Are you a Poshiter Yid?

I hope I am not offending anybody. Ran into the above bumper sticker on the way to the Staten Island Ferry on a car with Illinois plates. I thought it was something anti-semitic. Instead it refers to some Yiddish pop Music banned by some orthodox rabbis in Chicago. I hear that the bumper sticker is a way of using non-verbal negatives to the rabbis who have banned the music. (Poshiter Yid = a simple Jew)

Below is a clip of I think by the same artist. I did not know Yiddish was still spoken. I remember it from my youth when my father would go and haggle with some Jewish merchants for the best bargain in town for school clothes etc. My father did not speak Yiddish but he may have known a few words to strike up the conversation or finish up the deal.

The artist's name is Lipa Schmeltzer.



A Poshiter Yid

This Review is Banned!
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How Goes Maine So Goes The Nation ?

The political saying above was about Presidential Elections that saw the State of Maine voting for the winner 90% of the time in the past century. Maine in the past seemed to be right in the middle but on the fine winning edge of how to judge the mood and course of the nation.

Gay marriage has come to Maine. There is obviously something going on out there in the world. Being the flaming liberal that I am, I believe in equal rights and opportunities for everyone. The liberal in me is also still a little bit homophobic. That is what I was taught in the American Culture that I grew up in. The American Culture I will die in someday in the future will have Gay Marriage almost everywhere. Theory is one thing. The facts staring at you in the face is quite a different thing. It will take some getting used to (for me at least).

I have known and socialized with Gay people in the past. Having lived on and off in NYC for close to a quarter century, it is impossible not to know any gay people. Live and let live has always been the common attitude for the most part. Hate crimes can happen just as easily here in NYC as they do in Wyoming. Social mores can change. Human nature remains the same.

This is where the paradigm shift happens in our Global Culture. This is where there are no real roadmaps. What was described in the Bible as a no-no is now getting mainstream secular attention. Without a Constitutional amendment supporting rights to gay marriage I would guesstimate this status will be a permanent civil function of a dozen to half the fifty states in the next decade. Once the novelty, fear and bias wears off, perhaps all or almost all states will recognize this as a legal status.

Isn’t it odd how so much of what the common culture now wants comes from the culture itself and not from tradition and not from sacred texts anymore? The secular state has arrived even with all the right wing evangelists screaming and kicking and spouting ancient words every step of the way.

What I first thought of as a Global Town Square and as perhaps a variation of the old concept of the “global village” is nothing quite as I imagined it to be – today.

We all not in a physical town square anymore. We are in a virtual town square and it is the same in Iowa as it is in New York City. We cling to our homes, our worlds and we wrap ourselves in a bubble with cell phones, iPods, earphones, laptops and centered around the virtual Yellow Pages, Webster’s Dictionary and Sears Catalogue of the new age – the Internet. We reinforce our own view of the world instead of the other way around as it has been for centuries.

My need to be spiritual depends on me. I do not trust the moral authority of the Christian or Catholic Church that I have seen reshape itself into its own financial and survival mode self interests and at the expense I think of the people who once sat in the pews of churches. Even the intimacy of being in a small church or chapel to pray or meditate is dwarfed by Mega churches designed more for rock concerts than spirituality that I feel comfortable with.

Part of my reason for writing this blog has been to keep an ongoing interest and observation of the day to day lives of people in the domestic end of my street and all the way to the national culture generated from Hollywood, NYC or Wash. D.C.. The view I see today is a remarkable but twisted view through a prism.

What I see through that prism I sometimes do not grasp easily or understand but stand by in cautious curiosity and feel that no matter what I see or feel does not matter much. The world and the culture is evolving all around us. I only hope that the end results or the discernible results down the road somehow match what is now, has been and will hopefully remain a human culture.

The future has arrived! (and we all remain pilgrims in search of something)

Senator Bob Casey at King's College - May 17

While surfing the net for other things, I ran into one of those connect the dots things of things related or seemingly related or of having no relation at all. Am I making sense?

Not to harp much further on Bishop Martino of Scranton. He has been ragging on Senator Casey of Pennsylvania who is scheduled to speak at King's College in Wilkes Barre on May 17. Casey is pro-life but his voting record is many times pro-choice and not satisfactory to Vatican standards of what a good Catholic should say, do or think.

May 17 is the same day that good Catholics want to lynch Obama for giving a commencement speech at Notre Dame. Is May 17 some sort of Catholic Holy Day?

Back to Casey and King's College, if you cannot get a better moral man than Casey why not have a famous alumni of the same college speak.

I hear that Judge Mark Ciavarella might be available to replace Casey as a speaker.

Of course Judge Ciavarella is a “white collar” criminal who got caught cheating on his income taxes along with that other Judge Michael Conahan.

This is where connecting dots really gets a little interesting. In doing some research on Bishop Martino, his posted pastoral letters and his quotes on the Catholic Blogosphere posing as journalism, I do not see one condemnation of the this man Judge Mark Ciavarella by this very loud, very angry, very “moral” Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton.

I know that Judge Ciavarella’s white collar crime happened over the county line in Lucerne County but it is still Martino’s religious bailiwick. And Wilkes Barre is a whole sixteen miles from Scranton. This is where I think of all those Germans after WWII who said that did not know about Auschwitz that was just down the road and they did not know what was going on at that facility of historic horrors.

I know that the moral leader of the Catholic Church in the Scranton Diocese did not know about the crimes against humanity of children being put in private “for profit” juvenile jails so that Judge Ciavarella and Judge Conahan could get bribes to fill up these “for profit” prisons.

I feel sad that the best way the Bush “Justice” department could deal with these monsters in judge’s robes who in essence trafficked in children - was to only let them get off with a mere seven years plea bargained sentence and on the white collar crime of tax fraud.

America’s total moral abandonment during these recent years is something everybody should recognize, pray about, ask forgiveness for, and turn over a new leaf to the country’s hopefully better moral future.

You speak in the public square Bishop Martino screaming your moral righteousness about Bob Casey or are obsessed about sex on Catholic Campuses or the general state of morality, and you will do everything in your power to strike down Roe vs. Wade.

I know that you have not addressed one of the most recent heinous crimes against humanity carried out within your moral jurisdiction and now I understand why you shout so loud on other matters. You shout to not hear the cries of the children whose lives where ruined by these judges, one of whom I know is the Product of the Diocese of Scranton’s Catholic grade school, high school and college education system.

You cannot condemn the whole system for the failure of a few. But being whole moral on some issues and then being half moral or morally absent on other issues makes for a very lukewarm morality. Last dot is connected.

You’re right Bishop Martino. Bob Casey is not good enough to speak at King’s College. He is perhaps too good.