Finally, it’s religious people who are being oppressed by an angry, politically motivated mob, offering their freedoms up to a public vote. After decades of gays and lesbians suffering through second class citizenship and in some cases having their previously obtained rights stripped away, the gayest city in the country is now turning the tables and placing freedom of religion on the ballot. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong religion, ironically targeting the most pro-gay equality major faith in the world, as opposed to targetting the anti-gay conservative Evangelicals, Mormons, and Catholics who are the most destructive forces against gay rights. The proposed San Francisco legislation that would criminalize parents having their sons circumcised is just more anti-Semitic hatred, once again disguised as “human rights.”
If the only people affected by a proposed ban on circumcision were anti-gay religious extremists, the ban would still be immoral, but at least there would be a great irony in such a gay city finally getting back at religion. But most Jews are not Orthodox (the smallest and only anti-gay version of Judaism,) and are actually disproportionally involved in gay rights; plus Conservative and Reform Judaism are leaders in gay-straight equality among the Abrahamic faiths.
The man behind the anti-Jewish ban is Lloyd Schofield (you don’t get any points for guessing he'd be Jewish.) He compares the removal of the foreskin with other religions’ rituals of female circumcision, the barbarous mutilation of a woman’s clitoris that’s designed to remove her pleasure during sex, a brutal act with no male equivalent. Rabbis and imams have invited Schofield to debate circumcision, and he refuses because he knows his claims are ridiculous.
Circumcision is not mutilation of the penis; it’s the simple removal of the foreskin. Medical and science journals prove that circumcision is the second best protection against the transmission of HIV after condoms. The British Medical Journal reports that circumcised men are eight times less likely to contract HIV. It’s been proven that circumcision removes Langerhans cells in the foreskin and reduces the transmission of many other STDs including genital herpes and syphilis, not to mention genital warts. Circumcision reduces cervical cancer in women who have sex with cut men. Circumcised men have 100% immunity from penile cancer.
Beyond health and hygiene, though, circumcision is an ancient practice in both Judaism and Islam. For believing Jews, it’s the most sacred symbol of the covenant between God and Jewish men. And that’s the real reason liberals are trying to ban the practice. Jews in San Francisco could now face up to a year in prison and a fine of $1,000 just for practicing their religion.
Aside from Jews and Muslims who circumcise their sons for largely spiritual and cultural reasons, everyone else is affected too. The above mentioned benefits to circumcision have urged non-Jews and non-Muslims to circumcise their sons, and it's a common practice in the U.S. and increasingly in Europe as well.
A city so world renowned for tolerance should never punish anyone for her religious or cultural beliefs or tell citizens of any faith how to raise their kids. Especially when the practice is not only proven to be not harmful but actually beneficial. If you're against circumcision, practice your freedom of choice on your own sons.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Happy Purim!!! Check Out This Purim Video by Yeshiva Boys
Everybody have a great Purim and check out this video by a group of Yeshiva University boys. It's really well done and uplifting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgJInVvJSZg
That's actually their second video; the first made a huge splash late last year. It's about Hanukkah. Check it out too!! It's actually even better than the Purim video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSJCSR4MuhU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgJInVvJSZg
That's actually their second video; the first made a huge splash late last year. It's about Hanukkah. Check it out too!! It's actually even better than the Purim video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSJCSR4MuhU
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Rapper Shyne Embraces Order and Discipline in Orthodox Judaism
It's old news that Drake is Jewish, but this really surprised me. Godfather Buried Alive was among the first music albums I ever reviewed for my school paper. Shyne sounds extraordinarily committed to Hashem, and I'm thrilled that he has found order and discipline in Jewish practice.
November 10, 2010
Rapper Finds Order in Orthodox Judaism in IsraelBy DINA KRAFT
JERUSALEM — The tall man in the velvet fedora and knee-length black jacket with ritual fringes peeking out takes long, swift strides toward the Western Wall. It’s late in the day, and he does not want to miss afternoon prayers at Judaism’s holiest site.
“We have to get there before the sun goes down,” he says, his stare fixed behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, the first clue that this is no ordinary Jerusalem man of God. It’s the rapper Shyne, the Sean Combs protégé who served almost nine years in New York prisons for opening fire in a nightclub in 1999 during an evening out with Mr. Combs and his girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Lopez.
“My entire life screams that I have a Jewish neshama,” he said, using the Hebrew word for soul.
Living as Moses Levi, an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem (he legally changed his name from Jamaal Barrow), he shuttles between sessions of Talmud study with some of the most religiously stringent rabbis in the city and preparations for a musical comeback.
