Here’s what we’re reading: The only good Jewish-angle-on-Star-Wars article you’ll read; Birthright takes measures to keep participants out of dangerous places; and more on the various indiscretions of former rabbi Marc Gafni.
There are plenty of milquetoast, tangential attempts to connect Star Wars to Jewish topics floating around the Jewish media. The best one, by Jay Michaelson in the Forward, comments on the transformation of Star Wars into modern myth and the trouble new installments will have coming up with anything truly innovative. (If you read the full article, be warned: Spoiler alert!)
This is a profoundly Jewish crisis. … it is intrinsic to the recurrent sense in Jewish intellectual history of being heirs to an impossibly heroic past. “Yeridat Hadorot,” the notion that each generation is “lower” than the preceding one, is one iteration of it. The veneration of the Patriarchs, Talmudic Sages, and ‘Gedolim’ of past centuries is another. Even the recollection of the glories of the Jerusalem Temple suggest that the lost past haunts us, and yet we come up short. We … are but an echo of the mythic past, yearning to continue its work but aware of how we come up short.
Winter break is one of the peak Birthright seasons in Israel. But as terror attacks continue, Birthright has made some changes to the standard itineraries in the name of safety, Times of Israel reports.
As a result, Taglit-Birthright severely limited its participants during their stop in Jerusalem, canceling visits to the capital’s Ben Yehuda Street pedestrian mall and Mahane Yehuda market, both of which have been common sites for terror attacks over the years.
Mark Oppenheimer’s New York Times article last week about ex-rabbi-turned-New-Age-guru Marc Gafni garnered a lot attention. Despite years of admitted sexual indiscretions, including the abuse of two adolescent girls, he has recently reestablished himself two hours south of San Francisco in Pacific Grove, with the vocal support of many high-profile students and other associates. In a follow-up piece in Tablet, Oppenheimer asks who those supporters are, and what is their reasoning:
We can gain some idea by listening to his supporters themselves. Many of them have gone on the record over various years. They include some of his earliest friends in the Orthodox Jewish community; the rabbi of a wealthy Reform temple in Los Angeles; and a religion teacher at one of America’s most prestigious boarding schools. They offer a range of explanations for why they trust (or trusted) Gafni, from skepticism about the sexual-abuse charges, or the veracity of such charges more generally, to a New Age belief that Gafni is sometimes overwhelmed by his own sexual energy. Taken together, they teach us something about what some call forgiveness, others denial.