Religious Freedom? Meh.

The Pastafarian Tradition: Just like you, Abq Jew has been watching the news this week. There has been a lot of news, and some of it has been bad. But some of it has been good! 

Abq Jew is eager to tell you about it. But first -

The Flying Spaghetti Monster

During his years at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (see Wanna Be A Rabbi? and Rabbi School Dropout) AND during his subsequent years studying the religious traditions of the world, Abq Jew not once (to his failing memory) encountered the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

You know - the Pastafarians.

Wikipedia succinctly explains:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is the deity of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pastafarianism (a portmanteau of pasta and Rastafarian), a social movement that promotes a light-hearted view of religion and opposes the teaching of intelligent design and creationism in public schools. 

Although adherents describe Pastafarianism as a genuine religion, it is generally seen by the media as a parody religion.

And the media - what do they know about religious truth? (Or any truth, for that matter.) Wikipedia continues:

The "Flying Spaghetti Monster" was first described in a satirical open letter written by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest the Kansas State Board of Education decision to permit teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes.\ 

In that letter, Henderson satirized creationism by professing his belief that whenever a scientist carbon-dates an object, a supernatural creator that closely resembles spaghetti and meatballs is there "changing the results with His Noodly Appendage."

Henderson argued that his beliefs were just as valid as intelligent design, and called for equal time in science classrooms alongside intelligent design and evolution. 

After Henderson published the letter on his website, the Flying Spaghetti Monster rapidly became an Internet phenomenon and a symbol of opposition to the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. 

Lindsay Miller of Lowell, Mass.

Which brings us to Lindsay Miller of Lowell, Mass. - a courageous Pastafiarian who years ago insisted upon and achieved her right to be photographed for her Massachusetts driver's license with a colander (that's a spaghetti strainer, by the way) on her head.

Ms Miller (said the New York Daily News at the time) was previously denied a license renewal under Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles policy that does not permit hats or head coverings except for religious reasons.

"They were kind of laughing at me," Miller told the Boston Globe. 

"I thought of other religions and women and thought that this was not fair. I thought, 'Just because you haven't heard of this belief system, [the RMV] should not be denying me a license," she said. 

"The fact that many see this is as a satirical religion doesn't change the fact that by any standard one can come up with our religion is as legitimate as any other. And *that* is the point,” according to a posting on the church’s web site.

So you want to join the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster yourself and become a Pastafarian? Well, you can start with the entertaining and informative WikiHow article How to Become a Pastafarian.

Or you can visit the Church's website and view this entertaining and informative video:

And many years ago, Rachel Maddow (no surprise, there) also covered the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in this video:

Which includes the following explanation:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, much as it is today, but for reasons unknown made it appear that the universe is billions of years old (instead of thousands) and that life evolved into its current state (rather than created in its current form). 

Whenever a scientist carbon-dates an object, The Flying Spaghetti Monster is there to change the results with his noodly appendage, so only the TRUE BELIEVERS understand the truth. 

May you too be touched by His noodly appendage and be blessed. 

RAMEN.

Now you may ask -  

What has this got to do with The Jews?

And the answer, Abq Jew claims, is - nothing, very little, or, as we used to say in yeshiva, not much. And that's the way it should be. 

But all of a sudden, everyone's talking about The Ten Commandments. No, not the 1956 Cecile B DeMille movie starring Moses (see photo above) as Charlton Heston. But rather HB71, the new law in

The State of Louisiana?

A Trebuchet Is

Not A Catapult: You can tell the difference by the sound it makes when it is fired: Whoosh. A catapult, on the other hand, goes Boing.

The website TimeRef.com offers a more complete description.

The trebuchet was a wooden siege engine designed to destroy castle walls by throwing large rocks at them. 

The engine was constructed using a sturdy base, a long throwing arm and a bucket to hold weights. The projectile was connected by a rope to the end of the throwing arm while the bucket at the other end of the arm was filled with a heavy material. 

The arm was winched down lifting the bucket into the air and secured in place while the projectile was attached. The projectile rested on a flat piece of wood. The projectile was connected to the arm and the firing mechanism released. 

The weight of the bucket brought the other end of the arm down and sent the projectile flying into the air. At the top of the arc the projectile was released and sent speeding to hit the castle wall. 

The direction of the projectile could be controlled by moving it left and right on the board. 

The distance could be controlled by altering the shape of the release pin on the end of the arm, the amount of weight in the bucket or the weight of the projectile itself.

Trebuchets came in many shapes and sizes, some having wheels so they could be moved around the siege landscape. 

