Cyberculture
This is a word that I throw around casually. But if viewed critically, it’s almost an oxymoron. Cyber: of, relating to, or involving computers or computer networks (as the Internet), Culture: the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group (both definitions from m-w.com).
It’s not hard to see that all things cyber have become part of our culture. If I take a step back though, this wasn’t the case even 5 years ago. What happened to move technology past efficiency tools to becoming integrated into culture? This isn’t a rhetorical question – I really want to know the answer! Well, OK – I do have one theory. Web 2.0.
Wikipedia says (at least as of this writing) “Web 2.0 is a trend in World Wide Web technology, and web design, a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users.” They key is facilitating creativity, collaboration, and sharing. For me, when we stopped using computers as passive ‘users’ and started using them to create, cyber began influencing our culture.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, but was led to write about it today because of a Facebook group I just discovered. It’s called “I love cutting edge Judaism” and rather than being a religion, culture, or society group it’s listed under “Type: Internet & Technology – Cyberculture.” As one who works with congregations and technology, I’m somewhat sheepish to admit I missed this transition. I’ve been focused (and writing about) technology as a tool for congregations with little to say about how technology is redefining congregational culture. It is obviously redefining religious culture.
The group has a YouTube video listed that I think may be the best explanation of Web 2.0 I’ve seen (heard, read, listened to, etc.). Kudos to Michael Wesch at Kansas State University!
The next war memorial
My wife and I are in Washington, DC. My father-in-law, Jim McAlister, will be buried at Arlington National Cemetary tomorrow afternoon.
Jim was a career Air Force veteran and did two tours in Vietnam. My wife wanted to visit the Vietnam Memorial. As we approached the entrance to this important, solemn place I was struck with a question. ”Where will the Iraq War Memorial be located?”
I think there is no question that it will be necessary. Like the 58,000 Americans who died or are missing from Vietnam, I fear we are on the same path with Iraq and Afghanistan.
How sad. Perhaps if our legislators planned memorials ahead of wars they might be less anxious to risk American lives?
Criminal Behavior
I don’t know where this came from (someone forwarded it to me) but it’s brilliant!
10. Alberto Gonzales
Crimes: The most truckling, amoral flunky to ever serve as Attorney General. A jurisprudent organelle, he manifests no concept of the law independent of its expediency to the president. Would smilingly accuse himself of providing material support to al Qaeda at President Bush’s request, hurriedly plead guilty, sign his own death warrant and flip the switch himself. His testimony before congressional committees is to public service what cholera is to the small intestine. As first Hispanic Attorney General, Gonzo typifies the self-betrayal and ethical compromise necessary for minorities to become successful Republicans. Been felching sweet approval from Bush’s lily-white ass since Texas. A conscienceless, memo-drafting, loophole-crafting liar for hire, pushing for all the worst administration policies, including nixing habeas corpus, denying and then defending rendition, torture, political firings, and a ton of other evil stuff. He even visited a seriously ill and disoriented John Ashcroft at the hospital, attempting to coax him into reauthorizing a clearly illegal wiretapping program. The only Attorney General who ever could have made John Ashcroft a sympathetic character by contrast.
Exhibit A: “The fact that the Constitution — again, there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away.”
Sentence: Death by dull guillotine, head bent by Beckham.
9. You
Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism — it’s nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears’ children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you’re going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques.” You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can’t spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don’t want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy’s doing well. You’re an idiot.
Exhibit A: You couldn’t get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.
Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn’t cover. You deserve it, chump.
8. Michael Chertoff
Charges: Looks and acts like a man who sleeps in a coffin. As the head, or should we say skull, of our latest redundant security bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, Chertoff used 2007 to further Rumsfeld’s purportedly defunct policy of “Total Information Awareness,” ordering U.S. military satellites be trained on American soil for first time in history. Beyond that, DHS seems to function as a corruption farm, spending billions on programs that either don’t work or are never implemented, often lobbied for by former DHS employees. If the terror threat really is as dire as Chertoff says, then he is criminally negligent.
Exhibit A: Habitually references his “gut feeling” that the next terror attack is imminent.
Sentence: Gut feeling is actually stomach cancer.