His transition from troubled adolescent in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, shot at the age of 15, to celebrity gangster rapper turned prisoner turned frequenter of yeshivas, is the latest chapter in a bizarre journey that began with his birth in Belize 32 years ago. He is the son of a lawyer who is now that country’s prime minister and a mother who brought him to the United States and cleaned houses for a living.
“The science of Judaism” as Mr. Levi refers to it, has become his system for living, a lifeline that connects him to God and becoming a better human being. He sees no conflict fusing the hip-hop world with the life of a Torah-observant Jew.
Mr. Levi speaks in the style of the urban streets but combines his slang with Yiddish-accented Hebrew words and references to the “Chumash” (the bound version of the Torah, pronounced khoo-MASH) and “Halacha” (Jewish law, pronounced ha-la-KHAH).
As in: “There’s nothing in the Chumash that says I can’t drive a Lamborghini,” and “nothing in the Halacha about driving the cars I like, about the lifestyle I live.” As a teenager he started reading the Bible, relating to the stories of King David and Moses that he had first heard from his grandmother. At 13 (bar mitzvah age, he notes) he began to identify himself as “an Israelite,” a sensibility reinforced after finding out his great-grandmother was Ethiopian; he likes to wonder aloud whether she might have been Jewish.
He was already praying daily and engaged in his own study of Judaism at the time of his arrest but only became a practicing Jew, celebrating the holidays, keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath under the tutelage of prison rabbis. In Israel, he said, he had undergone a type of pro forma conversion known as “giyur lechumra” (pronounced ghee-YUR le-kchoom-RAH).
On the December night in 1999 that Mr. Levi walked into a Times Square nightclub, he was a 21-year-old enjoying the fruits of his first record deal and the hip-hop high life. The details of what happened inside remain muddled, but after an argument broke out between Mr. Combs, then known as Puff Daddy, and a group in the club, shots were fired, and three people were hurt.
Mr. Combs was charged with gun possession but later cleared in a highly publicized trial. Mr. Levi was sentenced to 10 years in prison for assault, gun possession and reckless endangerment. The police said he fired into the crowd. He maintains he shot in the air to break up the dispute. He would not say whether he took a fall for his former mentor.
“That’s the past, I got so much going on,” he said. “We move on.”
What Mr. Levi has moved on to since being released from prison last year is a life in which he is often up at daybreak, wrapping his arms with the leather straps of tefillin, the ritual boxes containing Torah verses worn by observant Jews for morning prayers. Throughout the day he studies with various strictly Orthodox rabbis.
“What are the laws?” he said, explaining his decision to adhere to the Orthodox level of observance. “I want to know the laws. I don’t want to know the leniencies. I never look for the leniencies because of all of the terrible things I’ve done in my life, all of the mistakes I’ve made.”
On the sprawling stone plaza of the Western Wall, crowded with tourists and worshipers, he clutches a worn prayer book whose leather cover was torn off by prison officials for security reasons.
Here he encounters a group of young Ethiopians singing in Hebrew and Amharic about Jerusalem. For a moment he links arms with them, and together they spin, dancing in concentric circles at dizzying speed.
With him is his local sidekick, a burly and bearded 30-year-old named Eli Goldsmith who used to run nightclubs in London (his uncle is a prominent music promoter) before he too became religious.
Later, with Mr. Goldsmith in the rental car he uses to get around, Mr. Levi sampled tracks from two new albums, “Messiah” and “Gangland,” that are to be released in a joint venture with Def Jam Records. The deal suggests the clout he holds despite not having released an album since 2004. He put the volume on high as he drove through the traffic-clogged roads of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
In songs like “Am I a Sinner?” he casts his spiritual quest as an escape from prison life and pain, with lyrics like, “Look in your soul and you will find vision that you can’t see through the eye.”
Three more albums are scheduled to follow. Touring in the United States remains uncertain; he was deported after his prison release as a felon who does not have citizenship, a ruling he is appealing.
Arriving at a small hummus restaurant, he recited the blessing for bread over a piece of warm pita. With him were two rabbis. Jeffrey Seidel, one of the rabbis, said he been moved by the depth of Mr. Levi’s intellectual curiosity and dedication to Judaism.
Their current focus of study together: Sabbath laws. For Mr. Levi they help explain his attraction to Judaism.
“What I do get is boundaries,” he said. “Definition and form. And that is what Shabbat is. You can’t just do whatever you want to do. You have to set limits for yourself.
“All these rules, rules, rules,” he said with his hand on an open page of the Talmud. “But you know what you have if you don’t have rules? You end up with a bunch of pills in your stomach. When you don’t know when to say when and no one tells you no, you go off the deep.”
