JustASC

Israel21C reports on a new study in Israel about heart attack risks:

Hair reveals stress levels and heart attack risks

….according to several important studies by Israeli-Canadian researcher Dr. Gideon Koren, your hair can also reveal lifestyle information, such as whether you have been under stress and are at greater risk of a heart attack. 

No kidding. I conducted a similar study this morning, and here are the results:

Stress level: High
Risk of heart attack: High

Stress level: Low
Risk of heart attack: Low

The Star-Ledger reports on the sale of the former Temple Israel of Union building to the Islamic Center of Union County. (Temple Israel was absorbed by Temple Beth Ahm Yisrael of Springfield in a merger in January, 2008; the latter sold the building to the mosque.)

Some members and former members of Temple Beth Ahm Yisrael aren’t happy, as Rabbi Mark Mallach explains in a letter to our paper:  

Sadly and unfortunately, from within the Jewish community, there have come vicious attacks against those involved in the merger for selling to what one such detractor labeled “Arabs, Jew-haters.” In my humble opinion, this is clearly an example of the sin of Dibbur Peh – the spewing of hateful words, and an example of horrific xenophobic behavior that should have no place in the Jewish community.

Over the long process of trying to sell the Temple Israel building, I often shared my opinion that I thought all of us would much prefer that the worship of God continue in the building rather it being torn down for a office building. We now know that such worship will continue. Once again, sacred space has been sold, yet remains to serve another tribe’s sacred needs. It is our hope to develop ties of friendship and cooperation with the ICUC, with whom we share a linkage as descendants of Abraham, and to work together to oppose xenophobia wherever it raises its ugly head.

I usually have a few books going at the same time: there’s the audio book in the car, the novel at bedtime, the non-fiction I sneak in at other times during the day (I can’t read non-fiction at bedtime. I begin arguing with it and then can’t fall asleep). I usually have a separate book with me in synagogue — my personal rule is that it has to have Jewish content, and that I can remove the dust jacket so it’s not so obvious that I am reading “Without Feathers” during davening.

Here’s my current diet:

Audio: “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis. Ira Glass said it was brilliant, and I feel it’s my duty to understand the financial crisis. It is compelling, although whole paragraphs fly by that I don’t understand at all. Sample sentence:

If he wanted to buy insurance on the supposedly riskless triple-A-rated tranche, he might pay 20 basis points (0.20 percent); on the riskier, A-rated tranches, he might pay 50 basis points (0.50 percent); and on the even less safe, triple-B-rated tranches, 200 basis points—that is, 2 percent.

I mean, I understand the words. But it’s like reading a sports novel about cricket — I get the idea who’s winning and losing, who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, but I’m not sure I can picture the action.

Non-fiction: “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry” by Gal Beckerman. An exhaustive and spookily self-assured history by a writer who can’t be more than 30. I was supposedly reporting on this stuff as it happened, but on every page I realize how little I knew or understood about Jewish life in Russia, the refusenik culture, the diplomatic maneuverings in this country, and the various tensions among American Jewish groups. And Beckerman writes like a dream.

Misc.: “How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less,” by Sarah Glidden. A charmingly illustrated and often very funny non-fiction graphic novel chronicles the author’s experiences on a Birthright Israel trip. Glidden arrives deeply critical of Israel and the occupation, but through the course of the tour  is tossed about by the conflicting histories and “truths” on both sides. This isn’t pro-Israel propaganda, but does make the case to the Left and the Right for at least acknowledging the complexity of Israel’s, and the Palestinians’, dilemma.

Fiction: “To the End of the Land” by David Grossman. Some are calling this the defining Israeli novel of the moment, if not of its generation. Grossman is one of her best living writers, and the recent New Yorker profile about him was great and tragic and inspiring and troubling. But I have to tell you — I have tried to read his challenging, elliptical fiction in the past and just can’t do it.  Six pages into the book and I can’t figure out the setting or who’s talking. I can’t keep it up for another 400 pages.

Nice line from Margalit Fox’s obit of lexicographer Sol Steinmetz:

Sol Steinmetz was born in Budapest on July 29, 1930; his surname is the Yiddish word for stonemason.

As she explains, Rabbi Steinmetz was a dictionary editor whose particular specialty was Yiddish; beautiful touch to include the Yiddish derivation of his name.

The Star-Ledger is reporting the suicide of Marlboro Englishtown resident Alan Smolen. We profiled Cantor Smolen as he began his new job at Congregation Agudath Achim Freehold Jewish Center in August.

Hamakom yinachem…

Former Bush aide Tevi Troy discusses NJ’s Dist. 12 race in a Politico piece suggesting growing Jewish Republican support at the local level:

Canada’s National Post has an interesting analysis asking why so many of its rabbis are from the United States (short answer: the seminaries are in America, and Canada has a lot fewer Jews) and why that’s a bad thing (short answer: Americans can’t talk hockey [seriously; read the piece]).

But here’s the moment of Zen for New Jersey readers:

I saw, and enjoyed thoroughly, The Social Network over the weekend. I was struck by the centrality of the “Jew as outsider” theme, with Zuckerberg’s resentment and envy of Harvard’s WASP insiders portrayed as the driving force behind his ambition.

This is underlined most explicitly in the “final club” business, in which Zuckerberg, a member of the Jewish fraternity, longs to be a member of the fabled Porcellian or Phoenix clubs, and the central conflict between this suburban Jewish kid — with more brains and drive than grace — and the Winklevoss twins, the golden scholar-athletes who self-consciously embody the notion of a “gentleman of Harvard.”

