this year around for me. To learn more about me or schedule a visit, email: caawsmail@yahoo.com

Robyn and I purchased our tickets and waited patiently in the long exhibit queue where we had an opportunity to look at Diego Rivera’s Liberation of the Peon (1931). Once through the entrance, we accepted the audio guides and commenced our study of the work of Frida Kahlo. Narration on the tour was provided by a device contained a small LCD screen, a keypad, and pause, stop, and play audio buttons, as well as attached earphones.  To play the commentary for a particular image, one would simply press in the keypad the number listed next to the painting on the wall of the gallery. In addition to the audio commentary, informative text was also silk screened onto the walls of the gallery adjoining the paintings and photographs displayed.

This exhibit originally began its tour with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The fancy Antenna Audio gadget that had been used in these earlier Kahlo exhibits was for some reason not used for this show at the PMA. I’m not certain why. Also, the audio provided was not that of the exhibit curator Hayden Herrera, or her assistant Elizabeth Carpenter, but from some other British man. I’m still trying to find out who this is. I’d like to ask them a question:

Namely, why did the curator introduce Kahlo as having been born of mixed German and Mexican Indian heritage and not mention her Jewish heritage? This is what the narrator said:

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacán, a southern suburb of Mexico City, the third daughter of a German father and a mother of Spanish and Native American descent.

So I want to know: was Kahlo’s father Guillermo (née Wilhelm) Kahlo’s Hungarian-Jewish ancestry so irrelevant and besides the point to exclude it? Kahlo’s Indian heritage and Mexican socialist nationalism is well known because they are so much a part of her art work. But Kahlo herself claimed to be the granddaughter of Hungarian Jews that emigrated to Germany in the 19th century. Isn’t that significant? In an article on a 2007 Kahlo exhibit, Gannit Ankori, an art historian specializing in Frida Kahlo provides the details,

Kahlo testified “many times- about her Jewish identity, “stressing that her paternal grandparents, Henriette Kaufmann and Jakob Kahlo, were Jews from the city of Arad.” Further, many people who knew Frida and Wilhelm, such as Frida’s biographer, Hayden Herrera, and Frida’s husband Diego Rivera’s biographer, Bertram Wolfe, personally repeated this fact.

It seems a mistake to omit the fact that expatriate Eurpoean Jews made up an important core of the radical progressive political and art scene that Kahlo and her husband Diego inhabited, the most famous of whom was Leon Trotsky. This is an important point because socialism, communism, and anarchism, and the arts were secular programs that accepted the contribution of Jews at a time when anti-Jewish sentiment was profound and ubiquitous. Although antisemitism persisted (and still persists) in the Left, Guillermo Kahlo and his daughter, could find sanctuary among more enlightened contemporaries. And they did.

Perhaps the lack of attention or unwillingness of the art historian narrating the exhibit to be fully forthcoming about Kahlo’s Jewish heritage stems from ambivalence and ignorance of what Judaism is in general, let alone specifically how Kahlo and her father understood it as relevant to their self-identity. Judaism is correctly understood as not only a religion, but also as a civilization with an enduring culture the re religious aspect of which is not easily (or honestly) excised, as well as the inspiration of a modern nationalist and socialist movement of liberation and self-determination (Zionism). If Kahlo’s Jewish ancestry was only understood to be a religious identity then commenting on her Jewish parentage would correctly be considered irrelevant and misleading. So, what did Kahlo think of her Jewish heritage? How did she self-identify?

The answer to these questions was dealt with in 2003 at a Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Jewish Museum, “‘Frida Kahlo’s Intimate Family Picture.” In that exhibit, Israeli curator Gannit Ankori recognized an extremely important point revealed in Kahlo’s painting, “My Grandparents, My Parents and I.” Grace Glueck for the NY Times Art Review explains,

”My Grandparents” shows Frida as a small child, standing naked in the courtyard of the Casa Azul, the comfortable home built by her father in Coyoacán, then a village south of Mexico City, where Frida spent most of her life. (She died there, and it is now the Frida Kahlo Museum.) In her right hand she holds a ribbon that flows upward on either side of the picture to support floating portraits of each set of grandparents; the Mexican couple on the left, the Hungarian-Jewish pair on the right. (From her Kahlo grandmother, Frida apparently inherited those awesome black eyebrows that almost met in the middle of her forehead.) [emphasis mine]

The subject of Kahlo’s Jewish identity was returned to again in a 2005 book on Guillermo Kahlo’s photographic work, Fridas Vater: Der Fotograf Guillermo Kahlo, by Gaby Franger and Rainer Huhle. The historians reveal that contrary to Frida Kahlo’s own claim, her father was the scion of a long line of German Lutheran Protestants. If this was indeed the case, then the curiosity remains why Kahlo claimed herself to be of Jewish ancestry. Was it a family legend encouraged by her father? Was it in vogue to have Jewish ancestry in artsy socialist circles in Mexico City? Or was Kahlo, in identifying her genealogy with Jews during the 1930s, declaring solidarity with another ethnic minority oppressed by fascists at the onset of Hitler’s campaign of extermination?

