JustASC

The Philadelphia Inquirer takes the pulse of religious newspapers, including the Phila. Jewish Exponent and the Community Voice (Burlington, Camden and Gloucester Counties).

Here’s the lede:

They land politely – in mailboxes, not driveways — and deliver their good news gently.

Which is a little tautological — how else do you deliver good news? The trick (and chronic failing) of the ethnic press is that we deliver bad news gently.

My old pal David Portnoe (we were roommates on an Israel program in 1984), editor of the Community Voice, tells the Inky that his paper serves a more important role today than when it was founded in 1941:

“Back then, most of the Jewish population [in South Jersey] was concentrated in certain neighborhoods in Camden,” he said.

With Jews now geographically dispersed, “the paper has become more of a communications tool . . . for holding that sense of community together.”

The University at Albany Libraries have digitized their entire collection of the Albany Student Press, and I was able to find the very first article I wrote as a freshman in October 1979. I still remember the thrill of riding the campus bus and seeing someone reading the ASP and turning to the page with my front-page article.

Warning: do not operate heavy equipment after reading this page-turner:

Library Moves Books

Shift Will Ease
Uptown Library Crowding

by Andrew Carroll

A shift in several SUNYA schools
has precipitated the movement of
volumes of books from the uptown
library to the downtown annex.

According to Acting Library
Director John Farley, the
movement of various schools, including the Schools of Criminal
Justice, Social Welfare, and Library
and Information, prompted the
of a collection of law and related
volumes to the downtown llawley
Library.
Farley said the action, a decision
made by SUNYA President Vincent
O’l.eary, would help alleviate a
space problem at the uptown
library, while providing close access
of library materials at
downtown schools. (more…)

More trend-spotting: Jordana Horn reports for Tablet on the popularity of havdalah (end of Shabbat) bar and bat mitzva services. I love the combination of accomodation and pragmatism on which any new custom is based:

There are several other reasons why families opt for havdalah b’nai mitzvah — to accommodate Orthodox relatives who will not attend non-Orthodox services on Shabbat, for instance, or those who stay too far away to walk to synagogue but could drive to a havdalah ceremony that begins after sundown. Additionally, Haber said, sometimes families opt for a havdalah service because there is less material for a child to master and therefore less pressure…. The havdalah ceremony is a shorter and more exclusive service, since fewer members of the general congregation attend. And, sometimes families choose this option because it means they are excused from sponsoring a mid-day kiddush lunch for the synagogue, which adds extra costs.

Then, of course, there is the fact that some families want to get to the post-service Saturday night festivities without the intervening hiatus of Shabbat afternoon. “Whereas the Shabbat morning service tends to be a little more haimish, the havdalah bar or bat mitzvah feels more like the prelude to a party, more like the opening act, as opposed to the act itself,” said Rabbi Dan Ain of The New Shul, a nondenominational progressive congregation in New York City. 

The Republican Jewish Coalition comes out against Obama’s health care plans in their entirety, urging followers to tell their legislators that “you reject President Obama’s plans.”

What is the RJC for? Tort reform, “full and fair debate,” and “a bill that addresses real problems in health-care coverage without taking us down the road to a government takeover.” That’s as specific as they get.

In my column this week, I interview an inside source — my wife! — about health care reform.

Meanwhile, two interesting conservative perspectives on the need for reform, the first from Rod Dreher, who writes the “conservative politics and religion” blog for Beliefnet:

Look, I’m not saying that we should not be concerned about, and not oppose Obama’s proposed healthcare reform, if it truly is a bad deal. But it’s not enough to say, “Hey, it’s going to mess with my healthcare, and I’m going to fight it tooth and nail.” The situation we’re in now is intolerable, and unsustainable, and we don’t do the country any good by adopting the Democratic Party’s line on Social Security — namely, that any attempt to reform a broken system that would cost any current recipient anything is completely wicked and must be opposed….

 We have to do better by the uninsured folks in this country — even if it costs the rest of us (and it will). In this economy, any one of us could find ourselves there.

And this from Philip Giraldi at The American Conservative:

It seems to me that the problem with most “conservative” commentators on the Obama health care reforms and on the health care situation in general is that few of them have been victims of the current system. They have had good health insurance through their employers all their lives and think that anyone outside the system is a deadbeat or an illegal immigrant. Having experienced first hand the downside of the system I would like to make a few comments. I would note that the current insurance structure basically stinks. It denies insurance to those who actually need it unless they are employed by a company that offers that benefit (fewer and fewer do). Insurance companies exist to make money, not to make people healthy, and there is no money to be made in paying out for those who are sick.

Asbury Park Press reports that the Deal Yeshiva is being sued on allegations that it helped Solomon Dwek — the government “cooperating witness” in the NJ corruption sting — channel some $13 million that he used in a Ponzi scheme.

Confused? Dwek’s parents founded the yeshiva. The suit was filed by the trustee appointed by a court to oversee Dwek’s bankrupt real estate business and try to get money back to his former investors and creditors.

Same story says teachers say they haven’t been paid in six months, although administrators deny that the school won’t reopen in September.

