Jewish Press: Obama's 'not some ogre'

There has been an obnoxious number of stories lately about Obama's Jewish problem.

I found Jodi Kantor's much-discussed NYT piece yesterday to be heavy on anecdotes and light on evidence. Last week, Jeffrey Goldberg published his interview with Obama, in which they discussed Israel, Hamas and the "kishke question," a conversation that has had more traction than any in recent memory and to which the New York Times followed with this piece on Obama's Jewish campaign.

Thomas Friedman added to the din this Sunday with "Obama and the Jews," a good column about the whisper campaign against the Illinois senator, but, frankly, I'm a bit tuckered out.

I don’t want a president who is just going to lean on Israel and not get in the Arabs’ face too, or one who, as the former Mideast negotiator Aaron D. Miller puts it, “loves Israel to death” — by not drawing red lines when Israel does reckless things that are also not in America’s interest, like building settlements all over the West Bank.

It’s a tricky business. But if Israel is your voting priority, then at least ask the right questions about Mr. Obama. Knock off the churlish whispering campaign about what’s in his heart on Israel (what was in Richard Nixon’s heart?) and focus first on what kind of America you think he’d build and second on whether you believe that as president he’d have the smarts, steel and cunning to seize a historic opportunity if it arises.

I've argued before that the claim that American Jews need to choose between Obama and Israel is false. The right-wing Jewish Press agreed, and quoting from Goldberg's interview ran this editorial:

Sen. Obama is very forthcoming about his commitment to the survival of Israel. This is not some ogre with a hidden anti-Semitic agenda. The devil, however, is in the details.

That's where, of course, they question just what his commitment would look like. And I'd say that's a fair exercise to do with any presidential candidate on any issues you as a voter care about. (Again, this is why I don't vote for politicians based on their purported religious beliefs.)

(Hat tip: Bintel Blog)

Protesting gay marriage

Look beyond the kissing dudes to the folks protesting the ruling of California's Supreme Court regarding same-sex marriage. The message reminds me of another guy nobody takes seriously.

By the way, it was nice to see Mollie at GetReligion shares my frustration with the poorly reported, knee-jerk news features about how Christians were struggling with and celebrating the court's decision.

The God Blog gets a new look

For the past year, I've appreciated Blogger's free hosting, but, then again, you get what you don't pay for, and there have been a lot of bugs. So starting tomorrow, The God Blog should have a totally new look (and content management system).

The switch coincides with the launch of The Jewish Journal's new Website. You may already be reading this post on the new site, which has the same address as the old blog. The blog archives also are now fully searchable through the Journal's home page.

But there likely will be some problems with the launch, and I may have trouble posting during the next two days. My advance apologies.

Also, you will notice that, as of right now, comments are missing from posts less than a month old. This is because the designers of our new site made the error of migrating over all the blogs too close to our original launch date. I spent much of today moving over the 100 or so posts I'd written since then and over the next week will have to add the comments by hand. For once I'm glad comments here aren't too numerous.

McCain rejects Rod Parsley's support too

Well, John McCain didn't wait long to answer my question about what he would do with Rod Parsley.

McCain kicks Hagee to curb for Hitler remarks

It seems John McCain has tired of John Hagee, and rightfully so after it was reported that the leader of Christians United for Israel considered Hitler a divine agent, called by God to return the Jews to the biblical Land of Israel. Those six million butchered in the Holocaust? Collateral damage, I guess. Via CNN:

“Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well,” McCain said in a statement to CNN Thursday.

He added that his relationship with Hagee did not compare with Obama’s lengthy association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright's extreme views. But let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual advisor, and I did not attend his church for twenty years. I have denounced statements he made immediately upon learning of them, as I do again today,” said McCain.

Now, what to do with Rod Parsley?

Court sides with polygamist families

Breaking news in the Texas polygamy raid from the NYT:

A Texas state court of appeals ruled Thursday afternoon that the state of Texas had no right to seize more than 400 children from a polygamist ranch in Eldorado, in the western part of the state.

The ruling asserted that the state’s child protection agency not only acted hastily in removing the children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in April but also failed to show that they were in immediate danger. According to the court, the state did not establish proper grounds to remove the children from their families, who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. The F.L.D.S. broke off from the mainstream Mormon church after it had disavowed polygamy in 1890.

At news conference in San Angelo, the closest city to Eldorado, a lawyer for the sect said it was unclear when the families would be reunited, and that the team was reviewing the next legal steps in the process.

Getting furry for the Omer

Jay Firestone has given us a matzo taste test, shown the post-party perils of Purim and hit the streets to talk politics in Pico-Robertson, but this is by far his best video dispatch so far.

ADL adds to literature on Kevin MacDonald

That image, which appears to have been "borrowed" from The Journal, is now at the top of the Anti-Defamation League's homepage. (I wanted to put a screen grab up but, as usual, Blogger had other ideas.) Accompanying the image is a long-awaited report, published today, by the ADL that is short, uncontroversial and includes no new information that I could find.

"Kevin MacDonald is someone who is hailed among the bigots not just for his beliefs about Jews, but because of his ability to lend to his anti-Semitism a scholarly veneer," said Dr. Kevin O'Grady, ADL Orange County Regional Director. "Because he is a tenured professor who couches his views as a form of academic inquiry, he defies the mold of more traditional anti-Semites like jackbooted neo-Nazis or robe-wearing Klansmen."

MacDonald is a celebrated figure in the world of white supremacy because his views about Jews -- many of which promote classical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories -- are given added legitimacy by his ability to present them in a scholarly guise, according to ADL. The League has added MacDonald to its definitive online guide to extremist groups and individuals in the United States, Extremism in America.

ADL says that MacDonald has evolved from a writer of books to a blogger and prolific contributor to anti-Semitic publications both in print and online.

A lot more info about MacDonald, whom I profiled for The Jewish Journal two weeks ago, can be found in a much more lengthy bio page the ADL created, which includes an overview of the man, his ideology and affiliations and his own words:

“[H]atred toward all things European is normative among a great many strongly identified Jews.”

“Can the Jewish Model Help the West Survive?”

Jack London Literary Prize acceptance speech, October 31, 2004

American Bible Society goes on alert

From Gary Stern at Blogging Religiously:

I got this ominous-sounding press release today from the American Bible Society, a NYC-based group, nearly 200 years old, that tries to make the Bible available to everyone:

New York – May 20, 2008 – The American Bible Society Board Chairman, Dr. Dennis C. Dickerson, announced today that two American Bible Society executives, Dr. Paul Irwin, President, and Richard Stewart, Chief Financial Officer, have been placed on leave at the request of the Board of Trustees.

The Board has committed to a full and independent review of the financial stewardship of the American Bible Society.

The American Bible Society’s Executive Vice Presidents, Dr. R. L. Vest and The Reverend Simon Barnes, will assume responsibility for day-to-day operations, reporting to the American Bible Society Board of Trustees Chairman, Dr. Dennis C. Dickerson.

Sounds like a bit of cleaning house. The New York Times had reported Sunday that the American Bible Society paid $5 million to an "electronic commerce" mogul whose clients included pornographers. Irwin denied knowing of Richard J. Gordon's business with adult entertainers.

The singularity will give you eternal life

I read a few years ago in The Atlantic of an impending "death shortage," an unfortunate consequence of technological advancements that would turn 70 year olds into early-career professionals. These people -- we people -- would still die; it was just going to take a lot longer to happen.

But leafing through back issues of Wired last night, I came across an article about a technology prodigy trying to buy eternal life. Not the kind paid for with the blood of a lamb, but the kind that could be achieved here on earth if you were to download your brain to your laptop. You just have to live long enough.

Let me explain.

This ambition is based on a theory called the singularity, the point at which technology will surpass human intelligence and become independent, like Skynet without the nuclear winter. "AIs will help us see and hear better. They will give us better memories and help us fight disease. Eventually, AIs will allow us to conquer death itself," Gary Wolf writes in Wired. Believers say the singularity will arrive in phases:

First, lifestyle and aggressive antiaging therapies will allow more people to approach the 125-year limit of the natural human lifespan. This is bridge one. Meanwhile, advanced medical technology will begin to fix some of the underlying biological causes of aging, allowing this natural limit to be surpassed. This is bridge two. Finally, computers become so powerful that they can model human consciousness. This will permit us to download our personalities into nonbiological substrates. When we cross this third bridge, we become information. And then, as long as we maintain multiple copies of ourselves to protect against a system crash, we won't die.

So Ray Kurzweil, who has written a few books that are the Bible of the movement and is the focus of the article, is spending a lot of money, and taking 180 to 210 vitamins a day (so many he has a "pill wrangler"), to try to stay alive until the singularity arrives.

