Last week’s news was dominated by the deaths of three celebrities: Ed McMahon, who entered our homes as Johnny Carson’s sidekick, and later – we wished – as the man bearing the big check from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Farrah Fawcett, whose pin-up poster sold 12 million copies and appeared in the dorm rooms of a generation, and whose hairstyle literally sent millions of American women to stylists asking to “look like Farrah.” And Michael Jackson, who was performing as a gifted song-and-dance talent from as early as age five. By the time he would emerge from among his family as the preeminent Jackson entertainer, his albums would sell 750 million copies. Days later, we learned that 50-year-old Billy Mays had just died of a heart attack. Billy was the “As Seen on TV” pitch man who sold us products while operators were standing by: OxiClean, Orange Glo, Mighty Putty, a health insurance plan, ESPN 360.
Michael Jackson’s death set off a veritable panic. It took one of my family members, who works near UCLA, three extra hours to get home because the crowds outside UCLA Medical Center, where Jackson died, were so massive. On the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, throngs placed wreaths and wept at Michael Jackson’s star on the cement – not realizing that they were mourning at the star of the wrong Michael Jackson, a radio talk show host.
The death of Michael Jackson the Moonwalker eclipsed Ms. Fawcett’s death earlier that morning. When she had died, the TV networks began preparing to preempt their regular programming for the night, for their respective documentaries remembering her life: the hairdo, the poster, the marriage to the Six Million Dollar Man, the divorce, the surprising reminder that she had acted only one year on “Charlie’s Angel’s” before moving to made-for-TV films. Ryan O’Neal, her long-time companion, told an interviewer that, while there are many “celebrities,” Ms. Fawcett genuinely was a “star.” And yet her star was eclipsed the day of her death; media focus of remembrance rapidly shifted mid-day to Jackson
And so, as each element of our media-driven society – the cable news and celebrity-gossip programs in particular – endeavor to keep the stories running, it is worthwhile pausing to ask whether there is anything for us to learn from it all.
There is.
Life is short. So terribly short. “The days of our lives are seventy years and, [if blessed with extra] strength, eighty years . . . so much of it hard work and emptiness cut off suddenly and we fly away. . . . So teach us [O G-d] to count our days.” (Tehillim 90:10,12 ) We know we will not live forever, but how we do let the days go by! And why not? For “tomorrow is another day.” And then, suddenly, the little boy for whom we bought his first ice cream cone at his first state fair, and the little girl we pushed on a swing, each has a packed suitcase at the front door, bidding us good-bye as each leaves the nest, closing a chapter in our biographies. And soon our parents’ friends – people with whom we grew up – are dying. And then parents.
Tomorrow is not another day. Tomorrow is a noun that means that today is lost forever. Yesterday, too. There is no tomorrow for even the greatest of celebrities whose time comes. Nor is there a today for those of us who would consume it watching and reading all about them. Our moments to realize our own dreams and hopes are today.
Synagogues are filled with congregants who congregate to reach the spiritual, the Divine. The rabbi or shul president announces after services that Torah classes will be meeting during the week. A chesed committee will be doing acts of kindness on Tuesday. A scholar is visiting and will speak next week. Do we take advantage of every moment, every opportunity that comes our way to grow Jewishly? Do we passionately seize the day’s opportunity to grow closer to G-d, acting as if there is no tomorrow and as if today is too precious to waste?
The real stars are not on the screen but in the firmaments, and they are counted only by G-d. “He counts the number of the stars, and He calls each one by its name.” (Tehillim 147:4) But we do have the chance – at least a bit – to number our days. We need only contemplate how quickly our heroes and our legends pass. How quickly their laughter fades, their smiles fade, their hair, their booming voices, their dancing. There is so little time. And every precious moment is witnessed by the stars above and G-d above them.
Showing posts with label Hollywood Jews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hollywood Jews. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Bar & Bat Mitzvahs: Spending Ourselves into Oblivion
Bar Mitzvahs typically are foolishly extravagant to a degree that is Jewishly unjustifiable. Nothing about being a boy becoming 13 or a girl becoming 12 justifies the insanity of turning it into a wedding, replete with a 20-minute film retrospective on the kid's life, as though it were the Biography Channel reviewing the life of Abraham Lincoln.
In this time of massive economic crisis, it must be quite a spectacle for many to behold Jewish profligacy in spending $15,000-$50,000 on a kid's 13th birthday.
I am reminded of the commentary on Yaakov Avinu sending his sons to Egypt on their first go- round to ask for food (as it turned out, from their brother Yosef). Did they really need food? Were they being impacted adversely by the same famine that affected others? (The question is amplified because we know that the "seven-year" famine predicted by Yosef lasted only two years in Egypt, stopped "prematurely" by Hashem when Yaakov arrived there and bestowed a brakhah on Par'oh. Rashi & Tanchuma on Breishit 47:10. )
So, in Breishit 42:1, Rashi brings the Gemara from Ta'anit 10b that says they still had ample food. Ya got that? Yaakov and his sons had ample food in Canaan, and they did not need to ask for food from Egypt. Nonetheless, Yaakov said to his sons in Cana'an: "Lamah tit-ra'u?" which Rashi defines as "Why make yourselves be seen [by the non-Jews around us as though you are sated]?" That is, when everyone around is starving, it is not our way to refrain from seeking food from Par'oh, just like everyone else. Don't relish while others lack.
That should be the slogan in American Jewish Life -- "Lamah Tit-ra'u?" It really is a terrible thing, not only insane and counter-intuitive, a source of fodder for fostering hatred, but such excessive galas also impose enormous burdens on the majority of amkha who do not have the courage and commonsense to resist the social pressures to spend beyond their means on these foolish events.
In this time of massive economic crisis, it must be quite a spectacle for many to behold Jewish profligacy in spending $15,000-$50,000 on a kid's 13th birthday.
I am reminded of the commentary on Yaakov Avinu sending his sons to Egypt on their first go- round to ask for food (as it turned out, from their brother Yosef). Did they really need food? Were they being impacted adversely by the same famine that affected others? (The question is amplified because we know that the "seven-year" famine predicted by Yosef lasted only two years in Egypt, stopped "prematurely" by Hashem when Yaakov arrived there and bestowed a brakhah on Par'oh. Rashi & Tanchuma on Breishit 47:10. )
So, in Breishit 42:1, Rashi brings the Gemara from Ta'anit 10b that says they still had ample food. Ya got that? Yaakov and his sons had ample food in Canaan, and they did not need to ask for food from Egypt. Nonetheless, Yaakov said to his sons in Cana'an: "Lamah tit-ra'u?" which Rashi defines as "Why make yourselves be seen [by the non-Jews around us as though you are sated]?" That is, when everyone around is starving, it is not our way to refrain from seeking food from Par'oh, just like everyone else. Don't relish while others lack.
That should be the slogan in American Jewish Life -- "Lamah Tit-ra'u?" It really is a terrible thing, not only insane and counter-intuitive, a source of fodder for fostering hatred, but such excessive galas also impose enormous burdens on the majority of amkha who do not have the courage and commonsense to resist the social pressures to spend beyond their means on these foolish events.
A Mindset that Drinking Is Not Cool, Vodka Vomiting Is Not Cool, Crookery Is Not Cool
When I attended yeshiva high school, everyone kvetched about the school: kids kvetched about the teachers, the facility, the bathrooms, the color the walls were painted. It was in the culture to kvetch about the place -- even though we loved it so much. And then I went to college at Columbia University. Students at Columbia did not love that place as passionately as we loved our yeshiva high school. But no one kvetched at Columbia. (Yes, there were political riots -- but it was a different thing. You had to be there.) The thing is, those of us from yeshiva high school who attended Columbia at that time quickly saw that it is not cool to kvetch at Columbia. It was not cool to shoot spitballs at Columbia. You did not get popularity points for interrupting professors with wise cracks, as you did in high school. So there is great value in changing a milieu, changing the mindset of what is cool.
There are places where it is perceived by some that it is cool to be frummer than the next guy. Each guy in such a milieu wants to exhibit his chumrah. That is an environment -- maybe it is good, maybe not -- but in that environment, people proudly demonstrate their chumras.
The goal needs to be to create a nationwide mindset in the Torah-observant community that it is cool to be honest, and it is not cool to cheat. It is not cool to avoid paying state sales tax by paying in cash -- and, for the one who does so, he keeps it to himself out of a proper sense of shame, rather than telling people in shul how he does it and where he goes.
To create that mindset -- and it can be created, just as Columbia created a mindset that differed from yeshiva high school regarding what is cool to talk about -- there needs to be a nationwide concerted effort. It means shiurim and divrei Torah and sermons. It means hand-outs and circulars placed on shul seats. It means a concerted effort that denies honors to certain people and that starts to honor others.
These things are never easy. We all know that one reason that Dor HaMidbar did not enter Eretz Yisrael -- transcending the p'shat of the punishment for how almost all the men responded to the m'raglim -- is that they were not able to evolve the mindset of free people after a lifetime of slavery. Their children, experiencing freedom in their youth, could evolve that mindset. And so it goes.
In some places, people speak loshon horo, typically starting each sentence with: "I don’t think this is loshon horo, so I want you to know that . . ." It is like a culture. And then, in some places, people just do not speak loshon horo. Can you imagine going to a Yeshivat Chofetz Chaim and speaking loshon horo? Inconceivable -- because there is a mindset. It is not cool.
In some places, there are Kiddush Clubs. In other places, such things are inconceivable. Many Torah authorities have made an effort to send the word that Kiddush Clubs are not cool. That it is not cool to brag about what whiskey or malt scotch or whatever one drinks. One Young Israel rav here in Los Angeles took a powerful, powerful stand against Kiddush Clubs in his shul. Some people left his shul. His shul emerged better, stronger, and holier for his heroic leadership on that issue. His strength on this issue made him a role model for many other rabbonim.
In some places, it is cool to get so much vodka into one's body on Simchat Torah and on Purim that fellows actually expel that intake uncontrollably, publicly on streets. Even as they are being plied with more. And so the community arose with a campaign -- at least here in Los Angeles -- to teach people that is not cool. That it is not cool to vomit on the sidewalk in front of shul on Purim or Simchat Torah night. It is not cool to drink or to serve teens such alcohol or to let your teens get drunk. It had such an impact that the Los Angeles Times did a beautiful story on it, and it was a beautiful story that, in turn, gave impetus to other rabbis to lead on the subject.
These are hard things. Kiddush Clubs. Teen and Adult inebriation on Purim and Simchat Torah. Loshon Horo. Business dishonesty. In each case, it is about creating a new mindset -- putting circulars regularly on shul seats, having not just one or two strong rabbonim talking about the issue but having a national campaign that urges all rabbonim to speak about an issue. Creating an environment where it is not cool to cheat or to tell others.
