Baba Sali: The Messiah Is Coming

The Internet has been around for a while -- and, while the immediacy of the medium is unsurpassed in spreading news stories and viral videos of nose-picking politicians and lightsaber duels, the most emotion that's most commonly associated with retrospective looks at internet viral memes is one of acute, painful embarrassment. For every "ZOMG Look At This" that us bloggers have posted, and then proudly bragged to our colleagues that we broke the story, there are a thousand things that would have made the world a better place if we'd totally ignored it in the first place.

And then there are the truly sad ones. The Heaven's Gate cult, originally thought to be harmless -- hey, they weren't recruiting, and they weren't affecting anyone but themselves -- who were among the early Web presences and whose site endures as a testament to their mass suicide.

Okay, but I wanted to talk about something that also has elements of pathos and sadness, if on a totally different level. It's all about a watch.

The great Moroccan sage the Baba Sali ostensibly gave a couple of watches to Rav Mordechai Eliyahu, one of the most important Sephardic rabbis in Israel. One was silver, one was gold. The watches are broken -- or, rather, they move much slower than normal watches. According to Mishpacha magazine (quoted here), Mordechai Eiliyahu's son relates how the watches work:

"One day, the Baba Sali's son came to my father and presented him with a watch. He explained that his holy father had come to him in a dream and told him that he should look in a certain drawer in a certain desk, where he would find this watch. He was to give it to my father and tell him that when the watch reached twelve o'clock, then Mashiach would come. At that time, the watch hands showed twenty minutes to eleven. Since then, my father keeps a very close eye on the watch, and found that sometimes it goes and other times it just stops."

Recently, I stumbled across, this post on another blog, which reported that one of the watches had struck twelve -- that the Messiah's arrival was imminent. Then I noticed the date of the post, August 2005.

Another Heaven's Gate, I thought.

My stomach sunk. I've always been an insufficient believer in the Messiah -- our sages say we should be ready for Mashiach's imminent arrival at all times. I always want to be. Messiah stories thrill me. But I haven't been able to get my head around the concept that the world might be changing, that I might actually see my grandfather and my dead best friend again. Shlomo Carlebach says that that's the kind of thinking that keeps the Messiah from coming. But, hey, I can barely believe that Obama is president -- and there he is, tellin' off the fat cats of Wall Street on the front page of the New York Times.

So, what of it now? Well, it turns out that the watch that struck twelve was only the silver watch -- and, as of November, there was a report (though unconfirmed) that, while Rav Mordechai Eliyahu was in the hospital, his son had custody of the watch, and it had moved to twelve. Or almost twelve?

I haven't been able to find anything more recent. But, as the Baba Sali Facebook group commemorates, today is his 25th yahrzeit. And I can't think of a better way to honor it by thinking that the Messiah might come today. Hey -- there's still hours before sunset. In New York, anyway.

Duck.

A ridiculous amount of music stuff.

First of all, new music column up on Nextbook: Israeli hip-hop and Bible Belt punk-rock.

Hadara Levin-Areddy is a one-woman cultural steamroller. She’s a secular Jew living in Jerusalem, a pianist who plays rock music, a determined iconoclast who’s at once playful and dark-humored—think early Bruce Springsteen meets early Alanis Morrisette. She's carved out a niche for her own art-pop music in Israeli radio that’s not exactly Top 40, but still holds down a demographic of her own, roughly equivalent to that of NPR listeners. Hadara's seventh album, K’ilu Ain Machar ("Like There’s No Tomorrow"), finds her branching out both musically and lyrically, abandoning pop songs for hip hop. more...

And then I talk about it on MJL:

The launch of Jewish Music Report probably has nothing to do with the upcoming Event, starring Lipa Schmeltzer — but I’m sure the timing couldn’t hurt either. Since last year’s sudden cancellation of the Big Event due to rabbinical warnings, Lipa has blown up from a wacky-but-talented opening act into a full-fledged major with wacky Youtube rap videos into a major Hasidic media star. The coverage provoked a profile in the New York Times, and, in many ways, backfired on its organizers — some rabbis who authorized the ban later admitted to having been coerced into signing, or signing without really knowing what was going on. It also propelled Lipa’s fame into uncharted waters. Whereas before, everyone in the Hasidic world kind of knew about the singer who did holy parodies of secular songs in Yiddish, now everyone — even non-music listeners — knew that he was a good Jew who just happened to ire the wrong rabbi.

And I am so, so lucky -- I can't believe that I am related to these people (courtesy of JMR):

Jazz Is the New Klezmer

I know, I know -- I talk about Yoshie Fruchter a lot. But he's worth it -- and he's doing so much stuff that it would be hard not to talk about him.

On Jewcy today, I talk to him about his new band, his new album, and why his parents are so damn cool:

Yoshie Fruchter gets around. Besides being a member of half a dozen bands, from the children's parody band Shlock Rock to guesting with Pharaoh's Daughter, he's made a name for himself in the few short years since he moved to Brooklyn from his hometown of Silver Spring, MD.