As a driver he is cautious. He frequently bicycles through the Boston suburbs, which is good for physical conditioning but also puts his immortality on the line. For most people, such risks blend into the background of life, concealed by a cheerful fatalism that under ordinary conditions we take as a sign of mental health. But of course Kurzweil objects to this fatalism. He wants us to try harder to survive.

His plea is often ignored. Kurzweil has written about the loneliness of being a singularitarian. This may seem an odd complaint, given his large following, but there is something to it. A dozen of his fans may show up in Denver every month to initiate longevity treatments, but many of them, like Matt Philips, are simply hedging their bets. Most health fanatics remain agnostic, at best, on the question of immortality.

(That last line could just as easily be a criticism of a lot of religious people, ambivalent agnostics "simply hedging their bets." See what the Apostle Paul's commentary on this.)

Clearly Kurzweil and the growing faithful have removed God from their religion. Oddly, though, Mark Anderson argues they've done away with science too.

Villaraigosa renews his Israeli ties

To celebrate Israeli@60, Jewlicious started a feature called 60Bloggers, which has included a few notable names thus far, including Gary Wexler and The Calendar Girls. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa added his name Monday, drawing comparisons to the "culture and commerce, and ties of blood and family":

Los Angeles and Israel are both homes of creativity and bastions of innovation - places defined by a deep respect for diversity, a longstanding belief in what’s possible, and the fervent hope, dream and commitment to build a peaceful tomorrow.

Here in Los Angeles, we celebrate the state of Israel and our own Israeli community in a variety of ways. We host the largest showcase of Israeli films in the United States and we have built a strong relationship with our sister city, Eilat. Thousands of Israeli students of all ages have attended and enriched our schools and synagogues, and Israeli security specialists have come to the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport to help protect airline passengers and foreign visitors. Each year, the city’s Israel Festival brings together over 40,000 people in the largest celebration of Israeli culture anywhere. And, overcoming the obstacles faced by so many immigrant groups, the vitality and vibrancy of L.A.’s Israeli families never diminish and only grow stronger every day.

Israel’s 60 years have been shaped by the resilience, strength and devotion of its people. Through criticism and condemnation, the Jewish state has stood up for the values and principles that have long made the Jewish people a “light unto the nations.” Israel’s citizens have kept faith with the hope – “ha-tikvah” – that they might live as a free nation, in peace and security, in the land of their ancestors. I know the City of Los Angeles and our people will continue to benefit from a close relationship with the State of Israel long into the future.

Villaraigosa has a very close relationship with L.A.'s Jewish leaders. He's been called an "honorary member of the Tribe" and his best buddy on the City Council is Jack Weiss, who represents the city's most Jewish district.

As Speaker of the California Assembly, Villaraigosa twice visited Israel, and two years ago he developed a relationship with Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal. Efforts last summer to organize a mayor's trip to the Jewish state were unsuccessful; I've been told his calendar is marked for a week-long trip next month.

Though he couldn't see the holy sites or dignitaries from the San Fernando Valley on Sunday Villaraigosa had the chance to speak with several thousand Israelis at the annual Israel Festival at Woodley Park.

I was there, but, vainly attempting to avoid the heat of the day, before the mayor arrived. Between dripping buckets of sweat and being shown how to solve a Rubik's cube by a Messianic Jew, I enjoyed fake Hebrew coke and picked up books about Spinoza and Koufax. It reminded me of something a former field deputy for U.S. Rep Brad Sherman, who is Jewish and represents part of the Valley, once told me:

The biggest threat to Israel is Tarzana, Calif. It looks like Israel; it feels like Israel; and the people all speak Hebrew.

Orthodox Jews torch pile of New Testaments

And you thought reaction to the Messianic Jew who wanted to compete in the Bible Quiz was ugly. Orthodox Jews pull a page from Nazi playbook in this AP report:

Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.

After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.

The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.

The Israeli Maariv daily reported Tuesday that hundreds of Jewish religious school students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched. Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were, he said.

He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a "commandment" to burn materials that urge Jews to convert.

Just imagine if this had happened with distributed copies of the Quran. The Arab world would be looking for Jewish blood. Oh, nevermind.

NY Wasps candidly share anti-Semitic attitudes

It seems like shameless anti-Semitism in this article online at Vanity Fair:

“It is an act of the worst kind of buffoonery. Schwarzman is horrid.”

This statement was made to me by a member of New York’s Protestant establishment in reference to the renaming of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue at 42nd Street after Stephen A. Schwarzman, C.E.O. of The Blackstone Group, a private equity company. In March news broke that Mr. Schwarzman had agreed to lead the library’s current fundraising campaign by pledging a $100 million gift—the largest the institution has ever received. In recognition, the library announced, his name would be would be carved onto the exterior of the lion-guarded building.

Within senior Wasp circles, Schwarzman and the distinction he has received for his gift have set off a great deal of concealed outrage. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is to say that when I sat and talked with several Wasps about the diminishing influence of their clan, they often waited until the interview was winding down and I had folded up my notebook, and then they jumped back into conversation about Schwarzman and the library.

Old-guard Wasps appear to feel threatened by the newly rich and their growing influence around the city, and dismiss new money as “tasteless and gauche.” When discussing vastly rich people who are Jewish, it is not uncommon for them to use anti-Semitic slurs.

“Come on, though, it’s not Wasps giving Jews a bad name, it’s Jews giving Jews a bad name,” one said. Another told me, “The Astors knew to put their name on the inside. It’s good taste, that’s the difference between old and new.” A third said Schwarzman, who is Jewish, “is cleaning himself up, that’s what new money does. I suppose my family had to do the same thing hundreds of years ago, but look at us now, we’re like deities.”

I imagine this is what it sounded like in Hancock Park years ago as the tony L.A. neighborhood transitioned from the Waspyist address in town to the center of many a fights over Orthodox Jewish practices in residential neighborhood.

But today we are enlightened and Jews in America probably enjoy the most privileged diaspora lives since at least Islamic Spain if not Joseph's years as viceroy of Egypt. (Anyone want to make a case for pre-Nazi Germany?) Which is why it's surprising to see anti-Jewish sentiments so openly aired by somebody not named Kevin MacDonald or his anti-Semitic admirers. Even if they are being expressed anonymously.

The mere mention last summer by Tom Wolfe that many of the new hedge fund managers, like Schwartzman, were Jewish led Moneybox's Daniel Gross to say, "When you finish reading the piece, the faintest whiff of anti-Semitism lingers."

I read the article, and while I agree its quality did not meet Wolfe standards, likely because of the unavoidable comparisons to "The Bonfire of the Vanities," I didn't close Portfolio thinking Jews were money grubbers scouring American society.

Then the housing market tanked ...

There is no question Schwartzman is a jerk. Anybody who throws himself a $3 million birthday party has to be. But this should have nothing to do with Schwartzman being Jewish. In fact, it's worth arguing that if he were a better Jew, he'd be a little less selfish (regardless of how much money he's worth, or was worth).

Maybe Mondoweiss is right. Maybe something historic is happening.

Jerusalem bans 'Sex and the City' ads

Good for the Holy City.

Outdoor advertising company Maximedia has notified the distributors of 'Sex in the City' Forum Films and its publicist, Golan Advertising - that the movie based on the popular TV series of the same name will not be allowed to advertise in Jerusalem and Petah Tikva, because the word "sex" appears on the signs.

I don't agree on religious grounds, partially because it is not "Sex in the City" as the Haaretz reports states, despite letters larger than Sarah Jessica Parker. I just can't stand that show.

'Jews Against Obama'

It was only a matter of time.

Rod Parsley: firebrand and gonif

I strongly disagree with Rod Parsley's characterization of Islam (based on "revelations from demon spirits" and "an anti-Christ religion that intends, through violence, to conquer the world"), but as someone who believes there is Truth and not just religion, he has the right to be divisive. But to what end?

More troubling to a God-fearing Christian -- me -- is that Parsley appears to be a purveyor of the Prosperity Gospel, that vile distortion of the Bible infamous for conning little old ladies out of their social security checks. (Though it may be true in a different context that giving makes you rich.) From the Huffington Post:

You've probably seen the prosperity gospel on television if you've surfed past the Trinity Broadcasting Network, where you could see Parsley, John Hagee, who also endorsed McCain, or Kenneth Copeland, who supported Mike Huckabee. Prosperity preachers tell their followers that if they "sow a seed" -- in other words, donate to the televangelist -- they will "reap a harvest," or get a supernatural return on their investment. The promise of God's blessing in return for lining the preachers' pocket is the movement's organizing principle, bolstered by promises that believers are "little gods" who possess "revelation knowledge" entitling them to ignore the media and academia, and the ability to positively confess things -- that is, just say, "in the name of Jesus, that Cadillac is mine!"