7. Erik Prince
Charges: Priming Baghdad’s streets for American imperialism by making them pristinely wog-free. Prince’s Iraq is one massive free-fire zone for his bullet-sweating mercenaries, a Hogan’s Alley in which everyone dusky is blithely expendable, rape is a mischievous dalliance, and accountability an inside joke. Remarkably, enabling the US occupation and simultaneously fomenting destabilizing enmity. Bringing the privatization of warfare to full fruition — next time, Exxon can just invade a country directly.
Exhibit A: Blackwater Vice Chairman Cofer Black is Mitt Romney’s campaign counterterrorism policy adviser. The company’s website also hawks infant onesies.
Sentence: Tanned and tethered outside Baghdad’s Green Zone after curfew. Whatever happens, happens.
6. Rudy Giuliani
Charges: 9/11 Tourette’s syndrome, compounded by compulsive lying. Despite the ’93 WTC bombing, didn’t act to put all first responders on the same radio frequency and chose to house his Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor of WTC 7. Giuliani Partners consulting firm routinely did business with a Qatar ministry run by royal Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, a man whose farm has seen guests the likes of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Osama bin Laden. Wooed mistress and future wife with an NYPD chauffeur and trips to Southampton on NYC taxpayers’ dime. Ruined the prospect of a Times Square tug-job.
Exhibit A: Stages phone calls from his wife during campaign stops-to show ’em he’s got family values. Family values apparently do not include rudimentary put-it-on-vibrate cell phone etiquette. Invoked 9/11 to explain this.
Sentence: Victim of the next 9/11, which consists of two radio-controlled hobby planes smashing into his face.
5. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid
Charges: Graduates of the Neville Chamberlain school of appeasement, the Democratic leadership continues to ignore the constitution-and the American people-by keeping impeachment “off the table” and refusing to defund the war. True pushovers, they’re too stupid, cowardly, weak and outmatched politically to accomplish anything substantive, their “strategy” essentially boiling down to whining a lot while handing Bush whatever the hell he wants. There is just no way that appearing this weak and ineffectual could be any better for them politically than impeachment. Everything that the White House gets away with, it gets away with because congress allows it.
Exhibit A: Failure to woo the two thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto is moot: They could defund the war with a 41-senator budgetary filibuster. But that would take guts and conviction.
Sentence: 2 cups anthrax bisque.
4. Seung-Hui Cho
Charges: A useless fucking nerd who shot a bunch of better people because he couldn’t get laid. Take note, all you pent-up losers out there: If you think you’re about to go on a murderous rampage, either take up a drug habit, find a hooker, or just kill yourself. Your inability to cope with a comfortable life in a developed nation is nobody else’s fault, except maybe your parents. Nothing says “I have a tiny penis” like a douchebag taking pictures of himself with a gun.
Exhibit A: Cho’s infamous “disturbing” stories are only disturbing in how completely terrible they are, but now every kid with an imagination is going to be hauled off to the nuthouse if he expresses himself.
Sentence: Used as kindling at bonfire kegger for rich, popular kids.
3. Fred Phelps
Charges: Leads a picketing campaign so hyperoffensive that his Church is unanimously reviled by queers and Bible thumping homophobes alike. Along with daughter Shirley, will drag hate into the public spotlight wherever it might seem least helpful or appropriate as long as it garners his “cause” attention. Harasses widows of heterosexual soldiers at funerals because their beloved were employed by a government that does not stone fags. Torments loved ones of those murdered in anti-gay violence. Is almost definitely gay himself.
Exhibit A: He is such an effective, soul-sucking brainwasher that Fred’s granddaughter declines relationships because of her delusion that world will end in her lifetime.
Sentence: Finally comes out of closet and is immediately killed by his followers.
2. Dick Cheney
Charges: Worst president ever. So openly horrible, he now makes jokes about being Darth Vader. Unashamedly advocating for executive abuse of power and corporate theft. In and out of public office since his congressional internship during the Nixon Administration. Didn’t care about the quagmire he foresaw in ’94, because since then he’d deftly maneuvered to profit from it. Polling lower than HPV.
Exhibit A: His Halliburton stock options rose 3000% in value from 2004-2005. No joke.
Punishment: Raped by the sun.
