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#Blue Jew Published Study

bruceslatonpite · 1 year

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Blue Jew Crystal Club Published Study

Mythbusters: Is meth really all bad for you? In November 2011, scientists from Columbia University published a study on the effects of methamphetamine use. What made this study stand out was that it not only questioned received wisdom about the damaging effects the drug has on the brain, but it also suggested meth could actually improve some brain functions. Mythbusters takes a closer look…

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psychreviews2 · 2 months

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Case Studies: Dora – Sigmund Freud Pt. 3

The cycle of disappointment

Freud was right that communism wouldn't work to eliminate conflict and racism, but he wasn't able to see much further than that. The 2008 economic crash, as bad as it was, proved that a form of democratic socialism was something that people couldn't do without. It prevented the fallout on the poor from being as bad as it was in prior generations, vindicating some of Otto's idealism for a future with more stability.

Freud's advice, based on his patient's inability to deal with reality, and make healthy changes to the environment, was prophetic with his result with Ida. In Hannah's book, accounts of Ida's outcome identified her as being similar to her mother, with her "excessive cleanliness. She and her mother saw the dirt not only in their surroundings, but also on and within themselves. Both suffered from genital discharges." Richie Robertson in the introduction of the Oxford World Classics version, hints that Ida's mother, instead of having a psychosis of cleaning, was performing a form of revenge, since "you have made me a housewife; very well, I’ll be a perfect housewife and make you suffer for it." Some of these feminist interpretations are quite modern. Another interpretation was that Ida's mother wanted revenge for getting syphilis or gonorrhea from her husband. My interpretation is that the obsession to clean is more about cleaning a person's self-esteem, to avoid rejection from others.

"Nothing is good enough to join us!"

Hannah's book goes further into Dora's Christian conversion, and her, and Freud's escape from the NAZIS. Again the pattern repeated of destroyed hopes for the Jewish. Even when deliberate attempts to imitate the culture of the ruling ethnic groups, her brother Otto said that "assimilated Jews [were] still obviously Jews according to their facial characteristics. Race instincts and race prejudices live on after assimilation." Otto felt that Christian conversion wasn't going to work, and only intermarriage with Christians would solve the problem. This differed at the time with the Zionists who felt that the only solution would ultimately be to live in a Jewish nation.

This is a great lesson for all people who want to immigrate to another country. The lesson is that if you compete with the status and identities that others have already claimed, they will split hairs in every way to put you down. "You're too Jewish! Oh you're Christian now, but you still look Semitic. Not good enough!" This goes more into my influences from René Girard's Judeo-Christian works, but to enter into any new society, even if you are not that different from the culture you are joining, because you are a HUMAN, you have to be different in a way that is useful to others. This means creating new businesses, new products, and have something new to trade with the established identities of others.

Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781625274496/

If one can't create those situations, then filling positions that are needed as opposed to competing for the most alluring hierarchies everyone else wants, creates the harmony that Otto was so desperately trying to seek. There will always be competition for pride and social rewards that leads to conflict, especially in economic crashes and the resulting scarcity of opportunities. People are forced to step on each other's toes to hold onto an identity in a recession.

Circling around, zeroing in - Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2018/181116_Circling_Around,_Zeroing_In.mp3

I remember coming out of the Spike Lee movie BlacKkKlansman, and seeing an interracial couple walking out with looks of relief of validation. They were obviously maintaining their identities and going to mind their own business and live their lives, which looks the same as everyone else's lives.

But a society where people are trading their advantageous differences with each other means people can see value in those differences, and therefore less bigotry, and if there is intermarriage, it's more authentic because the marriage isn't a means to an end, to gain an identity. They have a healthy identity beforehand and appreciate each other's. There's always a commonality that can be found if people are willing to look for it. In my travels, most people are worried about the same things. Getting a good job, having their kids find success in school, and trying to gain a good marriage. After a period of culture shock, people eventually find new cultural habits to graft onto the ones they want to keep. Sometimes this takes a couple of generations, but it happens.

Flexible goals

With the help of her son, Ida was able to move to New York. She lived with the same physical problems as before and died of colon cancer in 1945. One can imagine that Dora would have loved to have lived long enough to see how things had changed for women, or visible minorities, but I think she would still notice the same cycles of dissatisfaction in modern people as in the past. As long as people are struggling with identities that have mutual claims, they will be stuck in the same conflicts, regardless of what their success looks like from afar to those followers outside their milieu. "Control of consciousness determines the quality of life," as Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi reminds. A lot of people at the top of the pyramid feel they don't have as much control over their life as they think they do. Having to make appearances, networking, dealing with politics and keeping allies satisfied, reduces a lot of that sense of control. René Girard, also noticed the intensity of the desire, and how it dissipates when the desired object is obtained, or how it intensifies again when the object is lost. The freedom of knowing this is that I can always look for a new object when there's a rivalry, because ultimately, I will be bored with any possession, because no possession can make you eternally satisfied like an omnipotent God. New objects will always be desired. I can instead look at objects for their actual value, not whether the object will add to social proof that I'm a human deity. I also don't have to worship an idol, like a missing parent, or pretend to be a God and all the effort at impression management that narcissists go through. The great value of this knowledge is that it doesn't have to be hidden. I don't need to hide this knowledge to one-up someone else. The knowledge is flexible, no matter how many people know it, and having more people know this, the better. Much like Galadriel's "I pass the test" speech in Lord of the rings, we have to see this in ourselves. It's not so much the ambition, which can be noble, but how aggressively we look at "Others", as Girard emphasizes, with this ambition. It's actually hard to let go of the sadomasochism of bullying and revenge. But for the one who does, narcissistic neurosis cools off into a beautiful peace and self-acceptance.

Finding personal meaning

Another solution to a lack of personal meaning and identity in life comes from Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning. He emphasized the need for people to actively find their own meanings in their current lives. His message was similar to Freud's of actively using ingenuity and realistic choices and actions that have personal meaning, to reduce that sense of helplessness that makes people neurotic or violent. These negative feelings come from chasing activities to "be somebody important", while at the same time putting oneself down for not being there already. Yet there are many important things in our lives we are doing now that should allow us to be as we are, without shame and envy. We remind ourselves what we are trying to achieve when we are taking care of someone who is sick, or serving a customer, or communicating important values. It doesn't mean we let go of healthy ambitions, but we know that it's okay to just start somewhere, and all these early activities are important stepping stones to where you want to go.

If we can't control our consciousness all the time, if we have to change objects of desire, if we choose to see the meaning and importance of our current mundane activities, they become intrinsically satisfying, and then the self-hatred disappears. This meaning doesn't require imitating a narcissistic idol providing a parental meaning for us. We don't have to gather into the safety of ethnic groups and scapegoat others for our problems. A lot of Viktor's message resonates with me, because meaning is found in those overlooked opportunities that are available to us right now. We shouldn't get locked into objects that we are not ready for or are not available to us.

A Case of Hysteria - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780199639861/

Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900 - Hannah S. Decker: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780029072127/

Physiology of Love and Other Writings - Paolo Mantegazza: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781442691728/

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780061339202/

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780671023379/

Ellis, A. W. & Raitmayr, O. & Herbst, C. (2016). The Ks: The Other Couple in the Case of Freud’s “Dora”. Journal of Austrian Studies 48(4), 1-26. University of Nebraska Press.

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning - René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781570753190/

René Girard and Creative Mimesis - Thomas Ryba: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781498550574/

René Girard and Creative Reconciliation - Thomas Ryba: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780739169001/

The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780261103207/

A Survey of the Woman Problem - Rosa Mayreder: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781330999349/

Psychology: http://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/

#dora #sigmund freud #psychoanalysis #psychology #casestudies #Projection #oedipus complex #transference #countertransference

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zionsings · 1 year

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Swarthy Yahudim aka Black Jews

I don't think the Hebrew roots movement should have took a racist turn, but can you debunk John Olgilby's writings from the 1600's that described the Jews as Swarthy black people? His work is published in Justor, what about Tudor Parfitt who studied the scattered Negroid jews in Africa? He wrote many books as well. Can you explain the ark & the covenant being held in Axum? I studied art history as well the paint used in the ancient days were made of natural materials that can fade over time especially if it wasn't well made. There are many other depictions of the Yahudim who were dark skinned too iconography of Ancient Egypt. the Vatican runs Egyptology, & yes there were mummies who had wooly hair. Just look up the piece named the Semitic prisoner, it isa depicted with dark skin and wooly hair. in my case it is not about religion bug actual history. What about when Gamal Abdel Nasser this was a the 2nd president in Egypt in 1956. Abdel went on television and radio in the 50's and stated to the Askenazi & I quote "You have left Black and returned White you are impostors and shall never see peace","his words not mine".. He was right there still isn't peace.Rome wiped out the SYRIAC Christians, & even Constantinople some of the people from Palestine are very dark skinned too and never left the region. why is there so much ancient art, however we have to rely on Egyptian Iconography for ancient art of Israel? Can you debunk the Papal Bulls like Dum Diversas that lead up to the Spanish inquisition that birthed the Transatlantic slave trade? Those slave colonies were owned by Portugal land Spain and once of the colonies was named "the Kingdom of Judah on map cartography dating back to 1747. Many other edicts were written expelling the non believers of" Roman Christianity" to enslavement in perpitutity, & no such edict would have to be written if it wasn't contradicting a law that a Hebrew slave was not supposed to he held in captivity forever. No they were supposed to be released after 6 years of service, just like the Vatican changed the Sabbath to Sunday with blue laws and the Jewish Sanhedrin changed the Sabbath to Saturday never incorporating the New Moon. You can't debunk these things, the roman captivity of the Jews in 70'AD ended in 139 AD. I'm not saying there are no white jews but I do believe history and the powers that be are lying to the masses. There was black Israelites rescued in the 1980's from Starvation, I think they were from the tribe of Dan. I get not wanting the movement to be racist but there is a lot of history that backs up the claim. You read Deuteronmoy 28:37 which part of the Torah which Reads "You will be become a thing of horror, a byword and the object of ridicule among all nations where the lord will drive you. You are Jewish you supposedly know your history, but still to this day you are called Jewish and blackness and whiteness was created in the 1600's after Bacon's rebellion to divide the people from indentured servant and slave revolts. The way some go about it maybe not as POC & I am although I am trying not to offend and use the fruit of the spirit to educate, I am trying relay this truth comely, it is offensive...Nick Cannon and Kyrie Irving got in trouble trying to educate people about this history, so did Michael Jackson, one of his lyrics said he looked to heaven to fulfill this prophecy, set me free on the song he got accused of being an antisemite on. See you don't know black history, because there is no such thing as black history beside the history that began in 1619 in the USA and 400 years later in 2019 BOOM Covid 19 stops the world. The Euphrates is dried up too. We have had triads of Blood moon and a solar eclipse that passed through 7 cities in America named Salem. Israel just outlawed Christianity. Desantis is banning black history books. These are signs of the times. Sanhedrin changed the Sabbath to Saturday never incorporating the New Moon. You can't debunk these things, the roman captivity of the Jews in 70'AD ended in 139 AD. I'm not saying there are no white jews but I do believe history and the powers that be are lying to the masses. There was black Israelites rescued in the 1980's from Starvation, I think they were from the tribe of Dan. I get not wanting the movement to be racist but there is a lot of history that backs up the claim. You read Deuteronmoy 28:37 which part of the Torah which Reads "You will be become a thing of horror, a byword and the object of ridicule among all nations where the lord will drive you. You are Jewish you supposedly know your history, but still to this day you are called Jewish and blackness and whiteness was created in the 1600's after Bacon's rebellion to divide the people from indentured servant and slave revolts. The way some go about it maybe not as POC & I am although I am trying not to offend and use the fruit of the spirit to educate, I am trying relay this truth comely, it is offensive...Nick Cannon and Kyrie Irving got in trouble trying to educate people about this history, so did Michael Jackson, one of his lyrics sang Jew me Sue me everybody do me , kick me Ki#e e, don'tcha black or white me, he looked to heaven to fulfill this prophecy, set me free on the song he got accused of being an antisemite on. See you don't know black history, because there is no such thing as black history beside the history that began in 1619 in the USA and 400 years later in 2019 BOOM Covid 19 stops the world. The Euphrates is dried up too. We have had triads of Blood moon and a solar eclipse that passed through 7 cities in America named Salem. Israel just outlawed Christianity. Desantis is banning black history books. These are signs of the times. May Yahuah be with us all because we have been lied too and a lot of history was white washed and rewritten.

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laskinpublishing · 2 years

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SCROLL DOWN ▼ for Laskin Publishing's Books & Artwork

Now: Don's Uncalled for Commentary on Just About Anything That's Often None of His Business

The Donald and Der Fuhrer: Not a Perfect Match

In my last post titled, February 27, 1933 - January 6, 2021 , a paean to the January 6th hearings, I pointed out a number of things Mr. Trump and Herr Hitler shared in common. In the interests of fairness, I’d like to now point out where Hitler and Trump are very different.

Phenotype

Adolf Hitler

5’8" +/-, black hair, thin build; Charlie Chaplin mustache.

Donald Trump

6’2” or 6’3” or 6’4 ¾” Weight 244 lbs. or 265lbs. or 289 lbs; Blond hair in a comb-over, comic-book hero windswept look.

Blue eyes aside, chances are they'd never pass for twins

Psychological profile

Adolf Hitler

A psychopath driven by an irrational, burning hatred, especially of Jews, he curiously permitted himself one exception.That was Dr. Bloch, the Jewish physician who treated Hitler’s mother for breast cancer and charged the family little or nothing despite the fact he was at the Hitler home in Linz virtually every day for months.

After Germany’s annexation of Austria, Hitler protected Bloch, having the Gestapo of all organizations, ensure he wouldn’t be harassed. Hitler also made it possible for Bloch to emigrate to the United States in 1940 after the start of WWII.

While other Jews fortunate enough to be able to leave were forced to sell their homes for a fraction of their worth, Bloch received full fair-market value for his.

No amount of rationalizing in the case of Dr. Bloch seems to make sense since Hitler’s visceral hatred of Jews possibly more than any other factor, was responsible for the Holocaust.

Donald Trump

Scores of people from his niece, Mary Trump, to psychiatrists, to me — I took a year of psychology in college including a semester of abnormal psychwhich qualifies me to make a diagnosis…okay an opinion...how about a mildly informed guess — concluded Mr. Trump is a narcissistic sociopath.

Rather than being consumed by irrational hatred or even rational hatred, Donald Trump is consumed by love...of himself. He's often demonstrated it by taking credit for others' successes and shifting blame for his failures. In fact the phrase “throwing somebody under the bus” was coined just for him.

Mr. Trump has hired then fired everybody from attorneys general to his “favorite” child. Okay, so he didn’t exactly fire Ivanka. But, hearing Bill Barr testify that Joe Biden won the election and reports that it was stolen were "bullshit", Ivanka told the Committee, "It affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he said.”

That's all The Donald needed to flag down a bus. “Ivanka Trump [How many Ivankas does the man know?] was not involved in looking at, or studying, election results. She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!).”

You’ve got to give The Donald kudos for the comment. In one shot, he suggested his former favorite child was clueless and his former attorney general sucked. Not too shabby.

ANYWAY…

Many, if not most, sociopaths are extremely charming when they want to be...or have to be. Whether it's murdering women (Ted Bundy), selling time shares or asking supporters for donations to the Trump legal defense fund, sociopaths have an innate ability to tell listeners exactly what they want to hear.

As a psychopath, Hitler demanded his followers go where he wanted to go.

Trump, the sociopath, went where his listeners wanted to go. Of course, there were places of agreement like building a wall to stop immigration or instituting a Muslim ban. However, if Mr. Trump’s audience was against abortion, he was anti-abortion (after years of not caring one way or the other). If they were fundamentalist believers of “The Word”, he would be a fundamentalist believer of “The Word” despite not quite knowing which end of the Bible was up.

Work habits

Adolf Hitler

Early on, as a political rabblerouser, Hitler worked tirelessly hour after hour in front of a mirror perfecting his gestures and facial expressions to ensure his speeches would have audiences out of their seats and "heiling" at a fever pitch.

Throughout World War II, he continued working hard. Said to have a photographic memory, Hitler, took an active interest in every phase of the German military machine — often to its detriment.

Donald Trump

His work habits could be summed up in two words: Golf. Twitter.

Food

Adolf Hitler

A vegetarian, Hitler had a major sweet tooth. To keep from gaining weight after indulging in his favorite deserts, he took purgatives (more on this later).

Donald Trump

Big Mac, fries and a Coke.

Drugs

Adolf Hitler

Der Fuhrer was a walking pharmacy. Supplied by one Dr. Morell, over the last six years of his life, Hitler received a cornucopia of drugs for everything from indigestion and insomnia to pain, lethargy and depression.

One drug, Mutaflor, replaced bad bacteria in the gut with good bacteria derived from the fecal matter of a Bulgarian peasant. Why a Bulgarian peasant and not an Albanian or Moravian? Sadly, that shall remain one of history’s unsolved mysteries.

Anti-gas pills Hitler took for his meteorism, a wonderfully descriptive term for chronic flatulence, contained atropine, a hallucinogen, and strychnine. Unfortunately, the doses were not sufficient to kill.

As many as twenty times a day, Dr. Morell injected the fuhrer with everything from cocaine to Oxycodone to Pervitin, a methamphetamine. It got to the point where the good doctor was having a hellacious time finding a usable vein.

By the time the War was drawing to a close, Hitler was left with compulsive habits including biting the skin on his fingers and scratching the back of his neck till it became infected. More and more he found it difficult to walk; hands shaking uncontrollably, and mind going from rage to depression to rage.

Donald Trump

Trump doesn’t smoke, drink or do drugs.

Murder

Adolf Hitler

Hitler was, of course, directly responsible for the mass murder of millions upon millions of innocent men, women and children.

Donald Trump

I could find no instance of Donald Trump having murdered anyone. The nearest thing to murder was when he posited the opinion that it might indeed be a wonderful idea if his VP were hanged.

Comments welcome.

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phroyd · 3 years

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One of our Great Comedians leaves us this day! Rest In Peace, Jackie! - Phroyd

Jackie Mason, whose staccato, arm-waving delivery and thick Yiddish accent kept the borscht belt style of comedy alive long after the Catskills resorts had shut their doors, and whose career reached new heights in the 1980s with a series of one-man shows on Broadway, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 93.His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital, was confirmed by the lawyer Raoul Felder, a longtime friend.Mr. Mason regarded the world around him as a nonstop assault on common sense and an affront to his sense of dignity. Gesturing frantically, his forefinger jabbing the air, he would invite the audience to share his sense of disbelief and inhabit his very thin skin, if only for an hour.“I used to be so self-conscious,” he once said, “that when I attended a football game, every time the players went into a huddle, I thought they were talking about me.” Recalling his early struggles as a comic, he said, “I had to sell furniture to make a living — my own.”The idea of music in elevators sent him into a tirade: “I live on the first floor; how much music can I hear by the time I get there? The guy on the 28th floor, let him pay for it.”

The humor was punchy, down-to-earth and emphatically Jewish: His last one-man show in New York, in 2008, was titled “The Ultimate Jew.” A former rabbi from a long line of rabbis, Mr. Mason made comic capital as a Jew feeling his way — sometimes nervously, sometimes pugnaciously — through a perplexing gentile world.“Every time I see a contradiction or hypocrisy in somebody’s behavior,” he once told The Wall Street Journal, “I think of the Talmud and build the joke from there.” Describing his comic style to The New York Times in 1988, he said, “My humor — it’s a man in a conversation, pointing things out to you.”“He’s not better than you, he’s just another guy,” he added. “I see life with love — I’m your brother up there — but if I see you make a fool out of yourself, I owe it to you to point that out to you.”He was born Yacov Moshe Maza in Sheboygan, Wis., on June 9, 1928, to immigrants from Belarus. (Some sources give the year as 1931.) When he was 5, his father, Eli, an Orthodox rabbi, and his mother, Bella (Gitlin) Maza, moved the family to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Yacov discovered that his path in life had already been determined. Not only his father, but his grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfathers had all been rabbis. His three older brothers became rabbis, and his two younger sisters married rabbis. “It was unheard-of to think of anything else,” Mr. Mason said. “But I knew, from the time I’m 12, I had to plot to get out of this, because this is not my calling.”

After earning a degree from City College, he completed his rabbinical studies at Yeshiva University and was ordained. In a state of mounting misery, he tended to congregations in Weldon, N.C., and Latrobe, Pa., unhappy in his profession but unwilling to disappoint his father.Hedging his bets, he had begun working summers in the Catskills, where he wrote comic monologues and appeared onstage at every opportunity. This, he decided, was his true calling, and after his father’s death in 1959 he felt free to pursue it in earnest, with a new name.He struggled at first, playing the Catskills and, with little success, obscure clubs in New York and Miami. Plagued by guilt, he underwent psychoanalysis, which did not solve his problems but did provide him with good comic material.Nevertheless, he found it hard to break into the nightclub circuit in New York — in part, he claimed, because his act made Jewish audiences uncomfortable. “My accent reminds them of a background they’re trying to forget,” he said.

While performing at a Los Angeles nightclub in 1960, he caught the attention of his fellow comedian Jan Murray, who recommended him to the television personality Steve Allen. Two appearances in two weeks on “The Steve Allen Show” led to bookings at the Copacabana and the Blue Angel in New York.Mr. Mason’s career was off and running. He became a regular on the top television variety shows, recorded two albums for the Verve label — “I Am the Greatest Comedian in the World Only Nobody Knows It Yet” and “I Want to Leave You With the Words of a Great Comedian” — and wrote a book, “My Son the Candidate.”

After dozens of appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Mr. Mason encountered disaster on Oct. 18, 1964. A speech by President Lyndon B. Johnson pre-empted the program, which resumed as Mr. Mason was halfway through his act. Onstage but out of camera range, Sullivan indicated with two fingers, then one, how many minutes Mr. Mason had left, distracting the audience. Mr. Mason, annoyed, responded by holding up his own fingers to the audience, saying, “Here’s a finger for you, and a finger for you, and a finger for you.”Sullivan, convinced that one of those fingers was an obscene gesture, canceled Mr. Mason’s six-show contract and refused to pay him for the performance. Mr. Mason sued, and won.The two later reconciled, but the damage was done. Club owners and booking agents now regarded him, he said, as “crude and unpredictable.”

“People started to think I was some kind of sick maniac,” Mr. Mason told Look. “It took 20 years to overcome what happened in that one minute.”His career went into a slump, punctuated by bizarre instances of bad luck. In Las Vegas in 1966, after he made a few ill-considered remarks about Frank Sinatra’s recent marriage to the much younger Mia Farrow (“Frank soaks his dentures and Mia brushes her braces,” one joke went), an unidentified gunman fired a .22 pistol into his hotel room.A play he starred in and wrote (with Mike Mortman), “A Teaspoon Every Four Hours,” went through a record-breaking 97 preview performances on Broadway before opening on June 14, 1969, to terrible reviews. It closed after one night, taking with it his $100,000 investment.He also invested in “The Stoolie” (1972), a film in which he played a con man and improbable Romeo. It also failed, taking even more of his money. Roles in sitcoms and films eluded him, although he did make the most of small parts in Mel Brooks’s “History of the World: Part I” (1981) — he was “Jew No. 1” in the Spanish Inquisition sequence — and “The Jerk” (1979), in which he played the gas-station owner who employs Steve Martin.Rebuffed, Mr. Mason set about rebuilding his career with guest appearances on television. His new manager, Jyll Rosenfeld, convinced that the old borscht belt comics were ripe for a comeback, encouraged him to bring his act to the theater as a one-man show.

After attracting celebrity audiences in Los Angeles, that show, “The World According to Me!,” opened on Broadway in December 1986 and ran for two years. It earned Mr. Mason a special Tony Award in 1987, as well as an Emmy for writing after HBO aired an abridged version in 1988.

“I didn’t think it would work,” Mr. Mason said. “But people, when they come into a theater, see you in a whole new light. It’s like taking a picture from a kitchen and hanging it in a museum.”In 1991 Mr. Mason married Ms. Rosenfeld, who survives him. He is also survived by a daughter, the comedian Sheba Mason, from a relationship with Ginger Reiter in the 1970s and ’80s.“The World According to Me!” generated a series of sequels — “Politically Incorrect,” “Love Thy Neighbor,” “Prune Danish” and others — which carried Mr. Mason through the 1990s and into the new millennium.He published an autobiography, “Jackie, Oy!” (written with Ken Gross), in 1988. He also found a new sideline as an opinionated political commentator on talk radio. In the 2016 presidential campaign, he was one of the few well-known entertainers to support Donald J. Trump.Mr. Mason’s forays into political commentary caused him trouble. He was reported to have used a Yiddish word considered to be a racial slur in talking about David N. Dinkins, the Black mayoral candidate, at a Plaza Hotel luncheon in 1989. Mr. Mason was a campaigner for Mr. Dinkins’s opponent, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani said the incident had been blown out of proportion but nevertheless dismissed Mr. Mason from the campaign. Mr. Mason at first refused to apologize but did so later.

He drew attention for using the same word regarding President Barack Obama during a performance in 2009.Appearances on the cartoon series “The Simpsons,” as the voice of Rabbi Hyman Krustofski, the father of Krusty the Clown, confirmed his newfound status, and earned him a second Emmy. Not even the 1988 bomb “Caddyshack II,” in which he was a last-minute replacement for Rodney Dangerfield, or the ill-fated “Chicken Soup,” a 1989 sitcom co-starring Lynn Redgrave that died quickly, could slow his improbable transformation from borscht belt relic into hot property.“I’ve been doing this for a hundred thousand years, but it’s like I was born last Thursday,” Mr. Mason once said of his career turnaround. “They see me as today’s comedian. Thank God I stunk for such a long time and was invisible, so I could be discovered.”

Michael Levenson contributed reporting.

Phroyd

#rip #jackie mason

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anastkantdhangar · 4 years

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The Petrifying Situation of the Indian Media

India ranks so badly for press freedom because much of the media has simply stopped doing its moral job, and, as a culmination of facts, journalism is in some serious trouble in the world’s largest democracy. I’m afraid the consequences could be dire.

A cluster of mics of different channels of India's television media, accountable for shaping the social and political thoughts for the most of the country's population.

March 6, Vinesh Kunhiraman, The Media One anchor, goes on air, just like any other day in the office, about to tell his channel’s five million viewers in Kerala about the death anniversary of a famous comedian and the latest updates on the coronavirus pandemic.

But just a few minutes into the broadcast, he sees the managing editor rushing towards the studio floor gesturing desperately. As soon as Kunhiraman realizes that something’s not right, his image dissolves into a blue screen, a message shows up on the screen saying that there’s no signal and that they regret the inconvenience. The channel’s uplink, all of sudden, goes dead.

Actually, this was no technical difficulty. The channel was cut off as a consequence of order issued by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to block the channel for 48 hours, because it had covered February’s biggest news story -- mob attacks on anti-CAA protesters and in Muslim-dominant areas of Delhi, which took place just a few days after the result of Delhi’s Assembly Elections, which ultimately flared into a broader unrest and the Delhi Riots -- in a way that seemed “critical towards Delhi Police and R.S.S.,” the order said.

This shows a glimpse of how tolerant the government of world's largest democracy actually is about it’s criticism, despite many of the government ministers and the Prime Minister Modi himself stating that he wants the government to be criticized as it makes a democracy stronger and motivates him to work better.

WIDE URGE TO ADVERTISE “POSITIVE STORIES”

PM Modi addressing the nation amidst the coronavirus pandemic and about the government’s steps to address it.

Just before he announced the world’s largest coronavirus lockdown, PM Modi met with top news executives and urged them to publish “inspiring and positive stories” about the government’s efforts. Then, after the lockdown stranded half a million migrant workers, with some dying along the highways, government lawyers persuaded the Supreme Court to order all media to “publish the official version” of coronavirus developments, although outlets are still allowed to carry independent reporting.

A large section of leading broadcasters were quick to welcome this decision of the apex court, but left many intellectuals with questions on India’s constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of press.

India’s media universe is vast, perhaps the biggest in the world: More than 17,000 newspapers, 100,000 magazines, 178 television news channels and countless websites in dozens of languages. Thousands of Facebook pages call themselves news publishers, and YouTube is filled with local bulletins on everything from real estate trends to police raids.

Under immense pressure from the government, many media owners have fired their journalists who have criticized the PM and his government, and asked their media houses to not to run stories of hate-crime trackers that may embarrass the government or the ruling party. Instead, media houses have been asked to, and have been running what is being called “positive and inspiring” stories so that a “healthy environment” is being maintained throughout the country, and that could actually lead to a number of conclusions from various points of views.

This is so evident at the time of the coronavirus pandemic, where media houses have been given official orders to run the “official versions of the stories so that people do not panic”. Indian media has been constantly pressing on to project the fact the fact how India have been tackling the coronavirus pandemic outbreak way better than the much developed western countries, but not many compared, what we should call, the “other statistics” -- the amount of daily covid tests conducted, and its comparison with the same countries it claims to be performing better from.

Media, being the fourth pillar in any democracy, is morally obliged to present the facts in the way they should, in order to be in the best interest of the people as a whole. Even the academic study of journalism has part where it teaches the students, or the future journalists, to see government’s policies and steps with suspicion, as if media starts supporting government everywhere in any democracy, things could turn out to be disastrous, yes of course it is evident.

They can only ask PM about how much does he sleep, from where does he get the motivation, how much of a fakir he is. And this is the same person who left an interview with just three minutes into it because he was being asked bitter questions about his role during the 2002 Gujarat Riots, Modi was being interviewed by Karan Thapar then, and has not given any such bitter interview ever since even after becoming the Prime Minister of India, and has not even indulged in any press conferences but one, that too just before the 2019 Lok Sabha Polls, in which he did not answer a single question, in fact, gestured many to Amit Shah to answer.

Instead, days before 2019 Lok Sabha elections, PM Modi gave an "non-political" interview to a Bollywood actor, Akshay Kumar, in which he was asked questions like "how does he have his mangoes".

STRATEGICALLY CONTROLLING THE COUNTRY’S THOUGHT PROCESS

It is a fact, even is a part of academic structures in schools, that Adolf Hitler ran a hate propaganda against the Jews for his political gains, most probably fulfilled his personal desires too through it, and eventually built such a large campaign that he was able to convince millions of Germans that a clear minority population composition of 6 million Jews were a threat to Germany and it’s integrity, and that to eradicate and eliminate them by killing them in large numbers and fleeing them was the only possible way to save Germany.

At first, this sounds outlandish for any democracy, as to solve differences between communities, especially by the side of government, rather sounds pretty un-democratic. But the fact that Hitler was able to convince this as only possible way out is very intriguing, as he off course had a popular public support. How was he able to do that?

Adolf Hitler addressing the people in a rally

In Hitler’s Nazi Germany, media was censored by the government, as a result of which what the media can open as news in public domain was solely controlled by the Hitler’s government, which led to media only praising Hitler as Germany’s Savior and projected every person who criticized Hitler as a traitor, giving Hitler complete power to prove so, and execute him. The whole anti-Jewish sentiment was a result of years of propaganda run by the Hitler’s media to earn a wide public support to execute his dangerous plans and unleash havoc.

Seems familiar? A considerable section of the world society sees the same signs repeating in India based on religious grounds. Starting from near-end of 2014, India’s media has run a large scale propaganda based on religious grounds, resulting in instilling of hatred against the largest religious minority in India, and convincing people that they do not belong here. As a result, India has seen a sudden upsurge in mob lynchings based on communal lines, a strong hostility against sections of society, challenging the integral character of India’s Unity in Diversity and it’s very traditional secular character.

CAPTURING THE STILL “FREE VOICES”

The current NDA government and PM Modi are backed up by an army of online allies who discredit and harass independent journalists; female journalists, in particular, have been besieged with abuse and rape threats. And the police say Hindu nationalists were behind the 2017 murder of Gauri Lankesh, a female newspaper editor hailed as one of India’s most crusading journalists.

And for the most part, Indian news outlets have knuckled under, concluding that since much of the public supports the prime minister, they should, too. Even skeptical journalists censor themselves, afraid to be branded anti-national by a government that equates patriotism with support for PM Modi.

The Modi government has been particularly concerned about broadcast media, which reach into every corner of the country. In such a scenario, months before 2019 elections, an ABP journalist, named Punya Prasun Bajpai, questioned the results of government’s scheme of providing financial help to farmers, and broadcasters stated that the broadcast of the show was being interrupted in various parts of the country until the ABP journalist was being asked to leave days after the incident.

There are numerous such examples of journalists and reporters being left out and asked to leave by the broadcasters, so that they’re not being branded as anti-nationals, or lose sponsors or afraid that cases might be filed against them.

Arnab Goswami, from the Republic, hosting his debate program

Arnab Goswami of the Republic TV has come out be one of the most prominent Right wing, pro-government journalist in recent times, with constant praises for PM Modi, his government and his policies and of course his ideologies, and has constantly questioned the opposition for every misdeed in the country. He accused the Congress and Sonia Gandhi of sending goons to attack him in April.

Ravish Kumar, NDTV, in between his daily debate program

Ravish Kumar of NDTV, another popular journalist, this time one who has been critical of government, not only during the NDA tenure, but a hard critical of UPA government too. Being a hard critical of PM Modi and Amit Shah, he has been abused constantly on social media and death threats for him and his family, and the Modi and Shah’s BJP has now boycotted Ravish for years, by not sending any spokesperson in his show.

PM Modi, after taking over the PMO, gave his very first interview to Arnab Goswami, and Arnab has been backing up with frequent interviews of PM Modi, and his senior ministers.

Ravish won the Ramon Magsaysay Award, also known as Asia’s Nobel, in 2019. Even after this, no other channel even covered this achievement of Indian media. Many speculated that had Goswami win the Ramon Magsaysay, would PM Modi, or any of the senior ministers or his senior party members have congratulated him, or tweeted the same? Because not a thing even close to this happened.

THE CURRENT MILIEU

An usual Production Control Room of a news channel, responsible for working behind what we see on air

It is very much evident that the Indian Media is in a state of crisis, it simply ‘cannot speak the truth to the power’. From not being vocal about about how big a blundering failure the 2016 demonetization was and the dent it hit on the economy, to constantly attacking the opposition rather than questioning the power, to reporting from the AC studios and not about the situation from the ground, to initially having ignored the migrant laborer's crisis and much more, all this suggests that from the view of the best interests of a tolerant democratic nation, Indian Media has had been in a deep state of crisis.

If it had not been the case, no journalist in any democracy, can openly criticize the voters on live television of being freeloaders, anti-national and being abused for not electing those in central government in a state assembly election, and walk free without even a complaint. Sudhir Choudhury of Zee Media did the very same back in February after the results of the Delhi State Assembly elections, having called a democratically elected Chief Minister as a terrorist.

No wonder why India has further slipped in the latest Press Freedom Index Rankings to 142nd Rank out of a total of 180 countries, very close to Pakistan, ranked 145th, the only comparison most of the Indian Media understands.

If ever our future generations are allowed to look back upon how India lived in the hallucination of being in its best of times what actually also could be a very strong contender of being one of the most dark times in the history of Independent India along with the 1975 Emergency, Indian Media of the current times would also have to bear a lot of credit for the same, along with many strong names both in the government, and the government institutions.

Information and Pictures’ Reference -

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Jill Fields, "Where my dreidel at?": Representing Jewish Identity in Orange Is the New Black, 13 J Jewish Identities 1 (2020)

The Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black ranks among the most watched shows available for streaming online or on cable. In June 2016, the first episode of Season 4 drew 6.7 million views in 72 hours, making it second in viewership only to HBO's popular Game of Thrones.1 It also garnered critical acclaim, receiving a Peabody Award in addition to many Golden Globe, Emmy, and Screen Actors Guild nominations and awards.2 The series is based on a memoir by Piper Kerman, who served thirteen months in a minimum security women's prison in Danbury, Connecticut after her conviction on a drug-related offense she had committed ten years earlier. Created by Jenji Kohan, the series is a "dramedy" that mixes comedic touches with poignant stories based upon Piper's prison experiences and those of others she lived with and worked alongside while incarcerated. When the series debuted in 2013, it was lauded for its diverse female cast—in terms of racial, ethnic, and sexual identities—and for its sympathetic depiction of the plight of the primarily poor women who serve time behind bars.3 Orange Is the New Black (OITNB) clearly broke new ground in representing women who are rarely seen in mainstream cultural texts, especially in prominent roles. Kohan revealed in an NPR interview that she used the character of the blonde Piper—whose last name was changed to Chapman in the show and who labels herself a WASP in both her memoir and on screen—as a "Trojan Horse" in order to sell the series to Netflix executives, who green-lighted a project that began with Chapman as the lead, but quickly evolved in an inclusive direction by elevating women of color to co-starring status.4

Academic assessment of OITNB has celebrated aspects of the series, but also critiqued ways in which the show upholds stereotypes about women of color, lesbians, transwomen, and older women, and how it draws upon women's prison film conventions that objectify incarcerated female bodies, albeit at times self-knowingly.5 Less noted thus far by scholars is the prominent attention the show gives to its Jewish characters and themes.6 Though the series deserves praise for shining light on diverse female experiences, its treatment of Jews draws upon long-standing tropes. The show deploys, for example, the classic construction of the interfaith relationship, seen for over a century in American culture; the enduring American television tradition of covert rather than openly Jewish identity; and reliance on the conversion narrative in portraying Jewish beliefs and rituals. These mechanisms highlight, yet also displace, the depiction of Jewishness on the series and the contributions of its Jewish creator, writers, directors, and actors.

Studies of Jewish representation in American popular culture have addressed both the presence and absence of Jewish characters and narratives. Documentation of the Jewish presence in film and television has produced assessments and generated debates about whether particular portrayals draw upon or challenge antisemitic tropes, provide realistic depictions of the Jewish-American experience, or sidestep considerations of what it means to be Jewish.7 Over time, and in tandem with emerging trends in feminist analysis and cultural studies, investigations of the representation of Jews in film and television began to also consider how particular narratives construct Jewish identity, especially in regard to gender, and explore contradictions embedded in mass cultural texts that reference Jewish experiences. Though ire, fear, outrage, and appreciation continue to motivate some research and give it urgency, analysis questioning assumptions about claims to authenticity, acknowledging diversity within Jewish communities, and drawing parallels in addition to contrasts with how a range of minorities are represented both in front of and behind the camera has provided new insights and opened up new ways of thinking about larger frameworks as well as specific texts. Nonetheless, asking whether products of the culture industry such as OITNB are "good for the Jews" remains relevant even when also taking into account a range of Jewish experiences and practices, the potential instability of identity formations, and possibilities for conflicting interpretations.

Important Jewish characters in OITNB include Piper Chapman's fiancé Larry Bloom, inmate Nicky Nichols—who I assert is a crypto-Jew through Season 5—and African-American inmate Cindy Hayes, who converts to Judaism in Season 3. It is significant as well that a number of actors, writers, and directors employed by the show in addition to series creator and producer Kohan are also Jewish. In what follows, I explore relevant aspects of the source material—Kerman's memoir—with a primary focus on how the fictional characters and their stories create Jewish moments in series episodes. I also suggest ways in which the representation of Jews connects with the show's Jewish cast and crew. Moreover, the contrast between the show's groundbreaking status and its employment of practices that date back to earlier periods in the history of television reveal the persistence of problematics for including fully realized Jews and their narratives on the small screen.

Larry Bloom, Masculinity, and Jewish Betrayal

Piper's Jewish fiancé Larry Bloom appears in the first episode of Season 1 and remains in the series through Season 2.8 The real Piper's real-life Jewish fiancé (now husband), who is a successful writer with the far less iconic Jewish last name of Smith, is in Kerman's memoir supportive and loving throughout Piper's prison ordeal, as are his equally wonderful parents. Larry Bloom of the series, an aspiring writer who struggles to get a paying gig, is initially kind and defends Piper to his awful Portnoyesque parents, who try to get him to dump his shiksa girlfriend. Larry has internalized his father's view of the blonde gentile woman as exotic and uses the term himself when proposing to Piper after she is sentenced. "Why would I want a felonious former Lesbian WASP shiksa who is about to go to prison to marry me? Why? Because this underachieving, underemployed Jewboy loves her."9 Larry Smith describes meeting Piper in similar terms: "Piper was pretty by anyone's standards, but blonde, blue-eyed, Waspy girls are catnip for hairy Jewish guys like myself." He further describes "classic Piper: steely and self-contained. I grew up with a different window into the world of women, one where they are a little neurotic and a lot needy."10 This well-worn construction of Jewish women has appeared in a range of media and texts, including interfaith marriage narratives depicted in such films as The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and Along Came Polly (2004), and in the 2015 comment by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump calling Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz "crazy" and "highly neurotic."11 In OITNB, Larry further demonstrates his assimilationist impulse by preparing roasted pig for the couple's last meal together before Piper's self-surrender at Litchfield prison; their first snack in the prison visiting room is pork rinds.12

Larry is played by actor Jason Biggs, who has portrayed Jewish men in films such as American Pie (1999), though not Jewish himself.13 Soon after OITNB debuted, articles such as "Does Orange Is the New Black Have a Jewish Problem?" expressed concern about yet another iteration of Jewish masculinity as having "that tortured, brooding, nebbish quality we've come to associate with Woody Allen."14 Moreover, as other characters are humanized via flashbacks that reveal their difficult personal histories and draw viewers' sympathies, Larry's weaknesses become more apparent as the narrative unfolds and he draws viewers' disgust. A 2014 article, "A Guide to The Internet's Love of Hating Larry Bloom From 'Orange Is the New Black,'" concluded Larry was so detested he was the object of "world-class hatred."15

Larry's multiple betrayals of Piper propel his development into—or revelation as—a despised, nebbishy Judas. His first step down that path is watching episodes of Mad Men alone, after promising Piper he would wait to watch them with her after her release. To do so guilt-free, he turns over a framed photo of the two of them on his coffee table. As one critic called it, "Only a truly terrible human being would go against his loving girlfriend's wishes and watch their show without her. But turning the frame over? That's just cold-blooded."16 Larry's initial betrayal leads to more. When his only chance to get paid for writing an article requires detailing the prison experiences that Piper has shared with him in phone calls and visits, he goes ahead without her permission.17 She finds out about his New York Times "Modern Love" column from her prison counselor and, after viewers see Larry excitedly buying up copies of the newspaper, we find out that he has revealed information that endangers the tenuous relationships Piper has been building and needs to survive prison.18 In a subsequent episode, despite Piper's distress, Larry cozies up to an NPR reporter he meets at a Thanksgiving dinner, which results in a radio appearance sharing similar stories. Again, Piper only finds out about this after the fact, and listens in horror as Larry further humiliates both her and inmates she knows.19

The real Larry did write a "Modern Love" column about his relationship with an inmate, though it was published well after Piper's sentence ended, and a month before the 2010 publication of her memoir. Likely timed to promote Kerman's book prior to its release, the column most importantly does not betray her or her prison friends. Instead, Larry focuses on his devotion to Piper throughout her incarceration and the men he met who were also visiting their wives or girlfriends. The column ends with claims that his consistent visits and phone calls were not testaments to his character but instead prove how wonderful his fiancée is.20 In contrast, Netflix Larry's multiple betrayals reach their ultimate conclusion when he sleeps with Polly (Maria Dizzia), Piper's married best friend and business partner, and then dumps Piper for her. Larry and Polly even move in together and are shown enjoying their comfortable New York City lives as Larry and Piper used to do.21

Expressing dismay about how the show transformed Larry's character by drawing upon familiar tropes that denigrate Jewish men and Jews generally, and identifying differences between the two portrayals of Larry, is a fair, but ultimately narrow criticism. After all, adapting books into movies or television shows, whether fiction or non-fiction, requires alterations. The real Larry, for example, explains that translating Netflix Larry into what he calls a "schmuck" made the show more interesting.22 Another way to frame that transformation is to ask what purpose the nebbishy Judas/Jewdas performs in the OITNB narrative. I would argue that Larry's betrayal not only relieves the show from an unexciting story of a reliable boyfriend, but also displaces questions about possibly exploitative aspects of Kerman's best-seller and hit series onto the despicable and feminized Jewish man. This narrative turn burnishes the author's—and series creator Kohan's—celebratory claims to tell rather than sell the stories of incarcerated women who will not profit from their commercial dissemination.23

Kohan's OITNB cookbook, which features "Larry's Orange and Black Peppercorn Pulled Pork," is suggestive of her commercial goals and conflicted take on just how seriously the show and the discourse it has generated consider prison conditions.24 In addition, Kerman's former girlfriend, Cleary Wolters, who facilitated Kerman's criminal involvement in the drug trade, states in her memoir that she was never contacted by anyone connected with the book or the series prior to their release. In OITNB, her fictionalized character Alex Vause ends up in the same prison with Piper and their relationship is a central story line. When the Netflix series debuted, Wolters was out of prison and working and, though her employers knew the broad outlines of her criminal past, she had not shared details nor come out as gay at work when outed by the series. Wolters feared for her job security, aware of her tenuous status as an ex-felon. Within one day of the series release, the identity of the "real Alex Vause" was posted online, which caused her anxiety that former inmates might track her down. Ultimately, however, Wolters felt grateful that the success of OITNB allowed her to also share in print the sobering lessons of her criminal past and prison experiences.25 Nonetheless, the risks provoked by Wolters's inclusion in the memoir and series raise the question of exploitation, a charge against the show conceptualized as "trauma porn." Ashleigh Shackleford popularized the term in her assessment, shared by a number of African-American critics, that the show depicted "bleak narratives about the experience of people of color for the entertainment of those who have never lived those experiences."26 Such critiques provide further evidence for reading Larry's many betrayals as a displacement or hedge against similar charges directed toward Kerman or the series creators. As a long-standing trope, Jewish betrayal is easily identifiable and works to distract or absolve others of incriminating behavior.

The Jewish Inmate Problem: Levy

The treatment of a woman who, like Wolters, appears in the memoir but who has drawn less attention because she did not become an easily identifiable character in the show, provides an additional avenue for exploring Jewish identity in OITNB. Kerman's descriptions of Levy, a Jewish inmate, suggests the translation of Larry into a Judas can be indeed identified as a "Jewish problem," and one that originated in the memoir rather than the series. Consideration of the memoir is uncommon in studies of the series; Hilary Malatino's analysis is an important exception that provides a point of comparison below.27 A French Moroccan Jew, Levy is the only inmate whose behavior and demeanor Kerman derides repeatedly in her memoir. Levy is a true "other" in prison. As Kerman explains early on:

When a new person arrived their tribe—white, black, Latino, or the few and far between "others"—would … get them settled and steer them through their arrival. If you fall into that "other" category—Native American, Asian, Middle Eastern—then you got a patchwork welcome committee of … women from the dominant tribes.28

Levy thus falls outside or in between even the "other" category, but her status as a Member of the Tribe without a tribe and the impact her singularity might have had on her ability to in fact "get settled" is not considered by the otherwise compassionate Kerman. Described in the memoir as "tiny," Kerman scorns Levy for being "totally useless at electrical studies" despite "preening about her Sorbonne education."29 She is also criticized for her decision not to allow her children to come visit her because she does not "want them to see her in prison," despite Kerman noting without judgement others who "did not want their people to see them in a place like this."30 Kerman even positions Levy below guards in likeability: "'Zey have no class,'" sneered Levy. I didn't like prison guards, but she was insufferable."31 This excerpt is also an example of how Levy is singled out by Kerman, who reproduces her accent in the text to a greater degree than any other prisoner's. Levy is also ridiculed for crying more often than Kerman deems appropriate, though Kerman writes that when seeing an inmate cry after visiting hours are over, "you smiled sympathetically or touched their shoulder."32 Together, these comments justify Levy's status as:

the unifying factor in the [electrical] shop: the rest of us united against her. She was insufferable, crying daily and complaining loudly and constantly about her measly six-month sentence, asking inappropriate personal questions, trying to boss people around, and making appalling and loud statements about other prisoners' appearance and lack of education sophistication, or "class," as she put it. … Most of the time she was nervous-verging-on-hysterical, which manifested in dramatic physical symptoms; an astonishing hive-like swelling made her look like the Elephant Man, and her always sweating hands made her particularly useless for working with electricity.33

Though we do not learn the specifics regarding the cause of Levy's incarceration, Kerman mentions Levy was "whisked away to testify against her chiseler ex-boyfriend."34 However, the worst offense committed by Levy, according to Kerman, occurs after her release when she is interviewed by the Hartford Courant in September 2004, just before Martha Stewart's incarceration. Kerman reports the "Camp freaked out" that Barbara, as Levy is referred to in the newspaper article, describes the prison as a "big hotel" with "an ice machine, ironing boards," "two libraries" and "amazing food," and that she says she enjoyed not having to cook, clean, drive or buy gas. Kerman responded to the article in her memoir by "pictur[ing] Levy, swollen with hives, looking like the Elephant Man, crying every single day over her six-month sentence and sneering at anyone she thought was not 'classy.'" Though Kerman states the "reporter got many minor facts wrong," she and other inmates who "are outraged by the false claim that [they] could buy Haagen-Dazs ice cream" at the commissary blame Levy for the error. The prisoner in charge of the kitchen, Pop in the memoir and Red in the show, is upset and confused:

Piper, I just don't understand it. Why would she lie? You have the opportunity to get the truth out there about this place, and instead she makes up these lies? We have nothing here, and she makes it sound like a picnic.35

Kerman then explains to her readers that Levy lied because she "didn't want to admit to herself, let alone to the outside world, that she had been placed in a ghetto, just as ghetto as they had once had in Poland." Kerman here assumes that she understands the Jewish ghettos of World War II-era Poland better than Levy. She continues:

It was too painful … for Levy and others (especially the middle-class prisoners) to admit that they had been classed as undesirables, compelled against their will into containment, and forced into scarcity without even the dignity of chosen austerity. So instead, she said it was Club Fed.36

Kerman uses the ghetto metaphor to help her readers understand the "revolving door between our urban and rural ghettos and the formal ghetto of our prison system" in the United States and the difficulty of escaping either.37 However, Kerman, in collapsing distinctions, overlooks differences between Nazi ghettos and those she references, and also ways in which targeted communities form alliances based in shared histories of pain and oppression. Moreover, she does not consider the possibility if not probability that Levy has family members who perished, or who suffered and survived the Holocaust in France and Morocco. In a comparable critique, though one focusing on gender identity, Malatino finds Kerman "lacks a framework for understanding trans subjectivity," and uses "classic othering strategies … [that] serve to de-authenticate transfeminine gender expressions."38 Kerman similarly lacks intersectional frameworks that could account for Levy's status as both wielding middle-class privilege and experiencing her subjectivity as an isolated and vulnerable minority.

Lacking fuller consideration of Levy's multiple facets, Kerman also did not mention that Levy in the interview lauded her fellow prisoners as "classy" and defended them against charges that sexual assault was common. For Levy, "The worst part about being there was being counted. They count you like an animal." Whether intentional or not, her emphasis on this aspect of prison life being exceptionally difficult for her evokes the experiences of Jews in Nazi camps during the Holocaust, an allusion that escapes Kerman. The Courant also sympathetically reported Levy's decision not to see her children, which Levy states was the hardest part of her stay, and an effort to maintain her dignity.39

Levy indeed may have been annoying. But that alone does not explain why Kerman devotes so much attention to her. In assessing what work she performs in the narrative, I argue Levy serves several functions. First, she is a vehicle for the middle-class Kerman to distance herself from those of her own class and to legitimate her claim that she accepts her shared status with poor undesirables, which other middle-class women prisoners like Levy do not. Second, she confirms the view of Jewish women as needy and neurotic, a dominant caricature even promulgated by Kerman's real-life Jewish husband. Levy thus also is a vehicle Kerman uses to elide her possible association with reviled Jewish femininity via her relationship with a Jewish man. Third, Levy translates into Netflix Larry as they are both Judases who in self-interest betray the experiences of incarcerated women in mass media forums. Levy-Larry are categorically unable to truly understand who those women are or identify with them, unlike the transcendent Kerman. Thus Levy-Larry is the mechanism by which Kerman and by default Kohan distance themselves from assessments that they are profiting from the ordeals of women who do not have similar professional opportunities to do so.40 Moreover, the construction of the justifiably hated if not abject Jew that results from Levy's transgressive behavior and Larry's increasingly despicable acts creates more possibilities for the diverse female inmates to be viewed sympathetically by readers and viewers.

OITNB and Television's Crypto-Jews

The portrayal of Jewish identity on the television series OITNB contains further complexities, as Jewish elements beyond the Bloom stereotypes are depicted from its earliest episodes. A mechanism for simultaneously including and excluding Jews in television is the long-standing practice of the crypto-Jewish character. Leslie Fiedler first used the term in 1964 to describe the phenomenon of characters whose Jewish identity is hidden, like the original crypto-Jews, Spanish Jews forced to convert in 1492 whose Mexican and Mexican-American descendants maintained Jewish practices for centuries typically without knowing the origins of their family traditions.41 Fiedler deployed the term critically in analyzing Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and other characters penned by mid-twentieth-century Jewish-American writers such as Paddy Chayefsky, Bernard Malamud, and Norman Mailer. Fielder deplored the effect of "characters who are in habit, speech, and condition typically Jewish American, but who are presented as something else—general American," as "pseudo-universalizing." As a result, "the works … lose authenticity and strength" and constitute a "failure to remember that the inhabitants of Dante's Hell or Joyce's Dublin are more universal as they are more Florentine or Irish."42

Jewish Studies media critics such as Jeffrey Shandler, David Zurawik, and Vincent Brooks found the crypto-Jew concept useful in describing television characters whose Jewish identity is ambiguous, hidden, or suppressed but hinted at through narrative gestures, personal qualities, or physical features and often by being played by a Jewish actor. These critics explain that the crypto-Jew phenomenon was born of concern largely on the part of Jewish television executives that shows that appeared "too Jewish" would not appeal to most Americans and would make them vulnerable to charges of Jewish control of the media. The practice emerged in television's "Golden Era," after the popular radio and then television show The Gold-bergs ended its twenty-six-year run in 1955. The Goldbergs depicted an observant Jewish family of modest means comprised of immigrant parents and America-born children living in New York City. Matriarch Molly Goldberg (Gertrude Berg) was a beloved mass culture icon known for her down-to-earth wisdom and endearing malapropisms. Despite its broad appeal—Berg won the first Emmy awarded for Best Actress in 1950—Jewish television moguls such as William Paley, who headed CBS, made it clear that no new shows with Jewish leading characters would be aired. This attitude has been attributed to television executives' fears that Jewish programming would bring unwanted attention and therefore problems to Jews working in the medium. Occasionally, Jewish characters appeared in Jewish-themed episodes of shows from westerns like Rawhide (1959–1965) and Bonanza (1959–1973) to procedurals such as The F.B.I (1965–1974). However, the maxim "write Yiddish, cast British" became the rule through the 1970s. It was implemented most famously in network discussions about what became The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966). Created by Carl Reiner, who planned to star, the sitcom was based on his life as a television comedy writer and head of a Jewish family living in the suburbs. Innovative in depicting both its main character's home and work life, CBS agreed to put the show in the prime time schedule if Reiner, et al. would step aside for a "less ethnic" cast. The one exception in the final ensemble was supporting character Buddy Sorrel, played by Morey Amsterdam, though his Jewish identity was rarely referenced.43

In the 1970s, "write Yiddish, cast British" remained a guiding principle on network television, though popular shows such as Barney Miller (1974–1982) and Welcome Back Kotter (1975–1979) featured lead characters with familiar Jewish identifiers, such as their New York City origins and speech patterns, and who were played by Jewish actors. Nonetheless, such characters remained crypto-Jews, as story lines never referenced or confirmed their Jewish identity. Rhoda (1974–1978), a spin off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show starring the non-Jewish Valerie Harper as Mary's Jewish friend Rhoda Morgenstern, was an exception, a sitcom about a Jewish woman. Even after the late 1980s and 1990s saw the return of the Jewish female lead in The Nanny (1993–1999) and Will & Grace (1998–2006), and the Jewish leading man in dramas thirtysomething (1987–1991) and Northern Exposure (1990–1995), the crypto-Jew remained an important creature of network television. Crypto-Jews of this era include George Costanza, Kramer, and Elaine on Seinfeld (1989–1998) and Rachel Green, Monica Geller, and Ross Geller on Friends (1994–2004). In an echo of the decision to recast what became The Dick Van Dyke Show, NBC executives insisted the Seinfeld characters, who were created as Jews, not remain so. Only Jerry Seinfeld remained identifiably Jewish, which was unavoidable as his character was based on the already known Jewish comedian's real persona.44

Despite this decades-long context and an emerging self-referential and fearless Jewish sensibility in twentieth-first-century cable programming personified by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson's Broad City, and by the Amazon series Transparent, celebrated as the "Jewiest show ever," all of which found broad audiences, Orange Is the New Black features crypto-Jews among its diverse cast.45 Jewish actors in the series in recurring roles that began in the first season include Yael Stone, Constance Shulman, Barbara Rosenblatt, and Natasha Lyonne. Constance Shulman's character Yoga Jones's potential identity as a crypto-Jew is tipped off in a visual cue. As the inmates prepare for the December holidays by decorating the prison, Jones tapes a two-dimensional dreidel decoration to the wall upside down. Whether this indicates ignorance or a sign of Jewish distress (or Jews in distress), like the meaning of flying the American flag upside down, it is significant that this moment precedes, and perhaps precipitates, the scene where Jones's back story is revealed in flashback. Though nothing in the character's background particularly suggests she is Jewish, that she becomes a Buddhist after her conviction for mistakenly shooting and killing a neighbor's child when protecting her remote marijuana crop might be, as so many American Buddhists are Jewish, they are known as "JuBus." Jones's story also evokes the television character Dharma Finkelstein of Dharma & Greg (1997–2002) whose father is a Jewish hippie and befuddled pothead.46

Drug offender Nicky Nichols is the most prominent and clearly identifiable crypto-Jew on OITNB throughout its first five seasons. Yet a case can be made as well for Yael Stone's Lorna Morello. Stone, for example, was originally considered for the part of Nicky Nichols, but instead was cast as the working-class Italian-American Lorna Morello. This cultural slippage between Italian Americans and Jewish Americans has been long noted. In 1964, for example, Leslie Fiedler cited Paddy Chayefsky's Italian American Marty as a Jewish American being "presented as something else."47 More recently, Dominique Ruggieri and Elizabeth Leebron in their research on Jewish- and Italian-American women on television conclude that ever since Mama Rosa debuted in 1950, shortly after the transition of The Goldbergs from radio to television, both Jewish- and Italian-American women have been portrayed as:

selfish, pushy, materialistic, domineering, manipulative, assertive, loud, shallow, whiny, demanding, man-hunting, weight-conscious, high-maintenance, shopping-crazed bargain hunters, possessive, controlling, unmarried, success-oriented, food-oriented, asexual, and unattractive. Physical qualities that epitomize these characters include large noses, big hair, a dark complexion and issues with their bodies. The positive characteristics linked to these ethnic portrayals include strong family orientation, loyalty, and devotion as mothers.48

In addition, several prominent Italian-American television characters, such as Dorothy Petrollo-Zbornak on The Golden Girls (1985–1992) and Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond (1996–2005) were played by Jewish actors, Bea Arthur and Doris Roberts respectively. Some Jewish media journalists have gone a step further and declared the entire Barone family Jewish because the show's Jewish creator, Phil Rosenthal, infused the series with storylines based on his own family.49 Similarly, crypto-Jew Costanza from Seinfeld, who is ostensibly Italian American, is played by a Jewish actor, as are his parents. It works both ways; Italian-American actor John Turturro has played Jews in multiple films.50 Moreover, on OITNB, the connection between Nicky and Lorna is part of the narrative. In the first episode of Season 1, we are introduced to both characters along with Piper, who discovers them having sex in the shower. The amorous relationship between Nichols, who is a lesbian, and Morello, who identifies as heterosexual, continues through the fifth episode, when Morello breaks it off to save herself for her fiancé. Nonetheless, their relationship maintains an emotional and at times physical intimacy. Furthermore, Lorna later reveals her fiancé is Jewish, and decides, "If I marry him, I'll be Jewish too."51

On her own, drug offender Nicky Nichols personifies the typical television crypto-Jew. Natasha Lyonne neé Bronstein's thick, wavy long hair and New York accent are key physical markers. Nicky, an articulate, insightful, and wisecracking lesbian, was raised in Manhattan by her professional, well-to-do, divorced mother. Nicky complains about and blames her mother's absence in her life for some of the psychic distress that undergirds her addiction. Flashbacks depict their difficult relationship; however, as her back story progresses, we see Nicky is an incorrigible addict who uses her smarts and sarcasm to manipulate her mother, who eventually throws up her hands. Nicky's mother's characterization is not stable in the show and there is no evidence to suggest she is a crypto-Jew herself. For example, she is not played by a Jewish actor. Perhaps then it is Nicky's truly absent father who is Jewish. After all, her last name mirrors jokester Joey Nichols, who is Woody Allen/Alvy Singer's father's friend in Annie Hall. As Joey's cultural descendant, Nicky's comedic abilities are more fully evolved: in another marker of Jewish-American identity, she performs stand-up during the prison holiday talent show.52 Moreover, Lyonne makes her own Jewish identity clear in interviews and in the extra feature "Getting to Know the Cast" on the Season 3 DVD, where she talks about living in Israel in the 1980s, and provides the wittiest responses to many of the questions she and the other actors are asked. Nicky is also the first character to use Yiddish words in the series and the first to term a gang of white supremacist inmates as Nazis.53

In critical readings of the show, Nicky has been noted for her non-normative lesbian body, i.e., she is perceived as non-conforming to dominant standards of beauty. Such critiques either laud the show for depicting Nicky enjoying her sexuality despite not being thin and "attractive" or find fault in that the white lesbians with leading roles, Piper and her girlfriend Alex (Laura Prepon), uphold and thus perpetuate these oppressive standards.54 Furthermore Nicky's (crypto-Jewish) hair is unruly, and she does not attend fully to grooming and behavioral practices associated with femininity such as being neat, tidy, and controlled in appearance or speech. Nicky's presentation thus can be seen as conforming to the view of Jewish women as unattractive. Nonetheless, Kyra Hunting finds that:

often it is not Piper, marked by the politics of respectability who is the moral center for the group of white women but drug addict and promiscuous Nicky—whose appearance and lascivious language has rough edges but who consistently provides the most rational advice to other inmates.55

In addition, Nicky articulates incisive feminist critiques. For example, in regard to Lorna's obsession about her future marriage to her fiancé, Nicky comments on "the wedding industrial complex and society's bullshit need to infantilize grown women." Though Nicky demonstrates the benefits of her college education in such comments, she does not use her well-honed analytical skills to assert her superiority in the same manner as Piper's displays of knowledge sometimes do and for which other inmates call her out.56

Claiming Nicky as a crypto-Jew opens up further possibilities for considering her within the genealogy of "tough Jews," who defy stereotypes of Jews as weak, passive, victims or brainy yet nebbishy nerds. Scholars and commentators have deployed the term "tough Jew" to describe a range of real and representational Jewish men, from early twentieth-century Jewish-American gangsters Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel and Holocaust resistance fighters the Bielski Brothers, to the muscular Zionists and Israelis who forged a Jewish state and aim to protect the Jewish people. Nathan Abrams in The New Jew in Film extends the category to include the "tough Jewess with Attitude" seen in a number of turn-of-the-century films such as Miller's Crossing (1990), Homicide (1991), and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Though Nicky engages in illegal activity, she is not a gangster in the Lansky mold, nor is she a righteous member of anti-fascist resistance. Instead, her brand of Jewish toughness is born of her defiant lesbian identity, rough street life as a junkie, and willingness to speak her mind. These attributes are essential components of her prison survival skills.57

The tough Jew is posited by Abrams as a one-half of a binary paired with the queer Jewish male. In regard to Jewish women, he explains:

the tough Jewess with Attitude not only rebels against stereo(typical) gender roles, demonstrating that she can perform the same roles and tasks as the Jew, but also questions the duality of gender in the first place, confounding both the general and Jewish binary logic.58

As Nicky is queer and tough, she confounds stereotypes about Jewish women's representation on television, and, as I discuss further below, the representation of Jewish women in OITNB. Perhaps Nicky's status as a crypto—rather than "out" Jew—is thus overdetermined because not only does she defy categorization, she is categorically defiant. However, the popular cultural presence of well-known Jews with histories of substance abuse such as Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, Hillel Slovak, and Amy Winehouse—and that Natasha Lyonne's own struggles as an addict inform Nicky's narrative—raises additional questions about the reluctance or apparent impossibility of presenting Nicky as Jewish.59

Like many of the inmates, Nicky is not only tough. She displays vulnerability, particularly in her relationship with her prison mother Red (Kate Mulgrew). Yet even crypto-Jew Nicky engages in a Judas betrayal by sharing with a corrupt prison guard her prison mom's secret method of getting in additional culinary supplies. He plans to use the information to smuggle in drugs. This will lead to Nicky's downfall, as she later is found with drugs in her possession and, early in Season 3, gets sent to the nearby higher security prison. The dispatching of Nicky underscores the tenuous status of the television crypto-Jew, whose identity both articulates and avoids representations of Jewishness. Crypto-Jews provide gestures of Jewish representation, however reified—such as physical features, names, personal qualities, comedic sensibilities and intellectual insights—that convey a sense of Jewishness detached from historical contexts and specific experiences. Thus, a crypto character's Jewish attributes can be assigned or withdrawn at will, evading narrative demands for continuity or follow-through. The tattoo of a cross Nicky sports on the inside of her forearm, for example, thus neither confirms nor denies her Jewish identity. Instead it speaks to the shifting construction of the crypto-Jew as both trope and pastiche.60

"Where my dreidel at?" Kosher Food and Conversion Narratives

It is telling that it is only shortly after Nicky leaves, that the first "out" Jewish inmate shows up. Or at least, the first inmate who asks for a kosher meal. It turns out she is not Jewish, but requests kosher meals to get better food. This is a real phenomenon in US prisons. According to a 2012 Forward article, just one-sixth of the 24,000 prisoners receiving kosher meals in America are Jewish.61 On OITNB, the quality of the kosher meals is quickly noticed by other inmates, particularly Cindy (Adrienne C. Moore), who is among the first to request one. By the next episode several other African-American characters whose back stories have been previously highlighted are also eating kosher. However, it is Cindy who most embraces the potential of claiming Jewish identity. When she is accused of not being Jewish, she replies, "You think you know my life? Shabbat Shalom, bitch!" And as one Jewish popular press article on the topic notes, Cindy's "quest for edible food" leads her to other Jewish references, "including 'Shanah tova and hava nagila. It is good to be chosen.'" In response to someone asking if a seat is taken, she replies, "Yeah. We're saving it for Elijah." Cindy pursues her desire to learn more about Jewish culture by checking out Fiddler on the Roof and a Woody Allen movie from the library, which is humorous yet also a self-referential gesture to the importance of popular cultural texts in disseminating information about what it means to be Jewish.62

Up to this point in the series, Cindy's character has largely served as comic relief. She is depicted as a fool and an immature petty thief who is in prison because she abused her position as a TSA officer to steal passengers' belongings at the airport.63 When a rabbi is brought into the now privatized prison to determine if prisoners requesting kosher meals are motivated by "sincerely held beliefs"—an actual legal standard employed to determine the validity of prisoners' claims to kosher meals—his interviews are relayed in a montage of inmates sharing both goofy ideas about what it means to be Jewish and some well-worn stereotypes that are played for laughs: "I think y'all are doing a wonderful job controlling the media. I mean we. We are doing a wonderful job;" and "I call my mother a lot, like every day, and, love a bargain." When asked whether she was raised Jewish, Cindy claims she was "born and bred," and recounts plot points from Annie Hall and Yentl. This strategy fails to keep her on the kosher meal list and Cindy decides to convert, ending the episode with its title question, "Where my dreidel at?"64

In the next episode we discover there actually are Jewish women inmates held at Litchfield; Cindy has sought them out to prepare for her conversion. One is Ginsberg (Jamie Denbo), who sheepishly reveals she has been convicted for money laundering when asked. This is an odd exchange not only because it is rare for a prisoner to be asked that question by another inmate, especially when they have just met, but also because Ginsberg's gesture when revealing the basis for her conviction conveys shame at having been caught both in the crime itself and in a crime that evokes the antisemitic association of Jews with money. However, that same information reassures Cindy that Ginsberg is indeed Jewish, as she was skeptical due to Gins-berg's blonde hair and blue eyes. In the commentary on the episode by its credited writer, who describes herself as an Irish Catholic, she explains that Kohan rewrote Ginsberg's monologue describing the inmate's upbringing. Ginsberg's experiences thus appear grounded in those of Kohan's herself, as when Ginsberg demonstrates she knows her Jewish chops by talking about her bat mitzvah and her Hebrew name, Shayna Malka.65

In the last episode of Season 3, Cindy, with Ginsberg and another Jewish inmate, Rhea Boyle (Yelena Shmulenson) by her side, meets with the rabbi. Rhea opens the conversation: "Why you want to go from a hated minority to a double-hated minority is beyond me," before turning to the rabbi, and vouching for Cindy by asserting, "she's for real." Cindy has chosen the Hebrew name Tovah—"which means good and it's all good now"—and explains she has traded granola bars with Ginsberg and Boyle for Hebrew lessons. The rabbi then asks, "What is this for you?" Cindy's reply, written by Kohan, is conveyed in a truly moving performance by Moore.

Honestly, I think I found my people. I was raised in a church where I was told to believe and pray. And if I was bad, I'd go to Hell. If I was good, I'd go to Heaven. And if I asked Jesus, he'd forgive me and that was that. And here y'all saying there ain't no Hell. Ain't sure about Heaven, and if you do something wrong, you got to figure it out yourself. And as far as God's concerned, it's your job to keep asking questions and to keep learning and to keep arguing. It's like a verb. You do God. … I want to learn more and I think I got to be in it to do that. … Can I be a Jew?

Cindy is ecstatic when he and both witnesses say yes, until she finds out she must also experience ritual immersion in a mikvah to make her conversion official. Ginsberg consoles her by explaining that although she is not a Jew yet, she is "Jew-ish."66

A miracle ensues for all the inmates when the guards go on strike and a construction crew accidentally rips open a hole in the fence, allowing everyone to take a dip in the lake on the other side. Most prisoners run in to enjoy their momentary freedom. Cindy finds Ginsberg, who recites the blessing as Cindy immerses her naked body in the water. Conversion complete, Gins-berg congratulates her with a "mazel tov" and Cindy is all smiles in a closeup shot depicting her deep expression of her new found source of joy. Cindy's transformation during a season in which all sorts of religious identities and meanings are explored is remarkable for her as a character and also for the way it explains the meaning of Judaism, and most importantly, the difference of Judaism, which the show affirms and upholds. Furthermore, the sensitive treatment of her conversion story creates opportunities to depict Jewish community within the prison, and allusions to Jewish community outside it. In so doing OITNB incorporates significant Jewish content that a focus on individuals, especially when occurring in fleeting moments or signaled in quips, cannot accomplish alone. I would argue the brief depiction of Jewish community on the show reveals the fissures of representing Jewishness without that larger communal context, and the potential for greater narrative depth when included.

African Americans and Jews by Choice

Cindy's conversion is credible as a personal journey that concludes the series' prison kosher food narrative, and also because it resonates with the experiences of other well- and lesser-known African-American converts—whether real or imagined—to Judaism. These "Jews by Choice" join a diverse Jewish community: a 1990 study conducted by the Council of Jewish Federations concluded that in the United States 2.4 percent of "self-identified Jews list their race as black," and "about 100,000" additional African Americans "reported having 'connections' to Judaism." In addition, African-born Jews comprise 14.6 percent of Israel's Jewish population.67 Popular entertainer and Rat Pack member Sammy Davis, Jr. was the most well-known African-American Jew for many decades following his 1960 conversion, which occurred after years of study and consultation with Reform rabbis in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He and his Swedish fiancée, actress May Britt, "formally converted a few weeks before their wedding."68 Other well-known African-American converts include writer Julius Lester, actress Nell Carter, writer Jamaica Kincaid, and rapper Shyne. Convert Alysa Stanton became the first African-American woman rabbi in 2009. She decided to convert when in her twenties, explaining her choice in similar terms voiced by the fictional Cindy, "For me, Judaism was where I found a home." After overcoming initial hesitancy upon her hiring, she ultimately led the Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville, North Carolina to great acclaim.69

Fictional African-American Jews have also previously appeared on television. In an episode of the 1970s situation comedy Sanford and Son entitled "Funny, You Don't Look It," patriarch Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) is told by a genealogist that he is a descendant of Ethiopian Jews. His initial reaction trades in stereotypes in a similar vein to Litchfield inmates' attempts to assert a legitimate claim to their kosher meals, such as articulating his new-found desire for his son to become a doctor. However, like Cindy, Fred then explores more deeply the meaning and history of Judaism and its rituals. When it turns out he was misinformed about his Jewish roots, he celebrates what he learned and appreciates his Jewish teacher's perspective that "Jews and blacks … have a lot in common," hoping that "the similarities will bring us closer together."70

Sammy Davis, Jr.'s conversion was also motivated by sentiments about connections between the two minority groups, in addition to spiritual connections he felt after a 1954 car crash in which he lost one of his eyes. He had become familiar with Jewish teachings and practices after working closely with Jewish entertainers such as Eddie Cantor, whom Davis credited for giving him his first big break. Davis particularly admired and was inspired by the Jewish people's ability to survive adversity.

These are a swinging bunch of people. I mean I've heard of persecution, but what they went through is ridiculous! … They'd get kicked out of one place, so they'd just go on to the next one and keep swinging like they wanted to, believing in themselves and in their right to have rights, asking nothing but for people to leave 'em alone and get off their backs, and having the guts to fight to get themselves a little peace.71

Despite the lengthy period during which Davis considered conversion, when accomplished it was met with some skepticism and criticism. Ribbing from his Las Vegas Jewish comedian friends was to be expected, but he was also the object of charges from some African Americans that he converted to advance his career, and escape from his blackness. Such accusations may explain his 1980 statement in Ebony that "My people are my people and my religion is my religion. My people are first. I happen to be a Black Jew. I am Black first and the religion I have chosen is Judaism."72

African Americans who become or are born as Jews challenge static notions of black and Jewish identity. Popular cultural renditions can further evoke the fluid terms that construct identities generally. African-American inmate Cindy, in OITNB, seeks and finds a spiritual home by converting to Judaism. Moreover, African-American Jews, both real and imagined, create spaces for plural Jewish identities. Yet questions remain about the benefits, costs, and consequences of such transformations, and their meanings in cultural representations.

In Lovesong, Julius Lester's 1988 memoir, he explores his path to conversion and the many dimensions of his Jewish identity. In the book's preface Lester states, "I am no longer deceived by the black face which stars at me from the mirror. I am a Jew."73 This expression of tension between his identities as black and Jewish is articulated by other African-American converts as well. Assumptions when attending services at an unfamiliar congregation that one is a curious visitor and not Jewish, and accusations from African Americans that conversion to Judaism represents a desire to escape blackness and become white, are both common experiences of black Jews by Choice. However, among other diverse Jewish populations, African-American Jews open up conceptions of what an American Jew looks like and point to limitations regarding assumptions about Jews and whiteness. In OITNB, Cindy's character also points to more flexible understandings of Jewish-American identity. Cindy's turn to gospel music after an African-American inmate's death—"I may be a Jew now, but times like this call for some Black gospel no matter what"—is a tribute to the power of that musical form and an expression of her own dual moment when she articulates both her black and Jewish identities. Asserting Jewishness as American in this case is also related to African-American cultural expression. Moreover, as Terry Shoemaker points out, Cindy shows she "is capable of being both Jewish and African American."74

OITNB's deployment of an African-American character's conversion to Judaism to convey Jewish values and depict Jewish rituals without inclusion of a fully realized recurring Jewish-American character and community underscores the problematic representation of Jewish identity in American popular culture. Though Cindy in OITNB tells the visiting rabbi in Season 3 she has "found her people" when professing to the sincerity of her quest to become a Jew, Season 4 depicts her prison experience largely as before, living among and hanging out with her African-American friends, with sparse attention to her new found faith and its meaning for her. Despite her new mezuzah, the Jewish inmates who assisted her conversion have not become a part of her life and no longer appear on the show. Moreover, Cindy's Jewish identity flattens, expressed primarily by her and other inmates in articulations of stereotypical if not antisemitic Jewish avarice. Conflicts with Alison, a newly arrived African-American inmate who is Muslim, wears a hijab, and is assigned to the bunk next to Cindy's, lightly spoof tensions between the two groups, yet mostly at Cindy's expense. In one episode, Alison hopes to trade access to her contraband cell phone for some of Cindy's commissary-purchased tampons during a prison sanitary napkin shortage. When Alison references a Biblical admonition, "If there are poor among you, do not be selfish or greedy towards them" to make her case, Cindy rejects this view as Christian. In addition to demeaning Cindy by showing her to be ignorant of the shared basis of the Abrahamic religions, which Alison understands, the one-dimensional focus on stale jokes about Jewish greed that dominate Jewish references in Season 4 prevents Cindy from articulating deeply-held Jewish values—for example in this moment of potential tzedakah—as she had during the previous season's focus on her conversion.75 Thus, the show's sympathetic portrayal of Jewish faith, values, and identity is short-lived, and its reliance upon an African-American character who converts to convey the authenticity of the Jewish experience most fully proves unstable.

Despite their limitations, a century of cultural texts from The Jazz Singer to OITNB have served as vehicles for disseminating information via mass culture about Jewish practices, values, family life, and community concerns to gentile audiences. Such exposure serves an ongoing need, as African-American actress Yvonne Orji recently demonstrated when she said, "I know what Shabbat is by watching Curb Your Enthusiasm."76 Yet the apparent impossibility for OITNB, despite its well-deserved reputation for inclusivity, to incorporate a Jewish-American inmate, or an ongoing Jewish prison community, however small, for Cindy to continue to interact with, suggests Jewish television creators and writers are still struggling with a revised, contemporary version of the "write Yiddish, cast British" mandate. One expression of that dilemma occurs early in the series when a posted list of religious services is shown to include Catholic, Wiccan and Muslim, but omits a Jewish option.77

Nicky and Cindy: New Information and Missing Connections in Season 6

Six years into the series, Nicky's crypto-Jewish identity resolves via a flashback to her fraught bat mitzvah. Her parents are divorced, squabbling, and more concerned about superficial and materialist aspects of the event than their daughter's achievement. As the second pair of Jewish parents depicted on the show, they are far worse than Larry's, who, however misguided, at least cared about their son's well-being. The bat mitzvah plays out as a teenage revenge fantasy, as Nicky strays from her prepared Torah commentary to excoriate her parents in front of the congregation. Yet the additional details provided about Nicky's self-absorbed and neglectful parents, whose behavior has been referenced previously, though not as Jews, do not further humanize Nicky nor serve to explain in a compassionate manner her drug addiction and criminal behavior because her parents, like Larry's, are one-dimensional. As one reviewer assessed the season, "Nicky Nichol's bat mitzvah is a train wreck with some good laugh lines, but it does not feel like an indispensable part of this show." Rolling Stone's Season 6 review similarly found only one of the season's flashbacks—about two other characters—"worth the bother," and did not mention Nicky's at all.78

The bat mitzvah flashback comes after Nicky, who is facing significant additional prison time in the aftermath of a prison riot, has contacted her father for legal assistance, and he comes through. Themes of Jewish betrayal become central as he urges Nicky to betray Red—again—to save herself. She does, though Red in a Stella Dallas moment of maternal self-sacrifice grants her permission to do so.79 Moreover, Cindy faces a similar high-pressure situation. She contacts her conversion rabbi for legal assistance, which he facilitates. Here too, her lawyer advises her to betray her best friend.80 Though wracked with guilt—a "Jewish thing" another inmate explains—she does.81

Though Cindy asserts the primacy of her Jewish identity in this season by using her Hebrew name when she becomes co-host of a radio show within the prison, she must do so repeatedly to her gentile friends. Other audiences apparently also need convincing; it is interesting that in the closed captions for the show, she is always referred to as Cindy, not Tovah.82 Furthermore, though there are parallels to Nicky's and Tovah's story lines, they seem to exist, like these characters themselves, in separate worlds within the prison. They appear briefly together in a prison wedding scene, where Nicky has donned a yarmulke and prayer shawl to officiate, though the couple, Piper and Alex, are not Jewish and there is no Jewish content to the ceremony. The Jewish objects, which also include a chuppah, add an exotic vibe that liven up the dreary setting, but like Nicky and Tovah, do not connect in any meaningful way with their Jewish character, identity, or values. The cross tattoo on Nicky's forearm is prominently displayed in another indication of her continuing ambivalent status post bat mitzvah flashback. In a measure of the irrelevance of the Jewish components depicted at the wedding, many reviews of the episode do not mention them at all. Thus, the Jewish elements of this season's important final episode—that includes a classic TV series ratings magnet, a wedding—provide color or comic effect, detached from ritual and cultural significance.83

Conclusion

In OITNB's final, seventh season, Nicky retreats to her crypto-Jewish identity. Despite having a loving relationship with a lesbian Egyptian inmate held for an immigration violation, a seeming set up for jokes and storylines like those created for Alison and Cindy in Season 4, there is bupkis about Nicky's Jewishness in any of this season's episodes. In regard to Cindy, the brief references to her being Jewish in Season 7 are few and far between. Though her rabbi comes through for her again in writing an employment reference letter, which secures her a job, he is mentioned only in passing, and Cindy is never depicted interacting with other Jews. These retrenchments once again point to the instability of the crypto-Jew and convert in reliably relating Jewish identity, practices, and sensibilities in television narratives. Erasure and marginalization of Jewish perspectives also appear to be facilitated by the absence of depictions of Jewish community.

Over its seven seasons, OITNB's shifting representations of Jewish identity move from the Bloom stereotypes and crypto-Jew Nicky Nichols, to the inclusion of Ashkenazi Jews in minor supporting roles that are essential in supporting the conversion of higher profile character Cindy. In Season 4, the reversion to stereotypes about Jews accompanies the return of crypto-Jew Nicky, who has been transferred back from a higher security prison. Perhaps the series' success in featuring the stories of women of color, lesbians, and transwomen, and in building a fan base for its diverse cast, created the possibility for the open exploration of what it means to be a Jew, if only temporarily. Nonetheless the instability of Jewish identity in the show may suggest tensions and uncertainties surrounding the relationship of Jewish subjectivity to those more clearly understood as marginalized. Thus it is significant that the character with the most screen time who voices the most endearing and sympathetic Jewish perspective is a convert who expresses her Jewish identity through the lens of her experience as an African American. When Nicky is revealed to be Jewish in Season 6, it makes little difference, as her Jewish identity and that of Cindy/Tovah's typically find expression only in passing verbal quips or visual jokes. These indications are underscored in Season 7, the series' last, in which the Jewish identities of these characters are rarely referenced or elided completely. Like other television shows that only explore Jewish identity in the apparently safer context of interfaith marriages and relationships, Jewish identity in OITNB is most fully realized when linked with someone who is not, at least initially, Jewish, and whose struggles as an incarcerated African-American woman have been depicted previously in the series, though no Jewish inmate's story receives similar treatment. Moreover, the troubling treatment of Levy in Kerman's memoir finds an echo in references to Jewish identity on the series that mine well-worn stereotypes without addressing the consequences, for example, of antisemitism in similar ways that the series addresses racism and homophobia. Yet importantly, Cindy converts and becomes a Jew who is accepted by the Jewish inmates who supported her religious transformation and by the rabbi who authorized it. Her conversion narrative provides opportunities for compassionate expression of Jewish values, conveys information about Jewish rituals, and challenges static notions of Jewish identity.

Though OITNB incorporates if not champions the experiences and perspectives of a range of minority groups, portrays incarcerated women sympathetically, and aims to critically depict the prison-industrial complex, and deserves praise for doing so, the significant Jewish presence on OITNB still bears consideration as simultaneous displacement through deployment of familiar stereotypes, crypto-identities, and conversion narratives. As Malatino also finds in regard to trans issues, "the show subverts certain tropes," yet also relies on "stereotypes."84 Cindy's struggles to be recognized as Tovah are emblematic and suggest that a Jewish problem—the problem of Jewish representation—remains a forceful shaper of narratives and character development on episodic television and streaming series.

Notes

Michael O'Connell, "Nielsen Says 6.7M Watched Orange Is the New Black Premiere in 3 Days," Hollywood Reporter, June 29, 2016, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/orange-is-new-black-ratings-907390; Daniel Holloway, "TV Ratings: Orange Is the New Black Premiere Numbers Revealed by Nielsen," Variety, June 29, 2016, http://variety.com/2016/tv/ratings/tv-ratings-orange-is-the-new-black-premiere-nielsen-1201805991/, accessed December 4, 2016. OITNB is the "most-watched show" on the streaming platform according to Netflix executive Ted Sarandos. Dana Birnbaum, "'Orange Is the New Black': Jenji Kohan, Cast Talks Season 4, Diversity, Binge-Watching," Variety, January 17, 2016, http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/orange-is-thenew-black-season-4-jenji-kohan-1201681782/, cited by Sarah Artt and Anne Schwan, "Screening Women's Imprisonment: Agency and Exploitation in Orange Is the New Black," Television & New Media 17:6 (September 2016): 468.

Suzanne Enck and Megan Morrissey, "If Orange Is the New Black, I Must be Color Blind: Comic Framings of Post-Racism in the Prison-Industrial Complex," Critical Studies in Media Communication 32:5 (October 2015): 303. Piper Kerman, Orange Is the New Black (New York: Random House, 2010). See also Internet Movie Data Base, which notes over 250,00 reviews and an overall viewer rating of 8.1, www.imdb.com, accessed March 14, 2019.

Numerous articles laud the show's diverse cast, even those finding fault with how specific individuals and groups are represented. See for example, Roxanne Gay, "The Bar for TV Diversity Is Way Too Low," Salon, August 22, 2013. Gay notes, "You can't blink without someone celebrating the show's diversity," accessed March 10, 2019, https://www.salon.com/2013/08/22/the_bar_for_tv_diversity_is_way_too_low/.

“Orange Creator Jenji Kohan: Piper Was My Trojan Horse," Fresh Air, National Public Radio, August 13, 2013, accessed December 4, 2016, http://www.npr.org/2013/08/13/211639989/orange-creator-jenji-kohan-piper-was-my-trojan-horse. See also Jason Demers, "Is a Trojan Horse an Empty Signifier? The Televisual Politics of Orange Is the New Black," Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d'Études Américaines 47:3 (2017).

For essay collections with a range of perspectives on the series and how it represents particular groups, see Shirley A. Jackson and Laurie L. Gordy, eds., Caged Women: Incarceration, Representation and Media (New York: Routledge, 2018); April Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspective on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016), and Television & New Media 17:6 (September 2016), special issue, ed. Sarah Artt and Anne Schwan.

Analysis of religion on the show that discuss Jewish themes include Terry Shoemaker, "Escaping Our Shitty Reality: Counterpublics, Orange Is the New Black, and Religion," Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 29.3 (Fall 2017): 217–229, and Terri Toles Patkin, "Broccoli, Love, and the Holy Toast: Cultural Depictions of Religion in Orange Is the New Black," in Shirley A. Jackson and Laurie L. Gordy, eds., Caged Women: Incarceration, Representation and Media (New York: Routledge, 2018), 227–238.

Foundational texts in Jewish television studies include Jonathan and Judith Pearl, The Chosen Image: Television's Portrayal of Jewish Themes and Characters (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1999); Vincent Brook, Something Ain't Kosher Here: The Rise of the "Jewish" Sitcom (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003); David Zurawik, The Jews of Prime Time (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2003). For a critical assessment of the field, see Michele Byers and Rosalin Krieger, "Beyond Binaries and Condemnation: Opening New Theoretical Spaces in Jewish Television Studies," Culture, Theory & Critique 46:2 (2015): 131–145. Some studies incorporate consideration of both television and film. See for example, J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler, Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Paul Buhle, ed., Jews and American Popular Culture, vol. 1 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007); Joshua Louis Moss, Why Harry Met Sally: Subversive Jewishness, Anglo-Christian Power, and the Rhetoric of Modern Love (Austin: University of Texas, 2017); Michael Renov and Vincent Brook, eds., From Shtetl to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2017).

OITNB, www.imdb.com

"I Wasn't Ready," OITNB season 1, episode 1, Netflix, July 11, 2013. Piper tells Larry not to inform his father about her predicament because "he already hates me."

Larry Smith, "My Life with Piper: From Big House to Small Screen: The Other True Story Behind Orange Is the New Black," Medium, July 14, 2014, accessed December 4, 2016, https://medium.com/matter/my-life-with-piper-from-big-house-to-small-screen-592b35f5af94#.t5josbg1p.

Jeremy Diamond, "Trump: DNC Chairwoman 'Crazy' 'Neurotic Woman,'" CNN, November 2, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/02/politics/donald-trump-debbie-wasserman-schultz-crazy-neurotic-woman/index.html; Miriam Levine, "Am I That 'Crazy Neurotic' Jewish Woman Donald Trump Is Describing?" Forward, November 3, 2015, accessed December 4, 2016, http://forward.com/sisterhood/323877/the-crazy-neurotic-jewish-woman/

"I Wasn't Ready," OITNB season 1, episode 1.

13. Biggs also portrayed American Pie character Jim Levenstein in American Pie 2 (2001), American Wedding (2003), and American Reunion (2012).

Sigal Samuel, "Does Orange Is the New Black Have a Jewish Problem?" The Daily Beast, July 18, 2013, accessed December 4, 2016 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/18/does-orange-is-the-new-black-have-a-jewish-problem.html.

Ashley Burns, "A Guide to the Internet's Love of Hating Larry Bloom from Orange Is the New Black," Uproxx, June 30, 2014, accessed December 4, 2016 http://uproxx.com/tv/aguide-to-the-internets-love-of-hating-larry-bloom-from-orange-is-the-new-black/3/.

Ibid. See also Kimberly Potts, "Orange Is the New Black: You're Not the Only One Who's Not on Team Larry," Yahoo TV, June 20, 2014, accessed December 15, 2016, https://www.yahoo.com/tv/orange-is-the-new-black-youre-not-the-only-one-96478890565.html.

"WAC Pack," OITNB season 1, episode 6, Netflix, July 11, 2013; "Blood Donut," OITNB season 1, episode 7, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

"Moscow Mule," OITNB season 1, episode 8, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

"F … sgiving," OITNB season 1, episode 9, Netflix, July 11, 2013; "Bora, Bora, Bora," OIT NB season 1, episode 10, Netflix, July 11, 2013; "Tall Men with Feelings," OITNB season 1, episode 11, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

Larry Smith, "A Life to Live This Side of the Bars," New York Times, March 28, 2010, accessed December 4, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/fashion/28Love.html. He wrote an earlier "Modern Love" column about proposing to marry Piper that did not mention her recent prison experience. Larry Smith, "Hear that Wedding March Often Enough You Fall in Step," New York Times, December 26, 2004.

"Comic Sans," OITNB season 2, episode 7, Netflix, June 6, 2014; "Take a Break from Your Values," OITNB season 2, episode 11, Netflix, June 6, 2014.

Smith, "My Life with Piper."

See for example Yasmin Nair, who states, "White women like Kerman leave prison with book contracts, while others keep moving through its doors, fodder for the expanding Prison Industrial Complex." Idem, "White Chicks Behind Bars," In These Times, July 18, 2013, accessed March 10, 2019, http://inthesetimes.com/article/15311/white_chick_behind_bars/. The term "trauma porn" emerged to signal concerns about the show's exploitative aspects. Ashleigh Shackelford, "Orange Is the New Black Is Trauma Porn Written for White People," June 20, 2016, accessed March 10, 2019, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/culture/orange-is-the-new-black-trauma-porn-written-white-people.

Jenji Kohan, Tara Hermann, Hartley Voss, and Alex Regnery, Orange Is the New Black Presents: The Cookbook (New York: Abrams Image, 2014).

Cleary Wolters, Out of Orange: A Memoir (New York: Harper Collins, 2015), 4–8, 300–303.

Shackelford, "Trauma Porn;" Keah Brown, "Season Four of Orange Is the New Black Has a Race Problem," June 30, 2016, accessed May 14, 2019, https://medium.com/the-establishment/season-four-of-orange-is-the-new-black-has-a-race-problem-159a999dc66c.

Hilary Malatino, "The Transgender Tipping Point: The Social Death of Sophia Burset," in April Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspective on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016), 95–110.

Kerman, Orange Is the New Black, 49; see also "WAC Pack," OITNB season 1, episode 6.

Kerman, Orange Is the New Black, 90.

Ibid., 91, 111.

Ibid., 94

Ibid., 114.

Ibid., 97.

Ibid., 199.

Ibid., 200.

Ibid., 200–201.

Kerman writes: "Prison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the world [sic], a place where the US government now puts not only the dangerous but also the inconvenient—people who are mentally ill, people who are addicts, people who are poor and uneducated and unskilled. Meanwhile the ghetto in the outside world is a prison as well, and a much more difficult one to escape from than this correctional compound. … t." Ibid.

Maltino, "Transgender Tipping Point," 101.

Lynne Tuohy, "Don't Worry Martha, It's Like a Big Hotel," Hartford Courant, September 19, 2004. There are Holocaust references in the series; for example, inmate Red refers to Anne Frank in "Blood Donut," OITNB season 1, episode 7.

See for example, Nair, "White Chicks;" Shackelford, "Trauma Porn;" Brown, "Season Four"; Cate Young, "On Orange Is the New Black and the Destruction of Black Bodies," July 14, 2016, accessed March 10, 2019, https://medium.com/the-establishment/season-four-oforange-is-the-new-black-has-a-race-problem-159a999dc66c.

For earlier use of the term, see for example, Lucien Wolf, "Crypto-Jews under the Commonwealth: A Paper Read before the Jewish Historical Society of England on Re-Settlement Day, February 4th, 1894," (London: Jewish Chronicle Office, 1894).

Leslie Fielder, "Jewish-Americans, Go Home!" in Leslie Fielder, ed., Waiting for the End: The American Literary Scene from Hemingway to Baldwin (New York: Stein and Day, 1964), 91. See also Henry Popkin, "The Vanishing Jew of Our Popular Culture: The Little Man Who Is No Longer There," Commentary, July 1952.

Jeffrey Shandler, "At Home on the Small Screen: Television's New York Jews," in J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler, Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 244–257; Zurawik, Jews of Prime Time, passim, 51–54; Vincent Brook, Something Ain't Kosher Here: The Rise of the "Jewish" Sitcom (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003); Pearl and Pearl, The Chosen Image, 73–4, 155.

Zurawik, Jews of Prime Time, chapters 4 and 6; Brook, Something Ain't Kosher. Also notable is the Jewish family depicted in Brooklyn Bridge, 1991–1993.

Jon Stewart debuted on The Daily Show in 1999; Curb Your Enthusiasm launched the next year. Transparent began streaming in 2014, the year after OITNB's first season. Debra Nussbaum Cohen, "How Jill Soloway Created Transparent—the Jewiest Show Ever," Forward, October 21, 2014, cited by Roberta Rosenberg, "The Importance of Jewish Ritual in the Secular, Postmodern World of Transparent, Jewish Film & New Media 5:1 (Spring 2017): 98.

"Fool Me Once," OITNB season 1, episode 12, Netflix, July 11, 2013. See for example, Emily Sigalow, American JuBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).

Fielder, "Jewish Americans," 91.

Elizabeth J. Leebron and Dominique G. Ruggieri, "How TV Portrays Jewish and Italian Women," Television Quarterly 34: 3/4 (Spring 2004): 41; Dominique G. Ruggieri and Elizabeth J. Leebron, "Situation Comedies Imitate Life: Jewish and Italian-American Women on Prime Time," The Journal of Popular Culture 43:6 (2010): 1266–1281; 1269. The article cites a 1998 study by Hadassah of portrayals of Jewish women in the media that found similar qualities.

Ellen Sandler, "Raymond Barone, Crypto-Jew?" Jewish Journal, January 24, 2002, accessed December 15, 2016, http://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/5412/; Tom Teicholz, "The Heroes of Jewish Comedy," Jewish Journal, July 4, 2003, accessed December 15, 2016, http://jewishjournal.com/news/16/the-heroes-of-jewish-comedy/.

Turturro plays Jewish characters in such films as Mo' Better Blues (1990), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), and Quiz Show (1994). In The Truce (1997), he portrays Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. It is also worth noting that Jason Biggs is three-quarters Italian American, and Jewish actors James Caan, Henry Winkler, and Edward G. Robinson have portrayed Italian Americans (Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, The Fonz in Happy Days and Rico in Public Enemy, respectively). See Nathan Abrams, The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012).

"Fear and Other Smells," OITNB season 3, episode 8, Netflix, June 11, 2015.

"Can't Fix Crazy," OITNB season 1, episode 13, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

See for example, "Take a Break from Your Values," OITNB season 2, episode 11; "It Sounded Nicer in My Head," OITNB season 4, episode 7, Netflix, June 17, 2016.

Sarah Fryett, "'Chocolate and Vanilla Swirl, Swi-irl': Race and Lesbian Identity Politics," in April Kalogeropoulos Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), 16.

Kyra Hunting, "All in the (Prison) Family: Genre Mixing and Queer Representation," in April Kalogeropoulos Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), 120.

Sarah Gibbons, "'Can't fix crazy': Confronting Able-Mindedness," in April Kalogeropoulos Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), 213.

Paul Breines, Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry (New York: Basic Books, 1990); Nathan Abrams, The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012).

Abrams, The New Jew, 132.

Ben Stiller played Jewish writer and heroin addict Jerry Stahl in the 1998 film based on his memoir Permanent Midnight. "Fool Me Once," OITNB season 1, episode 12.

"Friends in Low Places," OITNB season 4, episode 8, Netflix, July 17, 2016.

Naomi Zeveloff, "Kosher Prisons in U.S. Spend Millions on Food for Non-Jewish Inmates," Forward, April 30, 2012, accessed December 15, 2016, https://forward.com/news/155363/not-just-jews-eat-kosher-food-in-prison/.

Linda Buchwald, "Orange Is the New Black: The Best Jewish Moments from the New Season," Jewish Telegraph Agency, June 15, 2015, accessed December 15, 2106, https://www.jta.org/2015/06/15/arts-entertainment/orange-is-the-new-black-the-best-jewish-momentsfrom-the-new-season. "Ching Chang Chong," OITNB season 3, episode 6, June 11, 2015; "Tongue-Tied," OITNB season 3, episode 7 Netflix, June 11, 2015; "Fear and Other Smells," OITNB season 3, episode 8.

"Comic Sans," OITNB season 2, episode 7.

“Where My Dreidel At?" OITNB season 3, episode 9, Netflix, June 11, 2015.

"A Tittin and a Hairin'," OITNB season 3, episode 10, Netflix, June 11, 2015.

"Trust No Bitch," OITNB season 3, episode 13, Netflix, June 11, 2015.

Nora Rubel, "Chicken Soup for the Souls of Black Folk: African American Converts to Judaism and the Negotiation of Identity," Social Compass 51:3 (2004): 335–347, accessed June 22, 2018, http://www.academia.edu/5543962/Chicken_Soup_for_the_Souls_of_Black_Folk_African_American_Converts_to_Judaism_and_the_Negotiation_of_Identity_English_Translation_.

Rebecca Davis, "'These Are a Swinging Bunch of People': Sammy Davis, Jr., Religious Conversion, and the Color of Jewish Ethnicity," American Jewish History 100:1 (January 2016): 40.

Amanda Seigel, "Celebrating African American Jews" New York Public Library Blog, February 11, 2016, accessed June 22, 2018, https://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/02/11/celebrating-african-american-jews; Dina Kraft, "Rapper Finds Order in Orthodox Judaism in Israel, New York Times, November 10, 2010, accessed June 22, 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/arts/music/11shyne.html?pagewanted=all. Stewart Ain, "Pulpit of Col-or," The New York Jewish Week, May 20, 2009, accessed June 22, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20110615044723/http://www.thejewishweek.com/features/pulpit_color.

Pearl and Pearl, The Chosen Image, 82–83.

Sammy Davis, Jr., Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965), 246–247, emphasis in original, cited by Rebecca Davis, "'These Are a Swinging Bunch of People': Sammy Davis, Jr., Religious Conversion, and the Color of Jewish Ethnicity," American Jewish History 100:1 (January 2016): 36.

"Becoming a Jew Gave New Meaning to Davis' Life" Jet, June 4, 1990, 29. The entire issue was devoted to "Sammy Davis Jr., World's Greatest Entertainer, 1925–1990."

Julius Lester, Lovesong: Becoming a Jew (New York: Arcade Books, 1988), 1, cited in Adam Meyer, "Gee, You Don't Look Jewish: Julius Lester's Lovesong, an African-American Jewish-American Autobiography," Studies in American Jewish Literature 18 (1999): 41–51.

"Toast Can Never Be Bread Again," OITNB season 4, episode 13, Netflix, June 17, 2016. Shoemaker, "Escaping Our Shitty Reality," 225.

"Power Suit," OITNB season 4, episode 2, Netflix, June 17, 2016; "We'll Always Have Baltimore," OITNB season 4, episode 5, Netflix, June 17, 2016.

Sonaiya Kelley, "Yvonne Orji on Dating, Virginity and Playing Sexually Liberated Molly on 'Insecure,'" Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2017.

"The Chickening," OITNB season 1, episode 5, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

"I'm the Talking Ass," OITNB season 6, episode 4, Netflix, July 27, 2018. Kathryn VanArendonk, Orange Is the New Black Season 6 Is Aimless, But Still Compelling," July 18, 2018, accessed May 14, 2019, https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/orange-is-the-new-black-season-6-review.html; Alan Sepinwall, "Orange Is the New Black Season 6 Review: Maximum Security, Medium Payoff," Rolling Stone, July 25, 2018, accessed May 14, 2019, https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/orange-is-the-new-black-season-6-review-701476/.

"Who Knows Better Than I" OITNB season 6, episode 1; "Sh*tstorm Coming" OITNB season 6, episode 2, Netflix, July 27, 2018; "Look Out for Number One," OITNB season 6, episode 3, Netflix, July 27, 2018; "I'm the Talking Ass," OITNB season 6, episode 4.

"Who Knows Better Than I" OITNB season 6, episode 1; "Sh*tstorm Coming;" OITNB season 6, episode 2.

"Well This Took a Dark Turn," OITNB season 6, episode 11, Netflix, July 27, 2018; "Double Trouble," OITNB season 6, episode 12, Netflix, July 27, 2018.

Cindy asserts her name as Tovah in season 6 episodes, such as episode 6, "State of the Uterus;" OITNB, Netflix, July 27, 2018; episode 7, "Changing Winds," OITNB, Netflix, July 27, 2018; and episode 9, "Break the String," OITNB, Netflix, July 27, 2018.

"Be Free," OITNB Season 6, episode 13, July 27, 2018. VanArendonk, "Season 6 Is Aimless"; Alana Altman, "Alex and Piper's Wedding on Orange Is the New Black Season 6 Was A Bright Light," July 27, 2018, https://www.elitedaily.com/p/alex-pipers-wedding-onorange-is-the-new-black-season-6-was-a-bright-light-9869449; Isabella Silvers, "Here's what the Orange Is the New Black Cast Thought About That Surprise Wedding," Cosmopolitan, August 7, 2018, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/a22666213/orange-is-the-new-black-season-6-piper-alex-wedding/. All accessed June 7, 2019.

Maltino, "Transgender Tipping Point," 95.

#jews #jews in entertainment #cultural depictions of jews #orange is the new black #the goldbergs #television #conversion #stereotypes #religion #religion in entertainment #crypto-jews #narrative #character development

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antoine-roquentin · 5 years

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The anti-male and anti-White rhetoric of the new left is extreme. The racial attacks on whites in particular approaches exterminationist propaganda seen only in, e.g., the Hutu against the Tutsi in 1990’s Rwanda.

For anyone who doubts this, consider the following few examples, which are far from complete:

A columnist for the Huffington Post, a major leftist publication, wrote an article titled “Towards a Concept of White Wounding,” apparently calling for racial violence.

The New York Times hired a columnist who had repeated vulgar racial attacks on whites, calling “whiteness” “awful,” whites “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins,” expressed great joy at “being cruel to old white men,” and declared that whites will be “extinct soon.” The Paper of Record stood by her when these attacks were exposed, and only quietly let her go recently when she supported a boycott against her own employer.

Symone Sanders, currently a senior adviser to Joe Biden and previously the national press secretary for Bernie Sanders, mocked a disabled white teenager who was tortured on camera in 2017 by a black mob screaming “Fuck Trump! Fuck white people!” and otherwise called cases of antiwhite political violence “a protest.”

The New York Times—again, hardly an unknown blog—published an opinion column by Michelle Goldberg with the eliminationist title “We Can Replace Them,” ostensibly against “white nationalism,” but in fact directed against a demographic white majority as such, which the author seeks to replace with nonwhites for what she imagines to be political advantage.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, a major organ of the Left that pushes the security establishment’s Russia Hoax conspiracy theories, called this summer for “a literal or figurative war” on whites and a “race war” that the DNC must be willing to get “Lincolnesque” about.

Major leftist and establishment media such as Newsweek publish cover stories titled “Is Your Baby Racist”; major publishers promote books titled White Fragility, or The Dying of Whiteness, and CNN—not white nationalist outlets—runs graphics on “The Vanishing White American.”

Again, all this is par for the course these days; as everyone knows, state-funded universities routinely hold “white privilege” seminars and orientation sessions, promoting a concept the plain meaning of which is to dispossess people of property and civil rights based on their biology.

the thing that really gets me about BAP is that he’s done enough study of past genocides to realize that ideological terrain must be laid to entice people to perform the requisite actions, and yet he has no idea how this is done at best, and is trying to convince people that generic academic writing is call to genocide for his own obscene purposes at worst. like, i am somebody who has been obsessed with the notion of genocide since kindergarten, when my mom described in her blue collar view the nature of the nazi regime to me (which was in the news around that time over the former yugoslavia), and i questioned how people could perform those actions and, to the extent that i could as a child without internet access, researched this, mostly by asking my mom for holocaust books in the scholastic book catalogue. and ever since, i have read and read and read about genocide, because if there is one goal i have above all else in live it is to prevent violence. and when somebody says that absurdly sterile sociological language like

Importantly, the effort to break up white supremacy posthaste requires a diversity of tactics, efforts, people, organizations, opinions, and so on. What’s suggested here is hardly meant to encompass that range, and it is not meant to demean or necessarily render an opinion on most of the tactics other white people are using in this fight. It is to critique a misguided focus on creating a version of whiteness that seems more akin to escapism than a realistic possibility, and one that we believe diverts us from the real work at hand.

More than anything it’s a thought. A notion. One that’s being worked out on these pages as it’s typed. As such, it will be missing key pieces. It will likely be wrongheaded in certain (hopefully not all) aspects.

is going to drive anybody to commit any action whatsoever, much less a violent one, i’d say that person is a fucking moron. like, when an article says

Whoever had the occasion to be an eye-witness during the slaughtering of animals or to see at least a truthful film on the slaughtering-will never forget this horrible experience. It is atrocious. And unwillingly, he is reminded of the crimes which the Jews have committed for centuries on men. He will be reminded of the ritual murder.

History points out hundreds of cases in which non-Jewish children were tortured to death. They also were given the same incision through the throat as is found on slaughtered animals. They also were slowly bled to death while fully conscious

that’s the roth test of genocide support right there. that’s emotive language designed to inspire people to take violent action. in contrast, is

Beyond this, if the goal is dismantling a system of white supremacy, changing our personal sense of whiteness misses the mark. Systems of power can and will exist regardless of the individual or even group mentalities or feelings of those operating within them. By educating ourselves on the damage caused by whiteness, and the system of white supremacy that undergirds it, and then turning to find a version of whiteness at-odds with this system, we don’t tear the system down. Instead, perhaps counter-intuitively, we create actors within that system who no longer believe they are perpetuating it, which does exactly that.

supposed to inspire college students to pick up ak47s and uh, kill their parents? cause i know college students, and if they have to do an assignment they were given a month ago without an extension, they will shit themselves. everybody else in america would stop reading about five words in. (christ, i’ve looked at this paragraph a dozen times and i still haven’t done anything more than skim it)

this is the same sort of tribalistic language he supposedly deplores, except by calling it tribalistic he pretends to be above the fray and thus gains cache as a supposed independent observer of this shit. in reality, he’s just taking advantage of the fact that some people have noted a tired media cliche and, being largely insulated from politics in general, have built their entire political worldview around it. trust me, i’ve met them, i know them, and for the most part, they’re fairly quickly dissuaded if you talk to them as human beings for a few hours. BAP wants to take advantage of their limited knowledge and attention spans. don’t let him.

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alexsmitposts · 4 years

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Rewriting History – Xenophobe’s New Weapon In the coming days, the global community will mark 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Sixty two nations fought in this war, which was unprecedented in scale. It resulted in the death of 50 million people. More than half of them were from the Soviet Union, which emerged as the key opponent of Nazi Germany and its secret and not-so-secret allies as they attempted to conquer the “East”. The worst possible crimes against humanity were committed during this conflict and included the targeted and systematic killing of millions of people by Nazis, referred to as the Holocaust. Civilians from all European nations fell victim to this war: Jews, Slavs, the Romani people, Soviet prisoners of war and all those who Nazi propaganda labelled using the xenophobic term “untermenschlich” (i.e., subhuman). World War II, dubbed the “Great Patriotic War” in the USSR, was the biggest milestone in Soviet and Russian history, and an incomparably hard ordeal for the entire population of the Soviet Union. In more modern times, the conflict came to symbolize an important part of our history that can unite most citizens, and not only of the USSR, but also of many other nations, as well as encourage them to fight for world peace but against racial inequality, xenophobia and the return of Nazism. It is, therefore, not surprising that today there is an active push within reactionary circles to tarnish collective memories of the Second World War and its tragic consequences. The main tools used to do so are rewriting history and demolishing memorials erected to honor those who sacrificed their lives to liberate European countries from the Nazi scourge, which is truly worrisome. In a number of Western countries, revision of World War II history has been widely encouraged lately. At first glance, there is nothing wrong in re-working and re-examining information in connection to any (and especially armed) conflicts of the past. However, in this particular case, the rise in pseudoscientific studies about World War II nowadays is not motivated by the desire to get to the truth. Instead, it is on orders from the current ruling elites of a number of countries that misleading and false information is being spread. Silly fake arguments are being used to try to downplay the dominant role played by the Soviet Union in defeating Nazism. They equate the USSR to Nazi Germany, and portray both as being equally responsible for the tragedy. For instance, attempts to intentionally belittle the heroic role of the Soviet Union in liberating Auschwitz were evident in reports published by German magazine Der Spiegel, US-European media outlet Politico, and even in speeches of the Vice-President of the United States, Mike Pence, on January 23, at Holocaust Memorial events in Jerusalem. Following the lead of such proponents of fake history, the US Embassy in Denmark even decided to attribute the liberation of Auschwitz to US soldiers although that is completely untrue! Czech analyst Martin Koller wrote a fairly detailed article commenting on these misleading and false statements made by members of EU elite circles, and providing facts to explain why leaders in the United States and Great Britain had not been fighting against the lies being spread about the Second World War and, first and foremost, about Auschwitz. In such a climate, as deliberate distortion of history is being encouraged, it is not surprising that Nazism is being openly glorified in a number of countries. For example, in the Baltic countries, neo-Nazi marches have become the norm, and in Ukraine, Nazi sympathizer Stepan Bandera and death squads of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (organizations banned in the Russian Federation) are being lauded. In Ukraine, medals “For Distinction in Military Service. 75th Anniversary of the Victory over Nazism” are to be awarded both to veterans who fought in the Red Army and those who were part of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), banned in the Russian Federation. The fact that UPA’s death squads were responsible for numerous crimes, including the massacre of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943, does not seem to deter Ukraine or the EU. Using any possible means of mass extermination of people at their disposal, German Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists of OUN-UPA killed 1 million 473 thousand and 575 civilians in seven western regions of Ukraine! Spanish media reported that members of the Blue Division, which fought on Adolf Hitler’s side during World War II and traveled to the USSR to “fight communism”, were viewed as heroes by some and villains by others. Famous Czech political scientist and professor Oskar Krejčí has said that there is a unique propagandist revisionism of events that transpired 75 years ago nowadays. He convincingly debunks new Polish theories on history that contain mistakes in chronology, fail to mention the context in certain cases, and ignore “inconvenient” events and logical connections. Primarily, the Red Army and the heroism of the Soviet people saved Europe from the horrors of Nazism. These are not empty words, but the truth, as evidenced by the graves of 27 million Soviet people. It is no secret that this campaign to rewrite history undoubtedly stems from military and geopolitical plans of the current political elite in the United States, who are trying, by any available means, to undermine the global standing and influence of Russia in order to deprive it of its moral right to the status of a great power, and to, instead turn it into a pariah. Clearly, Russophobic sentiments expressed by Polish, Baltic and Ukrainian politicians serve these interests of the American political establishment. Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Ryabkov has recently said that such attempts by the United States to rewrite the history of the Second World War in their favor were unacceptable. Today, there is no doubt that, ultimately, the discussion about World War II is a discussion about attitudes towards Russia. And some Western European politicians are convinced that falling into step with Russophobia, actively used for brainwashing, in particular, Eastern Europe, is most certainly an acceptable price to pay in order to maintain unity within the EU, an entity which, incidentally, originated in the Second World War. After the conflict ended with the complete defeat of Nazism, the self-destructive forces within Europe that led to the catastrophe in the first half of the 20th century, forced the most far-sighted politicians and intellectuals to think about what could prevent such crises. Some of the key principles that lie at the heart of this Union are about ensuring that lessons from the Second World have been learned, and that such a catastrophe is prevented at all costs. Remembering the history of World War II, the Nazis in Germany who unleashed the conflict and the great Victory of the Soviet people is not only a question of national pride for the current generation of Russians. It is true that any event in history is reviewed with time, archives are opened and different views on it appear. This is a normal process that happens everywhere. But there is no need to politicize history because nothing good can come of such actions. Discussions about history can result in new friendships or fights. It is also important to remember that if historical facts could be denied, falsified or distorted, the danger that such events would be repeated increases.

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sciencespies · 4 years

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Researchers Follow a 15th-Century Recipe to Recreate Medieval Blue Ink

https://sciencespies.com/news/researchers-follow-a-15th-century-recipe-to-recreate-medieval-blue-ink/

Researchers Follow a 15th-Century Recipe to Recreate Medieval Blue Ink

In southern Portugal, an unassuming, silvery plant with small, green- and white-flecked fruit grows on the edges of fields and along the sides of roads. But when researchers stirred the fruit—called Chrozophora tinctoria—into a mixture of methanol and water, it released a dark blue, almost purple hue.

Back in the medieval era, the pigment, known as folium, decorated elaborate manuscripts. But by the 19th century, it had fallen out of use, and its chemical makeup was soon forgotten. Now, a team of chemists, conservators and a biologist has successfully revived the lost blue hue. The scientists’ results, published April 17 in the journal Science Advances, detail both the medieval ink’s recreation and the pigment’s chemical structure.

“This is the only medieval color based on organic dyes that we didn’t have a structure for,” Maria João Melo, a conservation and restoration expert at the NOVA University of Lisbon, tells Chemical and Engineering News’ Bethany Halford. “We need to know what’s in medieval manuscript illuminations because we want to preserve these beautiful colors for future generations.”

To create folium ink, medieval manuscript makers extracted concentrated pigment from C. tinctoria, soaked a piece of cloth in the purple-blue solution and let the fabric dry. They then reactivated the ink by wetting the cloth.

Cloths soaked in folium solution

(Courtesy of Paula Nabais / NOVA University)

As Isaac Schultz reports for Atlas Obscura, folium was once used to color everything from illustrations of biblical scenes to the rind of a Dutch cheese. But when medieval manuscripts fell out of use, folium did as well.

The researchers resurrected the pigment with the help of three texts: a 12th-century manual penned by an artisan named Theophilus, a 14th-century painting handbook, and a 15th-century tome titled The Book on How to Make All the Colour Paints for Illuminating Books.

Interpreting these treatises came with its own set of challenges, according to Atlas Obscura. Written in Judeao-Portuguese, an extinct language used by the Jews of medieval Portugal, the trio offered conflicting instructions. Ultimately, the 15th-century text proved indispensable in recreating the ink, Paula Nabais, a conservation scientist and lead author of the study, tells Chemical and Engineering News.

Speaking with Atlas Obscura, Nabais says the manuscript details “how the plant looks, how the fruits look.”

She adds, “[I]t’s very specific, also telling you when where the plant grows, when you can collect it. We were able to understand what we needed to do to collect the fruits in the field ourselves, and then prepare the extracts.”

The books provided detailed descriptions of the plant, which the team’s biologist and expert in Portuguese flora identified as Chrozophora tinctoria. The pea-sized fruits mature in late summer and early fall, so the research team spent July through September 2016, 2017 and 2018 collecting samples to transport back to the lab.

The fruit of the Chrozophora tinctoria plant is less than half an inch across. It becomes darker in color as it ripens toward the end of the summer.

(Courtesy of Paula Nabais / NOVA University)

There, the scientists followed the medieval recipe, soaking the fresh fruit in four liters of methanol and water. They stirred the fruit for two hours, taking care to avoid releasing the seeds inside and making the mixture gummy.

“It was really great fun to recover these recipes,” Melo tells Science News’ Carolyn Wilke.

Once the researchers had purified the pigment, they were able to use chromatography, mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance to determine its structure, per Chemical and Engineering News.

Examples of “long-lasting” blue dye are few and far between, according to Science News. Two of the most prominent pigments are indigo, which is also extracted from plants, and anthocyanins, which are found in flower petals and berries. Folium’s blue is in a class of its own, derived from a chemical that the team dubbed chrozophoridin.

As Patrick Ravines, an art conservationist at Buffalo State College who wasn’t involved in the study, tells Chemical and Engineering News, the study highlights “how the combination of historical literature and current scientific methods and instrumentation can sort out with pinpoint precision the chemical nature of the artist’s or scribe’s palette.”

#News

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schraubd · 5 years

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A Very Jewish Week Roundup

I'm having a very Jewish week. It started, mostly, with the column I published in Haaretz calling "bullshit" on the claim that the New York Times presents a greater antisemitism threat than contemporary mainstream conservatism. That led to a completely out-of-the-blue call from none other than ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt. Like, literally, I was sitting on my couch and the phone rang and it was him. We've never conversed or connected in any other way (I've bent the ear of the San Francisco ADL office more than a few times), and there didn't seem to be any other motive behind the call other than to say he liked the Haaretz piece. Then today, I had another phone call with a different prominent Jewish public figure -- I won't say who, since the project she was asking my take on isn't yet public, but let's just say that if Greenblatt is part of the "establishment" wing of the Jewish community, this person is more on the "insurgent" side. Somehow, I seem to be bridging that gap -- at least a little bit. Tomorrow, I have a conference call to discuss my participation on a panel at the Goethe-Institut on resurgent antisemitism and White nationalism. Then Friday, I'm meeting with a student who sought me out to discuss how one researches issues of antisemitism in contemporary academia. Oh, and Jill and I went to Talmud study for the first time last night. * * * Jews are the religious group most likely to view Muslims favorably. And wouldn't you know it -- but those positive sentiments are reflected right back at us -- Muslims also overwhelmingly view Jews favorably! Very interesting new article in the Yale Law Journal experimentally measures whether people feel free to refuse intrusive search requests. Answer: they don't, which doesn't surprise. What might surprise a little is that even explicitly telling people "you're free to refuse this search" doesn't move the needle much. Radical settler Rabbis caught on type expressing admiration for Hitler and racism. Nice. Robert Farley thinks Team Living actually had decent military strategy in the Battle for Winterfell. Trump pick Stephen Moore might not have the votes to get a Fed seat -- which is weird because, if he's a crank extremist too far gone to even get through this pliant GOP Senate, how did he occupy all these respectable conservative sinecures for all these years? Such a mystery. Artist behind NYT's antisemitic cartoon denies it's an antisemitic cartoon, says controversy is a product of the "Jewish propaganda machine." Checks out! via The Debate Link http://bit.ly/2UUZ9kK

#anti-semitism #economy #Islamophobia #Israel #Jews #Muslims #Personal #police #privacy #Stephen Moor

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ruminativerabbi · 4 years

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Pandemic Purim

Purim was a slightly melancholic experience at Shelter Rock this year: first we cancelled the dancing, then we cancelled the party, then we cancelled the whole evening so as best to conform to the advice we were getting indirectly from the CDC in Atlanta, less indirectly from the Nassau County Board of Health, and not at all indirectly from physicians in the community who felt we would be putting people—and particularly our seniors—at risk by bringing them together in large numbers in a confined space. I suppose some must have felt we were over-reacting. But can you really over-react when we are talking about the health and welfare of a whole community and specifically of its oldest and youngest members? Better safe than sorry!

And yet, even so, the whole experience left me feeling a bit despondent, a bit blue—but not specifically because I was or am suffering over the decision itself. When I analyzed my thinking, in fact, I realized that my mood had more to do with the way the decision—and the whole coronavirus outbreak—had somehow managed to shift the way I think about Purim itself, moving me along from considering it basically to be about the great success of the Jews of Persia in standing together to defend themselves to focusing instead on just how vulnerable those people were in the first place, how completely they would surely have been annihilated if Queen Esther hadn’t found the courage to enter the king’s throne room uninvited, if she hadn’t found the words to stir the king to action on her people’s behalf, if she hadn’t been the paragon of virtue and bravery as which we more than reasonably remember her. It all worked out well, of course. But it also could not have…and that sense of vulnerability is what I noted coming to the fore in me and displacing the raucous delight our happiest holiday generally elicits in me easily.

And then I read Meir Soloveitchik’s essay published in the New York Times on Purim day itself. Rabbi Soloveitchik, the rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue on Central Park West, is one of my favorite essayists. (He is also only the synagogue’s tenth rabbi since the American Revolution, which detail seems impossible to believe and yet is apparently true.) He writes in several different forums, all of which I try to keep up with, but this Op-Ed piece for the Times (click here) made a special impression on me both because it both confirmed my mood but also because it helped me understand about the whole concept of vulnerability that had somehow come to the fore in my thinking about the holiday.

Rabbi Soloveitchik’s basic point is that there is something slightly both slightly self-serving and seriously strange about celebrating the happy end of the Purim story without pausing to contemplate the political instability that is, after all, at the heart of the tale. He cites a comment made by his uncle, the late Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s in the latter’s book, Days of Deliverance: Essays on Purim and Chanukah, which I would like also to quote. “If,” the elder Rabbi Soloveitchik wrote, “a Prime Minister who just yesterday enjoyed the full confidence and trust of the king was suddenly convicted and executed,” he reflected, “then who is wise and clairvoyant enough to assure us that the same unreasonable, absurd, neurotic change of mood and mind will not repeat itself?” And, of course, the answer is that none of us is: King Achashveirosh is depicted in the Megillah as the most terrifying political figure of all: the idiot-king possessed of immense and unchallengeable power who is so pathetically eager to please the world that he basically agrees to whatever proposal is put to him no matter how malign or barbaric, and no matter how reliable or unreliable the person putting it to him might be.

The younger Rabbi Soloveitchik, the essayist whose work I so admire, then goes on to ask the obvious question: if his uncle’s observation is correct, which it certainly is, then why exactly is Purim celebrated as a holiday at all? It’s a good question. And his answer is also a good one. Queen Esther, he writes, embodied precisely the character traits— and foremost among them initiative, bravery, and insight—that made it possible for the Jews to survive both the terrifying imbecility of an Achashveirosh and the malign savagery of a Haman. And so we celebrate, not the specific incident that gave rise to the holiday, but rather the possibility of heroism that constitutes its greatest lesson. That last phrase “the possibility of heroism,” comes directly from the final paragraph in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s essay, where he writes that, for all Purim “marks the fragility of Jewish security,” it also represents the possibility of heroism in the face of that vulnerability. And then the essay concludes with the thought that Purim “is therefore a holiday for our time. Around the world, and especially in a Europe that should know better, anti-Semitism has made itself manifest once again. As Esther’s example is celebrated, and Jews gather in synagogue to study her terrifying tale, we are reminded why, in the face of hate, we remain vigilant — and why we continue to joyously celebrate all the same.”

In my weekly letters, I have returned again and again to the topic of heroism and the specific question of what constitutes a true hero. (Click here or here for some examples.) Esther certain qualifies: untrained in diplomacy or in strategic negotiation techniques, she somehow nonetheless found a way to identify her people’s foes’ Achilles’ heels—Haman’s preening megalomania and Achashveirosh’s pathetic need to please—and bravely to use them artfully and cleverly in the defense of her people. And so Purim really is a holiday for our time. We all feel ever more vulnerable in the world than ever as the number of anti-Semitic incidents at home and abroad multiplies, as anti-Semitic tropes creep into public discourse in a way that even a few years ago would have felt unimaginable, and as the world’s eagerness to placate Iran, Israel’s most vicious foe, feels more and more ominous with every passing week. The obvious question is how to respond forcefully effectively. And to that specific question, Purim offers a very good answer: with cunning, with forthrightness, with intelligence rooted in an honest understanding of our enemies’ motives, with selflessness and singlemindedness, and with courage and bravery. And so, because Queen Esther was the embodiment of all of the above, we celebrate her success…even though, at the same time, we take note of just how precarious the security the Jews of old Persia surely felt before Haman came to office truly was. And that vulnerability can serve us well…if we can get over our skittishness in its regard to allow it to guide us an understanding of how things actually are in the world.

Of course, all Americans are feeling vulnerable this week as the coronavirus spreads unchecked throughout thirty-eight of the fifty states and 117 of the world’s countries including every nation in Europe. But is that sense of vulnerability a problem or an asset? Or is it just the right emotion for us all to bring to the table as we prepare to elect a new (or not new) president in November? Indeed, perhaps we should be coming to the New York State primary on April 19 or the general election on November 3 possessed not of our usual American sense of invincibility but rather of a sense of the vulnerability we are all facing…and demanding that those who would be our leaders respond to how things actually are not with bluster, let alone with unfulfillable empty promises, but with the same combination of intelligence, bravery, and chutzpah that Esther brought to the table when she risked everything to prevent a catastrophe of immense proportions from befalling her people.

Since neither major party has actually nominated a candidate for the presidency, the challenge facing the American people is not prematurely to decide who to vote for, but rather thoughtfully to decide what qualities we wish to characterize those who would be our leaders. Starting from a deep sense of our vulnerability, our national and international interconnectedness to other people and peoples, and our deep and abiding sense of our personal responsibility for the welfare of others sounds like the right approach to me! Even if Queen Esther were somehow to come back to life and become a naturalized American citizen, she still would not be eligible to run for the office of President. So we’re going to have to go with someone who embodies her finest qualities, someone possessed of the courage and the cleverness, the altruism and the cunning to lead us out of this mess we find ourselves in. And who will that person be? That, of course, remains to be seen!

#COVID-19 #Purim #vulnerability

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eretzyisrael · 4 years

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For 600 years, the main street in Barcelona’s former Jewish quarter was named Sant Domènech to “celebrate” the massacre of 300 Jews there on his saint’s day in 1391. But last year Barcelona city council renamed the carrer Sant Domènech del Call, the main street in the city’s former Jewish quarter, after the former chief rabbi Salomò Ben Adret. Was it a sign of a new era for Jews in the Catalan capital?

There were pogroms all over Spain in 1391 but they were especially intense in Catalonia. In Barcelona, a community that had thrived for centuries and made up around 15% of the population, was wiped out through an all too familiar process of murder, exile and forced conversion.

For the next six centuries Jews were effectively non-existent in Barcelona. Well, not quite. The fascinating study Voces caídas del cielo (Voices from Out of the Blue) by local historian Manu Valentín, published last year, reveals that for a brief period from the late 19th century until the end of the Second World War, Barcelona became a refuge for both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews.

Valentín, who is a member of Mozaika, a Jewish cultural association based in Barcelona, was researching a book on George Orwell’s stay in the city during the Civil War when he stumbled upon a document dated 1918. It recorded the formal foundation of the Barcelona Jewish Community as an association and the establishment of a shopfront synagogue. He noticed that most of the 17 signatories had Sephardic surnames and discovered they had fled the Ottoman empire.

Prior to this, various Spanish diplomats in Istanbul initiated a phase of what Valentín calls “philo-sephardism” in which they encouraged the government to offer shelter to the thousands of Sephardim in Turkey who had escaped pogroms in southern Russia.

#jews #barcelona #spain #sant domenech

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mmead2113 · 4 years

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*** Tumblr 1: Rhetoric and Narratives***

youtube

In this entry, I will examine these critical questions: What central narrative(s) does this artifact tell through its rhetorical elements? In doing so, what values does it promote or ignore (who does it include and exclude)? In which ways is this narrative (ethically) productive for society, in which ways is it limiting, and is it more productive or limiting?

To investigate these questions, I examined Taika Waititi’s 2019 movie Jojo Rabbit as my rhetorical artifact. Through strong character development and a unique view of the human condition, Jojo Rabbit creates a central narrative that nobody is innately evil, and that hate is taught through society (and thus can be untaught). Overall the narrative is productive because it ethically demonstrates how togetherness can overcome hate even in the worst of situations.

Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi) is a film adaptation of the book Caging Skies (Christine Leunens) that depicts the life of a young boy – named Jojo Betzler – in the Hitler Youth during the 1940’s. The movie covers Jojo’s life from the mid-war era to the liberation of his German town following the collapse of the Third Reich. In the beginning, Jojo is completely swept up in the Nazi fanaticism, and even has an imaginary Hitler friend (but it is how his 10-year-old mind envisions Hitler, not actual Hitler). After getting injured during a Hitler Youth camp excursion, Jojo is sent back to his hometown where he eventually discovers a young Jewish girl named Elsa living in secret in his home under the protection of his mother. Faced with a dilemma that challenges everything Jojo was raised to believe under the Nazi rule, his character undergoes great moral changes to eventually realize that Jews are just like him; and that they are not the horrifying monsters that his upbringing taught him to see them as. Thus, the film ends with Jojo and Elsa becoming great friends by the time their town is liberated by Allied forces.

One way the narrative that “hatred is taught” is prevalent in Jojo Rabbit is in the movie’s opening sequence, where Jojo is attending a week-long camp in the mountains for the Hitler Youth. At this camp, young boys undergo daily activities that are reminiscent of modern Boy Scout camps, such as basic survival skills and group activities in the outdoors. However, they also participate (in a satirically funny manner) in Nazi-centered fanaticism drills to mold their minds into a certain way of thinking. These drills include how to make a swastika stance with their bodies, a group-think session where they all contribute to a drawing of what a Jew is in their minds, and they cap off each night with a book burning rather than a typical campfire. The Jew drawing scene especially encapsulates the narrative that hatred is taught, as in this scene one Hitler youth child shouts out “Add fangs!” followed by another stating “And a serpent’s tongue!” The drawing is then completed when a young girl says “Scales!” to which the Nazi woman doing the drawing and leading the session replies, “Ya! Scales, because once upon a time a Jewish man mated with a fish. The Arians are 1000 times more civilized and advanced than any other race.” This statement is then met with great excitement among the children, as it emphasizes beliefs that they have already had beaten into their minds by the society that’s raised them. These ideas are all they know, and thus affirmation of their opinions only strengthens the hatred they have for these people in their minds. This scene is a shining example of the narrative that “hatred can be taught” since it features hatred, quite literally, being taught, and all the children clearly taking it in. It is through this unique view into the human condition – and what life may have been like growing up in Germany in the 1940’s (satirically) – that we are first introduced to the movie’s central narrative.

Another way the narrative is evident is when Jojo first encounters Elsa, a Jewish girl living in secret in his home under the protection of his mother. Up until this point, Jojo is a fanatic, 10-year old Nazi who believes in the power of the Third Reich not because he chooses to, but because he has never been exposed to another way of thinking in his life. When he meets Elsa, he is equally terrified and dumbfounded. He’s confronted by his worst fear: a Jew. However, she’s not this fishy, fanged monster that he always pictured. Instead, she is a completely normal girl, whom he actually has a crush on. His instincts kick in at first, and he reacts in the only way he’s been taught: by attempting to assert dominance since he has been raised to believe that he (of Arian race) is far better than Elsa. Jojo says, “You are weak, like an eyelash. I am born of Arian ancestry. My blood is the color of a pure red rose, and my eyes are blue…” This line is representative of the social truths that Jojo has been taught to accept. As explained by Palczewski, Ice and Fritch (2012), social truth is a set of “…beliefs and values that do not refer to some objective reality, but to social reality – those beliefs about what is right that people have arrived at together.” Jojo’s social truths from the Nazi society have taught him hatred, and he has accepted (and embraced) that up to this point, emphasizing the central narrative.

With this central narrative comes the idea that hatred can also be untaught. After what Jojo says to Elsa, she reacts by wrestling and pinning him, saying, “Break free great Arian. There are no weak Jews. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who cannot even grow a full mustache.” Here, Jojo is taught the lesson that he is indeed not the strongest person and that he clearly has no power of Elsa, despite what he was raised to believe. This is the beginning of his moral growth as a character, and through his character development, the central narrative is completely brought to bear. Jojo’s character is the foil through which we see how hatred is imbued in someone, but it is also through Jojo that we see how hatred can be removed and replaced with a sense of togetherness and love, as by the end of the film, Elsa is his greatest friend.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to this narrative, though there are mostly advantages. One advantage is that the message is incredibly positive and lacks in any negative meaning. It is one that states that hatefulness can be addressed and resolved, a much more positive outlook than simply believing that hate is innate and cannot be changed. Therefore, ethically this message is incredibly productive for society as it encourages proper moral developments, especially with the young. It is hard to find any disadvantages of this narrative. One disadvantage could be that by believing hatred is only taught, society is seen to be completely to blame for all wrongs committed by an individual: not the individual themselves. In other words, the narrative is almost giving excuses for those that act morally/ethically incorrectly. This disadvantage is certainly not very strong though and is hardly even a disadvantage, and as such it does not affect the overall positivity and importance of the central narrative.

Igartua and Barrios further explain how narratives can directly influence societal behavior by discussing how narratives in the film “Camino” (Fesser, 2008) caused an empirical change in the audience’s views on Opus Dei and religion. They tested this by – in simple terms – asking participants in the study to fill out questionnaires both before and after the testing. These questionnaires determined their overall connection to the main character of “Camino,” as well as their feelings towards Opus Dei and religion (and they attempted to determine how involved in the narratives each participant was likely to be). The results empirically demonstrated that narratives in film can directly affect the audience’s opinions on the subject matter, as the participants were found to have more hatred towards Opus Dei and religion after the film; a belief that aligned with the central narrative of the movie. This furthers the impact of films like Jojo Rabbit, which have messages intended to change the audience’s thoughts on certain topics. In fact, Jojo Rabbit closes with a quote clearly stating the message the director wanted to tell the audience: “Go to the limits of your longing. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Whether or not the film does successfully change the audience depends on each individual, but Jojo Rabbit’s unique view into the human condition with what life would be like as a child in such a tough environment truly does try to reach out to the audience and deliver its central narrative on a personal level: something that is possible as shown by Igartua and Barrios in their study.

In summary, Jojo Rabbit’s phenomenal character arc and moral development with Jojo – along with the unique view into a radically different society from a child’s perspective – allows the film’s central narrative that “hate” is something that is taught (and can therefore be “untaught”) to be delivered effectively to the audience; enabling them to potentially embrace the ideals the films puts forth and directly influence modern societal truths.

Igartua, Juan-José, and Isabel Barrios. “Changing Real-World Beliefs With Controversial Movies: Processes and Mechanisms of Narrative Persuasion.” Journal of Communication, vol. 62, no. 3, June 2012, pp. 514–531., doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01640.x.

Palczewski, C. H., Ice, R., Fritch, J. (2012). Narratives. In Rhetoric in Civic Life (pp. 117- 146). State College, PA: Strata Publishing, Inc.

Jojo Rabbit. Dir. Taika Waititi. Searchlight Pictures, November 2019. Film.

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prevodioci-blog · 6 years

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Niehime To Kemono No Ou

Sunda offers secure and high-quality machine translation tools and services that help you translate between Finnish and English. The dispersed Jews had forgotten Hebrew, their ancestral language, and needed the Bible to be translated into Greek to be able to read it. This translation is known as the Septuagint”, a name that refers to the seventy translators who were commissioned to translate the Hebrew Bible in Alexandria, Egypt. Patricia Travers, 82, American violinist, died of cancer. Ron Fimrite, 79, American sports journalist (Sports Illustrated), pancreatic died of cancer. Users from different backgrounds translate and retrieve English to Spanish information by simply clicking on any document on their computers using Babylon software; Babylon has been voted by millions as the most convenient and user-friendly English to Spanish translation tool available on Blue Universe the market today. In English, some readers prefer the Authorized King James Version of the Bible to modern translations, and Shakespeare in the original of c. 1600 to modern translations. You pick your set of languages and you do a quick online test, proof of your capabilities. Thanks to our unique platform, English translators from all over the world come together. Like their ancestors, contemporary translators have substantially helped to shape the languages into which they have translated. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Toledo School of Translators (Escuela de Traductores de Toledo) became a meeting point for European scholars who - attracted by the high wages they were offered - traveled and settled down in Toledo, Spain, to translate major philosophical, religious, scientific and medical works from Arabic, Greek and Hebrew into Latin and Castilian.

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In our translation courses, students work with Google Translator Toolkit, Memsource, and SDL Trados Studio as learning computer-assisted tools in their translation practice. Much dies and changes as we progress through time, but slang adds much to language and in the way people communicate. Times of Contempt (official English translation, literal translation: The Time of Disdain, early title was annouced as Times of Anger, original Polish Czas pogardy), written by Andrzej Sapkowski, first published in Poland in 1995, is the fourth book in the Witcher series and the second novel in the Witcher saga. Please use the comment section here as much as you want for questions, suggestions, or letting folks know about your personal experiences learning Spanish or dealing with English to Spanish translations. People in every country (including your own) are becoming "Westernized" like Americans because of the global communication methods such as satellite TV and international magazines where Americanism is prominently displayed as a rich lifestyle to desire when it is actually a starved and malnourished lifestyle of trying to fill one's life with material possessions and a party atmosphere to escape the reality that most Americans lack true love and true friendships.

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Chaucer translated the Roman de la Rose” from French, and Boethius's works from Latin. Sheldon Gilgore, 77, American physician, President of Pfizer (1971-1986) and Searle (1986-1995), died of pancreatic cancer. When McLuhan, who coined the term "Global Village," talks of"The Extensions Of Man," he is referring to how n individual or society creates or makes use something that extends the human body or mind in an innovative way. It is estimated that native English speakers can recognise around 3,000 Spanish words. 1) In this example, I am going to ask my device to help me translate French words to English. Bonus Feature - Learn and Master the pronunciation as English Arabic Translator has in built audio feature. Now you can learn Arabic or English language at your convenience, while driving, playing games, in class, while on travel, while commuting to work, with friends, etc. It would be a pleasure for me to teach you Persian,Dari , Pushtu and English languages Via Skype. She personally translates or reviews all translations done by Gaucha Translations. Friends, I recommend your to use to translate any numbers to Russian and English languages. Thanks for reading my list of translations, commenting in my article, and pinning and sharing my Hub. They provide a cheap translation for clients while giving a fair pay rate to its translators.

Although we translate birth certificate from Hindi to all Foreign languages but we mainly receive cases for translation of Birth certificate from Hindi to English, French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, Arabic, etc. The Wampanoag were a Native American people living in the southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island area at the time of English settlement. Following that is a quick demonstration on how to translate the words in question to English. Translating Spanish needs localising even if the business is already operating in a Spanish-speaking market so that communication is not hindered. It is this activating dimension of popular free radio that most distinguishes it from the usual pacifying operations of the mass media and that also posed the greatest threat to the authorities; if people were just sitting at home listening to strange political broadcasts, or being urged to participate in conventional, organised political actions such as demonstrations that would be tolerable but once you start mobilising a massive and unpredictable political affectivity and subjectivation that is autonomous, self-referential and self-reinforcing, then this is a cause for panic on the part of the forces of social order, as was amply demonstrated in Bologna in 1977.

Free Language Translator is a useful translating utility powered by Google Translate which enables you to translate texts between more than 40 different languages - just as many as the Google service supports. People who don't know foreign languages are bound to use free translation services on the Internet, which basically provide draft translations, or have to refer to the professional French translator If you speak the French language , you will be able to easily translate French , communicate with people while traveling in the French speaking countries, help your kids doing French translation for the homework, and use the French language in your job. I will show in this article that a complete reliance on translation is often not needed and detrimental to the student when learning English. Old English, sometimes known as Anglo Saxon, is a precursor of the Modern English language. I'm also an English-Spanish translator and interpreter and earned my national medical interpreter certification through NBCMI in July 2015. In this case, you are already well on your way to becoming a Japanese translator. All our translations into Spanish are always carried out by 100% native Spanish translators, working in the mother tongue, and who are completely fluent in the source languages, i.e. English, French, German, Italian or Portuguese.

It's a fast-paced Italian world, and sometimes all you need is a quick English translation to get you up to speed. I know that for studying Ancient Near Eastern studies, eventually you would have to have a good command of French and German because a lot of the scholarly material is written in those languages. It is as funny as Mark Twain's translation and retranslation of his Jumping Frog, from English to French and back to English. Today, thousands of people from western countries such as USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and from most of European countries have already some Japanese Kanji symbols tattooed into their skin. As the mother tongue of 480 million people, Spanish is one of the world's most widely-spoken native languages. I have heard foreign-language speaking people talk about thinking in their native language before they translate. Veritas Language Solutions is going insolvent and I doubt any of the translators will receive money once higher ranking creditors have been paid. What I'm saying is, instead of trying to figure out which existing translation is most accurate, one can learn the languages, and of course the history, and do their own translation. Another thing, translating English to Arabic may have "corny" results i.e. the sentence may sound poetic with a deep meaning in English but very silly & childish in Arabic.

Zanos died of ovarian cancer just a couple of days of her 60th birthday. Our translation team has many experienced document translators who specialize in translating different types of documents including employee handbooks, contracts, leases, books, birth and death certificates, marriage certificates, divorce decrees, diplomas, transcripts, and any other Spanish document you may need translated. Interpreters and translators must have knowledge of medical terminology and of common medical terms in both languages. This is why, educators believe our kids understand computers and their programming languages better than the people who designed them. Below is an "opportunity" I received a couple of months ago from Wolfestone Translation (UK), click here which is encouraging translators to "post-edit" machine translations for GBP 0.015 per word. The democratic African National Congress (ANC) government was elected in 1994, after a half century of the nationalist government's racist policies under apartheid (the Afrikaans word for separateness”), which included political, legal, social and economic discrimination against black people. A virtual keyboard is offered for Russian, Ukrainian, English, German and French languages. So that, if Botha holler what he is purported to have been by the Sunday times article, it holds a whole stack of truths in it. If one understand Afrikaner history, the themes he hit on have been enforced and promoted or talked about by the Afrikaner people.

His argument, in a nutshell, is that technology forms a mass of people, and conditions their essential humanity by restricting their freedom and displacing their responsibility. Anthony is a French translator who is also fluent in Arabic. Start applying it to your everyday life like change your all devices language setting from English to Spanish, start watching Spanish TV shows and serials, start reading or listening news in Spanish language, start learning about your favorite topic or subject in Spanish it will be fun to learn your favorite subject in Spanish language and it will your added advantage to know your favorite topic in two languages. For exceptional Spanish translation services, look no further than TransPerfect Blue Universe prevodilacka agenicja Translations. Let us say this is not true, it is mentioned in the bible that "the book is given to him who is not learned saying read this, and he says i am not learned." Not in those exact words but in the same meaning, mohamed is the only prophet in history to not be learned after the prophecy was revealed, and anyone who reads the story of prophet muhammad pbuh will know that this is him who is prophesized. I fell in love with them all over again and its all because of you translators. When we received the copy, there was no context at all, just the slogan and this sentence: Is it possible to have a few words translated into Spanish by Monday?,” followed by a request that we also translate the word small.

To support my argument, I will present several examples of the current media environments and personal experience, particularly in relation to music and music industries since music is one of the important mass cultural forms, representing current trends of peoples' mind and thinking. Without his work in the 1950s and '60s, there would be no field of study that sought to explain how the nuances and great sweeps of human history are made possible by media of communication—how media determine the thoughts and actions of people and society, in a soft” way. We know about it because we were at least, up to the coming of the Social Networks, reading books, listen to all types of different genre and good music and that has kept us as a "Sane Society' in this day and age. Then, tickled by curiosity, he read it and at the same time compared it with the previous translations. So long as Man Mind has existed, from the crude forms of mass mobilization to contemporary Meida technological mind control, it has always been the desire and aim of those who are rich, and have time to fine-tune and fine-chissel their distorted and concocted strategy of mass control to set and determine the final outcome, social arrangements and reality. John Carl Warnecke, 91, American architect (John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame), died of complications of pancreatic cancer.

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seeselfblack · 6 years

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Happy Earth Baba Dr. Ben...

Dr. Yosef Alfredo Antonio ben-Jochannan [A Special Tribute]

The Black Man of the Nile and His Family

Dr. Yosef Alfredo Antonio ben-Jochannan (Dr. Ben) was the preeminent "Multi-Genius of Our Time." Therefore, he cannot be defined nor scrutinized by western academic standards given the fact that he forever altered how classical African civilizations, in particular the Nile Valley, can be viewed and examined in colleges and throughout the global African community.

Furthermore, Dr. Ben’s contributions to academia and the global African community stand alone as he represents not the floor of our potential, but the ceiling in which we can rise to. We, the global African community, adulate Dr. Ben for his groundbreaking scholarship and unprecedented service. Moreover, we praise enthusiastically his great work and sacrifice along with his love for African people and the Nile Valley.

As such, when it comes to the study and understanding of the Nile Valley, no one had a greater impact on the minds and hearts of African people at a global and grand scale than Dr. Ben. As an exceptional thinker and prolific writer, Dr. Ben’s scholarship regarding the Nile Valley along with his service within the global African community is not only exemplary, but unmatched – exceeding all others in terms of scholarly influence, community based impact, and global outreach.

In regards to the African origin of western civilization and religion, Dr. Ben’s contribution to the production of knowledge is monumental as evident in his most celebrated and best-selling magna opera: The African Origins of the Major Western Religions (1970), Africa: Mother of Western Civilization (1971), The Black Man of the Nile and His Family (1972), and We, The Black Jews: Witness to the White Jewish Race Myth (1983). Lesser-known, but no less important texts include collaborations with his frequent associate Professor George E. Simmonds, The Black Man’s North and East Africa (1971) and Understanding the African Philosophical Concept Behind the ‘Diagram of the Law of Opposites (1975) with Evelyn Walker, Dorothy Lee Cobb and Calvin Birdsong. As a spirited public intellectual and iconoclast, Dr. Ben published nearly fifty books and manuscripts.

Undaunted, and with such scholarly publications, Dr. Ben singlehandedly transformed the epistemological and pedagogical landscape of Africana (Black) Studies programs by introducing us to the Nile Valley where he frequently stated that “we came from the beginning of the Nile where God Hapi dwells, at the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon.” Indeed, for Dr. Ben, the beginning started in the Nile Valley on December 31, 1918 at Gondar, Ethiopia where he was born to an Ethiopian father, Kriston ben-Jochannan and a Puerto Rican mother, Julia Matta.

Soon after his birth, Dr. Ben’s family moved to Puerto Rico and St. Croix. After graduating from high school, Dr. Ben further embraced his intellectual quest for knowledge by pursuing higher education and advanced learning. As a result, Dr. Ben upgraded the legal training programs and services in Puerto Rico. Moreover, his thirst for knowledge was fulfilled with his remarkable expeditions around the world.

Having already traveled extensively to the Nile Valley during the summers of his youth, Dr. Ben immigrated to the United States, where he worked as an architect/draftsman in New York.

However, following in his father’s footsteps and inspired by the struggles around safeguarding Ethiopia from the invasion of Italy, Dr. Ben initiated numerous study abroad programs to Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Sudan. This particular experience along with many others laid the foundation for Dr. Ben to become one of the world’s most distinguished public intellectuals / scholars who advanced the study of Nile Valley civilizations.

By continuing his father’s admonition to return to ancient Africa as the foundation for the study of his people, Dr. Ben sparked the study tour movement among Africans away from home that has now become commonplace for African-Americans and others. His study tours of the 1960s and 70s paved the way for Dr. Ben’s historic 1987 pilgrimage to the Nile Valley which was undertaken by Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC) cofounded by Dr. Ben. Dr. Ben’s friend, Emmy Awards broadcaster Gil Noble recorded that pilgrimage for his television show “Like It Is,” and the video for that show has been seen by hundreds of thousands for whom it has become a virtual study tour of the Nile Valley.

As an authentic public intellectual and committed community activist, Dr. Ben skillfully integrated scholarship with service by bringing colleges to the community and the community to colleges. By coalescing scholarship and service, Dr. Ben warmly embraced academia and activism as he cheerfully steered both colleges and community to the Nile Valley where the God Hapi dwells. Dr. Ben, therefore, modeled institutional academic study and research with community activism until his transition on Thursday, March 18, 2015.

As an engaged scholar and involved activist, Dr. Ben, like his mentors Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X, lectured gratuitously to the masses of African people on the street corners of the United States and globally. Dr. Ben also secured teaching positions at Malcolm-King Harlem College, Marymount College, Pace University, Borough of Manhattan Community College, State University of New York at New Paltz, Temple University, Howard University, Cornell University and Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

In addition to his academic responsibilities, Dr. Ben lectured to clusters of Africans in forums as wide-ranging as corporate America, such as Bell Laboratories to the Shrine of the Black Madonna while influencing Pan-African culture-keepers Fela Kuti and Randy Weston. Whether at colleges or in the community, Dr. Ben became known for his no-holds-barred intellectualism and activism while generously embracing Black people wherever he found them. Dr. Ben also disseminated his knowledge through forums as diverse as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Harlem Academy in New York City. Dr. Ben’s 1969 text, Africa, The Land, the People, the Culture marked his preeminent work on behalf of UNESCO.

As the first widely known African scholar to analyze the Abrahamic faith based traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and their origins, Dr. Ben judiciously debated scholars of all three religions and successfully traced the origins of western religions to the Nile Valley by way of primary sources. Dr. Ben’s scholarly publications, such as The African Origins of the Major Western Religions (1970), A Chronology of the Bible: A Challenge to the Standard Version (1973) and the trilogy: Our Black Seminarians and Black Clergy Without a Black Theology (1978), The Myth of Genesis and Exodus and the Exclusion of Their African Origins (1996), and The Need for a Black Bible (1996) serve to inform, inspire, and provoke generations of scholars.

The influence and presence of Dr. Ben are still felt with the likes of Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Dr. James Turner, Dr. Charles Finch, Dr. Wade Nobles, Dr. Maulana Karenga, Dr. Molefi Asante, award winning journalist Herb Boyd, Tony Browder, Ashra Kwesi, Runoko Rashidi, and Professor James Small. Dr. Ben also had a special influence on our female scholars, public intellectuals, and activists such as Dr. Rosalind Jeffries, Dr. Patricia Newton, Dr. Vera Nobles, Dr. Iva Carruthers, Dr. Marimba Ani, Dr. Adelaide Sanford, Dr. Joy DeGruy, Dr. Jewel Pookrum, Rkhty Amen, LaTrella Thornton, and Dr. Frances Cress Welsing. Furthermore, Dr. Ben has inspired a new generation of scholars, public intellectuals, and activists such as Bro. Reggie Mabry, Dr. Greg Carr, Dr. Mario Beatty, Nayaba Arinde, Manbo Asogwe Dòwòti Désir, and Professor Patrick Delices among countless others. Additionally, a special acknowledgment is extended to Dr. Georgina Falu who was also inspired by Dr. Ben and took it upon herself to translate three of Dr. Ben’s major books into Spanish while lecturing throughout Latin America on the contents of Dr. Ben’s works.

Dr. Ben is therefore recognized as the last of the great Black history scholars, public intellectuals, and activists which include the late Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Edward Scobie, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Dr. Charshee McIntyre, Dr. Jacob Carruthers, Dr. Richard King, Dr. Asa Hilliard, Dr. Amos Wilson, Steve Cokely, and Dr. Khalid Muhammad.

Dr. Ben’s service to the community is seen by his collaboration and partnership with Minister Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Al Sharpton, and Attorney Alton Maddox. Dr. Ben also worked closely with local community leaders and elders including Sybil Williams Clarke and Drs. Mary and Arthur Lewis in addition to the masses of African people at home and abroad.

Dr. Ben founded, cofounded, and inspired several organizations and institutions including the Africana Studies Department at the City College of New York, the African Nationalist in America [ANIA], the First World Alliance, ASCAC, the Blue Nile, the Board for the Education of People of African Ancestry, and countless others. In one of his most impactful efforts to build and sustain public spaces for African people to learn, debate and share widely the knowledge of our history and culture, Dr. Ben partnered with Bill Jones, Sister Khefa Nephtys and other Pan-African scholars and activists in New York City to initiate the First World Alliance in Harlem. The First World Alliance became one of the country’s oldest and most influential lecture forums devoted to the study of classical Africans civilizations along with the global African presence. First World’s platform hosted hundreds of scholars from the global African community - always beginning its annual lecture series with Drs. Ben and Clarke, as well as their colleagues, Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Dr. Edward Scobie, and Professor James Small.

Dr. Ben also held various pertinent executive positions at several premier organizations, schools, educational / non-profit boards, and cultural institutions. Dr. Ben's special passion was to create a Brotherhood, "The CRAFT" which would reflect the ancient sacred traditions and teachings of the Nile Valley.

In creating his own publishing company, Alkebu-lan Book Associates with his colleague George Simmonds, Dr. Ben joined Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Joel Augustus Rogers and later, Paul Coates and Haki Madhubuti in establishing independent publishing platforms for African thinkers and public intellectuals to advance their ideas and produce knowledge. His company’s distinct texts along with their colorful cardstock covers and unmistakable combination of typeset, maps, reproduced images, ephemera, and intermittent handwritten interjections created a new style of writing that was uniquely Dr. Ben’s.

As a pioneer in the field of Africana (Black) Studies and Egyptology, Dr. Ben, like his colleague and dear friend John Henrik Clarke, produced numerous curricula, lesson plans and countless professional development seminars for educators and activists to enhance the teaching of African history and culture at colleges and in the community. Dr. Ben’s publications on curriculum range from the Cultural Genocide in the Black and African Studies Curriculum (1975) to a study guide he coauthored with Dr. Clarke, which was published for the 1972 Congress of African People in African Congress: A Documentary of the First Modern Pan-African Congress. Moreover, in 1986, his lectures in London with Dr. Clarke, New Dimensions in African History: From the Nile Valley to the New World (1991) now serves as the most influential text and study guide for the teaching of global African history.

Dr. Ben’s lectures are thought-provoking and powerful, especially when examining the relationship between Black women and men – often using what appeared to be an intentionally provocative statement to simply enter a discussion of the centrality of the Black women to African life, cosmology, culture, and societies.

Ultimately, Dr. Ben’s life cannot be fully summarized in this literary tribute to him. However, Dr. Ben’s greatness can be summarized as the “Gift” that keeps on “Giving” for future African generations. In a way, Dr. Ben wrote his own epitaph in his books, manuscripts, lectures, and thousands of hours spent teaching us. Therefore, from this time forth to eternity, Dr. Ben is still teaching us, not at the colleges or in the community, but over the ancestral arc, that we came from the beginning of the Nile at the foothills of the mountains of the moon where the God Hapi dwells with our beloved Dr. Ben.

This tribute statement to Dr. Ben’s life and legacy is a written and research collaboration among Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Professor James Small, Dr. Georgina Falu, Dr. Greg Carr, Dr. Mario Beatty, ASCAC’s Board of Directors, Bro. Reggie Mabry, and Professor Patrick Delices.

Professor Patrick Delices is a political analyst/commentator for the Black Star News and the author of “The Digital Economy,” Journal of International Affairs. For nearly a decade, Prof. Delices has taught Africana Studies at Hunter College. He also served as a research fellow for the late Pulitzer Prize recipient, Dr. Manning Marable at Columbia University. Prof. Delices can be contacted at [email protected]

Via Black Star News

Also see:

- African American Registry

- Dr. Ben -- Black Jewish Historian

- The Nile Valley Civilization and the Spread of African Culture - PDF

#Dr. Ben #African History #Black History #Black Jewish Historian #Dr. Leonard Jeffries #James small #Dr. Georgina Falu #Black Star News

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