From LISTSERV@h-net.msu.edu Mon Nov 4 19:41:51 1996 Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 00:01:21 -0400 From: Automatic digest processor Reply-To: H-NET Jewish Studies List To: Recipients of H-JUDAIC digests Subject: H-JUDAIC Digest - 12 Jul 1996 to 14 Jul 1996 There are 11 messages totalling 269 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. administravia re newsletter (editor) 2. Sephardic Women (Tabak) 3. Sephardi women (Perlmutter) 4. Biographies of Jewish Heroines (Abrams) 5. Jewish heroines (Baskin) 6. Jewish heroines (Lipsitz) 7. Printing Hebrew (Adelman) 8. Jewish heroines (Gold) 9. Maimonides on the Treatment of Idolaters (Rose) 10. Calendar (Corre) 11. Jewish Masculinity in Independence Day (Rosenberg) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:09:52 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: administravia re newsletter (editor) From: editorial office Subject: administravia re newsletter Hi - today I e-mail the latest copy of the newsletter, with over 18 job postings in Jewish Studies ... you should have all received it as a separate mailing. Let me know if you didn't. Avi ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:42:57 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Re: Sephardic Women (Tabak) From: RTabak@aol.com Subject: Re: Sephardic Women A wonderful film made around 1980 by a young woman film maker in Brooklyn is "I Miss the Sun". It focuses on the Passover celebrations and seder of an Egyptian Jewish family, particularly the grandmother, as remembered in Egypt and re-created in America. It is also of interest as a comparison with more widely known Ashkenazi customs at Pesach. I don't have full info but know it is available for rental on video. Bob Tabak ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:43:20 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Sephardi women (Perlmutter) From: Tova Perlmutter Subject: Sephardi women One quite brief, unorthodox source that might be fun for students (as well as suggesting to them the range of sources that can be used for scholarship) is a Sephardic cookbook by Viviane Alchech Miner, called _From My Grandmother's Kitchen_, which intersperses family stories and history between (delicious) recipes. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:43:41 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Biographies of Jewish Heroines (Abrams) From: RUTH ABRAMS Subject: Biographies of Jewish Heroines Aletta Jacobs, the first Dutch woman doctor, and in fact the first woman to study in Dutch university, wrote her memoirs in the 1920's. Recently, an English translation of this memoir came out in English: Aletta Jacobs. _Memories: My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage and Peace_. Harriet Feinberg, editor, Annie Wright, translator. (New York: Feminist Press, 1996.) It's true that Jacobs was not open about her Jewish identity, but Harriet Feinberg and Harriet Pass Friedenreich's essays in this translation help to place Jacobs in her Jewish context. Jacobs was such an incredible woman, it seems that 12 and 13 year old girls would appreciate her story. Ruth Abrams ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:43:59 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Jewish heroines (Baskin) From: J Baskin Subject: Jewish heroines In regard to Erma's query about an age appropriate source on Jewish women for a Bat Mitzvah group, the JPS fall catalogue lists by Emily Taitz and Sondra Henry (the authors of ), intended for just this age group. According to the catalogue the book will be available in August. Contact Jewish Publication Society (800-355-1165). Shelly Tenenbaum and I edited a collection of 35 course syllabi either about Jewish women or incorporating women into Jewish Studies courses; it also includes three pieces on adult education: , available from Biblio Press in NYC (212-684-1257). In the best of all possible worlds, of course, material and research on Jewish women would regularly be incorporated into Bar Mitzvah training, too. Judith Baskin ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:44:32 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Jewish heroines (Lipsitz) From: Edmond Y. Lipsitz <75567.3155@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Jewish heroines Re: Erma Sherman's request about a list of Jewish women with a brief biography. A 1983 edition of "Who's Who In Canadian Jewish Women" has short biographies of hundreds of Canadian Jewish women who made important contributions to Canada in Jewish and general spheres. The book is available from JESL Educational Products, 58 Glen Park Ave., Toronto, ON M6B 2C2 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:45:00 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Printing Hebrew (Adelman) From: Howie Adelman Subject: Printing Hebrew Can anybody tell me how to print Hebrew from Notabene 3.0 to an HP deskjet 340 or where to turn to for such questions? thank you. Hadelman@Smith.smith.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:44:23 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Re: Jewish heroines (Gold) From: Nora Gold Subject: Re: Jewish heroines Two women who would be able to suggest Jewish heroines woule be Frieda Forman at the Women's Educational Resource Centre at OISE (fforman@oise.utoronto.ca) and Michele Landsberg who is writing a book on some of our Jewish foremothers (mlwriter@web.apc.org). Good luck, Nora Gold ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:44:46 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Maimonides on the Treatment of Idolaters (Rose) From: Paul Lawrence Rose Subject: Maimonides on the Treatment of Idolaters MAIMONIDES ON THE TREATMENT OF IDOLATERS: I would appreciate receiving any bibliographical information on recent accounts of Maimonides's attitudes to the treatment of Christians qua "idolaters". (I found Blidstein's 1991 article on "Holy War useful). And does anyone know when the Yale edition of the Avoda Zara section of his Commentary on the Mishna is due to appear (or has it already ?). Thanks, Paul Lawrence Rose, Penn State U (PLR2@PSUVM.PSU.EDU) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:44:53 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Calendar (Corre) From: Alan D Corre Subject: Calendar It is indeed astonishing that the elapsed time between lunations was known so well in ancient times. As you mention, the figure used