MY URBAN KVETCH

My So-Called Social Life

Last week was such insanity from Tuesday to Thursday, with every night dominated by the NY literati and bloggerati in one form or another, that I plumb tuckered out without blogging any of it except PresenTense's Thursday night exhibition, PresenText, at the Bronfman Center (photos of which are available on Facebook in many locations).

The blogger reception at the 92nd Street Y was on my calendar for what seemed like months, and I was excited to finally attend an event which was itself a nod that my blogging endeavors--and those of my fellow J- and non-J-but-interested bloggers--were of rising importance and visibility. The excuse was a lecture/conversation between neighbors Patty Marx and Adam Gopnik, and invoked three of the seemingly most holy words in NY hipster culture: :The New Yorker. (Gopnik and Marx both write for the New Yorker, and were promoting new books--Gopnik's a collection of essays and Marx's a novel about a late-night comedy writer, which she used to be.) Gopnik's piece on the rodential infestation of his building was hilarious and unfortunately all too relatable from plague-besotted New Yorkers, and Marx's fictional humor piece, which featured a woman giving a museum-style tour of her ex's apartment, provoked much audience laughter.

The blogorganizer-general was Andrew Krucoff, who famously had the first Jewlicious bar mitzvah on record and defected from Gawker for a glamorous life in Jewish non-profit life without speaking with me first. Others in attendance included Lilit (also of SavetheAssistants), Judith (KesherTalk), the JDub guys, Isaac Galena, EV, Rebecca from Six Points, and the omnipresent Steven I. Weiss.

Then Wednesday came along, with a reception at the Jewish Museum in honor of Scott Shay, Chairman of the Board of Signature Bank and author of the newly reprinted Getting Our Groove Back: How to Energize American Jewry. This drew a slightly different set (the only overlap seeming to be Rebecca from Six Points), with JTA writers, Jewish community leaders and bigwigs whose names I knew but whom I had never met in person. The reception was lovely, and I'm making my way through the book, which so far is depressing me with every Jew's favorite subject: the shrinking demographics of Jews in America. But, judging the book by its title and its impressive endorsements by Jewish names like Michael Steinhardt and Lynn Schusterman, I'm hopeful for some provocative ideas and suggestions as I proceed through the book.

Then, Thursday brought PresenText. And on Friday, I collapsed. But it's all in the service of the Jewish people. To whom I will be sending my rent bill.

Wishing everyone a good, so-called-social life this week.

Kevin Bacon Urges Me to Be a "Celebrity for Your Cause"

OK, so Kevin Bacon's not my friend. Well, no more than any of the other celebs I've seen on the streets of NYC (Tina Fey notwithstanding--she's my friend, she just doesn't know it yet). But through Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, he and I are connected. I was in a movie with Julia Roberts, who was in Flatliners with Kevin Bacon. Two degrees. (OK, it was a movie theater, but there might be a connection through Keeping the Faith*, too...so you get my drift.)

Really, it's the original social networking (a phrase which a friend recently told me is "out" among her techie friends, who now prefer "social media"). And Kevin, as unofficial and inadvertent founder of the "we're all connected to each other" concept, is now teaming with Network For Good to form, er, a network for good. The idea behind SixDegrees.org is to connect people with charities, those supported by celebrities (like Jessica Simpson's Operation Smile) and those supported by regular people. And because we're all web-savvy these days, we can create our own accounts, and our own badges for our websites and blogs (that's right, Kevin Bacon said "blogs") that advertise our own personal causes.

I would have made my own badge right then and there, but I've been trying to identify the cause that's the most important to me. Which cause would I want to be a non-celebrity spokesperson for? I even tried on a sample script:

"Hi, I'm Esther Kustanowitz. You know, I am sometimes known as the Urban Kvetch. But alot of people have real tzuris to kvetch about. Like [fill in particular brand of tzuris here], which affects more than [impressive number of people] daily. But now, for only the cost of a small cup of non-Starbucks, non-organic coffee, you can join with me in supporting [important cause] and helping to stop the brutal spread of [particular brand of tzuris]."

But no cause occurs to me. So that's something I'm going to have to figure out. What's your cause?

You can go here for a message of explanation from KB, or to view the YouTube clip, click here or below.

*I was in Keeping the Faith with Ed Norton, who was in Primal Fear with Alfre Woodard, who was in Beauty Shop with Kevin Bacon! Um, why was Kevin Bacon in Beauty Shop? Apparently to give me a "Bacon number" of 3.

