JustASC

CNN.com has a package on “The New Jew” — a competent if somewhat-late-to-the-game wrap-up of under-40 Jewish ferment. They round up the usual suspects: Heeb, Hadar, Limmud, Zeek, J-Dub, J Street, and Jewcy.

Here’s how CNN identifies the “story highlights”:

 Some Gen X and Y Jews are staking creative claims to identity, religion and culture

They don tattoos, blend Jewish sounds with hip-hop, write edgy blogs and own their spirituality

“They want to re-engage in the world as Jews, but not solely for Jewish causes,” one says

Where traditional synagogues fail to touch them, independent groups and alternatives step up

Brandeis’  Jonathan Sarna (the go-to guy when you need a quote on anything Jewish, it seems) and Steven M. Cohen offer the usual praise and caveats.

The piece has a strange, fetishistic focus on Jewish tattoos. Andy Abrams, who is making a documentary called “Tattoo Jew,”  says the tats represent a bold stand:

“They’re being overtly Jewish,” Abrams said [of the wearers]. “They’re saying, ‘I’m Jewish. I’m proud. And I’m willing to wear it on my skin.’ “

Of course, this is a people who have lopped off the male foreskin since time immemorial as a permanent identity marker; we’re kind of pioneers when it comes to body modification. So I can’t get all that excited about someone who inks a star of David on his chest.

Nor can I get all that upset about it either — I know the tradition finds the practice repugnant, but the majority of Jews reject halachic practices that are considered much more central to Jewish identity (as the old joke goes, “It sures beats a ham sandwich, doesn’t it, Father?”).  

As for those who  insist a tattoo is an insult to Holocaust survivors: I don’t understand why we allow Nazis to be arbiters of what we can and cannot do.

I think if my kid came home with a Jewish tattoo, I’d be somewhat proud that he/she would want to celebrate his/her Jewishness. But my problem with Jewish tattoos is my problem with tattoos in general: They’re permanent. They represent the naive belief that the things you think are hip and/or important today will be hip and/or important to you in 20 years.

I think tattoos should be like the kabbalah: You shouldn’t play around with them until you’re 40, when your identity is essentially fixed and you’re past the recklessness of youth. Of course by then, no one will want to see much of your skin anyway.

Irish tenor Ronan Tynan did sing at the ADL annual dinner last night, saying

“I come here tonight … to seek your forgiveness.”

Now will the Yankees bring him back for his regular gig singing “God Bless America” during the 7th inning stretch? At the Wall St. Journal W0rld Series blog, Nando di Fino suggests why they may not want to:

[T]he Yankees have won zero titles since Tynan started singing in 2001. Baseball is a notoriously superstitious sport, and I don’t think I would be accused of being a total conspiracy nut job if I suggested that the whole business with Tynan being ratted out to the Yankees by a pediatrician for allegedly making an anti-Semitic joke at an apartment showing (seriously…why go tattle to the Yankees?) was at least a mini-setup to get Tynan out and break the possible bad luck.   

L.A. Times has second-day coverage of the shooting of two men at a North Hollywood synagogue, and after initial talk of a hate crime the authorities are treating it as a random act of violence:

By day’s end, authorities had come to believe that the shooting, in which two men were wounded, was probably a far more mundane crime.

“There is absolutely no evidence to support any connection to terrorism or a hate crime,” said Mike Downing, deputy chief of the LAPD’s Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau….

Several law enforcement sources told The Times that investigators were looking at whether the shooting was related to a business or personal dispute. The sources said detectives believe that one of the victims was the target and that the second victim may have been shot because he witnessed the attack.

The ADL is being cautious however, saying it

issued a security bulletin to all Jewish institutions in its Pacific Southwest Region (Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Kern and Riverside Counties) explaining that the situation is still unfolding, but we have no reason to believe that it is part of any larger plot or conspiracy.

Although early reports described the shooter as being black, police later said detectives were not certain of the suspect’s race.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat will run in Sunday’s New York City Marathon.  

Maybe he heard there would be 40,000 masochists clogging the streets of Manhattan and thought it was the Israel Solidarity Parade.

Ba-dump bump!

Rutgers’ satirical newspaper, The Medium, has fun with the Westboro church protest:

HABAD RABBI TO WBC: “WE’RE JEWS TOO!”

BY ABA SABABA,  News Editor

COLLEGE AVENUE—In a drunken rage, Baruch Goodman, rabbi and alcoholic-in-residence of the Chabad center on College Avenue, tiraded against the Westboro Baptist Church during services last week. “These people hate Jews,” said the rabbi, “so why are they picketing Hillel? Those Reform schmucks are half the Jews we are!”

He continued to kvetch about how faklempt he was that the WBC didn’t consider the biggest Chabad in the nation to be a viable threat. “The chutzpah they have!” shouted the rabbi.

Sophomoric, but pretty revealing of how some perceive Chabad on campus.

The L.A. Jewish Journal has breaking coverage of the West North Hollywood synagogue shooting:

The Los Angeles Police Department has issued an alert to all Jewish day schools and synagogues after two men were shot early this morning in the parking lot of Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic synagogue.