1. George W. Bush
Charges: Is it a civil rights milestone to have a retarded president? Maybe it would be, if he were ever legitimately elected. You can practically hear the whole nation holding its breath, hoping this guy will just fucking leave come January ’09 and not declare martial law. Only supporters left are the ones who would worship a fucking turnip if it promised to kill foreigners. Is so clearly not in charge of his own White House that his feeble attempts to define himself as “decider” or “commander guy” are the equivalent of a five-year-old kid sitting on his dad’s Harley and saying “vroom vroom!” Has lost so many disgusted staffers that all he’s left with are the kids from Jesus Camp. The first president who is so visibly stupid he can say “I didn’t know what was in the National Intelligence Estimate until last week” and sound plausible. Inarguably a major criminal and a much greater threat to the future of America than any Muslim terrorist.
Exhibit A: “And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I’m sorry it’s the case, and I’ll work hard to try to elevate it.”
Sentence: Dismembered, limbs donated to injured veterans.
Another reason I hate Hanukkah!
Check out The Holy Observer for their monthly church sign of the month.
My year of living kaddish
Today is the first anniversary of my father’s death – at least according to the Jewish calendar. My father died December 31, 2006 corresponding with the 10th of Tevet. Ari Goldman, former reporter for the New York Times and now assistant dean of at the Columbia School of Journalism, wrote a book called Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir. I read his book shortly after my father died and wrote the following to Goldman, January 14, 2007:
Professor Goldman,
My father died two weeks ago after a long battle with cancer. I’ve thought of reading your book for ages – and finally picked it up this afternoon while back at my parent’s house to help my mother. I ended up reading it in one sitting. Thank you for reminding me why I’m saying kaddish! Kol ha kavod.
His reply the next day:
Dear Rabbi Spiegel,
I am so sorry to hear about the passing of your father. I am glad to hear that my book was something of a comfort. This is such a difficult time and having a prayer like kaddish is a great companion. I hope sweet memories of your father together with the love of family and friends will help sustain you.
sincerely,
Ari
So began my year of living kaddish.
My year has been very different from Goldman’s, and yet not so different. The mechanics of our observance is different – he is Orthodox and felt required to say kaddish three times daily. My liberal tradition says once a day is enough. Goldman talks in the book about frantic searches to find a minyan three times a day. I was not so panicked, partly because I was able to stay home during most of the year and when I did travel, I was able to arrange to find a synagogue beforehand. I’m both surprised and a bit amazed to say I made a minyan once a day almost every day for the whole year.
At first it was a daunting task and I admit I did it as much out of a sense of obligation as any other reason. Truth be told, it is an obligation for an oldest son to say kaddish for a parent, at least in a halachic sense. But modern sensibilities permeate the Jewish world and most American Jews might say kaddish through shiva (7 days), maybe some even through sh’loshim (30 days). I felt the need to do the ‘whole magillah.’ And it was not easy.
There was many a day I just couldn’t imagine doing this for a year. The precept that got me through is the 12-Step notion of one day at a time. I didn’t have to worry about doing it tomorrow, only today. And so, my days took on the routine of leaving the office just after 5pm to make mincha at 5:45pm. And the year passed.
Today I will lead mincha and ma’ariv and say kaddish for the last time as a part of the formal mourning period. Did it help? Absolutely. While I wasn’t able to focus on my grief and memories every day, in retrospect, I did for most of the days. Having stopped the daily trip to synagogue after 11 months, I’ve already re-adapted my routine. Funny, I don’t have any extra time in my life – it’s just filled with other things. As I think about today’s last kaddish I’m almost melancholy and my emotions are mixed. I miss my dad, and this is the last piece of letting go. Zichronah livrachah, his memory is a blessing.
Marvin H. Spiegel, z”l
May 15, 1929 – December 31, 2007
5 Iyyar, 5689 – 10 Tevet, 5768
original eulogy at http://atomic-temporary-2090004.wpcomstaging.com/2007/01/02/marvin-h-spiegel-zl/
New resources for synagogues
Kudos to Rabbi Hayim Herring and the folks at STAR, Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal, for their new series of reports for and about synagogues.