Operating their churches with an iron hand and complete secrecy around their finances, these televangelists command their troops by declaring themselves prophets, God's "anointed," not to be criticized or questioned. "Touch not mine anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm," a verse from Psalms, is invoked as their autocratic shield. It's that secrecy that provoked a Senate Finance Committee investigation into the financial affairs of six of them, including Copeland, who continues to refuse to cooperate with Congressional investigators. Because they view the world through the prism of spiritual warfare, anyone who questions their doctrine or their wealth must be instruments of Satan.

Revelation knowledge lies at the heart of this autocratic movement's powerful hold. Don't let Satan eclipse what revelation knowledge tells you. Revelation knowledge always trumps reason. If this movement's followers believe that they only need to listen to God's word, as delivered through the mouths of their pastors, and that the media, scholarship, and reason are to be ignored, what does this say about the political choices, not to mention the life choices, followers of this movement make?

The embrace of these televangelists by Republican politicians -- exposed in my new book, God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters -- elevates them in the eyes of their followers and promotes their ideology as moral and pure. Parsley, whom McCain called a "moral compass" and "spiritual guide," proudly boasts about how presidential candidates seek his advice. Hagee claims the admiration of the White House, members of Congress from both parties (Joe Lieberman has compared him to Moses), Republican Party officials, and even the former director of the CIA, James Woolsey. When President Bush compared Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers last week, he was tipping his hat to Hagee, who routinely charges political enemies with appeasement as well, while portraying himself and his followers as modern-day Churchills.

(skip)

If you were to turn on your television and watch Parsley or Hagee, you would undoubtedly see them pleading for money. But you might also see Parsley calling for spiritual warfare against Satan, faith-healing homosexuals from the "bondage" of their sin, or prophesying a bloody apocalyptic showdown with Islam out of secret codes in Genesis. You might see Hagee proclaiming that he doesn't care if someone who doesn't work starves, because welfare is satanic. He might be calling environmentalists "wackos" or feminism witchcraft or describing the Bible's plan for men to maintain authority over their wives or predicting God's wrath on the United States if it supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Watching Word of Faith on television, though, is nothing compared to experiencing it -- sitting in the pews while everyone stares you down for not waving your offering envelope in the air, watching a televangelist demand money while people are in an ecstatic religious state; or being crushed by a euphoric crowd at a faith-healing service, during which Parsley claimed he had healed a baby born without a brain, and moments later bragged about how he's a coveted guest in the halls of Congress.

'The Ned Testament'

The 2001 cover story about the evangelical presence of Ned diddly ed Flanders on "The Simpsons" is one of the most popular to run in Christianity Today. It's author, Mark I. Pinsky, cobbled the article from his reportage for "The Gospel According to the Simpsons," and it was based on details like these:

An Oral Roberts University graduate who is never without a Bible and a large piece of the True Cross (which saved his life in one episode when he was shot), Ned believes that an essential element of a good life is "a daily dose of vitamin church."

Pinsky returns to CT with a short review of a tract by "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening called, "Flanders' Book of Faith."

There are two running features in the book that elucidate Flanders's religious faith and its practical application. One is "What Would Ned Do?" Among the things he would do is sacrifice his son, as the patriarch Abraham was ordered to do, without question. He'd also audit his own taxes and charge himself an additional $65.42.

There is also an ongoing dialogue in which the children of The Simpsons ask him deceptively simple questions that require profound responses. "If God is love," Lisa asks, "why does he send people to hell?" Ned thinks a moment, and then explains, "Technically, God doesn't send anyone to hell, Lisa. People send themselves there. It's what we call 'free will.'" Bart scoffs that the Bible "is filled with trick questions."

Bart is, of course, right. My favorite example is when Jesus was asked whether his followers should pay taxes in an act of submission to secular authority.

"Show me a denarius. Whose portrait and inscription are on it?"

"Caesar's," they replied.

He said to them, "Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

God gets a blog to discuss stuff He hates

This supposedly sayeth the Lord:

Of the many human body parts I intensely dislike, there is none I hate more than the foreskin. I believe this small stretch of penile tissue is responsible for turning more men away from Me, the Almighty Lord your God, than anything Lucifer has ever done.

See, back when I was designing the first man, I decided to just make him look exactly like Me. Perfect in every way. I sat naked in the Heavenly Hall of Mirrors for a couple of hours and sculpted Adam’s body to look just like Mine.

And so I gave Adam a huge penis. With some balls. And a foreskin.

And as you all know, that accursed foreskin made sex such a wondrous experience for Adam that he turned away from Me for that dirty-slut-whore Eve.

I blame Eve, but I mostly blame the foreskin, with its thousands upon thousands of pleasure-inducing nerve-endings. Damn you foreskin!

Despite all My best efforts, of the total number of penises worldwide today, 87% still have foreskins. This is a travesty!

I consider every male attached to those foreskins My forsworn enemy! I also consider any woman who has sex with an uncircumcised man equally culpable! As Myself as My witness, they will all burn with Eve in the fiery pits of hell!

These are the alleged ruminations of the Almighty on His new blog dedicated to Stuff God Hates. It's not very believable, what with the pettiness and f-bombs. I did, however, enjoy the post about cats.

A little while back, my editor suggested such a gimmick might be a cool addition to The God Blog -- a regular feature called God's Blog, in which I would speak as the Lord on the big news of the day. I liked the idea, and still might try it, but when I thought about how to make it work, I realized my voice would likely be either dull or melodramatic.

Stuff God Hates opts for the latter. The tone might not work, but the blog has the exact same design, and even object-noun-verb domain, as Stuff White People Like, and that has certainly been successful. It's not clear, but I'm going to gander that they're written by the same Christian Lander of Culver City. Lander launched that blog in January, which has had 28 million hits (that's ridiculous), and by March signed a book deal for their musings on white people. Example:

Plain and simple, white people don’t just like Apple, they love and need Apple to operate.

On the surface, you would ask yourself, how is that white people love a multi-billion dollar company with manufacturing plants in China, mass production, and that contributes to global pollution through the manufacture of consumer electronic devices?

Simple answer: Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.

The writing as God doesn't work as well. Instead of being sharp it sounds silly and mean (when is the last time I packaged those two words together?).

Asia is a huge waste of space and I despise every last country, animal* and heathen-commie-bastard living there. However, I don’t hate the topography. Unlike Africa - which I am deeply, deeply ashamed of – I’m actually kind of satisfied with the land I made in Asia (with the exception of the Russian, Mongol and Kazakhstani areas).

No, it’s strictly the people and the governments of Asia I loathe. Why you ask? Because they don’t Worship Me! I mean, for f--ks-sake! I’m only the Flawless Creator of the Entire Universe, but do they care? No!

This was posted May 14, right after the cyclone death toll in Burma had passed 30,000 and at least 10,000 Chinese had died in a massive earthquake. Heaven help us if a book publisher wants to ink this too.

Saban accused of trying to bribe superdelegates

Haim Saban, a major financial supporter of Hillary Clinton, allegedly attempted to buy two superdelegates with a million-dollar gift to Young Democrats of America. Saban denied it, but the Huffington Post has some damaging information from four independent, and, of course, anonymous, sources:

Members of the Young Democrats agonized about the potential fallout of Saban's call; his financial offer represented one-third of the group's 2008 budget. Democratic officials and fundraisers were consulted about how to respond, and at times the discussions were "emotional," one participant said. "It is scary for them, Haim is very powerful, he has great influence over donors who give to them."

Another source said that Hardt and others were acutely aware of Saban's status within Democratic circles and were concerned that their organization would suffer long-term harm if they declined his offer or if news of the proposal became public.

"I said I thought that the appropriate response was to call Haim back and say thank you but we are not interested," said the source. "I also said that it was surely the case that this story would get out because it is too interesting not to and they should think about how to deal with it. It was a day or two [before they responded]. They felt afraid. They were like, 'Holy sh--, this is Haim Saban.'"

Clinton's Israeli-American supporters living in Los Angeles sure have been causing a stir.

U.S. prez says Islam 'fanatic and fraudulent'

Not that president. But give me a second to mention this week's paper first.

I like The Jewish Journal's cover for Israel@60 because it shows some of the diversity of Israeli society. Inside is the thickest issue we've published since at least High Holy Days, and quite a few notable bylines -- Avraham Burg, Yossi Klein Halevi and, my favorite, Tom Tugend.

There also is an article titled, "Israeli Heart, Jewish Soul," written by Michael Oren,, author of the bestseller "Six Days of War." Oren's most recent book is "Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to Present," and I've been working through it for the past month and marked up countless pages to blog about. Here's one nugget, surprising for what it reveals about Americans' early view of Muslims, and for who's saying it.

John Quincy Adams ... believed that Islam was a "fanatic and fraudulent" religion, one that was founded on "the natural hatred of Mussulmen towards the infidel" and the subjugation of others by the sword."

