• Here’s an interesting Easter trivia rundown I Stumbled Upon just two days ago. Didn’t bode well for my Spanish essay, but I bet Wesleyan students would be glad to know that the Foss Hill Easter Egg Hunt (maybe a tradition that should be revived?) got a mention here.
• Much in the spirit of LATFH comes Christmas is Dead, a tumblr blog originally designed to host writer Santamantana’s oddly large collection of people in Santa Claus suits doing terrible things. After a Halloween edition last year, I was glad to find last week that Santamantana apparently has an even larger collection of people in Easter bunny suits doing lots of things they really shouldn’t be. Great for pissing off neighbors in Olin with giddy laughter!
• Just click. This one speaks for itself.

Check out more goodies after the jump…

• Snopes.com featured a round up last year of Easter related-myths. Among the “true” highlights:  a bunny mascot at an Easter basketball game brings a girl from the audience out to the court during the halftime show. They begin to slow dance before the the poor guy in the suit gets his jaw broken from a heavy paw, not realizing the girl was actually an adult grizzly bear. Yes, there are pictures.
• Final link (for now, anyway–feel free to add in the comments): this is the myspace band page for Hare Eggs and Hare Abortions, an indie lo-fi quartet from Vancouver, CA that’s put out four excellent songs in the last three weeks. According to the page, later today not only will the album title and release date be available, but they’ll have the whole thing available to stream on the band’s website, also apparently launching later today. Eagerly awaiting with the rest of the blogosphere.

Reb Drew is a rabbi in the Reform movement who “weaves traditional Jewish liturgy and musical modes into the increasingly popular call-and-response chant technology from India, known as Kirtan.”

His main vocation is to make Torah accessible, deep and fun, — to Jew and non-Jew alike — in a way that is participatory and memorable. David Leipziger Teva, Rabbi and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Wesleyan University, recently wrote to Rabbi Hahn, saying, “You have enlightened our community in countless ways. I am envisioning your coming back every eighteen months or so. We should not let students graduate without being exposed to your Torah.”

Come for an afternoon and evening of “great energy, passion and melodic flow.”

BuHo: 3-4pm
The Bayit: 6pm (with FREE home-cooked dinner to follow!)

Date: Feb. 26
Time: 3:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Place: BuHo (356 Wash) and The Bayit (157 Church)

Will Schragis ‘12 invites us all to see Daniel Levine-Spound share his thoughts on Issac Deutscher’s speech, “The Non-Jewish Jew”:

Can one still be a non-Jewish Jew when a nation exists which claims to represent all Jews? What does Zionism mean for the radical universalist Jewish tradition dating back to Spinoza? We will examine several works by Marx, Freud, and Woody Allen with the goals of both delving deeper into Deutscher’s thoughts, and re-examining the meaning of his thesis in a contemporary context.

Date: Tonight, February 5th
Time: 8:00Pm
Place: PAC 002

Sunday, 9/27:
Dinner 5:00pm, Usdan Campus Center
Evening services/Kol Nidre 6:15 PM Beckham Hall

Monday, 9/28:
Morning service 10 AM: Beckham Hall
Havdallah followed by lox and bagels break the fast 7PM in
Usdan Campus Center: Daniel Family Commons

Check out the schedule at the chaplains’ website.

American Jewish newspaper The Forward explores his conflation of Wesleyan students, Jews, and Justin-Jinich, and talks about Jewish identity at Wesleyan in the wake of the shooting.

President Michael Roth and Rabbi David Leipziger Teva were (probably rightly) quick to dismiss the specific role of Jewishness in the muder, since this guy was clearly twisted. The students interviewed in the article agreed:

[...] what could have been a moment of vulnerability and isolation for Wesleyan’s Jewish students turned out to be quite the opposite. In interviews, Jewish, non-Jewish and half-Jewish Wesleyan students suggested repeatedly that nothing the alleged gunman had done moved them to view Jews as separated out in any way from the rest of the student body. For the students — and, it appears from his writings, for Morgan, as well — there was no distinction, because there is essentially no difference.

