JustASC

The ADL is demanding an apology from Rush Limbaugh for these remarks:

Limbaugh told his listeners: “To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s – if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there.”

[Media Matters has the clip from the January 20 edition of his show.]

What’s notable about Limbaugh’s remarks is that it appears he’s trying to be  sensitive to the Jews — you know, “Obama is going after the bankers, so that’s got to be bad for the Jews, since people think all Jews are bankers.”  For the logic to work, Jews would need to accept that the anti-Semites are right– we are a bunch of bankers. Its sort of like telling a woman that dogcatchers hate women because a lot of women are dogs. 

Limbaugh went here before, when he equated the Democrats and the Nazis because both “were opposed to Jewish capitalism.” Again, you have to accept the anti-Semitic premise to accept his logic.

Or he might have meant this: When Obama  talks about bankers, he really means Jews. I think Jews do a pretty good job of de-coding anti-Semitic talk on their own, without Limbaugh’s help. As far as I can tell, Limbaugh is the first to make the connection — which makes him more the purveyor than the whistle-blower.

It reminds me of one of my favorite bits from The Odd Couple. In a flashback during episode 77, Felix and Murray the Cop are in the army together. Murray is down in the dumps, and Felix asks if it’s because the men are making fun of Murray’s big nose. Murray says, “I didn’t know the men are making fun of my nose!” “They are,” says Felix. “I heard them. One said it looked like a two-car garage.”

Jonathan Sarna is a wonderful historian and terrific guy, and apparently the go-to person when reporters need a quote on anything Jewish, from popes to challah. But there are plenty of similarly qualified and quotable Jewish scholars out there. Not to take anything away from Prof. Sarna, but for the sake of variety, reporters covering the American-Jewish scene ought to add a few more names to the Rolodex.

Here’s the result of a GoogleNews search for Sarna’s name:

A Muckraking Blogger Focuses on Jews, New York Times, ‎Jan 8, 2010‎

“Shmarya often reminds me of journalism in the old days — when editors would sometimes go at one another physically in the street,” Jonathan D. Sarna, a historian of American Jewry at Brandeis University with expertise in Jewish journalism, wrote in an e-mail message.”

Fast Times At ‘Gap Year’ High, The Jewish Week,  ‎Jan 13, 2010‎

Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis University professor of American Jewish history who is on sabbatical in Jerusalem this year, notes that while the lack of … ”

Taking Prayer Into Their Own Hands, The Jewish Week,  ‎Jan 13, 2010‎

“When congregants produce a prayer book, that often leads to more meaningful prayer — for at least a while,” says Jonathan Sarna, professor of American … ”

DC-area Jewish federation revises investment rules, Washington Post, ‎Jan 7, 2010‎

“Jonathan Sarna, a professor at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, estimated that Jewish philanthropy declined last year by 25 to 30 percent. …”

 Brandeis Looking For Next Leader While Facing Budget Challenge, Forward, ‎Jan 13, 2010‎

“When the historians write the history of Brandeis, Reinharz will be remembered as the greatest president since Abe Sachar,” said Jonathan Sarna, …”

Bar mitzvahs without God, Jerusalem Post, ‎Jan 3, 2010‎

“Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, has posited that as the Holocaust and Israel cease to resonate with young … ”

Crunch Time: Rolling Out Passover Matzahs in December, Lubavitch.com, ‎Dec 30, 2009‎

“… like home-made challah, is somehow more authentic, less ‘industrial,’ and more ‘natural,’” explains Brandeis Professor Dr. Jonathan Sarna. …”

Jews Split On Pius Sainthood Action, Jewish Week, Dec. 12, 2009

Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said, “I don’t think [Benedict XVI’s recent action] is going to be a major problem.”

Is it day school or nothing?

From Josh Lipowsky’s report on a Jewish day school conference in Teaneck, sponsored by groups representing Othodox, Reform, Conservative and independent schools:

Among the challenges facing the day school system is how to maintain relevance in the wider Jewish community. With the issue of affordability, other options such as charter schools have become more popular.

“There is no alternative to day school,” said Scott Goldberg, [director of the Institute for University-School Partnership at Yeshiva Unviersity]. “There’s day school and there’s not day school. Day school is the most effective means of keeping the community vibrant. Other things will come along that will contribute to the perpetuity of the Jewish people, but they’re not [as good as] day school.”

There is so much to unpack in Goldberg’s statement that I don’t know where to begin. Let me say that as the father of three day school kids (through the eighth grade), I made the personal choice that the other Jewish educational alternatives (namely, Hebrew school) were not as “good” as day school.  But to define “good” I have to state my goals.

