From the Denver Post:
Man struck by lightning near Denver synagogue Wednesday night
A man was struck by lightning Wednesday night after leaving the Hebrew Educational Alliance Center in southeast Denver.
Denver fire personnel were administering CPR as the man was taken from the synagogue at 3600 South Ivanhoe St., said Denver Fire Lt. Phil Champagne.
His name and condition were not immediately available.
My friend Larry Yudelson shared an e-mailed press release about a group helping the medical community work with ”Holocaust survivors who are facing advanced illness and/or end of life” issues. The subject line on the email was rather unfortunate:
Subject: Helping survivors die
A few weeks ago, on the eve of offering a benediction at the Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles Rabbi David Wolpe made clear that he didn’t intend his appearance to be seen as partisan in any way. At the time, I used Wolpe’s remarks as a springboard for a lament about the absence of politics in rabbinic discourse, saying a rabbi’s unwillingness or inability to clock in on high-stakes debates of the day undermines claims to the continuing relevancy of Torah and its teachers.
Now, writing for Time, Wolpe does clock in on a burning issue — Iran’s nuclear ambitions — but in a way that also leaves me unsatisfied. Essentially, Wolpe asserts that he has become a single issue voter this campaign, and that issue is Iran:
With the exception of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humanity has managed to restrain itself from deploying this most awful of weapons, the one that can indeed destroy worlds. We stand before an iron law of history: you cannot unmake what has been made. Once Iran has a nuclear bomb, the world will never look the same. Not only Israelis, but the West will never sleep easily in its bed. Stopping Iran will not feed your family, get you a job or open a factory. It will not elevate the level of public discourse or bring manufacturing back from China. It will merely ensure that the free world, beginning with Israel but not ending there, will not live under the shadow of annihilation. To our presidential candidates: show me you have a way to do that, and you’ve got my vote.
In truth, I don’t think his article is about the presidential election at all, but rather a way to front and center the Iran crisis using the elections as a convenient hook. Or maybe it is just a way to wring strong statements and clear policies onIran out of both candidates, now and during the debates. That would be a win-win.
But let’s say it is about the elections — then what? Wolpe doesn’t discuss the candidates’ views on the subject, nor does he assert what combination of sanctions, red lines, and military responses he considers appropriate to preventing Iran from gettting the bomb. In fact, there is no discussion of the policy choices available to the president, either this one or whoever wins come November.
So if this is his single issue, what would a candidate have to tell him to earn his vote? Wolpe doesn’t say.
More than one pundit has suggested that there is no discernible difference between the Iran rhetoric of Romney and the policies of Obama — see here, here, here, and here. If there is any difference in their rhetoric, it revolves around whether the candidate would act militarily “if Iran actually tried to build a bomb” (Obama) or “if Iran were merely close to acquiring all the means for a weapon — which it is” (Romney).
Of course, people don’t just vote on the dry facts of policy and past actions — they go with their gut. And perhaps that’s how Wolpe will vote. Still, you have to suspect that he has a few criteria, or how else will he make a decision? By not sharing any of those criteria, the essay reads a bit like a Jewish telegram: “Start worrying — letter to follow.”
It’s a delicate dance — trying to be in the political debate, but above it at the same time. Desperate to bring attention to a burning issue, but unable to weigh in on its solution lest you alienate followers or your own principles of objectivity and non-partisanship. I’m sorry to single out Wolpe. In some ways, this is characteristic of the entire Jewish communal debate over Iran. The Jewish organizational consensus is that “Iran must be stopped” and “Iran must not be allowed to go nuclear,” and, except on the distinct ideological Right and Left, the discussion stops there. There’s little full-throated support for the sanctions regime because we don’t want to be seen as condoning too tepid a response; there are no demands for miltiary action because Jews don’t want to be seen as “leading” the country into war. “Containment” is an option that dare not speak its name. We can’t question Netanyahu’s actions or rhetoric because mainstream Jewish groups don’t do that, but we can’t challenge Obama because it would appear disloyal or partisan. We’re left with a communal dialogue on Iran that sounds like Mark Twain’s crack about the weather: “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
But give Wolpe credit for laying the huge stakes of the Iranian crisis before a national audience. If a new poll of Florida Jewish voters by the American Jewish Committee is any indication, Iran is way down the list of priorities of most Americans. Only 1 percent of those polled say that Iran is their most important issue in deciding how they will vote in the election; the top two spots belong to the economy at 54 percent and health care at 16 percent. Iran trails behind issues like national security, U.S.-Israel relations, abortion, and social security.
The Times reports on the “elastic” rules — among Israelis and the organizers of the World Baseball Classic — that allow Israel to field a team in the tournament that includes only 3 players from Israel and 25 Americans “with professional baseball experience and Jewish roots, recruited to play for a homeland only a few have visited.”