-----The New York Times
November 10, 2010
Rapper Finds Order in Orthodox Judaism in IsraelBy DINA KRAFT
JERUSALEM — The tall man in the velvet fedora and knee-length black jacket with ritual fringes peeking out takes long, swift strides toward the Western Wall. It’s late in the day, and he does not want to miss afternoon prayers at Judaism’s holiest site.
“We have to get there before the sun goes down,” he says, his stare fixed behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, the first clue that this is no ordinary Jerusalem man of God. It’s the rapper Shyne, the Sean Combs protégé who served almost nine years in New York prisons for opening fire in a nightclub in 1999 during an evening out with Mr. Combs and his girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Lopez.
“My entire life screams that I have a Jewish neshama,” he said, using the Hebrew word for soul.
Living as Moses Levi, an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem (he legally changed his name from Jamaal Barrow), he shuttles between sessions of Talmud study with some of the most religiously stringent rabbis in the city and preparations for a musical comeback.
His transition from troubled adolescent in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, shot at the age of 15, to celebrity gangster rapper turned prisoner turned frequenter of yeshivas, is the latest chapter in a bizarre journey that began with his birth in Belize 32 years ago. He is the son of a lawyer who is now that country’s prime minister and a mother who brought him to the United States and cleaned houses for a living.
“The science of Judaism” as Mr. Levi refers to it, has become his system for living, a lifeline that connects him to God and becoming a better human being. He sees no conflict fusing the hip-hop world with the life of a Torah-observant Jew.
Mr. Levi speaks in the style of the urban streets but combines his slang with Yiddish-accented Hebrew words and references to the “Chumash” (the bound version of the Torah, pronounced khoo-MASH) and “Halacha” (Jewish law, pronounced ha-la-KHAH).
As in: “There’s nothing in the Chumash that says I can’t drive a Lamborghini,” and “nothing in the Halacha about driving the cars I like, about the lifestyle I live.” As a teenager he started reading the Bible, relating to the stories of King David and Moses that he had first heard from his grandmother. At 13 (bar mitzvah age, he notes) he began to identify himself as “an Israelite,” a sensibility reinforced after finding out his great-grandmother was Ethiopian; he likes to wonder aloud whether she might have been Jewish.
He was already praying daily and engaged in his own study of Judaism at the time of his arrest but only became a practicing Jew, celebrating the holidays, keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath under the tutelage of prison rabbis. In Israel, he said, he had undergone a type of pro forma conversion known as “giyur lechumra” (pronounced ghee-YUR le-kchoom-RAH).
On the December night in 1999 that Mr. Levi walked into a Times Square nightclub, he was a 21-year-old enjoying the fruits of his first record deal and the hip-hop high life. The details of what happened inside remain muddled, but after an argument broke out between Mr. Combs, then known as Puff Daddy, and a group in the club, shots were fired, and three people were hurt.
Mr. Combs was charged with gun possession but later cleared in a highly publicized trial. Mr. Levi was sentenced to 10 years in prison for assault, gun possession and reckless endangerment. The police said he fired into the crowd. He maintains he shot in the air to break up the dispute. He would not say whether he took a fall for his former mentor.
“That’s the past, I got so much going on,” he said. “We move on.”
What Mr. Levi has moved on to since being released from prison last year is a life in which he is often up at daybreak, wrapping his arms with the leather straps of tefillin, the ritual boxes containing Torah verses worn by observant Jews for morning prayers. Throughout the day he studies with various strictly Orthodox rabbis.
“What are the laws?” he said, explaining his decision to adhere to the Orthodox level of observance. “I want to know the laws. I don’t want to know the leniencies. I never look for the leniencies because of all of the terrible things I’ve done in my life, all of the mistakes I’ve made.”
On the sprawling stone plaza of the Western Wall, crowded with tourists and worshipers, he clutches a worn prayer book whose leather cover was torn off by prison officials for security reasons.
Here he encounters a group of young Ethiopians singing in Hebrew and Amharic about Jerusalem. For a moment he links arms with them, and together they spin, dancing in concentric circles at dizzying speed.
With him is his local sidekick, a burly and bearded 30-year-old named Eli Goldsmith who used to run nightclubs in London (his uncle is a prominent music promoter) before he too became religious.
Later, with Mr. Goldsmith in the rental car he uses to get around, Mr. Levi sampled tracks from two new albums, “Messiah” and “Gangland,” that are to be released in a joint venture with Def Jam Records. The deal suggests the clout he holds despite not having released an album since 2004. He put the volume on high as he drove through the traffic-clogged roads of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
In songs like “Am I a Sinner?” he casts his spiritual quest as an escape from prison life and pain, with lyrics like, “Look in your soul and you will find vision that you can’t see through the eye.”
