JustASC

The Orthodox Union has a new logo:

which will replace its famed U-within-a-circle: 

 on its press releases, letterhead, business cards, advertising, and brochures, but NOT on the products it certifies as kosher.

According to a press release:

the additional new logo has been designed to reflect the reality that the organization does much more than certify food products….”The final look reflects what the OU is all about — a contemporary organization enhancing Jewish life in practically every sphere,” declared Gerald M. Schreck, the Chair of the OU Communications and Marketing Commission.

Sometimes a logo redesign is just a redesign, but it will be curious if there is more to it than that — and in what way the rebranding reflects the priorities of the OU’s incoming Executive Vice President, Rabbi Steven Weil of Beverly Hills, CA, who succeeds Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb on July 1.

The logo, designed by Josef Tocker, is a clever melding of two forms, and somehow still reminds me of Jewish food — specifically, marble rye:

Of course, it has its Picasso qualities too. Here’s a flipped and inverted detail from “The Dream”:

See what I’m sayin’?

A colleague, in light of Hagee’s remarks, is baffled by the Jewish embrace of Christian Zionism. She writes:

What I don’t understand is the shortsightedness of those who so enthusiastically and uncritically accept the embrace of the pro-Israel evangelists. Don’t they see that the evangelists’ hunger to restore biblical Israel is for the sake of swallowing up Israel and the Jews and bringing about Christian salvation? It’s like gleefully accepting a hug that is designed one day to turn into a suffocating and murderous chokehold.

I would argue that the Jewish pro-Israel establishment, with perhaps one notable exception, welcomes the Christian embrace of Israel PRECISELY because it so deeply based in theology — however condescending or anti-Jewish that theology ultimately (and I do mean ultimately) is. As the Obama candidacy is proving (and see page one of today’s Times) pro-Israel Jewish activists much prefer those who support Israel in their kishkes and deepest beliefs over those who have come to their pro-Israel positions through a rational or expedient route. (more…)

Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Union for Reform Judaism asks John Hagee for an explanation of his sermon thanking Hitler for helping Jews create Israel and asserting that the Holocaust was God’s way of punishing the Jews for not going to Israel in the first place:

I am aware of the work that you have done on behalf of the State of Israel, and for that reason I find your remarks especially troubling. Please help me explain to the members of my movement the statements attributed to you. Are these sentiments representative of your current feelings and perceptions of the Jewish people and the people of Israel? Were they at one time representative? Have you in some way been grossly misquoted? Are these views which you have now repudiated?

HuffPost’s Sam Stein  has audio of Rev. John Hagee explaining in a 1990s sermon that God allowed Hitler to carry out the Holocaust because “God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.” 

Writes Stein:

Since McCain secured the endorsement, both his campaign and Hagee have been pressed to explain a series of derogatory remarks the Reverend made about the Catholic Church, including his reference to the institution as “the Great Whore.”

Hagee has since apologized for those remarks. His interpretation of the role of the Nazis could be harder to dismiss, in part because McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are expected to compete heavily over the Jewish vote come the general election, in part because McCain has said he admires Hagee’s commitment to Israel, but mainly because similar theories have found their way into much of the Reverend’s writings.

Don’t count on it. Neither Hagee nor McCain will pay much of a price because Hagee’s religiously inspired craziness, unlike Wright’s, takes him to a PRO-Israel place. (Same thing re: his anti-Catholicism. Don’t expect Jewish groups to get too upset by a minister who blames the Holocaust on fellow Christians.)

The pro-Israel Jewish community that’s most exercised about Obama-Wright is least inclined to criticize a pastor, like Hagee, who puts his Christian Zionism at the center of his political activism.

Pro-Israel groups long ago made peace with Christian Zionist theology, in which, when you take away all the goodwill and financial and political support (which is not to be sneezed at), Israel and the Jews are ultimately pawns in God’s greater plan for Christian redemption.

But as any Israeli diplomat will tell you, we’ll argue about that when the Messiah comes (or comes back). Until then, they’re happy for the support.