Accepting Israel’s rules of eligibility (roughly akin to the Law of Return that allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to claim Israeli citizenship), the WBC “required documentation proving a player was Jewish.” As a result,
prospective players and their families were set off on a scramble for supporting evidence. Jews are a people, but the supplied evidence most often tended to be religious. Jake Lemmerman, a promising shortstop in the Los Angeles Dodgers system, produced certificates from his bar mitzvah and his confirmation a year later.
Meanwhile, other teams are — ahem — envious of Israel’s ability to choose from so many American Jews:
“The Israelis have 100 Jewish-American ballplayers to choose from,” [South Africa’s manager, Rick Magnante] said. “I ask you: where’s the level playing field?”
Writing in the Jerusalem Post, my friend Elli Wohlgelernter acknowledges the murky optics of a mostly American Israeli team:
Some American-Israelis deride this squad as not really being “Israeli,” but a team of American ringers bearing about the same relationship to Israel as a “kosher-style” deli does to the real thing.
These purists believe that the term “Israeli” should only apply to someone willing to live and sacrifice (and bunt, steal, and slide) in Eretz Yisrael.
However, adds Elli, the eligibility rules reflect a debate — and a principle — as old as Zionism:
Early Zionists debated whether Israel would be a state of its citizens, or the homeland of the Jewish people.
The argument was settled with its founding: Israel would be both. While Israeli citizenship is qualitatively different from Jewish identity, all you needed was the latter to assume the former.
Jews would get a new (or additional) passport when they immigrated to Israel; if they didn’t immigrate, they and Israel would consider each other part of a global Jewish family.
But if you are eligible for citizenship according to the rules of [the Law of Return] – and these are civil parameters, not halachic, closer to the Nuremberg Laws definition of Who is a Jew than the guidelines of the Torah – then you are automatically part of the family of Jews.
Period.
Michigan prosecutors render judgment in the case of the Michigan State University student who claimed he was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack:
Ingham County’s prosecutor said a Michigan State University sophomore who claimed he was punched in the face last month because he is Jewish was not the victim of a hate crime.
“There is no indication at all that this was a hate crime. None. Zero,” Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III said Monday. “I think it’s a shame when one person makes an allegation and everyone takes it as the truth and gets up in arms about it.”
The Anti-Defamation League accepts the finding:
Our understanding is that the investigation is now nearly complete. Based on interviews with more than 50 witnesses who were at the party that night, the East Lansing Police have apparently concluded that while the student was the victim of a serious physical assault, the evidence does not support his claim that the assault involved anti-Semitic hate speech or gestures, nor does it indicate that the incident was motivated by his religion.
The story is a very sad one, on many levels. However, based on the best information currently available, ADL does not believe this incident should be treated as a hate crime.
President Obama sent personal Rosh Hashana greetings to Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, and in addition to some serious remarks about the U.S.-Israel relationship gave a shout-out to Oren’s Jersey roots:
Michael, your life of service embodies the bonds between our nations — not bad for a kid from Jersey.
Oh, and this just in: Republican Jewish Coalition criticizes the president for ridiculing New Jersey.
Just kidding. they wouldn’t do that – New Jersey isn’t in play.
In early September, Republicans feigned expressed outrage when California Democratic chief John Burton accused Paul Ryan of engaging in the “big lie,” a synonym for misinformation attributed, as Burton pointed out, to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. While more than one sober pundit noted that the “big lie” has entered the political dictionary despite its provenance, the Anti-Defamation League joined those calling on Burton to apologize:
We were dismayed by your recent comparison between statements made at the Republican National Convention and the Nazi propaganda put forth by Joseph Goebbels.
This comparison to Goebbels’ genocidal propaganda serves to trivialize the Holocaust and is deeply offensive to Jews and other survivors, as well as those Americans who fought valiantly against the Nazis in World War II.
Not one hour ago I got a statement from the ADL calling on the media to do a better job at debunking the myth that a Jew was behind that noxious anti-Islam film. And I quote:
News organizations need to clearly correct the record so that this myth does not morph into another Big Lie blaming and scapegoating Israelis and Jews.”
So is using the “Big Lie” acceptable discourse or not? Or was Burton’s sin that he actually, and factually, attributed the quote to Goebbels?
Check the ADL archive and you find that they use the “Big Lie” to refer to “Israel and Apartheid,” Amiri Baraka’s 9/11 poem, and myths surrounding the “Israel Lobby.”
The ADL could argue that the “Big Lie” should only refer to anti-Jewish slander, but that’s splitting hairs, it seems to me.
JTA summarizes the important correctives to the Libyan embassy story:
He’s not a Jew.
At least that’s the latest on the man behind the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims,” which has fueled attacks on U.S. diplomatic installations in Libya, Egypt and Yemen.
