Hasta La Gadget!

(RNS) Earlier this month we learned that Washington, D.C., police had charged a prominent rabbi with spying on naked women at his synagogue’s mikvah. So what is a mikvah, anyway, and does it have anything to do with sex?

What’s a mikvah?

A mikvah is a pool of water — some of it from a natural source — in which observant married Jewish women are required to dip once a month, seven days after the end of their menstrual cycle. The ocean is a mikvah. A lake can be a mikvah. More commonly, it’s indoors and looks like an oversized bathtub. “Mikvah” comes from the Hebrew word for “collection,” as in a collection of water.

For those curious about the law behind the mikvah, Rabbi Alana Suskin points to lusty Leviticus verses (15:19, 15:24, 18:19 and 20:18) that deal with all sorts of, er, human emissions. In ancient times, the Israelites immersed in a mikvah before entering Jerusalem’s Holy Temple.

So, a mikvah is about hygiene?

Dips in the mikvah take the woman from a state of impurity (“tumah” in Hebrew) to a state of purity (“taharah”). Tumah and taharah, however, do not correlate with clean and dirty, said Rivkah Slonim, director of education at the Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at Binghamton University. “Mikvah is about the immersion of the soul,” she said.

Tumah refers to the fact that the woman had a period because she didn’t become pregnant in the past month; it recognizes the absence of a new life in her. The mikvah restores her to a state of taharah in that she has the potential to bring new life into the world.

What about the sex part?

Once the mikvah immersion takes place, a woman is free to have sex with her husband, which is not permitted when she is in a state of tumah. At this point in a woman’s cycle, she is most fertile.

Yes, your math is right. Very observant Jewish couples do not have sex for half the month — the days a woman is having her period and seven days after that.

It’s a big no-no to talk about another woman you saw at mikvah, because it’s the same as saying: “I know who’s gonna get some tonight!”

Can you wear a bathing suit in the mikvah?

No. The idea of mikvah is that there is no barrier between the person and the water. This means no clothes, but also no jewelry, makeup, nail polish, fake nails or beauty products on the hair or skin. In mikvahs run by more observant Jews, an attendant will check to make sure these requirements are met.

Aren’t people too embarrassed to get naked at the mikvah?

Less traditional mikvahs allow people to immerse alone. In traditional mikvahs, a female attendant will give the woman as much privacy as possible, averting her eyes until the woman is in the water. Then she watches to see that an immersion is “kosher,” i.e., that the woman’s body is completely under water. Her hair can’t be floating on the surface.

Do men ever go to the mikvah? What about unmarried women?

Observant men will sometimes use a mikvah before Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) and before Jewish holidays. Mikvahs are also used to make eating and cooking implements kosher, or permitted, under Jewish dietary laws. Conversions to Judaism also require a dip in the mikvah, too.

In recent decades, the mikvah has enjoyed a revival among less observant Jews who see it as a way to mark transitions in their lives. “Open” mikvahs, those that welcome Jews for reasons not required by Jewish law, encourage people to immerse after a divorce, after chemotherapy, to celebrate a new job or to find closure after an abortion — among other reasons. Mayyim Hayyim (“Living Waters”) near Boston is considered a pioneer in the movement.

Do non-Jews ever go to mikvah?

Not typically, though many Christians have pointed out the Jewish roots of Christian baptism.

One of the disturbing aspects of the case of Rabbi Barry Freundel, the District rabbi who has pleaded not guilty to spying on women as they prepared for mikvah, is that he reportedly encouraged his non-Jewish students to give mikvah a try.

Many traditional Jews believe mikvahs should be reserved for those who need it to observe Jewish law. And they worry that Freundel may have had a sinister motive: to peep at naked women.

Can the mikvah enhance your marriage? Your sex life?

