Maccabeats, Purity and Persumei Nisah

By now I'm sure most of my viewers have seen the Maccabeats YouTube video. I was delighted to see that Orthodox boys can compete with the best of them, particularly in the YouTube realm.

It is very appropos that the video that went viral was produced Lekovod Chanukah, where Pirsumei Nisah is the ideal. Quite ironic that the group is named Maccabeats, with strong Chanukah connotations.

Beating the "Greeks" at their own game makes me feel proud as a Jew.

As for ferreting out the "add ons" that accompany a YouTube screening, I was made aware of a website viewpure which enables one to view only the requested video without the adjoining distractions. Again, this is most relevant to Chanukah, where the oil rises to the top and the dregs are removed from the equation.

Maccabeats pure link

Dan Lekaf Zechus II

The People Speak/Kid Speak series is part of the more interesting literature that has been published over the past decade. Author Rabbi Chaim Walder has a popular radio program in Israel where callers can discuss notable events in their personal lives. Additionally, many write to Rabbi Walder and share various personal anecdotes. Stories which share a beneficial message are then shared with the public.

In the most recent volume, People Speak IV, there is a very poignant story which is appropos to Jbloggers. Someone in the blogging/news arena is about to publish a story which would implicate some Yeshiva Bochurim who foolishly endangered themselves and others. At the last minute, he gets a call from a frantic editor who realizes that he is related to the perpetrators and wants to kill the story.

Our protaganist is then faced with the difficult decision as to whether to publish or retract. He sadly realizes that if it were HIS relatives, he would not want to publish the story.

This brings to mind Hillel's great dictum, built on the "Love your neighbor" principle from the Torah: "What is hateful to you, don't do to others."

This then should be the criteria to ask ones self before posting on the internet. If it were about my relatives, would I still publish the story? Unfortunately, many just fire off the story and then ask questions later.

Dan Lekaf Zechus I

Jewish Observer {JO} Revivication Redux

I've blogged several times in the past regarding reviving the Jewish Observer.

I was gratified to see page 22 of this week's Yated (December 23 - Mikeitz) where Rabbi Avrohom Birnbaum dedicated a full page to this noble endeavor. It seems like this topic has resurfaced during one of the sessions at the recent Agudah convention. Perhaps now the movement to bring back the JO will gain some steam. See excerpts from the article below:

That is why the closing of the JO has been such a tragic mistake, both for Klal Yisroel and Agudas Yisroel. For lack of a better moshol, I am reminded of a story that is told about a person on a boat in a stormy sea…the captain determines that the first thing that must be done is to lighten the load. He asks passengers to throw overboard anything expendable. One Jew rises, takes his tefillin and throws it over. A pious Jew observes him and says, “How can you throw over your tefillin?! Your tefillin is perhaps the only thing that can save you now!”… How then can it [Agudah] throw overboard its “tefillin,” its ideological tool, the entire zechus kiyum of Agudas Yisroel? Even if it means that the JO will never be financially successful, is it not warranted to take funds from other programs that are not critical to what they are and redirect them to ideology? After all, today’s young people are starving to find meaning, to find ideology, and be shown that there is something more important than the bottom line.

Ami, Mishpacha, Binah, Zman, Olomeinu and the JO

Another new Jewish magazine has launched. Ami will join Mishpacha, Binah and Zman and many others which have sprouted up in recent memory.

I recall the days of yesteryear when the Yeshiva community didn’t have Jewish weeklies. There was Olomeinu for children and the Jewish Observer O"H for adults, both of which were published monthly.

While the proliferation of Jewish content periodicals is remarkable, there is a sad aspect to this glut of reading material.

Each edition of Olomeinu and JO was fought over and devoured until it was dog-eared , committed to memory and then saved. Today’s reading material is read and then discarded. One can pick up the same issue several weeks later and scarcely remember reading the articles.

The reason why the Talmudic greats of the previous era were able to memorize the Rashba, Ketzos and Nesivos etc. was primarily because there was a shortage of Seforim, hence each Sefer was precious. You committed the Sefer to memory because you never knew if you would have access to it the next time you needed it.

With the advent of Bar-Ilan, Otzar HaSeforim and Hebrewbooks.org databases, more and more source material will be available, but less and less of it will stick in our minds. The psychological idea that the text is always available whenever we need it, coupled by the fact that we don’t need to remember where anything is – the search engines will find it for us – is my lament.

Yet the bright side is that hopefully one day the JO and Olomeinu will be added to these digital libraries. Then I will be in bookworm Heaven.

Hebrew Manuscripts Dot Org

The fine people at Hebrewbooks.org have now started sharing Hebrew Manuscripts online. Available over here.

Diaspora Yeshiva Band Mechayeh HaMeisim

Jewish Music Radio Comes of Age

In my early years, I recall once hearing a Yiddish song on the radio as I flipped through the various stations. I was quite surprised to discover that the Jewish minority was large enough to procure programming time on the public airwaves. As I matured, I was able to enjoy Jewish music on Art Raymond of WEVD and also Dov Shurin. Eventually Nachum Segal became King of Jewish music radio and became the standard EmCee at Jewish concerts.

Yet as large as these audiences grew, there still was no full-time Jewish music radio option. One could listen a few hours in the morning, sometimes a few hours at night, but there was nothing in between. I once entertained the notion to solicit sponsorship for 24x6 Jewish music programming. I thought that perhaps this would sway the youth not to get hooked onto rock-n-roll. One of the arguments I would encounter when I asked friends why they listened to R-n-R was that there wasn’t anything Jewish readily available.

But as JM proliferated in the 80’s and 90’s, there was now plenty of source material to support a full-time radio station. As the great Abie Rotenberg once noted…”a new tape comes out every week”. Even though other radio personalities, such as Country Yossi and others found their niche, even in our day there is not a dedicated Jewish music station.

Yet the age of the internet has enabled the world of “Internet Radio”. Almost all music stations now boast a presence on the world wide web; where their music is now available 24x7. The cost to maintain such a site is now totally within reason, and several websites have appeared with Jewish themed music being streamed to one’s computer.

However, for the Yeshivishe consumer, most programming was still wanting, as several of these sites play songs sung by women, or other content that the Yeshiva World finds offensive. This issue has now been rectified by several websites now offering streaming Jewish music 24x6. One can now play the radio at work or at home and enjoy the wide variety of "oldies" along with the new talented singers. Kudos to the pioneers who have brought us this service.

Redacted 5:42 PM November 14