JTA reports that Jewish Dems are anxious about how Obama will do among their co-religionists. Ira Forman of the National Jewish Democratic Council frets a recent Gallup Poll showing Obama winning 61 percent of the Jewish vote in a match-up against U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) taking 67 percent against the presumptive Republican nominee:

“What does that drop of 15 to 20 percent mean?” he asked. “It means 180,000 votes in the state of Florida if we drop 20 percent. It means 35,000 votes in Ohio. God forbid New Jersey’s in play, 130,000 votes in New Jersey; 16,000 votes in the small state of Nevada; 25,000 votes in Colorado; 70,000 votes in Pennsylvania. I could go on and on.”

Bangitout.com, the humor site for Modern Orthodox hipsters, has a list of the “Top Ten Most Annoying People in Synagogue,” including:

10. The OCD gabbi – continuously and condescendingly corrects the baal koreh on words he said incorrectly and correctly

9. The Parent who decides it’s better to not take his hysterical crying kids out of shul lest they miss a word of Torah reading

 7. The Chazan who is too self absorbed in hearing his own voice to realize he’s been davening for 4 hours

6. The Shusher

4. The Guy whose seat you are sitting in – who must make a huge public scene to ensure that you and the rest of the shul know it

3. The Baseball Score Guy -The most moving prayer of your life was just interrupted by an update on his fantasy team starting lineup

I can think of a few more:

The guy (or gal) who insists on harmonizing with the “Amens.”

The chazan who introduces the unfamiliar Adon Olam melody based on the 12-tone scale.

The guy who namedrops during the misheberach for the sick — you know, when the rabbi asks for congregants to announce the name of their ailing loved ones, and the guy says “Edward M. Kennedy” to remind us that he once worked on the campaign in 1974.

The guy in front of you who can’t keep his satin yarmulke or tallis in place, so you have to keep reaching down and over to help him out.

The black or Asian bar mitzvah guest who sits rigidly and politely for the entire three-hour service, shaming you for fidgeting and checking your watch every ten minutes.

The chazan who gets to the “Ve’ne’emar” at the end of Aleinu faster than is humanly possible, making u feel like a slacker.

The Hatzolah ambulance guy who makes a big show of displaying his emergency beeper on Shabbat – reminding you that he has an escape plan, while you’re stuck for another two hours.

The people who mouth  the words to the silent Amidah as they daven, making that disgusting lip-smacking, saliva- popping sound.

Morton Mandelbrot — you don’t know him, but he’s really freakin’ annoying.

I’m big in Abu Dhabi: The National, an English-language paper there, quotes me on the chances that left-leaning lobbying groups like J Street can make a dent in pro-Israel circles:

“These left-wing views sound like they could leave Israel vulnerable and it’s harder to make the case or reduce it to a slogan,” says Andrew Silow-Carroll, the liberal editor of the New Jersey Jewish News. “It’s hard to be too right wing on Israel or care too much because it involves the very visceral, existential fears of Israelis.”

I don’t know about the “liberal” tag, especially in this context, but she quotes me accurately. Perhaps it was unclear, but I was describing the mindset of a generic, anxious American Jew who may agree with the views of the Israeli left, but when it comes to U.S. politicans and pro-Israel lobbying groups, has more gut faith in pols and groups that press a harder line. It’s like picking a real estate agent: you want one who will start with an unrealistically high price, so you’ll end up with the kind of offer you can live with.

The only problem, as Jeffrey Goldberg suggests in his oped in yesterday’s Times,  is when the high bid stops being a negotiating position, and becomes the bottom line:

The leadership of the organized American Jewish community has allowed the partisans of settlement to conflate support for the colonization of the West Bank with support for Israel itself. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, in their polemical work “The Israel Lobby,” have it wrong: They argue, unpersuasively, that American support for Israel hurts America. It doesn’t. But unthinking American support does hurt Israel.