There’s no proof, but many Jewish couples say observing the laws that require them to not touch each other until the woman has emerged from the mikvah gives them a once-a-month honeymoon. It takes hard work on many fronts to make a marriage work, but the mikvah can help, writes Slonim:

For two weeks they must finely hone that almost lost form of art: communication. With physical intimacy not an option, they are catapulted into a deep friendship, which in turn can only help fuel the passion they unleash when they come back to each other’s sexual embrace.

On Halloween night, the European Commission – Europe’s “executive” – changed. At the helm of foreign policy, Lady PESC – as Catherine Ashton was known – gave way to Mrs PESC, as Federica Mogherini prefers to be called. Two different women leaders, two leadership styles in foreign policy. The right time for an assessment and for a preview of what it is possibly to come.

Lady Catherine Ashton was named EU High Representative in November 2009. Her early days in office did not progress well, undermining her image and stance for a long time. Her nomination in November 2009 had come as a surprise: Ashton had been an EU Commissioner for a few months but she was little known to the European public, let alone to the rest of the world. Her name came in after months of speculations over whether a high-caliber politician would take the job. Hence, Ashton was seen as a living proof of the unwillingness of the EU to matter on the world scene.
Mrs Mogherini was equally little known before her turbulent nomination; likewise, her nomination was proceeded by expectations that heavy weights like Carl Build and Radosław Sikorski might get the job. The Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi threatened a veto to have her named.

At her hearing at the European Parliament, Mogherini however passed her first test with full marks, also giving a early taste of her leadership style. While Ashton is known for her bad temper – so much that her aides took classes to cope with it – Mogherini’s style is soft. A conciliatory tone, also supported by her younger age and reassuring physical appearance. For unfair that this is, bad temper and physical appearance are unfortunately more penalizing for women leaders than for men. Assertive women are often perceived as aggressive; aggressiveness is ok for men but lethal for women leaders. In this sense, Mogherini seem to have find her own voice, as communication experts would call it. The mail Mogherini wrote to the EEAS staff, thanking for their work in preparing the hearing, was also very well received and seen by many as a nice change in pace. Oddly, however, in the hearing Mogherini did not thank Ashton: word is that the two do not see eye to eye.

Ashton did not have an administration to rely on and setting it up was not an easy task. The making of the European External Action Service (EEAS) – a horrid Euro-jargon word invented to avoid using EU diplomacy – soon became the focus of a tribal-diplomatic war. The European Commission at war with the national governments, the European Parliament threatening to block or delay the creation of the new service; new member states at odds with the old ones; small countries rallying against the big bullies; big countries plotting one against the other.

In short, all the odds were against Ashton. Four years after, it is fair to say that she did a reasonable job. Given the conditions, hardly anyone could have done better. Ashton proved to be a formidable negotiator; her ability in shaping the Serbia-Kossovo agreement and in leading the negotiations with Iran (where she is supposed to stay on) are widely recognized both inside and outside Europe. She was the first to visit Egypt after the turmoil and overall won American appraisal and trust.

Federica Mogherini now inherits a decently working machine and can bring the EEAS to the next level. As an EU high official put in, Ashton began as a Brit and ended up as a European. Mogherini is already a convinced European – a member of the Erasmus generation, as she often likes to recall. She though comes from a country, Italy, who has a record of leaving its European representatives alone in Brussels and that too often fights for the shiny positions, forgetting where the real power lies. In the new Commission, Italy has only one Chief of Staff – Mogherini’s own one – as compared to five German Chief of Staff and twelve deputies.
Mogherini announced a review of EEAS for the spring. That can be her point of force or turn into her dead end. While a Foreign Minister in Italy, she has tried to escape the minutiae of administering the machine to concentrate on travel. It is a common mistake, especially for people with limited managing experience: fearing the “machine”, they concentrate on the big foreign policy issues, forgetting the fundamental role that the administration plays in implementation phase.