Actually, those words don't sound so unfamiliar. Americans may no longer use the term "Mussulmen," but too many still look cockeyed at all Muslims.

Honorary wandering Jew: Barack Obama?

In Jewcy post titled, "How Jewy Should We Want Our Presidents To Be?" Daniel Koffler doesn't really answer that question but does argue that Barack Obama, who has had a "Jewish problem," may, metaphorically, be the biggest Jew yet:

Obama in particular embodies that common thread between my community and his by being (again from Samuels) "a self-made man, part con artist, part performer, living in an imaginary future that will make him and his audience whole."

The flip side is that, truly unlike any potential president since the early days of the Republic (except Lincoln, maybe), he is a person of the book, and of books, and of philosophy and literature. If he does get to be president, his memoirs will be vastly more penetrating in their insights than anything a president has produced since Ulysses Grant more than a century ago, and radically unlike any president's literary output since presidents stopped writing for themselves sometime last century. That literariness is balanced by an Ivory Tower-trained analytic intelligence --- as the Clinton campaign found out to their chagrin, he was in fact a fairly skillful and accomplished legal academic.

All of which means that if elected, Obama will be the first president in ages (if not ever) to suffer from what Joyce called the agenbite of inwit (from ME, meaning "remorse of conscience"), the near-universal soul-sickness of introspective literary and intellectual types in the modern age, grasping for and unable to find concrete, stable concepts of identity and historical progression by which to gain a foothold on their world.

The condition is a two-edged sword for scores of reasons. For example, on the positive side of the ledger, it can provide fuel for empathy, for a creativity in problem-solving, and for just enough misanthropy to motivate the enlightened governance that rejects crude, short-sighted populism (his stand against the gas tax pander, his connections to and education from people like Austan Goolsbee and Lawrence Lessig are the encouraging data points here). And on the negative side, consider that Woodrow Wilson was the closest precedent in this regard, and one of the worst presidents we've ever had, and Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon are next closest. Intellectuality, especially when self-aware, can be a straitjacket and an amplifier for mistakes.

But more to the point here, the agenbite is, if not a Jewish condition, then more pervasive among Jews than any other group, by a wide margin. (It was no accident that Buck Mulligan described Stephen Dedalus as "a jesting jew jesuit," nor was it coincidental that the greatest song ever written about the suffering and dispossession of American southerners in the Civil War was written by a half-Jew half-Mohawk from rural Ontario.) Virtually every significant feature of Obama's biography --- from his name, to his twice-over paternal abandonment, to the clash of skin colors with all his relatives, to his drug years, to his Ivy League education, to his admission to modern day Talmud study in a law faculty --- scream of the agenbite, and through it, to a connection with the experience of overwhelming numbers of post-Haskalah Jews (which may or may not come to the same thing as the Jewish experience).

Times blogger: MacDonald 'blends creepiness, crackpottery and a surprising forthrightness'

Tim Cavanaugh, the administrator of the Times' Opinion L.A. blog who I mentioned in my profile of Luke Ford, complimented the tone of my article about Kevin MacDonald ("perfectly dry") and from it made a familiar observation of Cal State Long Beach's infamous academic:

MacDonald himself, who blends creepiness, crackpottery and a surprising forthrightness into a weird form of amiability that I can sort of respect. I hate to use such a hoary cliché, but he's a quintessentially American type of oddball, the kind you don't want to listen to because he occasionally makes you say "Hm, he's got a point."

In case you don't recall, MacDonald's point is that Jews are too smart and far too well organized for his people's good.

I agree with Cavanaugh to a point; as I wrote in the article, MacDonald's "affable" and "seems every bit a slice of Midwest Americana." And some of his arguments are uncontroversial

Yes, Jews have been encouraged to marry within the faith, to promote their own culture and to support Jewish causes and charities. There's probably some value in his theory that Judaism serves a "group evolutionary" purpose.

But the Nazis were a mirror image of Jewry that punished the Other for their success in science and the arts and business? And the Talmud was not for religious purposes but instead to weed out the dim witted? Hmm ... I don't think he has a point.

Martin Fiebert -- a fellow psych professor at The Beach who warned MacDonald in 1993 that his first book may find a "treasured place in the bookcases of neo-Nazis along with 'Mein Kampf' and the 'Protocols of Zion'" -- told me that he at first found MacDonald's writings on Jews to be an "intellectual excercise." He disagreed with MacDonald's argument but not so much with his desire to make it.

That changed for Fiebert when MacDonald decided to serve as an expert witness for Holocaust denier David Irving in a lawsuit against Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt.

Waiting for doomsday

From a short blog post Jeffrey Goldberg wrote about reaction to his op-ed in the Sunday Times,

For Israel's sake, it seems important to acknowledge, and then fix, its mistakes. Or we can just hunker down and wait for doomsday.

Anti-Zionist Philip Weiss, who considers Goldberg the most powerful Jewish American journalist, has been all over the op-ed as "a sign of hope for the Jewish community, a sign of hope that the monolithic orthodoxy is splintering."

Monday morning editor

In a letter to the editor this week, Paula Van Gelder, like Shoded Yam, argued that The Jewish Journal was the wrong place to report on the "ridiculous ramblings" of Kevin MacDonald. She went on to make a strange comparison that, if it were appreciated, would mean few articles about the environment should ever be written again.

This editorial decision makes about as much sense as The Journal's recent publication of a thick "green" issue, thereby destroying even more trees than usual in order to decry the destruction of our environment.

U.S. sniper used Quran for target practice

The U.S. military reported today that they canned an American sniper after he used the Quran for target practice.

Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Quran with graffiti inside the cover on a firing range near a police station in Radwaniyah, a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Col. Bill Buckner said.

I hope there is more veracity to this report than when Newsweek reported a soldier at Gitmo had flushed the Quran down the toilet. Not that I advocate desecrating sacred materials, but that toilet story turned out to be potty talk, and a handful of people died from the Muslim rioting that resulted and America's rep sunk a little lower.

Sectarian bloodshed in a familiar place: Lebanon

One of the most powerful, raw, emotional photos I've seen in a long time. This shooting, but one bout of recent warfare between Sunnis and Shiites, occurred during a funeral procession last week. The story is here.

Katherine's story: more on the Problem of Pain and how faith has buoyed a family and thousands of friends

I thought about mentioning a personal story Monday when I talked about the Problem of Pain, It was a recent event, with ongoing recovery, that has both shaken my wife and I emotionally and encouraged us spiritually.

Last month, one of the leaders of the Young Marrieds group at Bel Air Presbyterian that we've been involved with suffered a brain hemorrhage. Katherine Wolf is my age, and my wife had just seen her two days before at a baby shower. Beautiful mother of an adorable six-month-old son, husband weeks away from finishing law school -- prime of her life in every cliché sense. So young, and yet there she was at death's door.

The emails for prayer went out immediately: "Important -- prayers needed immediately" was the first subject line I saw. And after an unbelievable 13-hour surgery that doctors at UCLA weren't optimistic about her chances to come out of, Katherine was stable. Very sick, but stable:

My beautiful girl was fairly unrecognizable until she opened her eyes and a shot of that unique aqua blue flashed out. She had a huge ventilator tube twisting her swollen, torn lips to one side and a feeding tube distorting her nose. Since we’ve switched to a tracheotomy and feeding tube in the stomach, she looks more like Katherine, although her face and neck are still swollen. Her head has been shaved in patches. It looks like an unlovely patchwork quilt. There is a square on the right front part of her head with several angry-looking holes, one of which has a tube coming out of it. There is a large shaved area across the back, where the main vertical incision was. But she still wears the matted ponytail of what’s left on top, darkened by crusty dried blood. Clear tape covers much of the whole mess. There are ‘boo-boos’ all over her body from one ghastly life-saving procedure after another. Tiny machines are attached to tubes entering her arms, hands, abdomen, thighs...which are hooked up to big scary-looking machines crowded around the bed.

Her mom went on in this April 29 account; you can read it here.

Katherine continues to make progress, chronicled at this blog and on this Facebook page, which are followed closely by her friends, who pretty much haven't left the lobby of the UCLA Medical Center since April 21. (My wife and I slept there one night last week.) There is no sugarcoating, only the portrayal of profound faith and an awareness of the steep hill Katherine will climb before she leaves the hospital.

Katherine had a steady day yesterday. Our medical friends continue the attempt to open her natural brain drains by increasing the cranial pressure. The process slows Katherine’s responsiveness but is showing some results. However, her friend, Whitney, brought a “People” magazine and it received 2 “thumbs up” from Katherine! The medical team is fabulous and they are offering superlative care.

