JustASC

The Forward has its annual list of America’s 50 most influential Jews, including these New Jerseyans:

* ADL’s national director, Abe Foxman

* Livingston’s Susie Fishbein, of the popular Kosher by Design cookbook series.  

* Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of kosher supervision at the OU

* Jon Stewart (raised in Lawrenceville)

We’re now accepting nominees for the 2008 Hutton Gibson Award for ickiest comments by a public figure’s father:

WASHINGTON (JTA) – An Arab-American group wants Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel to repudiate remarks made by Emanuel’s father.

President-elect Obama last week named Emanuel, an Illinois congressman whose father is Israeli, as his White House chief of staff. In an interview with the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, Benjamin Emanuel said, “Obviously, he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”

 The ADC … wrote a letter to Emanuel asking him to repudiate his father’s comments, saying it “views this characterization of an Arab as an unacceptable smear.” 

The salutation on a press release sent to me by a brain research foundation hit uncomfortably close to home:

Dear Unknown,

I wanted to let you know Sarah Jane will be on The TODAY Show tomorrow morning (Friday, November 14) between 8-9 a.m. Matt Lauer will be interviewing me to discuss the work we are… 

The Republican Jewish Coalition’s Matt Brooks has an oped for JTA defending his organization from charges that they ran a “smear and fear” campaign against Obama. Read his oped here, and my column, a response to Brooks, here.

Key grafs, first from Brooks:

Since the first days of the election campaign, the RJC challenged President-elect Barack Obama to articulate his positions on these issues, and through our actions, let him know that the Jewish community would carefully examine his responses. As a result, neither party nor candidate took the support of the Jewish community for granted. The RJC is proud to have played a role in facilitating this important debate.

And from me:

Brooks is within his rights to assert that “there were serious and legitimate reasons to be concerned by Obama’s positions on Israel, Iran, and the Middle East,” except the ads were never about opening debate, but closing it down. If you’re looking for “clear answers” on “critical issues,” you don’t invoke the Nazis or imply anti-Semitism.

Interfaithfamily.com claims Rahm Emanuel as one of their own:

Like most American Jews–though the rest of us aren’t triathlon competitors whose rabbis give them permission to work on the economic bailout on Rosh Hashanah–Rahm Emanuel has an interfaith extended family. His wife Amy Rule is a Jew by choice who volunteers with children at their modern Orthodox synagogue.

A friend writes from Israel:

The papers here are full of news and articles about Obama’s election. Maariv’s large-type headline reads “Me’avdut l-Nesi’ut” — from slavery to the Presidency. Yediot Acharonot shouts “Obama: Eshmor al Bitachon Yisrael” — I will preserve Israel’s security. And the weekend Jerusalem Post (English) features numerous articles about Obama himself; which Israeli leaders would be able to work with him best, following the elections here next February; and even whether his “Yes, we can” attitude is prevalent enough in all communities in this country.

People here are very interested in how he will impact this area, and many others all over the world no doubt wonder about his impact on them. My friends and I estimate that he’s probably featured prominently in over a billion conversations this week — perhaps many more. His speeches show that he understands the powerful opportunity in front of him — and in front of us.

Let’s hope that we all make the most of it.

Well-known to cognoscenti but still fun-to-repeat tidbits about Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s pick for chief of staff.

First, courtesy of Time:

• A devout Jew, Emanuel was so intent on negotiating the passage of Congress’s $700 billion-bailout bill that he got a special waiver from his rabbi to work through Rosh Hashanah.

• His brother, Ari, is a high-powered Hollywood agent and the basis for Jeremy Piven’s character in the HBO series Entourage, Ari Gold. Emmanuel himself was the basis for the character played by Bradley Whitford in The West Wing: Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman.

And from the New Republic:

Despite their very, uh, different personalities, Obama and Emanuel have one big thing in common: [Obama campaign strategist] David Axelrod. Emanuel is one of Axelrod’s closest friends; Axelrod even signed the ketubah at Emanuel’s wedding.

Ha’aretz talks to Benjamin Emanuel, his father, and fills in the family history:

Emanuel, a former Bill Clinton adviser, is the son of a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun (Etzel or IZL), a militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine between 1931 and 1948…

…[Benjamin] also said his son is the namesake of Rahamim, a Lehi combatant who was killed.  

And from a 1996 NYT’s profile:

[Rahm, Ari, and Zeke] are the sons of an Israeli father, now a 70-year-old Chicago pediatrician, who passed secret codes for Menachem Begin’s underground,…and an American Jewish mother, who worked in the civil rights movement and owned, briefly, a Chicago rock-and-roll club.

The Boys went to summer camp in Israel, and reveled in the family lore: in 1933, after their uncle Emanuel Auerbach was killed in a skirmish with Arabs in Jerusalem, the family changed its last name to his first, as a tribute.

And Martin Sieff, writing in The Daily Beast, puts the pick into Jewish pespective — as the headline explains:

The president-elect’s new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel—a pro business quasi neocon whose middle name is Israel—gives the lie to the wildest myths Obama’s opponents spread about him in the campaign.

 

Here’s an interesting perspective,  courtesy of LA Times, on Obama and Iran, one you rarely heard amid an “official” Jewish communal consensus that Obama’s “softer” approach would signal weakness to Tehran:

Tehran feels the Obama team represents potential new threats to Iran, analysts say.

Bush’s polarizing persona may have alienated some countries that do business with Iran, but a unifying figure like Obama might help convince fence-sitters such as India, China, Turkey, Malaysia and Russia to synchronize their Tehran policies with the U.S.

“There is the thought that Obama could be as dangerous as Bush, but in a different way,” said Abolfazl Amouei, a conservative-leaning political scientist at Imam Sadeq University in Tehran. “In Iran, Democrats don’t have a good reputation. They were the first ones who started the sanctions under President Clinton.”

And this:

Obama’s victory could take the wind out of the sails of hard-liners who have consolidated their power on the threat of an American attack and weekly chants of “Death to America!” at Friday prayers. Leylaz predicted that outreach by the Obama administration might spell the end of Ahmadinejad and usher in a more pragmatic government more amenable to compromise over Iran’s nuclear program.

“The radicals will be weakened, because they have lost their partner in the United States,” Leylaz said. “They cannot silence critics by saying we are under pressure by the United States if Mr. Obama starts direct negotiations.”

In any case, it might be a tough sell to condemn a country whose leader’s middle name is the same as that of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson. Some in Iran entertain the theory that Obama, whose last name means “he’s with us” in Persian, is partially descended from Iranians who migrated to East Africa centuries ago.

“There’s an excitement,” said Ahmad Bakhshayesh-Ardestani, a political scientist. “An individual who’s of mixed race and who knows the Muslim world has become president of the U.S. He’s different. It’s inspiring.”

My kids’ Solomon Schechter Jewish day school just held their mock election and the lower school principal sent out a note congratulating “President Barak [sic] Obama.”