In the Bronx, an Islamic Center has opened its doors to a  Chabad synagogue so that they have a place to hold Shabbat services. The two houses of worship have a history of supporting each other and  have formed a deep bond.

The New York Times  took its sports section readers to Kiryat Shmona, one of Israel’s smallest cities, in a feature about its professional soccer team. The small club beat power team Hapoel Tel Aviv to capture the Toto Cup and sits atop Israel’s Premier League with an 11-point lead. The club is full of promise  and on the course for its first league championship. If Hapoel Ironi Kiryat Shmona captures the championship, it will certainly be well-deserved.

Collecting data tracks progress and informs service providers, policymakers, the public, and other anti-poverty measures.  This data can lead to more accurate program and policy assessment, site-specific development, and greater funding to alleviate homelessness and underserved communities. Typically, a regional report is released in early May by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Nonetheless, there is controversy on how to count those living “doubled up” with friends and family members (people who have lost their job, house, or apartment for various reasons).  Such individuals are not considered homeless by the Department of Housing and Urban Development standards and are not addressed in the count.

In DC, over 200 volunteers set out at 930pm to predesignated city neighborhoods. In the 12 year history of PIT in DC, yesterday was the first non-hypothermic evening, raising questions as to whether or not the count would be as accurate with less individuals accounted for in the shelters and more out on the streets.  Regardless, volunteers remained diligent in canvassing, and any overlapping of individual surveys would be amended. Questions included age, history of mental illness, current physical disabilities, military status, length of homelessness, and sources of income.  In return for their participation, individuals received a gift card to McDonald’s and hand warmers.  

Our group set off in Golden Triangle, zigzagging from M to P, 19^th to 23^rd, and back again.  After a slow start, we encountered several individuals sleeping in Dupont Circle.  Responses were warm, wary, fatigued, and sometimes scattered.  More apparent was the general confusion brought on by the apparition of such a blatant group of outsiders, and our genuine interest in their stories.  Some chitchatted and cracked jokes with us while others asked for food or money.  Most quickly answered our questions, closed their eyes, and drifted back to their cold and hard slumber. 

–

Special thank you to the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, the entire Point in Time Coordinating Team, and dedicated volunteers.

Well this night was different, the show that night was The Big Waste, and it made me think a bit more than usual (and not about food).

The Big Waste: First class chefs Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, Anne Burrell and Alex Guarnaschelli tackle one of the most massive problems in food today – waste! Divided into two teams, with only 48 hours on the clock, they are challenged to create a multi course gourmet banquet worthy of their great reputations, but with a big twist; they can only use food that is on its way to the trash.

To an extent, we do this for Hunger Action (we accept donations and most of the shopping is done at the Capital Area Food Bank), but Bobby, Michael, Anne and Alex took things to a new level. Maybe the Morris Cafritz Center for Community Service should try some of their recipes!

Or maybe we should be all be freegans. Freeganism is the practice of reclaiming and eating food that has been discarded.  On The Big Waste, Anne spends the evening with a freegan dumpster diving and checking out garbage bags of food being tossed out by restaurants.

The group also went to local bakeries and farms and took waste from there: eggs that weren’t a uniform size, chickens with broken wings, fruits or vegetables with a few brown spots.  All perfectly good to eat but not something most would pick from a store shelf.

Do you have a contact at a restaurant, a bakery or a local farm? Do you buy the non-perfect fruits and vegetables at the grocery? If we all pitch in and collect food that might be thrown out, think of the difference we could make.  Donate it to Hunger Action, DC Central Kitchen or give it someone living on the street.

One-third of the world’s food is wasted. What are you going to do?

-”Is a Master’s in Jewish Cultural Arts good for the Jews?”"
-”Well, it could not hurt.”

Image from USA TODAY

While the four remaining GOP hopefuls are rallying supporters in South Carolina, President Obama and his supporters are ramping up his re-election campaign. Yesterday the Obama campaign ran its first television ad in six states, including swing states with significant Jewish voting populations. These voters in swing states are important to both Democrats and Republicans because Jews have historically voted at a higher rate than the general public and they are concentrated in states with a high number of electoral votes. As national voting trends shift and change, it leaves one to wonder: what about the Jewish voter? (“Jewish voter” being a monolithic entity and painted with broad brush strokes, of course).

In September Gallup released an analysis which concluded that “although Obama’s approval rating among Jewish Americans has been declining, it has generally declined no more than it has among all Americans.” Yesterday, news broke that some staffers at the Center for American Progress, a think tank closely associated with the White House, publicly used language that could be construed as anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic…potentially complicating the president’s reelection outreach to some Jewish voters. But, wait! President Obama traveled down the East Coast yesterday to announce executive orders to boost international tourism in Florida and the up the East Coast to attend some fundraisers, the first of which was with “about 100 Jewish supporters.”  Not so fast! Shmuel Rosner includes some great graphs and interesting explanations to unpack the question of  whether or not Jews are “trending Republican” in his post on Wednesday.

Is there anyone out there who can explain how Jewish voters feel about Obama and/or predict the group’s voting patterns in 2012? Maybe this post by Brent E. Sasley will clear things up.