Skin

Occasionally it happens. Something I write lands wrong, even if it was penned with the best of intentions, and people I care about are hurt. Usually, I err on the side of being overly cautious when it comes to language and content, to avoid such situations. But there's never any controlling how you're interpreted, and that's where problems crop up. One such instance happened recently, and, although I still believe in what I wrote, I was torn up with guilt about how it had made someone else feel. That I'm so sensitive is sometimes good, but opens me up to self-analysis that's not always healthy. I wrote this as an exercise in working some of those guilt feelings out. It's a little overdramatic, but sometimes, aren't we all?-EDK

Ruminations lead to ruin, as I ponder the thinness of my skin. I can steel myself, gird my figurative loins to withstand an impact, and still, when cuts occur, I cannot banish the sting. Fault is never the issue. I feel the blame keenly whether or not I am its point of origin, whether or not the criticism is justified.

I have to reinforce such flimsy material, I think. What could achieve it? Steel is uncomfortable, and prone to rust, which helps no one. Plastic isn't breatheable, and because of sub-epidermal heat, sticks to exposed flesh. To achieve some sort of deflection just bounces the negative energy around, it's bound to bounce back my way sometime, probably when I'm not expecting it. I played Pong, so I know. I've watched the screensaver on my TV bounce from side to side, never hitting the same place twice until the loop is completed and begins again, so I know.

Maybe insulation is worth a try. But It itches now, with an annoyingly warm discomfort, like wool that insulates as it irritates. I'm allergic, but I'm cold, so it's a battle between needs. If I ignore it, will it go away? Or is it better to rip the offending garment from my flesh, leaving my skin exposed to the elements, hoping that the raw redness will fade and revert to its formerly soft, slightly resilient self?

I am vulnerable now. Caution. Proceed, but within the parameters of risk. Wear a helmet. Dress in layers. A hat can help you retain 70 percent of your conviction that your motives were pure, and that you never expected the fallout, even if it was inevitable. Honesty is lonely and of small comfort when you realize that something you've done has escaped your grasp; rippled, concentrically, beyond your vision; echoed, unendingly, beyond your hearing. It's gone with no potential for recall. And you're just going to have to live with that.

Young Creatives in NYC

Last night's PresenTense event, PresenText, the Art of New Jewish Media, rocked NYU's Bronfman Center with over 150 people braving the cold to experience bold new art pieces of graphic design, photography and mixed media. If you missed it and want to be on the list for future events, email me at esther at presentensemagazine.org, or stay tuned to this space, where events will appear in the sidebar and as featured posts. (Next event: February 12, 7pm--PresenTense lecture/discussion group led by me on the subject of "Zionism and Me," loosely based on the article I contributed to Issue One and delving into my personal relationship with Zionism.) The Facebook page for this event is here.

On Sunday January 28th, from 11:45 am to 6:00 pm at the Makor Steinhardt Center, young artists will present their work in the 8th Annual Marathon-Metropoly: A One-Day Multimedia Arts Festival; a "marathon" of great art, theater, music, video and dance, including a staged reading of my friend Marc Goldsmith's one-act play, Miami Twilight (at noon and 3:30pm). It's a very funny play (and runs about 45 minutes long), so if you're in NYC and want to check it out, go ahead and tell Marc that you heard about it from me. Tickets are $15 and the day's program runs 11:45am to 6pm. For a full schedule of the day's events, go to www.makor.org and click on Makor Gallery. Tickets available at the door, at  www.makor.org or 212.415.5500.

And just because the Jewish Film Festival is over doesn't mean you're out of luck when it comes to Jewish film. On Monday night, try the JCC with their showing of King of Beggars, an Israeli film (promoted as "one of Israel's biggest and most lucrative film productions in decades") based on a character created by the Yiddish writer Mendele Mocher Sforim and starring Shahar Sorek (famous in Israel from the Melrose Placey-type show Ramat Aviv Gimmel). Shahar's doing a Q&A after the film. Buy tickets here.

And feel free to come to Long Beach and meet him in person--Shahar will be joining us at the Jewlicious at the Beach 3.0 Festival and Conference March 9-11... not sure if he'll be with us for Shabbat, but his participation will definitely allow us to interact with him and ask him all about being a big star in Israel, coming from a both secular and religious family, and what it takes to get a movie made in Israel and exported to the US. Facebook group for Jewlicious is now at over 800 people--get your tickets soon! (Tickets for students are on pre-sale now, with others to follow in February...)

