Is Artist Judy Chicago Jewish?

Yes, artist Judy Chicago is a Jew. She was born Judy Cohen in the city of Chicago. She is best known for her work, “The Dinner Party” (see below).

New Yorker tells us that it, "takes up an entire room in the Brooklyn Museum and required years of work by dozens of artisans, who helped Chicago craft the plates (Emily Dickinson’s resembles a three-dimensional vulva framed with lace) and embroidered the runners (the astronomer Caroline Herschel’s name is stitched against a celestial sky)."

The New Yorker profile of Chicago demonstrates that she is not only noted for her art, but also for her humor. It recounts this doubly amusing story:

Chicago, who is seventy-one, has bright-orange hair and was wearing gold sneakers, purple glasses, and a top with gauzy hot-pink sleeves that fluttered over her muscular arms. She recalled a conversation from a decade ago: “A woman says to me, ‘You’re in really good shape!’ I said, ‘Not bad for sixty.’ She said, ‘What’s your secret?’ I said, ‘Hard work, sex, and exercise.’ There was a long pause. Then she said, ‘Do you think it would help if I took up one of them?’ ” ...more...

Is Elena Kagan Talmudic?

Mazal tov to Elena Kagan on her confirmation to the Supreme Court, which is a done deal.

Yes, Kagan is a Jew. David E. Y. Sarna argues in an article at Tablet ("Elena Kagan, Jewish law, and the principle of binding precedent") that she is also a jurist in the Talmudic tradition. He assembles some solid evidence to make that case beginning with his assertion,

...a third issue was raised at the hearings, and no one spoke of its Jewish antecedents. The elephant in the room was stare decisis (“let the decision stand” in legal Latin). It means refraining from overturning settled matters, regarding them as binding precedent. As we shall see, the controversy over stare decisis has a long history and dates back to the development of Jewish Law, known in Hebrew as halacha. Interestingly, the Justice’s position in this regard accords with halacha...more...

Clinton-Mezvinsky Wedding Raises the Issue Again: Is intermarriage bad for the Jews?

The Times has a short and balanced article on attitudes to intermarriage in the Jewish community, where it is sometimes a hot button issue. The article is quite lean on statistics. Indeed the debate over whether intermarriage is bad for Jews needs to be parsed. For sure, it makes life more complicated (or interesting) for the actual intermarried couple and their families. It also has ramifications for the future demography of the ethnic/religious group.

Mathematically in the abstract, intermarriage is almost certainly a net gain for Jewish numbers. The offspring of all Jewish women who marry out are still deemed Jews. And so if even one Jewish man who marries out raises his children as Jews, that is a gain (whether or not the mother converts according to Orthodox specifications). Even the Orthodox ought to have a hard time arguing with these metrics. Of course the expected dilution of identity in an intermarriage and the drop off in participation in synagogues and yeshivas, sets off alarms for the Orthodox since it means fewer clients for these institutions.

Here is a blurb from the Times:

...the seemingly incandescent wedding of Ms. Clinton and Mr. Mezvinsky has churned up ambivalent reactions among the nation’s almost six million Jews.

There is a clannish pride that after a history of exclusion and prejudice, the grandson of a Jewish Ohio grocer could marry into what passes for political royalty in the United States.

But some Jews fear that the societal openness confirmed by high-profile intermarriages like that of Ms. Clinton and Mr. Mezvinsky, or Caroline Kennedy and Edwin A. Schlossberg in 1986, prod more Jews to marry out of their faith. That, they worry, could threaten the vitality of a group that represents no more than 2 percent of the American population.

In an editorial, The Forward, a liberal Jewish affairs newspaper, called the Clinton-Mezvinsky marriage “a milestone of sorts, a measure of social acceptance, a sign that we’ve arrived.”

But it took note of the conundrum: “This nuptial is also representative of an increasingly vexing challenge within American Jewish life because we know that — apart from the celebrity and the Secret Service — the Clinton-Mezvinsky union is fast becoming the new normal.”...

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Tzvee says, "The Prime program is so good that it makes no sense to shop anywhere but at Amazon."

Tzvee's Talmudic Blog Passes 3,028 Posts, 600,000 Visits, 800,000 Page Views

Oops, so busy golfing we forgot to mention that all our hard work (smile) has resulted in Tzvee's Talmudic Blog passing 3,028 Posts, 600,000 Visits, 800,000 Page Views. And we got an award.



Thank you all for coming along for the fun ride.

Now if only we can figure out why we do this.

YouTube: Stephen I. Weiss on TJC Jewish News Video Covers Teaneck's Politics (and Rev. Hagee and Eric Cantor)

Check out how Stephen I. Weiss (with kippah) on TJC Jewish News Video Covers Teaneck's Politics at minute 3:00 of the YouTube Video..."This week's top stories from Jewish news around the world: controversial Israel advocacy group Christians United for Israel converges in D.C.; Teaneck, NJ's first Muslim mayor; and the only Jewish Republican congressman, Eric Cantor, sits down for an in-depth interview."

Times: Parlez Vous Cash? Moonlighting Earned Ruth Simmons of Brown University Well Over $4.3 Million

The Times explores the scandals of moonlighting university presidents who sell their institution's credibility for their own personal gain.