“I think it was more a dislike of Wesleyan students, and he considers us all ‘Jews,’” said freshman Jon Booth, who said he is not Jewish.

The May 6 shooting death of Justin-Jinich burst what students here describe as “the Wesleyan bubble,” replacing the ordinary stresses of finals period with shock and fear. In addition to being a very personal and fatal attack on Justin-Jinich — whom Morgan had stalked in the past — it also appeared to be, from Morgan’s journals, an attack on Wesleyan’s identity, on a campus where identity is not assumed, but debated, studied and even protested.

For Morgan, who was apprehended May 7, part of that had to do with his sense of Wesleyan’s students as the chosen elite. According to a warrant for his arrest, Morgan wrote resentfully about seeing the beautiful, smart and well-to-do students at Wesleyan. Somehow, it seems, this, combined with his obsession for Justin-Jinich, led him to focus on a different kind of chosenness, one that singled out Jewish students from their peers — or, perhaps, conflated the two.

Wesleyan has had a heavily Jewish presence for decades. Jeremy Zwelling, director of the university’s Israel and Jewish studies program, recalls Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld visiting in the late 1970s and commenting on how Jewish the campus felt compared with the stiff Protestantism of other New England colleges. According to Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, 735 of Wesleyan’s 2,700 undergraduates, or 27.2%, are Jewish.

Beyond the numbers, however, recently there have been signs of a higher Jewish profile on campus. The new dining hall has a kosher component for the first time. And President Michael Roth, who was installed in July 2007, is the first Jew to hold that post in the school’s 178-year history.

But right now, at least, school officials appear eager to downplay any focus on the role of Jewishness in the recent murder.

“I don’t think the ravings of someone about to commit murder are particularly relevant to who we are,” Roth told the Forward.

When a Forward reporter sought to interview residents of the Bayit, Rabbi David Leipziger Teva, Wesleyan’s Jewish chaplain, sent an e-mail labeled “URGENT” to the Bayit’s house manager, instructing her to “highly discourage” students from talking to the media lest their comments “be distorted to advance a range of personal agendas.” When asked about the e-mail, Teva said that he was simply trying to protect the students.

In general, Jewish identity at Wesleyan has been less notable for its emphasis on ethnic or religious solidarity than on qualities that have come to be associated with a different kind of Jewish cultural identity in America — activist liberal politics, intellectualism and a freewheeling brand of creativity.

That description could have extended to Justin-Jinich. A New York Times article said that Justin-Jinich was Jewish but that a former roommate said she regarded herself as “agnostic and politically liberal.”

“That’s Jewish!” Zwelling exclaimed. He added that the profile of the “typical” Wesleyan student — intellectual, elite and well heeled — though perhaps not entirely accurate, overlaps to a great extent with the image of the young Jewish suburbanites who do, in fact, attend such universities as Wesleyan.

Wesleyan does have a significant active Jewish community, of course, including the Bayit, which hosts Sabbath dinners at its kosher dining hall and mounts regular programs on Jewish and Israeli subjects. Yet even here, the lines are blurred, as a significant minority of the Bayit’s residents aren’t Jewish.

“I never identified with the Jews in the house more than on that day,” said one non-Jewish sophomore, who asked not to be identified by name. “Now I understand what it feels like to be in this position — being Jewish, feeling part of an oppressed group, with hateful prejudice directed against me because I live here.”

Part of the complication is that at Wesleyan, identity, Jewish or otherwise, is not a simple thing. It is a complex and multifaceted construction that people wear as consciously as an outfit of clothes.

In fact, many of the students interviewed bristled at the notion of reducing Justin-Jinich’s killing to a “Jewish Columbine.”

“The thing that frustrates me is that nobody is talking about it as an act of violence against women,” said Karina, a junior who described herself as “half-Jewish” and asked to be identified by her first name only. “To call it a ‘Jewish Columbine,’ that undermines [Morgan’s] intent.”

For others, the notion of antisemitism at a place like Wesleyan was simply foreign.