And in case you didn’t get it, there’s the scene between the Winklevii and then-Harvard prez Larry Summers – the former invoking Harvard’s gentlemanly code (and presumably its past) while the burly, wise-cracking Summers (a Jew) represents the gate-crashing, meritocratic, post-diversity future.

It’s a compelling conceit, but feels a little dated. With waves of first Jewish, then Indian and Asian kids having crashed the ivy-covered gates long ago, and with not a single WASP sitting on the Supreme Court, is this ethnic outsider-insider thing still the reality at Harvard and Yale?

Of the reviews I’ve read, Lee Siegel at the Observer, in a review titled The Class Wounds of a Jewish Upstart, does the best job in exploring the Jew-gentile theme, and then some:

In The Social Network, Zuckerberg is yet another shocking Jewish outsider, yet another Jewish modernist shattering tradition, yet another Jewish argonaut of the unconscious. Marx thought he saw the mental destruction wreaked by capitalism’s creative forces. Freud thought he saw a war of all against all beneath the happy facade of the bourgeois family. According to Aaron Sorkin (a Jewish counterrevolutionary?), Zuckerberg perceived the ruthless will to gratify oneself behind the pleasant conventions of friendship. 

UPDATE: Since posting this I discovered that Marc Tracy of Tablet got here first, in a well-done essay subtitled “‘The Social Network’ and the Outsider”:

Yet I have to wonder whether The Social Network’s narrative of Jew-against-all is not a bit dated. After all, long gone are the days when Jews were true outsiders at Harvard and (nearly) everywhere else. In 1969, Philip Roth’s Alexander Portnoy could have parents who marveled at their son’s invitation to Gracie Mansion; today, we live in Gracie Mansion (or, rather, we host parties there, and live in a $30 million townhouse in a better neighborhood). One of my favorite lines from my favorite movie, 1978’s Animal House (set in 1962), is: “Bad news: I just checked with the guys at the Jewish house, and they say all our answers to the Psych test were wrong.” Today, you’d make that joke about the Asian house, or the Indian house—the Jewish house is just another house. At Harvard, I can personally attest, there are Jews in even the most elite final clubs. (Myself, I’ve been inside one of them, The Fox, because my oldest friend was a member. I obviously was not allowed upstairs, but I didn’t particularly care.)

The Jewish Standard reports on its own story, getting react from local rabbis and Jewish communal professionals. It’s a long and useful explication of the issues, especially the essential one: Should a Jewish newspaper reflect the range of communal attitudes and sanctioned behaviors, or are there some issues that are so off-putting to one segment of the community that they should be suppressed in the name of sensitivity? 

As far as news, the story also has the following tidbits:

Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, religious leader of Cong. Ahavath Torah in Englewood and first vice president of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, acknowledges that it was he who telephoned the Standard following publication of the same-sex wedding announcement. The story says Standard publisher Jamie Janoff “recalled that the rabbi said he had been in touch with Rabbi Larry Rothwachs, president of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County,” the Orthodox kashrut organization and umbrella group.

(“In touch” is more than a little vague, although thrice removed from the original incident [a reporter paraphasing a source's recollection of what a third party said] it’s hard to parse.) 

Goldin denies rumors, however, that he carried an explicit or implied threat from the RCBC:

“Gross misrepresentations have been accepted as fact,” he said. “The fact is that the RCBC had no official response” to the incident. “To say that the group threatened organized activity is an outright lie.”

(The RCBC asserted the same thing in a statement earlier this month.)

There’s no explanation from The Standard why their statement regretting publication was issued so swiftly (one week after the announcement appeared) and with so little time for consultation with other communal figures (the two issues spanned Sukkot and Simchat Torah — meaning shortened work weeks for everyone involved.

To judge to the side of merit, perhaps Goldin’s argument was so compelling and convincing that we should take the “retraction” at its word: That the Standard was persuaded that publishing same-sex announcements did not justify the “pain and consternation” it caused to Orthodox readers.  

Janoff also confirms what has been strongly implied in the Standard‘s second official statement, that he is encouraging a communal dialogue before making a “final decision” on whether to publish same-sex announcements:

For his part, Janoff knows that he has a lot of listening to do. In a statement published on Oct. 8, he wrote that the paper now understands “that we may have acted too quickly in issuing the follow-up statement, responding only to one segment of the community.”

As a result, he said, he is now engaged in meeting with local rabbis and community leaders, understanding that the exchange of views is necessary before the paper issues its final decision.

Wrote Janoff: “We urge everyone to take a step back and reflect on what this series of events has taught us about the community we care so much about, and about the steps we must take to move forward together.” 

JTA becomes the first to identify the Orthodox rabbi who met with staff at the Jewish Standard to discuss the now famous same-sex wedding announcement:

“Sometimes people feel that they have the right to make their choices and then to obligate others to celebrate their choices,” said Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, a past president of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County in northern New Jersey. “We believe that we cannot celebrate these choices.”

Goldin was the rabbi who in a meeting with The Jewish Standard warned the paper that its same-sex wedding announcement might alienate Orthodox readers.

-snip-

Goldin, the spiritual leader of Congregation Ahavath Torah in Englewood, N.J., said he has spoken from the pulpit against anti-gay discrimination and encourages others to do so. Goldin also is the vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, the main modern Orthodox rabbinic organization.

“The Orthodox approach to gays in our community is guided by two principles that are somewhat conflicting,” Goldin said. “We believe in respect for all individuals regardless of their sexual orientation and stand adamantly against any physical, mental or social violence committed against them. At the same time we have a deep commitment to the integrity of Torah law, which clearly proscribes same-sex relationships.”