Katherine’s heart rate was high and she spiked a fever so they are backing off a bit on her breathing and physical therapy efforts. This is a huge battle. God encouraged Joshua as His people moved to new territory, “Be stong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:)

Katherine's husband, Jay -- I previously admired him for sporting a beard -- has shown a spiritual maturity that has left me in awe. In his shoes, I fear I'd be very angry with God. Healthy angry, hopefully. But angry nonetheless. Jay, however, has been a warrior with immeasurable wisdom.

To me, the most amazing story here has been the outpouring of love and support from Katherine and Jay's friends, particularly those at Bel Air Pres, which became their home after they relocated here from the South. "This is the body of Christ," a pastor said at a special service the Sunday after the next step in Katherine's life began, referring to the way the community had rallied, the way people had forgone work and sleep to comfort and counsel. Katherine's friends also started a little movement to memorize Romans 8, a portion of Paul's letter that reminds us we are "more than conquerers through him who loved us."

At the prayer service, Katherine's mom, Kim Arnold, joked that her daughter had always wanted to be famous; her story now has been told on news programs in Jay's native Montgomery, Ala., where his father is a Baptist pastor, and last night on Fox 11 in L.A. Here is the link to the Fox report and the transcription of a bit that discusses how faith has buoyed the Wolfs, Arnolds and their church family:

Fox: Prayer is what this family knows and does best.

Jay: God has given us everything, in saving her life and in healing her in miraculous ways everyday.

Fox: Still in intensive care, Katherine is showing signs of recovery -- the answers, say the Wolfs, to their prayers.

Pastor Wolf: I believe I am sitting on the frontrow of a miracle, and God is showing up and showing off.

NY Jews protest attack on teen

New York Chasids responded with a lot more anger and outrage to the assault and robbery of a Jewish teen early Friday morning than Jews in Pico-Roberston did this time last year, when a spate of Shabbat muggings had the community on edge, or the attack last fall on the prominent rabbi of Young Israel of Century City. The difference seems to be that the L.A. attacks were crimes of opportunities while NY authorities are looking into Friday's incident as a possible hate crime.

Evangelical leaders: global warming 'uncertain'

Oy vey. It's statements like these that convince atheists good evangelicals have no brains:

WASHINGTON – While it may seem like everyone believes in global warming and the impending catastrophe it will bring, a group of conservative Christians countered that message Thursday by launching a national campaign to gather one million signatures for a statement that says Christians must not believe in all the hype about global warming.

The “We Get It!” declaration, which currently has nearly 100 signers, is backed by prominent Christians including Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, award-winning radio host Janet Parshall, and U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

What supporters of the statement seek is to inform Christians about the biblical perspective on the environment and the poor, and to encourage them to look at the hard evidence, which they say does not support the devastating degree of climate change claimed by mainstream society.

“How can you create policies on uncertain science?” asked Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

“How can you say what it is that needs to be done when you don’t really know and you don’t really have real consensus on the state of the problem or what is causing the problem?”

I've never understood who the Tony Perkinses and James Dobsonses of the world speak for. It's certainly not me or a lot of other evangelicals like the NAE's Richard Cizik. Maybe the pope.

Sitting down with NY's most influential Muslim

Reuters religion editor and FaithWorld administrator, Tom Heneghan, recently interviewed Mohammad Shamsi Ali, New York's "most influential Islamic leader" and the Muslim emissary to local police and the mayor's. Here's what Ali had to say about being Muslim in America and dealing with radical Islamists:

“We feel at home here. To be honest with you, those people who are really sincere with their religion and understand the religion properly, they see many things Islamic in America, more Islamic than in many Muslim countries. First of all, freedom and Islam are like fish and water. Islam cannot live without freedom … Here in America we have freedom. You can express yourself freely. It is guaranteed by the Constitution. Then you have justice for all, equality. We have to say there are some interruptions because of the security. But it doesn’t at all change the real nature of America. For those Muslims who understand the teaching, this will make them feel that America really belongs to them and they belong to America.”

(skip)

“Some Muslims like the Islamic Thinkers Society are against Jews and against non-Muslims. I consider them ignorant and in need of an education. I feel a deep responsibility to bring them back to the right track. It makes me worry when I see what Imam Shamsi Ali, 23 April 2008/Tom Heneghanhappened in Britain, in London with Hizb ut Tahrir and Al Muhajiroun. They are very much fundamentalist radicals. I don’t think these will give any benefit to our community, nothing at all. Among the Jewish community there are also fairly radical people. It is the responsibility of us in the middle to strengthen our unity and come together and try to find solutions to problems that surround our communities. I say to non-Muslims: let us do the job but have confidence in us … In a meeting with the NYPD, I told them we acknowledge the presence of radicals in the Muslim community — but it doesn’t mean we support them. In fact, the radicals are marginalised in many ways right now … So I don’t feel we need aggressiveness. I feel we need to reach out … We need confidence in us (from non-Muslims) and we need support. Don’t put suspicions over us. We are not confident enough to do the job. All good Muslims must have good intentions for America because this is the country where we live and we consider this our own country. The opposite is true too — if you’re not good Muslims, you’re not good Americans.”

Hagee: Hitler God's chosen to get Jews to Palestine

The Revealer unearthed a scary recording from the Rev. John Hagee.

in which Hagee elaborates on his view that Hitler and the Nazis were divine agents, sent by God to (with gruesome inefficiency it would seem) chase Europe's Jews towards Palestine. In his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown", Hagee proposed that anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves - the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive. In the sermon Hagee also clarifies a point, on his theological views, that has long concerned me...[Note: excerpt from John Hagee sermon, given probably in the late 1990's - with its themes plied into the John Hagee books "Battle For Jerusalem" (2001, reprinted 2003) and "Jerusalem Countdown" (2006), begins 1:00 minute into the video]

Einstein's 'childish' letter sells for $400k

Albert Einstein's letter dismissing the Bible as "a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish" fetched a real adult price at auction. The collector signing the $400,000 check was not identified.

I cross-posted my earlier mention of this letter at Christianity Today' Liveblog. The comments turned into an interesting back and forth between evangelicals and atheists. Such as:

I dare say I could find many religious "zealots" who have a far higher intellectual capacity than yourselves and who certainly do not have primitive minds. You betray great intellectual insecurity yourselves by resorting to name-calling rather than actual debate.

Open thread on Palestinian awareness week

I returned to UC Irvine today for the final day of Palestinian awareness week. Amir Abdel Malik Ali, who, days after the terror attack on a Jerusalem yeshiva, stood in front of the Israeli consulate in L.A. and called Zionists the new Nazis, delivered a lunchtime tirade about America the imperialist, in bed with the Zionists, and the quick death that would soon befall one and then the other. I agree Rome is burning and worry about what that would mean for Israel, but I try not to undercut my argument by praising Hamas and Hezbollah as freedom fighters.

The scene at UC Irvine, however, was a lot tamer than in years past, and I'll be writing more about that later. For now, I just wanted to share one of the photos I snapped, this of a torn and bloodied Israeli flag.

The comment board is open.

The dangerous world of religion reporting

I've been there, attacked by fellow Christians for critical articles I've written about them.

Religion reporting has proven not only challenging but humorous for a Christian named Greenberg. Christians blame negative stories on my Jewish byline; Jews offer guilt-laden responses to articles that buck the corporate line (or what they wish were); and Muslims, I think, don't know what to expect.

Once considered a backwater of journalism, the God beat feels to me quite chosen, home to immensely important and interesting news. Religion, after all, is the rubric through which each person uniquely sees the world. Science, education, politics, entertainment -- it regularly serves as an undercurrent in these fields. (That was, in fact, part of my pitch at The Sun three years ago when they were looking for a reporter for the newly created position and I was eager to get out of Rialto.) The religion angle also is occasionally relevant when trying to understand peoples' beliefs in God, their perspectives on the life hereafter and that which gives every day meaning.

Think of the God beat as the Jerusalem of journalism. Seriously.

On this topic, Tim Townsend, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's excellent religion reporter, has an amazing piece in the current Columbia Journalism Review. He discusses the religious origins of the United States, the Dover monkey trial in 2005 and the challenges of sensitively reporting on other peoples' religious beliefs.

The portion I found most fascinating, however, was the ugly description of what happened when Townsend wrote an article that was considered too favorable to CAIR and got on the bad side of the Little Green Footballs blog community. Here it is (and was):

Just a few weeks ago, in late February, I got an e-mail from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. This was not unusual. Like most beat reporters, I get hundreds of press releases a day. Some I look at, some I don’t. From CAIR alone, I typically receive from one to three e-mails every day, and I had never acted on one before. But this one was different. It involved a mosque I cover in south St. Louis. The CAIR press release said that the FBI had been asked to investigate several comments on two blogs, which threatened a minaret being built outside the mosque.

I had covered the groundbreaking of the minaret—the first to be built in St. Louis. The mayor had been there to praise pluralism and throw a little dirt around for the cameras. In Muslim countries, the minaret is the tower from which the muezzin chants the call to prayer. But as I noted in the original story, this particular 107-foot minaret was symbolic, not functional.