Mogherini likes to travel the world and to lead foreign policy. This might prove a bit more difficult at the EU level rather than at the national one. Among her national colleagues, Ashton chose to play the broker, rather than primus inter pares; Mogherini is likely to act the other way round. Whether she will manage, it is another story. Gone Carl Build and Radosław Sikorski, there are no heavy weights left in the General Affairs Council – as the gathering of Foreign Ministers is called – to counterbalance her. However, while the smaller EU countries have an interest in a functioning EU foreign policy – as it helps them amplifying their voice – the bigger ones are definitely not likely to surrender more power to the EU level in foreign policy.

According to Carnegie Europe, the EU High Representative shall be more like the US National Security Advisor than the US Secretary of State. It is unlikely that Mogherini will follow this particular advice. It would also be a fundamental mistake to confound her soft style with lack of will. After she failed to be named by the European Council last July, she decided to fight back and put all her energy in networking and raising her international profile to achieve her goal.

In 1985, Jacques Delors was named at the head of the European Commission because Margaret Thatcher was deceived by his seemingly unassuming semblance and tone. He inherited a low-spirited administration, vexed by the difficult Seventies. He turned out to be the most formidable Commission President the EEC/EU has ever had ever, without whom neither the Single Market nor the Euro would exist. Today’s messy world need a stronger unified European voice more than ever. May the new Mrs Pesc be the EU foreign policy’s Delors.

London–In all my theater-going days, I don’t remember seeing a production that would likely give me nightmares. The thought had never crossed my mind. Until, that is, I went to the Pleasance Company and witnessed The Curing Room, David Ian Lee’s import from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Playwright Lee had come upon two paragraphs in George Steiner’s classic, The Death of Tragedy concerning seven Russian soldiers captured in World War II who were thrown naked into a locked room and left with no food, no heat, no nothing.

Since food was unavailable, eating each other rather quickly became a topic of conversation and not too shortly after that turned into a reality. To depict this graphically, Lee and director Joao de Sousa leave very little out, including blood and bones–Lifecast & Dapper Cadaver, the prosthetic props supplier. (What isn’t shown or dealt with as a small sop to audience sensibilities is urination and defecation.)

Guided unflinchingly by de Sousa, the actors asked to perform this difficult but undeniably potent 90-minute drama are Rupert Elmes, Harvey Robinson, Marlon Solomon, Will Bowden, John Hoye, Matt Houston and Thomas Holloway. They’re required to go light years farther than William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in demonstrating how deeply civilized behavior does or doesn’t extend and where limits are set on the will to survive–if anywhere.

All buff men, the actors are to be congratulated for bravery in a production that isn’t likely to be deemed broadly commercial many places. I’m glad I saw it at a venue bold enough to offer the 90-minute play and recommend it to others with the warning that they have strong stomachs.
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Things also get blood-soaked at the recently opened Sam Wanamaker Theatre, where to join Shakespeare’s reimagined Globe, architect Theo Crosby has recreated a Jacobean space with a 340-seating-and-standing capacity. At the moment the free-flowing blood on knives, hands and clothes is courtesy of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

This is the one–revived frequently in England but not so often in the US–where brother and sister Giovanni (Max Bennett) and Annabella (Fiona Button) act on their romantic attraction to each other and thereby set off a series of vengeful murders.

Though Ford makes strong arguments for the sibs to lie together (leading to a pregnancy), any favorable attitude towards incest is kiboshed by what develops when Annabella’s father (Sam Cox) insists she wed (and she does to no good end) Soranzo (Stefano Braschi). In his turn, Soranzo has snubbed Hippolita (Noma Dumezweni), and she’s out to wreak her vengeance at the Annabella-Soranza nuptials.

The revenge plots set in motion are almost too numerous to count, although they seem mostly carried out by the ruthless Vasquez (Philip Cumbus). Swept up in them are several others, perhaps the most irresistible two being the clumsy Bergetto (James Garnon), an Annabella suitor more attracted to Philotis (Alice Haig), and a corrupt Cardinal (Garnon again), whose notions of justice wouldn’t be deemed universal.

