Jewish Stuff

Your blogiste will be getting ready for Passover, spring planting and travelling to visit family. So don't expect too much from me. I'll be back to normal mid-week next week, by about the point that I never, ever want to see another piece of matzah again. Back to Passover cleaning. Hope all of your houses are tidier than mine (which would not be difficult ;-)). Sharon

Not so much. Because, according to a letter signed by over 400 hundred U.S. rabbis, Fox seems to have a Glenn Beck problem: We are rabbis of diverse political views. As part of our work, we are devoted to preserving the memory of the Shoah, and to passing its lessons on to our future generations and to all humankind. All of us have vigorously defended the Holocaust's legacy. We have worked to encourage the responsible invocation of its symbols as a powerful lesson for the future. We were therefore deeply offended by Roger Ailes' recent statement attributing the outrage over Glenn Beck's use…

Like clockwork, every time an election rolls around, Republican-leaning pundits and political operatives, in their infinite wisdom, predict that this election will be the election wherein Jews abandon the Democratic Party. And then, like clockwork, Jews overwhelmingly vote Democratic. One reason has to do with the Republican Party's exclusionary identity politics: even if Jews were disposed to vote Republican based on political ideology, the strong ties to the Christian theopolitical right are...offputting. But there's another reason too, that has to do with, well, Judaism. Being Jewish…

If you haven't heard by now, Sarah Palin compared criticism of her to "blood libel", the disgusting medieval falsehood that Jews used Christian blood in religious rituals. While some have chalked this up to paranoia, I don't think that's correct (besides, Palin's paranoia stems from the bursting of her narcissistic bubble). Because there's an increasingly tendency among fundamentalists to view themselves as Jews. Now, this might sound odd, since they seem to have some difficulties with the Judeo part of Judeo-Christian. But they do see themselves as new and improved Jews. Some…

It's not that some Texas Republicans are anti-Semitic, it's just that they need a Christian in charge. A bunch of angry Texan evangelical Republicans are trying to replace House Speaker Joe Strauss, and aren't having much success. So: And, not surprisingly, the effort has started to take on religious overtones: [A] handful of outside socially conservative groups are running a fairly deceitful but noisy campaign trying to pressure lawmakers who actually like the speaker's management style to vote against him. They blame him for the failure of the sonogram bill but the pro-life Texans for…

If you're Jewish, you'll probably be reading this in a few hours, depending on your time zone. What really bugs me about the theopolitical right is their selective choosing of which parts of the Bible they will take 'literally' and which parts they ignore. They typically ignore this bit by my landsman Izzy, which is read every year on Yom Kippur: To be sure, they seek Me daily, Eager to learn My ways. Like a nation that does what is right, That has not abandoned the laws of its God, They ask Me for the right path, They are eager for the nearness of God: :Why, when we fasted, did You not see…

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't usually something I discuss here, but Peter Beinart's surprisingly on-target NY Review of Books essay, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" is an incredibly accurate description of the self-appointed American Jewish 'leadership' and their supposed followers. Beinart on non-Orthodox Jewish college students: Most of the students, in other words, were liberals, broadly defined. They had imbibed some of the defining values of American Jewish political culture: a belief in open debate, a skepticism about military force, a commitment to human…

...but who is a rabbi? A recent British High Court decision making it illegal for a Jewish school that favors Jewish applicants to base its admissions policy on whether one's mother is Jewish, while correct in outcome, completely misunderstands the entire controversy: "One thing is clear about the matrilineal test; it is a test of ethnic origin," Lord Phillips, president of the court, said in his majority opinion. Under the law, he said, "by definition, discrimination that is based upon that test is discrimination on racial grounds." The decision, by Britain's highest court, brings an end to…

So to speak. One of the many loathsome things about the Stupak-Mills amendment is that insurance would not be able to cover abortions for the following reasons (italics mine): Cases that are excluded: where the health but not the life of the woman is threatened by the pregnancy, severe fetal abnormalities, mental illness or anguish that will lead to suicide or self-harm. In Jewish religious law, all authorities agree that if the health of the mother--including her ability to have children in the future--is jeopardized, then abortion is the appropriate option. And many authorities (not just…

