Zealots and Bullies

So right now I'm on vacation in Chicago. Weird to do a trip where we're just visiting people and not Having Meetings or Running To Do Insanely Complicated Things In An Unreasonably Short Amount of Time or something of that sort. But before I turn my computer off and vacate, I just needed to share these two little parting gifts:

The Jewish Press, which is the biggest Orthodox paper in New York and which all my Hasidic Cousins actually read, wrote an article about art in the Orthodox world. More specifically:

A nascent community of religious artists - including the Orthodox African-American hip-hop musician Y-Love, poet Matthue Roth, novelist Tova Mirvis, and the novelist and playwright Naomi Ragen - are all working to create a more art-friendly and embracing religious model.

It is so, so unimaginably cool to be cited as an example of how people can be Orthodox and artists and how it doesn't have to be some big religious crisis. This is my favorite part of the article, though -- apparently, before Yeshiva University introduced its business school, everyone thought it was a crazy idea:

In 1977, a fake ad in Yeshiva University's yearbook made fun of the idea of a business school at the university. The mock ad promised that a school of business "will be opening its doors to all students who cannot cope with liberal arts."

The rest is at the link.


And the Scholastic blog came out with a post about bullying, and how to deal with bullying, and what to do about it. And that, no surprise, one of the best ways to cope and not just be damaged by it is to read about it. They suggest a bunch of resources, and one of the recommended titles is 

Losers by Matthue Roth: This off-the-wall novel introduces readers to Jupiter—a Russian immigrant learning to deal with high-school life in America. With dead-on deadpan humor, Matthue Roth makes everything illuminated about American teen life—like Borat as directed by John Hughes.

Okay. Now I've got some Sears Tower to climb. Shabbos and out.