I wish I could recall whose insight this was, because I really liked it (Jewsrock, maybe?), but someone compared Channukah songs to Christmas songs. They explained that Christmas has a very wide range of songs, from the poppy to the poignant, while Channukah is fairly blah. Why? Well, Channukah just isn't as important to the Jewish faith as Christmas is to the gentile (ha! I mean Christian) faith. We have Adam Sandler, they have Silent Night. Of course, it doesn't help that Jewish songwriters (ahem, Paul Simon) decided to do Christmas songs. Even if S&G's Silent Night is a political statement. (Quick detour: Since when is "What a Wonderful World" a Christmas song?)

That said, we don't have many gorgeous Yom Kippur songs. Understandably, the holiday doesn't lend itself to pop, but liturgy just isn't the same. And though I'd like to keep away from heresy, wouldn't a bubblegum-supermarket version of Vidui be awesome?

Because I don't think anyone has written a piece of Jewish Christmas Short Fiction yet, I took the challenge. The result is in the prose boards right now. I know that self-promotion is tactless, but I figured that the absurdity of writing Jewish Christmas Fiction already sets the class meter to 0. (Is it possible to go into negative numbers?)

Just one Chanukah album I'd like to spotlight:
Ellen Kushner: The Golden Dreydl: A Klezmer Nutcracker for Chanuk

If this album is already a well-known secret, my apologies. But I had never heard of it until I went searching for Chanukah music. Here is the description straight from Amazon.com.

"The Shrim Orchestra rearranged Tchaikovsky's masterful score, but Kushner did not retell the classic story with a Yiddish spin. Instead, she created the glorious, imaginative tale of Sara, a young girl who confides to her mother that she pines for a Christmas tree and loathes the family's annual Chanukah celebration. Shortly after her admission, Sara receives a magical golden dreydl, which transports her into a fantastical world peopled with demons, sorcerers, and sages. "

And that - magical dreydl, demons, sorcerers and sages - is how Jews get down with Chanukah. No reindeer for us. We go straight for the jugular, and the dybbiks.

Judging the book by its BACK-cover Word from: Jake

Before even opening The Marrano, a collection of poems by Barry Goldensohn, I impulsively checked out its back-cover. There was a photo of the author; his look reminded me of Philip Roth's, a little in terms of the physique, but mostly, the contemporaneity - I've seen a ton of Roth pictures in the same suit, with the same hair, etc. Makes sense, the two are of the same generation. And, as it turns out, they have a similar tone - very noir, sarcastic, and solid as in

The Gnostics were right, the world is made of shit.
I made my life a work of art expressing this.

There is that same identity anguish - one piece is about on trying to hitch a "shiksah" but being rejected by her father, etc. There's one radical difference between the two artists though: Goldensohn goes after spirituality the way Roth goes after Freud and Marx. In a piece called "The Kabbalist," he has a really pretty image, almost naive in its ecsotericism:

On my shelves, even the meanest book
retreats in depth and joins with all my books,
petals moving towards the fertile center,
and can place me back behind myself
reading the book behind the book, until
the blossom opens and we form one text,
one complete mind, the one order.

Aside from the (almost New Agey) mysticism, this, of course, smells of Derrida. But how pretty is it! And speaking of smells, here's another quote I really like:

My mind stank with a need for prayer.
In the religion of the Great Dispersal
my shul was the record player

turning the world on auto-repeat
eight times, before I could find
the firmness of Bach's first Cello Suite.

But anyway, as I was googlin for the author's photo to illustrate my point, I found the whole book available on the web - here. Definitely check it out, but don't look for the backcover - it's chopped out of the e-version.

Sketchbook: FREE ART! Word from: Shlomo

I'm just kind of curious... I've heard that there a lot more lurkers hanging out here than actually comment. So I had a silly idea: feel free to post an interpretation of the following image, or write a poem to accompany it, and I will subsequently choose the one I like the best and send them the actual drawing. Pretty simple. If it turns out to be fun, I'll do it again. I've got a lot of sketches--I dont mind parting with a couple.



Fine print: All responses must be posted to the blog by tuesday night, next week. Although I would love to hear from all the members of the mimaamakim staff, you guys are inelegible to win. So sorry, but post if u got something to say.

Sketchbook: In case you didn't believe me... Word from: Shlomo

(see last sketchbook post)




*with much appreciation to Tamar, Yud and Shani

Buzzkill Word from: Mordy

Hate to kill the buzz, especially moments before Shabbos, but for Pitchforkmedia fanatics like myself, the recent Year-End Comments and List, Pt. 4, validates (or offends) like nothing else being written this year. The list is, "Worst Albums of the Year," and squeezed between M83, and R. Kelly's "Sex Weed" is Mattisyahu. Now, I promised never to mention him on these boards again (overkill) but here is the list for your guilty pleasure viewing.

Contrast that to the recent Algeimener Journal article that attempts to co-opt Mattisyahu as a spiritual soldier in Tzvot Hashem. Don't they know he performed with P.O.D.?

Have a good Shabbos, and weep not Mattisyahu fans. Pitchforkmedia is pretentious anyway.