And you know what? We still may fail because it takes only one Madoff -- only one -- to destroy a generation's efforts. So, if Ivan Boesky does not go to our shul, nor Madoff, nor the junk-bond guy, nor Marc Rich, nor the money-laundering crooks involved in that East Coast/West Coast scandal (including Chasidim, Israeli bankers, and the guy who was a West Coast Orthodox Union leader), nor the others -- we still lose. But at least we know we tried. And-- who knows? -- maybe in an environment with the right kind of mindset, maybe a Madoff would not get to be a Treasurer at Yeshiva University nor chairman of a school within YU. Who knows? But that takes a mindset-change, and maybe it takes a generation.
The Sea does not split until someone jumps in. We probably should try everything.
There are places where it is perceived by some that it is cool to be frummer than the next guy. Each guy in such a milieu wants to exhibit his chumrah. That is an environment -- maybe it is good, maybe not -- but in that environment, people proudly demonstrate their chumras.
The goal needs to be to create a nationwide mindset in the Torah-observant community that it is cool to be honest, and it is not cool to cheat. It is not cool to avoid paying state sales tax by paying in cash -- and, for the one who does so, he keeps it to himself out of a proper sense of shame, rather than telling people in shul how he does it and where he goes.
To create that mindset -- and it can be created, just as Columbia created a mindset that differed from yeshiva high school regarding what is cool to talk about -- there needs to be a nationwide concerted effort. It means shiurim and divrei Torah and sermons. It means hand-outs and circulars placed on shul seats. It means a concerted effort that denies honors to certain people and that starts to honor others.
These things are never easy. We all know that one reason that Dor HaMidbar did not enter Eretz Yisrael -- transcending the p'shat of the punishment for how almost all the men responded to the m'raglim -- is that they were not able to evolve the mindset of free people after a lifetime of slavery. Their children, experiencing freedom in their youth, could evolve that mindset. And so it goes.
In some places, people speak loshon horo, typically starting each sentence with: "I don’t think this is loshon horo, so I want you to know that . . ." It is like a culture. And then, in some places, people just do not speak loshon horo. Can you imagine going to a Yeshivat Chofetz Chaim and speaking loshon horo? Inconceivable -- because there is a mindset. It is not cool.
In some places, there are Kiddush Clubs. In other places, such things are inconceivable. Many Torah authorities have made an effort to send the word that Kiddush Clubs are not cool. That it is not cool to brag about what whiskey or malt scotch or whatever one drinks. One Young Israel rav here in Los Angeles took a powerful, powerful stand against Kiddush Clubs in his shul. Some people left his shul. His shul emerged better, stronger, and holier for his heroic leadership on that issue. His strength on this issue made him a role model for many other rabbonim.
In some places, it is cool to get so much vodka into one's body on Simchat Torah and on Purim that fellows actually expel that intake uncontrollably, publicly on streets. Even as they are being plied with more. And so the community arose with a campaign -- at least here in Los Angeles -- to teach people that is not cool. That it is not cool to vomit on the sidewalk in front of shul on Purim or Simchat Torah night. It is not cool to drink or to serve teens such alcohol or to let your teens get drunk. It had such an impact that the Los Angeles Times did a beautiful story on it, and it was a beautiful story that, in turn, gave impetus to other rabbis to lead on the subject.
These are hard things. Kiddush Clubs. Teen and Adult inebriation on Purim and Simchat Torah. Loshon Horo. Business dishonesty. In each case, it is about creating a new mindset -- putting circulars regularly on shul seats, having not just one or two strong rabbonim talking about the issue but having a national campaign that urges all rabbonim to speak about an issue. Creating an environment where it is not cool to cheat or to tell others.
And you know what? We still may fail because it takes only one Madoff -- only one -- to destroy a generation's efforts. So, if Ivan Boesky does not go to our shul, nor Madoff, nor the junk-bond guy, nor Marc Rich, nor the money-laundering crooks involved in that East Coast/West Coast scandal (including Chasidim, Israeli bankers, and the guy who was a West Coast Orthodox Union leader), nor the others -- we still lose. But at least we know we tried. And-- who knows? -- maybe in an environment with the right kind of mindset, maybe a Madoff would not get to be a Treasurer at Yeshiva University nor chairman of a school within YU. Who knows? But that takes a mindset-change, and maybe it takes a generation.
The Sea does not split until someone jumps in. We probably should try everything.
"J" Street, Growing up on the Street, and Street Survival: Why Israel Cannot Abide the Morons Who Call Themselves "Friend"
Today’s “J Street” was yesterday’s Peace Now and Breira. Always rushing to “make peace,” to trust Arafat to keep his word, to encourage and push Israel to sign Oslo Accords.
I like to think of myself as an intellectual, too. I do not cede that ground to the “J Street” crowd. But I also grew up a bit on the streets. I know both sides – the people who attended Columbia University with me, the law school types, the scholars. And I know street fighters.
Israel has a real problem -- because she is not bordered by Mexico and Canada. She is bordered by Hezbollah and Hamas. Every time Israel has conceded land, the result has been the opposite of what the J Streeters predicted. She gave up Southern Lebanon unilaterally on the theory that the cession of land would bring peace in the north. “After all, what would Arabs have to complain about up north?” Yeah. So Hezbollah moved in and eventually put Haifa within range of its shelling.
Then Israel ceded Gaza. “Who needs Gaza anyway – with all its Arab overpopulation and all the trouble? It’s not worth it – let them choke on their own suffering! They will be so busy running an economy and a government that they will not have time to bother Israel.” Yeah. So Hamas took over and turned Gaza into an arcade, with terrorists raining down missiles and rockets on Sderot. When the air raid sounds in Sderot, a person has 15 seconds lead time to get to safety underground before the shell strikes. So people cannot shower.
Israel is not dealing with post-war Germany or Japan, with France or England. She is dealing with a theology that is sworn to subjugate all Jews and to destroy a Jewish country. There is no way to get them honestly to live with us except to persuade them that the cost of fighting us is too dear. That is how Israel took Jordan and Egypt out of the confrontation – beating them in war after war, until those governments gave up on destroying Israel.
I like to think of myself as an intellectual, too. I do not cede that ground to the “J Street” crowd. But I also grew up a bit on the streets. I know both sides – the people who attended Columbia University with me, the law school types, the scholars. And I know street fighters.
Israel has a real problem -- because she is not bordered by Mexico and Canada. She is bordered by Hezbollah and Hamas. Every time Israel has conceded land, the result has been the opposite of what the J Streeters predicted. She gave up Southern Lebanon unilaterally on the theory that the cession of land would bring peace in the north. “After all, what would Arabs have to complain about up north?” Yeah. So Hezbollah moved in and eventually put Haifa within range of its shelling.
Then Israel ceded Gaza. “Who needs Gaza anyway – with all its Arab overpopulation and all the trouble? It’s not worth it – let them choke on their own suffering! They will be so busy running an economy and a government that they will not have time to bother Israel.” Yeah. So Hamas took over and turned Gaza into an arcade, with terrorists raining down missiles and rockets on Sderot. When the air raid sounds in Sderot, a person has 15 seconds lead time to get to safety underground before the shell strikes. So people cannot shower.
Israel is not dealing with post-war Germany or Japan, with France or England. She is dealing with a theology that is sworn to subjugate all Jews and to destroy a Jewish country. There is no way to get them honestly to live with us except to persuade them that the cost of fighting us is too dear. That is how Israel took Jordan and Egypt out of the confrontation – beating them in war after war, until those governments gave up on destroying Israel.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
On Bernie who Madoff with the Loot -- Fifty Billion
It was said of Lev Bronstein, a revolutionary in post-Czarist Russia, who -- to dissociate himself from his Jewish roots -- changed his name to Leon Trotsky: “It’s the Trotskys who make the revolutions, and the Bronsteins who pay the bill.”
We are 5 million Jews in America, and ten percent of us are Orthodox. So: 500,000 Orthodox Jews . . . 5 million American Jews. There are one or two of these crook situations each and every year. One or two out of 500,000 . . . one or two out of 5,000,000. The large-yarmulka’d rabbi of the 1970s nursing home scandal. The Brooklyn yeshiva condemned by United States Senator Sam Nunn for drawing federal Pell Grant funds for students who do not exist in a yeshiva that does not exist to eat meals that do not exist. The junk bond dealer. The Washington lobbyist. The fellow who fled America for Switzerland, then got pardoned by a departing President who said the pardon was requested by Israel’s Prime Minister. The New Square Chassidic community that bullet-voted for Hillary for U.S. Senate after Bill did not pardon but commuted sentences of three of their chassidim. The East Coast Chassidim, West Coast Orthodox Union lay leader, and Israeli bankers involved in a federally indicted money-laundering scheme. And of course Postville. Some are “Orthodox.” Some are otherwise denominated.
We Jews are such a profoundly ethical and honest community. How many prisoners in the federal prisons really ask for kosher meals? Five? Eight? Nine?
Yet, there comes a point where it no longer seems or feels like only three out of 500,000 -- because this is the area of stereotype. It plays and feeds into stereotype. And therein lies the profound sensitivity.
Stereotypes are foolish, built on apocryphal presumptions. Do Jews really know more about money than do others? Clearly, anti-Semites throughout history have thought so, always keeping a Jew around to head the Treasury or the Exchequer. Even Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, when they expelled all Jews from Spain, asked one individual Jew, Don Isaac Abravanel, to stay behind to do the books. Insane! If Jews know so much about managing money and turning a profit, why is Israel unable to manage without American largesse? How did Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke help preside over the American fiscal fiasco? And was it Mayor Abe Beame who took New York City into bankruptcy? And Robert Citron in Orange County?
Who got the idea that Jews know so much more than anyone else about how to manage money? Yet several Presidents seem to have brought in some Jewish monetary advisors. FDR had Treasury Secretary Morgenthau. Nixon had Herbert Stein as chairman of his Council of Economic Advisors. Carter had W. Michael Blumenthal. (Shhhhh! He was not really Jewish despite being named Blumenthal.) Clinton had Robert Rubin. Certainly, to employ a double negative, there is no reason that a Jew should not be welcomed as an economic advisor if she is best for the job. And certainly Jewish deep thinkers populate the entire spectrum of economic thought from a range of liberals including Paul Samuelson to conservatives like Milton Friedman and even objectivist-libertarians like Ayn Rand (Shhhhh! She was Jewish despite changing her name to Rand . . . from Alice Rosenbaum.)
It is impossible to avoid noting that this latest crook, Bernard Madoff, was prominently positioned in the Yeshiva University lay hierarchy. (He personally is not Orthodox, nor is he nominally so or thus quasi-denominated.) He also invested hundreds of millions of charitable dollars in his Ponzi schemes. We need to do something as a community akin to what Jews in America did 100 years ago to separate ourselves in the popular imagination from the likes of Arnold Rothstein and Bugsy Siegel and Legs Diamond and Meyer Lansky. And we did.