Now I wrote a second story, which was maybe twelve column-inches long and ran the next day on the bottom of B2. It was workmanlike—it did what it had to do for our readers—and nothing more. I wrote that the author of a local blog, Gateway Pundit: Observations of the World from the Heart of Jesusland, had posted some photos of the minaret covered in scaffolding. One of the photo captions read, “Those calls to prayers ought to go over really well with the people of this South St. Louis neighborhood.”

I quoted the imam, who confirmed what I’d already written—that the minaret had no sound system or speakers and would not be used to call Muslims to prayer. I also quoted an FBI spokesman as well as a CAIR spokesman, and then detailed some of the comments that had alarmed Muslims and caused them to inform the FBI.

For example, one visitor to Gateway Pundit had written: “It is really hard on us white, nonMuslims to have to live with these folks taking over our neighborhood and community. Our government helping these people relocate into America’s heartland is like inviting the enemy into your camp. It’s totally disgusting.” On another blog, Little Green Footballs, a visitor named “Amer1can” upped the ante: “Would be a shame if it were to be vandalized or destroyed. Just a shame I tell you….wink wink STL youth.” Another visitor to the same blog added: “I suppose dynamite would be considered an extreme response.”

That was it. Twelve inches. Bottom of B2.

But of course, B2 doesn’t really exist anymore. Not on the Internet. The next morning, the e-mails started coming in at around nine. Many of them complained that I had written a story “planted” by CAIR, which was, I was told over and over again, a front for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and a fundraising arm for other Islamist terrorist organizations. But it was only after my testy e-mail exchange with Charles Johnson, the proprietor of Little Green Footballs, that the real fun began—especially after Johnson posted our correspondence on the blog.

Over the next two days, I received more than one hundred e-mails from Little Green Footballs readers. One suggested I should look into a job at Taco Bell, since I was obviously going to be fired for messing with Johnson. (Little Green Footballs fans credit Johnson with taking down Dan Rather after his 60 Minutes story on George W. Bush’s National Guard service.) Another called me “a self-righteous numskull with the literary prowess of a dodo bird. A dodo bird that dropped out of college and is on drugs.” Still another suggested that there was “no way you could possibly be any more of a dick.”

In two related threads on Johnson’s blog, which ran to nearly 1,500 comments, my photo, bio, and home address were all posted. Someone ran my name through an anagram site and listed the results (Demon Shitty Town, Howdy Mitten Snot, Hindmost Yet Wont). Another participant wrote a song, to be sung to the “Toys ‘R’ Us” theme: “I don’t want to be a St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist, because if I was. There wouldn’t be heaven after death.” And let’s not forget the haiku:

Tim shills for haters While wearing moderate robes He does not fool us

Besides being called ignorant, arrogant, balding, stupid, rude, fat (my new nickname was Burger Boy), lazy, and incompetent, I was depicted as a Satanic baby. My mother was insulted. I was accused of lying about my academic degrees, having a comb-over, being a paid agent of the Saudi government, and acquiring “numerous social diseases.” I was, apparently, a plagiarist and a terrorist. Someone did a search to see if I was a pedophile. Others stuck with more generalized invective:

Tim Townsend—you’re a smarmy little f---, aren’t you? [my editing]

Townsend really should have checked on Dan Rather’s career before he messed with Charles.

What a chickenshit little cocksucker. Another journalouse prick with a face for radio.

Finally, there were suggestions that I should be murdered. To his credit, Johnson deleted the death threats and the comments with my address. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Bush to Israel: 'Masada will not fall again'

Speaking today to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, President Bush said the bond between the United States and Israel was unbreakable and promised that "Masada will not fall again."

"Some people suggest that if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away," Bush said in his prepared address.

"This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of our enemies, and America rejects it utterly. Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you."

Masada is the desert fortress near the Dead Sea where, after the destruction of the Second Temple, 960 Jewish zealots committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans.

GodTube likes big bucks

I've never used GodTube, the evangelical equivalent of YouTube, but apparently enough people have that a London hedge fund thought the company deserved a $30 million investment. The NY Times explains:

When it was formally introduced last August, GodTube was the fastest-growing Web site, as rated by comScore, attracting 1.7 million unique visitors for the month. The traffic remains about the same today. “People thirst for more than just a once-a-week relationship with the Lord and Savior,” said Jason Illian, Big Jump Media’s chief strategy officer. “They desire something that they can live out 24/7.”

Unlike its secular cousin, YouTube, GodTube is proudly filtered: all content must gain approval from the site’s headquarters in Plano, Tex. Vulgar and overtly sexual material isn’t allowed. Neither are videos promoting other religions — for that, there are JewTube.com and IslamicTube.net. (Appropriately enough, the domain name SatanTube.com is for sale.)

Mocking Christianity is definitely not allowed. James O’Malley, a 20-year-old from Leicestershire, in Britain, posted a series of videos last year that jeered at evangelical theology. During a videotaped walking tour of the Natural History Museum in London, he referred to a plesiosaur fossil as a “liar-saur” and noted that volcanoes tended to erupt in non-Christian countries.

“The first couple of videos, where I spoke about Biblical infallibility and homosexuality, remained on GodTube and were treated like any other video,” Mr. O’Malley said. “It was only when I posted a third video suggesting that the earth was flat and that astronauts were part of the ‘round earth’ conspiracy that they finally cottoned on to the fact it was a hoax, and I was banned.”

More in line with GodTube’s spirit is “Baby Got Book,” a satire of the rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot’s ode to the full-size derrière, “Baby Got Back.” In it, Dan Smith, a 34-year-old minister at a church near Cleveland, simultaneously praises godly women and pokes fun at aspects of Christian culture. He dances around with a gold neck medallion reading KJV (for King James Version) and tweaks Sir Mix-A-Lot’s lyrics so that “butt” becomes “Bible” and “she looks like a total prostitute” turns into “looks like Mother Teresa.”

The video has logged more views on GodTube than it has on YouTube. Mr. Smith says he appreciates the exposure, though he prefers promoting his music in places where he can reach nonbelievers, like call-in radio shows. “I just know there aren’t a lot of unchurched or de-churched people going to GodTube,” he said.

I just watched "Baby Got Book" while typing this, and it was worth a few good laughs. Not $30 million, but at least $5. I'm interested to see how GodTube makes money off its popularity.

More Ruth Wisse, Jews and Power

Nextbook's second annual "festival of ideas" will be held Sunday in New York. This year's theme is "Jews and Power" and it will feature thinkers like J.J. Goldberg and Ruth Wisse. In preparation, Wisse, who recently wrote a book bearing the same name as the conference, penned a piece for The Forward that argues how the world would have changed if the Jews had remained the masters of their own universe.

Had Jews always remained a self-governing people in their land, there would have been no Crusader wars over Jerusalem, no Spanish Inquisition and no Holocaust. Karl Marx would not have concluded that “the bill of exchange is the Jew’s actual god” and Stalin would not have mounted a lethal campaign against Jewish “rootless cosmopolitans.” Host nations would not have wreaked upon Jews some of the most terrible evils in the history of humankind. The Jewish contribution to the welfare of the world would have been all the greater had the Jews managed to secure for themselves their aboriginal land.

She talks about how Jews saw their exile as punishment for poor Torah observance and the challenges of Jewish self-governance in Europe, which usually ended in expulsion, and then concludes:

Today’s Jews rightfully resent the assaults against them, wishing that they could be allowed to live in peace. New generations of Israelis dislike having to soldier; American Jewish students dislike having to defend Israel on campus. But paradoxically, Jews cannot achieve peace for themselves, never mind for the rest of the world, unless they convince their enemies they are unbeatable and home for good. Jews can only help to “repair the world” by insisting that their assailants begin to repair themselves.

College administrator fired over 'anti-gay' column

You can say a lot of things as a tenured faculty member that you could not say as a service worker or administrator -- positions that are not tenured. Case in point: Crystal Dixon was fired as the associate vp of human resources at the University of Toledo after she wrote a column criticizing comparisons between the drive for legalizing same-sex unions and the civil rights movement.

I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. I am genetically and biologically a Black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle evidenced by the growing population of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex Gays) and Exodus International just to name a few. Frequently, the individuals report that the impetus to their change of heart and lifestyle was a transformative experience with God; a realization that their choice of same-sex practices wreaked havoc in their psychological and physical lives.

Dixon has sought the help of the conservative ACLU, the Thomas More Law Center.

Creator's note: I've been trying to publish this post and another on "Jews and Power" all day. However, I have been unable due to some irregular blogging issues that should be resolved soon.

Inside the wacky world of Christian pop culture

At my high school graduation party, a friend who was not a Christian walked up and commented on the music playing over the outdoor speakers at my parents' house.