Trebuchets were built as kits that could be assembled and disassembled and transported in sections to where they were needed. All the pieces slotted together and were fixed with wooden or metal pegs.

Rocks were not the only things that were thrown by trebuchets. 

• It was common to throw urns filled with flammable material into the castle where many of the buildings were made of wood. The urn had a lit fuse that would have ignited the material when the urn broke. 
• Dead animals were another type of projectile thrown into castles. Animals that were diseased were preferred as they could spread disease if they landed in the castle's water source.

Being constructed of wood made trebuchets vunerable to attack by fire and had to be protected from this danger.

Now, if you're a former engineer like Abq Jew - first of all, his condolences. Life in the high-technology mines of Silicon Valley, TPC (The Phone Company), and Big Pharma, Abq Jew recalls, was nothing - absolutely nothing - like Workin' In the Coal Mine. Or like Workin' On a Chain Gang.

One of the perpetual residual effects of an engineering career, it appears, is a fascination with, you should certainly not excuse the expression in our current anti-science climate ... 

The Way Things Work

Which fascination is more than shared, Abq Jew is happy to report, by the Israel Defense Forces and (see January's Building The Iron Beam) the entire robust Israeli defense industry. 

In fact, NBC News (et al) reports:

Israeli troops use medieval-style trebuchet weapon in fighting at Lebanon border

A trebuchet is a medieval siege weapon made of wood with a long arm that, when released, catapults a projectile — in this case, a fireball — at its target.

TEL AVIV — Israeli troops stationed on the Lebanese border fired a medieval-style siege weapon known as a trebuchet amid recent fighting against Hezbollah militants, an Israeli military official confirmed to NBC News.  

Video of the weapon hurling a fireball emerged Thursday, sparking equal measures of confusion and amusement in Israel, even as Israeli troops and Hezbollah were locked in some of the most intense fighting of the war. 

The six-second video shows Israeli troops looking on as the trebuchet — which largely disappeared from the battlefield in the 15th century — fires a flaming projectile over a fortified wall. One soldier is seen holding a fire extinguisher in case something were to go awry.  

An Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the weapon is not part of the IDF’s standard arsenal and is believed to have been built by reservist soldiers stationed on the border.  

The People’s Commencement

At Columbia: It’s 1968 all over again, as New York Ivy Leaguers flip the script and stage an unofficial counter-graduation ceremony at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Illustration by João Fazenda

Thus begins Andrew Marantz's On Campus article in the June 3, 2024 issue of The New Yorker. As a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Abq Jew finds this article very upsetting.

And rather than attempt to summarize it, Abq Jew here presents to you, his loyal readers, the whole thing - in complete violation of an entire plethora of US copyright laws, UN resolutions, and international conventions. 

Please, copyright lawyers, consider this fair use - or even a free promotion! And stay tuned for a (brief) discussion at the end.

On Campus

The People’s Commencement at Columbia

It’s 1968 all over again, as New York Ivy Leaguers flip the script
and stage an unofficial counter-graduation ceremony
at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

By Andrew Marantz
May 25, 2024

In the spring of 1968, after a series of antiwar demonstrations and a police raid on Columbia’s campus, protesters ended the semester with a “counter-commencement.” “while columbia dances its obscene ceremony,” a flyer read, “we will open a liberation school for all people.” 

At the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the historian Richard Hofstadter gave the official commencement address; hundreds of students walked out in protest and marched a few blocks north to an alternative graduation ceremony, where the writer Dwight Macdonald and others delivered remarks on the library steps. 

“While I find your strike and your sit-ins productive, I don’t think these tactics can be used indefinitely without doing more damage than good to the university,” Macdonald said.

This spring, during another series of antiwar demonstrations and student arrests at Columbia, a group of sympathetic faculty and staff organized another counter-commencement. 

“We looked through the historical archives for inspiration,” Manu Karuka, a professor of American studies at Barnard, said. “We even used a font reminiscent of the ’68 program.” 

The 2024 program featured a drawing of a red poppy, a symbol of Palestinian resistance, above the words “The People’s Graduation: A Gathering for Peace and Justice.” 

A supplementary handout included a list of Barnard’s “distrustees,” along with top Columbia administrators and their e-mail addresses, and an acknowledgment in fine print: “This shitshow would not have been possible without these cruel and incompetent people.”

The locations were flipped this year. The counter-commencement was held at St. John the Divine, whose clergy had offered it to the university community as a sanctuary. (Columbia’s main graduation was supposed to take place in the middle of campus, until, at the last minute, it was cancelled.) 