Join us. Golem, Rav Shmuel and his band, Jerusalem indie band Miss Flag, Speakers including the writers of "When Do We Eat?", creators of young magazine empires, Jewish robots, and singles columnists from NYC. Resistance is futile.

Shabbat shalom!

 

Tonight! 8pm: PRESENTEXT: The Art of New Jewish Media

Come one, come all. Hope to see you there. Complete press release follows.
RSVPs requested but not required: esther @ presentensemagazine.org.

PresenText: The Art of New Jewish Media
Thursday, 1/25 at 8pm
@ The Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at NYU
7 East 10th Street (between 5th and University)

PresenTense Magazine Launches PresenText: The Art of New Jewish Media:
Special Exhibition Celebrates Technology, Art, Publishing and the Global Conversation on Jewish Identity

NEW YORK, JANUARY 20, 2007- In a celebration of the intersection of literature, technology, publishing, image and text, PresenTense Magazine will launch PresenText: The Art of New Jewish Media at a special public opening and reception this Thursday January 25 at 8 p.m. at the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at New York University, 7 East 10th Street, New York City. This visual exploration of how technology has transformed the art of publishing and infused new forms of Jewish community and identity with collaboration and interaction is produced in cooperation with NYU's

Edgar

M.

Bronfman

Center

and AvodaArts. The event is free and open to the public. RSVPs requested but not required (esther@presentensemagazine.org).

A multi-media installation, PresenText uses the story and content of PresenTense, a magazine dedicated to the invigoration of Hebrew culture and the enrichment of Jewish life, to explore how global communication has enabled the current generation to develop new connections to Jewish identity. "The show illustrates today's 'open-source' reality -- not only blurring the line between writers and readers, but questioning the notion of authority itself," says PresenTense editor and publisher Ariel Beery. "As young Jews around the world embrace the latest communication technologies to engage in a centuries-old conversation about Jewish identity, the traditional hierarchy of leaders and disciples is breaking down, dissolving the borders previously separating institutions from the masses," says Beery.

PresenText translates the written texts of this ongoing conversation into visual forms, articulated by a group of young, dynamic artists, designers and writers. "From blogs to text messages, from on-line dating to a new Jewish magazine produced by a global network of users/creators, technology has democratized the experience of being part of a transnational Jewish community," explains exhibit co-curator Tamar Benzikry, a student in the Jewish Art program at the Jewish Theological Seminary's

Graduate

School

.

PresenTense art director Lina Tuv, who designs the magazine from her studio in

Chicago

, is particularly proud of the ways that the PresenText exhibition uses graphic art and design, photography and magazine cover art to represent some of the many new forms that Jewish identity has assumed in the Age of Information. "Conveying these complex themes was an exciting challenge," she says. "For instance, the transformation of how we communicate and relate to our Jewish community, via the use of digital media, requires the compression of these themes into a simpler, more user-friendly form, in effect, translating a thousand words into one."

Co-curator Polly Zavadivker, PresenTense's drector of programs and a student at NYU's

Wagner

Graduate

School

, notes that the show uses material from PresenTense’s first two issues and celebrates revolutionary Jewish magazines past and present. "This exhibition explores how contemporary modes of communication have eroded barriers between Jews in

Israel

and throughout the Diaspora as never before, creating an international forum for dialogue of unprecedented diversity," she says.

Welcome to the next level of discussion on Jewish identity -- your voices and opinions are welcome.

Beliefnet's Oscar Coverage

Dudes, this is big. I've got one of the four rotating lead stories on today's Beliefnet homepage. Click the "The Oscar Nominations" button, or the headline: "The Oscar Goes to...Being an Outsider." (I wonder what blogger with fourteen years of day school education thought of that kind of concept.)

Enjoy, comment, disagree...and post your Oscar picks...

PresenText, Thursday night

You're all cordially invited to PresenTense's newest event, which examines the link between  technology, creativity and Jewish identity. The event, PresenText: The Art of New Jewish Media, is this Thursday, 1/25 at 8pm at the Bronfman Center at NYU.

PresenTense is a magazine that goes beyond the frontal presentation of articles and information, beyond the written page and beyond the internet, providing real-life, in-person opportunities for people to meet over creative projects. We've sponsored lectures and salons in New York, Chicago and Jerusalem, with other cities and events in the works, all toward expanding the global conversation on Jewish identity and creating a more diverse, eminently contemporary exploration of Jewish identity in the age of technology.

