A voice from the ethereal realm has called unto to me to feature Divine Interventions, an inspired example of commercial "religious obscenity." DI's products are primarily from the Christian tradition, tho they also include Moses and the Buddha--but not Muhammad.
Available from Faith-Action-Change NYC, at cost. GetReligion has more on Obama & the Jewish vote.
Students of comparative theology have long been aware of resurrection motifs in religion before Christ. James Tabor points to an even more direct antecedent in Judaism, as a new scholarly paper offers textual evidence of the sufffering-messiah-resurrected-after-three-days motif in Judaism circulating shortly before Jesus' crucifixion.
Via The Light Stuff
Gawker has the scoop.
"After eating Matzah accidentally baked with radioactive water in a microwave oven, this future heroine discovered that the molecules in her body had been charged with hyper energy."
For the entire roster of the Corps, check out their page on International Hero. My favorite is probably Shabbas Queen, whose electromagnetic "wand needs to recharge one day out of every seven."
Performed in Little Rock, Arkansas, offered by the Jewish Music Group.
Coming up: a movie called The Shiva Club.
Yes.
Just . . . yes.
Don't see the connection to the BofG?
Well, I wish you could go back in time to see the stellar 2005 Wild Things exhibit at New York's Jewish Museum, which traced the influence of Maurice Sendak's Jewish immigrant upbringing on his work. From the archived online exhibit gallery:
In Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak renders his Eastern European Jewish relatives, whom he remembers from childhood, as the wild things. Max, the story’s protagonist, journeys to a fantasy land inhabited by the monsters, whom he eventually sends to bed without their supper, as his own mother has done to him.
Tattoo via the always informative needled.
When I was a tyke, I was positively addicted to How and Why Wonder Books. Today a series on evolutionary science wouldn't include a book on religious history--and, in evangelical circles, vice versa. I'm not sure that's progress.
Romance Was Born, an Australian fashion house, has released a stunning, biblical-inspired campaign called the Garden of Eden. The dramatically funky, eccentric label is designed by Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett and is sure to dazzle, particularly with this fascinating, artistic set up.
“They invent tall tales through elaborately-designed garments while spinning adventurous ranges and seasonal collections from a web of whimsical yarns,” Dexigner explains.
Not so long ago a trip to Penn Station meant seeing ubiquitous promos for Justin Timberlake. I was hoping to see the same thing for Hasidic pop star Lipa Schmeltzer, but alas, it's not to be.
Two Brooklyn community leaders, Asher Friedman and Rabbi Avraham Shor, mobilized opposition to the concert late last month, warning that the concert would promote “ribaldry and lightheadedness… [and] strip the youth of every shred of fear of heaven.” Some Hasidim criticize Friedman for corrupting Jewish youth with secular musical styles, others warn his popularity might eclipse the authority of the rabbis.
Gothamist highlights a telling response from one commenter:
“We have now banned sporting events, concerts, amusement parks, the circus & malls among other things. Of course I don’t argue with the p’sak on these. But what in heavens name do we want people to do realistically for recreation?”
When I wrote about the passing of Steve Gerber, prolific comics writer and creator of Howard of Duck, I did so recalling the way the themes of God and fate reverberated through his work. What I didn't know: that he named the character after a high school friend who later became a rabbi.
Howard the Duck was reading the newspaper at a coffee shop in Dayton, Ohio, when he saw a wire service item that Steve had died. "I was shocked," Howard told me in a phone interview on Monday.
Howard — Howard Tockman, another U. City classmate — probably was Steve's closest friend through high school and college. "I used to do a Donald Duck voice," he recalled, "so when Steve came up with the character, kind of a combination of Donald Duck and Groucho Marx, he named him Howard the Duck."
In high school, "we were all kind of carefree and joked around," said Tock, as he was known. We put out a comedy magazine called 'Nerve' from Steve's basement. Some of what was in 'Nerve' was political and social, and some of it was just silly. Steve had a very sharp wit. He could reflect humorously about something in a very dark way."
Tock, now the rabbi at Congregation Sh'ma Yisrael in Dayton, knew Steve had had some health problems, but he, too, had lost touch with his old friend. "I know that at one time, he had hopes of writing more than comics," Tock told me. "I got the sense that he would have liked to write something of greater significance. He had a lot of talent, and he was sort of pigeonholed in the comic book field."As Steve's friend, Tock said it saddened him to learn that Steve had been so unhappy. As Rabbi Tockman, he said he understood how it can feel "when you are by yourself a lot and creating fictional characters and you don't have a grounding in relationships and no real permanent base for yourself. When we were young, I didn't have a sense that he would have a lonely life, and I'm sorry to hear that."