In an oped, JTA editor in chief Ami Eden analyses the Jewish anger over the Obama administration’s decision to pin the Medal of Freedom on Mary Robinson today:

The fight over Robinson isn’t about criticizing Israel. It’s about Durban and the noxious notion that in a world filled with racism and genocide, Israel is a rogue nation deserving of special rebuke.

In the end, Robinson ended up lending legitimacy to this warped worldview. So however praiseworthy her other efforts in shining a light on human rights issues, don’t expect friends of Israel to think she’s deserving of America’s highest civilian honor.

Ami also notes how the honor has seemed to flush out more official Jewish anger than anything else Obama has done in regards to Israel, despite a push by the right that he be rebuked for pressuring Israel on the settlements:

[F]or the most part, Jewish groups — including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobby — refused to side publicly with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he appeared to be backtracking from Israel’s stated commitment to a two-state solution; and they have avoided directly defending Israel’s settlement policies in the face of the Obama administration’s calls for a settlement freeze.

But the honor for Robinson has prompted AIPAC and other groups to speak out against the Obama administration’s decision. Perhaps even more telling is the silence coming from several left-wing groups (J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom) that have eagerly jumped at the chance to defend Obama on settlements and Palestinian statehood.

The difference here may be that the big groups like AIPAC suspected that their constituents were essentially sympathetic to Obama in his clash with Netanyahu — most Americans Jew are not willing to go to the mat in defense of the settlements, nor in defense of a truculent (in their eyes) Netanyahu.

The opposition to Robinson, therefore, can be seen as a proxy fight — using an indisputably poor selection of an undeniably antagonistic honoree to criticize Obama in ways they dared not to over the settlements fight.

As a hyphenated American (hyphenated last name, that is) I’m always interested in what people do and don’t do with their last names upon marriage.

So I took notice when I saw that Nextbook lists the author of the  paperback edition of Betraying Spinoza as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, when the hardback original had it as Rebecca Goldstein.

All becomes clear in this 2006 interview between Luke Ford and the famed author, whose maiden name was Newberger and first husband was Sheldon Goldstein:

Luke: “Did you have any second thoughts about taking your husband’s name?”

Rebecca: “Funny you should ask. I didn’t want to take my husband’s name. He asked me to. I was touched by his asking me to and I did it and always regretted it. I don’t like the name Goldstein. It never felt like mine [her maiden name was Newberger]. It’s a cliché.

“My latest book [Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity] I wanted to publish under Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. I had visited my father’s ancestral schtettle this past autumn and I discovered that Newbergers had lived in the area back to Napoleon.

“Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is on the back cover. They won’t put it on the front cover.

“I just got a Guggenheim prize. The Times had the list of people who had it and it’s listed as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. That’s my first public appearance under that name.”

[By the way, Newberger Goldstein, perhaps best known as the author of The Mind-Body Problem, lived at one point in Highland Park, NJ. Her memories are none-too-fond:

"I don't enjoy, nor did my husband enjoy, the Jewish community.

"We were living in suburban New Jersey in a claustrophobic Jewish community. Our kids went to the day school."] 

I’ve read this piece by Robert Malley and Hussein Agha a few times, and I’m still not sure if there is less or more than meets the eye.

I think they are saying that a two-state solution is not viable unless Israel is willing to compromise on the status of Jerusalem and its insistence that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state; and unless the Palestinians are willing to compromise on the return of their refugees to their homes within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

A pretty old and conventional insight. What may be new is their pessimism. Some people can imagine an agreement that cedes parts of E. Jerusalem to the P.A., and finds a Jesuitical way around the “Jewish state” formula, while the refugee issue is resolved through compensation or some other land for peace formula. But not the authors, which is their right.

But what does this last paragraph mean, exactly:

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees’ rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

This seems to suggest that the two-state solution depends completely on what compromises Israel is willing to make. And if they don’t stop with this Jewish nonsense and don’t welcome the Palestinians back to their homes in Emek Refayim, we’ll know whom to blame for the failure of a peace process.

Why only Israel must compromise on its aspirations is not exactly clear to me.

Jeffrey Goldberg has another take on the piece.

Reform Judaism magazine reports on the dilemmas of synagogues trying to accomodate interfaith couples who want to be buried side-by-side. Although all-Jewish cemeteries are a Diaspora custom, the rules are pretty entrenched. The result is episodes like these:

Linda Sosnowitz, past president of the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue (BHS), discovered just how binding this prohibitive custom had become several years ago when she embarked on a mission to purchase cemetery space on behalf of her fifty-year-old congregation. It took nearly 100 phone calls to cemeteries from New Jersey to Westchester County to find a match for the members’ needs.  Cemetery administrators who answered yes to Sosnowitz’s first question — “Can you sell [our Reform congregation] 200 plots?” — invariably said no to questions two and three: “Can we bury members and immediate family members who are not Jewish in the same space, and can we bury the remains of members who choose to be cremated?”

[Only] the administrators at Maimonides Cemetery in Elmont, New York fit the bill, offering to sell BHS a piece of undeveloped land fenced off from the rest of the cemetery which could be used to bury non-Jews with Jewish relatives. The requirements were in line with what BHS was already planning for the space: bottomless grave liners, no burials on Shabbat or Jewish holidays, officiation solely by Jewish clergy, and markers with Jewish symbols only.