Whether it means refusing to count these characters in minyans, to give them aliyas, to permit them to attend banquet dinners, taking their names off synagogue walls and out of siddur/chumash inside-covers, or the like, it seems necessary to do something to separate our community from them.
There should always be a chance for teshuvah -- sincere, heartfelt repentance. Absolutely -- that is a core Jewish value and belief. And someday in the future, maybe after therapy, after restitution, after complete repentance (teshuvah g’murah), new books can be dedicated, and new minyanim can be formed with their inclusion. They can be given new honors. But there needs to be a separation, a havdalah g’murah, pending teshuvah.
Similarly, we must give real thought to changing the way we do business as an organized theological and spiritual community. Are we too material-focused? Do we respect money more than good deeds? To paraphrase Rav Michael Broyde's quote of Rav Emanuel Rackman's observation: Do we teach that it is more important to do good in this world -- or that it is more important to do well? Do we honor people who are monied more than people who exude righteousness? (Yes, a monied person simultaneously can exude righteousness. I have known some such people, like Jack Nagel of Los Angeles, and they have touched my life by their example without really donating my way.)
What a moment of opportunity we have before us to teach our community and our young people real Jewish values! Or to capture some of these thoughts in a public statement promoting reconsidered public policy. We have before us -- right now -- an opportunity to propose or suggest standards that limit or regulate the vulgar excesses of Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah parties. (How many meals can a Jew eat in three hours? Does every thirteen-year-old merit a life-sized ice sculpture of his luminescence and deserve to have 300 adults compelled to watch a fifteen minute retrospective of his life-and-times as though compiled by Ken Burns?)
What a moment of opportunity to reinforce condemnations that rabbinic organizations repeatedly have published against those who conduct synagogue-centered poker games and casino-like gambling. To teach people that the great names that have lived in Jewish history are those of rabbis who taught Torah, scholars and teachers, pioneers who built Israel, other pioneers who built and defended Jewish communities throughout the world -- and monied people who distributed their wealth generously. The greatness of Baron Rothschild, Moses Montefiore, Baron de Hirsch, Haym Salomon, Jacob Schiff, and others was not their riches but their philanthropy. They did not sit on their money and hoard it. They worked hard for it, took real risks in the world of industry, and then shared generously with those less fortunate.
What an opportunity we have! To require that every public event/banquet include at least one major award to be conferred on a humble less-prominent person purely for his or her profound leadership in Torah and ethics, regardless of money. To teach about honesty. To invite to schools the person who returns a lost bag of cash that he finds left behind in a taxi. This is the moment to turn this shame into a moment of pride.
And, even as we truly have a remarkably proud record throughout the world as a law-abiding community – can you think of a safer place to walk alone in the middle of the night than in a frum neighborhood that is not plagued by midnight interlopers from outside? -- we need to teach our yeshiva kids again and again, nukh a-mol un takeh nukh a-mol, that financial crimes are cardinal sins because they implicate the name and honor of HaKadosh Barukh Hu.
And now a final exposition: “Why is the religion of these isolated perpetrators relevant?”
In Torah terms, the problem is Chilul Hashem. Their actions desecrate the Holy Name of the G-d of Israel Who took us out of Egypt and brought us to Mount Sinai to receive His Word and to transmit its glory to the Nations around us.
And in secular terms, the problem is in the stereotype. If David Berkowitz, the non-Jewish “Son of Sam,” went around murdering blonde women in their cars with his .44-caliber gun, it still did not feed a stereotype. Jews are not stereotyped as killers/murderers.
But this Madoff thing fits a stereotype. For some prejudiced non-observant Jews, it fits one intra-Jewish stereotype: “Oh, those Orthodox! They are so strict about their supposedly high standards. They think they are so much better than we are. Why, one of their rabbis would not even drink wine that I poured for him! They won’t eat my food – even though they will eat the food of people who hire illegal aliens and employ child labor. So they are oh-so-holy, but when it comes to being honest, they take a back seat, those Orthodox. I’m a better Jew than they are, any day of the week. We may eat pork on Yom Kippur, but we are better Jews than they are. Because we have Jewish hearts.”
Cardiac Jews.
That is why Madoff -- who is not Orthodox in the first place -- is a problem of Chilul Hashem of one sort, when dealing with one sub-group of non-observant Jews. And it is not an answer to respond that the Reform Community Day school in Los Angeles is named for a junk-bond dealer who perpetrated crimes of financial shame. How can that be an answer? What kind of response is that? Rather, that is the road of falling into the same silly trap when, in fact, we all should be working together as Jews of all stripes and spots, denominations, genders, and politics, to eradicate financial malfeasance and defalcations.
Again the question, then: Why is the religion of the perpetrator relevant? I would say, because the real concern is the way that we -- all Jews -- appear in the eyes of those bigots among the non-Jewish world who may bear prejudices and stereotypes that feed off these aberrations.
There are plenty of non-Jewish crooks, frauds, and defalcators. The present Illinois Governor (still in office as of this second) was elected to shake up Springfield but instead shook down Illinois. How Jewish is a guy whose name is pronounced Bla-goy-avich? And Martha Stewart is not Jewish. And, during my high-stakes litigation career, I represented and defended powerful clients, including a solid cross-section of non-Jews who were accused of financial malfeasance.
Yet it is not a sufficient answer to say that Enron were non-Jews and that Global Crossing were non-Jews and that Charles Keating was a non-Jew who used his fraudulent gains to support Mother Theresa – indeed, she even wrote a letter to the judge in his support during the legal proceedings against him. Because, at day’s end, there are stereotypes. Stereotypes are so hard to squelch and so easy to reinforce. People truly believe that Polish people are stupid, even though they have produced a Pope of the Catholic Church, a brilliant (if disastrous) foreign policy advisor to a past American president, my favorite / sharpest / most brilliant morning talk show hostess, and at least two Prime Ministers of Israel. If an Irish person gets involved in something arising from inebriation, well, it is as though the only alcoholic beverages ever concocted were Jameson's, Powell's, and Bailey's. When an Italian person is associated even obliquely with something arising from organized crime, it feeds stereotypes, even though Italians like Rudy Giulliani led vigorous struggles against organized crime.
People of color particularly are subjects of stereotypes.
The stuff of Madoff feeds our stereotype. The vulgar use of the word “Jew” as a verb is shamefully tied with financial vulgarism. We may fight the Oxford Dictionary, but this is what it is. The stereotype is Shylock the Moneylender. It is hook-nosed Fagin who corrupts and sends urchins to steal for him. Both were fictional creations of literary minds and pens that could have designated them Anglicans, but didn't. During the Civil War, the stereotype prompted Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to issue General Order No. 11. When William Jennings Bryant railed at the 1896 Chicago Democrat National Convention against Wall Street financiers, saying “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor a crown of thorns; [y]ou shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” everyone understood what he was saying. He was not stereotyping the Romans on Wall Street.
This is the viciously unfair stereotype of us. In the streets of the rustic Midwest, even where no Jews live, arson-for-insurance (as contrasted from pyromaniacally setting wildfires in California) is called “Jewish lightning.” The term is so defined on Wikipedia's Wiktionary website: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jewish_lightning I heard it for the first time while traveling in the Bible Belt. The person was a non-Jewish colleague of mine, a friend, who did not even realize that the term was offensive. (It is like absent-mindedly criticizing a Native American as an “Indian giver.”) It is Marc Rich getting pardoned by an American President who pens dishonestly in the New York Times that he did so at the urgent behest of the Prime Minister of Israel. And every single time that an outlier, isolated Jew emerges in one of these things, it builds, and it builds on itself. It builds on stereotypes. It poses the single greatest calumny against Jewish people.
That’s why the religion of the perpetrator matters to me. I wish we could figure out a way to separate ourselves in the public mind from these guys, but it is easier said than done. As long as we allow such defalcators and crooks to be honorees at our events, to have their names on our institutions' buildings and in the inside covers of our holy books, to hold positions of lay leadership in temple and synagogue boards of directors or trustees, we inadvertently become ignorant accessories, teaching children for the next generation that we accord our highest honors based not only on how deeply within his denomination he bears his bond and trust in G-d . . . but on how consummately he is deeply pocketed in bearer bonds denominated “In Gd We Trust.”
We have to aim higher. We absolutely must.
We are 5 million Jews in America, and ten percent of us are Orthodox. So: 500,000 Orthodox Jews . . . 5 million American Jews. There are one or two of these crook situations each and every year. One or two out of 500,000 . . . one or two out of 5,000,000. The large-yarmulka’d rabbi of the 1970s nursing home scandal. The Brooklyn yeshiva condemned by United States Senator Sam Nunn for drawing federal Pell Grant funds for students who do not exist in a yeshiva that does not exist to eat meals that do not exist. The junk bond dealer. The Washington lobbyist. The fellow who fled America for Switzerland, then got pardoned by a departing President who said the pardon was requested by Israel’s Prime Minister. The New Square Chassidic community that bullet-voted for Hillary for U.S. Senate after Bill did not pardon but commuted sentences of three of their chassidim. The East Coast Chassidim, West Coast Orthodox Union lay leader, and Israeli bankers involved in a federally indicted money-laundering scheme. And of course Postville. Some are “Orthodox.” Some are otherwise denominated.
We Jews are such a profoundly ethical and honest community. How many prisoners in the federal prisons really ask for kosher meals? Five? Eight? Nine?
Yet, there comes a point where it no longer seems or feels like only three out of 500,000 -- because this is the area of stereotype. It plays and feeds into stereotype. And therein lies the profound sensitivity.
Stereotypes are foolish, built on apocryphal presumptions. Do Jews really know more about money than do others? Clearly, anti-Semites throughout history have thought so, always keeping a Jew around to head the Treasury or the Exchequer. Even Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, when they expelled all Jews from Spain, asked one individual Jew, Don Isaac Abravanel, to stay behind to do the books. Insane! If Jews know so much about managing money and turning a profit, why is Israel unable to manage without American largesse? How did Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke help preside over the American fiscal fiasco? And was it Mayor Abe Beame who took New York City into bankruptcy? And Robert Citron in Orange County?
Who got the idea that Jews know so much more than anyone else about how to manage money? Yet several Presidents seem to have brought in some Jewish monetary advisors. FDR had Treasury Secretary Morgenthau. Nixon had Herbert Stein as chairman of his Council of Economic Advisors. Carter had W. Michael Blumenthal. (Shhhhh! He was not really Jewish despite being named Blumenthal.) Clinton had Robert Rubin. Certainly, to employ a double negative, there is no reason that a Jew should not be welcomed as an economic advisor if she is best for the job. And certainly Jewish deep thinkers populate the entire spectrum of economic thought from a range of liberals including Paul Samuelson to conservatives like Milton Friedman and even objectivist-libertarians like Ayn Rand (Shhhhh! She was Jewish despite changing her name to Rand . . . from Alice Rosenbaum.)