It's been a weird 24 hours here at the BofG. Every time I've tried tried to post, something crashed--and the crashes occurred only when trying to post on this site. Flickr posts--didn't work. Wireless--cut out, prompting repeated router reboots. Desktop blogging software implodes. Screen freezes. And so on.
And so it came to pass that this site had become the web equivalent of the Garden of Eden's tree of the knowledge of good and evil--the day wherein I tried to access it, my post would surely die. To mark the occasion I tracked down this vintage Adam & Eve at the Tree of Life brooch, replete with the serpent and the apple and the unhappy couple poised to doom us all--and wouldn't you know it, the post looks like it's going to go through.
Just doing my part to extend original sin to the web, if it wasn't there already . . .
Via MediaBistro, a revealing interview with architect Daniel Libeskind on designing a Jewish museum that isn't centered on the Holocaust:
I’ve dealt with Jewish museums in Europe where you are always part of an immense tragedy. I thought it was remarkable to work in San Francisco on a Jewish museum that is a celebration of Jewish life, and of San Francisco, and of America. That’s why I based it on that very traditional and very ancient core of the Jewish spirit: l’chaim. To life.
Libeskind also discusses the interplay of symbol and abstraction in Jewish design:
[I]f you really go into the biblical texts, you see how important architecture and art is for Jews from the beginning. In the book of Kings, chapter six is a very serious passage. There’s the description of specific measures and cherubim, or angels, and it says: “And he made the oracle in the midst of the house, in the inner part, to set there the ark.” But of course, Jewish architecture is not about venerating an image—it is being communicated through the weight of the buildings, the substantial aspect of the tabernacle.
But enough with the excerpts; read the whole thing here.
*. . . but were afraid they'd sing.
One old model of secularization theory posits that an abundance of choices in the spiritual marketplace can create a spiritual aporia--there are so many viable choices that it can be hard to pick just one, thereby leaving us with nothing.
Whatever the value of that theory in understanding society, it sure applies to this site in regard to the C.B. Gardner Witches Mill Collection that's been selling on eBay, which has so many cool pieces that I've been dithering over which one to post. Be sure to click over to another of my favorite daily reads--AltReligion--for the scoop.
Why did I pick the image above? Well, it's a magic square, a wonderful example of a spiritual icon now reincarnated in a pop secular form. For an illustrated history of the link between magic squares and sudoku, check out this article from Plus as well as this fun page from EMAS Portsmouth, which integrates mathematical training with cultural traditions.
The first major jewelry and watch trade show in Macau celebrates the occasion in song.
Over the past few months, news reports have been circulating re some Christians' claim that I-35 is the subject of biblical prophecy in Isaiah 35, which states the unclean shall not pass over God's holy highway. MMI has the rundown with a revelatory video from CNN in which one Christian links JFK's assassination and the bridge collapse to God's desire to cleanse His Holy Highway.
While the Prophets do speak often of God's anger, I'm not sure they meant road rage.
Sacred Cut Metal Designs is a multifaith spiritual marketplace with designs that represent a diverse range of spiritual traditions. This informative article from a local paper explains reason for the name: they custom-cut each piece with "holy water and sacred sand"--"customers can request that any refinable liquid, sand or herb that is meaningful to them be used to make their jewelry."
Because the aim is to promote peace and goodwill for all people, Sacred Cut has pieces from a wide range of traditions and beliefs, such as Christian crosses . . .
and Stars of David
and Oms.
But what really sets Sacred Cut apart is the following item, which links the sacred number 7 with a truly divine name:
Speaking of unusual combinations of celebrity and Jewish culture, check out this parody of Soulja Boy Tell 'Em's Crank Dat Soulja Boy.
Profound or obscene? You be the judge:
Daniel Radcliffe, who has captivated moviegoers as the bespectacled schoolboy wizard in the Harry Potter films, has donated the first pair of glasses he wore as a child to an exhibition marking the horrors of the Holocaust.
