Purim

ReformJudaism.org

 March 4-5, 2015

Purim is celebrated with a public reading—usually in the synagogue—of the Book of Esther (Megillah Esther), which tells the story of the holiday. Under the rule of King Ahashverosh, Haman, the king's prime minister, plots to exterminate all of the Jews of Persia. His plan is foiled by Queen Esther and her cousin Mordechai, who ultimately save the Jews of Persia from destruction. The reading of the megillah typically is a rowdy affair, punctuated by booing and noise-making when Haman's name is read aloud.

Purim is an unusual holiday in many respects. First, Esther is the only biblical book in which God is not mentioned. Second, Purim, like Hanukkah, traditionally is viewed as a minor festival, but elevated to a major holiday as a result of the Jewish historical experience. Over the centuries, Haman became the embodiment of every anti-Semite in every land where Jews were oppressed. The significance of Purim lies not so much in how it began, but in what it has become: a thankful and joyous affirmation of Jewish survival against all odds.

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Norman Lear Talks ‘All in the Family,’ Network Age-ism and Dancing Naked

During the Hebrew month of Shvat with no immediate Jewish holidays,Jvillage Network is running articles relating to Jewish Arts and Culture.

Cynthia Littleton, Managing Editor, Variety    

MIAMI — Norman Lear charmed the crowd at Tuesday’s opening session of the NATPE confab, telling tales of fighting censors on “All in the Family,” struggling to get on the air today and offering his unconventional tips for longevity.

The 92-year-old TV Hall of Famer is on tubthumping tour for his memoir “Even This I Get to Experience.” “Everybody Loves Raymond” creator Phil Rosenthal, a longtime admirer of Lear’s work, led the wide-ranging Q&A session.

Even with all the channels out there today, Lear said he has had no luck trying to set up a show about a group of 60-plus retirees. He’s dubbed it “Guess Who Died?” “They don’t want to hear it,” Lear said of his efforts to sell it to the major nets.

“Let’s just spend the rest of our time complaining about that,” Rosenthal responded, noting he too was stymied in trying to sell a show about two college students who move into a retirement community because the school has run out of dorm space.

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Tu biShvat Social Justice Guide

Tu Bishvat is Coming February 4

From ReformJudaism.org

Modern-day Jews celebrate Tu BiSh'vat by expressing joy and thankfulness for trees, harvests, and the natural world. Many Jews plant trees at home and in Israel, and eat delicious fruits and greens in celebration of this “New Year of the Trees.” During this agricultural festival, Jews around the world consider our obligation to care for the environment and our sacred responsibility to share the fruits of God’s earth with all.

You can incorporate social justice themes into your Tu BiSh'vat celebration in the following ways.

Host a Tu BiSh'vat Social Action Seder

Infuse your Tu BiShvat seder with environmental education to give modern meaning to this celebration. Many such seders focus on the natural world and our responsibility to protect it, like this Tu BiSh'vat seder, published by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) and the North American Federation for Temple Youth (NFTY). In keeping with the nature of this holiday, this seder is a call to action, a time of education and reflection at we examine our impact on the world around us and commit to changing the way we interact with our environment.

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Tu biShvat Holiday Kit

Tu biShvat (notice the 'funny' spelling*) falls on February 4th and if you want to know what it is, how it evolved, how it's celebrated, songs, videos, recipes, crafts, etc. then you should check out Jvillage Network's Tu biShvat Holiday Kit.  It even explains the *correct spelling of this holiday.

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Tu Bishvat is Coming February 4

Roz Chast Drags Us Kicking, Screaming, and Laughing, Into the Land of the Infirm

During the Hebrew month of Tevet there are no Jewish holidays. Jvillage Network, therefore, will be printing articles relating to Jewish Arts and Culture.

The cartoonist’s grahic memoir made many Top Ten lists this year. Here’s what she had to say about it.

By Vox Tablet - Audio Podcast

[Podcast audio below.] Roz Chast is best known for her New Yorker comics—colorful and witty depictions of everyday humiliations and grievances. Often those come at the hands of the people closest to her: family members. In Chast’s recent book, a graphic memoir called Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? that has rightfully earned a place on many annual lists of the year’s best new non-fiction, she tells the story of her parents. In particular, she looks back at how, as an only child, she dealt with their steep decline at the end of their lives—with love and sadness, but also with frustration and guilt. It’s a poignant and often unexpectedly hilarious account and one that confronts head-on a dilemma most of us will face at some point if we haven’t already: figuring out what to do with an elderly relative who can no longer look after him- or herself.

Vox Tablet’s Julie Subrin visited with Chast in her Connecticut home last spring to talk about Chast’s reasons for delving into this depressing terrain and how the daughter of two extremely high-strung and rather humorless Depression-scarred parents stuck in the backwaters of Jewish Brooklyn became a successful and very funny cartoon artist.

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Frederick Wiseman’s Cosmic Joke

The Old Master of documentary film talks about tantrums at London’s National Gallery, his curiosity, and his love of janitors

By Jeremy Sigler|for Tablet Magazine

Never before has such a mixed bag of “documentaries” been so instantly available through digital streaming. But Frederick Wiseman’s films are still hard to find, and equally hard to ingest. Other documentary filmmakers associated with the Cinema Verité movement are inclined to stalk a charismatic subject until something truly unprecedented is caught on film; Wiseman, however, lets the true drama of his subject speak, even if nothing especially dramatic happens. His mastery is in capturing the uneventfulness of everyday life. (Ironically, his films are a treasure trove of mind-boggling, often hilarious occurrences.)

Wiseman is now in his eighties (born in 1930) and has made more than 30 full-length feature films, mainly ingenuously non-opinionated accounts of American institutions (public high schools, factories, the military, and hospitals), most of which originally aired on PBS. His historic contribution to the art of 20th-century cinema is a given, yet each new film retains an innocence and curiosity that thrusts us yet again into a new context. There we may witness another collection of performances by “normal” people who often don’t realize they are “acting” in a movie. In his latest slice of reality, National Gallery, Wiseman immerses his audience in a cinematic “behind the scenes” choreography of the London museum’s blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci show, as well as its magnificent collection of Old Master paintings. Never before has da Vinci been upstaged by painfully long administrative meetings; verbose docents; framers; restorers; museum workers erecting and breaking down galleries, painting walls, installing paintings, polishing floors, tilting lights, and even tending bars—and I almost forgot: hordes of art-loving, googly-eyed museum-goers.

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