It is impossible to avoid noting that this latest crook, Bernard Madoff, was prominently positioned in the Yeshiva University lay hierarchy. (He personally is not Orthodox, nor is he nominally so or thus quasi-denominated.) He also invested hundreds of millions of charitable dollars in his Ponzi schemes. We need to do something as a community akin to what Jews in America did 100 years ago to separate ourselves in the popular imagination from the likes of Arnold Rothstein and Bugsy Siegel and Legs Diamond and Meyer Lansky. And we did.
Whether it means refusing to count these characters in minyans, to give them aliyas, to permit them to attend banquet dinners, taking their names off synagogue walls and out of siddur/chumash inside-covers, or the like, it seems necessary to do something to separate our community from them.
There should always be a chance for teshuvah -- sincere, heartfelt repentance. Absolutely -- that is a core Jewish value and belief. And someday in the future, maybe after therapy, after restitution, after complete repentance (teshuvah g’murah), new books can be dedicated, and new minyanim can be formed with their inclusion. They can be given new honors. But there needs to be a separation, a havdalah g’murah, pending teshuvah.
Similarly, we must give real thought to changing the way we do business as an organized theological and spiritual community. Are we too material-focused? Do we respect money more than good deeds? To paraphrase Rav Michael Broyde's quote of Rav Emanuel Rackman's observation: Do we teach that it is more important to do good in this world -- or that it is more important to do well? Do we honor people who are monied more than people who exude righteousness? (Yes, a monied person simultaneously can exude righteousness. I have known some such people, like Jack Nagel of Los Angeles, and they have touched my life by their example without really donating my way.)
What a moment of opportunity we have before us to teach our community and our young people real Jewish values! Or to capture some of these thoughts in a public statement promoting reconsidered public policy. We have before us -- right now -- an opportunity to propose or suggest standards that limit or regulate the vulgar excesses of Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah parties. (How many meals can a Jew eat in three hours? Does every thirteen-year-old merit a life-sized ice sculpture of his luminescence and deserve to have 300 adults compelled to watch a fifteen minute retrospective of his life-and-times as though compiled by Ken Burns?)
What a moment of opportunity to reinforce condemnations that rabbinic organizations repeatedly have published against those who conduct synagogue-centered poker games and casino-like gambling. To teach people that the great names that have lived in Jewish history are those of rabbis who taught Torah, scholars and teachers, pioneers who built Israel, other pioneers who built and defended Jewish communities throughout the world -- and monied people who distributed their wealth generously. The greatness of Baron Rothschild, Moses Montefiore, Baron de Hirsch, Haym Salomon, Jacob Schiff, and others was not their riches but their philanthropy. They did not sit on their money and hoard it. They worked hard for it, took real risks in the world of industry, and then shared generously with those less fortunate.
What an opportunity we have! To require that every public event/banquet include at least one major award to be conferred on a humble less-prominent person purely for his or her profound leadership in Torah and ethics, regardless of money. To teach about honesty. To invite to schools the person who returns a lost bag of cash that he finds left behind in a taxi. This is the moment to turn this shame into a moment of pride.
And, even as we truly have a remarkably proud record throughout the world as a law-abiding community – can you think of a safer place to walk alone in the middle of the night than in a frum neighborhood that is not plagued by midnight interlopers from outside? -- we need to teach our yeshiva kids again and again, nukh a-mol un takeh nukh a-mol, that financial crimes are cardinal sins because they implicate the name and honor of HaKadosh Barukh Hu.
And now a final exposition: “Why is the religion of these isolated perpetrators relevant?”
In Torah terms, the problem is Chilul Hashem. Their actions desecrate the Holy Name of the G-d of Israel Who took us out of Egypt and brought us to Mount Sinai to receive His Word and to transmit its glory to the Nations around us.
And in secular terms, the problem is in the stereotype. If David Berkowitz, the non-Jewish “Son of Sam,” went around murdering blonde women in their cars with his .44-caliber gun, it still did not feed a stereotype. Jews are not stereotyped as killers/murderers.
But this Madoff thing fits a stereotype. For some prejudiced non-observant Jews, it fits one intra-Jewish stereotype: “Oh, those Orthodox! They are so strict about their supposedly high standards. They think they are so much better than we are. Why, one of their rabbis would not even drink wine that I poured for him! They won’t eat my food – even though they will eat the food of people who hire illegal aliens and employ child labor. So they are oh-so-holy, but when it comes to being honest, they take a back seat, those Orthodox. I’m a better Jew than they are, any day of the week. We may eat pork on Yom Kippur, but we are better Jews than they are. Because we have Jewish hearts.”
Cardiac Jews.
That is why Madoff -- who is not Orthodox in the first place -- is a problem of Chilul Hashem of one sort, when dealing with one sub-group of non-observant Jews. And it is not an answer to respond that the Reform Community Day school in Los Angeles is named for a junk-bond dealer who perpetrated crimes of financial shame. How can that be an answer? What kind of response is that? Rather, that is the road of falling into the same silly trap when, in fact, we all should be working together as Jews of all stripes and spots, denominations, genders, and politics, to eradicate financial malfeasance and defalcations.
Again the question, then: Why is the religion of the perpetrator relevant? I would say, because the real concern is the way that we -- all Jews -- appear in the eyes of those bigots among the non-Jewish world who may bear prejudices and stereotypes that feed off these aberrations.
There are plenty of non-Jewish crooks, frauds, and defalcators. The present Illinois Governor (still in office as of this second) was elected to shake up Springfield but instead shook down Illinois. How Jewish is a guy whose name is pronounced Bla-goy-avich? And Martha Stewart is not Jewish. And, during my high-stakes litigation career, I represented and defended powerful clients, including a solid cross-section of non-Jews who were accused of financial malfeasance.
Yet it is not a sufficient answer to say that Enron were non-Jews and that Global Crossing were non-Jews and that Charles Keating was a non-Jew who used his fraudulent gains to support Mother Theresa – indeed, she even wrote a letter to the judge in his support during the legal proceedings against him. Because, at day’s end, there are stereotypes. Stereotypes are so hard to squelch and so easy to reinforce. People truly believe that Polish people are stupid, even though they have produced a Pope of the Catholic Church, a brilliant (if disastrous) foreign policy advisor to a past American president, my favorite / sharpest / most brilliant morning talk show hostess, and at least two Prime Ministers of Israel. If an Irish person gets involved in something arising from inebriation, well, it is as though the only alcoholic beverages ever concocted were Jameson's, Powell's, and Bailey's. When an Italian person is associated even obliquely with something arising from organized crime, it feeds stereotypes, even though Italians like Rudy Giulliani led vigorous struggles against organized crime.
People of color particularly are subjects of stereotypes.
The stuff of Madoff feeds our stereotype. The vulgar use of the word “Jew” as a verb is shamefully tied with financial vulgarism. We may fight the Oxford Dictionary, but this is what it is. The stereotype is Shylock the Moneylender. It is hook-nosed Fagin who corrupts and sends urchins to steal for him. Both were fictional creations of literary minds and pens that could have designated them Anglicans, but didn't. During the Civil War, the stereotype prompted Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to issue General Order No. 11. When William Jennings Bryant railed at the 1896 Chicago Democrat National Convention against Wall Street financiers, saying “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor a crown of thorns; [y]ou shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” everyone understood what he was saying. He was not stereotyping the Romans on Wall Street.
This is the viciously unfair stereotype of us. In the streets of the rustic Midwest, even where no Jews live, arson-for-insurance (as contrasted from pyromaniacally setting wildfires in California) is called “Jewish lightning.” The term is so defined on Wikipedia's Wiktionary website: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jewish_lightning I heard it for the first time while traveling in the Bible Belt. The person was a non-Jewish colleague of mine, a friend, who did not even realize that the term was offensive. (It is like absent-mindedly criticizing a Native American as an “Indian giver.”) It is Marc Rich getting pardoned by an American President who pens dishonestly in the New York Times that he did so at the urgent behest of the Prime Minister of Israel. And every single time that an outlier, isolated Jew emerges in one of these things, it builds, and it builds on itself. It builds on stereotypes. It poses the single greatest calumny against Jewish people.
That’s why the religion of the perpetrator matters to me. I wish we could figure out a way to separate ourselves in the public mind from these guys, but it is easier said than done. As long as we allow such defalcators and crooks to be honorees at our events, to have their names on our institutions' buildings and in the inside covers of our holy books, to hold positions of lay leadership in temple and synagogue boards of directors or trustees, we inadvertently become ignorant accessories, teaching children for the next generation that we accord our highest honors based not only on how deeply within his denomination he bears his bond and trust in G-d . . . but on how consummately he is deeply pocketed in bearer bonds denominated “In Gd We Trust.”
We have to aim higher. We absolutely must.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Disinviting Gov. Palin: A Sad and Disgraceful Day for American Jews
I live in California and could not have attended the anti-Ahmadinejad Rally at the United Nations in New York anyway. But Californian Jews, too, may recoil at the New York political circus that became a national disgrace for American Jewry as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (the “Presidents’ Conference”) disinvited Sarah Palin from speaking at the event. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, I attended rallies-upon-rallies-upon-rallies sponsored by the GNYCSJ (Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry), the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, the National Conference for Soviet Jewry, and the Presidents’ Conference. Malcolm Hoenlein, now executive director of the Presidents’ Conference, was executive director of GNYCSJ in its time. They always, always had prominent political personalities and candidates speaking. No one ever had a tax-status issue.
In reading the press release that Gov. Palin has been disinvited from speaking at the rally, what were we really being told? That there never were campaigning politicians at New York’s annual Solidarity Day for Soviet Jewry? At the annual Israel Day Parade down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue?
C’mon. Gimme a break.
If they had invited only Palin but no Democrats, then the Presidents’ Conference conceivably would have invited a series of questions about partisanship. But Hillary was coming. And they had invited other Dems. It was balanced, as these events always are balanced and non-partisan or, more accurately, bi-partisan.
Sen. Barack Obama speaks at churches. Do they lose their tax status? That overheated priest in Chicago, who mocked Hillary from the Sunday pulpit at Jeremiah Wright’s church. Did that church lose its tax status? Bill Clinton campaigned at churches, speaking at Sunday morning prayers. Gore. Even our own Orthodox Jewish VP candidate some time back spoke at plenty of religious houses of worship. There is absolutely no risk of losing tax-exempt status if a balanced array of politicians speaks out on a public stage against a matter of public concern, like Ahmadinejad being warmly greeted at the General Assembly. And Malcolm Hoenlein knows those rules very, very well because he has been at the vortex of American Jewish political activity for at least 35 years.