The complex construction of Kahlo’s identity and its relationship to anti-Nazi Jewish sympathies is the subject of 2007 article in the Jewish Press by Menachem Wecker on Kahlo exhibit in Washington, DC’s National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). Wecker writes,

[Ankori] cited the position that Kahlo sought to distance herself from the Nazis based upon the fact that testimony about Wilhelm Kahlo’s Jewish background surfaced most frequently between 1936 and the 1940s. But she said over email, “I think in light of the new findings , these issues require further investigation. What is of great interest to me is not Wilhelm Kahlo’s -˜real’ religion, but Frida Kahlo’s construction of her self-image- insofar as it “impacted Kahlo’s self-image as manifested in her art.”

But later in Wecker’s article, Ankori does consider Wilhelm Kahlo’s “real religion” to be of interest, since besides Kahlo’s penchant for and mastery of her self-constructed image, she may very well have building a family tree to satisfy any doubts of her father’s identity in terms of both halakha (Jewish ritual law) and the Nazi’s ancestry laws. In short, what is relevant for Kahlo herself is whether her genealogy is Jewish enough to be murdered with her adopted semitic compatriots.

To Ankori, the question is whether Henriette Kaufmann was Jewish, since her Jewishness would make Wilhelm Jewish “according to both Jewish Halakha and Nazi laws.” If instead Wilhelm was a German Lutheran (Ankori says Lutheran, while Ronnen wrote Protestant), “why would Frida Kahlo -˜create’ a Hungarian Jewish genealogy for him and for herself?- Ankori wondered.

Even after Franger and Huhle’s book, for Jason Steiber, archivist at the NMWA, Kahlo remains a Jewish artist.

“I believe, without a doubt, that Frida Kahlo was a Jewish artist,” said Jason Stieber, archivist at the NMWA, through e-mail. But Stieber said other aspects of Kahlo’s identity played much greater roles in her life and work. “Frida was many things … and she embraced wholeheartedly everything that she was,” he said, noting that Frida “was proud of this lineage- and greatly delighted in “wheedling anti-Semites in America,” such as her famous inquiry put forth to Henry Ford of whether he was Jewish. Although she was an atheist, “she abhorred the Catholic religiosity of her mother,” and she “did embrace her Jewish ethnicity, if not the tenets of Judaic faith.”

“So yes, Frida was a Jewish artist,” Strieber continued, “however, I think she would have been more likely to refer to herself as a Mexican artist. Mexico held a very special place in heart and in her art.”

So I’ve been thinking about all of this and I’m left with an important quote that Wecker brings from an email in conversation with, Robin Cembalest, executive editor of ARTNews magazine, reveals the other side to the fascination with the question of Kahlo’s heritage.

“In my world the process of defining Jewish art, or what is Jewish in art, is both parlor game and intellectual exercise,” Cembalest wrote. “Either way, clearly it reveals as much about who is doing the assessing as it does about the figures we are claiming for our team.”

I think this is a remarkable statement as it rings both true and hollow — true in the sense that, yeah, ethnic pride is commonly expressed in appropriating the achievements of individuals as evidence of community capabilities. Hollow in the sense, that if art historians can not see beyond chauvinist ethnic boosterism to understand the importance of identity politics in the lives and art of artists then they are willingly blinding themselves to significant contextual meaning.

Kahlo’s creative philo-semitism is just one example of her passion for the liberation of all peoples. I, for one, am proud of Frida Kahlo’s defiant solidarity with Jews in the face of fascism, her storytelling in the face of a geneology and ritual law that would deny her a more rigorous and truthful connection with my people.

I held off from writing about Philly while present there, but now that I’m away, my need to share dictates that I must, and I’m hopeful that in doing so, I might smooth some of the edge off of my missing the city already. To this end, you’ll soon be able to read a series of posts of some personal thoughts worthwhile of your review.