Erin Cosgrove, the video’s creator, told GalleyCat,  “Some of the scenes were great fun to animate- like the inflatable rabbis and the ‘Jew Hole,’ which sounds a bit dirty saying it off the cuff like that.”

The protest is based around the idea that online piracy is certainly a problem that needs to be addressed, but that these bills won’t actually impact the pirate websites, and instead only hurt everyone else, through censorship.

We use this space to share what we think is interesting and thought-provoking and entertaining. Sometimes we want to share the latest music from upcoming performers at Music Fest, present trailers from the hot new film we’ll screen, and show you that hilarious bit from our favorite comedian. On this blog and our website, we make every attempt to use creative content respectfully, legally, and with permission/attribution.

We love artists, and want you to love them, too! We wonder about all the wonderful ideas, work and performances we’ll be too afraid to share.

We hope you will take today to think about the ways you use the Internet, what sites you use and enjoy, and learn about this legislation.

Signs of this interest are evident in place like Makor, a cultural gathering place dedicated to New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s and the university courses being offered in Yiddish and Yiddish literature in translation.” YIVO, Workmen’s Circle, and The National Yiddish Book Center host events that also attract people in their 20s and 30s. The National Yiddish Book Center offers graduate students a chance to work on preserving Jewish books while taking Yiddish classes. The Center receives about forty applications each year. This kind of innovative programming is working to keep Yiddish alive for future generations.

Here at the Washington DCJCC, we recently had an EntryPointDC Yiddish event and 37 Young Professionals attended. While this event was more of a scholarly introduction to Yiddish, it got me thinking about offering interactive and humorous Yiddish language courses for YPs.

One of my friends recently co-founded a Yiddish Farm and has been honored as a Jewish Social Innovator by the ROI Community. His Yiddish Farm boasts programs such as a Summer Immersion program and Golus Festival. Check it out at www.yiddishfarm.org

Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to ask him a few questions…

1.Why are young adults all of a sudden fascinated by Yiddish?

-I believe the reason people are fascinated by Yiddish is because of its glaring omission from the standard Jewish narrative, as if it was hidden from them. Although Yiddish was more widely spoken by Jews than any other language in history (including English and Hebrew), it is barely mentioned in Jewish day schools and congregational schools. In writings about Jewish history, culture, peoplehood and/or civilization, Yiddish is notably absent. For example: In Mordechai Kaplan’s lengthy masterpiece Judaism as a Civilization, which formulates a theory of Jewish peoplehood based on cultural factors (such as language), fewer than 10 pages mention Yiddish. Once people realize how big the discrepancy is between the importance of Yiddish in shaping the Jewish people and the attention that it receives, it is fascinating to discover this major piece in the puzzle of who we are. It is as if we are discovering a major cover-up: “How did I miss this all these years?”

Indeed Yiddish was, in a way, covered up. After the Holocaust laid waste to Yiddish-speaking centers, Yiddish was left to fend for itself in the United States, Israel and the Soviet Union. In all three of these areas, Yiddish was actively suppressed. In the United States Yiddish was a casualty of the desire to become acculturated to American society. In Israel, the Zionist ambition to create a “new Jew” conflicted with Yiddish, which was understood as a symbol of weakness. In the Soviet Union, where separate national consciousness was considered a threat to class unity, the government embarked on a Russification of the Jewish people, including the murder of Yiddish writers in the 1950s. Now that Jews feel comfortable in the United States, Hebrew has blossomed in Israel, and the Soviet Union collapsed, Yiddish is suddenly allowed to be pursued. Let’s hope that it isn’t too late.

3. Tell me more about your Yiddish Farm…

-Yiddish Farm was founded in order to respond to the decline in spoken Yiddish, especially among young people. Given the proper resources and attention, there is no reason why Yiddish shouldn’t be used as a spoken language today among certain parts of the population. The biggest challenge we face in the Yiddish world is that, although people have many opportunities to study Yiddish, Yiddish students usually do not become fluent. We believe that this is due to the following reasons:

1. Lack of sustained Yiddish immersion

2. Lack of access to native Yiddish speakers

People that wish to become fluent in majority languages supplement their studies by practicing with native speakers in foreign countries. Since we do not have this option with minority languages, we must be creative. On our summer programs, people have the opportunity to experience Yiddish in an exciting, new way: by living and working on an Yiddish-speaking organic farm. Participants spend part of the day working the land, and part of the day at classes on Yiddish language, theater, literature, history and cooking. They are exposed to hundreds of hours of Yiddish immersion and they live in a tight-knit community among native Yiddish speakers. We offer a beginner’s track as well as an advanced track for our summer program. We also run an outdoor Jewish culture festival called the Golus Festival. This festival celebrated the diversity of the Jewish diaspora with music, dancing, camping, cooking and shabbos programming.

4. As a social entrepreneur what advice can you give for other people looking to start up programs?

-1. It is hard to work alone: Find someone that could partner with you even if it means compromising a little on your vision.

2. Take advantage of all of the pro-bono resources out there: Foundation Center, SCORE, and if you live in New York: NYC Business Solutions, Lawyers Alliance for New York, and if your project serves the Jewish people: PresenTense, ROI, Bikkurim, Joshua Venture Fellowship etc.