Sketchbook: Pose #3 Word from: Shlomo

(I have to admit that most of my drawings from real life are of people reading, playing the guitar, or sleeping. Any other activity and they are just moving too fast, so my models have to choose one of the three... I guess that's why they call me Slow-mo...)

Maayan Magazine Word from: Jake

Meet Maayan - bilingual Israeli magazine of avant-gadrde poetry, prose and visual art. They recently put out their second issue, you can get a copy all around Tel Aviv in book stores, cafes and such. The circulation is 4,000 - which is impressive! Judging by the poster, they got gigs too (by the way, I think we should also be considering the bikini-shira combo for one of our next shows. I could take my "Chassidic Cheerleader" poem to a whole new level.) Check out its editor Roy "Chicky" Arad, certainly a character, you'll get a kick out of his form-defying anti-corporate album... Israeli style. Also, here's the English abstract from the first issue. My personal favorite is the "letter to the Minister of Interior Security," which I would like to quote in full in case the minister may be looking at our website.

Dear Sir,

On July 2, 1999 you spoke on the radio about the need for the government to support non-commercial art. This encouraged me to address you.
I believe that an artist is obliged to find its audience and not the other way around(for example I've established "Antigoy" – An academy to fight Paganism, which intendes to serve as a meeting place for artists and clients of the Carmel market in Tel-Aviv).
Therefore, I've got an immense interest in having poetry evenings in prisons. I am confident that such a project will be in the interest of all concerning and may lead to unpredictable positive results.
We must not forget that during different eras of history, prisons were the homes of people such as: Cervantes, Marquise De Sade and Dostoyevsky, among many others. I would be glad for your cooperation in promoting this project.

Sincerely yours,
Roman Baembaiev

The Jewish Writer As Shaman Word from: Mordy

In today's German Jewish Intellectuals class we discussed Jewish Shamanism. The topic sounds weird, but the evolution in the conversation flowed naturally. Walter Benjamin in "Task of the Translator," the introduction to his reading of Baudelaire's Tableaux parisiens, writes, "The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect [Intention] upon the language into which he is translating." His distinction is pure language, a form of meta-languages that exists outside the realm of words.

Chronologically, he wrote "Task of the Translator" long after he began his conversations with Scholem about Kabbalah. I don't think it is a stretch to compare Benjamin's pure language with the words of creation that stand apart from spoken/written expression. Kabbalah says that words keep the world in existence, and that without them, everything would cease to be. You can see how this is a hop, skip and jump away from declaring that the purpose of the writer is to call into existence this spiritual energy of language. Making the modern writer, as Benjamin indeed suggests elsewhere, a Shaman.

Jewish Shamanism is not a new concept, but we see an emergence of it that resists the historical trends of Judaism. On a simplistic level, Rabbinical Judaism has always been a hyper-intellectual denial of Shamanism. If a Rabbi leads a community, what room is there for a mystical evoker of God? Pop Kabbalah, the type practiced by Madonna, is a cultural urge to manifest the Jewish Shaman. At one point, that role was fulfilled by the Navi. Chassidic Rebbes have at different times embraced the role.

If this read into Walter Benjamin is correct though, the Jewish Shamans of today are the writers. Once the storyteller lost responsibility to the masses, he gained the ability to rebuke them, much like the Navi. Benjamin writes earlier in "Task of the Translator" that "Art... posits man's physical and spiritual existence, but in none of its works is it concerned with his response. No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener." It is not for their sake that the writer writes, but for His.

Personally, faced with this radical recast of writing, and the role of Mimaamakim writers specifically, I started contemplating how best to get in touch with the Godly in my writing. I could wear my tefillin while I write, but there are divisions between the holy and mundane that I am afraid to cross. Can one make a blessing over writing? Are my fears of sacrilege unwarranted? After all, Benjamin says that my very writing is sublime expression of divinity. I am the one who calls it mundane.

Any thoughts?

Photos from the Publication Party Word from: Jake

Seems like our Publication Party was ages ago, and has not even been a month yet. I thought it rocked, especially the trend of collaboration work that's starting to settle in - I love it, and hope it's going to grow in the future shows. By the way, these photos too got a collaborative, or as Lilit and other post-structuralists would say, "meta" angle: Shlomo wasn't taking them straight up as wedding shots, but with a measure of funk. So, this is artwork depicting artists performing in honor of the publication of their art. The funny thing about this kind of meta, is that it's always walking the line of Marxist 'maximized usefulness' and self-indulgence.

On the business note. I've gotten lots of compliments about the new issue, but it would be great to get more journals out. We're distributing in a grass-roots fashion, by ourselves and through our friends, so if you have not gotten your couple of copies, please order them, or pick them up from one of our people. It's an excellent read, thoughtful present. Exploration of Judaism through art in a sincere, sophisticated and entertaining fashion! I really believe it's out there making a difference in the world - in attitudes and perceptions of spirituality, identity, intellectual thought. And even though, by its nature, it is not going to attain the pop-appeal but stay within rather narrow circles, it would be great to expand more, bring in new authors and readers.

Sketchbook: In Briefs Word from: Shlomo

"Alone in the universe
in my sky-blue underwear"

Jake gave me the line, and I did a page of sketches playing off of it. Enjoy!



(I kind of like the little sketch at the bottom the best--the one with the guy sitting on a bed with the clouds behind him.)