JustASC

Responding to the planned protest by the odious Westboro Baptist Church, Rutgers Hillel is organizing a Rutgers United Against Hate rally on Wednesday, October 28,  8:30am – 9:30am, at their College. Ave. building in New Brunswick.

We plan to send a unified message against hate to the protesters and to the community at large. Rutgers Hillel is reaching out to other groups on campus in an effort to bring together a diverse group of students in pursuit of a powerful mission. We aim to show that the Rutgers community can come together when faced with adversity and prove the importance of diversity and co-existence in a time when it is so rarely found.

 Details here.

A headline in the Los Angeles Times:

Were balloon boy Falcon Heene’s words a sign of a hoax or a kid’s confusion? Child behavior experts say they could be either — or both.

Here’s a chance to test my TSPAR©, my patented formula for determining the seriousness of an anti-Semitic remark by a public figure:

Two Republican party chairmen from South Carolina, in trying to defend Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) practice of not using earmarks, said DeMint “is watching our nation’s pennies,” just like “the Jews who are wealthy.”

Edwin O. Merwin and James S. Ulmer, chairs of the Bamberg County Republican Party and the Orangeburg County Republican Party, respectively, wrote an op-ed in the Times and Democrat this Sunday.

“There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves,” they wrote. “By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.”

Now remember our formula:

Track record + Severity of the remark ÷ Private or Public nature of offense + Apology = Rebuke.

I can’t judge the writers’ track record, and I haven’t head an apology yet. But the pair lose big time in terms of severity: “penny-pinching” may sound like a compliment in the context of their op-ed, but you’d have to live a pretty sheltered life not to realize how offensive it is to Jews. These guys could turn out to be co-presidents of the local Bnai Brith chapter, and still the incredible insensitivity and historical tone-deafedness of the remark — and the fact that it is not an off-the-cuff or private statement, but a published op-ed that two people actually signed off on — is going to make their TSPAR soar.

And even as I write this I realize my formula doesn’t account for another factor: The relative Influence of the accused. An entertainer like Ronan Tynan should be given a bye for an isolated Jew joke. Merwin and Ulmer are in positions of political power, albeit only at the county level. But they’ve brought great embarrassment on the Republican Party, and tar their fellow GOPers in a way that will earn and deserve a going over in the media cycle.

Irish tenor Ronan Tynan is in trouble for making an “anti-Semitic” comment to a New York real estate agent:

The trouble began on Thursday when the 49-year-old Tynan bumped into a Halstead Property real estate agent showing an apartment on his floor to a potential buyer, a pediatrician from NYU Medical Center.

The real estate agent said to the tenor, famous for his association with Yankees, “Don’t worry they are not Red Sox fans,” according to the apartment-hunter, Dr. Gabrielle Gold-von Simson.

To which Tynan replied, “I don’t care about that, as long as they are not Jewish,” Gabrielle Gold-von Simson told NBC New York.

“Why is that?” asked a flabbergasted Gold-von Simson of the singer.

And Tynan responded that Jewish ladies had been looking at the apartment before and they were “scary,” according to Gold-von Simson.

The singer now claims he was joking, but the good doctor didn’t see it that way.

“I didn’t know him at all so how could I take it as a joke,” said Gold-von Simson.

The Yankees cancelled his scheduled Friday night appearance during Game 1 of the League Championship Series.

Tynan, of course, says he’s no anti-Semite. I think we need a formula for dealing with these events:

T + S ÷ P + A = R

Let T be the offender’s track record and S stand for the seriousness of the remark, divided by P (private or public nature of offense) plus quickness and seeming sincerity of the Apology, equal the public Rebuke.

If the offender has given no previous reason to suspect him/her of anti-Semitism or intolerance, if the remark is made in a private setting, and the offender is quick to apologize without waffling, everyone involved should let it go.

It sounds like Tynan is no Mel Gibson, his apology was unequivocal, and the remark was said in private. As for the content of the remark, is it possible (stay with me here) that Tynan was joking about a certain New York “type” — think Mike Meyer’s Coffee Tawk character? Stereotypes always have the potential to offend, but I think there is a difference between an ethnic joke that traffics in classic racial or religious tropes and one that just might be a ham-fisted acknowledgement of the kinds of stereotypes we all notice on a daily basis.

UPDATE: The Times version of the story leaves out the part about Jewish ladies being “scary.” That makes Tynan sound worse than he did.

Jonathan Tobin explains to fellow conservatives why Obama is not Hitler:

Say what you will about the faults of Obama-care as well as the absurd cult of personality that has grown up around the president but neither he nor his party can or should be compared to the Nazis. Obama is a preening puffed up poseur besotted with some very bad ideas but he is the elected leader of a democracy and no totalitarian. Hitler murdered six million Jews and launched a genocidal war that took the lives of tens of millions of others. Any comparison between the two or of liberal Democrats with Nazis says everything about the people who make such comparisons and nothing about Obama. The simple rule for rational politics is that anyone who invokes Hitler loses the debate as well the respect of right-thinking citizens.