I’ve taken some pictures but lacking a memory stick card reader at the moment, it will be a while before I’ll be able to illustrate these thoughts with images. And I’m writing this from DC of which I’ll write about still later, perhaps while I’m visiting NYC next week.

A turntable spins ye-ye
A darkness sleeps in fits
A cat speaks in Mandarin
and the walls, last forever

A man is hidden under the boards
While the window glares on its curtains
All lines cast suspicions
on the vagueries of nature’s curve

Brightly bit, sound asleep
exposed in so many tears
and projected through with
the light of shining wit
a drama in black and white
and a tragedy in color

The turntable spins ye-ye
the dance party is over
and the cat licks its chops
in the house that emma built

in a sub-basement that the house built
in a different plane, on a scale removed
the memories of the house dream an emma
cast in infrared and animated with love
a panoply of spirits shimmering and laughing
cooking and breathing and weaving a guitar out of old chord

kittens act out Siysphus with a ball of twine
on a mountain of folded laundry
the bicycle room looks upon the garden
and echoes with the ring of rusty belling
a friend is dozed upon the chaise casting spells
of resurrection…

awaken dear emma, awaken
life under rebar and concrete oppression
erodes all homes with moisture and oxygen
the house becomes the garden, the window the way through
the emma the notion, and the idea a means to
awake dear emma, awake
and live in musical tires, with spyrographs drunk in honey
and fungus budding through floorboards, over sweet oceans
in time with all awakening

the house becomes the emma
a smile simply drawn
in parametric models
grown from new math
all the lawns have been banished
and the asphalt all ground up
what becomes is Now is emergent
this house that emma built
a lattice of dreams in habit

Despite what cable television, Blockbuster and now Netflix would have us believe, films are social events. It is good to know you’ve just enjoyed an awakened experience watching Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal or Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with other sentient, feeling human beings. Cinemas are like imaginary public commons, mental parks and open spaces where we direct our minds to share in empathy a vision that is wholly other to our own and thus — mind expanding! No wonder that for a hundred years films have been married to dinner dates, giving them some center of gravity about which conversations and memories will orbit. For a downtown to live again, it needs a multitude of places for people to enjoy life together. This is the vision of a downtown that is not a tourist destination, but rather a home to people, humans with needs for art, love, food, nighttime breezes, poetry, street music, and serendipitous discovery.

The argument for this sort of revitalization was articulated recently by Fred Kent of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) in his 2004 article “The Power of Ten.” Imagine a new art museum building with fascinating things inside, but a dearth of energy about its exterior. Sound familiar? Such was the case the Seattle Art Museum sought to avoid when Kent was asked to look at the plans for their museum’s new downtown building and advise them on how to best generate “public activity” around it. As they brainstormed, Kent was inspired by the concept of scale illustrated so powerfully in the short film Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames. Instead of one or two attractions meant to draw activity to the space, Kent envisioned an arbitrary ten “focal points” — a bike path, a street vendor, a museum, a restaurant, a bookstore, a cafe, a park and water fountain, a busker, the spectacle of other people enjoying themselves, and public art and architecture (just for example).  You can find this sort of environment if you’ve ever enjoyed a stroll through parts of New Orleans or Brooklyn, or even a carnival. The challenge for city planners is often not in finding the attractions but stitching together this fabric among a multitude of public and private interests in a way that doesn’t seem contrived and controlled. Rich urban spaces inevitably develop organically as entrepreneurs use available resources and work around the limitations of the public commons. Sometimes all successful spaces need is interest, attention, and a small push.

In Baton Rouge, the downtown has needed a larger push, greater attention from citizens, entrepreneurs and developers, and top-down interest from the mayor’s office and state government. Ask most Baton Rouge residents about urban planning in their city and they are liable to say, “What planning?” But the truth is that this city has a planning commission, a comprehensive plan (the Horizon Plan), zoning, building, and subdivision ordinances, as well as a rather exciting vision for the revitalization of a downtown grown moribund after a half century of neglect and automobile oriented excess. The plan, succinctly called “Plan Baton Rouge,” was submitted to the city ten years ago by famed architect and town planners, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., the firm of star urban designer Andres Duany. Among other improvements, Duany’s plan called for the creation of a cinema at the corner of Third and Main to act as a commercial anchor for 3rd Street. So what happened?