The shooting took place at 6:18 am in the subterranean parking structure of the synagogue, located at 12405 Sylvan Street in North Hollywood. According to LAPD Deputy Chief Michel R. Moore, two shooters approached two men on their way into the synagogue for morning prayers. The assailant fired the first shot, which struck one man in the leg, then fired a second shot.

Police responded at the scene, where the two victims, both Jewish, were stabilized and are reported to be in good condition.  The two shooters were described as older African American males. Police arrested one man for 17 year old male for questioning, but he is not a suspect at this time. (more…)

The New York Times announces the wedding of NJ real estate baron and publisher Jared Kushner to Ivanka Trump, and the Forward has a piece by Sylvia Barack Fishman, Judaic studies prof at Brandeis, about what it means when the scion of a prominent Orthodox family marries an equally prominent Jew-by-choice:

In part, the relative nonchalance that greeted this high-profile pairing reflects a sea-change over the last century in attitudes toward Jews in America: Marrying a Jew — even becoming a Jew, as Ivanka has done — no longer means removing oneself from high society. On the contrary, becoming a Jew may mean joining one of contemporary American society’s most enticing cultural streams.

I think that should be Judaism’s new advertising pitch: “One of Contemporary America’s Most Enticing Cultural Streams!”

It sure beats the old one: “Now with twice the guilt!”

I love this: Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, who got into hot water after he was reported making a dicey joke about Jews, will be singing “God Bless America” at the Anti-Defamation League’s  annual meeting. From the ADL release:

 In a meeting with ADL leaders Dr. Tynan unequivocally and sincerely apologized for a comment he made about Jews. The ADL leaders said that “in talking with Dr. Tynan and hearing his life story, it was clear that he is a good man who understood that he had made an inappropriate comment that was hurtful not only to the person who heard it but to the community.”

I think having to sit through a Jewish testimonial dinner is enough punishment for anybody.

Over at Tablet, Columbia prof Jeremy Tauber weighs in on Glee‘s recent Jewish story line (studly, mohawk-wearing Noah “Puck” Puckerman  hooks up with fellow “hot Jew” Rachel). Dauber posits that the show added a Jewish storyline in keeping with its “misfit” theme, and this:

The show’s bones are in Broadway; and— in a truth espoused by William Goldman in his backstage classic The Season 40 years ago and more recently and pungently in Eric Idle’s score for Spamalot—you won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews. Jews are as much a part of the DNA of American musical theater—and, as such, of Glee—as, well, gay men.

Yeah, maybe. But the Jewish stuff also seemed a little lazy. The frequency with which Hollywood injects Jews into plots  — where they are inevitably short-hand for misfits or intellectuals – suggests a lack of imagination and real guts, if you ask me. Going Jewish is an easy way to make your show look ethnic or “exotic” and, let’s face it, doesn’t run the risk of offending studio bosses for obvious ethnic reasons. (For the same reason, Jewish characters tend to be the same kinds of Jews you find in Hollywood offices: secular, ethnic, assimilated, and often confused about and/or mocking of Jewish ritual.)

If you’re a writer and want to push the envelope slightly more (an envelope  that has already been torn to shreds, by the way), then you add a gay character to your checklist. (Again, not likely to offend a significiant portion of the entertainment world.) So Glee doe just that, and also in the safest possible way: Kurt is femme-y and flamey and, get this, loves fashion and musical theater! (Imagine if Finn, the quarterback, was gay, or if Kurt wasn’t gay but transgendered  – now that would challenge stereotypes, not reinforce them.)

Glee wants to be a celebration of outsiders, but its misfits are the 2009 version of the platoon from a World War II movie. Instead of Moscowitz and Roselli and O’Leary and Smith, you have the Jew and the gay and the Asian-American and the overwight black girl and the disabled kid.

But if you want real “misfits,” I can imagine a few un-lazy and un-safe choices the writers could make. How about a Muslim character (Aliens in America, to which I’ve compared Glee before, did this to great and daring effect — it was essentially a mainstream sitcom that accepted the Third World’s critique of suburban American culture, to subtle and devastating effect).  Or a deeply religious kid — Jewish, Christian, Mormon – who isn’t a prude or a hypocrite. Or an Asberger’s kid who genuinely tries the patience of his peers, and isn’t precious in the Rain Man mode.

But I can’t get excited about another deracinated Jewish charcter who eats pork on Simchat Torah while watching Schindler’s List. Enough already.

This is a big moment for me: my first test of Starbuck’s Via.

My whole adult life I’ve complained about instant coffee. How hard can it be to approximate the taste of coffee? Not good coffee, necessarily, but ballpark? They do it in candies, why not a jar? 

I can’t even say that I hate the taste of your average instant — it can be pretty good with enough sweetener. But it isn’t coffee.

Starbucks is promising real coffee taste in its new instant. So here goes. My first taste.

Nothing. No wait — something. Not much flavor up front, but it leaves a little umami and a coffee-like bitterness as it goes over the back of my tongue. No real coffee aroma that I can tell. On the other hand, it doesn’t have the Sanka flavor either, so you don’t feel deceived. Just — let down.

As Mark Twain said, “If this is the coffee, I’ll take the tea. If this is the tea, bring me the coffee.”

I’m still waiting.