Seems to me that if you have to explain this to your friends, their problem goes deeper than a faulty analogy.

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The National Jewish Democratic Council has created a flyer in support of Jon Corzine. It emphasizes his record on divesting from Iran, gun control, stem cell research and “a plan to lead NJ to prosperity.”

But the big message is this: “We believe in the spirit and achievements of the modern state of Israel.”

(The quote is from this article in the NJJN.)

Meanwhile, the RJC has taken out an ad in the NJJN on behalf of Chris Christie. It attacks Corzine on his budget, tax increases, and the state’s unemployment rate. Its big message: “The Greatest Jewish Value is Family. Mishpacha is everything. Our young people shouldn’t have to leave New Jersey to have a bright future.”

Melissa B. Arbus	Rabbi Sharon Brous		Yanina Fleysher

Jewish Women International just announced its “10 Jewish Women  to Watch in 5770,” a list that includes three women with NJ connections:

*Jeweler, philanthropist and Soviet immigrant Yanina Fleysher of Cedar Grove 

* Rabbi Sharon Brous, who grew up in Livingston and Short Hills and is founder of IKAR, a popular congregation in Los Angeles.

* Attorney Melissa B. Arbus, who grew up in Ocean Township, and is Assistant to Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

The “God Hates Fags” lunatics are headed to a Jewish institution near you.

The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church plans to march outside the JCC of MetroWest in West Orange, Rutgers University Hillel in New Brunswick and New Brunswick High School, the Conservative synagogue in Hoboken, and various sites in Bergen County, including the Jewish federation and the Jewish Standard newspaper.

(What? We don’t deserve a protest? What are we, Godless, Christ-killing chopped liver?)

The October 27 protests are part of a series of rallies planned for cities around the country. JTA has a backgrounder here.

 The ADL is providing synagogues and other Jewish institutions with a bulletin that offers strategies for responding to the group. Find it here. Says the ADL:

 What can we do to respond effectively?

Resist Directly Engaging with WBC.

A primary goal of WBC is to garner publicity and to spread their message through tactics that grab media attention. WBC has a “loud bark,” but communities should resist directly engaging with them.

Instead:

Spread messages of tolerance and respect throughout the community. The antidote to hate speech is good speech…. Discuss openly how hateful speech can poison a community. Notably, we do not recommend holding counter-protests or educational events at the same location as, or close to, the protest. 

“We believe that the WBC is carrying on this campaign in the hopes of getting reaction from the Jewish community and to garner media attention,” said Etzion Neuer, the ADL’s NJ regional director.

As we report this week and according to a press release from the National Jewish Democratic Council, Jewish Dems and Republicans are launching outreach efforts in NJ on behalf of their gubernatorial candidates.

Questions for readers: Have you seen evidence of this outreach? Have you gotten a robo-call or mass mailing at your home? Have you received any emails?

Let me know — send me an e-mal at ascATnjjewishnews.com.

From the NJDC release:

 The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) announced today that it is launching an unprecedented Jewish outreach effort for the upcoming New Jersey election. NJDC’s wide-ranging New Jersey project will include field organizers, advertising, direct mail, literature drops, trainings, surrogate speaking, phone banking, and canvassing.

Amost three years ago to the day, in a depressing display of parochialism, a bunch of right-wing and Orthodox Jewish organizations put up a stink when they “discovered” that money raised by local Jewish federations for the post-Lebanon War Israel Emergency Campaign was going to help Israeli Arabs and Druze as well as Jews. The president of the National Council of Young Israel said at the time, “It’s not that I want to seem harsh or that this is an anti-Arab statement, but money raised from Jews because of a war against Jews should only be used for Jews.”

And not, you know, for those Israeli citizens who happen to be Arabs.

Today the UJC/Jewish Federations of North America is launching a new loan fund for joint Jewish-Arab employment zones. The loan fund is intended to

give Israeli-Arab entrepreneurs the support to develop their businesses, create economic development and employment, fortify Jewish-Arab relations and build strong and stable communities in key regions of Israel. Those regions include Yokneam/Megiddo (Mevo Carmel) and Carmiel and the neighboring Arab town (Bar Lev) in Northern Israel and Lehavim, the Bnei Shimon Regional Council and the Bedouin town of Rahat in Southern Israel.

The press release announcing the venture seems to anticipate and address objections that Jewish federations are helping Arabs:

“This fund is an example of a forward-thinking strategy for Federations to help strengthen Israel from within,” said Jeff Cohen, an investment banker who is a member of the Social Venture Fund, and United Jewish Communities of MetroWest, NJ leader who helped broker this historic partnership. “By improving the economic prospects and directly contributing to a sense of shared society among residents in these key regions, we will help foster a healthier environment for businesses and people to thrive together.”

Let’s see if the usual suspects object. Not that they’re harsh or anti-Arab, mind you.