Ilan Cohen, who was graduating with a dual degree from Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary, started the day at a small J.T.S. ceremony, where attendees sang both the American and the Israeli national anthems and Wolf Blitzer gave the commencement speech (“You stand at a crossroads in American history, and Jewish history”). 

Afterward, Cohen, who had participated in the student encampment, walked briskly toward the cathedral, wearing a robin’s-egg-blue robe and a beet-red yarmulke. He carried three pins—“Columbia Jews for Ceasefire,” “JTS Jews for Ceasefire,” and “Not in My Name”—and deliberated over which to wear. “No pins, I’m sorry,” a volunteer usher said. “Church rules.” The rules failed to prevent posters, banners, or slogans on mortarboards (“Free Palestine”; “Student Intifada”; “Glory to the Class of 2024 of Gaza”). 

Someone handed Cohen a parody newspaper called the New York War Crimes—the “Nakba Day Edition” (“All the Consent That’s Fit to Manufacture”). As Cohen looked for a seat, he ran into Frank Guridy, a history professor with whom he had taken a course called Columbia 1968. They posed for a photo, and Guridy asked about Cohen’s plans. “Haven’t had a second to think about it,” he said.

The actress and comedian Amanda Seales, a Columbia alum, was the m.c. “Today, in the spirit of 1968, we gather in what gentrifiers call Morningside Heights but the real ones know is Harlem,” she began. A full cathedral—a few dozen faculty and special guests onstage, a few hundred students in the pews—cheered. 

Seales introduced Randa Jarrar, a Palestinian American writer and activist. “In 1799, Napoleon invaded Palestine,” Jarrar said, then led the audience in a chant: “We defeated Napoleon!” “We are defeating Israel!” “We defeated Columbia!” “We are dismantling this empire!” 

A Palestinian American poet named Fady Joudah read a poem called “Dedication,” fighting back tears; Noura Erakat, a human-rights lawyer, told the students, “You have taught us well—in your sacrifice, in your courage, in your ingenuity.” A few backpack-wearing cathedral tourists took photos in chastened silence, then quickly left.

To close out the ceremony, Seales introduced a band called the Liberated Zone, “a ragtag collective of musically inclined radicals, scholars, and truthtellers who met while jamming at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” 

Six musicians, half of them barefoot, performed a two-chord folk song based on a verse from the Book of Ruth. Then the grads marched out, applauded by faculty waiting on the steps. Clumps of students stood chatting about summer plans and upcoming disciplinary hearings, or breaking into brief chants (“Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest”). 

A Barnard professor invited Cohen to join her protest singing group, Voices of Witness. Cohen had been part of a “pluralistic Jewish a-cappella group,” he said, “and this was the year we really had to figure out what pluralism meant.”

“How’d that go?” the professor asked.

“Well,” Cohen said, “we just had to appoint two students to be mediators next year, if that gives you an idea.” ♦

Abq Jew sadly admits he doesn't have
the foggiest idea how that is gonna work.

Not to pick on Ilan Cohen - it's not just him! -
but you would think that Jewish day school learning,
an Ivy League education, plus studies at JTS
would add up to more than this.
But you'd be wrong.

Even (Especially?) after the hostages' rescue on Shabbat,
the American Jewish community has been soundly
kicked under the bus. It's not just that many of our
former friends, colleagues, and allies have abandoned us -
they've actively turned against us and joined
with those who seek our destruction. 

Yes, our Jewish history offers parallels to what is happening
all around us. But we've just celebrated Shavuot.
Let's try to stay happy.

Remembering the Days

Remembering The Weeks: As Abq Jew ® first noted thirteen (13!) years ago (wow! like it was yesterday!) in  A Murder of Crows:

Several thousand years ago, all Jews then living, all Jews ever born, and all Jews ever to be born gathered beneath Mount Sinai to hear God speak to us. 

We celebrate this wondrous event every year on the Holiday of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, exactly forty-nine full days (which are, as we know now, seven full weeks) after the Holiday of Pesach.

And we recongregate to celebrate Shavuot just one week after we all celebrated Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day) ...

... and just 10 days after Jewish New Yorkers joined October 7 hostage families for the Israel Day Parade.

Shavuot (שבועות‎) occurs on the sixth day of the
Hebrew month of Sivan. This year, Shavuot begins
on the evening of Tuesday, June 11.The festival days
are Wednesday and Thursday, June 12-13.

As we remember what our fathers fought for
and honor their sacrifice ...

Happy Shavuot!

We will dance again ....