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Etz Haim

June 8, 2010 in Judaism, Links | No comments

How a girl named Yomaira became Yehudit: “Yehudit Tamayo’s path to Judaism began when she was a ten-year-old Roman Catholic by the name of Yomaira.”
Following their true paths: “The journey to one’s Jewish soul may have several bumps along the way, but those who choose Judaism for genuine reasons often find that they were on that path long before they themselves had the revelation that, at their core, they were already Jewish.”
When I told my family I wanted to be Jewish: “I was 14 the first time I told my mother I wanted to be Jewish. She reeled her arm back like a baseball player (she is Dominican) and she smacked me across the face.”
Tired of living in fear: “The issue is not who my mother is, but rather who I am. The question for all of us is – what have you done today? Are you a Jew by birth and an idol worshiper by practice? (Insert the name of your favorite idol, be it stone, drugs, money or physical pleasure.) Or are you a Jew by practice? By conversion, I am a Jew. By practice, I am a Jew.”

[Photograph of Synagogue Etz Haim (Tree of Life), circa 1700 in Izmir, Turkey & links via Aliza Hausman]

Helpful links in the avoidance of studying and/or finals

May 10, 2010 in Links | No comments

Greg Palast on BP’s oil spill disaster/negligence: “Why didn’t the government do something to stop it? The answer is, because government took you at your word they should get out of the way of business, that business could be trusted to police itself. It was only last month that BP, lobbying for new deepwater drilling, testified to Congress that additional equipment and inspection wasn’t needed.” (Yeah, that picture depicts the Deepwater Horizon exploding.)
One of these days, I would like to grow mushrooms inside of a book.
Open Yale Courses has RLST 145: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) available, with audio, video, and even class lecture transcripts. Even if you’re not religious, perhaps you will find the historical-critical aspects interesting. If you’ve done any research into the TaNaKh, a lot of it will be review — but the professor still manages to sprinkle in bits of information that I didn’t know already. It’s not on iTunes U due to copyright issues, which makes me wonder how many other open courses are out there which go unnoticed because it’s not picked up by iTunes.
Anne Lamot on Mother’s Day: “Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path.”
Eyeballing the site where the Times Square car bomber was held in NYC.

I go through the internet like it’s made of toilet paper. It’s an insatiable search for more information, more enrichment. Here are some things I’ve come across lately. Not all of them are recent. (But how many interesting things really are?)

Too Weird for The Wire: “Although Mitchell and his peers didn’t know it, they were inheriting the intellectual legacy of white supremacists who believe that America was irrevocably broken when the 14th Amendment provided equal rights to former slaves.”
Capturing Somali pirates: first-person shooter view: “Watch as some Dutch marines board a container ship that had been hijacked by Somali pirates. The footage is from a camera mounted on one of the marines’ helmets.”
Double Blind: “This came clear to Kevin Fulton on the day his cover as an IRA man collapsed. It happened inside an IRA safe house in north Belfast, in 1994. Fulton sat facing a wall, blindfolded. Curtains shut out the pale light of winter. Bottles lay scattered on the floor, and the place stank of stale beer. An interrogator paced the room, his boots scuffing against the floor.”
How I Convinced a Death-Row Murderer Not to Die: “He called himself Michael Finkel. Which happens to be my name. And he told everyone he met that he was a writer for The New York Times. Which happened to be my job.”
Letting Daylight into Magic: The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden: “While feeding the West’s seemingly insatiable fascination with all things Tibetan, the murders and demonstrations have exposed a dark and troubling underside of a tradition often seen as a beacon of wisdom and compassion in a spiritually confused world.”
The Passion of David Bazan: “‘People used to compare him to Jesus,’ says a backstage manager as David Bazan walks offstage, guitar in hand. ‘But not so much anymore.’”
The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: No quotation, this is some weird and heavily awkward shit. Premise: Reverend Al Sharpton goes to Liberia to hold peace talks, brings a bunch of Nation of Islam dudes with him… and Tucker Carlson. Tucker (he of the bow-ties) is dubbed an honorary member of NOI by the end of the trip: Tucker X.
Glenn Beck Inc: “With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: ‘I could give a flying crap about the political process.’ Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. ‘We’re an entertainment company,’ Beck says.”