Arrest of IMF Head Not So Good for the Jews

"Money, women, and the fact that I am Jewish": three barriers that Dominique Strauss-Kahn mused in a recent interview with the French daily Liberation would stand in his way despite his being the expected favorite for his country's upcoming presidential elections. Turns out one was all it took.

180 Sephardi Girls Shut Out From School

Old biases die hard; we Jews know that. But for Sephardi Jews in Israel's "ultra-Orthodox" Haredi community, discrimination and exclusion--by their fellow Jews--serve as regular reminders.

Ynet reports that 180 Sephardi students (students from Middle-Eastern descent) from Jerusalem have no spot in the city's Haredi school system for the 2011-2012 school year after the close of registration. This in addition to the handful of girls who are still without spots from the beginning of this year, and some from 2009. Critics accuse the schools of maintaining an unspoken quota of, at most, 30% Sephardi girls, and accuse the Jerusalem municipality of "washing its hands of the situation year after year, ...deny[ing] the existence of quotas" while doing all it can to support them.

Read the full story here

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Israeli Soldier, Killed in Yom Kipur War, Given a New Voice

Idan Raichel sets to music the young man's "letter home" more than 35 years after it was written

Israeli singer, songwriter and producer Idan Raichel wrote this song as a musical setting for a poem written by a young IDF soldier named Reuven Politi to his mother before his death in the Y"K war. (Lyrics are at the end of the post.)

Listen to the way Raichel wrote the verses in (modern) phrygian mode (you'll hear what I mean), evoking the intensity and fear of war, and switches abruptly to a major scale for the chorus (ironically, just for the words "We are not heros"), for a brief tinge of hope. All of that amplifies the exquisite pathos of the rest of the chorus as it moves into a minor scale as the narrator tries desperately to impress upon his mother the urgency of his message. Of course, knowing the mortal fate of that young soldier only makes it that much more heartbreaking.

Below is a piece from Israel's Channel 2 News (Hebrew) on the background story.

אמא, אבא וכל השאר
מילים: ראובן פוליטי ז"ל
לחן: עידן רייכל
וכשהלילה תם והשמש מאירה
התדעי אמא מה לעינינו נראה?
עצים סביב, רמי צמרת אך חרוכי גזע
בתים גדולים סביב אך הרוסים הם דהויי צבע
מהלך על הריסות אני, אמא
ותאמיני לי אין כאן שום אגס ואין כאן פרח

לא גיבורים אנחנו כי מלאכתנו שחורה
תשקע השמש, תבוא העלטה
ואז ננום בבגדנו במיטה
כן אמא, זה חשוב, זה קשה וזה נורא

בחיי שזה קשה אך אני נשאר
אפורה האדמה ושחור האופק
וכחול שמים כאילו משתהה והוא ממתין
ולא נוגע, הוא לא נוגע באופק השחור
ביניהם חלל, שום קשר וכל השאר
וזה קשה מאוד אך אני נשאר
יש כאן גדר תיל ואחריה חרב שלופה
אמא, אבא וכל השאר

לא גיבורים אנחנו כי מלאכתנו שחורה
תשקע השמש, תבוא העלטה
ואז ננום בבגדנו במיטה
כן אמא, זה חשוב, זה קשה וזה נורא

וכשהלילה תם והשמש מאירה
התדעי אמא מה לעינינו נראה?

Life Lessons from a Coke Machine: The Ecstasy of the Unexpected

אז ימלא שחוק פינו

Unforeseen Delight

Have you ever been staggered with gladness? Have you ever been caught off guard by something small and ordinary but delighted by the sheer surprise of it? There's something particularly elating about the unexpected—a gift from a stranger, an unpredicted punchline, an unbelievable sports play, a playfully startled baby—that evokes within us joy and laughter unlike those from any other source.

Below is a promotional video from Coca Cola that shows various gleeful college students brought to laughter by a Coke machine. Coke's message, apparently, is that in some vague way Coke brings people happiness. Some might rightly point out that giving anyone something for nothing would make them smile. But I think the real power here is not what was given, but the unexpectedness of how it was done. I wonder with the author of A GeekyMomma's Blog, writes, "if the same machine doled out jokes, a handshake, or perhaps wrote a check to a non-profit organization, if the reaction might be very similar."

What do you think? Watch and decide for yourself:

What struck me most about my reaction to this video is how happy it made me seeing other people getting gladdened like this. And writing that last sentence made me realize how insufficiently our language includes references to making other people happy. In contrast, the root of Hebrew's most common word for happiness, שמחה, is regularly used as לְשַׂמִֵחַ for that purpose. This might reflect the ease of Hebrew conjugation, but this usage dates back at least to the Book of Psalms, and is firmly embedded within Jewish culture.) GeekyMom is taking this one step further with a delightful contest, where, starting today readers post videos to YouTube of themselves being "Happiness Machines" (á la the Coke machine) for a chance to win a Lenovo M90z computer (I kid you not!).

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And Now for Something Completely Different: or Laughing All the Way to...

This kind of unexpected joy is what the sages, חז“ל call שְׂחוֹק, and it has an important mystical/eschatological meaning. This feeling was embedded into the our collective spiritual identity during the very birth of כלל ישראל (the Jewish people) in the person of יִצְחַק. When Sara, at 90 years old and infertile from youth, bore an unexpected son it was this distinctive delight that Avraham acknowledged with the child's name (the root of "Isaac" is similar to שחוק). This joy, Jews believe, will ultimately be revealed in its full form one day when the world joins together to serve Hashem. Then, אַז, when evil and darkness are be overturned abruptly and absolutely, G-d will be exalted, the world will be filled with the ecstasy of the unexpected, and we will be filled with joyous song. And in case you were wondering, that is what you've been talking about every week for all these years: אז ימלא שחוק פינו ולשוננו רנה.

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All right, this post was kind of messianistic, but can you blame me? I mean, what do you think of when you see Coca Cola YouTube videos??