No organization endangers its tax status by providing a platform for political leaders to speak publicly, with bipartisan concern, over Ahmadinejad coming to NY.
What happened here is that Hillary already was coming. Then Gov. Palin was invited, and Hillary backed out for narrow political reasons — no point in giving Palin a public stage to demonstrate her awareness of an international foreign policy concern, while she simultaneously builds bridges to American Jewry. Hillary took a non-partisan issue regarding a public protest against one of the most dangerous Jew-haters in the world, and she turned it into a circus.
I have been a political activist and street-protest kind of person for 35 years. OK, I stopped after leaving New York in the mid-1980s because we have no good places to protest here. (Where are we going to protest Ahmadinejad – At a beach? At the “Hollywood” sign? In Malibu?) I have never seen anything like this. It is a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, that the organized Jewish community got pushed around like this on so critical an issue and gave in so meekly.
Outside New York, in states throughout the nation, the protest against Ahmadinejad lost all its bite, all its meaning. Words were spoken on a stage, and the syllables floated and dissipated into thin air. The news was the disinvitation to Palin. Here she was, readily accepting a Jewish invitation to add her voice to others across the spectrum on the Ahmadinejad invitation. In a few months, it is conceivable that she could be a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States. She graciously accepted our invitation, as Hillary graciously had done earlier – and then we publicly humiliate and disinvite Gov. Palin? It is a disgrace.
And it is not a very nice thing to do, either.
I put my faith in Hashem. For me, in the end of the day, Israel’s survival stems from His grace. In that regard, the United Nations does not matter, nor does Ahmadinejad. Among others whose efforts to destroy Israel have failed, Israel has survived Gamal Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Sheikh Yassin, and Yasser Arafat. In that sense, none of this matters. But, as our Patriarch Jacob prepared for his encounter with the dangerous twin-brother Esau with gifts and with prayer and with a readiness to fight, so we are bidden to pursue the natural course of defense side-by-side with the religious values of repentance, prayer, and charity.
This disinvitation was a shameful decision. As such, it also reflects and recalls the kinds of Jewish organizational infighting that sabotaged rescue efforts during the years of the Shoah. The American Jewish Congress and American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League jockeyed against each other. Rabbi Stephen Wise induced President Franklin Roosevelt to ignore the March of the Rabbis when more than 400 Orthodox Rabbis from throughout America marched to the White House in 1943, seeking an audience to discuss rescue. In their volume “A Race Against Death,” Professors David Wyman and Rafael Medoff tell the sordid details of American Jewish organizational efforts to detour the Bergson Group in its efforts to press Washington to save Jewish lives in Holocaust Europe.
Always the infighting, the smallness and pettiness, even at life-and-death times of Pikuach Nefesh. So sad.
From: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Date: September 19, 2008 3:21:34 PM EDT
To: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Subject: Rally Update
September 19, 2008
We know that organizations are receiving many inquires and protests about the decision not to have any political personalities at the rally. This was not a decision of the Conference of Presidents. We will have the opportunity to explain the full process once the event is behind us. Our partner agencies did not feel that they could continue to participate given legal opinions regarding their tax-exempt status and other factors. The choice was either to cancel or remove all the political speakers. Among the speakers on Monday will be Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, Natan Sharansky, former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler and many top national figures.
We hope that the focus of the rally can now be back on Iran and that everyone who worked to have the maximum turn-out to urge their constituencies to come to protest Ahmadinjad’s threats to “wipe Israel off the map.”
Harold Tanner, Acting Chairman
Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
633 Third Avenue, 21st Floor,
New York, NY 10017Tel. 212-318-6111 /
Fax 212-644-4135
Email: info@conferenceofpresidents.org
http://www.conferenceofpresidents.org/
In reading the press release that Gov. Palin has been disinvited from speaking at the rally, what were we really being told? That there never were campaigning politicians at New York’s annual Solidarity Day for Soviet Jewry? At the annual Israel Day Parade down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue?
C’mon. Gimme a break.
If they had invited only Palin but no Democrats, then the Presidents’ Conference conceivably would have invited a series of questions about partisanship. But Hillary was coming. And they had invited other Dems. It was balanced, as these events always are balanced and non-partisan or, more accurately, bi-partisan.
Sen. Barack Obama speaks at churches. Do they lose their tax status? That overheated priest in Chicago, who mocked Hillary from the Sunday pulpit at Jeremiah Wright’s church. Did that church lose its tax status? Bill Clinton campaigned at churches, speaking at Sunday morning prayers. Gore. Even our own Orthodox Jewish VP candidate some time back spoke at plenty of religious houses of worship. There is absolutely no risk of losing tax-exempt status if a balanced array of politicians speaks out on a public stage against a matter of public concern, like Ahmadinejad being warmly greeted at the General Assembly. And Malcolm Hoenlein knows those rules very, very well because he has been at the vortex of American Jewish political activity for at least 35 years.
No organization endangers its tax status by providing a platform for political leaders to speak publicly, with bipartisan concern, over Ahmadinejad coming to NY.
What happened here is that Hillary already was coming. Then Gov. Palin was invited, and Hillary backed out for narrow political reasons — no point in giving Palin a public stage to demonstrate her awareness of an international foreign policy concern, while she simultaneously builds bridges to American Jewry. Hillary took a non-partisan issue regarding a public protest against one of the most dangerous Jew-haters in the world, and she turned it into a circus.
I have been a political activist and street-protest kind of person for 35 years. OK, I stopped after leaving New York in the mid-1980s because we have no good places to protest here. (Where are we going to protest Ahmadinejad – At a beach? At the “Hollywood” sign? In Malibu?) I have never seen anything like this. It is a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, that the organized Jewish community got pushed around like this on so critical an issue and gave in so meekly.
Outside New York, in states throughout the nation, the protest against Ahmadinejad lost all its bite, all its meaning. Words were spoken on a stage, and the syllables floated and dissipated into thin air. The news was the disinvitation to Palin. Here she was, readily accepting a Jewish invitation to add her voice to others across the spectrum on the Ahmadinejad invitation. In a few months, it is conceivable that she could be a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States. She graciously accepted our invitation, as Hillary graciously had done earlier – and then we publicly humiliate and disinvite Gov. Palin? It is a disgrace.
And it is not a very nice thing to do, either.
I put my faith in Hashem. For me, in the end of the day, Israel’s survival stems from His grace. In that regard, the United Nations does not matter, nor does Ahmadinejad. Among others whose efforts to destroy Israel have failed, Israel has survived Gamal Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Sheikh Yassin, and Yasser Arafat. In that sense, none of this matters. But, as our Patriarch Jacob prepared for his encounter with the dangerous twin-brother Esau with gifts and with prayer and with a readiness to fight, so we are bidden to pursue the natural course of defense side-by-side with the religious values of repentance, prayer, and charity.
This disinvitation was a shameful decision. As such, it also reflects and recalls the kinds of Jewish organizational infighting that sabotaged rescue efforts during the years of the Shoah. The American Jewish Congress and American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League jockeyed against each other. Rabbi Stephen Wise induced President Franklin Roosevelt to ignore the March of the Rabbis when more than 400 Orthodox Rabbis from throughout America marched to the White House in 1943, seeking an audience to discuss rescue. In their volume “A Race Against Death,” Professors David Wyman and Rafael Medoff tell the sordid details of American Jewish organizational efforts to detour the Bergson Group in its efforts to press Washington to save Jewish lives in Holocaust Europe.
Always the infighting, the smallness and pettiness, even at life-and-death times of Pikuach Nefesh. So sad.
From: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Date: September 19, 2008 3:21:34 PM EDT
To: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Subject: Rally Update
September 19, 2008
We know that organizations are receiving many inquires and protests about the decision not to have any political personalities at the rally. This was not a decision of the Conference of Presidents. We will have the opportunity to explain the full process once the event is behind us. Our partner agencies did not feel that they could continue to participate given legal opinions regarding their tax-exempt status and other factors. The choice was either to cancel or remove all the political speakers. Among the speakers on Monday will be Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, Natan Sharansky, former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler and many top national figures.
We hope that the focus of the rally can now be back on Iran and that everyone who worked to have the maximum turn-out to urge their constituencies to come to protest Ahmadinjad’s threats to “wipe Israel off the map.”
Harold Tanner, Acting Chairman
Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
633 Third Avenue, 21st Floor,
New York, NY 10017Tel. 212-318-6111 /
Fax 212-644-4135
Email: info@conferenceofpresidents.org
http://www.conferenceofpresidents.org/
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Hollywood Isn't Fair to Jews Either
Counterpunch: Hollywood Isn't Fair to Jews Either
From the Los Angeles Times (August 6, 1990)
When African American filmmakers are upset about perceived inequities in Hollywood, they can blame the Jews. When a Christian (Nikos Kazantzakis) writes a sacrilegious novel about Jesus and a second Christian (Martin Scorsese) converts the book into a film, fundamentalists on the periphery still find an angle to blame the Jews.
They are lucky.
Whom shall the Jews blame for Hollywood's decades-long denigration of Jewish women and mockery of Jewish tradition? The Christians? The Japanese? The Mongolians?
Consider Hollywood's unique mistreatment of Jewish women. Michael Steadman of "thirtysomething" would not marry one. Stuart Markowitz of "L.A. Law" did not. Marty Gold, for all his Yiddish mumblings on "Anything but Love," will romance anyone but Jewish women. Even the pajama salesman portrayed by Jackie Mason, the man who wears his religion on his tongue, steered away from his TV mother's urgings to date one. (When he finally gave in, once, the Jewish woman was characterized as snorting like a pig whenever she laughed.) "Bridget Loves Bernie" was tame by comparison.
The big screen is the same. In "Exodus," Paul Newman's Ari Ben Canaan liberated Israel while romancing Eva Marie Saint's British shiksa on the side. Charles Grodin at least gives a Jewish woman a chance, marrying her in "The Heartbreak Kid," but she proves to be such a slob (she can't even eat an egg salad sandwich neatly) that he spends the rest of the film pursuing Cybill Shepherd's version of Nordic shiksa.
Robert Redford's Hubbel fares no better in "The Way We Were," suffocated by Barbra Streisand, his loud, pushy Jewish wife (who is a radical leftist to boot), struggling and finally succeeding in regaining his freedom from her clutches. Elliott Gould's story is the same in "Over the Brooklyn Bridge," as he battles off Carol Kane's sex-starved Jewish woman in favor of Margaux Hemingway's version of shiksa.
Even such sobering miniseries blockbusters as Gerald Green's "Holocaust" and Herman Wouk's "War and Remembrance" bear the Hollywood message. In both stories, the central Jewish family suffers annihilation in the Nazi death camps -- except for the one kin with the non-Jewish spouse.