The British actor joins Yoko Ono, talk show host Jerry Springer, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other celebrities and members of the public whose spectacles will be linked together in the shape of a railway track — recalling the trains that carried many of the Nazis' victims to concentration camps throughout Europe. An estimated 6 million Jews died. . . .
Muslim leaders are to attend the multicultural service, which is the culmination of a series of lectures, exhibitions, stage shows and musical events recalling the Nazi atrocities and more recent genocides. Jason Isaacs, who stars as the sinister Lucius Malfoy in the "Harry Potter" films, will also take part in the service.
The 18-year-old Radcliffe, whose mother is Jewish, sent the oval, gray metal-framed pair of glasses he wore as a 6-year-old.
In a statement, Ono called the project "such a symbolic piece of artwork, which will help people to learn how important it is to never forget the horrors of the Holocaust and to challenge hatred and prejudice wherever it arises."
Via the Consumerist
From JewishSource: "Just try to pick up the Hail/Death of the Firstborn split. Fun for the whole family!"
Fresh from the latest Heeb, here's a juicy morsel from How to Cook a Gentile by Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer.
Does the prophet Jeremiah's condemnation of Christmas trees make you uncomfortable with decorating your own this holiday season?
Well, one way to maintain the tradition without violating the letter of Jeremiah's command would be to make your very own beer bottle Christmas tree! No woods or chopping necessary--just plenty of holiday cheer.
HT: Russell's Teapot, AltReligion, Unbounded Edition, Faith Central
Two stories out of Canada today highlight an emerging twist in the American culture war:
Soccer rules tangled up in Hijab: an Edmonton girls team is benched after a league bans Islamic head scarves during games
Killed for not wearing a Hijab: A father kills his daughter for removing her hijab at school
And in more hopeful news, the New York press is abuzz with the story of how a Muslim guy saved two Jews being beaten up on the subway by self-proclaimed Catholics, one of whom preceded the attack by flashing his Jesus tattoo.
The dumbest part of the assault? One of the attackers said it was in retribution for the Jews killing Jesus on Hanukkah.
Earlier this week I was at an office in the Empire State Building when I heard singing. Cheerful songs, holidayish yet unfamiliar. The voices led me out to the lobby, where a crowd had gathered to listen to . . .
Hanukkah carolers.*
The December holidays are like that. Judaism, Christianity, the pagan Saturnalia--religions had mashup culture down cold long before Web 2.0. Pictured below is designer Sahar Batsry's fusion for the season: the Treenorah.
HT: Kottke and Kitsune Noir.
*Although I wasn't familiar with the songs, I'm pretty sure none of them were on this CD.
What better way to accessorize your Absolut Shabbat t-shirt and Chanukah Ham? Available from Menorah.com (HT: Fashionista)
No, really. NancyKay Shapiro found this sign at a New York City (!) Balducci's:
Of course, Christianity isn't the only religion known to adapt commercial trademarks. Here's a t-shirt sold by Chabad at Tulane:
The atmosphere in front of the FAO Schwarz flagship toy store in New York was tense. No one spoke. It was September 14, 2006, and artist and sculptor Ken Goldman had flown to the famous store from Israel to compete in the annual toy audition. Carrying the prototypes of his three new Kabbala dolls - Blue Sansoni, Orange Samonglif and Green Sanoi - Goldman took his place in line with crazed toy inventors from around the world. . . .
While most of the inventors were granted three minutes or less, Goldman had over 30 minutes to present his dolls and explain their connection to a ninth-century Kabbala text.
When he finished, the CEO and head buyer at FAO Schwarz told him to just leave everything with them. Now, a little over a year later, the dolls are being mass-produced and sold all over the world.. . .
But although the three dolls' shapes and names are taken directly from a Kabbala text, Goldman notes that they are designed to be gifts that touch upon an old tradition of protecting children with an object; they are not meant to make a statement about the mythology surrounding Adam, Eve and Lilith, who is sometimes referred to as Adam's first wife. In the original drawings of the amulets that Goldman used as a model, the Hebrew text above loosely translates as: "Adam and Eve: Lilith aside."
According to Christopher Witcombe, author of Eve and the Identity of Women, Lilith appears as Adam's first wife in midrashic literature. Lilith, a figure often celebrated today as the first feminist, abandoned Adam to go and live near the Red Sea. In the Zohar Lilith vanishes from Adam's side after saying the unspeakable name of God. Adam then beseeches God to bring her back. Upon his request, God sends three angels - Sanoi, Sansoni and Samonglif - to Lilith. Nevertheless, despite their threats, she refuses to return, insisting instead upon harming newborn infants. She does, however, promise that no harm will come to any baby wearing an amulet with either the names or images of the three angels.
