Record Sale at Eslite Bookstore on Taichung's Westside

5-4-16 

I waited until yesterday to ride the bike to Eslite on the Westside for their annual record sale. The bookstore was almost empty and I was the one of the only customers checking out the albums. A clerk gave me a shopping basket when he saw me looking and later gave me a chair to carry around as I perused the bins of mostly classical instrumentals. When I asked, the clerk pointed me to the singer section. It was there that I found most of the albums I bought including every Mario Lanza they had, but I did find two more Mario Lanza albums searching through the bins as well as a collection of Cantor Josef Rosenblatt’s recordings from the 20's. Bubby and Pop left me original 78's of his operatic prayers. It will be nice to hear them without the scratchiness. The Eslite near the 101 Building in Taipei has the yearly rock 'n' roll record sale; I went to it last year and was blown away by the crowd waiting on a long line outside the music department and didn't bother to wait or go in. 

      Here is a list of albums I got, seven of them 99 NT-$3.10 us and another four 199 NT-$6.21 us for a total 1500 NT-$46.87 us:

Mario Lanza

1.         Christmas Hymns & Carols

2.         The Magic Mario

3.         I’ll Walk With God

4.         The Desert Song

5.         I’ll See You In My Dreams

6.         His Greatest Hits From Operettas and Musicals Vol. 1

(I already have “Student Prince” and “Sings Caruso Favorites” in the LP collection)

Other Artists

7.         Enrico Caruso – Ember Greatest Voices of the Century

8.         Cantor Josef Rosenblatt – Masterpieces of the Synagogue Vol. 2

9.         Digits McPhee – Honky Tonkin’

10.    Clarence Williams- Rhythm Kings 1935

11.    The Virtuoso Classical Mandolin 

"Judaism; My Faith" Presentation at National Chi Nan University

                                                            The Preparation

National Chi Nan University
in Puli, Nantou, Taiwan

3-27-16

 I was asked by my Mandarin tutor to conduct a presentation on Jewish history and culture at National Chi Nan University in Puli, Nantou on April 28th. Miss Amber Zheng teaches classes on Chinese culture.  I decided to start brainstorming what I wanted to tell and show the students. Ms. Zheng wants me to compare my culture with Taiwan’s. It is a very broad stroke to paint. I will do what I did at Sheng-Kang Junior High School: a power-point presentation touching on a workshop model of sub-topics that the students will brainstorm details for and generate questions from. 

      The 19^th century history will turn to my personal family history, socialism and pogroms in Russia, Austria to England, and my grandparents’ immigration to America in the 20^th century. Unionism and bourgeois tendency could be illustrated and divided by my grandfather David Temple, the designer, and “Pop” Simon Zekowsky, the tailor.

      As for culture, my secular family, second-generation Americans, our deviation from conservative Judaism, my sister and my marrying outside our faith, my nuclear family’s connection with Asia, will be interesting. I will turn to my dad’s involvement in World War II, my childhood on the fringe of Borough Park, our oriental art at home, dinner at Cantonese Chinese restaurants, my mom’s job at the Takara barber chair importers in Industry City (we were one of the first families in Brooklyn to eat ramen noodle soup!) my bar mitzvah, ostracism from my Christian childhood friends and, in junior high school, befriending Hom Chow-Mein, from the first Chinese family in Brooklyn's Chinatown on 8th Avenue.   

      My pride in Jewish heritage, basic precepts like the Ten Commandments, dietary laws and cleanliness (kosher that saved us from the Plague in Middle Ages, monogamy and circumcision that helped avoid venereal disease, etc.) and my historical Jewish heroes, real and mythic, will be highlighted. Our closeness to our Semitic neighbors, the Muslims, will be another highlight. The Crusades and the 12^th century anti-Semitic Christian Pope, the Diaspora, pogroms, and the Nazi holocaust aided by American industrialists, the hopeful founding of Israel, the hijacking of the Jewish state for imperialist ruling class exploitation, the partitioning of Palestinians, isolation of Jews from our Middle World neighbors, increasing Antisemitism, and turning Jewish people into the scapegoats of the world, with no good end in sight.

3-29-16

      I started creating the slides for the power point that will go with the presentation I was asked to do at National Chi Nan University in Puli, Nantou, on April 28^th. I don’t have a title for it yet and call it Judaism: My Faith I started by taking some current (and ancient) events and making slides: ISIS- clandestine US destabilization of the Middle World, Apartheid in Israel, American Industry complicity in the holocaust, Jews and Arab descendants from extra-terrestrials, and the Chabad (reclaim) Passover Seder in Taipei. My point is that the Jewish people, intelligent, pure of heart and morality straight, are still scapegoats of the ruling classes of history, currently The United States.  

4-27-16 

     I chuckle when I think of myself going all over Taiwan with the two-hour presentation of "Judaism; My Faith." Like the "Read the World and The World Reads You" presentation, this presentation tomorrow is a one shot deal. I'm not erasing either power point presentation because, who knows, I may need it again. Certainly I did enough research and planning to warrant keeping it, at least showing it to some of my friends, if not for approval then as entertainment: "Look at what I have been doing?" Teacher Zheng says she wants to videotape tomorrow's presentation. She even said I could present it in Mandarin if I liked; my Mandarin is not that good. I am doing it for fun, but I have a responsibility. I am the radical secular Jew telling Buddhist/Taoist idolaters and Christian converts my take on how the world got this way; how were the Jews involved in making it better and showing it for its worst. I also have a hunch about how the world could become a better place. 