Woody Allen's "New York Stories" vignette, to be sure, actually sees a Jewish male take a liking to a Jewish woman. But only after the canard of "The Jewish Mother" has been dragged through the mud and plastered across the sky, as she badgers her son to "make her happy" and give up the shiksa he prefers. Is Allen re-packaging "Annie Hall" -- or "Portnoy's Complaint"?
Yes, there are a few good Jewish women in the movies, so good that Jewish men deign to marry them: the women of "Fiddler on the Roof," "Hester Street," "Yentl" and "The Frisco Kid," for example. But all those films share in common an omnipresent romanticizing of an era long past, a nostalgic glimpse back to a different time and epoch. In the old days, we infer, there were such women. In the old days, tradition was, well, tradition.
But today's rabbi might just as well be the pervert in Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (but Were Afraid to Ask)" or the Rabbi Huckelman of "Anything but Love" who plays offensive practical jokes on party-goers. When "L.A. Law" presents a man who performs ritual circumcisions, he is the butt of humor, being sued for slipping during the procedure -- a horrifying matter which neither I nor any of my rabbinic colleagues have ever encountered in our respective careers.
There has never been, not in the movies and not on television, so much as a single subplot focusing on a traditionally observant, yet culturally contemporary, Jewish family engaging modern American society, synthesizing their ancient traditions with the challenges of today. When the hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- of Americans who respect Jewish tradition watch "The Cosby Show" or "Amen," "A Different World" or "227," we are truly envious of our African American neighbors.
Not only do they get better treatment from Hollywood than do we. They even have a scapegoat. Whom shall we blame?
From the Los Angeles Times (August 6, 1990)
When African American filmmakers are upset about perceived inequities in Hollywood, they can blame the Jews. When a Christian (Nikos Kazantzakis) writes a sacrilegious novel about Jesus and a second Christian (Martin Scorsese) converts the book into a film, fundamentalists on the periphery still find an angle to blame the Jews.
They are lucky.
Whom shall the Jews blame for Hollywood's decades-long denigration of Jewish women and mockery of Jewish tradition? The Christians? The Japanese? The Mongolians?
Consider Hollywood's unique mistreatment of Jewish women. Michael Steadman of "thirtysomething" would not marry one. Stuart Markowitz of "L.A. Law" did not. Marty Gold, for all his Yiddish mumblings on "Anything but Love," will romance anyone but Jewish women. Even the pajama salesman portrayed by Jackie Mason, the man who wears his religion on his tongue, steered away from his TV mother's urgings to date one. (When he finally gave in, once, the Jewish woman was characterized as snorting like a pig whenever she laughed.) "Bridget Loves Bernie" was tame by comparison.
The big screen is the same. In "Exodus," Paul Newman's Ari Ben Canaan liberated Israel while romancing Eva Marie Saint's British shiksa on the side. Charles Grodin at least gives a Jewish woman a chance, marrying her in "The Heartbreak Kid," but she proves to be such a slob (she can't even eat an egg salad sandwich neatly) that he spends the rest of the film pursuing Cybill Shepherd's version of Nordic shiksa.
Robert Redford's Hubbel fares no better in "The Way We Were," suffocated by Barbra Streisand, his loud, pushy Jewish wife (who is a radical leftist to boot), struggling and finally succeeding in regaining his freedom from her clutches. Elliott Gould's story is the same in "Over the Brooklyn Bridge," as he battles off Carol Kane's sex-starved Jewish woman in favor of Margaux Hemingway's version of shiksa.
Even such sobering miniseries blockbusters as Gerald Green's "Holocaust" and Herman Wouk's "War and Remembrance" bear the Hollywood message. In both stories, the central Jewish family suffers annihilation in the Nazi death camps -- except for the one kin with the non-Jewish spouse.
Woody Allen's "New York Stories" vignette, to be sure, actually sees a Jewish male take a liking to a Jewish woman. But only after the canard of "The Jewish Mother" has been dragged through the mud and plastered across the sky, as she badgers her son to "make her happy" and give up the shiksa he prefers. Is Allen re-packaging "Annie Hall" -- or "Portnoy's Complaint"?
Yes, there are a few good Jewish women in the movies, so good that Jewish men deign to marry them: the women of "Fiddler on the Roof," "Hester Street," "Yentl" and "The Frisco Kid," for example. But all those films share in common an omnipresent romanticizing of an era long past, a nostalgic glimpse back to a different time and epoch. In the old days, we infer, there were such women. In the old days, tradition was, well, tradition.
But today's rabbi might just as well be the pervert in Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (but Were Afraid to Ask)" or the Rabbi Huckelman of "Anything but Love" who plays offensive practical jokes on party-goers. When "L.A. Law" presents a man who performs ritual circumcisions, he is the butt of humor, being sued for slipping during the procedure -- a horrifying matter which neither I nor any of my rabbinic colleagues have ever encountered in our respective careers.
There has never been, not in the movies and not on television, so much as a single subplot focusing on a traditionally observant, yet culturally contemporary, Jewish family engaging modern American society, synthesizing their ancient traditions with the challenges of today. When the hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- of Americans who respect Jewish tradition watch "The Cosby Show" or "Amen," "A Different World" or "227," we are truly envious of our African American neighbors.
Not only do they get better treatment from Hollywood than do we. They even have a scapegoat. Whom shall we blame?
Leftist I.Q. Snobbery: They're Not Stupid, Stupid
They’re Not Stupid, Stupid: The Left’s I.Q. attack.
From National Review Online (May 31, 2002)
In his latest ad hominem-based syndicated article, the resident radical-Left opinion writer at the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer, mocked the intelligence of Attorney General John Ashcroft. In a vertical screed, Scheer wrote the following: Ashcroft is "not the sharpest [tool] in the shed." He "managed to lose a Senate race to a dead man." He "was not picked for his smarts." He is a "Keystone Kop in charge of law enforcement." And, in the most telling comment, "Perhaps it is just too difficult for a stern, God-fearing fundamentalist like the attorney general to fully anticipate the dark side of religion's wrath."
Scheer's writing reflects the polemic arrogance monopolized by a Left that is convinced its ranks are just too smart for conservatives to fathom and that conservatives are just too troglodytic to be liberal. Thus, as Paul Bacon has written, Gerald R. Ford was consistently mocked during his presidency as a bumbling and stumbling fool. (In fact, Ford played on two championship football teams at the University of Michigan, and his athletic dexterity was rewarded when he was named a college all-star. He simultaneously was named a Phi Beta Kappa at that top-ten college and went on to earn a Juris Doctor degree at Yale Law School, commonly regarded as one of the nation's two finest law schools.)
Liberal critics regularly mocked Ronald Reagan as a dumb actor who could not conceive an original thought but relied on cue cards. (This, despite Reagan having been elected president of a prominent union of exceptionally opinionated and discerning members, the Screen Actors Guild, and having served two terms as elected governor of America's most populous state.) The first President George Bush was the butt of the slogan: "It's the economy, stupid." And the current president, who earned his bachelor's degree at Yale and his M.B.A. at Harvard, is mocked for flubbing words and is depicted as lacking the intelligence a liberal would expect of a Democrat counterpart like, say, erstwhile journalism professor Al Gore. As for the only conservative president in the past half century who manifestly was smart, the liberals dismissed Richard Nixon's intelligence as "tricky."
By contrast, we were told that Jimmy Carter was not merely a peanut farmer but really a particularly brilliant man, studious and capable of grasping every detail of his office, and we were reminded constantly that Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar out of Yale. (Only two Democrats have held the presidency in the past 34 years, a sign of someone's intelligence.)
It is not clear why the Left is so smug about its supposed brilliance. Under Jimmy Carter, interest rates nearly hit 20 percent. Was the Left convinced that Gerald Ford, Carter's predecessor, maintained inflation in the four-percent range because he could not match Carter's ability to multiply mortgage rates by percentages five times higher? Moreover, under Carter, an antediluvian Islamic cleric held our entire nation hostage for so long that the Ayatollah's drama literally created a steady viewership over fourteen months for a new network television show, Nightline. The Carter years also saw the United States give up the Panama Canal, the Soviets invade Afghanistan and extend their hegemony into Africa, even prompting new Marxist rumblings in South America. In response, Carter pulled our Olympic athletes out of world competition to make a moral statement that he understood better than did a less sophisticated Leonid Brezhnev.
With Reagan the Actor, inflation plunged, the bond market revived, the economy boomed, the 52 hostages were freed bloodlessly from Iran, Libya's Col. Qaddafi was disabused of continuing his role on the cutting edge of state terrorism , the Sandinistas were stopped in Nicaragua, Communism was eradicated from Granada, and the evil Soviet Empire began to crumble from Africa to Eastern Europe to Asia. His successor, the first President Bush, finished the job of assuring Communism's demise, built an international coalition that freed Kuwait, nabbed Panamanian strongman Manual Noriega and closed down his national drug store.
For two years, from 1992-1994, the Clintons of Yale came to town. Perspicacious in their uniquely liberal way, they turned the armed forces into a social laboratory, failed miserably in an attempt to socialize healthcare, and brilliantly managed to achieve something that half a century of dummies could not even conceptualize: They inspired the American electorate to entrust both Houses of Congress to the Republicans. In time, the man whose haircut had stopped traffic at LAX airport was dismantling welfare as we knew it, cutting the deficit, preaching fiscal prudence, backing away from Joycelyn Elders after 15 months and Lani Guinier after what seemed like 15 days, and behaving himself — at least in public. Even so, in the one area that most dramatically remains the ultimate province of the Presidency — the role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States — this most brilliant of our recent presidents allowed Osama bin Laden to build an al Qaeda terror infrastructure.
It is difficult, then, to fathom why radicals on the Left think they are so much smarter than conservatives. Consider, for example, Scheer and Ashcroft. Ashcroft earned his undergraduate degree at Yale and then graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, one of the top-ranked and exclusive academic institutions in the country. Just to get admitted requires profoundly and consistently high college grades and a stellar score on the law-school admissions test. His father was a university president. Ashcroft coauthored two college textbooks. He managed to get elected to statewide office several times, including two terms as state attorney general, two terms as governor (prevented by term limits from seeking reelection again), and a term as United States senator.
But what of Scheer? He graduated City College of New York, a good school that my uncle attended, and then did graduate work at Syracuse University, where my very intelligent wife studied. And then he did more graduate work, in economics at the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley. Ah-ha! That's what makes him smart enough to write a regular screed for the Los Angeles Times. But he never was elected a United States senator or a governor. He never engaged in or directed law enforcement.
