Fall 2024 @ OASIS Abq

 Great Courses of Jewish Interest

Abq Jew is pleased to inform you that
OASIS Albuquerque has just announced
their Fall 2024 line-up of classes!
Registration opens on
Wednesday September 4
but you can Wish List your selections now.

OASIS Albuquerque Executive Director Scott Sharp and his staff continue to bring you new and interesting class offerings, and continue to make sure there are plenty of courses of Jewish interest.

This session's courses and instructors include,

but are by no means limited to:

Death Beliefs & Funeral Traditions

Wednesday September 25 @ 12:30 - #186

Instructor: Gail Rubin

What It Is: Customs and traditions to honor the dead vary greatly from past to present and place to place. What do different religions and cultures believe about life and death? How do funeral traditions vary among different religions? Gail Rubin shares some of the fascinating practices from around the world.

Slow Travel in New Mexico:
A Transforming Experience

Friday October 4 [Rosh Hashanah 2] @ 12:30 - #212

Instructor: Judith Fein & Paul Ross

What It Is: Award-winning journalists describe a slow approach to travel and photography. Slow travel is the secret to opening doors, meeting people, participating in surprising events, experiencing joy, and making each trip–no matter how long or short–deeper, richer, and an adventure that is uniquely yours. A different and transformative way to travel around the word and in your home town.

Spinoza: Heretic or 

God-Intoxicated Man?

Thursday October 10 @ 10:00 - #187

Instructor: Michael Nutkiewicz

What It Is: Benedict, or Baruch Spinoza (d. 1677), was excommunicated from the Dutch Jewish community and went on to write some of the most controversial books about philosophy, religion, and political theory. Look at Spinoza’s life and the circumstances surrounding his excommunication. Touch upon his philosophy as well as his critique of religion. Learn why Spinoza’s life represents the coming Age of Enlightenment, and why he has sometimes been called the first “modern man.”

Roger Williams, Dissenting Puritan

Separation of Church & State

Wednesday October 23 @ 10:00 - #156

Instructor: David Crowley

What It Is: Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, broke with the notion of civil support of religious belief and practice, effectively creating the political doctrine of separation of church and state in the American political ethos. Moreover, he did this a century and a half prior to the First Amendment. We look at Williams’ founding of a new colony that sought to honor the free exercise of religion.

Brujeria: A History of

Witchcraft in New Mexico

Monday October 28 @ 10:00 - #211

Instructor: Rob Martinez

What It Is: The history of witchcraft in New Mexico is a fascinating subject that spans the Spanish Colonial, Mexican, and US Territorial periods. In this presentation about brujería and hechicería, witchcraft and sorcery, Rob Martinez looks at actual case studies from historical documents that help to explain why, even in current times, such beliefs still persist in New Mexico.

Poland & The Holocaust:

An Exploration

Wednesday November 13 @ 10:00 - #159

Instructor: Christopher Zugger

What It Is: Poland had a population of three million Jews in 1939. Over the course of the war, Hitler opened 400 camps there. Challenges to rescues included fear, blackmailers, betrayal, prewar anti-Semitic attitudes, and harsh Nazi persecution of Jews and Poles. Any assistance to a Jew could bring death and even the destruction of whole villages. Hear stories of rescue, loss, the work of both the Catholic Church and Żegota ending with how Communist rule affects retrieving history.

The Genius of Leonardo da Vinci

Wednesday November 13 @ 12:30 - #160

Instructor: Timothy Graham

What It Is: Scientist, inventor, engineer, architect, and creator of the world’s most famous painting; there seems no end to the accomplishments of Leonardo da Vinci. Timothy Graham sets Leonardo’s amazing innovative prowess against the shifting background of his career, as da Vinci moved from Tuscany to Milan and into the service of the king of France. We consider why he chose to write backwards. And we explore the mystery of his most beloved work, the Mona Lisa.

Why is Leonardo in a list of Great Courses of Jewish Interest?

Click here to find out!

Paradise Bronx

And The Spaldeen: The Bronx is a hand reaching down to pull the other boroughs of New York City out of the harbor and the sea. 

Its fellow-boroughs are islands or parts of islands; the Bronx hangs on to Manhattan and Queens and Brooklyn, with Staten Island trailing at the end of the long towrope of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and keeps the whole business from drifting away on a strong outgoing tide. 

No water comes between the Bronx (if you leave out its own few islands) and the rest of North America. The Bronx is the continent, and once you’re on it you can go for thousands of miles without seeing ocean again. 

The other boroughs, for their part, cling to the Bronx for dear life. The chafing and strife of this connection have made all the difference to the Bronx.

So begins Ian Frazier's masterful essay - yes, about The Bronx, of all places - in the July 22 issue of The New Yorker. Want to know more about The Bronx?

Thirteen bridges connect Manhattan to the Bronx, and two more cross the East River from Queens. Other links exist underground in tunnels and pipes, which carry subway lines, drinking water, gas mains, power cables, and wastewater. 

Every which way, the Bronx is sewn and bound and grappled and clamped to the rest of the city. Every kind of transportation passes through it or over it. 

Walking on Bruckner Boulevard one morning, I was stunned by the loudness of the trucks. (No other borough has truck traffic like the Bronx’s, partly because its Hunts Point market, for produce, meat, and fish, is the largest food-distribution depot in the world.) 

I also heard cars, vans, motorcycles, an Amtrak train, airplanes, and, on the lower Bronx River nearby, the horn of a tugboat pushing a barge. Even during the emptiest days of the Covid shutdown, the Bronx’s pulse of transport kept pounding.

