Opinions about life and culture, A world view of a Woman Artist travelling from The Middle-east to Europe in the 80's, 90's and 2000/2019 ..... Autobiographycal Stories which have been published in the book "A Time For dreamers" (Austin Macauley Publishers) and some self published Stories on Kindle ( "Paris 2015" / "I Believe in You")
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Artile on the Guardian by Lloyd Green "Jewish American History"
Steven Weisman finds ‘contention and dispute’ at every stage of Jewish American history – including modern-day politics
A member of an Orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
On election day 2016, Hillary Clinton won more than 70% of the Jewish vote.
But that number tells only part of a story. In some predominately
Orthodox Jewish precincts, Donald Trump’s numbers were straight out of
the rust belt or the deep south.
As in the rest of the electorate, religious commitment and
educational attainment shaped how Jews voted. In the overwhelmingly
religious Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, Trump took 68% of the vote. In New Jersey’s Lakewood Township, he won with a 50-point margin. By contrast, the island of Manhattan was a sea of Democratic blue.
The political cleavages that mark the broader American landscape
exist among America’s Jews. Just as Jews were to be found on both sides
of slavery, secession and the civil war, they are again combatants in a
political skirmish. Think of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law,
and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader.
Welcome to The Chosen Wars, a narrative of the Jewish journey across the American landscape. Steven Weisman,
who covered politics and economics at the New York Times for a quarter
of a century, marshals an impressive array of facts to argue that the
competing tugs of separatism and assimilation have been present ever
since Jews landed in the New World in the 17th century, that even among
the devout the broader culture affected religious practice, and that
Jewish communal engagement has ebbed and flowed with time.
As Weisman frames things, “Jewish belief in the Jewish people’s own
unique identity … has been so strong that it remains a foundation of
Jewish life in the United States.” He also acknowledges that identity
“has always been and will likely be one of contention and dispute”.
Things are alloyed.
The book chronicles how the constitution’s establishment clause led
to the laity’s supremacy within the synagogue. Most notably for Weisman,
a schism within a Charleston shul triggered a landmark lawsuit and
decision. Unlike Europe, the civil authorities would not pick sides even
when asked. Ultimately, a South Carolina appellate court ruled in 1846
that the judiciary must avoid “questions of theological doctrine,
depending on speculative faith, or ecclesiastical rites”.
In other words, they would let the Jews duke it out among themselves.
At times they really did. Weisman describes an actual riot that broke
out on Rosh Hashanah 1850 in Albany, New York, over the nature of the
Messiah. The police were called and the congregation dispersed, but not
before the synagogue president taunted the rabbi, Isaac Wise, saying: “I
have $100,000 more than you.” Yet it was Wise’s rejection of a personal
and national Messiah that shaped Reform Judaism. It represented a break from 2,000 years of tradition.
The book also examines how Darwin and criticism impacted attitudes
toward the Bible, divine authorship taking a hit. Emil Hirsch, a Reform
Rabbi and professor at the University of Chicago, declared: “Modern
scholarship has spoken, and its voice cannot be hushed.”
To put things in context, even those more traditionally minded were forced to respond or adjust to science.
On the one hand, within the Hasidic movement the dominant mantra remains:
“If you are still troubled by the theory of evolution, I can tell you
without fear of contradiction that it has not a shred of evidence to
support it.”
On the other, within Orthodoxy’s more modern circles there was a
retreat from taking the creation story and Genesis’s timeline literally.
A “day” came to be read as eons, and the Divine Hand could be found
guiding the Descent of Man.
Said differently, distinctions are now being drawn between the “historical credibility of biblical narrative” and its “theological truths”.
Donald Trump receives a gift at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Weisman gives Orthodoxy its due as a force to be reckoned with. From
Long Island’s Five Towns to the Upper East Side, and in the Young Israel
of New Rochelle and Scarsdale, the denomination is no longer acting
like a poor relation.
The Chosen Wars occasionally loses sight of relevant skirmishes
within American Protestantism. Weisman does a deep dive on the battle
waged from the pulpit on slavery and secession but makes no reference to
its antecedents. In a sense, 19th-century Jews arrived late to that
party.
