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The Nazz Abides
- Shimshon Stu Siegel (shimstu)
- Somerville/Waltham, Massachusetts, United States
- Jewish Educator, amateur cyber cowboy. Director of Impact Boston- the most fabulous Jewish service learning program in the Universe. Member of the Dream Team at the Brandeis Univ. Office of High School Programs. Certified Un-Rabbi (5+ years in training). Fermenter, fomenter, pimento.
15 comments:
may you continue to feel that way, and appreciate it!
Shimshon, Shalom!
Sorry, but the title of this most recent short post is intolerable. It's not funny, it's not ironic, it's not redeeming. The associations won't go away, Shimshon, and they shouldn't. A quote such as "Ehov et Hamelachah, u'sneh et harabbanut" (Avot), although it might resonate with way fewer people, would be much more on target.
Rav Yeshoshua- point duly noted. at first, i confess, i was going to use the quote as is-- the words, in a vacuum, felt rather true at the time i was posting. obviously, work can only mean "an engaging task undertaken by choice." but it was exactly that sense of freedom i was feeling that brought those words to mind. However, there is clearly no vacuum in the human soul.
i figured that no way in hell would i be able to decontextualize the complete phrase, so i made the adjustment.
i wasn't trying to be ironic, nor funny. maybe, foolishly, "cute." and maybe a bit challenging- not to those who suffered, but to the inescapable meanings we ascribe to things.
perhaps that was a foolish undertaking itself. i am not above admitting so. but i'm gonna leave the heading as it is, because now it's far more interesting than its original context
(i would never try to be ironic. i learned my lesson about 5 years ago with the Matthew Broderick Debacle. Google - Broderick Stuart Siegel - for more on that one)
Dear Rav Yehoshua-
then i woke up this morning and thought that maybe the reason i didn't feel so solid with what i was saying in last night's comment was that i didn't really care that much about the case i presenting. Add to that the fact that most of my readers probably don't know what simcha means (that is, the word itself), and i found little reason to keep the post as it was.
i could have argued for keeping it unchanged for the sake of holding my ground against your will and protest, but what a foolish motivation that would be.
you are, after all, a teacher, friend and mentor- why must i be so 20th damn western and resolve to spit in your face.
b'chavod
2 things i forgot to add-
i would not be able to use "u'sneh et harabbanut" while simultaneously trying to show my love for you.
the other is that i still do believe in challenging the inherent "sacredness" or "taboo" we put on words, things and places, when there is a message to be conveyed. for example, i think my friend Dan's keffiah tzitzit are fabulous.
i just woke up this morning realizing that, in this instance, with this concept and context, i would rather concede to you.
of course my new title, rather than a possibly confusing and offensive rephrasing of the Nazi "slogan," is a quote from the 1980s rap artist Kool Moe Dee.
Perhaps even less recognizable, but certainly less problematic.
A little late , but I was singing KMD to myself as I soon as I read the title, and went to the comments... ooh 6 comments... and wondered what the deal was about that title that caused the surge of comments , then started to understand that it had been changed.
And when this rhyme is done, your mind will become, so trapped in the rap, you'll lust on another one
i DO need another one... which jay is this?
Thank you for you thoughts - all the various angles from which you considered your response - and thank you for the change. I also appreciate challenging "orthodoxies" when the challenge is coming from a deep, questioning, wondering, striving place, and not just an expression of another convention, such as the bumper sticker, "Question Authority". I don't know when, if ever, the images of the Holocaust will be sufficient digested as to enable their appropriation in other contexts. Perhaps the fact that we can make jokes about Genghis Khan is a tremendous moral failing, seeing as how he wreaked suffering the likes of which no single man had ever done before him. If time effaces memory and allows us to reenter the space of our world unchanged at the core, then we maybe we don't know how to live.
this may be anticlimactic- but ,hey shimshon- when do we make soup?
lovya..
shaul
OK, another one, I signed in this time.
Here we go
Come on
Yeah yeah
The word is out
Kool Moe Dee's in the house again
And here we go again
And word has it the brother's esoteric knowledge
Is a little too deep for the fans
So he gon' come this time with a simplyfied rhyme
Check it out
Around and around and around we go
People comin to the jam to hear me flow
The live lyricist is here and it's so
I got a funky beat to let you know
Only real brothers wanna hear real rhymes
All the soft suckers want the nickel-and-dime
Candy-coated, sugar-coated bubblegum rap
Long as it's movin on a funky track
My vocabulary's over their head
They can't understand a word I said
So I gotta come with the watered-down sound
With mediocre adjectives, verbs and nouns
Party people in the party only wanna dance
It's hard to rock a party when you're lyrically advanced
I tone down the lyrics, supressed ego
Got a funky rhythm, now watch me go
---
And one shout outto all the other Jays and to all the party people in the party who only wanna dance
Tell me, is it hard to rock a party when you're lyrically advanced?
Sometimes verbal sophistication certain obstructs the laid-back demeanor that is so necessary to rocking a party. As a famous wordsmith once intoned:
It's hard to clock the friction
When you dissin' suckas' diction
PS Anonymous commenting breaks hearts. And kills puppies.
crap- i hate typos. i meant to say "certainly."
Please don't kill my puppy. I was anonymously lazy.
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