It's easy to chalk Yoshie's existence until that point up to the classic story of small-town-boy-makes-it-big. But between the lines, Fruchter has a lot of stories--his mother is a full-time arts educator in the yeshiva system, and his father is a versatile musician who, among his own accolades, was babysat by Elvis as a child.

READ MORE >

Open Mic & Neil Gaiman in New York (but not together)

Tomorrow night: open mic with me at the 92Y Tribeca! 200 Hudson Street, right near pretty much every good after-show bar and restuarant in the city. Featured readers are Jen Hubley, senior style editor for About.com and wild blogger in her own right, and Megan Bruce. Everything moves quickly, and everyone there pretty much rocks. Which is why you should be there. Cause you rock, too. Oh, and it's free. Sign-up and coctails 7:00, show at 7:30.

And, oh, cool -- Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book won this year's Newbery. Although, as a friend pointed out, what awards left has he not won? After a certain point, I feel like people should be immune from awards (which, in NG's defense, he's very good at withdrawing himself from competitions that he wins too much) and create, I don't know, like a hall of fame or something -- a center-of-the-universe Neutral Zone where writers and musicians are recognized as the coolest people ever, and therefore are disqualified from competitions, because you already know that everything they touch pen to is going to be really smoking good. I'm thinking of Maurice Sendak, mostly, although pretty much everything Lydia Millet writes is amazing, as well.

Oh, and in prep for the new movie (courtesy of Alisha at Harper's), you can (and should) read the entirety of Coraline online here for free. If only to prepare yourself.

Oh, and -- he's in New York today!

Hating “Loving Leah,” But Loving The Orthodox Girls

I never thought I'd say it -- at least, in this context -- but thank God that Matisyahu wears good clothes on MTV.

On The View yesterday, Susie Essman -- who plays the Lubavitch mother of the eponymous character in the Hallmark Hall of Fame special Loving Leah -- served as the world's authority to Orthodox Jews. Do you know how many people watch The View? Do you know how many of those people have never met an Orthodox Jew in their lives? And, thankfully, someone as knowledgeable and as accurate a researcher as Susie Essman is their only dose of exposure to Orthodox Jews.

BARBARA WALTERS: What did you learn in your course of researching the Hasidim?
SUSIE ESSMAN: I learned they're not very good dressers.

Sara Ester Crispe, webmaster of TheJewishWoman.org, just told her off on JTA. And there's definitely no shortage of articles about hot Orthodox women -- including a whole Hot Chani Field Guide and a blog -- to the contrary. I don't know if the fact-checkers for The View didn't get a chance to do their homework, or if it all just happened too quickly to edit, but there's something wrong in View-land.

I can't believe that not even Whoopi Goldberg called her out on it. I mean, she starred in the COLOR FREAKING PURPLE. (What she's doing on daytime TV is a total mystery -- I mean, it's not, everyone needs a good paycheck -- but I figured she'd be using her role to better the universe, not be Barbara Walters' funny-glasses'd sidekick.)

Fortunately, it's the easiest thing in the universe to send a comment to The View just telling them that Susie Essman was gross, inappropriate, and doesn't know what she was talking about -- but that Sara Ester Crispe is funny, charming, and a laugh riot. Put her up next to Barbara -- then we'll see who's better-dressed.

In actuality, what offended me most about her comments wasn't that -- it was the intimation that Orthodox men are perverts who are uncontrollably turned on by a woman's hair. (Not yours, honey.) Okay, I don't expect anyone (least of all Susie Essman) to understand the finer points of Jewish mysticism, but check this out: ONLY MARRIED WOMEN COVER THEIR HAIR. If hair is that sexually arousing, and that's why crazy Orthodox people cover it, then wouldn't all women's hair be covered? Anyway, Susie: If you're reading this, next time, do a little research. You don't even have to meet a real Orthodox woman -- just read about it on MyJewishLearning. I promise, the entire article will take you less than 5 minutes, flat.

In any case, here's the video. Susie's bad side comes out right at 3:00, if you want to skip the kibitzing.

The Boys Boys from Brazil

Not a typo: There's a village in Brazil where one out of every five births produces twins, most of them blond-haired and blue-eyed. If you can guess who might have been behind them -- or what experiments may have set the stage for this sort of medical tampering -- you win a cookie.

According to a new book, Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America, the head doctor of Auschwitz shuttled himself between German colonies in Paraguay and Brazil, avoiding capture by the authorities until his death in 1979. (There's a pretty intense article about his background and evasion of post-war capture here.) But Angel of Death sheds new light, so to speak, on his Brazilian activities and suggests that he might have succeeded in creating a race of perfect Aryan children.

For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed.

But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town.

Uh....if a strange man showed up in town claiming to be a veterinarian but then asking to see the inflated stomach of your pregnant loved one, would you let them? The Telegraph article continues:

"There is testimony that he attended women, followed their pregnancies, treated them with new types of drugs and preparations, that he talked of artificial insemination in human beings, and that he continued working with animals, proclaiming that he was capable of getting cows to produce male twins."

If you're pregnant, and you're going to a German animal doctor with a shady past for pregnancy advice, Mengele's new biography probably isn't the book for you -- but maybe this one is.