in the Jewish calendar is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 and one third seconds. (793/1080 of the hour.) The true value is known now to be 29.53059 days. If you find mental arithmetic difficult, try it like this. 29.5 takes care of the 29 days and 12 hours. This leaves 0.03059 of a day. Multiply this by 24 (hours) and 60 (minutes) and you get 0.03097 x 24 x 60 = 44.0496. This takes care of the minutes. Multiply the decimal part by 60 .0496 x 60 = 2.976. The discrepancy between the old estimate, and today is 0.357 -- less than 4 tenths of a second, an elapsed time we can only think of in connexion with a stopwatch. But they got this centuries before the invention of the chronometer! However, these half seconds are inexorably adding up, and the Jewish calendar needs a little correction, which it seems unlikely to get. Hipparchus, who thought about these issues so long ago, was well thought of by Ptolemy, the great geographer of ancient times. Don't be scared of trying the calendar. These browsers make things wonderfully easy. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 23:45:14 -0400 From: J S Online Subject: Jewish Masculinity in Independence Day (Rosenberg) From: ROSENBEW@scholar.wabash.edu Subject: Jewish Masculinity in Independence Day I have recently succumbed to the media blitz and joined the record number seeing the new film Independence Day. As I sat in a crowded mid-Western theater I was struck once again by Hollywood's obsession with masculinity, and specifically with Jewish masculinity. Like others on this list, I have been studying cultural representations of Jewish men (my focus is on the theme of violence), and Independence Day offers a range of images, almost all of them problematic. I apologize to those of you who have not yet seen the film--you might want to stop at this point if hearing plot details will ruin your experience--but I would like to share some impressions and, hopefully, ellicit some responses and alternate points of view. There are three Jewish male characters in the film, and two of them--Jeff Goldblum's and Judd Hirsch's--are central. Hirsch plays a caricature of the post-war Jewish father, a walking bundle of Yiddishkeit mannerisms, who is in some sense anachronistic, given that the film is supposedly set in the present. Goldblum, his son, has spent eight years at MIT, but is now communications director (I think) for a New York t.v. network--considered a too-safe, underachieving job in the film, especially by his high powered ex-wife who works in Washington as the President's press secretary. One of the film's central narratives involves Goldblum earning back his wife's respect (she admits she has always loved him) by fulfilling his potential as a man--in this case, by literally saving the world! (I kept thinking of Clark Kent as I watched Goldblum's bespectacled and anxious face). Harvey Fierstein, who plays Goldblum's associate (or boss) at the station, provides uncomfortable comic relief in the first third of the film. He is the stereotypical Jewish male--urban, gay, and frightened out of his mind by the impending alien invasion. His first line on hearing what is to happen is--"I've got to call my mother." Goldblum finds him hiding under a desk, and when he orders him out, Fierstein insists he must call his analyst. He is trying to reach his analyst on his car phone just before a fire-ball consumes him along with the rest of New York City. Good riddance to him, the film says with a chuckle and a shrug--and the laughter in my audience confirmed that the message had hit home. People like this will not save our world, or this movie. Although I was sickened by this humiliating characterization, this is not a film that wants to give one much time to reflect, and we are pushed on, much as Goldblum is pushed on to the recuperation of the manhood Fierstein so clearly lacked. Bill Pullman, who plays the President, has manhood problems of his own--a gulf war pilot hero, he has been seen as a wimp in office. The alien invasion will get him back on the manly track as well, but interestingly, this is 1996, he needs the help of Goldblum, Hirsch, who incongruously comes along for the ride, and Will Smith, a black pilot who is also, stereotypically, all guts and swagger. (When he first meets an alien, he just punches him in the face). James Wollcott in his New Yorker review of the film says that Smith and Goldblum, who go up in a spaceship and destroy the aliens, are like "Cornel West and Michael Lerner of extraterrestrial tikkun," a line which cracked me up but which misses the violence that is the solution to all problems in this film's world. Goldblum and Smith are delivering a nuclear bomb to the aliens. This, I believe, is not West and Lerner's preferred way of dealing with conflict. Most ridiculous of all, and this film is always either ridiculous or right on the border--although its special effects are so astounding and the acting so generally competent that its absurdity is often masked-- is that it is Judd Hirsch's Jewish overprotectiveness that leads to the destruction of the aliens. He is concerned that his son looks rundown, that he might be getting a cold. (Thousands have already been killed before our eyes, so Hirsch's concern seems even more over the top). Goldblum's eyes light up--he is a brilliant Jewish scientist after all--and somehow jumps from his father's remark about getting a cold to "virus," which he connects to computer virus, which will be his way to disable the alien's communication system just long enough to "nuke them," which the President, at this point, is more than ready to do. The film ends with Goldblum and Smith swaggering across the desert, having destroyed the aliens, and puffing on cigars. (In this case a cigar is not just a cigar). They walk right into the arms of their adoring wives--Goldblum's is back in her rightful place--and America and the world are safe again. I suppose I should be happy that a Jewish guy was instrumental in saving the day, but I didn't leave the theater with tears of pride in my eyes. The film was directed by a German, but I won't even begin to speculate on what that might mean for its ethnic and gender dynamics. Will Hollywood ever get tired of this stuff? Warren Rosenberg, English Department Wabash College ------------------------------ End of H-JUDAIC Digest - 12 Jul 1996 to 14 Jul 1996 ***************************************************