By the end, even more bodies have littered the stage than the corpses in The Curing Game, although none of these are consumed. Director Michael Longhurst sees to it that Ford’s glimpse of a hopelessly decadent world is simultaneously gleeful and grim by having his players hold back nothing in their emoting. (There’s nudity here, too, but it’s discreet.)

Designer Alex Lowde’s costumes are gorgeous, until, that is, they’re sullied. Bret Yount gets to direct a series of exciting fights. In a loft above the stage, Arngeir Hauksson and Emily Baines underline the several dark moods with lute, theorbo, recorder, shawms, dulcimer and other what-have-you period instruments.

The result–and the obvious aim–is to suggest as strongly as possible what an audience under James I’s rule would experience. Uh, not exactly, since men took on women’s roles until Charles II’s reign. Nonetheless, with the only lighting thrown on the stage being candelabras hung from the ceiling and carried by the cast, it all worked for me.
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Is blood spilled at the Old Vic, where Sophocles’s Electra is being given an immaculately stark production? You bet it is, but only a few drops. It occurs when the surreptitiously returning Orestes (Jack Lowden) cuts his palm to moisten the parched land as he prepares to have his servant (Peter Wight) announce his death.

Exactly why he wants it bruited about perhaps involves his not having Clytemnestra (Diana Quick) learn he’s back in town and seeking revenge for her presiding over his father Agamemnon’s murder. The disturbing news has its most devastating effect, however, on his sister Electra (Kristin Scott Thomas).

Electra is the one around whom Sophocles constructs his fifth-century B. C. play. More than anything else as Sophocles contemplates Greek revenge–demanded when situations arise like Agamemnon’s sacrificing Iphigenia for a strong wind and Clytemnestra’s bloody response–it’s the effect the murders have on a woman of deep feeling that is his intention. Through her he displays the torment that results from such actions.

Bemoaning Electra’s abandoned status as a virtual slave to Clytemnestra. Scott Thomas gives a thrilling performance. Her hair cut bluntly and wearing a loose dress the color of barren earth, she reaches depths of loss when hearing the brother on whom she’s pinned her hopes has died. Her repeatedly howling the word “pain” while clutching her sack-like garment is a highpoint moment. When she realizes the stranger before her is truly Orestes, Scott Thomas’s Electra then reaches heights of joy. Ian Rickson’s direction of the reunion is beautifully done.

Scott Thomas is aided by Quick’s glaring and blaring Clytemnestra. Their confrontation scene swells with terror. Liz White as conciliating sister Chrysothemis and Tyron Huggins as the Aegisthus make their scenes count.

Mark Thompson’s set placed in the round–and loomed over by a high double door on one side and a dead tree at the other side–helps give the impression that the ancient drama is taking place in a Greek arena. And that’s all to the good of Sophocles’s up-close-and-personal look at the boundless nature of human emotions.

It sounds like an interesting challenge. Staging an authentic-looking zombie apocalypse while — at the same time — not scratching up any of Grizzly Creek Lodge’s nice new furniture.

But that’s exactly what Jon Cooke has spent the past five-and-a-half weeks doing. Taking Knott’s Berry Farm‘s recently refurbished Camp Snoopy and — using the 45 minutes between when this Buena Park theme park closes for the day and when Halloween Haunt officially opens for the night — then transforming this family-friendly area into a six-acre wide kill zone.

“While Security is clearing the Park and sweeping the last few Guests towards the exit, myself and six or seven other Knott’s employees are backstage preparing everything. We have a box truck loaded up with bodies and barricades, different barrels and stuff. And as soon as we get a Park Clear, we drive onstage and immediately begin setting everything up,” Cooke explained during a recent phone interview. “Our goal is to have the entire area flipped and get all of our zombies in place before the first Guest wanders back to Camp Snoopy and then get in line for ‘Special Ops: Infected.’ “

“And what is ‘Special Ops: Infected’?,” you ask. SOI is the multi-track, interactive, group participation experience that Jon — who is one of the leads in Knott’s Scary Farm’s prop department — has been trying to convince Cedar Fair officials to build for a number of years now.