And, judging from his mocking Attorney-General Ashcroft's "God-fearing fundamentalis[m]," Scheer presumably is too smart to fear G-d. It is hard to see why Ashcroft's love of Bible study should detract rather than augment his role in law enforcement. The Bible teaches respect for life and adherence to the social order. If anything, it is quirky that, under Ashcroft, the Justice Department has toed an annoyingly politically correct line against ethnic profiling at airports. With 15 Saudi Arabian males among the 19 terrorists of September 11 — and with all of them Arab Muslim men between ages 20 and 45 — the Justice Department absurdly endorses stopping elderly ladies for airport scrutiny, while others who would be stopped by El Al security officers merrily walk by, unchecked.
If political correctness at the airport is ludicrous, we still may take solace that our security lies in the hands of those not smart enough for Scheer, a commentator who equates Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Slobodan Milosevic. Writing in December 1990 from his Left lair at the redoubtable Los Angeles Times, Scheer described the secretary general of the Soviet Communist party: "Mikhail Gorbachev arguably has changed the world more dramatically and with less bloodshed than any leader since Christ." Less than a year later, Gorby, if not Scheer, had been recycled by forces for freedom. Still, it was refreshing seeing a breath of religion emanating from Mr. Scheer's pen.
From National Review Online (May 31, 2002)
In his latest ad hominem-based syndicated article, the resident radical-Left opinion writer at the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer, mocked the intelligence of Attorney General John Ashcroft. In a vertical screed, Scheer wrote the following: Ashcroft is "not the sharpest [tool] in the shed." He "managed to lose a Senate race to a dead man." He "was not picked for his smarts." He is a "Keystone Kop in charge of law enforcement." And, in the most telling comment, "Perhaps it is just too difficult for a stern, God-fearing fundamentalist like the attorney general to fully anticipate the dark side of religion's wrath."
Scheer's writing reflects the polemic arrogance monopolized by a Left that is convinced its ranks are just too smart for conservatives to fathom and that conservatives are just too troglodytic to be liberal. Thus, as Paul Bacon has written, Gerald R. Ford was consistently mocked during his presidency as a bumbling and stumbling fool. (In fact, Ford played on two championship football teams at the University of Michigan, and his athletic dexterity was rewarded when he was named a college all-star. He simultaneously was named a Phi Beta Kappa at that top-ten college and went on to earn a Juris Doctor degree at Yale Law School, commonly regarded as one of the nation's two finest law schools.)
Liberal critics regularly mocked Ronald Reagan as a dumb actor who could not conceive an original thought but relied on cue cards. (This, despite Reagan having been elected president of a prominent union of exceptionally opinionated and discerning members, the Screen Actors Guild, and having served two terms as elected governor of America's most populous state.) The first President George Bush was the butt of the slogan: "It's the economy, stupid." And the current president, who earned his bachelor's degree at Yale and his M.B.A. at Harvard, is mocked for flubbing words and is depicted as lacking the intelligence a liberal would expect of a Democrat counterpart like, say, erstwhile journalism professor Al Gore. As for the only conservative president in the past half century who manifestly was smart, the liberals dismissed Richard Nixon's intelligence as "tricky."
By contrast, we were told that Jimmy Carter was not merely a peanut farmer but really a particularly brilliant man, studious and capable of grasping every detail of his office, and we were reminded constantly that Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar out of Yale. (Only two Democrats have held the presidency in the past 34 years, a sign of someone's intelligence.)
It is not clear why the Left is so smug about its supposed brilliance. Under Jimmy Carter, interest rates nearly hit 20 percent. Was the Left convinced that Gerald Ford, Carter's predecessor, maintained inflation in the four-percent range because he could not match Carter's ability to multiply mortgage rates by percentages five times higher? Moreover, under Carter, an antediluvian Islamic cleric held our entire nation hostage for so long that the Ayatollah's drama literally created a steady viewership over fourteen months for a new network television show, Nightline. The Carter years also saw the United States give up the Panama Canal, the Soviets invade Afghanistan and extend their hegemony into Africa, even prompting new Marxist rumblings in South America. In response, Carter pulled our Olympic athletes out of world competition to make a moral statement that he understood better than did a less sophisticated Leonid Brezhnev.
With Reagan the Actor, inflation plunged, the bond market revived, the economy boomed, the 52 hostages were freed bloodlessly from Iran, Libya's Col. Qaddafi was disabused of continuing his role on the cutting edge of state terrorism , the Sandinistas were stopped in Nicaragua, Communism was eradicated from Granada, and the evil Soviet Empire began to crumble from Africa to Eastern Europe to Asia. His successor, the first President Bush, finished the job of assuring Communism's demise, built an international coalition that freed Kuwait, nabbed Panamanian strongman Manual Noriega and closed down his national drug store.
For two years, from 1992-1994, the Clintons of Yale came to town. Perspicacious in their uniquely liberal way, they turned the armed forces into a social laboratory, failed miserably in an attempt to socialize healthcare, and brilliantly managed to achieve something that half a century of dummies could not even conceptualize: They inspired the American electorate to entrust both Houses of Congress to the Republicans. In time, the man whose haircut had stopped traffic at LAX airport was dismantling welfare as we knew it, cutting the deficit, preaching fiscal prudence, backing away from Joycelyn Elders after 15 months and Lani Guinier after what seemed like 15 days, and behaving himself — at least in public. Even so, in the one area that most dramatically remains the ultimate province of the Presidency — the role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States — this most brilliant of our recent presidents allowed Osama bin Laden to build an al Qaeda terror infrastructure.
It is difficult, then, to fathom why radicals on the Left think they are so much smarter than conservatives. Consider, for example, Scheer and Ashcroft. Ashcroft earned his undergraduate degree at Yale and then graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, one of the top-ranked and exclusive academic institutions in the country. Just to get admitted requires profoundly and consistently high college grades and a stellar score on the law-school admissions test. His father was a university president. Ashcroft coauthored two college textbooks. He managed to get elected to statewide office several times, including two terms as state attorney general, two terms as governor (prevented by term limits from seeking reelection again), and a term as United States senator.
But what of Scheer? He graduated City College of New York, a good school that my uncle attended, and then did graduate work at Syracuse University, where my very intelligent wife studied. And then he did more graduate work, in economics at the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley. Ah-ha! That's what makes him smart enough to write a regular screed for the Los Angeles Times. But he never was elected a United States senator or a governor. He never engaged in or directed law enforcement.
And, judging from his mocking Attorney-General Ashcroft's "God-fearing fundamentalis[m]," Scheer presumably is too smart to fear G-d. It is hard to see why Ashcroft's love of Bible study should detract rather than augment his role in law enforcement. The Bible teaches respect for life and adherence to the social order. If anything, it is quirky that, under Ashcroft, the Justice Department has toed an annoyingly politically correct line against ethnic profiling at airports. With 15 Saudi Arabian males among the 19 terrorists of September 11 — and with all of them Arab Muslim men between ages 20 and 45 — the Justice Department absurdly endorses stopping elderly ladies for airport scrutiny, while others who would be stopped by El Al security officers merrily walk by, unchecked.
If political correctness at the airport is ludicrous, we still may take solace that our security lies in the hands of those not smart enough for Scheer, a commentator who equates Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Slobodan Milosevic. Writing in December 1990 from his Left lair at the redoubtable Los Angeles Times, Scheer described the secretary general of the Soviet Communist party: "Mikhail Gorbachev arguably has changed the world more dramatically and with less bloodshed than any leader since Christ." Less than a year later, Gorby, if not Scheer, had been recycled by forces for freedom. Still, it was refreshing seeing a breath of religion emanating from Mr. Scheer's pen.
Bob Dylan Song on the Middle East Crisis
I have just seen and heard this song. I am very surprised. A quarter-century of public Jewish life, if it has taught me anything, has taught me that large numbers of prominent American Jews in Hollywood and entertainment do everything they can do to hide their Jewishness. Yes, there are many others who are public about their Jewishness, but they typically offset it by acting with intensive political correctness, avoiding expressing straightforward support for Israel in her struggle for survival. Think of Steven Spielberg. So proud a Jew. The Jewish man in Hollywood who made "Schindler's List." The Jewish man in Hollywood who created a permanent Holocaust film archive project.
The Jewish mannin Hollywood who made "Munich."
Even at the telethons and pro-Israel programs where some of the Hollywood Jews show up, the pro-Israel sentiment is so wrapped in politically correct gobbledygook that, by the time the entertainer is finished talking, you don’t know whether he was speaking about Israel or global warming.
There are rare exceptions, of course, as there are exceptions to everything. For example, there is the well known actor who supports Jewish rights to live in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Well, actually not.
Or the fantastically famous singer who has identified unequivocally with Israel's rights. Oooops -- actually not.
Well, the famous Jewish author. Well – no.
Thus, I particularly would not have expected this song just released, apparently sung by Bob Dylan. His life has been a particularly strange journey, including a period in Christianity. Apparently, he now identifies again as a Jew. I use the adverb “apparently” because, well, it seems surprising.
This song clearly is not about global warming. More than 100,000 people have passed this around Youtube in the last few days. I share it with you.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WlHlXHimo_g (four-minute, thirty-second version)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RC_60b2NR1I (longer, ten-minute version)
Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County
Irvine, CA 92612
http://www.ravfischer.com/
ravfischer@sbcglobal.net
The Jewish mannin Hollywood who made "Munich."
Even at the telethons and pro-Israel programs where some of the Hollywood Jews show up, the pro-Israel sentiment is so wrapped in politically correct gobbledygook that, by the time the entertainer is finished talking, you don’t know whether he was speaking about Israel or global warming.
There are rare exceptions, of course, as there are exceptions to everything. For example, there is the well known actor who supports Jewish rights to live in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Well, actually not.
Or the fantastically famous singer who has identified unequivocally with Israel's rights. Oooops -- actually not.
Well, the famous Jewish author. Well – no.
Thus, I particularly would not have expected this song just released, apparently sung by Bob Dylan. His life has been a particularly strange journey, including a period in Christianity. Apparently, he now identifies again as a Jew. I use the adverb “apparently” because, well, it seems surprising.
This song clearly is not about global warming. More than 100,000 people have passed this around Youtube in the last few days. I share it with you.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WlHlXHimo_g (four-minute, thirty-second version)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RC_60b2NR1I (longer, ten-minute version)
Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County
Irvine, CA 92612
http://www.ravfischer.com/
ravfischer@sbcglobal.net
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Chrismas Tree Dilemma for Jews
The Xmas tree Dilemma
From the L.A. Jewish Journal (Dec.14, 2000)
The Christmas season dilemma arises for so many Jews in our city that it sadly deserves attention and comment. When I was a boy, growing up in a parochial Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood, I certainly harbored no yearning for a Christmas tree at home. I was thrilled with my little homemade menorah and our family's nifty electric menorah, which we placed in the living room window.
