Klez Dispeners
New Jersey’s finest Klezmer outfit, The Klez Dispeners , rocked our purim bash last night at the String of Pearls. They had everyone, especially the kinder, up on their feet, dancing like extras in Fiddler.
Pharmacogenics
My piece on Pharmacogenics is up on THE NEXT BIG THINK site this week! (thanks Andy) I imagine that very few people outside of the medical research community have heard the word pharmacogenomics — and I would have been one of those people if it hadn’t been for a man with a gnome-like beard named Bob Pollack. Pollack, a research biologist at Columbia University, recently taught a course titled “Evolution, DNA, and the Soul” at Auburn Theological Seminary — an…
An Adar Video Treat
Thanks to the blog “Life-of-Rubin” I came aross this brilliant little film – A perfect treat for the month of Adar.
More than baked goods from Waldensians!
The Role of Religious Minorities in Pluralistic Societies:A Conference Celebrating the Centennial of the American Waldensian Society23-26 March 2006 — Rutgers Presbyterian Church236 West 73rd Street, New York, NY 10023Three days of presentations, workshops and events led by religious scholars and church leaders on the gifts and challenges of religious pluralism in Western societies.The Conference will offer Waldensian perspectives from Latin America and Europe alongside North American voices and experiences. The purpose of such juxtaposition is to foster reciprocal learning…
A Poem for Purim
Lynching Haman Strange fruitspoon dollopedinto the floury centerof this soon to be folded over cookie. Your ears,We rip from the side of your head and chew,Tyson-Holyfield ritually re-ineacted. There are songs about the hatyou once purchased from Shushan’s finest haberdasheryIf it didn’t have three corners, would you have, indeed, chosen more of a beret? We erase your name from our files.Delete.We shout it down.We write it in chalk on the bottom of our Florsheim’s and we stomp.It is great fun….
Shinto Priests
Konee-chee-wah!!!!!!!!!!!! Next Friday morning, the State Department is sending over thirty Shinto priests from Japan. Few of them speak English – so I think I’ll do a few chassidic stories for them and teach a niggun. I’ll bring my digital recorder. Wish me luck. More later.
More on the immigration debates
The New York Daily News has got another strong piece on the immigration bill. From the piece: Tancredo is mad. And his rage is truly ecumenical. He is equally angry at the Catholic, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, United Methodist and Presbyterian churches, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. For the Colorado politician, these religious groups, by trying to inject desperately needed compassion and common sense into the immigration debate, are putting national security at risk. But the fact is that for…
Divan Cameo
Lisa and I were at a show last night – the Kretakor Theatre of Budapest’s rendition of Chekov’s The Seagull (3.5 hrs, in Hungarian) and we ran into Pearl Gluck. Pearl, who spends alot of time in Jersey now that she teaches at Rutgers, informs me that my dreams of being a movie star have been realized. I have a cameo in the DVD special features of her film Divan. Now I can move into a run down mansion on…
Wigwam, you are too tense….
Nineteen years ago, inspired by the words of the Western Shoshone tribal chief, I trespassed onto the Nevada Nuclear Test Site and found myself in handcuffs. I was a college student in need of a haircut in the hands of a Nevada police officer with a buzz cut who escorted me to a makeshift stockade topped with barbed wire, then to a prison bus, then to a town jail in Tonopah. Rather than book me, he took off my cuffs,…
buzzmachine
When I got started on Reb Blog, I basically thought of it as a good way to post articles in print media that I published, or got quoted in, or speeches that I gave up for public viewing in an ongoing way. It would be a vanity press-like journal of my work. Now I’m beginning to think differently about what a Blog is for. A few years ago, I got to meet Jay Rosen, an NYU journalism prfoessor who had…