We are pleased to announce the merging of PunkTorah and IndieYeshiva! This merger allows us to provide edgy, educational Jewish content along with social and religious commentary. We have just released the IndieYeshiva Pocket Siddur along with a number of other products in conjunction with ModernTribe.com Go to www.bit.ly/ptshop to check it out.

Also, come to the new site! PunkTorah.org, your only source for alternative Jewish spirituality, education, and debate.

-Patrick and Michael

Dear Friends of IRAC,

We write to you today because of a very serious situation that developed here in Israel last night.

We have learned that the Knesset may vote during the coming week on legislation that would make important changes to conversion authorities in Israel and to the Law of Return.

This new law would roll back the clock on all the achievements we have made for Reform and Conservative conversion rights in Israel: not only losing recognition for Reform and Conservative conversions in Israel, but even completely redefining who is a Jew. From now on the power to perform conversions would rest solely with the Chief Rabbinate – which only recognizes Orthodox conversions.

At your next Jewish gathering, take a look at the people around you: chances are good that you are sitting next to someone who would no longer be considered a Jew in Israel.

This decision, which impacts the very definition of who is a Jew for all of Klal Yisrael, is being made by a few politicians who happen to be in power during the 18th Knesset. They are not at all in conversation with world Jewry, on whom this decision will have a major impact.

There are millions of Jews in the Diaspora, and the current Israeli leadership needs to hear from all of you – and right away – if we are going to stop this.

The various arms of our Movement are asking you to send urgent messages of protest to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and your local ambassador.

IRAC is working intensively on lobbying efforts with Members of Knesset, but we need the strength of your numbers to remind those who promote this bill that Israel and Judaism is not theirs alone.

Please send the attached letter right now to the Prime Minister and your ambassador, and forward this urgent call to your friends and family.

For more information on the conversion bill, click here
Please click here for the Union of Reform Judaism’s press release.

Prime Minister Netanyahu: Prime.Minister’sOffice@it.

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Join Michael ארי and Patrick Aleph of PunkTorah and IndieYeshiva as we talk discuss Purim!

My real disappointment lies in the way we are holding modern, “liberal-type” services.  We all sit in rows in a fancy sanctuary, sing songs and follow along and do the “call and response” type of thing. We listen patiently as the leader drones in that “poetry/sing-songy/disingenuous” kind of high pitched voice. And it struck me that it was all so, for lack of a better word, “church-y”. I hated it. It feels like it is copying the Protestant style of Western church worship, from the music to the atmosphere. Someone at the service even made a comment (jokingly, I think) about being “quiet at church”. I thought to myself, “Shouldn’t this be different than church? Why are we trying to be like that? To fit in? No thanks.” We are different, and that should be a good thing. Jews always have been different. We’re iconoclasts! We break down walls and smash idols! Heck, we’re different from each other! You know that old chestnut, “two Jews, three opinions”!

My first exposure to a Chabad type service was really, interesting. We were on vacation, so we went somewhere we normally wouldn’t have gone. This was very different. Everyone seemed to be mumbling and shuckling and I had no idea where I was in the service. After  fifteen minutes I gave up trying and I just followed along as best I could. The shaliach’s kids came right up to him and he would pick up the little ones in between prayers. It was pretty overwhelming and a disorienting.

The same type of thing happened later when I was at a much smaller minyan and everyone was davening at different speeds. I got flustered and frustrated. I even got mad at the guy next to me for going so fast and not doing it “right”.  After thinking later about why I got angry, what about everyone not praying together made me some upset, I figured it out.

Jacob Siegel, in a fantastic post you should check out, put it like this:

In the middle of this cacophony of prayers,  “I would form my own personal connection with G-d, and you, praying beside me, would do the same, and we would each be vocalizing at different paces, and we would each be inspiring the other to achieve a spiritual awareness that we would then carry throughout the day.” This is incredible to me. It is that independence in the midst of community, what I consider almost the definition of Yiddshkeit, that electrifies my neshama.

I’m not saying one way is right and the other wrong. I am saying that it is a shame if we are changing our nature to conform to an idea of what a progressive, liberal service should look like. Something that IndieYeshiva and PunkTorah are trying to do is to bring these ideas back into the way we “do” Jewish, and have them there for us, to make our Yiddishkeit genuine and real, and by “genuine and real” I don’t mean specifically that there is one right way to do things, but a way that resonates with our past. I’m taking about an Integral Judaism that would transcend and include the past (more on that in another post).

I would like to, if I may, let Mr. Siegel take us out, because any paraphrasing on my part would be just that, and I feel he puts is very eloquently:

‘When we pray, we share our energy. I davven, and you hear me and feel inspired, and I hear you and feel further inspired. Let’s thank our cantors for their efforts in service of us and G-d, and ask them to step down from the bimah and stand beside us, as we now all share together in our cleaving to G-d.”

Yasher Koach.

Michael ארי

PunkTorah and IndieYeshiva visit the site of the lynching of Leo Frank, the only Jew to be hanged on US soil.

In a generalized nutshell, Shomer Shabbos Jews believe in observing the law for the law’s sake (or a literal interpretation). This means that the following activities would “break” Shabbat:

“ploughing earth, sowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, selecting, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, shearing wool, washing wool, beating wool, dyeing wool, spinning, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying, untying, sewing stitches, tearing, trapping, slaughtering, flaying, tanning, scraping hide, marking hides, cutting hide to shape, writing two or more letters, erasing two or more letters, building, demolishing, extinguishing a fire, kindling a fire, putting the finishing touch on an object and transporting an object between the private domain and the public domain, or for a distance of 4 cubits within the public domain” (taken from wikipedia.org).

The Zocher Shabbos, on the other hand, believe in “remembering the Shabbat” and have a more loose interpretation, citing the metaphorical aspects of Shabbos over the literal. Example: a Zocher Shabbos person will drive to synagogue for Shabbat (since the Bible pre-dates cars) while a Shomer Shabbat person would not drive because using a car requires an internal combustion engine that “creates fire”.

Recently, I have had several conversations with self-proclaimed Observant Jews on the issue on Shabbat. And I have realized that, despite what anyone says, we are all Zocher Shabbos.

There are many technologies that the Orthodox and Conservative Jewry have created to make Shabbat easier (example: timers on air conditioners and other appliances, a Shabbat elevator that opens the door and every floor so no one has to push a button, or hooks onto your belt for carrying keys so that you aren’t actually “carrying” anything). In a sense, you are cheating Shabbat, by trying to find ways “around” the actual rule: not to use your creative power to alter your environment for your own sake on this sanctified say.

Shabbat is about creating a time for the sacred to be the center of attention and removing the external forces that create the mundane activities of the work week. In this way, I personally feel that understanding Shabbat as Zocher Shabbos is to remember the “why” of Shabbat as opposed to the “how” of Shabbat.

Take it with a grain of salt, as this comes from a guy who never went to yeshiva. However, if you do take it with a grain of salt, make sure not to travel with that grain of salt farther that four cubits between 5PM on Friday and 7PM on Saturday.