Goldberg talks about keeping the Jewish community “vibrant” and contributing to its “perpetuity.”   I’m drawn to the former goal over the latter. I feel day schools gave my kids a deeper, thicker sense of Jewish culture, language, learning, and history than they would have gotten in two- or three-day-a-week Hebrew school. When it comes time for them to make their own Jewish choices, I hope they will do so knowing more, feeling more, and drawing on a community upon which they’ll want to build, or against which they’ll want to rebel (if they’re going to rebel, I want them at least to know what they’re rebelling against).

And I do believe a “vibrant” community depends on members who are steeped in its lore, raised on its culture, and fluent in its languages and ritual — even if they devote themselves to transforming that ritual, which I hope my kids do.

I understand the argument for “perpetuity” (or “continuity”) – roughly defined as making sure kids care enough about Judaism to want to at least marry a Jewish spouse and, one hopes, to live their lives as strongly identified Jews.  The evidence does suggest that graduates of day schools are  more likely to make these choices — although there’s debate over whether correlation implies causation. I just find “continuity” a rather soulless and biological goal, perpetuity without mission or meaning. (That’s why I salute Goldberg for saying “vibrant,” which suggests his goal is more than mere continuity).

The problem with “There is no alternative to day school” is that such thinking in recent years led to binary decision-making by Jewish leaders and educators.  The “smart money” and intellectual capital in Jewish education and philanthropy went to Jewish day schools in the past two decades, leaving Hebrew schools orphaned. Rabbi Gordon Tucker once said that the Conservative movement’s push for day school education at the expense of synagogue supplementary schools was a “massive rhetorical failure” that destroyed the religious school field for “decades to come.”

“There is no alternative to day school” is also problemmatic because there must be an alternative  — simply put, outside of Orthodoxy, the majority of Jewish families do not and will not choose day schools, even if they were free. And the recession has shown the vulnerability of the day school model — I know committed Conservative day school families who are actively seeking alternatives, because the financial burden of tuition is just too much.

There’s an unfortunate divide — even competition — between day schools and Hebrew schools, between educators and the parents — and it all comes down to binary thinking. Day school proponents are demanding support for their movement from federations and other institutions, and explicitly or implicitly diss Hebrew schools as failures. Hebrew school parents resent that day school parents get communal or synagogue subsidies for what they consider a rarified and even elitist choice on the part of parents they consider indulgent or fanatical.

We need a more holistic approach to Jewish education, one that doesn’t pit one model against the other, but instead regards Jewish education as a continuum that contains a variety of viable alternatives. Otherwise we are creating a sort of artificial class system, with all the tensions and inequities that implies.

The Vatican and the Israeli Rabbinate agree on the religious imperative of environmentalism.  But for some members of the observant Jewish community, it may be a tough sell.

From the JTA:

Vatican, rabbis: Faith needed to confront technology

ROME (JTA) — A return to religious faith is needed to confront a “unique environmental crisis” brought on by technology, the Vatican and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate warned.

Wednesday’s warning came in a statement after the ninth meeting of the Bilateral Commission of the Holy See and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, held in Rome Jan. 17-20 following Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the main Rome synagogue on Sunday.

“Humankind today faces a unique environmental crisis which is substantially the product of unbridled material and technological exploitation,” the statement said, adding that there is an “essential need for society to recognize the transcendent dimension of Creation that is critical to ensure sustainable development and progress in an ethically responsible manner.”

From Jonathan Rosenblum, writing at Cross-Currents (Orthodox Jewish Rabbis & Writers on Today’s Issues):

Similarly, there is widespread skepticism in the Torah community about the global warming alarmism of the Obama administration, and certainly about the wisdom of the proposed cap-and-trade bill, which would constitute a massive hidden tax and lead to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs, at a time when the real unemployment level in the United States is approaching 20%.

And Yaakov Menken, also writing in Cross-Currents:

[W]hile everything we do must be motivated by Jewish values and a Jewish view of the world and its purpose, the issues that climb to the level of what we call actual Mitzvah observance are few and far between — and yet they exist. It is only the eyes of the generation, our leaders, who can distinguish one from the other, and I, for one, cannot easily identify what standards determine the exceptional cases. One could argue that it is the presence of immediate and obvious danger — e.g. the close correlation between smoking and fatal cancers, rather than the less obvious risks of global warming and non-disposable plastics — but I’m not sure that’s a sufficient explanation.

For those too young to have experienced or remembered it, it’s hard to capture the phenomenon that was Love Story, the wildly and inexplicably successful novel by Yale professor Erich Segal (who died Sunday at age 72). For a few long moments in 1970, everyone was reading and talking about it; the slim book, with its Robert Indiana-style dust jacket, was a fixture on the bedside tables of all my friends’ parents (don’t ask what we were doing in their bedrooms).