While I'm hoping to find the time to write about Norman Podhoretz's question "Why Are Jews Liberals?" I don't think, unlike Podhoretz, that the fundamental reason is repulsion towards the Christian theopolitical right. But this statement by two South Carolina County Republican Party chairmen certainly won't help: After a Democratic state senator wrote in The State that DeMint didn't bring enough money back home, Bamberg County GOP Chairman Edwin Merwin and Orangeburg County GOP Chairman James Ulmer responded that he was just looking after the nation's pennies -- like a Jew would. "There is…

The wackaloons over at Conservapedia have a new project: releasing a new version of the Bible. No, really: Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning: lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts of Christianity lack of precision in modern language translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one. Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error…

..inscribed in the Book of Life. And if you're fasting for Yom Kippur, have an easy fast. (no, we don't really think God is up there, deciding whether or not to write our names in the Book of Life. It's a metaphor)

A recent post about the idiocy in Fairfax County regarding a student who was expelled for two weeks because she took birth control pills during school received some great comments. But as you might expect, with enough comments, one of the 'contraception is abortion' morons showed up (can't you morons leave me alone during my vacation?). Ordinarily, I would have let the commentors administer an ass kicking (which they did very well). But when the commenter wrote: I just wanted to remind readers that some believe life begins at conception (and that it doesn't get a postmodernist exemption to…

In Colorado, someone is very bothered by the idea of kosher salt: You've heard of kosher salt? Now there's a Christian variety. Retired barber Joe Godlewski says he was inspired by television chefs who repeatedly recommended kosher salt in recipes. "I said, 'What the heck's the matter with Christian salt?'" Godlewski said, sipping a beer in the living room of his home in unincorporated Cresaptown, a western Maryland mountain community. By next week, his trademarked Blessed Christians Salt will be available at http://www.memphi.net, the Web site of Memphis, Tenn.-based seasonings manufacturer…

If you thought this post was about is more wrong, the Israelis or the Palestinians, you've come to the wrong place. What I want to talk about is something that, in the early 1980s, I called Reaganite Judaism. If the term is unclear, it is a backhanded reference to the nascent neoconservative movement (Troll-be-gone: that term was used by neocons themselves in Commentary magazine) as another denomination of Judaism (e.g., Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, and Reform). Reaganite Judaism's tenets--a trinity if you will--were: Buy Israel bonds. Make the Holocaust the essence of Judaism…

If you thought Obama's minister was a piece of work, get a load of Palin's church (italics mine): An illustration of that gap came just two weeks ago, when Palin's church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus. Palin's pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church's website. "He's a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,"…

A recent poll breaks down the support for McCain and Obama among Jews by denomination: I can't figure out why there is such a sharp difference. It's not like abortion would be a wedge issue (an aside: Orthodox Jews comprise 7-12% of the population; in this poll, they were 8% of the sample). Age can't be an issue either: Conservative Jews trend slightly older, and Orthodox slightly younger. It would be interesting to see how denomination is correlated with religious denomination and with importance of Israel's security. Unfortunately, like every other poll where they claim to release the…

...or more accurately, Israel's 'self-appointed leadership of the American Jewish community' problem. From Jeffrey Goldberg (italics mine): I am not wishing that the next president be hostile to Israel, God forbid. But what Israel needs is an American president who not only helps defend it against the existential threat posed by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, but helps it to come to grips with the existential threat from within. A pro-Israel president today would be one who prods the Jewish state--publicly, continuously and vociferously--to create conditions on the West Bank that would…

Last week, Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel from 2001-2005, came out in support of Sen. Obama. In light of the Republican propaganda about how Obama would be 'anti-Israel' or some other hooey, it's worth noting why Kurtzer supports Obama (italics mine): We have one candidate who is prepared to do diplomacy. Only one candidate. We have two candidates who have told us all the countries they don't want to talk to. They don't want to talk to Iran because Iran has a really awful government. And Iran does have a really awful government. And Iran is pursuing policies that are not on…

Darksyde rightly skewers Ben Stein and his creationist fellow travellers for claiming that evolutionary biology led to the Holocaust: Religion and science are different species of course. But one thing they share in common is both can be used for great good or nightmarish evil. Particle physicists developed the theories underpinning everything from PET/CAT scans to the device you are reading this post on. They also brought us the hydrogen bomb. Biochemists developed antibiotics, saving the lives and limbs of countless millions of suffering people. The same science produced Zyklon B, a…