JustASC

Cute but fairly obvious satire from Andy Borowitz:

A perspective by Amir Mizroch, the English editor of Israel’s Yisrael Hayom, on the IOC’s refusal to allow a  moment of silence at the opening ceremony in memory of the the 11 Israelis killed at Munich 40 years ago:

A moment of silence at the Olympic ceremony could, I fear, embarrass Israel. It’s no secret that the International Olympic Committee does not want to ‘politicize’ this issue even more. Holding a minute of silence for Israelis murdered in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists – the way we see it, or Israeli men of military age killed by Palestinian freedom fighters – as much of the Muslim and Arab world sees it – will politicize the opening ceremony to the extreme. We will be accused of exploiting the ceremony for propaganda purposes. We call it commemoration, the world will call it propaganda.

By suggesting the memorial is about Israel and Palestine, Mizroch makes the same mistake as the IOC officials. From the perspective of the Olympic movement itself, remembering Munich at the Olympics is not about Israel, it is not about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Iit is about 11 murdered athletes, whose deaths sullied the Olympic ideal as no other act before or since.

Perhaps there are those, Jews included, who muddied the issue by calling a moment of silence a statement against “Palestinian terrorism.” And at least one Palestinian shat all over the issue by saying that remembering the slain athletes would be “racist.” 

The IOC could have held a moment of silence without “politicizing” the issue, had they stressed that it would be a moment of silence for “Olympians,” not Israelis. Isn’t that the Olympic ideal? Yes, its’ nonsense, considering all the jingoism, medal-counting and flag-waving that goes on, but we’re told every four years that the athletes’ village is its own world apart — where citizens of the world of sport can live under a pax Olympica. Armed gunmen — it doesn’t matter, not in this context, that they were Palestinian — literally invaded that territory and killed 11 people gathered to compete in a sporting event. I don’t think it is asking too much of the IOC to say that “we take no stand on world conflicts, but bow our heads in sadness when one of those conflicts breaches the very walls of our sanctuary.”

By not bringing themselves to say something like that, the IOC is essentially swallowing the Palestinian argument that every Israeli killed at Munich was a soldier in the war between Israel and Palestine. But even if that were literally true (how many athletes, especially in the old days, were actually soldiers in the Soviet army?), how would that change the equation? Either the Olympics represents an ideal of nations united in athletic competition, or it doesn’t; the IOC can’t have it both ways.

According to the Olympic charter,

The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

Murder is the ultimate denial of human dignity. If the IOC can’t acknowledge how its own charter was breached under its own flag, what are its ideals worth?

NJJN interviews NJ man Michael Goldstein, who stars in the new Republican Jewish Coalition video about Jewish Democrats who have become Romney supporters. Despite a brief fling with Giuliani for president in 2007, Goldstein says he is a life-long Democrat:

“In my heart I think Obama is a wonderful guy. I really do,” he said. “The way he speaks and the way he interacts with crowds. He has a charm. But look in his eyes, look in his soul, look in his heart. He is going to do something that is going to put Israel in jeopardy because it is not part of his beliefs to support Israel.”

Babbage, the Economist‘s science blog, features this revealing at-a-glance map of current and past Jewish population, based on the work of  Sergio DellaPergola at at the Hebrew University.

Of course, this being the web, the comments (on a MAP!) become a noxious symposium on those troublesome Jews — you know, how we run Hollywood, colonized Palestine, are too successful for our own good, are clannish, the whole bit. Too be fair, some pro-Jewish posters give as good as they get. My favorite post is from a cheeky fellow who writes merely “[Insert conspiracy theory here]“.

Is this a British thing — that a simple tally of Jews becomes a raging debate on their alleged character flaws and responsibility for others’ suffering?

Yesterday’s New York Times reported on the Republican Jewish Coalition’s new “Buyer’s Remorse” ads, featuring disillusioned Democrats voting for Romney. As Ron Kampeas notes, despite the front page photo of Sheldon Adelson, the Times never nails down whether the casino mogul is directly funding the campaign.

But something else bugged me: In rounding up critics, the Times finds two groups that are hardly prepared to give disinterested analysis: 

While the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party have increased their outreach, leaders of several Jewish organizations dismissed the possibility that the Republicans could make significant inroads in the November election.