The people of Aipac and the Conference of Presidents are well meaning, and their work in strengthening the overall relationship between America and Israel has ensured them a place in the world to come. But what’s needed now is a radical rethinking of what it means to be pro-Israel. Barack Obama and John McCain, the likely presidential nominees, are smart, analytical men who understand the manifold threats Israel faces 60 years after its founding. They should be able to talk, in blunt terms, about the full range of dangers faced by Israel, including the danger Israel has brought upon itself.

Speaking to the Knesset, President Bush suggested that Obama and Democrats (who else could he have meant?) favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists.

Obama fired back, accusing Bush of using the “60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack.”

Joe Lieberman then issued a statement agreeing with Bush:

President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and that holds that – if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers – they would cease to threaten us. It is critical to our national security that our commander-in-chief is able to distinguish between America’s friends and America’s enemies, and not confuse the two.

So if one is to follow the line of reasoning that “tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions,” as Obama calls for, are exactly analogous with “appeasement,” what’s the corollary of Lieberman’s remarks? What’s the alternative policy Lieberman is promoting? If talks=appeasement, then is it fair to say that no talks=war? (That is, after all, how we handled Hitler.)

Is Lieberman calling for war on Iran? Is that what McCain stands for? Is he prepared to say so? And will the Jews who join in tagging Obama a latter-day Chamberlain settle for nothing less?

Syndicated columnist Susan Estrich raises an interesting point about a series of YouTube videos in which amateurs subtitle a clip from a Hitler biopic to make the Fuerher rant about the topic du jour: the Dallas Cowboys’ playoff loss, being kicked off of Microsoft Live, losing his Xbox account, etc. In the most recent incarnation, Hitler is Hillary Clinton, ranting against Obama’s primary lead.

Writes Estrich:

There is, obviously, something very troubling about this very popular series. Hitler is not funny. Killing six million Jews is no joke.
Waging war across Europe, slaughtering millions of people because of their religion, or because they were gypsies or gay, is just not humorous. Sixty years, almost to the day, from the founding of Israel out of the ashes of the Holocaust, can it be that putting words to the rant of the most evil man of our time is the key to Internet fame, if not fortune?

The thing is, it IS funny when the 20th century’s signature madman is shown raving about having wasted his money on a Terrell Owens jersey. The video doesn’t mock anybody but Hitler, over-the-top television actors, and Dallas Cowboy fans — and the sputtering rage they felt when their team botched yet another shot at the Superbowl. (As one fan comments on the video at YouTube: “This is AWESOME! It explains *exactly* what it it was like to be a Cowboy fan and lose this season. “)

The joke wears off in the Hillary version, however. It’s goofily absurdist to imagine Hitler as a Cowboys or X-Box fan. But it’s a low blow to compare Clinton, or any politican really, to Hitler.

Mel Brooks and Charlie Chaplin showed you can deflate Hitler and his myth through parody. But the lesson of these “downfall” videos: Pick your targets carefully.

I’d like to think my Obama-Kishkes meme, first raised in this column, has gained some currency.

On Feb. 28, I wrote:

…[T]here is an intangible reason why Obama worries the pro-Israel camp. Call it the Kishkes Factor.

Maybe they’ve grown spoiled, but you hear in the pro-Israel, anti-Obama rhetoric the notion that Obama’s spotless Senate voting record on Israel and meat-and-potatoes speeches to AIPAC are not quite enough. “Window dressing,” as someone dismissively described it to me. A certain kind of pro-Israel voter wants to know that candidates feel for Israel in their guts – their kishkes – and not just in their heads.

Yesterday, in his Q and A with Obama, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg writes:

The Hamas episode won’t help Obama’s attempts to win over Jewish voters, particularly those in such places as — to pull an example from the air — Palm Beach County, Florida, whose Jewish residents tend to appreciate robust American support for Israel, and worry about whether presidential candidates feel the importance of Israel in their kishkes, or guts.

Then Goldberg puts the question to the candidate:

JG: Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you — Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski — then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it.

Obama’s answer after the jump: (more…)