An engaging multi-faith exploration of the relation between art and higher meaning, available here.
Cluny Grey is a jewelry designer who writes the always engaging Jewelry Blog, and today she features not own designs incorporating peridot, the August birthstone. Along with the pics: a historical overview that includes such information as . . .
Peridot has an interesting pedigree; many people believe that Aaron's breastplate (in the Bible) had peridot although it was referred to as "topaz".
Streams in the Desert in Pahrump (!) Nevada is a Christian book store that also sells jewelry. And, by the way, offers hyberbaric oxygen treatments and Christian colon cleansing. According to the shop's owners, colon hydrotherapy is an ancient judeochristian practice described in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And Streams in the Desert is not alone. Turns out the DSS Essenes have been appropriated by any number of modern-day practitioners who tout the spiritual benefits of inner cleansing. But if you actually read through the available collected texts of the Scrolls, you won't find the cited texts there.
What gives?
In a nutshell, it goes back to a guy named Edmund Bordeaux Szekely, who claims to have discovered a pristine collection of ancient Essene texts. In his Essene Science of Fasting, the group is depicted as advocating enemas as part of its spiritual discipline. After that, the deluge.
Fun bonus fact: Jim Bakker's Heritage USA included a shop selling a seaweed drink mix that purported to give your colon a heavenly cleansing. The proprietors gave me heaps of the stuff free as a loss leader when I interviewed PTL folks for a project in grad school. Thanks to their description of what this miracle seaweed would do to me for the first three or so days after chugging it down, I never touched the stuff.
Israel's decision to promote tourism through pictures of bikini-clad army women has met with heated protests. The controversy, of course, called far more attention to the campaign than if opponents had stayed silent, but then again, without it we might not have had such headlines as "Babes in Oy Land" and "Piece in the Middle East."
Unfortunately I have little to add, since I never did receive that invite to tonight's party hosted by Maxim and the Israeli Consulate (!). Instead I was left sitting here . . .
Matir Asurot is an organization trying to help women whose husbands will not give them a get, a divorce certificate required under Jewish law. To call attention to their plight, Magnolia Jewelry--which has stores in New York, London, Poland and Australia--is selling a bracelet whose proceeds will benefit the cause. Here's more from the Jerusalem Post, which also has news of a related wedding dress display:
SOCIO-RELIGIOUS issues require good marketing no less than economic services or consumer products. More and more women's organizations are being formed and are joining forces with existing organizations to raise public awareness of the plight of agunot - women who are anchored or chained in marriages from which they wish to be released, but are unable to be liberated because their husbands refuse to give them a get , or Jewish bill of divorce. Without it, these women cannot remarry or have children. To support the efforts of Asurot (Forbidden), a coalition of women's organizations working towards freeing women from marital bondage, the Magnolia Jewelry chain has produced a special silver bracelet with a Swarovski crystal as a form of identification with the struggle of the agunot. All proceeds from sales of this bracelet will go to Asurot. It is hoped that the bracelet which, though such a feminine piece of jewelry also symbolizes pain and slavery, will also become a symbol of hope. It sells at the affordable price of NIS 49. Asurot was initiated by the not-for-profit community art project headed by Adi Yekutieli. Asurot is currently engaged in completing what it believes to be the biggest wedding gown in the world, and hopes that the finished product will be included in the Guinness Book of Records, which in itself will make more people aware of the suffering of agunot. Meanwhile, the gown that incorporates embroidered images created in agunot workshops, will be displayed in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv from June 28 within the framework of the city's White Night festivities celebrating the fourth anniversary of UNESCO's conferring of World Heritage Site status on Tel Aviv's White City.
Available for purchase from New York's Jewish Museum:
A gold Sabbath ring made during 1806-07 in Cracow, Poland, inspired this pendant. The Sabbath ring features a carnelian incised with a candelabrum and a portion of the blessing over the Sabbath lights in Hebrew, which reads"....to light the candles of the Sabbath." In some communities, it was traditional for the bridegroom to give his bride such an inscribed ring on the first Sabbath after their wedding.