“There is a very large chunk of the Jewish community that is very Democratic that can’t be eaten into,” said Mik Moore, founder of the Jewish Council for Education and Research. “There is a fight for maybe 10-15 percent, but nobody is underestimating the impact that the massive independent spending can have on the campaign.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a Jewish lobbying group in Washington that favors Democratic candidates, said the effort by Mr. Adelson and the Republican Jewish Coalition would fall short.

“Every single number indicates there is simply no such thing as a Jewish problem for the president,” Mr. Ben-Ami said. “The people who vote only on Israel didn’t vote for Obama last time and know who they are voting for already.”

Okay, fine, in saying J Street  ”favors Democratic candidates,” the Times makes it clear that their analysis could be partisan.  But the report doesn’t mention that the innocuous-sounding “Jewish Council for Education and Research” is a pro-Obama political action committee, which in 2008 was behind “The Great Schlep” videos and campaigns. Weirder still, given the article’s focus on Adelson, it  doesn’t mention that JCER has a new effort called ScissorSheldon.com, in which comedian Sarah Silverman offers to dry hump Adelson if he donates his fortune to Obama. JCER is asking followers to sign a petition “to keep Adelson’s money out of politics.”

JCER is above-board in its intentions, and Mik Moore’s quote is probably not all that different from what a disinterested analyst might say. But by failing to identify him as a partisan, the Times misleads readers and devalues his insight.

Besides, why not find a nonpartisan analyst — say, Steven Windmueller of Hebrew Union College, who tracks Jewish voting, or someone from the Pew Reseach Council, which asks religion questions in its polling?

People will read this and say, “Of course — the Times is pro-Obama.” In fact, the effect is the opposite. By pitting partisans against partisans, it  turns the issue into a he said/she said, when there actually has been some solid nonpartisan polling suggesting the Jewish vote may not be as fluid as some insist it is.

From JTA:

An Iranian nuclear scientist complained to a cybersecurity expert via email that the AC/DC song “Thunderstruck” was playing from computers at two of the country’s nuclear facilities.

According to the Times of Israel, computers at the Nantaz and Fordo facilities blasted the heavy metal song at full volume in the middle of the night last weekend. The virus that caused the song to play also shut down part of the network.

Probably worth noting and decoding the lyrics:

I was caught
In the middle of a railroad track (Thunder)

[Clearly a reference to the "diplomatic track" favored by Obama and the western nations, and the more aggressive track favored by Netanyahu and Charles Krauthammer.]

And I knew there was no turning back (Thunder)

[Last November, Senior Iranian lawmaker Kazzem Jalali said that there will be "no turning back" in Iran's "peaceful" nuclear pursuit. Clearly an AC/DC fan.]

My mind raced
And I thought what could I do (Thunder)
And I knew
There was no help, no help from you (Thunder)

[Either a shot at Obama, or a reference to a lyric from AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." Oh wait, this is AC/DC's "Thunderstuck," so clearly a shot at Obama.] 

Sound of the drums
Beatin’ in my heart
The thunder of guns
Tore me apart
You’ve been – thunderstruck

[Uh-oh -- divest Iranian petroleum stock NOW.]

Went down the highway
Broke the limit, we hit the town

That town being Bushehr, Isfahan, Natanz, and a few others I could name.

New Voices magazine has posted an article on the Munich massacre written in 1972 by David Twersky, z”l, my predecessor as NJJN editor, when he was a staff writer for the Jewish Student Press Service.  

Remember, this is 1972:

How can we understand the sweep of the tide of history? Only this way: Black September has succeeded in its wild scheme. The world is polarized again, especially the Mideastern world. Peace will be missing from the marketplace conversation and from government planning. No one among the Israelis will talk about the rights of Palestinians as a people. And this is the greatest irony of all for the Palestinians. For only by working together with the Israelis will they achieve a just solution to their problem and ours. That their actions should serve to postpone this long awaited dream, sadly, makes no sense at all.