In 1700 Samuel Sewall, a Massachusetts businessman and magistrate,
penned The Selling of Joseph, which served as a theological rebuttal to
the contention that blacks were inferior in the eyes of God, and that
their plight as slaves was preordained as the purported descendants of
Ham and Canaan, Noah’s cursed son and grandson.
Sewall, a judge during the Salem witchcraft trials, contended that
“Joseph was rightfully no more a Slave to his Brethren, than they were
to him: and they had no more Authority to Sell him, than they had to
Slay him”. Against that backdrop, the “Curse of Ham”,
invoked in a New York synagogue in the run-up to the civil war, sounds
like a recapitulation of an earlier argument posited by
slavery-sympathetic southern clergy.
Weisman is optimistic about the future of American Jewry. But if the Puritans ultimately succumbed to the temptations of the figuratively forbidding
forest, there is no reason to assume Jews will be much different. After
all, Jewish immigration to America was about escaping from the Old
World and living the American Dream, not founding a City on a Hill.
Looking at America’s religious landscape, “nones” are now the single
largest subgroup among millennials. Among America’s Jews, the tale is
not much different. Three in 10 reject denominational identity. Outside the Orthodox community, the Jewish birthrate is below the national average.
American Jewry will probably endure, but its demographics stand to be
different: from the looks of things, more religious but less educated,
affluent and influential. Topics
Comment: I once found a bag near a shopping Mall in Paris .... It looked like a girl owned it because it was full of makeup bits and pieces and there were a lot of cards in it , one of which belonged to a buisness school and this had her name on it. The student was from Madagascar and i was sighing to myself when i called the school and the receptionist wasnt helpful in finding the person i was looking for. I went to the consolate or Embassy one morning , spending money on a Taxi in order to give the bag to a safe person working there. The consolate reminded me of consolates or embassies representing very poor countries ... .... where is all the money and wealth going ? SAMBAVA, Madagascar — Bright moonlight reflected off broad banana leaves, but it was still hard to see the blue twine laced through the undergrowth, a tripwire meant to send the unwary tumbling to the ground. “This is the way the thieves come,” sai...
arti visive street & urban art A Verona lo street artist Cibo combatte il fascismo e il razzismo con i murales By Valentina Poli - 31 luglio 2018 QUANDO L’ARTE PUÒ DAVVERO FARE LA DIFFERENZA NELLE NOSTRE CITTÀ: CIBO È UNO STREET ARTIST VERONESE, CLASSE 1982, CHE CON IL SUO LAVORO PROVA A CANCELLARE LE SCRITTE E I SIMBOLI D’ODIO CHE AFFOLLANO I MURI COPRENDOLE CON FRAGOLE, ANGURIE, MUFFIN E ALTRE COSE DA MANGIARE. LA SUA STORIA Lavoro dello street artist Cibo “Non lasciare spazio all’odio” o “No al fascismo. Sì alla cultura” e ancora “Se ci metto la faccia è perché ho la speranza che altri mi seguano nel rendere le città libere dall’odio e dai fascismi, qualsiasi bandiera portino oggi. Scendete in strada e non abbiate paura! La cultura e l’amore vincerà sempre su queste persone insipide!”. Queste sono alcune frasi che si possono leggere sul profilo Facebook di Pier Paolo Spinazzè , in ...
Photo Booth Abigail Heyman’s Groundbreaking Images of Women’s Lives By Naomi Fry November 1, 2019 “Houma Teenage Beauty Contest,” 1971. Photographs by Abigail Heyman In a two-page spread featured early on in “ Growing up Female ,” a photography book by Abigail Heyman, from 1974, two black-and-white pictures are laid out side by side. The left-hand photo shows a reflection of a little girl, from the shoulders up, gazing at herself in a bathroom mirror. The child, who is perhaps four or five, with dark, wide-set eyes and a pixie haircut, is separated from her likeness by a counter, whose white-tiled expanse is littered with a variety of beauty products: perfume bottles, creams, and soaps. These quotidian markers of feminine routine are accompanied by an element of fantasy; gazing at herself, the little girl stretches a slinky into a makeshift tiara atop her head. Seemingly mesmerized by her own image, she is captured at the innoce...
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