what

Not “Ani­mal, Veg­etable, or Min­er­al.” Yes, in those cat­e­gories, every­thing can be reduced to their low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor of “atoms.” And on the com­put­er, we can con­sid­er it all just “ones” and “zeros.” Nonethe­less, here I’ve gath­ered mate­ri­als I’ve pro­duced that are gen­er­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with “text” “visu­al art” and “music.”

Music

When in high school and col­lege I was a music major. I have had a long and deep inter­est in music of all kinds. We grew up with “folk music” in the house. We lived not far from the KFAC broad­cast­ing anten­na and when I got a crys­tal radio the only sta­tion I could pick up was that one. At the time the sta­tion played only clas­si­cal music. I would go to sleep with the ear­phone on, or hang­ing direct­ly above, my pil­low lis­ten­ing to the open­ing strains of Tchaikovsky’s piano con­cer­to No.1 in B‑flat minor, Op. 23 which was the theme music of “The Gas Com­pa­ny Evening Con­cert”. I cred­it this with my inter­est in West­ern Clas­si­cal Art music.

Here I’ll share thoughts about music and some of the music that has been impor­tant in my life.

Discussions

Dis­cus­sions are just that, col­lec­tions of ideas orga­nized in a coher­ent man­ner. Some of these are quite brief, oth­ers have more depth.

I high­light access to one below.

• Shoa
• On cre­at­ing down­load­able resources for Jew­ish col­lege students.
• Mus­lim spokes­peo­ple — some­body’s missing!
• What Do We Mean By “Reli­gious” Wars
• An Online Primer On Islam
• Islam Hijacked
• What We Can Do
• The Occu­pa­tion Must End!
• Avi­gail’s friends want­ed to know why I do not wear a Kippah
• Same-Sex Com­mit­ment Ceremonies
• The Nat­ur­al Life Cycle Of Mail­ing Lists
• The “Decem­ber Dilemma”
• Rab­bi Abra­ham Joshua Heschel

Liturgies

Since the late six­ties I’ve “com­posed” works for groups. A very few are musi­cal com­po­si­tions. Most are tex­tu­al readings.

I high­light access to one below.

• A Grow­ing Haggadah
• A Sukkot Meditation
• A Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Com­mu­ni­ty Thanksgiving
• A Chanukkah Collection
• A Purim Shpeil for Shabbat
• A Wed­ding Ceremony
• A Funer­al Ceremony

Sermonics

I once deliv­ered ser­mons, but rarely now. I con­tin­ue to col­lect what
I’ve writ­ten here.

• Our Guide­book and Our Spaceship
• For Rosh haShan­nah & Yom Kippur
• The “Scape” Goat (The “eScape” Goat); Yom Kip­pur 5755

Publishing

Here I make avail­able the works of oth­ers that I believe should see the
light of a cath­ode ray tube (with whom I may or may not agree).

• Rab­binic Offi­ci­a­tion at Same-Sex Cer­e­monies
  by Rab­bi Joan Friedman
• A Let­ter To My Rab­binic Col­leagues by Rab­bi W. Gun­ther Plaut. [regard­ing the same-sex mar­riage dis­cus­sion on HUCALUM and RavKav.]
• Who’s doing the She­ma?
  (… no, Who’s doing the can­dle light­ing!)
  by Can­tor Joel Col­man
  adapt­ed from “Who’s on First” by Abbott & Costello
• My Poet­ry Col­lec­tion
  In the late six­ties, I noticed some books on the poet­ry shelves of a vari­ety of inde­pen­dent book­stores. These had unusu­al Jew­ish-sound­ing titles. I start­ed col­lect­ing the books (often no more than broad­sides or pam­phlets) hop­ing to find poems of a spir­i­tu­al nature that could enter new sid­durim (a few have). Through the fol­low­ing years till the mid ’70s I did poet­ry read­ings and encour­aged more writ­ing which I pub­lished in Davka of which I was then the edi­tor. The vast major­i­ty of these texts I donat­ed to the Klau Library at HUC-JIR in Cincin­nati. I present the bib­li­og­ra­phy here as a resource for oth­ers to be aware of some of the breadth of Jew­ish poet­ic expres­sion avail­able. If you know of col­lec­tions of poet­ry use­ful for includ­ing in a sid­dur, please let me know. In the future, I hope to add a list of the spe­cif­ic poems I con­tin­ue to use (if not, due to copy­right con­cerns, their actu­al texts).
• דוקא/Davka (the journal)
  • The Inter­nal Stut­ter of the Amer­i­can Jew — Rab­bi Richard Levy
  • Vol. I, No. 4
  • Vol. II, No. 2

The Jewish Left

Very lit­tle has appeared online that deals with the activ­i­ties of the Jew­ish left dur­ing the 1960s. I try to make up for that lack here by report­ing on what I did with my peers in the Los Ange­les area. All of this mate­r­i­al, and more, will be avail­able at appro­pri­ate archives soon.