Interstate highways slice and dice the borough. The interstates within the Bronx’s borders are these: On the west, running approximately north and south, is I-87, also known (in the city) as the Major Deegan Expressway, or simply the Deegan. I-87 is bound for Albany and Canada. 

The Bruckner Expressway, a.k.a. I-278, connects to I-87 in the southern part of the borough. From there, I-278 veers to the northeast. 

Across the borough’s middle, I-95, a.k.a. the Cross Bronx Expressway, that road of infamous history, moves traffic east and west before merging with the Bruckner. Then it veers north, and follows the coast up to New England. 

A spur, I-295, splits off and goes south across the Throgs Neck Bridge to Queens. Another spur, I-678, also goes to Queens, over the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. 

At the point where I-678 goes south from I-95, the Hutchinson River Parkway goes north from I-95, crosses the Bronx, and continues into Westchester County.

Too much information? You can believe Abq Jew when he says he understands. Abq Jew is a Brooklyn / Valley Stream boy, whose excursions into The Bronx have been precious few and extremely far between. 

For which, Abq Jew is very, very happy.

But ... Ian Frazier's writing is just too good to let Paradise Bronx pass. Especially when he talks about 

The Spaldeen

The so-called Spaldeen, that pink rubber ball cherished in memory, could be employed not only in stickball (with a bat made of a broken-off broom or mop handle, the broken end rubbed smooth on the pavement) but also in fistball (no bat required), handball (ditto), stoopball (in which you threw the ball against a stoop and your opponent played the bounce), and jacks (one game in which girls, who generally didn’t play ball, might also use a Spaldeen). 

Manhole covers in the streets were set into the pavement at regular intervals. 

For a stickball batter to hit a Spaldeen the distance of three manhole covers—“three sewers”—was considered amazing.

Abq Jew is extremely happy to report that he has, indeed, completed 74 revolutions around our Sun, his favorite star in the Milky Way! 

And Abq Jew reports this on what would have been the 100th birthday of his father, Richard W Yellin z"l. Still miss you, Dad!

After Tisha b'Av 5784

Consolation for What We Lost: Following Tisha b'Av, there are seven prophetic readings of consolation - all from Isaiah - that comfort us after the Black Fast and prepare us, emotionally and spiritually, for the upcoming High Holidays.

This year, many of us New MexiJews - and many of us in the worldwide Jewish community - refuse to be consoled over the losses we have suffered. How can we ever dance again?

And this year, many of us Jews show strength and determination to move joyfully toward the future. We will dance again! 

Abq Jew has heard a story, about a certain rabbi, who had a very particular Tisha b'Av custom.

Every year, after the Black Fast was concluded, he gathered up all his copies of Eicha (Lamentations); all his Kinot (Elegies); all his Tisha b'Av sermons - and burned them.

Why? Because each year he hoped - no, he believed, and he wished to openly demonstrate his belief - that God would make this the last sad Tisha b'Av, and that next year we Jews would all dance again - to celebrate the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the return of all the Jews to the Holy Land.

But slowly.

It's no longer Tisha b'Av.
But it's still October 7th.

To start us off on our voyage to JOY, here is a video that's been going around the Internet. The place is the Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome (Italy). The piece is "Summer," from Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. 

The pianist is Julien Cohen. The 10-year-old violinist is YeonAh Kim.

These Three Weeks

These Nine Days: We, the Jewish People, have now entered the month of Av. This coming Sabbath is called the Sabbath of Vision (שׁבּת חזון) because of its Haftorah, the third in the series of three Haftorot of Affliction leading us to Tisha b"Av, the Black Fast on the ninth day of the month.

It is the custom in most synagogues to announce the month of Av as "Menachem Av" - literally, "Consoling The Father." The Talmud says, "When the month of Av begins, we reduce our joy." During the Nine Days we observe a greater level of mourning than during the Three Weeks. 

Our sages חז״ל tell us:

One reason for the destruction of the
Second Temple was sinat hinam - causeless hatred;
and one thing that can bring the Messianic Age
is ahavat hinam - causeless love.

Until those glorious days that we long for, we mourn - for the way things are, for the way things might have been. 

And until those glorious days that we long for, perhaps we can learn something important - about ahavat hinam - from the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Of all the great moments for America in this Olympics, none was greater than this show of sportsmanship. Simone Biles’ comeback and brilliance was breathtaking, but this is what should make us most proud of her.

So wrote Jon "Bowser" Bauman on X. (Yes, Abq Jew follows the Sha Na Na and Columbia University alum on social media.)

Even better is what Nancy Armour wrote for USA Today.

Simone Biles’ greatness is summed up in one photo — but not the one you think

PARIS — The greatness of Simone Biles can be summed up in one photo.

It’s not of her with her many, many medals. Or of a score that reflects another dominant performance. It doesn’t show her soaring high above the vault. 

It’s of Biles and Jordan Chiles, bowing down to new Olympic floor champion Rebeca Andrade as the Brazilian steps onto the medals podium at the 2024 Paris Games.

“I love Rebeca. She’s absolutely amazing,” Biles said Monday afternoon. “Jordan was like, 'Should we bow to her?’ And I was like, 'Absolutely.’ It was just the right thing to do.”

Yes, but not many athletes — not many people — would be big enough to celebrate someone else’s success in the wake of their own disappointment. Or mature enough to do it so genuinely. 

Not many would be generous enough to show the grace that so often isn’t extended to her.

Biles is the greatest gymnast of all time, and the surprising results Monday do nothing to change that. But she’s an equally good human, continuing to dole out lessons on how to do life.

Be kind.

Celebrate success, both yours and that of others. 

May we be comforted among the mourners 
of Zion and Jerusalem.