According to Davis Rhorer, director of the Downtown Development District (DDD), “the Shaw Center happened,” describing it as a development that has been “wildly successful.” After the Shaw Center’s construction and with the mayor’s attention shifted to the much needed improvement of the Baton Rouge riverfront, the idea for a downtown cinema was mostly forgotten — but not entirely so. The Shaw Center has been hosting annual film festivals for the past two years: Red Stick Animation, the Jewish and French Film Fests, and is a regular stop on the Southern Circuit Independent Film Series. Rhorer also points out that the Louisiana Art and Science Museum’s planetarium features a “Space Theater- for showing extra large format motion pictures. New construction on the Shaw Center also includes plans for an outdoor film screening area.

Despite these efforts, Plan BR’s vision for a downtown cinema remains obscure and woefully unrealized. Paige Heurtin, financial director of Manship Theatre who helps to manage the film series, knew of Andres Duany but was unaware of Duany’s call for a cinema on 3rd Street. Nor was John Schneider, developer of the Cyntreniks Group that with Chenevert Architects is restoring the Kress-Levy Building at 3rd and Main.  Keen on meeting the needs of the booming film industry, Schneider was pleased to describe plans for a 75 seat theater discussed with the Baton Rouge Film Commission and his realtors, Latter & Blum. Schneider envisions the theater’s primary use as a facility for industry production screenings, corporate training, and for documentaries showing the restoration of the Kress-Levy building and the history of the civil rights era in Baton Rouge. He also contemplates its use for showing second run Hollywood films.

The two facade statues of the Columbia (later Paramount) Theater downtown that grace Rhorer’s office are a constant reminder of the demolition madness that once gripped city developers in the name of progress and surface parking. Rhorer agrees that downtown needs a cinema. Rhorer agrees that downtown needs a cinema. “The suburbs are no place for a theater like Siegen,” Rhorer points out referencing the demise of the closest thing Baton Rouge had to an art theater. Tinseltown Theater, beyond the city’s outskirts, lived just long enough to drive Siegen out of business. Meanwhile, requests to Rave Motion Pictures last fall to show Michael Moore’s Sicko documentary went unfulfilled. Schneider’s plans are unfortunately both tantalizingly vague and too small scale to put much faith in, yet if he can be convinced to engage an independent film distributor such as Landmark Theaters to manage his space, there is hope. Landmark runs the River Oaks Theater in Houston, and cinemas in 24 other cities including Austin, Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC. These theaters are integral to the health of their cities’ art districts — and they are profitable and successful theaters as well. They’ve proven the business model for the revival of independent film cinemas in the US. So why not here?

Significantly, most of these cinemas have greater capacity than what Schneider is envisioning, with three or four separate screening rooms for daytime and evening film showings. Could a 75 seat limited single screen cinema survive in today’s market? Many of Landmark Theaters also have the support of a grassroots city politic that adores film, as well as a neighborhood arts district that provides incentives for art businesses. To the advantage of Baton Rouge, the city council passed in March 2008, the creation of its first ever Arts and Entertainment District downtown, an area bound by North Blvd, 4th Street, River Road and Main Street. — a Disneyland main street occupied by chain stores — but Rhorer is optimistic. He argues that 75% of downtown restaurants are locally owned, not chains, and that the DDD is actively working with local entrepreneurs with an overall interest in Downtown’s improvement.

If as Duany envisioned, a theater at 3rd and Main would be the commercial anchor for downtown, it follows that the failure of a poorly conceived second run movie theater would be a serious blight on neighboring businesses. With the Rave theaters and Citiplace already capturing popular audiences, what chance would a downtown theater have? The answer is that once the film is over would one rather submit to the haunted expanse of the suburban parking lot followed by traffic, or rather enjoy the art district’s Power of Ten. Ultimately, the success of an independent cinema, and of downtown’s arts district, will be due to the passionate clamor of the public-at-large. Realtors like Latter & Blum and developers like Schneider need to hear from the people that the most sustainable and beloved use of the spaces they’re constructing and restoring is a well managed independent repertoire cinema.

—

Note: An earlier version with name misspellings was posted to Sweet Tooth at culturecandy.org

One created a kingdom of earth and became suffused with it.
One created a kingdom of one and hid himself in it.
One created a kingdom of love and filled it with two and a challenge to entice them.
One created a kingdom without number and became lost in it.
One created a hole and pondered in it.
One created a throne and a castle but rarely dwelled there.
One created a kingdom of mystery of awe and of wonder, and an ocean of tears all about it.
One created a kingdom of sorrow and filled it with souls of all manner of complexion and humour.

Between the kingdoms, there were seven paths.