"Why is it," he asked, "that Christian bands always have the best musicians?"

I was a bit perplexed: The tunes he was hearing belonged to Midtown, a pop-punk quartet whose members, as far as I knew, were not Christian.

I also disagreed with my friend's assessment. I mean, I was a big fan of MxPx and Slick Shoes ... but the best musicians? Hardly. (For evidence, listen to"Rappin for Jesus" by Stephen Wiley.)

Until a few years ago, Christian bands occasionally would have a radio hit or two -- dc Talk and Jars of Clay had their moment, as did Sixpence None the Richer -- and then disappear back into oblivion.

Switchfoot, whose CD a friend of mine picked up in a South Dakota pawn shop during our 2001 road trip around the country (that's a different, longer story), seems to have bucked that trend. Being heard on TV promos and Star 98.7, or whatever the pop rock station is in your town, for years to follow, Switchfoot has been one of the lucky few who have broken through without significantly changing their message, though I would argue they too have watered it down and published one really bad album.

This music is part of the bigger, "parallel universe of Christian pop culture," as Daniel Radosh dubs the industry in his new book "Rapture Ready!" (Radosh's list of the top 10 Christian songs begins with Larry Norman's "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus?")

"Rapture Ready!" details the exploits of a secular New York Jew on a quest to the center of evangelical culture. Radosh visits the International Christian Retail Show, the Holy Land Experience and Stephen Baldwin World; serves as part of the mob calling for Christ's crucifixion in Arkansas' Great Passion Play; and goes backstage with Bibleman, AKA "Batman for Jesus." I'll forgive Radosh for avoiding VeggieTales night at a minor league baseball stadium and the giants who break burning stacks of bricks in Jesus' name.

Radosh intersperses Christian camp with more sober accounts of economics and theology. Chapter 4 focuses on the Bible-publishing business and originally appeared in The New Yorker, and Chapter 5, which, believe it or not, appeared in Playboy, is about pre-millenialism and the "Left Behind" phenomenon.

"In the end," Brian McLaren, author of "A New Kind of Christian," proclaims on the book jacket, "he offers evaluations and insights that might be considered downright prophetic, and compassionate too. No evangelical insider could have done as good a job as Daniel Radosh."

He's definitely more sensitive to things he finds strange than Matt Taibbi. The book has been well-reviewed by Relevant magazine and The Forward, among others. I read through a chunk of it last night and, for some reason, found the style quite similar to A.J. Jacobs' in "The Year of Living Biblically." (Jacobs, possibly not by coincidence, also wrote a review for the book jacket.)

In the intro, Radosh explains that Christian culture is no laughing matter, at least not from a business perspective: It is a $7 billion a year industry.

"At some point," Hanna Rosin wrote for Slate.com, "Radosh asks the obvious question":

Didn't Jesus chase the money changers out of the temple? In other words, isn't there something wrong with so thoroughly commercializing all aspects of faith? For this, the Christian pop-culture industry has a ready answer. Evangelizing and commercializing have much in common. In the "spiritual marketplace" (as it's called), Christianity is a brand that seeks to dominate. Like Coke, it wants to hold onto its followers and also win over new converts. As with advertisers, the most important audience is young people and teenagers, who are generally brand loyalists. Hence, Bibleman and Christian rock are the spiritual equivalent of New Coke. Christian trinkets—a WWJD bracelet, a "God is my DJ" T-shirt—function more like Coca-Cola T-shirts or those cute stuffed polar bears. They telegraph to the community that the wearer is a proud Christian and that this is a cool thing to be—which should, in theory, invite eager curiosity.

This is significant because, according to research by The Barna Group, 61 percent of twentysomethings were "spiritually active" teens but have since lost their religion. Christians leaders see culture as the new channel through which to reach the lost and distracted. Radosh writes:

A less reliable statistic -- but one that has galvanized pastors who believe it reflects what they see in the pews -- is that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of today's Christian teens will be "Bible-believing Christians" as adults.

"Less reliable" is far too generous. That factoid is pure fiction. But, nonetheless, Christian culture can increase the fervency of the faithful, something I saw countless times as a teen at P.O.D. and Dogwood concerts (the latter for which I actually skipped my senior prom). They may not be the best musicians, but their message often carries more weight than typical Christian influencers.

As Radosh relays in the first few words of the book when describing a concert on a rural Kansas airfield:

A lanky teenager made his way out of the crow and ran to where his friends were waiting on the periphery, sweat smearing his thick black eyeliner. "Awesome performance." He grinned broadly. "They prayed like three times in a twenty-minute set."

Does all God's creation include aliens?

This news from the Vatican's chief astronomer probably caught the pope's attention, and that is one boss I would not want to irritate.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures.

The interview was headlined “The extraterrestrial is my brother.” Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like “putting limits” on God’s creative freedom.

I've written before about whether God could have created aliens and, if so, what it would mean to a handful of religions. Raelians would be stoked and I imagine Scientologists would say they knew it all along.

As a Christian, I have no problem with this, though I struggle to understand whether these other beings could also be saved by a messiah -- little "m" because it couldn't possibly by the same Messiah. Could it?

'Zionist bigots like you, Mr. Greenberg'

Most of the e-mail I have received about my profile of Kevin MacDonald, the Cal State Long Beach professor whose books on Jews have been compared to 'Mein Kampf," has been tame and complimentary, most of all from MacDonald, who wrote me Thursday night:

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. I was really worried about a hatchet job and this definitely was not that. There were a few things that I would rephrase or provide a somewhat different context, but I suppose that's what all interviewees say.

His chief adversary, Jeff Blutinger, told me the response has been "overwhelmingly positive."

Thanks for making his gobbledy gook intelligible through your use of clear language.

But Anti-Zionist Wayne, similar to this "analysis" by John de Nugent, shared a different perspective in an e-mail I just received. He begins by thanking me for notifying him about MacDonald, whose books he now intends to buy. Wayne then lambastes me for my alleged desire to curb freedom of speech (nowhere in the article did I suggest this) and informs me that "this IS AMERICA . . . IT'S NOT FACIST ISRAEL (a nation OF Jews, BY Jews, FOR Jews) !"

He concludes with this thoughtful observation:

The truth is that the greatest danger that rascist Jews (i.e, Zionists) fear is NOT the anti-semitic terrorism from non-Jews, but the assimilation ("self-destruction") of the Diaspora Jews into "other" (impure) multi-ethnic cultures, LIKE IN MELTING POT AMERICA!!!!

The Aryan Neo-Nazis fear and hate MELTING POT America!
The WASPs (David Dukes) fear and hate MELTING POT America!
The Louis Farahkan Blacks fear and hate MELTING POT America!
The Zionist Jews fear and hate MELTING POT America!

I believe that ALL ethnic groups are possessed with RACIST factions that want to preserve their pedigree clan! If we must NEVER FORGET the evils and horrors of bigotry and racism, then we have to learn the attributes (psychological markers) of these bigoted factions, no matter what ethnic group they belong to!!

Louis Farrakhan can NOT use the horrors of the history of SLAVERY as an excuse, or justification, for tolerating Black bigotry! Neither can Zionist Jews be permitted to use the HOLOCAUST as an excuse or justification for tolerating Zionist (Israeli) bigotry!!

I suspect that that's the message Professor Kevin MacDonald wants to teach his students!

But I'm quite sure that he'll learn that you CAN NOT criticize the Jewish Community, by documenting its flaws, without facing professional assassination by Zionist bigots . . .umm, like you Mr Greenberg!!!

Coincidentally, this rant was sent to thecreator@thegodblog.org, the account I use for this blog, on which it is very apparent that I'm a practicing Christian who believes in Zionism, though not without criticism, and has a Jewish last name.

An old colleague of mine had a hilarious template letter for replying to such e-mails. It began "Dear Sir and/or Madam," thanked the author for "using fairly grammatically correct language and removing most of the typos" and offered to do better in the future "so you'll be able to spend your days contributing productively to society, rather than devoting time and effort to reminding me of what a miserable excuse for a person I am." Other parts of the letter, which was never sent out but was always good for a laugh, are not repeatable here.

But back to Wayne's e-mail: Notice the difference his insights into my flaws and those shared with me after I wrote an article about Islamopobia for the LA Daily News last year. (Hint: that guy told me I was a sucker for Islamofascists and said, "While you're waiting in line with your prayer rug on the way to the ovens, I'll continue to shine a light on the hate speech that Imams are spewing in Mosque's.")

American Jews and Israelis: brothers from different mothers

Kvetching in PresenTense about being a "single, twenty-something Jewish coquette" expected to marry a nice Jewish boy, my friend Rachel Axelbank explains why she finds herself much more attracted to Israelis. As a point of reference, she mentions the guards who issued our security clearance before we met last summer with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert -- they apparently shot her glances that I, fortunately, didn't receive -- and quotes Jon Stewart on the differences between our Jews and theirs:

“You have American Jews, who are the ‘let me help you with your tax return’ Jews,” he said. “And you have Israeli Jews, who are the ‘hold my machine gun while I take a leak’ Jews.”