3. Be flexible: Nothing ever works out according to how you imagined it would. You may have to update your strategies constantly.

While three-day weekends sometimes just seem to mean that public transportation is a bit spottier than usual, MLK weekend is full of meaning for the Jews. Martin Luther King, Jr. was very connected with the Jewish community when he was alive and we can only wonder what the world would look like if it were not for his untimely death.

Still running on the tremendous energy of our 2011 December 25^th Day of Service, the DCJCC’s Morris Cafritz Center for Community Service is at it again on Monday with a sold-out Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project at Community for Creative Non-Violence. Looking for another way to honor Dr. King and connect with the Jewish commitment to social justice? Congregations around the DC area are commemorating his legacy and dedication to love and justice with special Shabbat services tonight and tomorrow morning. It is a “perfect coincedence” that this Shabbat we start reading Exodus which, like Dr. King’s legacy, reminds us of the importance of human dignity.

The first duty of a dramaturg working on a new play is to explain to everyone else what a dramaturg does (ha, ha, yeah, ahem–that’s a little dramaturgy humor there).  The second duty is for the dramaturg to keep his eyes on the text, working with the playwright to help develop the piece, and with the actors to help them better understand the world of the play (through research, images, and conversation.)

I sat down with the playwright to talk about her new play, and how Theater J has worked with her over the past year and a half to develop it.  I also took it as an opportunity to just talk about the play itself, as dramaturgs are wont to do.

The cast of THE RELIGION THING (photo by Colin Hovde)

The Play (or, “Why You Have No Excuse Not To See This”)

The Religion Thing deals with weighty topics including, but not limited to, religion (as you may have inferred from the title) and politics.  As you watch the show, though, you will discover that our playwright never takes an opportunity to comment on her characters, or to inject her opinion into the play.  Calarco, an award-winning D.C. playwright, says “I don’t have an agenda with this play.  I didn’t want to reveal what my religion is, or what my political opinions are.”  In the end, this makes The Religion Thing a much more complex and thought-provoking play, leaving the audience with a lot to sort out for themselves.

The Religion Thing is a case study on personal identity rather than any kind of argument for or against religious belief.  Calarco shows how religion and faith not only affect the relationship between a person and his or her God, but also between a person and their own sense of self.  Throughout the play we see conflicts that are created because characters’ religious beliefs–or lack thereof–clash with their past, or their future.

 Okay, you caught me – if it sounds like I am being laughably vague, it’s because I am – The Religion Thing is not only a thematically deep play that will no doubt spark lengthy discussions (I suggest you and your fellow play-goers plan to spend a few hours at coffee shop or bar after the show), but it is also equal parts character-driven and plot-driven, with plenty of twists and surprises.

Liz Mamana and Chris Stezin as Mo and Brian in THE RELIGION THING (photo by Colin Hovde)

Mo and Brian are our main protagonists of the play.  A successful D.C. couple, she’s a quick-thinking lawyer with a sharp tongue and he’s a laid-back lobbyist who is a little lost in life.  When Mo’s friend Patti mentions that she and her husband Jeff are thinking of having a baby, it sets something off in Mo and the arguing begins.

“I’m tired of waiting for you, Brian,” Mo says mid-way through the first act, when the two are alone.  “I am not waiting until I’m 40 [to have kids].”

“So the religion thing is what?” replies Brian.  (Hey, that’s the title of the play!)

“The religion thing” is a point of contention that Mo and Brian have been avoiding confronting for their entire four years of marriage.  You see, Mo is Roman Catholic (“lapsed Catholic,” points out Brian) and Brian is Jewish (“You haven’t set foot in a synagogue since I’ve known you,” Mo shoots back at him).

 Neither of them is particularly religious.  And yet, neither is willing to budge when it comes to “the religion thing.”

“Our children are not being raised Catholic,” Brian says sternly.

“What, you want them to be raised Jewish?” asks Mo, though the disbelief in her voice shows it’s not really a question.

This is where The Religion Thing is at its most engaging and thought-provoking.  Faith isn’t so important to Mo and Brian–what their kids “believe,” matters of heaven and hell, and spirituality aren’t the point.  The real issue here is identity.  While Brian hasn’t been to a Kol Nidre service in eight years and Mo only goes to Mass on Christmas Eve, they both still identify strongly with the religion with which they were raised; neither would consider converting.

What makes this situation so difficult for us as the audience is that we can see that Mo and Brian are perfect for each other in every other way.  They way they can riff off of each other and trade lighthearted insults can only be described as endearing.  But Calarco gives us no easy outs – and she refuses to show us her judgments of the characters in the play.

“What do you hope happens to Mo and Brian after the end of the play?” I ask her eagerly, hoping she’ll give me some solace after the uncertainty of the play’s final scene.

“I think they’re doing what they should be doing at that moment in time,” she responds with a slight smile.  Well, I suppose I can read whatever I want into that.  Thanks, Renee.

You can see for yourself what happens to Mo and Brian by purchasing a ticket to THE RELIGION THING, which runs through January 29.