Everything happens for a reason. A cultural commentary with a lotta rock-n-roll, semitism, and parenting. See our Etsy Shop! Buy HeadyBands, Hoodies and more at www.wholephamily.etsy.com
We are not that political and don't aim to get political in the future at the Whole Phamily, yet we can not help ignore the media discussions on the recent terrorist attempt in Detroit.
Whatever your politics, we can not ignore that one of our very own, Jonathan Pollard,
recently marked his 25th year in prison for trying to help limit terrorist acts. His sentence for the crime of providing Israeli intelligence information was unfair. He has been placed in the harshest part of the harshest Federal prison. The calls for commutation of his sentence have gone, thus far, unanswered by the United States Government
At the very least, we urge you to take a few minutes. Pull out some stationary or some scrap paper.
Slap on a .44 cent stamp.
And let Jonathan know that we are all part of the same Ganse Mishpucha..
As the Whole Phamily is inspired by, but not limited to, Jewish Geneological research, we highly recommend the Tracing the Tribe blog if you have any interest in learning about your own family's history.
The author of the blog, Schelley Talalay Darsashti, also writes the blog for My Heritage.com (a for-profit venture).
which we have recommended in the past. We like that it is an Israel-based family tree building website.
We need our own personal IT guy here at the Whole Phamily and don't have down yet how to get this blog glossy, pretty, and image-linky (that My Heritage image is just an image, not an actual link to their site!!?!? Argh!!) , so bear with us while we tweak the system!
A recent study published in the well-respected journal Science found that New Yorkers were the least happy when compared to residents of the rest of the country. Yes, they came in at the bottom of the barrel of data processed to learn which state churned out the most satisfied people. If the Jewish population is most dominant in New York state (one estimate is 1.9 million), what does that say for the majority of our people in this country? Are Jews in New York actually less happy than those elsewhere? Does it fulfill the Woody Allen stereotype of the neurotic, parasitic, always-worrying, hypchondriac shnorrer?
Surely, even Woody found some happiness through film at least once by way of his mockumentary Zelig
(1983).
This title character became famous in the 1920s by possessing the skill to morph into various different famous personas. That's pretty happy, right? Optimistically, Zelig literally translates as "happy." Have you known a Seligman, Seelig, or Seligsohn? Here is a further look at the name with Zelig as its root.
Living in New York sure can be rough, at least around the edges, and especially when you get a ticket while you're down the block purchasing your muni meter parking ticket. Any number of Seinfeld or Curb episodes can attest to that type of absurdity that happens day-in, day-out in New York City. Perhaps this explains why so many Jews headed out west, making Los Angeles quite literally the city of angels for the Jews who had enough saychel (scroll down for the description of Greece) to move after braving the elements of New York.
(Keep posted for a report on Jews in LA...but not those of the Ashkenazi-bred rye bread deli-pack).
Looking at the bright side of the study, where were Americans happiest? Louisiana. Fascinating news since one would think that post-Katrina, folks in the Bayou were still downtrodden and depressed. But it sure sounds like it's the place to live, if you take the study for what it's worth. If that's the case, maybe we Jews should all head down to join Reb Uri and Dahlia Topolosky in their holy work with the rebuilding of the Jewish community of New Orleans.
In reality, whether you live in Prospect Heights, Runyon Canyon or Metairie, we should all be filled with Joy because "we want you to be happy, don't live inside the gloom..."
We've been so focused on all the Schwartzes, Rosenthals and Bernsteins out there that you'd think we thought all North American Jews came over on the same boat to Ellis Island from the same shtetl in Poland in 1905. But we were recently thinking about our very nice Persian (and Jewish) childhood friend Jenny whose family moved to our East Coast suburb in the early 80s (what did we know about the Revolution back then? We were just kids). They since moved out to California, and we hadn't heard much about her, but we always knew that the Persian community in Great Neck, Long Island, was strong and growing.
This past July's W magazine ran a very lovely piece about the Persian community in Beverly Hills. And we thought our 20 person shabbat dinners on the Upper West Side were something to write home about! According to this article, families can host shabbat dinners for upwards of 60 people. Now that's a lot of rice and chicken. Not to mention the crystal and silver. Does it all get handwashed?