One path led around a hill, and its passage could not be described.
One path was covered with water.
One path was hidden under earth and mountain.
One path was painted with letters, sygils, and symbols, mostly forgotten.
One path was so broad it was easily mistaken.
One path was too narrow, and surrounded by demons.
One path led back on itself when walked on facing forward

——-

with apologies to Tolkien, a riff on his “Verse on the Rings of Power”, this was inspired by some thoughts after reading Raphael Patai’s The Hebrew Goddess on the trancendent and imminent aspects of divinity.

A piyut (piyutim, pl. hebrew) is a sacred musical poem, sung as part of a communal prayer service but just as often after a good meal with friends and family. I was raised with these songs and tunes, learning a new one occasionally while eating as a guest at someone’s house, or at a weekend gathering, or in Israel at Yeshiva. I always hoped there was some archive because I was hearing quite a few of the common melodies and worried that there were likely thousands more that were fading into obscurity or limited by geography. (Ever wonder what shabbat tunes are kept in the piyutim of Kurdish Jews?) Then I stumbled on this site, piyut.org, which is just such an archive. I am so thankful. They even have something like a comprehensive collection of musical scales… I’m not certain what is meant by “musical scales” on this page, but I chose one at random and I found some musical expression that was completely new to me. I suspect that the music found on this site would also be appreciated by audionauts of sufi sacred music such as the Qawallis of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. But this archive is so diverse, I am still plumbing its depths of ancient sounds and their contemporary echoes.

I don’t know when this website was founded but from their about page it seems quite active with a passionate group of musicians, academics, and other scholars working on something they know is unique and essential to preserve and promote. This statement on that page summed it up nicely:

The vast majority of the poetic and musical creativity of the Jews emerged in various Diaspora communities during the past two millennia. Since the founding of the State of Israel and the immigration of the majority of these ancient Diaspora communities to Israel, large sections of the great tradition of piyut have been lost or forgotten. Finding access to the remnants that remain is not easy. The brief history of the modern period created, in many cases, a gap between the tradition of the past and the modern society and culture that developed in Israel. Tradition generally, and the legacy of piyut in particular, has stayed alive and meaningful only among a small portion of the Israeli population.
As time has passed, the need for people to connect with these roots has grown greatly. It is a need to access the voices calling from the depths of time, absorbed in emotion and wisdom of the many generations that sang these piyutim. We will widen and deepen our language and understand ourselves and our nation better as part of understanding our ancestors and their traditions better.

To change the ipod from shuffling songs to shuffling albums follow these steps:

1) Go ahead and shuffle your songs
2) Press the center button three times
3) select the shuffle setting you want (“songs”, “albums”, or “off”)

Once you have done this you will once again be able to change the shuffle setting via the ipod classic Settings.

For regular readers of this blog curious whatever happened to my 100gb Archos Jukebox/Rockbox player (blogged of here) a short note. The Archos is ok but (since soon after the periodic completion of this spaceling’s ambient solar orbit) the Archos took to rocking it with the Junkions on Planet Junk (at the bottom of my junk pile).

But looking back all nostalgia like for my tech-Gomi, the Archos Jukebox was an energy whore, that required me to lug around an AC adapter to service it’s unquenchable thirst for electrons. And it couldn’t shuffle albums.

“Shuffle Albums” was the killer feature I pined for in an mp3 player so when I discovered the ipods were capable of that (and the newer archos’ and cowons still could not) I shelled out for my little slice of Apple. (iTunes free thanks to Ubuntu Linux + Floola, I should add).

Why is shuffle albums so important? For the same reason that “Album List 2″ is an essential plugin for winamp — it provides for the ability to listen to a random album (just like those old giant 100 CD jukeboxes could). Industry folks talk about how the revolution of the mp3 was that it liberated tracks from the medium of “Albums.” Tracks could be listened to individually, mixed and shuffled at random, and most importantly, sold individually. But the medium of albums is still important for much of the music I listen to, whether it be Beethoven’s 9th Symphony or Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians: I want to listen to my tracks sequentially in the order suggested by the composer artist’s imagination. Or said differently: context matters, provenance matters, and please don’t use tech to manipulate art as a commodity.

The Archos is still accessible and usable and I’ll find a place for it in some future project. But aside from random firmware scares (see above shuffle surprise), I’m pretty damn pleased with this little apple unit. Wish Apple’d be more open with their firmware though and less jerky about opening up their tech to 3rd party itunes alternative ipod managers.