All of East 57th Street between Farragut and Foster Avenues had menorahs, all except for the block's one Christian family, the one with the tree. I barely knew their daughter, Kathy, but she once confided to me how much she wished that she, too, could have a menorah like everyone else on the block, instead of a tree. Over the years I have thought back to Kathy, as my life's travels took me out of Brooklyn's shtetl to a stint as rabbi in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. (Don't laugh - it comes right before "yarmulke" in some dictionaries.) I served a year in Louisville, Ky., not only clerking for a brilliant United States Court of Appeals judge but also serving as a volunteer rabbi for a small congregation there. And that experience brought me to Cincinnati. And, of course, I was rav of a synagogue in the San Fernando Valley.
Through all those experiences I, too, have encountered the Christmas season's presence. At the yeshiva day school I founded in Woodland Hills, we had to contend with parents' desires that we schedule vacation time between Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Taking my daughters to Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm and Magic Mountain my first winter here, I was visited with Christmas everywhere - not much different from Yarmouth, Louisville, or Cincinnati.
Santa Clauses and tannenbaums and songs of a virgin mother and her infant. The songs are ubiquitous and cannot be escaped, whether at the malls or in the movie theaters or at the supermarket. The television programs all have special Christmas episodes. It really is quite everywhere. And every channel seems to have rights to telecast "It's a Wonderful Life," which really is a wonderful movie.
Interestingly, not one of my children, reared these past two decades in these amalgams of secular society, ever asked me whether we, too, could have a Christmas tree, just as I never had asked for one when I was growing up.
Like me, they always were thrilled with their portion - the holiday with the menorah, with the eight days of presents (even though one day always was set aside for Abba's archaic thing about giving collector postage stamps), and with its own beautiful melodies that, thanks to Israel's songwriters, transcend the tired children's ditty about a dreidel made of clay. Chanukah, even though one of Judaism's lesser holidays, amply satisfied their souls as they grew through childhood. Never once did they feel denied.
This personal background experience, extending several generations, highlights the utter lameness of parental claims in assimilated Jewish circles that "we need to have a tree in our house for the kids. It is wrong to deny our children the same holiday symbols that everyone else has, that all their friends enjoy. We just take the 'Christ' out of our Christmas." How simply stated, but how terribly unsatisfying, coming from men and women, often quite sophisticated in so many other ways, who descend from their own rich culture and heritage.
We live in an exciting time and in an exciting place in American history, an era rich with cultural pluralism and a recognition of the benefits of preserving the cultural quiltwork that is America. African-Americans have evolved Kwanzaa into a major cultural event. Mexican-Americans joyously have made Cinco de Mayo part of this city's must-celebrate days. There is no shame, no yearning for someone else's holidays, someone else's traditions.
Christmas is not our day. It is a day that commemorates the birth of a Jewish child who hundreds of millions believe was the Messiah. But we humbly do not share that belief. Indeed, our respectful understanding that he was not the Messiah constitutes the linchpin that ironically differentiates most culturally assimilated Jews in Los Angeles from their Christian neighbors.
For those among us who do not observe the Torah traditions, who do not make Shabbat their special day of enjoyment and delight, who do not behold the cultural beauty of kosher restaurants and kosher foods, who do not study the Tanach or Talmud, who think Jeremiah was a bullfrog and that mikveh refers to a federal judge who used to be an Illinois congressman - ironically, the only point of departure that individuates the assimilated Angeleno Jew from her Christian counterpart is that Jews respectfully demur as to Jesus as Messiah.
But how sad it would be if our community were left with no component of meaningful self-identification other than that negative salient: the common belief that Jesus was not Messiah. And that is why the "Christmas Dilemma" offers an extraordinary challenge or opportunity for us to contemplate not merely what Judaism is not, but what Judaism is. In an era in which a president memorably asked what "is" is, it is fair for Jews to ask what "Judaism" is. It is not about a tree of another religion, marking another faith's holy day. It is something else.
But what is it?
Is Judaism about a superior ethical way of life? A higher humanistic calling? The suggestion sounds appealing to secular Jews, but it is not satisfying, because there are just too many wonderful Christians around us who also live the ethical, moral life. What motivates them: the Mother Teresas? The Doctors without Borders? The people in Santa Monica who serve free meals to the homeless on Thanksgiving? The builders of shelters for battered women? And what of the man - perhaps not Christian either - who stood in front of that tank in mainland China a few years ago? Or the Dalai Lama?
So it is not a love of ethical humanism that distinguishes Jews from those around us. And it just can't be that Judaism is special merely or even primarily because its adherents have shared victimhood at the hands of marauding Crusaders, torturing Inquisitors, and barbaric pogromists, Nazis, and Communists. Rather, it is something else. It must be something else. Something embedded in our history, in our shared experiences, and ultimately - we cannot avoid reaching this denominator - in our Torah and Talmud. Maybe this Christmas is a good time to set the tree aside, to pull away from the Christmas reruns, and instead to look at that forest of Judaism - and to sign up for a class in serious Jewish textual study, whether at the synagogue or the Aish HaTorah Center or the Jewish Learning Exchange or at any of the many Jewish institutions in this city that offer a text-based alternative to camping out in front of a tree that belongs to someone else's culture and heritage. If trees ultimately become paper and paper becomes books, we may recall that Mohammed called us the Children of the Book. Why not explore the forest this winter?
From the L.A. Jewish Journal (Dec.14, 2000)
The Christmas season dilemma arises for so many Jews in our city that it sadly deserves attention and comment. When I was a boy, growing up in a parochial Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood, I certainly harbored no yearning for a Christmas tree at home. I was thrilled with my little homemade menorah and our family's nifty electric menorah, which we placed in the living room window.
All of East 57th Street between Farragut and Foster Avenues had menorahs, all except for the block's one Christian family, the one with the tree. I barely knew their daughter, Kathy, but she once confided to me how much she wished that she, too, could have a menorah like everyone else on the block, instead of a tree. Over the years I have thought back to Kathy, as my life's travels took me out of Brooklyn's shtetl to a stint as rabbi in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. (Don't laugh - it comes right before "yarmulke" in some dictionaries.) I served a year in Louisville, Ky., not only clerking for a brilliant United States Court of Appeals judge but also serving as a volunteer rabbi for a small congregation there. And that experience brought me to Cincinnati. And, of course, I was rav of a synagogue in the San Fernando Valley.
Through all those experiences I, too, have encountered the Christmas season's presence. At the yeshiva day school I founded in Woodland Hills, we had to contend with parents' desires that we schedule vacation time between Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Taking my daughters to Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm and Magic Mountain my first winter here, I was visited with Christmas everywhere - not much different from Yarmouth, Louisville, or Cincinnati.
Santa Clauses and tannenbaums and songs of a virgin mother and her infant. The songs are ubiquitous and cannot be escaped, whether at the malls or in the movie theaters or at the supermarket. The television programs all have special Christmas episodes. It really is quite everywhere. And every channel seems to have rights to telecast "It's a Wonderful Life," which really is a wonderful movie.
Interestingly, not one of my children, reared these past two decades in these amalgams of secular society, ever asked me whether we, too, could have a Christmas tree, just as I never had asked for one when I was growing up.
Like me, they always were thrilled with their portion - the holiday with the menorah, with the eight days of presents (even though one day always was set aside for Abba's archaic thing about giving collector postage stamps), and with its own beautiful melodies that, thanks to Israel's songwriters, transcend the tired children's ditty about a dreidel made of clay. Chanukah, even though one of Judaism's lesser holidays, amply satisfied their souls as they grew through childhood. Never once did they feel denied.
This personal background experience, extending several generations, highlights the utter lameness of parental claims in assimilated Jewish circles that "we need to have a tree in our house for the kids. It is wrong to deny our children the same holiday symbols that everyone else has, that all their friends enjoy. We just take the 'Christ' out of our Christmas." How simply stated, but how terribly unsatisfying, coming from men and women, often quite sophisticated in so many other ways, who descend from their own rich culture and heritage.
We live in an exciting time and in an exciting place in American history, an era rich with cultural pluralism and a recognition of the benefits of preserving the cultural quiltwork that is America. African-Americans have evolved Kwanzaa into a major cultural event. Mexican-Americans joyously have made Cinco de Mayo part of this city's must-celebrate days. There is no shame, no yearning for someone else's holidays, someone else's traditions.
Christmas is not our day. It is a day that commemorates the birth of a Jewish child who hundreds of millions believe was the Messiah. But we humbly do not share that belief. Indeed, our respectful understanding that he was not the Messiah constitutes the linchpin that ironically differentiates most culturally assimilated Jews in Los Angeles from their Christian neighbors.
For those among us who do not observe the Torah traditions, who do not make Shabbat their special day of enjoyment and delight, who do not behold the cultural beauty of kosher restaurants and kosher foods, who do not study the Tanach or Talmud, who think Jeremiah was a bullfrog and that mikveh refers to a federal judge who used to be an Illinois congressman - ironically, the only point of departure that individuates the assimilated Angeleno Jew from her Christian counterpart is that Jews respectfully demur as to Jesus as Messiah.
But how sad it would be if our community were left with no component of meaningful self-identification other than that negative salient: the common belief that Jesus was not Messiah. And that is why the "Christmas Dilemma" offers an extraordinary challenge or opportunity for us to contemplate not merely what Judaism is not, but what Judaism is. In an era in which a president memorably asked what "is" is, it is fair for Jews to ask what "Judaism" is. It is not about a tree of another religion, marking another faith's holy day. It is something else.
But what is it?
Is Judaism about a superior ethical way of life? A higher humanistic calling? The suggestion sounds appealing to secular Jews, but it is not satisfying, because there are just too many wonderful Christians around us who also live the ethical, moral life. What motivates them: the Mother Teresas? The Doctors without Borders? The people in Santa Monica who serve free meals to the homeless on Thanksgiving? The builders of shelters for battered women? And what of the man - perhaps not Christian either - who stood in front of that tank in mainland China a few years ago? Or the Dalai Lama?
So it is not a love of ethical humanism that distinguishes Jews from those around us. And it just can't be that Judaism is special merely or even primarily because its adherents have shared victimhood at the hands of marauding Crusaders, torturing Inquisitors, and barbaric pogromists, Nazis, and Communists. Rather, it is something else. It must be something else. Something embedded in our history, in our shared experiences, and ultimately - we cannot avoid reaching this denominator - in our Torah and Talmud. Maybe this Christmas is a good time to set the tree aside, to pull away from the Christmas reruns, and instead to look at that forest of Judaism - and to sign up for a class in serious Jewish textual study, whether at the synagogue or the Aish HaTorah Center or the Jewish Learning Exchange or at any of the many Jewish institutions in this city that offer a text-based alternative to camping out in front of a tree that belongs to someone else's culture and heritage. If trees ultimately become paper and paper becomes books, we may recall that Mohammed called us the Children of the Book. Why not explore the forest this winter?
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