Hillel Day School

of Metropolitan Detroit

announces its

agrees. "But we are used to
plastic music. Thomas Edison
made a way to freeze music.
We have been trained to want
to listen to the same thing
over and over.
"But the TV generation has
an incredible appetite. It
doesn't want over and over
again. But it needs a tie. The
tie is in the familiarity. But
the familiarity (created by the
Jiffy Box) is with the logic of
the music, not in the notes.
The Jiffy box, says Kirschen,
frees listener • from plastic
recording. Unlike Edison,
who recorded sounds,
Kirschen says the computer
freezes ideas.
Dan Setton, who directed
the "Demjanjuk Dossier" and
used Kirschen's technology,
'doesn't offer as sweeping a
picture of the world after the
Jiffy Box.
"The music doesn't have a
soul," he says. "If you're sen-
sitive to music, it makes a dif-
ference."
Setton thinks the system

will continue to be used
primarily in film because-the
music is relatively inexpen-
sive to produce and will
always take a back seat to the
visual images.
Kirschen, however, envi-
sions his invention as an
alternative to flipping the car
radio dial or listening to the
same cassette for the ump-
teenth time.
"You'll say, 'I feel like
something bluesy,' and you'll
hear three hours of bluesy
that is original."
Kirschen doesn't believe all
this artificial creativity robs
humanity of the need or op-
portunity to create. The bot-
tom line still belongs to the
human agency, he says.
"The machine can't decide
if it made a good song or a bad
song. The job of the composer
is to choose what to keep and
what to throw away."
What the machine does do,
he says, is to free the creator
from dependence on the fickle
forces of the muse. D

Classes For Women
Redress 'Negatives'

Jerusalem — God com-
manded the man and woman
to be fruitful and multiply.
So the man said, "I should
be the one to give birth
because I am stronger."
But the woman said, "I
should be the one to give
birth because I am more flex-
ible and courageous."
So God decided to test them.
Both the man and the woman
began to menstruate. The
man complained to God about
the blood and asked that his
body be returned to its
original state.
Then their abdomens began
to swell and droop. Their
breasts filled with milk and
became sore.
The man again complained
to God: "Give me back the
body You gave me in Your
own image."
So the woman, who
delighted in the changes of
1-., er body, was allowed the
choice of the old or new body.
Mart was restricted to the
single, limited body.
This abbreviated version of
a midrash created by the San
Diego Cooperative of Women
is an example of how women
are attempting to redress
what they perceive as
negative images of women in
rabbinic lore.
Bonna Haberman present-
ed the midrash as an
introduction to a class on bir-
thing. "The midrash (in the
Talmud) takes every word in
the curse God gave to Eve and
makes it worse," Haberman

tells the half-dozen men and
women who are seated in her
living room, drinking tea and
eating popcorn. "As carriers
of this curse, I feel we have to
undo it."
She then tells her listeners
— one recently gave birth,
another is visibly pregnant, a
third cradles her infant —
about how she delivered her
own children. All three were
delivered at home with the
aid of a midwife.
The birthing seminar was
one of a weekly series of fami-
ly workshop classes that
Haberman teaches. She also
teaches a weekly Mishnah
class for women.
The framework for these
classes is the Lena Slom
School for the Study of Torah.
The school, a series of evening
classes in English, was
created last fall by Susan
Kahn, a 25-year-old Bosto-
nian who herself has been
studying Judaism in
Jerusalem since 1987. Thirty-
five women study at the
school, named for Kahn's
grandmother.
Other women active in the
feminist circle are interested
primarily in creating alter:
native liturgy and rituals,
Kahn says. "I want to create
other kinds of structures for
study."
The guidelines she follows
are personal ones, she says.
"My intention was to bring
unusual teachers together
with people like me."

— David Holzel

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