The community is family-oriented, tight-knit, and encourages their girls to marry young (which doesn't surprise us realizing now that another Persian friend, Debby, married just out of high school. We were all very surprised, as the typical friend in our suburban high school setting was heading off to college at that point)
The names of the Persian families are so interesting. Some have the -ian suffix. Last weekend we met a young Israeli woman whose last name is Elitzur. This name, meaning god-rock-stone-strength, was Hebraicized from the Persian name Elyasian by her grandfather when they immigrated from Iran. She had the knowledge that, actually, their family name originated from "Ben Eliyahu" which translates into the son of Elijah.
And let us not forget the greatest Jewish queen of all, Queen Esther, who was Persian through and through. Soon enough Purim will be here and we will celebrate her sacrifice of marrying the non Jewish kind Acheshverosh that saved the Jewish people from destruction at the hands of a Jew-hating empire.
"By common consent, Kafka is not only the strongest modern Jewish writer, but the Jewish writer. His only rival increasingly seems to be Freud, who, together with Kafka, may yet redefine Jewish culture for us, and so change our sense of Jewish memory."
This is what Harold Bloom wrote in his forward of the late Yosef Yerushalmi's monumental work Zakhor. which explores how modern Jews relate to their histories and memories.
Yerushalmi, the world's leading scholar of Jewish history in our time, has passed away at the age of 77. Check out the New York Times and Forward for informative obituaries.
His loss is a great one to the Jewish world today, but his contributions are vast and have affected our community in ways of which the average American Jew might be completely unaware.
The Whole Phamily is interested in the name Yerushalmi. Before learning about his background and upbringing, we posited that he was a native Jerusalemite, as the Hebrew "Yerushalmi" literally translates as "of Jerusalem" and is a surname used for families who have lived for generations in that city.
Yet, we learned that Yerushalmi has a similar heritage to many of our own Eastern European-born ancestors who immigrated here at the turn of the century. His father, Yehuda Yerushalmi as noted on Zakhor's dedication page, emigrated to British-ruled Palestine when, we are guessing, he Hebraicized his name. He then later settled in the Bronx, where the younger Yerushalmi was born and raised.
The concept of changing one's given last name (like Weiss, Perlman, or Ginsberg) at the turn of the century and into a Hebrew equivalent (such as Halivni, Ben-Yehuda, or Ha'am) is still practiced today. At Ellis Island (likely in Galveston as well), Jews Americanized their names, but in Israel many Jews have Hebraicized.
Last week some of us at the Whole Phamily had the incredible honor and privilege to bear witness to the kiddushin and nissuin (Jewish marriage) of our dear friend D. At the wedding tisch (where the bride, kallah, rocked the house!) prior to the ceremony, D touched on the topic of memory, and we could not help but think that he was referring to Yerushalmi, who passed away only weeks before the next chapter of D's journey. We believe that all things happen for a reason: Yerushalmi's own memory wafted through the honored air of perhaps one of the most bashert couples we have ever had the mazal of knowing.
Is this too much? It's way over our heads here at the Whole Phamily. So,we think it's time to kick back and reflect on these Heavy Things.
Meanwhile, if you find an affordable paperback of Zakhor, let us know, since we are returning the copy that has rested on our bookshelf for many years.
Why is that the case? For your Jewish geography-desiring ears:
Our copy belonged to an old camp friend's college friend who he has known since 8th grade, but that we met on our own during our post-college years through another friend we worked with at a different camp (but of the same Jewish camping movement). The book is inscribed by his college girlfriend prior to his own post-college visit to Minsk.
And, isn't Minsk (which is now-Belarus) where my great-great grandfather Yisroel Bear was from? (see the Whole Phamily's 2nd blog post).
There is a new book out about the former Robert Zimmerman regarding the Jewish influences on his music. Seth Rogovoy's Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet was reviewed in this week's edition of the Jewish Week. Dylan's influence over popular culture is immense. Mosh-pitter, headbanger, and classical music fan alike can all hum a soulful "Blowin' in the Wind." But there is no denying that Dylan is a part of the Whole Phamily and he has his Yiddishkeit to thank a bissel. This book explores some previously unrevealed truths of the Jewish foundation of some of Dylan's songs.