• The Hurvitz Fam­i­ly’s Yom Kip­pur Leaflet call­ing for an end to the war in Viet­nam (1966).
  The leaflet (print­ed on white paper (the col­or of the scan is not true)) was dis­trib­uted out­side of a num­ber of syn­a­gogues in Los Ange­les fol­low­ing Yom Kip­pur ser­vices 5727 (1966). the text; a scan of the front of the leaflet; a scan of the back of the leaflet.
  “Mom” Faye Hurvitz has been dis­trib­ut­ing the leaflet once again due to the cur­rent (Autumn 2004) polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the U. S. in rela­tion to the war in Iraq. It has received nods of recog­ni­tion for its prescience.
• Some thoughts about Abra­ham Joshua Hes­chel on the 25^th anniver­sary of his death.
• The Con­fer­ence on Jew­ish Action held May 9–11, 1969 which served as the orga­niz­ing meet­ing of the Jew­ish Rad­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ty of Los Angeles.
• Thoughts about the com­mon­al­i­ty of the strug­gles of Blacks (African Amer­i­cans) and Jews dur­ing the peri­od. A cou­ple of leaflets of the Jew­ish Rad­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ty on the subject: 
  • Amer­i­can Oppres­sion Divides Black and Jew; the first leaflet of the Jew­ish Rad­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ty of Los Ange­les (Jan­u­ary 5, 1970).
  • A com­par­i­son of the strug­gles of Sovi­et Jew­ish Pris­on­er of Con­science Boris Kochu­biyevsky and Black Pan­ther Bob­by SealeFree Boris Free Bob­by; the eighth leaflet of the Jew­ish Rad­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ty of Los Ange­les (August 7, 1970).
• The text of the Peo­ple’s Peace Treaty dis­trib­uted by the Jew­ish Rad­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ty of Los Ange­les. And scans of the pam­phlet that accom­pa­nied it: The front; the back; sup­port­ing mate­ri­als inside poet­ry; the a Torah-based case against the war by Rab­bi Moshe Adler; con­tin­ued; and The Viet­nam War and the Needs of the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty.

A Growing Haggadah

I edit and print a Hag­gadah every year (and have done this for the past 20 or so). This year (5757), for the sec­ond year, I have updat­ed and tak­en much (if not most) of the print­ed ver­sion and post­ed it here. This ver­sion dif­fers from the print­ed ver­sion in a vari­ety of ways. The elec­tron­ic ver­sion can change at any time. You can read it both lin­ear­ly and hyper­tex­tu­al­ly. The hyper­text links con­nect var­i­ous parts of the Hag­gadah and they also lead out from the Hag­gadah to the rest of the WWW. The print­ed ver­sion is sta­t­ic and only changes annu­al­ly. I designed it for lin­ear read­ing at the Seder.

The Hag­gadah (the 5756 edi­tion) was writ­ten up in “Judaism on the Web” by Irv­ing Green, 1997, MIS:Press, New York.

Sho’a
I collect here some personal attempts to respond.

• Com­mem­o­ra­tion event (1970 Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia) In 1970, the war in Viet­nam still raged. Many young Jews in the Los Ange­les area orga­nized a group called the Jew­ish Rad­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ty. They planned an event to com­mem­o­rate the Sho’a and call atten­tion to the fact that the Unit­ed States had not signed the Inter­na­tion­al Geno­cide Con­ven­tion. I pre­pared the leaflet for the event. The design is, in a sense, in inver­sion of the flag of the State of Israel. I spent many hours get­ting to know the young boy in the pic­ture, watch­ing him.
• Greet­ings “from the ‘youth’ ” offered at the annu­al “War­saw Ghet­to Upris­ing” com­mem­o­ra­tion event spon­sored by the Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tion-Coun­cil of Greater Los Ange­les, April 18, 1971, at Tem­ple Israel of Hol­ly­wood. (First pub­lished in Davka Vol­ume 1, Num­ber 4; Sum­mer 1971.)
• Davka Port­fo­lio “Thir­ty Years After the World Van­ished” (1973) Many years ago I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty (responsibility/honor) of edit­ing a jour­nal for Jew­ish youth (stu­dents) called Davka. Stu­dents put posters on the walls of their apart­ments. Most often these posters had no Jew­ish con­tent, and when they did, it was of a com­mer­cial or strict­ly polit­i­cal nature. We decid­ed to pro­duce a port­fo­lio of repro­duc­tions of real art, suit­able for fram­ing, that would sell at a rea­son­able price ($10.00!).
• Maror (1988 — 1995 Haggadah)
• Maror (1997 Haggadah)
• Rach­manut (1997) Many peo­ple begin to get impa­tient with those whose only response to their Jew­ish­ness is via the Sho’a. I’d like us to show a bit of “rach­mones” for them.
• Sho’a Night­mares (1998) I think every teenage Jew­ish child ought to have a week of Sho’a relat­ed night­mares. If we can reen­act the Exo­dus and liv­ing in Sukkot, why not the Sho’a?

Art

I don’t do much with the visu­al arts. How­ev­er, I enjoy tak­ing pho­tographs and I make an annu­al Rosh haShan­nah Greet­ing card.

• A sam­pling of some pho­tographs I’ve tak­en appears here.
  
• Since 1996 I have used a week of my sum­mer (usu­al­ly at camp (Swig or New­man)) to pro­duce a linoleum block (or oth­er visu­al). Each block rep­re­sents a verse (usu­al­ly) from the book of Psalms and becomes a mini visu­al midrash.
  I col­lect them here for your view­ing pleasure.

WHO	WHAT	WHERE	WHEN	WHY	HOW

© Mark Hurvitz
Last modified September 17, 2020