Part two:

My professional and personal life converge over Rutgers — as the NJ state university, it’s in our coverage area, and my son isa senior there studying engineering. Rutgers Hillel has been the center of a lot of our reporting, most notably on allegations  of anti-Israel activity on campus. Many of these allegations are overheated, although Hillel has done a fine job of keeping them in proper perspective.

The frisbee (flying disc, to be more precise; it’s not a WHAM-O®) also makes me think of my son, who sings in the campus Jewish a cappella choir and plays on one of the Rutgers Ultimate Frisbee teams. 

R-U Rah Rah! R-U Rah Rah! Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Rutgers Rah! Upstream Redteam, Redteam upstream, Rah! Rah! Rutgers Rah!

When I was at the Forward we started a feature about people’s various Jewish objects — little essays in which writers described their favorite Jewish knick-knacks and what they meant to them. (This was a few years before the New York Times Style section began its similar “Possessed” column.) I was inspired by Vanessa Ochs, one of my colleagues at CLAL and a member of the University of Virginia faculty, who introduced me to the discipline of “material culture”  — stuff, essentially, and what it says about its owners and collectors.  In an essay, What Makes a Jewish Home Jewish?, Vanessa inventoried the home of a “past president of a Conservative synagogue in suburban New Jersey,” and tallied her various tchotchkes. Wrote Vanessa:

In Judaism and, I imagine, most other faith traditions, the spiritual is material. Without things, in all their thingness, there is no Passover, only an idea of Passover; and a faint and fuzzy idea it would be, like honor, loyalty, and remorse — like, perhaps, God, and more surely, monotheism. Things denote one’s belonging, one’s participation, possibly one’s convictions.

I was reminded of all this after hearing a Studio 360 piece on Joshua Glenn, co-creator of the Significant Objects project. Glenn doesn’t ask people to describe the meaningful objects in their lives; instead, he asks well-known writers to create back stories to objects he’s collected.

Nevetheless, it got me thinking about the Jewish stuff that’s been gathering in my office, and what these tchotchkes signify, if anything. Below is the first installment, with a promise (or perhaps threat) of more to come.

Sholem Aleichem Bobblehead

Larry Bush of Jewish Currents magazine, that redoubt of secular Jewish leftism, began selling these a few years back. The famous Yiddish writer walks along a cobble-stone street, flanked by two very different buildings: a Lower East Side tenement, and a little shack straight out of Anatevke, the setting of his Tevye the Milkman stories.

Just saying the words “Sholem Aleichem bobblehead” makes me smile. And unlike the David Wright bobblehead we got at a Mets game a few year ago, this one actually looks the person it is supposed to depict.

I love the idea of celebrating Yiddish literature with this goofily American collectible. Now if they only made a Moses action figure. Oh wait — they do.

Tablet magazine, which has become the go-to site for Jewish cultural commentary (and is edited by friends whose work I admire deeply) has some explaining to do in the light of a bizarre and offensive essay that took a vicious swipe at Holocaust survivors.

In the course of reviewing  “Breaking Bad,”  author Anna Breslaw shares her suspicions of Holocaust survivors, who beneath a patina of sanctity and victimhood are actually “conniving, indestructible, taking and taking.” She shares her “gut instinct” that survivors are “villains masquerading as victims who, solely by virtue of surviving (very likely by any means necessary) felt that they had earned the right to be heroes.”

The result has been enormous and nearly unanimously negative. In a response to the critics, editor Alana Newhouse writes of the deliberations among her staff over publishing the piece:

[T]he conversation stretched beyond this one article, and raised a number of vital questions for Tablet as a journalistic enterprise: What—if any—is the communal responsibility to the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors? Do we have a duty to hear them out, even when their thoughts are—as Breslaw described her own—“unappealing and didactic,” or worse? And what of other writers looking to explore other painful questions about their Jewish identities?

Sure, we have a duty to hear people out, but not every thought, impulse, or “painful question” must be shared with the public. I am sure there are plenty of people who honestly believe or “suspect” that blondes are dumb and blacks are genetically inferior — or, in perhaps a better analogy, that every soldier who served in Viet Nam was a “baby killer” — but at some point we decided as a society that grotesque and denigrating generalizations about any group based on nothing but subjective feelings were beneath public discussion.