The first tropical storm of the season is moving toward the Florida coast. Pictured above, to mark the occasion: a hurricane pendant from Florida's Sanibel Island Goldsmith.
Storms have long loomed large in spiritual imagery. Even today, people link hurricanes to the wrath of God or Nature on our sins (whatever they may be). In fact, the appearance of God in the storm goes back as far as the Garden of Eden.
After Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, they hear the voice of God l'ruach hayyom--in ancient Hebrew, "in the wind of the storm." The image in this passage is of God thundering out of a raging wind; no longer will Adam and Eve converse with their creator as of old, in the calm of an Eden at peace. (Wanna impress your friends with your knowledge of linguistic arcana? Tell them you, unlike the King James Bible translators, recognize that "yom" in context here is not "day," but an archaic cognate of the Akkadian umu, or "storm.")
The association of God with swirling storms points to an even deeper resonance between our perception of the divine and recurring patterns in nature. Benoit Mandelbrot, for example, has described how the topology of turbulence can be explained using fractal geometry, an analysis that has shaped how meteorologists predict the course of storms. We won't go into the math here--yet! For now, here's another look at our old fractal friend, the spiral, itself a common image in spiritual adornment. On the left, a spiral galaxy, and on the right, a hurricane--and for an accessible look at the underlying science, click the pic to visit [censored].
Above: arguably the world's smallest item of quality gold jewelry, a 16-atom configuration newly created by scientists but not yet available in stores. As this article from the New York Times notes, 20-atom configurations of gold take a pyramidal shape, an array echoed in the golden sands of Egypt.
Below: a small, but not quite that small, merkaba from cosmic jeweler Ka Gold (HT: Jennifer Emick).
DA VINCI CODE EXTRA: click the pic for Ka Gold's explanation of the mystical merkaba and you'll see a rather familiar figure, pictured here in a more family friendly version!
In Germany, Christian pastors beat Islamic Imams at a soccer (football) match. Completing the religious trifecta: Jewish linesmen.
Stones have long been a source of inspiration for spiritual creativity. Crystals, of course, have been a mainstay of modern new age practice, while priests and preachers have waxed rhapsodic about the spiritual import of stones mentioned in the Bible.
Here's a recent human interest story about a woman who has created a small business crafting jewelry out of biblical stones. Pictured above: religious stones from Magicstones.com.
Of course, stones aren't the only hard object used in expressing a sense of higher meaning--ancient shell beads found in South Africa provide what may be the earliest evidence of symbolic thought. As noted in this article from National Geographic,
the production of art or jewelry is universally accepted as an indicator of symbolic thinking.
"Beads are tangible evidence of a concept of self," [archaelogist John] Bower said. "You're not going to decorate yourself if you have no concept of self."
As much spiritual jewelry as there is in the world, for some families it will never be enough. Last week a federal court approved the final allocation of museum funds as part of the settlement in the Gold Train case, in which U.S. soldiers took for themselves jewelry and other items that the Nazis had seized from Hungarian Jews. For more on the history behind this case, check out this government report and hungariangoldtrain.org.
Deborah Lurie Edery is the designer behind JudaiClay, a line of jewelry drawn from Jewish ritual and holidays. Above special for Passover is her Matzah Heart Pin, an unleavened but nonetheless tasty piece of spiritual bling!
For more matzah blinginess, check out Jibjab's playful Matzah rap video, featuring Eric Schwartz, aka Smooth-E.
And below (hat tip: Mark Evanier) is a short documentary from Chabad.org in which an inquiring Jewish puppet finds out how matzah is made.
Want this Star of David pendant from Kosher.com? Gotta wait. The shipping department is closed for Passover.
EXPLANATION EXTRA:
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The Jerusalem Post has an informative article on a women's seder now being sponsored by Hamidrasha, a center that seeks to bridge religious and secular cultures in Israel. In the women's seder, masculine Hebrew words are rewritten in the feminine; songs and readings focus on the seasonal renewal of spring; and the traditional four questions of the Haggadah have a somewhat different tone. For example . . .
Why is this night different from all other nights?
This night is not different from all other nights.
On all other nights, I promise myself that tomorrow I will eat less, I will tell another story to my children and I will be a little bit kinder.
Tonight is just the same.
PICTURED ABOVE: Passover earrings from Chadis Crafts, featuring the Haggadah and a seder plate. Besides having lots of interesting jewelry, the Chadis Crafts site has a couple other fun features of note:
