Atlantic City

Very few conferences in Atlantic City spill out onto the Boardwalk....but an 80 degree May day with a nice wind...you can't go wrong. My inclination, of course, was to skip the meeting and simply get the "$1 Reading" Fortune in the store behind us. But then I saw the sign that says $5. Oh well...I guess I'll have to wait for the future to find out what happens.

Bet for Badu?

Every once in a while while checking Google News one stumbles upon some wack-ness with Jewish content. Case in point is this from recording artist/performance artist Erykah Badu. What is with this cheeky Bet? A reference to a B-side? A reference to Bereshit? A reference to the mystical teaching "do not look at what is behind, above, or below, but only what is ahead"? A play on "Badu"? Do we have another celebrity kabbalist on our hands?

Apparently the Dallas Police Department is not down with her artistic expression.

But I for one am a fan -- if every celebrity chose a Hebrew letter to don on their cheek, children everywhere would have an easier time in Hebrew school.

How to Search for Chometz

How to Search for Chometz

the foamy spray of oven cleaner
snap of rubber gloves
squeak of Brillo pad against caked on shmutz
creak of refrigerator wheels on their once a year trek
wish-washy of the mop
splish-splashy of scalding water
vrum-vrumy of the vacuum

smack – the carpet runner that leads from the front door to the back hall is taken outside and whipped like a Hebrew slave

This is how you search for chometz, humming the soundtrack of freedom.

Kareem Abdul Jabar and Mos Def in one day?

Bizarro day. First, I'm in the airport in Newark at the gate getting ready to board the plane to New Orleans and Kareem Abdul Jabar walks up behind me, slips into the elite access lane and then ducks his head under the door and heads to the plane, bent over. Then I'm at Bon Temps Roule seeing the always amazing Soul Rebels and Mos Def walks beside me, gently pushing my friend out of the way to get closer to the stage.

What are the chances-- a rabbi rubs shoulders with two black Muslim celebrities in one day???

Malcolm X must be turning in his grave.

Retro Judaism

Below is an audio only version of the talk I gave in Charlotte:

Going Retro?

The Next Generation's Search for Jewish Authenticity

From the Charlotte Observer...

This event has been rescheduled for tomorrow night -- Tuesday, March 2nd - come on down!

Rabbi Brenner to speak at Jewish Federation event
Campaign kickoff is Feb. 21One of the nation's most influential rabbis will speak at the Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte’s 2010 campaign kickoff event at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 21 at Temple Israel.Rabbi Daniel Brenner, executive director of Birthrigh
By Joe Marusak
Posted: Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

One of the nation's most influential rabbis will speak at the Jewish Federation’s 2010 campaign kickoff event at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 21 at Temple Israel.

Rabbi Daniel Brenner, executive director of Birthright Israel Next, was recently named by Newsweek as among the 50 most influential rabbis in America.

Birthright Israel Next is the largest effort to foster Jewish cultural, intellectual, civic, spiritual and philanthropic life for adults ages 22 through 32.

Brenner was hired by the Birthright Israel Foundation in 2007 to launch a wide-reaching effort to engage the more than 200,000 North American program participants and their peers in Jewish communal life.

Born and raised in Charlotte, Brenner was educated at the Hebrew Academy before attending Charlotte Latin School and graduating from Myers Park High School. He has a bachelor of arts in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin and both master of arts and rabbinic degrees from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

In his speech, “Going Retro? The Next Generation's Search for Jewish Authenticity,” Brenner will address the future of Jewish life in America, what the next generation will bring to the table and how the Jewish community can connect and engage them.

Those attending can make their annual gift to the Jewish Federation’s 2010 Annual Campaign. The campaign enables the Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte to make a difference in the lives of millions of people in Charlotte, Israel and 60 other countries.

The money supports programs that feed the hungry, care for the elderly, educate the young, provide assistance for the troubled and intervene on behalf of families in distress who are unable to meet their basic needs.

Tickets for the event are $25 each and can be purchased online at www.jewishcharlotte.org, by calling 704-944-6757 and by visiting the Federation office on Main Street at Shalom Park.

For more details about the Main Event with Rabbi Brenner, contact the Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte at 704-944-6764 or www.jewishcharlotte.org.

Dr. Mel Silberman Z'L

My father-in-law, Dr. Mel Silberman was one of the most amazing men I have ever met. He passed away this past Shabbat, after a thirteen year battle with cancer. We have posted eulogies and other memories at Remembering Mel

Macho Macho Man...I want to be a....

Sorry folks, this header has nothing to do with the late 70s Gay club scene. Machismo, though, is a great topic. I just crafted a piece for the New Jersey Jewish News.

"Professor Daniel Boyarin’s 1997 work Unheroic Conduct: the Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man was the counter-text to the Zionist typology of the new Jewish man as farm laborer and warrior. Boyarin sparked a new intellectual movement which sought instead to preserve and reinvent the gentle, studious, and "indoors" nature of the Jewish man.

Popular child psychology works such as William Pollack’s work Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Manhood and Peg Tyre’s The Trouble with Boys have fueled a growing concern that..." read it here.

NYU Wagner School's Berman Policy Archive Rocks!

thanks to the fine archivists over at NYU, someday a researcher might stumble upon some of my scribbles. They have 23 of my essays up on this page.

And a ton of searchable other stuff. Wow.

Go BJPA!

Nissen!

A Jewish Star: Nissen Brenenson from COLlive.com on Vimeo.

This right here folks is my cousin Nissen Brenenson singing his heart out. Nissen is a Chabad rabbi and is the educational director of the Jewish Childrens' Museum. I've seen him rock out at a Karaoke bar in the basement of a Days Inn. This is a bit more polished and sans boa.

Ex-Carpool Line Terrorist to Speak

Grenade-throwing days are recalled in this sweet write-up. :)




THE MAIN EVENT OF THE 2010 ANNUAL CAMPAIGN
Featuring Rabbi Daniel Brenner

The Jewish Federation’s 2010 Annual Campaign will officially kick-off on Sunday, February 21, 2010 during The Main Event featuring special guest speaker Rabbi Daniel Brenner, Executive Director of Birthright Israel Next, who was recently named by Newsweek Magazine as one of the 50 most influential rabbis in America.

Brenner’s speech entitled “Going Retro? The Next Generation's Search for Jewish Authenticity” will be both eye opening and inspirational. His remarks will address the future of Jewish life in America, what the next generation will bring to the table and how we as a Jewish community can connect and engage them. Rabbi Brenner will surely leave us looking at ourselves and our community in a new light.

The Federation is especially pleased to be bringing Rabbi Brenner to our community because he was born and raised in Charlotte and was educated at the Hebrew Academy before attending Charlotte Latin and graduating from Meyers Park High School. Daniel is the son of Dr. Saul and Martha Brenner, long time members of Temple Israel.

The highly popular Federation annual event is chaired by Kevin Levine and Louis Sinkoe, who have assembled a fantastic Steering Committee of community leaders to help promote the event. “Louis and I are honored to chair the Main Event and are excited and pleased that Rabbi Daniel Brenner accepted our invitation to be our guest speaker! Having Daniel, who is our contemporary, return to his hometown to address our community is a tribute to the strong Jewish upbringing and values instilled in him by his parents, the Hebrew Academy and Temple Israel. From my days at the Hebrew Academy and Temple Israel, I remember Daniel as an energetic, talkative, and boisterous kid! He has come a long way from throwing magnolia seed “grenades” during carpool line. His views and stories will entertain and inspire us all,” remarked Kevin Levine.

The Main Event will be held at Temple Israel at 7:30 p.m. and a sumptuous dessert reception will follow the program. Event tickets are $25 per person and can be purchased online at www.jewishcharlotte.org or by calling the Federation office at 704-944-6757.

In the Spring of 2007, Daniel Brenner was hired by the Birthright Israel Foundation to launch a wide-reaching effort to engage the over 200,000 North American program participants and their peers in Jewish communal life. Birthright Israel NEXT, the project has grown into a national organization with professionals working in twelve cities, peer-driven programs that are attracting over 50,000 participants, and a robust training program for emerging leaders. It is now the largest effort to foster Jewish cultural, intellectual, civic, spiritual, and philanthropic life for young adults ages 22-32.

Brenner’s rabbinic path has focused on working across boundaries. Prior to working for Birthright Israel, Brenner worked outside the Jewish world, directing an educational center at Auburn Theological Seminary, a historic Protestant institution on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In this capacity, Brenner launched America’s first doctoral level program for clergy that work in the context of religious diversity, created an educational curriculum for Face to Face/Faith to Faith, Auburn’s international youth leadership program. He also developed Evolution, DNA and the Soul, a popular program of science education for religious leaders with Columbia University. At Auburn, Brenner was at the epicenter of the successful effort to stop anti-Israel divestment in the Presbyterian Church and his efforts in this debate garnered him a Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism.

Before his work at Auburn, Brenner served for five years on the faculty of CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York City where he pioneered programs that forged bonds between leaders of different Jewish denominations and co-authored (with help from Joseph J. Fins, M.D., Chief of Medical Ethics at Cornell's New York-Presbyterian Medical Center and Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard) Embracing Life and Facing Death: A Jewish Guide to Palliative Care. In his preface to the book, Senator Joseph Lieberman praised the work as a "transcendent contribution" to Jewish life.

Brenner is also a prolific playwright - his fifth professionally produced play premiered at New York City's Vital Theater. Brenner holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin and both M.A. and rabbinic degrees from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He lives with his wife Lisa and their three children in Montclair, New Jersey.

According to 2008 Main Event speaker Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, “Daniel Brenner is a wide-ranging scholar whose intellect has traversed so many fields, and whose heart encompasses the whole Jewish world, and the non-Jewish world as well. How wonderful it is for the community of Charlotte that he is a native son, and that he is returning to share with you his hard-earned wisdom.”

Text the word HEBREW to 41411

Since it has now been a whopping thirteen years since I lived in Israel, I'm starting to forget words...but now, thanks to some of my fine co-workers I am learning anew. If you

Text the word HEBREW to 41411 you get a free Hebrew word (and translation of that word) in your box each day (or you can control the frequency if you want to learn quickly.) It is a nice way to keep the language in the parts of my brain which are accessible.

Future of Foreskins

Great piece in the Jewish Week about the Berman Archive...and it has a nice little comment on one of my contributions.....

The Jewish policy archive is “a treasure trove at your fingertips,” says Ann Berman, who is on the board of BJPA. “It might take you longer to find these articles if you searched for them on Google. And even then, you might not even be able to access it.”

In placing historical and contemporary resources together in one database, “we can learn how our thinking has evolved on certain issues — and where it hasn’t,” says Mordecai Walfish, BJPA’s content manager. “This could be very instructive — for researchers, online and print journalists and Jewish communal professionals of all ages.” Walfish shared some fun tidbits about the archive, including its raciest title: “The Future of Foreskins” by Daniel S. Brenner. BJPA’s oldest publication? “Report Concerning Suffering Jews in San Francisco Earthquake and Fire” written by Nathan Bijur and published in January 1907.

To Read "The Future of Foreskins" click here.

FELA! on Broadway: A Review

The old Reese's peanut butter cup jingle is the perfect description for the Bill T. Jones - Fela extravaganza on Broadway: "Two great tastes that taste great together" FELA! is absolutely delicious -- amazing choreography by Jones combined with spectacular direction overall. And Antibalas honors Fela's music with their own deep grooving sounds -- electrifying. Both the actors playing Fela and his Mother deserve Tony Awards -- stunning performances. Mindblowing.

The only negative in this play is the attempt to add contemporary corporate bashing to Fela's narrative and to add contemporary examples of police related violence (Sean Bell) to the story. I understand the emotional connection, for sure -- but it comes across as a moral equation or a grab-bag of anti-establishment politics.

Still -- amazing work with great power.



For those of you not familiar with Fela, here is some video footage of the late great Nigerian musician

Shlomo Sand: A Response

Khazaria Flashback

That morning
We first woke up as Jews.
Drank Turkish coffee.
Started complaining.

The King, Jewish?
This will not turn out well.

Like schoolchildren they spoke to us.
Fringes.
Little boxes.

the joy of learning a new language
a room in the brain we didn’t know was there.

fires engulfed our old gods.
sacrificial flames for the big new one.
but we winked across the aisle
backup plan under the floorboards.

We have been chosen
The grey beards tell us
And our homeland lies in ruins
And our temple desecrated
But we have been chosen.

We learn to sing a new song
The chicken is saltier now
But we all love the Sabbath
Huge improvement.

So now we are all Jews.
Feels weird.
Feels right.
Maybe we were Jews the whole time?


- Daniel S. Brenner

Debkafile Homes In

Home? Hone?

I recently read the headline on Debka...

Al Qaeda homes in on Germany as its next European target

I scratched my head. Home in? Isn't it "hone in" ? Time for some sleuthing...and



...it turns out that there is a fascinating little history of the term.

Chana's Prayer: A Commentary for Men

I was asked by the good folks in Charlotte, North Carolina's Chavurat Tikvah to share a few words on the Rosh Hashannah Day 1 Haftarah. While I didn't have time to write out a drash, I did put some thoughts together and had a half way decent insight on the topic.

So here's how I started -- Chana's prayer is a beautiful counter-culture moment in the RH liturgy. Here we are with all this gratitude and all hail God is King talk, and here this woman steps up and prays "al" -- "against" God. The Rashba remarks that her prayer was not dignified or proper because she basically said "How could you allow me to suffer like this?" -- but that is the very reason why the Talmudic commentators in Bercahot 31a-b love her. They liken her to Moses (and Elijah) as someone who is willing to say to God -- "hey what's going on up there? you need to act down here."

There is a great bit from Levi of Berditchev on this where he holds the shofar aloft and says: "hey God - you want to hear this? then have my enemies blow it -- because you obviously seem to favor them."

Second -- I shared the brilliant commentary of Lori Lefkowitz (appeared in RT). She argues that Chana is not eating - she has an eating disorder, brought on by both the unrealistic demands of patriarchy and by the abuse of Peninah. (there's even a Midrash that says that Peninah would taunt her by saying ("i'm packing lunch for the children to take to school") The eating disorder is causing her infertility. But emoting -- pouring out her heart -- is the self-medicating therapy that she needs. She has the power to break from her depression and self-destruction and become aligned again. (a midrash puts the following words in Chana's mouth ' do you want me to be an angel -- to not eat and not have children, or do you want me to be a woman?)

Third -- and this is my contribution to all this -- is the question "why should men be listening to this story year after year?" My sense is that we need to hear the words of both Elkana and of Eli -- two men who obviously do not get how deep the depression and despair of this woman has become. Elkana says "isn't my love better than ten sons?" -- a message to all of us men who think that we are G-ds gift to women, that all they want is our attention and that's it. Eli, in accusing Chana of being drunk, is a paradigm for all the times that we men dismiss women's emotions as hysterical. Rather than see the very moment when they are speaking from the heart, we see it as madness. Hearing the story of Chana we are given an opportunity to repent for our inability to respond to the suffering of women -- and a charge to change our ways.

Rosh Hashannah Poem: Cash for Clunkers

Cash for Clunkers

A Poem for Rosh Hashannah

Hitch your rusty old heart to the tow truck
(We’ve got an old 8 track of Yossele Rosenblatt Sings Holiday Favorites up in the cab.)
Chains of prayer pulling you along
the glass walled showroom by the old highway
eternal light
a red neon “open”

Plastic banner whipping in the wind
Trade-ins Welcome
Gates of repentance marked by an “ENTER” arrow, slightly bent.

And here you are,
Your clogged heap,
Your worn tires,
Your gunked up insides.

Do you even accept my make and model?

Blast your horn nine times.
Collapse on your steering wheel for one long and holy honk.

Open the glove compartment and recite the words in the Owner’s Manual:

Forgive us, have mercy on us, atone for us.

Close you eyes and the new year lies before you.

It’s a 5770.

And it is clean.
And it is pure.
And it sparkles.
And it smells like new car.
And the odometer reads
“you have more life to live”

So where are you heading to?


-Daniel S. Brenner

090909 NY Times City Room Blog Meets Reb Blog :)

SEPTEMBER 4, 2009, 3:57 PM
09/09/09: An Auspicious Start to School?

By JENNIFER 8. LEE
Sept. 9, 2009 — or 09/09/09 — will be a significant day for baby boomers (the digitally remastered Beatles collection is being released) and for gadgetphiles (Apple may introduce new products).

But it will also be significant for New York City children. It is the first day of school.

Given the diversity of cultures in New York City, we wanted to know whether this means anything. After all, given how 9/9/99 was widely heralded, perhaps we could expect a repeat a decade later.

City Room first thought of reaching out to rabbis, given that many are familiar with gematria, the Hebrew numerological art of finding meaning by spinning numbers and words. Eighteen is lucky, because the letters in chai (חי) — the word for “living” — are composed of letters that add up to 18.

Since 18 is 9 plus 9, what would another 9 add? Would it be 50 percent more luck? Or does the extra 9 mess everything up?

But the purists among our first round of rabbis would not even look at the Gregorian calendar. (”The English calendar is basically random from a Jewish perspective,” one said, somewhat dismissively.)

Alas. But we found one willing to humor City Room. Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner, executive director of Birthright Israel NEXT, noted in an e-mail message that if you add up the three 9’s, you get 27. Similarly, that corresponds with the numeric value for the Hebrew letters in chida (חידה), the word for “riddle”: het, yud, dalet, hey.

Asked to expound on what “riddle” might mean in a school year context, Rabbi Brenner wrote:

Jewish education is based on the critical inquiry that happens between teachers and student, and riddles — which ask us to challenge how we define our world — are one of the fun ways that teachers engage students in learning. On the first day of school, I would hope that teachers not only set out the classroom rules, but set forth the “riddles” that they will explore with their students over the year.

Then we turned to the Chinese, another group that embraces numbers. We called Justin Yu, president of theChinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, for his take. The word for the number nine, jiu (九), sounds like the word for longevity in Chinese, jiu (久). He added, in Chinese, “Ninety-nine means forever, so 999 is even better.”

When asked about what that meant for students, he said:

The Chinese say that on Sept. 9, you can go very, very high. Sept. 9 is a day that people go up climbing mountains. For students, going back to school by Sept. 9 means that their score will be very high, and whatever they achieve will be much higher.

Are there other cultures that find meaning in 09/09/09 as the beginning of the school year?

Forward Thinking

(PHOTO: Birthright Israel NEXT alumni from Brooklyn dance at the National Yiddish Book Center)


Way back in 1997 I was a Steinhardt Fellow at CLAL – the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. Fresh out of rabbinical school, I was thrown into a rowdy crew of Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative rabbis – all of whom were dedicated to finding some way that we could transcend those very labels and yet still be true to our convictions. (I was trained by the reconstuctionists so I kind of had a head start.)

I only met very briefly with Michael Steinhardt during that year, but I heard many times about his desire to create a “Common Judaism” – a Judaism that was proudly shared across secular and religious circles. I was taken by the idea – and much of my teaching and curricula building energies were focused on defining the parameters of just such a breakthrough concept in Jewish life.

Reading the recent Forward articles I am reminded by those years at CLAL.

I, for one, am proud of the diversity of the programs this past year that Birthright Israel NEXT supported in New York -- including programs such as a seminar on Jewish culture led by the brilliant faculty of the National Yiddish Book Center, an exhilarating dance performance by the Batsheva Dance Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and multiple evenings where Birthright Israel participants told their personal stories in our Monologues production. And I am also proud that there is room at our table for a sometimes irreverent reconstructionist rabbi like me and the sometimes irreverent haredi-trained rabbis from the JEC to work on the same project. In my experience, I have found that they offer a style of teaching that is compelling and a passion for Judaism that is genuine and that their offerings connect with a segment of our alumni. Their contribution to our overall offerings to Birthright Israel alumni in New York is yet another example of the diversity that crosses boundaries and exemplifies Birthright Israel’s maverick approach.

But the program that touches the most New Yorkers is not any of the cultural or religious events that we have organized, but our call for alumni to take responsibility for their own Jewish lives. I am incredibly proud that over 1,000 New Yorkers who are Birthright Israel alumni opened up their homes to their friends for “NEXT Shabbat” dinners. Inviting a large group of people into a small apartment is, in my opinion, an enormous responsibility. 82% of our hosts had little or no experience hosting a Shabbat dinner. Yet, three-quarters of them made a home-cooked meal for their guests. Since the average size of the meals was fourteen guests, that amounts to over fourteen thousand guests in the first year of the program. Nationally, our numbers are closing in on 50,000 guests. (Show me a Jewish organization that can create peer-led, home hospitality events where over 50,000 young adults meet each other and have a positive Jewish experience for an average cost of under $25. If we had more donors across the country who saw the simple logic of this model, we could easily take the number of guests to 100,000.)

One of the things that happens after the Shabbat hosts finish their event is that they are asked how much of a grant that they would like to cover the expenses that they put up for the meal. They can get up to $25 per guest – but the vast majority of our hosts do not ask for $25. They ask for less because they realize that if they do, more people can benefit from the program.

In the past year alone Birthright Israel NEXT was involved in over four hundred events in eleven cities and we worked with over eighty partnering organizations. In other words, through Birthright Israel NEXT young adults are being exposed to multiple options for Jewish involvement – from mainstream Jewish institutions to emergent ones. I found it ironic that the Jewish Daily Forward editorial used the example of the JDC as one such possibility of the use of program funds because Birthright Israel NEXT actually worked with the JDC and I was fortunate to visit the JDC office in New York and meet with Birthright Israel alumni who discovered for the first time the life-saving work in the FSU that the Joint has undertaken. One of my staff worked on an amazing short film about her trip with other Birthright Israel alumni to the Ukraine to visit JDC projects. (There is a clip of it in this four minute video)

I hope that critics will take a look at the entirety of Birthright Israel NEXT and see not only the authentic diversity that we embrace, but the tens of thousands of young adults who are discovering that Jewish life in America is a big tent where secularists, all types of religious folks, and those who do not have a defined ideology have a home.