Acting Strategically: A Manual for Synagogue Planning is an excellent manual for synagogues (and other congregations) to use for long range, strategic planning. This report contains more inforamtion about synagogue planning than many books on the topic! Consulting in American Synagogues: A Report on the State of the Field is just what the name implies – a review of what synagogue consultants do. The report also includes very important information about how to assess a synagogue’s readiness for using an outside consultant. STAR follows that up with a list of practitioners in Preliminary Annotated List of Synagogue Consultants.
Congregational consulting is a very new field. The church world has been doing it for less than 30 years and synagogues even less. While it’s a burgeoning, somewhat immature field!
Join the conversations on these reports at the Co-Star blog or Synablog
Battle over religion in the public square: Round 2?
A local pastor decided to use my letter to the Star as a springboard for his comments – Some try to limit our personal faith to a private world. My reply:
I think Pastor Barry misunderstood my point. I stated in my letter, “The issue is not about prayer in a public venue as much as it is the majority religious view – Christianity – flexing its muscle over the minority – non Christians.” I find it both arrogant and insensitive that one would publically pray in a manner knowingly offensive to others. I certainly respect everyone’s right to their religious beliefs, just don’t assume they’re mine!
I don’t know what else to say – check out the online comments. Fortunately, most are rational rebukes of Pastor Barry. Thank God!
I hate Hanukkah
Truthfully, I hate what’s been done to Hanukkah. It’s been usurped by Christmas – meaning Americanized, materialized, demoralized! Hanukkah is really a universal event – the first recorded war over religious persecution where the persecuted won. That whole 8 day thing with the oil – total mishagas. The rabbis decided (some 300 years later) that they didn’t want us celebrating a military victory and they wanted more God in the story. The real miracle was that a rag tag bunch of Jews said ‘enough’ and ‘we’re not going to assimilate.’ They used gorilla warfare (maybe the first time in history?) and won. The Temple was still destroyed, but they maintained their right to be Jews. That’s good enough for me.
Challenging Tradition, Young Jews Worship on Their Terms
Kudos to Shawn Landres and Steven Cohen!
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — There are no pews at Tikkun Leil Shabbat, no rabbis, no one with children or gray hair.
Instead, one rainy Friday night, the young worshipers sat in concentric circles in the basement of an office building, damp stragglers four deep against the walls. In the middle, Megan Brudney and Rob Levy played guitar, drums and sang, leading about 120 people through the full Shabbat liturgy in Hebrew.
Without a building and budget, Tikkun Leil Shabbat is one of the independent prayer groups, or minyanim, that Jews in their 20s and 30s have organized in the last five years in at least 27 cities around the country. They are challenging traditional Jewish notions of prayer, community and identity.
In places like Atlanta; Brookline, Mass.; Chico, Calif.; and Manhattan the minyanim have shrugged off what many participants see as the passive, rabbi-led worship of their parents’ generation to join services led by their peers, with music sung by all, and where the full Hebrew liturgy and full inclusion of men and women, gay or straight, seem to be equal priorities.
Members of the minyanim are looking for “redemptive, transformative experiences that give rhythm to their days and weeks and give meaning to their lives,” said Joelle Novey, 28, a founder of Tikkun Leil Shabbat, whose name alludes to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or repairing the world. It is an experience they are not finding in traditional Jewish institutions, she said.
Many synagogues feel threatened by the minyanim, and in some cases have tried to adopt their approach, but with only limited success.
“Established synagogues are worrying about how to attract and engage younger people, and younger people are looking for a sense of sacred community, and they are going elsewhere,” said J. Shawn Landres, director of research at Synagogue 3000, an institute for congregational leadership and synagogue studies. “For a lot of people, it’s like two ships passing in the night.”
Younger Jews have spearheaded changes before in American Jewish life, including forming small fellowship groups in the 1960s and 1970s called havurot. Havurot were lay-led communities like the minyanim, but they were more countercultural, said Sherry Israel, chairwoman of the board of the National Havurah Committee. The minyanim are largely urban. They range from the 200 people who show up at the 9 a.m. Saturday service at Kehilat Hadar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to the 30 or so who attend Na’aleh’s Friday night worship in Denver. Kehilat Hadar’s e-mail list, however, has about 2,800 addresses, a sign of the transience of the young Jewish population in the city and the high level of interest.
