Jews News!:
According to Scholar In Residence, Paul Liptz
A reporter from Mars comes to research the Jews for a story; this was the topic of this week’s Shabbat sermon at Beth Am. What does this reporter find out? Well these Jews must be pretty important. They must have lots of influence because there are daily stories in the New York Times focused on Jews such as an "important" story about finding a note from Ann Frank's father. And CNN had an 8-minute story on how the price of marijuana in Israel is rising in contrast to a 2-minute story on a disaster in Sri Lanka. And Hebrew must now be the second language in Kazakhstan as indicated in the movie Borat (as the outrageous anti-semite character speaks Hebrew throughout the movie)!
There was much laughter at the Shabbat talk by Paul Liptz, professor at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem, as he described some of the uncanny ways in which the world sees Jews. When in reality we make up less than ½ of 1% of the world population, Jews seem to be everywhere. (I often wonder about how this happens) The humor of Paul Liptz keeps us engaged as he continues to point out the impact of Jews in today’s world in both serious and trivial ways. Notice the dominance of Jews in the list of Nobel Prize winners and amazing amounts of investment in Israel in the past few years. And there was visualized humor as he described the dress of the Hassidic Jews as 18th Century Polish Nobility who put their trousers in their socks to keep them clean from the muddy 18th Century streets and still do that today for some unknown reason!
The picture of Jews in 2007 that the reporter from Mars sees is a diverse one that covers a full range of looks, opinions and locations and we hope the friendly Martian sees it with the humorous point of view from Professor Liptz. With all our range of diversity, it seems, for some unexplained reason, that Jews is News no matter what!
A reporter from Mars comes to research the Jews for a story; this was the topic of this week’s Shabbat sermon at Beth Am. What does this reporter find out? Well these Jews must be pretty important. They must have lots of influence because there are daily stories in the New York Times focused on Jews such as an "important" story about finding a note from Ann Frank's father. And CNN had an 8-minute story on how the price of marijuana in Israel is rising in contrast to a 2-minute story on a disaster in Sri Lanka. And Hebrew must now be the second language in Kazakhstan as indicated in the movie Borat (as the outrageous anti-semite character speaks Hebrew throughout the movie)!
There was much laughter at the Shabbat talk by Paul Liptz, professor at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem, as he described some of the uncanny ways in which the world sees Jews. When in reality we make up less than ½ of 1% of the world population, Jews seem to be everywhere. (I often wonder about how this happens) The humor of Paul Liptz keeps us engaged as he continues to point out the impact of Jews in today’s world in both serious and trivial ways. Notice the dominance of Jews in the list of Nobel Prize winners and amazing amounts of investment in Israel in the past few years. And there was visualized humor as he described the dress of the Hassidic Jews as 18th Century Polish Nobility who put their trousers in their socks to keep them clean from the muddy 18th Century streets and still do that today for some unknown reason!
The picture of Jews in 2007 that the reporter from Mars sees is a diverse one that covers a full range of looks, opinions and locations and we hope the friendly Martian sees it with the humorous point of view from Professor Liptz. With all our range of diversity, it seems, for some unexplained reason, that Jews is News no matter what!
Labels: Beth Am, Humor, Jews, Paul Liptz
posted by Chavarah @ 10:41 PM
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