Examples abound, but Ruth Simmons of Brown was one of the most outrageous in the Times report. In addition to $576,000 in salary, she pocketed direct compensation of $323,539 from her Goldman Sachs directorship and added to that $4.3 million in other income from Goldman derived from options, while tuition at Brown rose to $49,128.

Simmons was a professor of French, expertise that gained her these positions: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, director; Pfizer, board of directors; Texas Instruments, Inc., board of directors; Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., board of directors.

No question. University presidents are selling the prestige of their institutions and pocketing the income. This outright compensation laundering makes a mockery of the notion of the non-profit corporation.

The Academic-Industrial Complex
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
WHAT does Shirley Ann Jackson know about shipping parcels? For that matter, what does Steven B. Sample understand about mutual funds?
James Estrin/The New York Times

Dr. Jackson, who is a theoretical physicist and the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., has served as an outside director on the board of FedEx since 1999.

Dr. Sample, an electrical engineer and the retiring president of the University of Southern California, sits on the boards of directors of the American Mutual and Amcap mutual funds. He is also a director of another company, and stepped down two years ago from the board of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the candy maker.

Dr. Jackson and Dr. Sample are part of a cozy and lucrative club: presidents and other senior university officials who cross from academia into the business world to serve on corporate boards.

While academics can often bring fresh perspectives, managerial experience and the imprimatur of a respected institution to a board, they are also serving in an era when corporations wrestling with fallout from the financial crisis (think Bank of America, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs) or very public mishaps (think BP, Johnson & Johnson and Toyota) have raised the stakes for board members expected to guide corporations.

Some analysts worry that academics are possibly imperiling or compromising the independence of their universities when they venture onto boards. Others question whether scholars have the time — and financial sophistication — needed to police the country’s biggest corporations while simultaneously juggling the demands of running a large university.

Times: Plagiarism Runs Rampant at Universities

The Times has an excellent article on plagiarism. We have been victimized both by plagiarist students who submitted the work of others as their own and by a plagiarist colleague who actually did published our original work in his own name and attempted to publish more of our work under his name.

What we did in the case of students goes back to 2006. Instead of warning them against plagiarizing, a concept that they did not grasp, we told them that they were forbidden to copy anything from the Internet and then submit it in an assignment.

What we did in the case of the colleague was more complex, but we managed to obtain agreements and compensation and resolve the incidents without publicizing the details and without filing lawsuits.

Along we the Times, we recognize how blurry the lines are in the minds of many people when it comes to what constitutes plagiarism. This will be an progressively more complicated issue as the spread of digital access to texts grows more universal.

Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in the Digital Age
College officials suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious academic misdeed....

Mazal Tov! Rabbi James Ponet Officiated at the Clinton - Mezvinsky Wedding

Sure to be the subject of discussion, a rabbi officiated at the big wedding. A Times Blog reports on the ceremony for the wedding today of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky.

6:50 p.m. |Some Details on the Ceremony

The interfaith ceremony will be conducted by Rabbi James Ponet and Reverend William Shillady. Ms. Clinton is Methodist and the groom, Marc Mezvinsky, is Jewish.

The family said the ceremony would celebrate and honor elements of both traditions. It would include friends and family reading the Seven Blessings, which are typically recited at traditional Jewish weddings following the vows and exchange of rings.

A friend of the couple planned to read the poem, “The Life That I Have,” by Leo Marks.

The Schmooze at the Forward reported:

Ponet is Yale’s Jewish chaplain and heads the university’s Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. Read his bio here. At Yale, he’s taught a seminar on “The Family in Jewish Tradition,” with sexpert and Bintel Brief guest columnist Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

No word yet on whether the groom wore a yarmulka or broke a glass at the conclusion of the ceremony.

Update: Pictures sent to us appear to show Marc wearing a kippah and a tallis (thanks to Joseph). That looks like a Ketubah in the background on the easel and the structure above the couple is said to be their Chuppah - wedding canopy. We were told the food was glatt kosher, but we deem that assertion dubious.

(Click to enlarge pictures... we see now they come from ABC News.)

Top Ten New Names for Conservative Judaism

Reports are that there may soon be a new name for Conservative Judaism...

NEW YORK (JTA) -- The leader of Conservative Judaism's flagship institution said the movement is debating a name change.

Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, made the comment ... saying that the "leading candidate right now" is the name "Masorti," the Hebrew word for "traditional," which is the name Conservative Judaism goes by in Israel and other countries outside of North America.

A friend sent us 10 other suggestions for a new name for the movement:

10. Not too Meshuggenah Judaism
9. Not too Goyische Judaism
8. Liberal, Not Conservative Judaism
7. You-Can-Eat-Swordfish Judaism
6. Kosher-at-Home Judaism
5. Camp Ramah was Great Judaism
4. Our Grandparents Were Orthodox Judaism
3. 2nd or 3rd Movement to Ordain Women Judaism
2. Just-Right Judaism
...and especially for Starbucks lovers...
1. Grande Judaism

For a story and discussion of additional serious and humorous suggestions, see here.