I was 9 at the time, and was desperate to read it. My parents disagreed — with each other. My father thought it was too adult for me and dismissed the idea. My mother, in words of wisdom I’ve quoted ever since, reasoned thus: “If he reads it and understands it, what’s the harm? And if he reads it and doesn’t understand it, what’s the harm?” 

So I got to read it, and like any kid rushed through trying to figure out what would have made it verboten in the first place. The sex scenes were tame, so I figured it was the language. But what language? It must have been a really bad word, something so graphic and obscene that it would unlock whatever secrets lay beyond puberty.

And then I found it, when Oliver describes a fight during a hockey game:

It was my own fault, really. At a heated juncture, I made the unfortunate error of referring to their center as a “fucking Canuck.”

There it was. I knew “fucking,” of course, as both adjective and verb. So that wasn’t it. But “Canuck”! What kind of polymorphous perversity did that describe?! For months I was convinced ”Canuck” was the worst possible profanity in the English language.

Obviously, I wasn’t a hockey fan.

Footage from Israel’s field hospital in Haiti:

From The New York Times, reporting Monday from Haiti:

Meanwhile, Col. Cormi Bartal, a doctor in the Israeli Army’s newly established field hospital here, pulled back the flap of a tent serving as the hospital’s pediatric section and pointed to a woman, Guerlande Jean Michel, 24. She identified a sleeping newborn on her cot, one of the first born in the city after the earthquake, and spoke in a halting voice. “This is my child,” said Ms. Jean Michel, a primary school teacher. “His name is Israel.”

There’s a delightful payoff at the end of this article, from the Arutz Sheva news service, which serves Israel’s pro-settler and presumably largely Orthodox community. The article announces that for the first time, there will be kosher concession stand at the Super Bowl in Miami.

The twist comes halfway down, when the reporter writes:

While many Jews are cheering for the increase in kosher food at sports arenas in North America, others are calling for observant Jews to get down from the bleachers.

The venerated 11th century Torah commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki – better known as Rashi – warned Jews away from sports arenas almost 1,000 years ago. According to the rabbi considered to be the father of all Torah commentators, the Torah admonition against “perform[ing] the practice of the land of Egypt in which you dwelled” (Leviticus 18:3) includes attendance at sports stadiums.

Other opponents refer to the construction of the world’s most famous sports arena – the Colosseum in Rome – as the impetus behind their rejection of professional sports.

In 2001, Cinzia Conti, the Director of Surface Restoration at the Colosseum in Rome confirmed that inscriptions deciphered at the site say the Colosseum was built using the spoils of war. The war was with the Hebrews, and the plunder used to pay for the building was taken from the Holy Temple, which was sacked 2 years prior to the beginning of work on the Roman arena.

In other words, lest somebody think Arutz Sheva was endorsing a goyishe pursuit like football, they reach back to the 11th century to find a rabbi to condemn it. I also love the way the article refers to Rashi in the present tense — “others are calling for observant Jews to get down from the bleachers.”

The Jerusalem Post’s “Ask the Rabbi” feature tackles — how do I say this? — ritual circumcisors who use their mouths to suck away the blood (that was easier than I thought). Writes Rabbi Shlomo Brody:

The final element of the procedure, known as metzitza (suctioning), remains disputed and controversial within all denominations…. The most recent flare-up of this debate occurred in 2004, when a group of Orthodox doctors alleged in a Pediatrics article that a few babies had contracted herpes after oral metzitza was performed at their circumcision.

Here’s what I don’t get. If this was the “Ask the Rabbi” column, what was the question, exactly? (The Post doesn’t say.) How about, After jellied calf’s feet, what is the most disgusting thing a Jew can put in his mouth? Or maybe, Circumcision is already a little traumatizing for the parents. Is there a ritual that can make it even worse??

Or possibly, Relations between the fervently Orthodox and the rest of the Jewish world are at an all-time low. Is there anything else you can think of that would widen the divide?

In my short-lived stand-up career (What? You don’t remember my sell-out performance at Congregation B’nai Tikvah in North Brunswick? My triumphant set at the Holocaust museum in Manhattan?) I used to have a joke about an actual headline in JTA, the Jewish news service:

Here’s a real headline from JTA: “Two Jews Killed in Turkish Earthquake.” Remember, TEN-THOUSAND people died in that quake. But we found the Jews. What would the headline have been if no Jews had died? “Big Quake Narrowly Misses Israel.”

Life imitates art: Here’s a headline from today’s Ha’aretz, the Israeli daily, following the Haiti catastrophe:

Israel is due, and ill prepared, for a major earthquake