Interestingly, Dylan put out an Xmas CD this holiday season. Check out the Nation's blog for a discussion about it. Or, more recently, Randy Lewis' coverage in the LA Times about Jews, including Neil Diamond, Barbara Streisand, Barry Manilow, producing Xmas albums. The Whole Phamily think it's mighty fine that he's belting out these classics for the general American public to hear, especially since we now know that he remains a Yid through and through (no name change will will really change you).
What would Garrison Keillor have to say about all this? There are elements of NPR that we enjoy (having been long-time fans of David Isay's various radio projects), but it's never been A Prairie Home Companion. Despite that Dylan and Keillor share Minnesota as their home state, Keillor's angry, evil words in a recent issue of The Baltimore Sun sound downright antisemitic.
What's the deal with Dylan's name, anyway? Zimmerman, his given name, translates as carpenter. Somewhere back in the alter heim his family were wood-workers. As we all know, Dylan took on the name of the poet Dylan Thomas. Too bad his name wasn't Zingerman (which translates as a singer). Then maybe he wouldn't have changed it, and surely he could've eventually had a nice deli sandwich (albeit treif) in Ann Arbor and reveled in shared family lineage.
Music has the power to move. It touches one's inner depths. It reminds us of happy times and sad. It brings excitement to otherwise-mundane activities. A good tune blaring out of the speakers of your best friends '63 Corvette brought you back to a time of freedom and youth. We are glad to learn for certain that Bob Dylan, after 50 years, was indeed influenced by the biblical, Jewish prophet Isaiah in All Along the Watchtower .
And, we hope that his son-in-law, Peter Himmelman, talented musician in his own right, is kvelling.
How is this classical composition by Richard Strauss, inspired by a Friedrich Nietzsche poem, and brought to its colloquial nickname "2001" by Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey at all related to the Whole Phamily?
As kids, we didn't realize at the time, but we were inculcated with its beauty through short animated films, and spoofs on the original film, on the ground-breaking children's literacy show the Electric Company. Check out of one of these shorts.
We saw countless clips like that, teaching us the beauty of "ai," "oo," "sh," and the like.
As adults, we enjoyed skillful live performances of the song by Phish, one of the best live bands currently out there. It only hit us yesterday (while our children were watching the Electric Company DVD), why we loved this song as children.
If you click to 5:40 on this performance (from 12/12/97...by the way, look at that date...weren't we just talking about the 11:11 Phenomenon a few posts ago? For one of the first followers of the Whole Phamily, this number is surely significant), you start to get to the pinnacle of Phish's rendition.
Then we started thinking, does the significance of the name of this song mean anything?
We do not claim to understand much about the events of 9/11, but indeed it occurred during the year 2001.
Just a few posts ago, weren't we talking about Jewish geography and summer camp?
Earlier this December we were chatting, in person, with two friends of Camp Haze, a one-week summer camp for children of 9/11 and those who have lost a loved one to illness or tragedy, at a Phish show. What great work these folks are doing. Dedicated to the memory of Scott Hazelcorn, who was a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, and from other online coverage, Scott seemed like the kind of Jewish guy we would have met at summer camp. We were interested in his name.
Hazelcorn? Haven't known any others. But, Korn, Kornfield, Korngold, Kornblit, Kornreich all ring a bell. They all have the word corn/korn in it, which, for Jewish names translates as "grain." Not a very uncommon word to have in an Ashkenazic Jewish name. As everyone knows, grain is needed for sustenance and survival.
Which leads us to this week's Torah parsha, or weekly portion read in synagogue, entitled Vayigash, which concludes with our patriarch Jacob and seventy family members moving down to Egypt due to famine (lack of sustenance or grain) in the land of Israel (called Canaan back then) where the family had been residing (this is before the Jews became slaves, during a time when we were on good terms with Pharoah. Yes, we were all friends at one point!) We like Rachel Farbiarz's d'var torah on this torah portion.
In the parsha, due to the grains that Jacob's son Joseph stored up, the family as well as the Egyptians in the land will survive. Here's another explanation of Vayigash that sheds light on the story.
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom. Do you think Stanley Kubrick would be able to make any sense of this?
The Whole Phamily has taken an informal poll of real-life friends, and asked if they have experienced the recurring phenomenon of looking at a digital clock and seeing their numeric birthday. For example, if their birthday is July 16th, they often look at the clock and see the numbers 07:16.