Three more albums are scheduled to follow. Touring in the United States remains uncertain; he was deported after his prison release as a felon who does not have citizenship, a ruling he is appealing.
Arriving at a small hummus restaurant, he recited the blessing for bread over a piece of warm pita. With him were two rabbis. Jeffrey Seidel, one of the rabbis, said he been moved by the depth of Mr. Levi’s intellectual curiosity and dedication to Judaism.
Their current focus of study together: Sabbath laws. For Mr. Levi they help explain his attraction to Judaism.
“What I do get is boundaries,” he said. “Definition and form. And that is what Shabbat is. You can’t just do whatever you want to do. You have to set limits for yourself.
“All these rules, rules, rules,” he said with his hand on an open page of the Talmud. “But you know what you have if you don’t have rules? You end up with a bunch of pills in your stomach. When you don’t know when to say when and no one tells you no, you go off the deep.”
-----The New York Times
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Tracy Morgan, Susan Sarandon, Other Celebs in Video Supporting American Jewish World Service
Judd Apatow produced this video endorsing the American Jewish World Service, which is an awesome Jewish charity that helps people in need all over the world. He enlisted some of entertainment's biggest stars (both Jewish and non-Jewish) to spread the message about this terrific non-profit. Watch it!! It's funny and it's for a great cause.
http://ajws.org/
http://ajws.org/
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Major Jewish Groups Pledge to Help End Anti-Gay Bullying
http://www.jewishjournal.com/nation/article/major_jewish_groups_pledge_to_end_glbt_bullying_20101008/
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Let's Send a Message to New Jersey's Anti-Gay Jewish Journal
Avi Smolen and Justin Rosen submitted notice of their nuptials to New Jersey's Jewish Journal, which lists local simchas. This angered a couple of Orthodox rabbis, and--incredibly--the Jewish Journal backtracked like cowards. They apologized to anyone "hurt" by the mentioning of a same-sex wedding and vowed to never repeat this grave error.
The Journal claims to have made this apology after igniting a firestorm among Orthodox Jews; this is strange because, well. . . just take a look at the comments responding to the apology. So many Jews came out to support gay/straight equality and to bash the Jewish Journal for its bigotry that it makes one wonder just which group the JJ will end up giving the final apology to.
It reminds me of the early part of the last decade, when radio personality Laura Schlessinger converted to Orthodox Judaism upon marrying a Jew and immediately caught flack from Jewish people for her anti-gay views. She recieved so much hate mail and so much criticism from organzied Jewish life--including the Federation and an alliance of pro-gay rabbis--that she eventually abandoned Judaism, claiming that apparently Jews care more about gay people than about what the Torah says. (I would certainly hope so, Laura.) Jews successfully drove her out of the religion, and about a month ago she got fired for repeatedly using the "N" word with a black caller.
It's amazing what Jewish people can get accomplished as a community when they are really passionate about something, and gay civil rights seem to rival support for Israel as the issue most Jews can agree on.
This is not a small matter. The New Jersey Jewish Journal (not to be confused with any other Jewish Journal, all of whom are unconnected)is a non-denominational publication read by Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews, as well as ethnic Jews with no religion. Orthodox is the SMALLEST branch of Judaism, and it's also the only anti-gay branch. The New Jersey Jewish Journal does not follow Orthodoxy in any other area; they print ads for non-kosher restaurants, clothing stores that mix wool and linen, bar/bat mitzvahs for kids with non-Jewish mothers, and they print marriage notices for Jews with Christian, Muslim, and Hindu spouses. ALL of that is against Orthodox rules, so discrimination against a male couple is not only bigoted,--it's hypocritical. Please let the New Jersey Jewish Journal know how disgusting you find their support for bigots and religious extremists. Even if you're not Jewish, please add your voice. Repairing the world is for everyone.
The Journal claims to have made this apology after igniting a firestorm among Orthodox Jews; this is strange because, well. . . just take a look at the comments responding to the apology. So many Jews came out to support gay/straight equality and to bash the Jewish Journal for its bigotry that it makes one wonder just which group the JJ will end up giving the final apology to.
It reminds me of the early part of the last decade, when radio personality Laura Schlessinger converted to Orthodox Judaism upon marrying a Jew and immediately caught flack from Jewish people for her anti-gay views. She recieved so much hate mail and so much criticism from organzied Jewish life--including the Federation and an alliance of pro-gay rabbis--that she eventually abandoned Judaism, claiming that apparently Jews care more about gay people than about what the Torah says. (I would certainly hope so, Laura.) Jews successfully drove her out of the religion, and about a month ago she got fired for repeatedly using the "N" word with a black caller.
