JustASC

This week in the NJJN:

Jewish War Veterans give the boot to suspected mole.

Rabbis reach out to Methodists over divestment – but are the Methodists reaching back?

Israeli Iranian expert: ayatollahs “are open to reason.”

Dissing Ben Stein:

Stein might also explain why he agreed to a film that makes bizarre and unseemly comparisons between evolutionary biologists and goose-stepping fascists. Expelled draws a direct line between Darwin and Hitler, between natural selection and the Selektions of the Holocaust. It’s like blaming Shakespeare for the English major who committed the Virginia Tech massacre.

Interesting split among Jewish activists: 185 rabbis and other Jewish leaders urge world-wide boycott of Summer Olympics in Beijing:

We remember all too well that the road to Nazi genocide began in the 1930s, with Hitler’s efforts to improve the public image of his evil regime. Jews should not be party to the whitewashing of such a regime.

But the ADL is opposed to a boycott:

While there is no doubt that China has an extremely poor human rights record and that its actions in Tibet and Sudan are to be condemned, we believe that asking the Jewish community to engage in a boycott of the games could be counterproductive and would not produce any tangible result.

In calling for a boycott, some have drawn parallels with the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936. We believe that these comparisons are inappropriate. China is a complicated society that is changing and opening up in many ways, and one simply cannot equate the Beijing Olympics with those games in Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust.

[UPDATE: I wasn’t sure what I thought of this issue, and then I figured out what was bugging me. Implicit in the ADL statement is what I’ll call the Nazi Standard: If a country’s behavior doesn’t rise (or sink) to the level of the Nazi Holocaust, we must be hesitant to use tactics that we would have applied against Hitler.  (I don’t mean to single out the ADL — the rabbis also applied the Nazi Standard in their statement.)

That’s placing a very high bar on Jewish advocacy — implying that we should call for extreme measures only to the degree that an issue stands up to the most exteme comparisons. And it hobbles our ability to judge a crisis on its own merits. So China is not engaged in genocide, just repression, human rights abuses, stifling the press, silencing its opposition. If the Nazis win the gold medal for World’s Worst Totalitarians, we need a way to talk about the silver and bronze medalists.

I haven’t made up my mind about the boycott, but let me propose that we have the conversation without referencing Nazism, and limiting the debate to China. Is it a bad player? Would there be a symbolic or tangible benefit — measured in the improvement of conditions for those living under Beijing’s thumb — if a boycott was in place? Will individuals and countries compromise their own principles by taking part?

Slate had a good piece about the boycott, and asked questions like these.

The one question not to ask is this: Are [fill in the blank] as bad as the Nazis?]

What do we teach when we teach about Israel? My column this week, prompted by my kids’ currrent and upcoming trips to Israel:

And as my teenagers head to Israel, I have two conflicting worries: The first, that they’ll absorb an idealized version of Israel that will either harden their politics or eventually lead to disillusionment; the second, that they’ve already absorbed the world’s jaundiced view of the Jewish state, and grown a cynical shell that no teacher or tour guide can crack.

So how do you cultivate a young person’s engagement with Israel so that he is neither naive to the point of gullibility, or knowing to the point of disdain?

What is the New York Sun getting at in its editorial on the NJ spy scandal? It lurches from trying to trivialize the charges, to justifying spying on America in service of Israel, to a disingenuous call for enforcing “America’s espionage laws.” It’s a neocon version of Freud’s kettle defense. (”I never borrowed that pot, it was broken when you lent it to me, and, anyways, I’ve already returned it.”)

New York Sun Editorial
April 23, 2008

It  sounds like the plot of a Zev Chafets novel, or a Purim spoof: An 84-year-old New Jersey man active in the Jewish War Veterans and the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County is accused of being an atomic spy for Israel, run out of an Israeli consulate in New York that is better known for the hummus served at its annual Israel Independence Day party.

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JTA provides the Jewish numbers on the Penn. primary:

Exit polling found that Jews comprised 7 percent of the electorate, and went 57 percent to 43 percent for Clinton.