“I’m a paintball fan. I love doing physical stuff, plus playing video games like ‘Left 4 Dead.’ But then when ‘The Walking Dead‘ debuted on AMC and then became this huge hit, it all just kind of clicked for me one day. That here was this perfect storm of elements that could now be combined to create a maze that was unlike anything else that had ever been done for Haunt before,” Cooke continued. “So I brought this idea up to Lara Hanneman, who’s the Director of Entertainment here at Knott’s one day. And she just kind of looked at me and said ‘Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. But how exactly are we going to pull that off?’ ”

And why was Hanneman concerned? Because what Jon wanted to do wasn’t really a maze. At least not in the traditional sense.

“When you’re building a maze for a Halloween event like this, strictly from a design point-of-view, you always design the rooms for your maze with two things in mind: Where is each scare in that room going to come from? And where is the distraction going to come from that then sets up the scare in that room?,” Jon stated. “With ‘Special Ops: Infected,’ by placing a laser tag gun in each of the Guest’s hands, that’s our distraction.”

“What also helps here to give Guest a different experience is that ‘Special Ops: Infected’ doesn’t play by traditional haunted house rules. You’re not being sent into a maze two and three people at a time. Here, the Guests are grouped in 12-person squads. They’ve then assigned two squad leaders — actors that we’ve hired for Haunt specifically to play these roles — who then take each group out into what used to be Camp Snoopy but is now a fog-filled wide open space filled with 135 zombies,” Jon enthused. “Better yet, depending on which side of the land that these people began their mission on — the Alpha Side or the Bravo side — and which of the four variations of our basic Alpha & Bravo scenarios they wind up being assigned to, these people can have completely different experiences each time they enter the kill zone.”

Take — for example — the Bravo side. Where your initial mission is to head up high into the hills and find a secret laboratory. Once there, you’re supposed to rescue this scientist who may have found the cure to this horrible zombie virus. The only problem is — as you’re making your way back to Base … Well, it’s not just the zombies that you have to worry about. There’s also a rogue militia unit hiding out there in the fog who may try and capture your squad so that they can then …

Ah, let’s not spoil the surprise. Especially since folks in Southern California still have a chance to grab a laser gun and go shoot some zombies this weekend. You see, rather than shutting down its annual Halloween event on October 31st, Knott’s officials opted instead to keep this year’s Haunt going through Saturday night, November 1st. Just understand that — if you’re driving out to Buena Park to experience “Special Ops: Infected” — that you could be in for quite a wait tonight.

“Right from the get-go, this particular maze has been hugely popular with Haunt attendees. The first week of this year’s Scary Farm, I actually had a Guest come up to me and say that he’d been back to the Park three nights in a row just so he could then try and do all of the variations of the ‘Special Ops: Infected’ combat missions,” Cooke stated. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we keep changing things up from night to night.”

“Take — for example — the combat mission you go on when you’re doing the Alpha track. You first have to get to this campsite and then rescue this camper who’s locked inside of a trailer,” Jon said. “Well, we change the location of where we hide that key every night. So even if you’ve done this particular mission before at Haunt, there are still different challenges, enough variations to keep ‘Special Ops: Infected’ fresh for Knott’s repeat customers.”

So if you’d like to work off some of that Trick-or-Treat candy that you ate last night by working up a sweat running away from zombies, then you should definitely check out the closing night of the 2014 edition of Knott’s Scary Farm. Where you can then experience “Special Ops: Infected,” that unique Haunt experience which proves that wide open spaces can be just as scary — or even scarier — then dark twisty mazes.

Your daily Internet browsing likely involves at least a GIF or two, and communication is quickly incorporating the animation snippets as visual alternatives to words. It makes sense, then, for someone to try out an advertisement campaign that brings these GIFs to the nearest street corner, and it isn’t surprising Netflix would be the company to do it. Given its … Continue reading