4-28-16 

      I am trying to align some of the vague questions the students submitted to Teacher Zheng, none of which relate directly to the topics of the slides in the PPP. I’ll match the questions to slides more reflective. The 28 students need comparatives between their own culture and Jewish culture, but their own cultures may be influenced by Christian missionaries, certainly influenced by Western capitalism, though the strongest strain is Chinese Buddhist-Taoist-Confucian. As I go through the slides, I will find the relevant questions they submitted and ask for comments and questions before going on to the next slide. At the conclusion, I will put on Ariel’s tallies, yarmulke, and say prayers for matzo, fruit of the vine, distribute grape juice and matzo, and read the four questions of Passover with the story of the ten plagues. 

                                                             The Presentation 

     My presentation, "Judaism; My Faith," given on Thursday, April 29, 2016 at National Chi Nan University in Puli, Taiwan, went off very well. I spoke from 12:45 pm to 2:45 pm stopping a few times to answer questions. Leona and I drove there early and waited outside the main entrance for Prof. Amber Zheng who came on time and brought us down the mountain to a vegetarian restaurant where we chatted.

We then returned to our car and followed her outside the lecture hall where some of her students sat.  Twenty-eight students and two adjuncts were present. I went on-line to set up the power point presentation (see the link below) Amber Zheng had the grape juice I requested and started to pour cups for the students, but I asked her to wait until I said the prayer for fruit of the vine first. I handed out black and white nylon yarmulkes and each male, and some coeds, placed them on their heads; I told them it was worn out of respect for G-d. I asked to take care of them or return them at the end of the presentation. The presentation was videotaped. Amber Zheng introduced me in Mandarin and we began.

I introduced myself in Mandarin saying I would use English but translate for them if they wished. The students were to clarify what I was saying. To begin with, I showed a truncated eight-slide power-point introduction of my life and stopped to field question. I took out my notes and answered some of the questions the students had prepared in advance mentioning that the other questions would be answered when the slide came up in the presentation.

 I went on to tongue-in-cheek suggest the origins of the Jewish people were aliens from another planet. I then give the biblical history of Judaism and the beliefs that Jews have; I asked if they believed Adam and Eve were the first humans. Few did. I separated Jewish myth with Jewish fact with King David, Solomon, and led up through the destruction of the second temple, Mongol marauders, crusades, plague, inquisition and the resultant Diaspora, elaborating and giving anecdotes. 

I stopped a few times to let the students ask questions. There were about six questions in all that I expanded on. The theme of Christian persecution of Jewish society, for two thousand years, was stark. It was the background of the modern Jewish history segment starting with Spinoza. I explained that I was a secular Jew saying “it's better to be a good person than a bad religious believer.”

The Dreyfus affair and Herzl's realization that a Zionist nation was the only protection for Jews rang true but didn't forestall the holocaust that a German Christian dictator used to finish what the Christian anti-Semites before him had started, what many American corporations profited from. 

With time constraints, I rushed through the birth of Israel and the reactionary apartheid policies against Palestinian and Muslims that developed. I barely touched on the peace treaty with Egypt, self-fulfilling prophesy of Christian millennial-ism, and clandestine American chaos and arming of ISIS, or Bernie Sanders presidential bid.

 I got to the Passover story and handed out pieces of matzo and we ate after saying the prayers. I then sang the first of four questions in Hebrew explaining that "asking questions to elders" was a cornerstone of Jewish family education. I answered a few more student questions about the rebirth of Hebrew language and thanked them for having me. The funds I got for speaking were donated to the victims of the earthquake in Japan a few weeks ago. 

                                                               The Power Point

 Judaism

View in OneDrive

                                                                              The Video

(pending)

Huatan JHS English Essay Contest

     On April 18, 2016, I was invited to be a judge at a school-wide English Essay Contest at Changhua County's Huatan Junior High School. We were driven there by the textbook publisher that I have been freelancing for. They supply the EFL textbooks for this school. The essay contest was enrichment for the schools English language program

      The children representing their classes in the sixth and seventh grade had, in most cases, appropriated essays to read in the contest; few had written their own. Furthermore, Only one of the eighteen participants read without looking at her prepared text. I was teamed with two Taiwanese English-language teachers from their school, without having any prior consultation or given ground rules. I merly sat down, was handed two lists of students from each grade, and had to rank them any way I saw fit.

 I judged the students for time (three minute limit), memorization, pronunciation, intonation, and body language. I have no idea if my judgments were considered in the choice of contest winners. I did make note of  which students I considered to be the best, second best, and third with my numeral value of each category, twenty each, totaling one hundred points. 

     I respect the teachers at Huatan JHS for going out of their way to encourage their English language learners with a contest and making it low stress by allowing the students to read the essay and not memorize. I do not know how much time the children were given for preparation.

     The students enjoyed reading and were generally relaxed despite the presence of a video camera, photography, and a rare school visit by a foreign teacher, yours truly. 

     I spoke with some of the students afterwards and told them how I admired them for the work they had done. I mentioned that few students in American schools would have the nerve or ability to read essays in Mandarin or any language other than English; that they should be proud of themselves for doing such nice work.