More analysis after the jump.

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This week inthe NJJN:

Full coverage of Ben-Ami Kadish, the NJ retiree accused of spying for Israel.

Immigration woes for a Venezuelan doctor, who fears a return to his “anti-Semitic” native land.

We cover the pope’s visit (our guy was the one without the yarmulke).

Take a knee, fellas: A coach’s prayer case splits Jewish experts:

Marc Stern, of the American Jewish Congress, said he was troubled by a “very narrow reading” of legal precedents.

According to Stern, the ruling suggests that a coach without Borden’s long history of leading or encouraging students to pray would be allowed to join them, “and that’s a big problem.”

“The judges were obviously bending over backwards to create teachers’ rights to engage in religion with their students, but there is no such right,” Stern said. “No court has recognized a free speech right or an academic freedom right to engage in religious activity with one’s students. This court does that. It is problematic.”

NJJN Middlesex bureau chief Debra Rubin interviews Ben-Ami Kadish’s cantor and friends:

Cantor Eli Perlman, religious leader of the Jewish Congregation of Concordia, said he did not know congregant Ben-Ami Kadish well, but was concerned about his age and health.

“I’ve only been in meetings with him, but I don’t think he’s in any shape to sit through a trial,” he said of the 84-year-old Kadish. “He doesn’t look like somebody who gets around easily.”

Perlman questioned why the government was bringing charges against Kadish decades after the alleged incidents.

“It sounds like a red herring-there’s something else going on,” he added. “It doesn’t make sense after all these years. Why has this all of a sudden come to the front?”

Charles and Fran Koppelman, who live in Concordia– another of Monroe’s adult communities — have known both Doris and Ben-Ami Kadish for several years.

“He’s outstanding as far as I’m concerned; very patriotic and caring,” said Charles Koppelman. “I know him as an outstanding individual as is his wife. I don’t know what he’s done before because I can’t see into the past. But, I can only praise him.”

Fran Koppelman, who described both Doris and Ben-Ami as “such nice people,” said she sees them around town.

“We just wish everything turns out well,” she said. “At his age he could drop dead from the humiliation.”

From David Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com, Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2008:

In an ad as polarizing and jarring as the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times branding the hero “General Betray Us” – a word play first used by MSNBC “journalist” Keith Olbermann.

David Horowitz, Newsmax.com, Oct. 1, 2007: 

Did I perhaps come up with the pun “Less Petraeus, more Betray Us” as a not-so-clever way to tarnish an American hero? No, as a matter of fact, Keith Olbermann did that. 
 

Fundraising letter for Frontpagemag.com from David Horowitz, Tuesday, April 22, 2008:

America’s most staunch ally in the war on terror is in great danger. Our ally is Israel, and it has been in great danger since it was founded sixty years ago. But now it’s in danger of being betrayed by our own government….  I’m writing to you today to ask your help in fighting back against this betrayal.

Do you find this headline from the Times as alarming as I did?

Praying Passenger Ejected From Jet for Failing to Return to His Seat

Turns out a “bearded Orthodox Jewish man”  in the back of a San Francisco-bound plane sitting on the tarmac at JFK was removed after he ignored flight attendants’ orders to return to his seat.

According to the Times, the man explained that once the prayer (probably the morning Amidah, fellow passengers surmised) is started, it must be finished without interruption. He returned to his seat after about two and a half minutes — too late for airline authorities.

A spokeswoman for United Airlines said that the man was put on another flight Thursday morning.  “It’s important that the customers listen to the flight crew’s instructions, especially safety instructions,” she said.

From NJJN: MetroWest, NJ federation leader urges readers to sound off to WQXR about rejecting the American Jewish Committee ad: 

WQXR’s dissonant sound

A colleague, David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, has brought to our attention the fact that WQXR, the New York Times’ classical music radio station, refuses to air an American Jewish Committee paid advertisement on Sderot.

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