Today’s Jewish yoga was a success. We made it in time after the Ben Moser reading! The large yoga studio was mat to mat and the soul-athletes diverse in age, though not in gender or religion. I think the Birthrighters found out about the event from email blasts or word of mouth and the crowd alive when Israel was founded was brought by the event’s other sponsor, Romemu, a new UWS shul.
There were two yoga teachers. One Howie Katz, with the strongest New York Jew accent I have heard in a while, swiftly lectured us on key words in Yoga and Jewish philosophies, two ancient belief systems that Native Americans didn’t know about until relatively recently. Key words: chakra, cheit, shuvah, slichot, energetic body, and nonjudgmental awareness. The second teacher, Lara Lauchheimer, led an awesome asana practice, sun salutations and Ashtanga poses. 
Afterward, Misha and I met fellow Israel Outdoors Bike alumnus because he was wearing the most early-adopter shoes I have seen a brave person wear. When I asked what they’re for, he replied, “For all the things you want to do barefoot but can’t.”
Like many sporting shoes they are unconventional compared to keds but unlike all shoes they have 5 slots, one for each toe. Our new friend said he heard of someone’s “roman second toes” (mine are somewhat extreme) being corrected after wearing these Vibrams. Mostly what I want to do barefoot (and can’t) is look down and see normal and pedicured 2nd toes.
Then we met executive director of Romemu who said we should be on camera for being so cute and funny. She was smiling and went to Naropa but she seemed charmed. The night ended with less charm when Misha and I got into a small raised-voice conversation that I have to add to my list of repentance.
***Author of Clarice Lispector’s biography Why This World, Benjamin “I learned Yiddish to write this book” Moser has officially blown up Lispector’s spot. An audience member asked which Lispector book she should start with, certainly a hard question, and Moser suggested his. Learning about the events of her life, he said, opened up impregnable passages and themes. This might be the case, but I liked reading Lispector cold starting with The Stream of Life, on the impassioned referral from my coworker friend back when a bookstore employed me. I’ve already learned some things about Clarice from the book reviews of W.T.W. and hope to borrow that friend’s copy which has a glossy insert of photos that are indulgent and make me want to buy it, almost.
Moser explained a bit about why Clarice wasn’t more out with her Judaism, which of course had to do with 1940-1970 Brazilian and Brazilian Diplomat culture. Apparently a few years before her death (she was in her 50s) she lost her job at a newspaper because she was Jewish. Still, he said that her writing is “irreducibly Jewish” which he elaborated implies “a rage against the divine” and a disgusted attraction towards it. She grew up the daughter of Yiddish-speaking Ukrainian Jews and her sole sane son lives in Rio raising a Jewish brood, despite himself having had an ethnically Catholic father. So of course she’s a Jew.
She was not a Jewish community leader you might say. In that if you publish a sensation of a novella at 23 as an unknown poor beauty, writing openly about Jewish questions or people would put you at a disadvantage and under an awkward burden.
I was in Israel when I read Selected Cronicas not conscious she was Jewish until I read the introduction afterward when I noticed I did feel a little proud and somehow not surprised.
***Online things:
*Nathan Schneider made a post called Jewish Without the Big Noseness at his smart and personal blog The Row Boat, which I started RSSing after c-ing Nathan read at The Bushwick Reading Series at the Bushwick Library. It features a clip of Sarah Silverman differentiating Scientology and Judaism.
*An event listed on NYBLUEPRINT teaches us about Jewish Shakespeare scholarship.
Don’t miss “revolutionary new dramaturgy by John Hudson, an English Shakespearean researcher, that presents a 16th century Marrano/Converso Jewish woman as the real author of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets.”
Posted by Sam 