Couples have met at the minyanim, but their leaders say the worship services are not singles’ socials. Music permeates the services, everyone is encouraged to sing and the melodies change frequently to keep things fresh.
“I felt it was hard for me to find a Jewish community that has the spiritual and communal things I was looking for,” said Vicki Kaplan, 24, who was raised in a Conservative family in Los Angeles, explaining why she does not attend a synagogue. “There were no instruments, no young people. At Tikkun Leil Shabbat, there’s a joyfulness to the singing, the community, the breaking of bread together.”
Ms. Kaplan said seeing her peers lead worship made her faith seem more accessible. “My friends who I play football with and have beers with are leading service here. I feel like if I wanted to lead a service, I could, too.”
The fact that women at the minyanim can lead prayers and read the Torah is central to their popularity, including among those raised in the Orthodox tradition, which limits women’s participation in services.
“The primary reason I am here is because of gender equality,” said Rebecca Israel, 25, who was raised in an Orthodox family. Ms. Israel attended D.C. Minyan and Tikkun Leil Shabbat, which she visited one recent Friday, until she moved a year ago to New York, where she goes to Kehilat Hadar. “If Judaism is central to my morality, then its practices needed to reflect the morality that I learned from it. In religious practices that limit women’s participation, Orthodox shuls were not living up to that equality that is important to me.”
The minyanim have attracted young people who are well schooled in Judaism. A flowering of Jewish day schools in the 1980s produced a generation with a strong Jewish education and “the cultural wherewithal to create their own institutions,” said Steven M. Cohen, a professor of sociology at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Many realized they could lead their own services after doing so through their college Hillel programs. Tikkun Leil Shabbat draws Reconstructionist Jews, Orthodox Jews and everyone in between, so it, like other minyanim, developed practices that respect people’s traditions.
For instance, its once-in-three-weeks services alternate between one with circular seating and a more traditional service, in which the chairs face east and the singing is a cappella.
The biggest challenge, minyanim leaders said, involves getting lots of people to participate, while ensuring that the liturgy is celebrated competently. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, who co-founded Kehilat Hadar when he was a layman, started an intensive eight-week course this year in New York, Mechon Hadar, to train those who want to lead or better participate in minyanim. D.C. Minyan has undertaken a campaign to equip more people to be able to read the Torah at services. Many minyanim offer tutoring to those who want to learn to lead services.
The first time she led morning prayers at D.C. Minyan, Lilah Pomerance said, she shook like a leaf.
“There was this disbelief that I was actually doing this,” Ms. Pomerance said of leading worship, “and the other piece was very spiritual, that I was leading the community in prayer and in communication with God.”
A survey that Mr. Landres has undertaken with Mr. Cohen and Rabbi Kaunfer indicates that rather than taking young Jews out of the synagogue pews, they are taking them out of their beds on Saturday mornings.
Rabbi Edward Feinstein is one leader of a traditional synagogue who applauds the development of the minyanim.
“If we were to say, ‘We are sticking to one institutional form or go away,’ then we would die as a people,” said Rabbi Feinstein, who is at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif., a Conservative synagogue. “Is it going to take young Jews that synagogues are counting on? Yes, unless you offer something better. Or better yet, invite the emergents in and make common cause.”
Some synagogues have created programs to draw young people, but they are often poorly done, underfinanced and come across as big singles’ mixers, Mr. Landres said.
The minyanim are noticing that some of their worshipers are getting older, and it is unclear how they might evolve as participants have children and move to the suburbs, said members and experts on the movement.
The answer may be found in the likes of Shabbat in the Hood, a minyan that draws 55 to 70 worshipers to peoples’ homes once a month in Leawood, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, Mo. Worshipers belong to local synagogues. This is “the soccer mom set,” with lots of children around, many of them encouraged to lead prayers, said Marla Brockman, the lay coordinator of the minyan.
“It has been a spiritual hit for our families,” Ms. Brockman said. “We were all looking to go back to Jewish summer camp — the ease of community, this feeling of ‘go ahead and try it, try a reading’ — and we found it.”
Jews Against the War
The title says it all. Go to http://jewsagainstthewar.org and sign the petition. Check to see if your rabbi has signed. If not, make ’em!
Ma Hamatzav? (Was' Up?) 