Anyone familiar with Jewish Music knows that Jewish music occasionally “borrows” from its secular culture. There are parody groups such as Shlock Rock and Rechnitzer Rejects,¹ who perform with an obviously humorous, satirical, or educational purpose. Some bands blatantly use secular music ironically:

Then are the examples of outright plagiarism, the most notable one pointed out way back by Rabbi Avraham Bronstein²

Even the Hatikva, the Israeli National Anthem, appears to find its origins elsewhere:

And I’m sure my astute and cultured readers can drudge up other examples. But this begs the question if Jews borrow liberally from secular music, does the converse also hold true with non-Jews using “Jewish” music as well?³ Let’s take a look:

Dear MovableType,

In the 6.5 years we’ve been together I’ve shared with you my innermost thoughts. You know more than anyone else how hard it is for me to let go and move on, so you also know just bad things have gotten to get to this point.

Simply put, I’m leaving you for WordPress.

Sure things were great in the beginning, you were the best blogging software around, dynamically generating php pages before blogger could even support comments (remember HaloScan?). And I know you might be thinking I cheated first when I spent all that time with WordPress in creating the new site for The Stanton Street Shul, but you know as well as I our problems started long before that. The world changed and became progressively more dynamic, but you always stayed the same. While other platforms kept innovating and providing nifty new plugins and themes, you couldn’t even be updated without throwing a hissyfit.

Basically I got tired of your tantrums, and how we needed to rehash (or recompile) all our old discussions in order to move on. Yes, I’ll miss the convenience of having the occasional static PHP page, but if I could find a way to get past your quirks, I’ll find a way to handle it or I’ll ask the huge community of followers for help (though I must credit Sarah Hughes for her help in moving my stuff out of your possessive clingy clutches – seriously, you wouldn’t even let me export my own posts!).

I’m reasonable enough to know that life with WordPress won’t be without its hiccups – I already know I’ve got permalinks to cleanup and Hebrew text to fix in earlier posts – but despite those issues I am very much looking forward to taking advantage of its massive theme and plugin repositories to make YUTOPIA easier to maintain and to add more features. Heck, I’m even experimenting with Podcasting.

To paraphrase Beit Hillel, you’ve burnt my soup one time to many and in the words of R. Akiva, I’ve found someone better than you (See B. Gittin 90a). I trust you’ll do well in your future endeavors, but I simply can’t be constrained by your restrictions anymore.

It’s simply time to part ways.

Josh

P.S. I’m taking full custody of my domains.

Last Saturday night I gave a class as part of the Jewish LES discussion series on the very topic of “Halakhic Ramifications of Eruv Disputes.” Most of the class was an abbreviation of my earlier three part series on eruvin in general.

The issue of eruv on the Lower East Side is particularly contentious. R. Moshe Feinstein, a preeminent decisor of Jewish Law, used to live on the Lower East Side and his son and many students of his still do so. R. Feinstein was particularly strict in prohibiting the construction on any eruv in Manhattan for reasons too complicated to discuss here, and it is allegedly out of allegiance to R. Feinstein’s position on eruv which has precluded its construction to this day.

However, R. Moshe Feinstein has another fascinating responsa regarding the opposition of eruvin in Manhattan, though in conversation it is rarely quoted by his most ardent followers. In response to the question if one ought to protest constructing eruvin in Manhattan, R. Feinstein states that while he personally cannot endorse it, one should not oppose it either since the positions allowing its construction are still legitimate. By all accounts this ought to be considered a very reasonable, respectful position and were it stated 30 years later might even be classified as “pluralistic.”

Here is the responsa in the original with my translation, for which I assume responsibility for errors.

Regarding the “Kol Korei” issue see this wonderful post form Eruv Online.

In my religious and academic lives I have an affinity for tracking down the original sources of ideas. Not surprisingly, this trait extends to other areas of geekdom including music. While there are no shortage of cover songs – with more coming every day – there are times when the cover version so completely overshadows the original that only few know whence it came.
In the interests of promoting music education, I’ve collected some of my favorite lost originals.

Being far removed from my alma mater, it is difficult for me to truly have a sense of what happens on campus anymore and second-hand reports fail to adequately capture the full zeitgeist of the community. The most recent controversy around Yeshiva University involves a forum on “Being Gay in the Orthodox World” and the expected. The topic of homosexuality in Orthodox Judaism has long been a controversial issue, one which we discussed years ago in “Lonely Men of Faith, but it is still considered taboo in certain Orthodox circles. Case in point, following said forum R. Meir Twersky responded with a public diatribe lambasting the entire event and its participants. This forum and the aftermath are helpfully recounted in great detail on Curious Jew’s blog. Since I did not attend the event nor did I hear R. Twersky’s statements firsthand I will not address either specifically. However, that such a controversy exists demonstrates that even after 123 YU is still struggling with its own identity as a “Yeshiva”, “University”, and a representative if not champion for “Modern Orthodoxy.”