It's amazing what Jewish people can get accomplished as a community when they are really passionate about something, and gay civil rights seem to rival support for Israel as the issue most Jews can agree on.
This is not a small matter. The New Jersey Jewish Journal (not to be confused with any other Jewish Journal, all of whom are unconnected)is a non-denominational publication read by Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews, as well as ethnic Jews with no religion. Orthodox is the SMALLEST branch of Judaism, and it's also the only anti-gay branch. The New Jersey Jewish Journal does not follow Orthodoxy in any other area; they print ads for non-kosher restaurants, clothing stores that mix wool and linen, bar/bat mitzvahs for kids with non-Jewish mothers, and they print marriage notices for Jews with Christian, Muslim, and Hindu spouses. ALL of that is against Orthodox rules, so discrimination against a male couple is not only bigoted,--it's hypocritical. Please let the New Jersey Jewish Journal know how disgusting you find their support for bigots and religious extremists. Even if you're not Jewish, please add your voice. Repairing the world is for everyone.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Natalie Portman on Israel
Israel is ...
Where I was born. Where I ate my first Popsicle and used a proper toilet for the first time. Where some of my 18-year-old friends spend their nights in bunkers sleeping with their helmets on. Where security guards are the only jobs in surplus. Where deserts bloom and pioneer stories are sentimentalized. Where a thorny, sweet cactus is the symbol of the ideal Israeli. Where immigrating to Israel is called “ascending” and emigrating from Israel is called “descending.” Where my grandparents were not born, but where they were saved.
Where the year passes with the season of olives, of almonds, of dates. Where the transgressive pig or shrimp dish speaks defiantly from a Jerusalem menu. Where, despite substantial exception, secularism is the rule. Where wine is religiously sweet. Where “Arabic homes” is a positive real estate term with no sense of irony. Where there is endless material for dark humor. Where there are countless words for “to bother,” but no single one yet for “to pleasure.” Where laughter is the currency; jokes the religion. Where political parties multiply more quickly than do people. Where to become religious is described as “returning to an answer” and becoming secular “returning to a question.”
Where six citizens have won Nobel prizes in 50 years. Where the first one earned an Olympic gold in 2004 for sailing (an Israeli also won the bronze for judo). Where there is snow two hours north and hamsin (desert wind) two hours south. Where Moses never was allowed to walk, but whose streets we litter. Where the language in which Abraham spoke to Isaac before he was to sacrifice him has been resuscitated to include the words for “sweatshirt” and “schadenfreude” and “chemical warfare” and “press conference.” Where the muezzin chants, and the church bells sound and the shofars cry freely at the Wall. Where the shopkeepers bargain. Where the politicians bargain. Where there will one day be peace but never quiet.
Where I was born; where my insides refuse to abandon.
Where I was born. Where I ate my first Popsicle and used a proper toilet for the first time. Where some of my 18-year-old friends spend their nights in bunkers sleeping with their helmets on. Where security guards are the only jobs in surplus. Where deserts bloom and pioneer stories are sentimentalized. Where a thorny, sweet cactus is the symbol of the ideal Israeli. Where immigrating to Israel is called “ascending” and emigrating from Israel is called “descending.” Where my grandparents were not born, but where they were saved.
Where the year passes with the season of olives, of almonds, of dates. Where the transgressive pig or shrimp dish speaks defiantly from a Jerusalem menu. Where, despite substantial exception, secularism is the rule. Where wine is religiously sweet. Where “Arabic homes” is a positive real estate term with no sense of irony. Where there is endless material for dark humor. Where there are countless words for “to bother,” but no single one yet for “to pleasure.” Where laughter is the currency; jokes the religion. Where political parties multiply more quickly than do people. Where to become religious is described as “returning to an answer” and becoming secular “returning to a question.”
Where six citizens have won Nobel prizes in 50 years. Where the first one earned an Olympic gold in 2004 for sailing (an Israeli also won the bronze for judo). Where there is snow two hours north and hamsin (desert wind) two hours south. Where Moses never was allowed to walk, but whose streets we litter. Where the language in which Abraham spoke to Isaac before he was to sacrifice him has been resuscitated to include the words for “sweatshirt” and “schadenfreude” and “chemical warfare” and “press conference.” Where the muezzin chants, and the church bells sound and the shofars cry freely at the Wall. Where the shopkeepers bargain. Where the politicians bargain. Where there will one day be peace but never quiet.
Where I was born; where my insides refuse to abandon.
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