soupablog

Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals + Ryan Sharp Snippet

It came in today! My advance copy of Jesus for President, the new Shane Claiborne + Chris Haw book for which I contributed 40 or so watercolor illustrations; designed by my friends Holly and Ryan over at SharpSeven. I'm really geeking out over how cool it turned out, thumbing through it like a little kid. It's cool to finally see the other contributors' work (several artists, photographers) and see how the whole thing comes together.

Please consider buying a copy.

It's four-color throughout, but somehow the price is less than $12 over at the big box place. I'm sure VivaBooks will sell it as well.

Here's an illustration I did, which you can see closer when you buy the book:

file under: filet'o'fish'o'war

Here's designer Ryan hard at work with his other love. This is fresh footage BTW:

Menachem Daum

"A person saved is a world saved" - ancient Jewish proverb

I posted last night about the large amount of TV, DVDs and VHS tapes, Hi-8 digital, and Super 8mm film converted-to-VHS that I took in this weekend. I failed to mention one of the most touching:

On August 30, PBS premiered  "Hiding and Seeking: Faith & Tolerance After the Holocaust" -- a compelling documentary by one Menachem Daum. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, Daum opts for a conciliatory "Jewish Humanism" in marked contrast to both his father's Orthodox fear of goyem (Gentiles) and his sons Tzvi Dovid and Akiva (now living in Israel) and their tacit approval of a Jewish post-Holocaust desire to retreat, insulate and mistrust the Other. (In my own context it's like looking in the mirror at conservative Christian evangelicalism's retreat from the World, wherein we are 'of' the world but no longer 'in' it.)

But Daum does two great things.

First, he takes a video camera and documents this search for understanding, trans-generational healing, a Jewish way of living within Holocaust-generated tensions.

Second, he allows his documentary to take him back to Poland (a country dear to my heart) where he (and his wife and 2 sons in tow) confront the Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto, bombed-out synagogues, overgrown Jewish cemeteries, and the remnants of the past that Menachem's father once called home.

While in Poland, the viewer pieces together the unfolding story of Menachem's father (Chaim) and his two brothers who escaped Nazi arrest by living in a hole dug under a large haystack -- they lived there literally underground for more than 2 years. We find that the (Christian) family (who housed the brothers and risked their lives to bring them food) is still in fact alive and even still owned the same farm. The resultant reunion and conversation and healing was very powerful. As was the transformation of Menachem's sons, who began to understand his father's unorthodox views of goyem, and his insistence that love -- Yahweh's love -- should trump modern Judaism's inabilities.

Next time I think of the Abrahamic covenant, the next time I think about the desire for Israel to be a blessing to all nations, I might just think of Menachem Daum.

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