The filmmaker appears to be an Egyptian Christian rather than an Israeli Jew, as he had claimed in interviews.
And the ADL wants the media to do a better job at getting the word out:
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed concern that the news media, despite their efforts to uncover and report on the true identity of the filmmaker responsible for an anti-Islam film that fanned violent protests across the Middle East, have not done enough to put to rest the myth that an “Israeli Jew” and 100 Jewish investors were behind the film.
“We are greatly concerned that this false notion that an Israeli Jew and 100 Jewish backers were behind the film now has legs and is gathering speed around the world,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “In an age where conspiracy theories, especially ones of an anti-Semitic nature, explode on the Internet in a matter of minutes, it is crucial for those news organizations who initially reported on his identity to correct the record. It is not a question of freedom of speech; it is a question of responsibility. News organizations need to clearly correct the record so that this myth does not morph into another Big Lie blaming and scapegoating Israelis and Jews.”
Two Ha’aretz columnists discuss reports that President Obama declined a request from Benjamin Netanyahu for a face-to-face meeting when the Israeli prime minister visits the United States to attend the UN General Assembly:
An isolated Israel threatens its most dependable ally
It’s not every day that the prime minister of an isolatedIsrael issues what amounts to an ultimatum to his most dependable, most indispensable ally. It’s not every day that an Israeli prime minister who by geopolitical necessity must be scrupulously neutral in an American presidential race tailors his moves to the campaign of one party at the expense of the other.
And it’s not every day that the prime minister of an Israel whose very security depends on close cooperation with the White House appears to work angles to try to see an incumbent president defeated — for example, announcing just at the climax of the Republican convention his intention to go to the UN to tell the world of the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program.
Only, in the case of Benjamin Netanyahu and his staff, it has been literally every day.
‘Refusing to meet Netanyahu is a mistake’
[R]efusing to meet Netanyahu is a mistake. Even if it’s not an outright refusal, but just a problem of venues and timetables, the decision is still a blunder. It is a political mistake, because many American Jews, even those who otherwise take a dim view of Netanyahu and his policies, are bound to be offended. On the back of the Jerusalem brouhaha at the recent Democratic National Convention, some American-Jewish voters might take umbrage from such a slight and find that the president’s attitude toward Israel is indeed, as his detractors claim, somewhat lacking.
Not only is it a political mistake but a practical one, too, when considering the Israeli public. Israelis might be affronted, whether they are supporters or detractors of Bibi, and they might also reach conclusions that run contrary to White House intentions. Yes, many will blame Netanyahu for needlessly inflaming tensions with the U.S. president, but they may also reach the conclusion, nonetheless, that Israel has been left truly alone and must therefore take matters into its own hands.
Outrage and reality when it comes to Obama and Jerusalem. First, the outrage:
At [the Sept. 6] State Department press conference — the day after President Obama directed the Democratic Party to re-instate in its platform the words “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital ofIsrael” — a reporter asked acting deputy spokesman Patrick Ventrell which city the U.S.recognizes as the capital ofIsrael. Mr. Ventrell responded as follows: “Well, as you know, longstanding Administration policy, both in this Administration and in previous administrations across both parties, is that the status of Jerusalem is an issue that should be resolved in final status negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. So that’s longstanding Administration policy and continues to be so.”
That response produced several more tries by reporters (“I mean, no city is recognized as a capital by the U.S. Government?” “That means Jerusalem is not a part ofIsrael?” “Are there any other countries in the world where the U.S.doesn’t know what the capital is or won’t say what the capital of a country is?”) — each of which produced the same non-response from Ventrell….
If President Obama ever holds another formal press conference, perhaps a reporter will ask how he was able to get the line into the platform but cannot get the State Department (or his own press secretary) to endorse even the first part of the sentence.
Rick Richman, Commentary
And now the reality:
First, let’s get something straight. The Jerusalem issue defies logic and rationality when it comes to our presidential elections. Presidential candidates say all kinds of things in order to win elections, including repeated commitments to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And then, once in office, they turn around and seek ways to avoid doing it.
Despite all of the campaign rhetoric, no administration has changed the bottom line U.S. position on the embassy, or for that matter the status of Jerusalem, since 1967. Its fate is to be determined in negotiations.
And here’s a news flash for you. Should Mitt Romney become president and serious negotiations start between the Israelis and Palestinians, his position would conform to that of his predecessors, and might even go further to allow for Palestinian sovereignty in east Jerusalem.
Second, what’s so curious about the flap is that the Jerusalem issue is less relevant today than ever. There are no prospects for reviving serious Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Taking positions on Jerusalem is a thought experiment now. And most smart politicians understand this.
—Aaron David Miller, CNN
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