“Of course antisemitism exists, but I don’t think of it as a daily threat the way that others are targeted on a daily basis,” Jewish sophomore Laura Bliss said. “There’s definitely a tinge of antiquity that added to the surreal way in which everything happened.”

But for many, the most salient fact of the killing was the most basic, which was that Justin-Jinich was simply another student like themselves.

“I think because of the fact that Wesleyan is such a small school, we don’t necessarily see ourselves as a bunch of groups,” said Alex Gumpel, a sophomore. “We’re a bunch of individuals who happen to be in groups. The targeting of one individual is the targeting of the community as a whole.”

The Jewish Daily Forward: Wesleyan Shooter’s ‘Columbine’ Plan Spotlights Jewish Identity on Campus — Or Not

[Thanks to Adina Teibloom '10 for the tip.]

As you’ve probably noticed, Wesleying isn’t the most up-to-date source for information on this developing story.  The site is having problems with bandwidth overload – we have put measures in place to make the site load more easily and reduce this problem, but it’s not perfect.  The ACB has the most up-to-date (if sometimes incorrect and unnecessarily panic-inducing) info, and the campus alerts have all the necessary info.

Also, NBC has reported additional details about how Stephen  Morgan knew Johanna; apparently she had filed complaints against him in 2007.

Stay safe, Wesleyan.

[EDIT by Sheek, 12:23 pm]

To reiterate Beau’s latest post, get the most up-to-date info on the situation from the Campus Security newsreel.

You are cordially invited to join us for:

Wesleyan’s Passover Seder

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 6 PM in Beckham Hall
Please RSVP by emailing esavage (at) wes
(Name, WesID #, or a check made out to “Bon Appetit”)
Cost: 16.95 in points or Middletown Cash per person or 1 meal and $6.95 in points/Middletown Cash
For more information about Passover at Wesleyan, go to: www.wesleyan.edu/chaplains/jewish/passover.html

Copious amounts of Manischewitz wine and questions about if you’ve met a nice Jewish boy yet probably not included.

Do you really love your mother’s latkes? Your grandfather’s hamentashen? Do you have a compelling argument as to why one is better than the other? Speak at the Latke Hamentashen Debate!

The Latke Hamentashen Debate is a humourous academic debate in which academics discuss the merits of latkes and hamentashen (two popular Jewish foods) from their respective fields. Arguments range from simple math (triangles vs circles) to abstract philosophical reasoning and everything in between.

The debate is Thursday, April 2nd at 8pm. We still need speakers to represent both latkes and hamentashen. (You don’t need to know anything about Judaism to participate.) If you are interested, please email ahartley@wes.

Date: Thursday, April 2nd
Time: 8 pm
Place: Judd 116

Blogging
Emily Hoffman ‘10 informs us that the Wesleyan Havurah has a brand new blog where you can post and read all about upcoming events in and related to the Jewish community. Check it out to get the news on Jews.

The Bayit Wants You!
Looking for a big, beautiful house with an open, welcoming community dedicated to exploring and sharing Judaism and other cultures? Then the Bayit might be just the place for you! The deadline for applications is this Friday, February 27th, at at midnight.

Dining and Schmoozing
The Interfaith Justice League is extending an invitation to come to the Interfaith Potluck.
Come check out next year’s new Interfaith Program House and mingle with friends!
Bring ethnic meals, desserts, or drinks (or just yourself), and a plate/knife/fork/cup!

Date: Thursday, February 26th
Time: 6:00pm
Place: 230 Washington Street (soon to be Interfaith House!)

A reminder: if you’re thinking of applying to Interfaith House (or any other program house), the deadline is also this Friday, February 27th

Tu B’shvat, the birthday of trees, is coming up, and the Jewish Community invites you celebrate with us! We’ll be having a special seder (ceremonial meal) on Friday night at the Bayit.

Following Shabbat services and dinner, we will enjoy dried fruits, nuts, and other goodies to celebrate nature and the seasons, and we will discuss how Judaism relates to environmental issues. The seder will probably start around 8:30 pm and go for about an hour. Please come and bring friends!

Date: Friday, February 6
Time: 8:30 pm
Place: The Bayit