This event uses multiple media to reinterpret published pieces visually. For instance, in the photo that accompanies this post (see above right), the text of blogs piece I did for Issue Zero, which positioned the structure of blogging as a contemporary Talmud, is now laid out in a style reminiscent of an actual page of Talmud, complete with commentary along the sides. (You know, if a Talmud were written in English.)

RSVPs aren't required, but help (and can be addressed to me at esther@presentensemagazine.org). Feel free to forward the information to friends or colleagues. Hope to see you there!

Jewish Future Alert: Legacy Heritage Fellows

If you're looking for the fresh faces of the Jewish future, you may want to check out the Legacy Heritage Fellows of the past and present.

The Legacy Heritage Fellowship Program seeks to build a global community of outstanding leaders and influential opinion makers. It supports exceptional post graduates in North America, Europe and Israel who have committed to a year-long internship in a major governmental, non-governmental, think-tank or media setting. Mentored by senior executives in their placements and informed by specially-designed seminars, the Legacy Heritage Fellows with their comprehensive knowledge of historical and intellectual trends, serve as articulate proponents of Middle East peace.

The Legacy Heritage Fund also provides a summer science research program at Hebrew U for young (high school) science students and runs a synagogue/community "Innovation Project", and promises to add programs for senior citizens.

Deadline for application to the Legacy Heritage Fellowship, including letters of recommendation and transcripts from universities must be postmarked by February 28, 2007, so better get moving, people...

Back, Better, Bewildered

So, I got back yesterday, and spent the day pushing off jetlag. Today, I woke up, took my medication (four more days to go), bought some staples (coffee, milk, cereal, cheese and toilet paper--and in deference to the country I left behind, cucumbers and tomatoes) and got back to work.

I haven't even unpacked my suitcase yet. But I've been unpacking my observations and experiences from the trip, and going through some things in my head, so that's something. And I've been through the mail, trying to figure out what I owe and who still owes me.

And as for bewildered? I'm watching American Idol. And with the exception of Seacrest's antics outside the door of the audition room, I really don't find it funny. I find it upsettingly uncomfortable. They're making fun of how people dress, fine. And if you want to tell someone he has an awful voice, that's fine--it's a musical competition. But they're making fun of how people look, too. "You look like one of those animals that live in the jungle, with those huge eyes. Like a bush-baby." Are you kidding me? Are they making fun of people with social disabilities and whose faces are, ok, a little bit unusual? Is that their role?

Maybe I'm too sensitive. But if it's a singing competition, you should be able to say "you sing like a monkey on crack," but maybe "bush-baby" is off the menu of criticisms. I wonder if "Kokhav Nolad" (Israeli version of the "Idol" series) has the same attitude...

Adventures in Israeli Medicine

So, here's the story of that weather I was under.

The diagnosis is "severe bronchitis" or "severe pneumo-bronchitis," depending on how many times I asked Ludmilla the doctor, who actually spoke no English that I could discern of. I asked her "Mah yesh li" (what do I have?), and she first said "severe bronchitis" and then I said, "bronchitis?" and she said "pneumo" and then I said "pneumo-bronchitis?" and she said "bronchitis," and we went back and forth a few more times.

It was a fun visit. First Ludmilla poking and prodding, then an x-ray by the technician, Mohammed, who asked me if I had any nipple rings to remove before the xray was taken. (A more emphatic no was never uttered.) Then back to Ludmilla, who gave me a Darth Vader type inhaling apparatus to breathe into until my brain felt both melted and frozen at the same time. My nose was now running, and there was a thin film of saliva over the mouthpiece that I kept trying to wipe off and breathe through at the same time. Then after about 15 minutes, Ludmilla came back and injected something into the mask--no idea what. Another 15 minutes later, we were done.

Then I went over to the pharmacy to get some meds, where the apothecary told me he decided he's only going to give me half the dose that the doctor instructed because he didn't want me to spend too much money at once.

Perhaps the funniest part of this whole story? I began this whole experience at the front desk, where they gave me a plastic cup full of boiling hot tea with sugar and real lemon (ask the seeds that almost choked me when I sipped at the liquid) and asked for my name, I said Kustanowitz and started to spell it and they said, "zeh b'seder, ani makirah et hashem." Truly a miracle. Where everybody knows your name, I guess.

Or perhaps, what she was really saying was a proclamation of faith. "Ani makirah et Hashem," I recognize God. Ooooohhh....

In any case, thanks to everyone for their good wishes, soup, tea and indulgence as I've coughed my way to a new me. Or at least to the old one...