Apparantly other people in cyberspace agree, and to some, this is called the 11:11 Phenomenon.
What in the world does this have to do with the Whole Phamily, which is exploring the interconnectivity of Judaism, names and beyond?
We believe that everything is connected. Indeed, Jonathan Safran Foer, with a totally funkadelic website that evokes interconnectivity, and one of the leading Jewish writers of our day, asserts that Everything is Illuminated in one of his novels. There is something to be said for numbers and names and how they are connected.
We are certainly not expects in the Zohar, the book of Kabbalah that is traditionally studied by men aged 40 years and up (this is when it was deemed certain that a Jewish man would be well-versed in the Torah and could therefore handle the intensity of its deep world truths). Obviously various popular culture stars (yes, you, Madonna) ignore that, but obviously people are seeking out truth in age-old wisdom. Indeed, Jewish astrology is very real, and very much happening as we write and you read.
Doubtful that as large a group of our immigrant ancestors to North America from Minsk, Pinsk, the Pale of Settlement, Damascus, Aleppo or Alexandria were exposed to these concepts as the Jewish community is today. Yes, the scholars were educated in deep metaphysical mysteries of the world, but not the average mama of eight children trying to get food on the table.
Today when you think of a favorite number combination and then later see it as a total on a store receipt from buying your day's groceries, realize that it's not totally random, and Judaism has a lot to say about that.
Do you look at the clock a lot these past nearly ten years and see 09:11?
On a positive note, the Whole Phamily thinks it's great when the time comes up as 6:13.
If you haven't yet heard about the famous game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where you link an actor to Kevin Bacon through no more than six connections, then, as in the words of Martin Short as the flamboyant wedding coordinator in the remake of "Father of the Bride, "Welcome to the 90's, Mr. Bank." The game is a take on the idea of six degress of separation, but when you're Jewish, that number seems sometimes to dwindle down to three or even two.
C'mon, we all know you've engaged in a fun game of it in your lifetime. Maybe you shy away from it now. But, even if you're from Bozeman, Montana, you most likely have played. Whether you're from Boca, Skokie, or Roslyn, whether you went to camp anywhere near Honesdale or Lake Winnipesaukee (Adam Sandler is from nearby), you've done youth groups like Young Judaea, USY, BBYO, B'nai Akiva, or NCSY, we know you've done it. Whether you were in a Jewish fraternity or sorority anywhere, but particularly at Wisconsin (Madison only, puh-lease!), Michigan (Ann Arbor, of course), or Indiana (are there even any other campuses where out of state Jews would seek out?), you've played. What about any affiliation with Penn, the SUNYs (particularly Binghamton or Albany), Maryland, Brandeis or B.U.?
Jewish geography is like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon amplified and on steroids, because you can be visiting your cousins in LA and run into a friend's aunt or uncle that you met a few years ago at his sister's bat mitzvah in the valley while strolling along Third Street Promenade.
The Whole Phamily is constantly learning about connections to friends of cousins of sisters of husbands' next door neighbors at their parents place in Bal Harbor. The network can seem endless.
As children, we were practically reared on Ezra Jack Keats' classic picture books The Snowy Day and Whistle for Willie. Through these stories we were introduced to the sweet African American boy named Peter, and got a glimpse of urban life that was different than that of ours in the suburbs. We always thought that these tales were written by an African American man, but as it turns out, this is not the case.
Did you know that Ezra Jack Keats was born Jewish, in Brooklyn, to parents who immigrated around the turn of the century and his given name was Jacob (Jack) Ezra Katz?
We owe so much to Keats for presenting the "black kid as hero" to thousands of American children. So many children welcomed Peter into their own homes, and in doing so, the African American child has become part of many other "phamilies" different than his own.
As we know, the name Katz is often a derivative of the name Cohen, and a very common Jewish name at that. The Kohen Gadolor, as a surname, Cohen, was the high priest who lived during the Temple Era and was a descendent of biblical Aaron, Moses' brother. In terms of tribal legacy, today's descendents of the Kohen Gadol have an elevated status among their fellow Jews, and are bestowed with the priestly blessing during communal prayers. As Keats most likely was passed down this tradition from his father, we feel an ever deeper sense of honor for the author.
Check out the Ezra Jack Keats foundation to learn more about this celebrated, award-winning American author and artist.
