JustASC

My Labor Day destination. Scorching heat, daily thunderstorms, and light blogging ahead.

Can this possibly be true?

Great correction in today’s Times:

An article on Wednesday about the need for athletes to relieve themselves at inopportune times referred incorrectly to the existence of bathroom facilities at Fenway Park. There is no bathroom behind the Green Monster.

My son, the pro-Israel ambassador (that’s him in the middle).

Nudnik Brooklyn rabbi Yehuda Levin blames this week’s east coast earthquake on gay marriage. (He’s the same homophobe who ghostwrote a notorious anti-gay campaign speech for New York gubernatorial contender Carl Paladino.)

Here’s the money quote from a video uploaded to YouTube:

“The Talmud states, ‘You have shaken your male member in a place where it doesn’t belong. I too, will shake the Earth,’” Levin says.

Does the Talmud really speak in such tortured and yucky metaphors? Does God really hand down judgment via one-liners? When the earth moved on Tuesday, was God really, um, behind it?

I can only imagine the fun Rabbi Levin will have once the hurricane starts blowing.

US Weekly wonders if Real Housewives of New Jersey’s Teresa Giudice made an “anti-Semitic quip” on a recent broadcast. Here’s their account:

As her husband Joe dealt with a huge financial crisis and court case — Joe was on the hook for $260,000 after forging his business partner’s signature, forcing the family to claim bankruptcy — Teresa insisted that she wouldn’t divorce her man over the scandal.

She added, “I mean my Jewish friends are all ‘I would have divorced him right away!!’ But I’m Italian.”

My impulse was to probe which anti-Semitic tropes were or were not at play in her remarks. Are Jewish woman stereotypically quicker to divorce their men ? Are they less loyal than Italian women? Is there a slur about miserliness implied — i.e., Jews marry for money, and when the money dries up, they move on?

But then Us talks to a spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League, who short-circuits all this navel-gazing with an obvious point:

“We don’t see any problem with this,” the spokesperson told Us Weekly. “That may very well be what her Jewish friends are saying.”

Yesterday, one hour after the earthquake rattled the East Coast, the Secure Community Network, which coordinates safety and security responses for Jewish institutions, sent out a memo titled:

What to do during an earthquake

I am looking forward to their next memo:  ”What to do after you left the stable door open and all the horses ran out.”

 N.J. bridal shop refuses to sell a wedding gown to a gay bride:

Alex Genter has complained that the manager at Here Comes the Bride in Somers Point, N.J., lectured her about her gay lifestyle after Genter crossed out the word “groom” and replaced it with “partner” and her fiancee’s name on paperwork she filled out for her planned purchase. “She said she wouldn’t work with me because I’m gay,” said Genter, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. “She also said that I came from a nice Jewish family, and that it was a shame I was gay. She said, ‘There’s right, and there’s wrong. And this is wrong.’ “

Hedline from the Forward:

Jews Shaken by Strong East Coast Earthquake

Another reminder of my favorite JTA headline.

(h/t Larry Yudelson) 

UPDATE: The Forward headline has been changed to:

In Richmond and D.C., Synagogues Emptied After Temblor Struck

I think the work of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller fills more of my head space than any other musical or artistic creation, with the possible exception of National Lampoon’s Vacation (and no, it is hardly the greatest movie comedy and yes, I quote from it more than any other film).

Not a day goes by that I don’t find myself humming the rhythm line from “On Broadway.” 

And that’s just one of any number of songs that could top my list of the most evocative and heartbreaking songs of the rock and roll era, including “Spanish Harlem” and ”Stand by Me.”  The L/S ouevre, starting with “Hound Dog,” just goes on and on. I’m too young to have heard many of these songs on their first go round, and caught up to them on oldies radio. But a good Leiber and Stoller song has a way of making you feel deeply nostalgic for a moment you never experienced in the first place.

Leiber, who died yesterday at 78, is remembered here and here.

The Baltimore Sun explored Lieber’s Jewish roots in this 1997 article:

Leiber, 64, said he learned only recently that his father had sung at synagogues in the family’s native Poland. He said traditional Jewish music shares many traits with rhythm and blues. “Listen to any cantor, any good hazan, sing and you can hear a little bit of Ray Charles going on,” he said.