Anyone want to argue with that wisdom?

Rev. Hagee apologizes to Catholic League

Yawn.

'God' speaks about wanting a new name

When I wrote last week about Steve Kreuscher, the man from Zion who wants to legally change his name to "In God We Trust," I cross-posted the article at the CT Liveblog. I was just checking comments there, and I saw that awaiting approval was one from Kreuscher.

The following is the whole reasoning behind me wanting to change my name to "In God We Trust; So that You know the whole truth about why I am doing it and see that I am more down to earth, then you probably thought at first.

"I have been a very creative artist since 1967. I have been searching for a new powerful and meaningful signature for my artwork, for the last 10 years. I was looking for a signature, which would best express my charactor of "Trust In God", my life of "Trust In God" and most of my artworks, which faithfully express my "Trust In God" also.

"Being born and raised in Zion Illinois, the city which the world renown faith healer, Dr. John Alexander Dowie, founded in 1900, I had a stong "Trust In God" since childhood. But then at 23 years old, I had a very dramatic spiritual experience and full whole hearted conversion to Christ, in October 1973, which is also the title of one of my very important works; "October 1973, My Conversion". Most of my artworks since my conversion, are very deeply religious. Being very religious, those artworks faithfully express my "Trust In God". Also many of those artworks express powerful stories about many tribulations that I went through in my life and how God used those trials to develope and increase that "Trust In Him" to where it is today.

"Therefore, changing my name to "In God We Trust" is my newest creative artwork; painted not with paint, but instead with those beautiful, powerful and meaningful words, on the canvas of my life. Those words "In God We Trust" most truely and most faithfully express me and who I am, in a beautiful creative word painting, a million times better, than the name Steve Kreuscher does.

"Those beautiful words are now the person, who God has made me into, by "the free riches of His power and His grace, In Christ Jesus" , my Lord and Savior

"And finally, by taking those precious words as my new name, I am joining those beautiful words, which are so dear to me, in a permanent way, to myself, preserving them for myself as part of me for ever."

Needless to say, My four children, my five grandchildren and myself need all the prayers and support that you can give us, for God's Divine protection, wisdom, strength and any thing else that God knows we will need through this all, and especially on Friday the 13th of June. I would love to see June 13th to be made into the offical "In God We Trust" day here in America. And last of all, my hopes and prayers are that Christians, all over America and all over the world, on that day figure out some creative, loving, peaceful way to take there own little personal stand for "In God We Trust" on that day.

All my love "In Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior"; Steve Kreuscher ( In God We Trust )

Kreuscher had me for a minute. Sort of. And then he mentioned Friday the 13th.

Obama's Jewish campaign

The New York Times this morning recycles a lot of news you've seen here in the past few weeks. The story is about Barack Obama's push to attract Jewish voters and alleviate their fears; it mentions his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and his congratulations to Israel on turning 60.

Nothing new, except for a reference to an op-ed Obama wrote for the Sunday edition of Israel's largest paper, Yedioth Ahronoth. I, however, can find no trace of this online.

Einstein found the Bible 'primitive, childish'

As a teen, I was told several times by fellow Christians that Charles Darwin recanted his theory of evolution on his deathbed. This 125-year-old legendwas believable because it played into the idea that no matter how wicked a life someone had led -- and we believed Darwin to be a vile man -- God would welcome them back, even in their final moments.

For Albert Einstein, who I will admit is one of my heroes, nearing the end did not make him a more religious man. His vague language on God had long been interpreted by the faithful that Einstein was a fellow believer. But, in a letter being auctioned in England, Einstein was quite critical of religion and the Jewish people, of which he was a proud member. From The Guardian:

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel's second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God's favoured people.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Avoiding Einstein's frank review of his people, I disagree with his interpretation of the Bible. Yes, Jesus spoke highly of a childlike faith, but does that mean the Bible's stories are "primitive" and "childish?"

Hardly. Even if you don't believe its accounts of Jewish history, the Gospels and the epistles, the complete book, covering 4,000 years from the Beginning to the End, is the greatest literary work ever.

It's more enjoyable, though, if you believe it.

The new Muslim smear for Obama

I made a mistake Monday morning. I should have read that Edward Luttwak op-ed on Barack Obama the Muslim apostate that I linked to here but didn't discuss. As the day dragged on, my Google Reader filled up with a few RSS feeds attacking the bankruptcy of Luttwak's argument that Obama, as an apostate who purportedly was born a Muslim and converted out to Christianity, could not be tolerated by other Muslims and might even be killed for it.

Here is what Luttwak wrote:

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

Obama, in fact, is not the son of a Muslim father. This belief comes from that rumor that he's a closet Muslim. Secondly, Luttwak's argument is not original, having first been made last summer in FrontPage magazine, courtesy of the man leading a battle against peaceful Islam, Daniel Pipes.

"This is an example of editorial lunacy," Richard Silverstein responded to Luttwak's column. "Why would you take a trashy rumor published in a David Horowitz shmate and transfer it to the N.Y. Times? I feel dirty just reading it there."

At Huffington Post, Ali Eteraz breaks down the fallacies inherent in Luttwak's piece, beginning "with his facile understanding of Sharia."

Luttwack and the other fake experts promoting this new smear do not understand Islam. Religion is not hereditary as it is in Judaism. Islam is not a race. Just because a child has a Muslim father -- which, again, Obama didn't -- doesn't mean anything unless the child is being raised as a Muslim. At the time of birth, Muslims engage in a symbolic act -- of saying the Call to Prayer in the child's ear -- that renders a child Muslim. If Obama's father was agnostic/atheist, then he wouldn't have done such a thing.

No call to prayer in the ear, not raised as a Muslim, born to an atheist father, and then abandoned to a Christian mother both by father and his family, equals not Muslim. Obama is right to say he had no religion until he became a Christian.

Also in the Obama files, Republicans politicians and the Republican Jewish Coalition respond to the Illinois senator's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, in which they spoke at length about Israel. Here's a compilation.

The pink gorilla and me

It's difficult to explain to a big pink gorilla why as a journalist you don't want to mug for the camera, so I indulged Zack Sher last week at UC Irvine. He and his fellow Anteaters for Israel were celebrating the Jewish State's 60th anniversary with iFest, a week long festival that preceded and partially overlapped Palestinian awareness week, for which I'll be heading down south again this week.

The lost members of the tribe in Cuba

I think there are less Jews in Cuba than at Langer's at any given time, but this small community (it's actually numbers about 1,500) has spent the past decade on the rebound. Here's what led to the decline in numbers so small that the synagogue, which still has no rabbi, couldn't form a minyan, courtesy of Cox News Service:

when Castro's government adopted communist ideals and began confiscating private businesses and properties, most Jews fled, many to the U.S.

"But they didn't leave because of anti-Semitism," [Adela] Dworin said. "In Cuba the behavior of the people toward the Jews was always very nice. There was never any persecution. I decided to stay because I always felt like a Cuban, proud of being born here, very Cuban and very Jewish."

The long years that followed were difficult, but Dworin remained optimistic. When Castro met with religious leaders in the 1990s and reversed the state's discouragement of organized religion, Dworin and others, including Dr. Jose Miller, began seeking out Cubans with Jewish roots.

Most of the island's Jews by then had married outside the faith, stopped attending services and lost touch with Jewish traditions. With the help of American and international Jewish support groups, the small number of faithful in Cuba began rebuilding their membership and refurbishing their facilities.

"I cried a lot when we re-opened the big sanctuary in 2000," Dworin said, noting that the extensive remodeling job was supported by American Jewish groups. "For so long we used the small chapel, but we grew so much we no longer had enough room for services there."

The Forward originally did this article last September, which is where Cox seemingly found Dworin. Here too is a Web site dedicated to Cuba's Jews.

Pope urges Israel to help Christians in Mideast

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday asked Israel to ease travel restrictions for Mideast Christians, who in Gaza and the West Bank and places like Lebanon have been under attack.

Benedict has made concern over the future of Middle East Christians a
priority. Economic problems as well as violence in the Holy Land and Iraq have led Christians to emigrate from the region.

"I pray that, in consequence of the growing friendship between Israel and the Holy See, ways will be found of reassuring the Christian community that they
have a secure future in the region," Benedict said.

He said problems facing Christians are related to Israel-Palestinian tensions.

The Holy See recognizes Israel's legitimate need for security and self-defense and strongly condemns all forms of anti-Semitism, the pope said.

At the same time, he urged Israel to alleviate travel restrictions causing hardships for Palestinians.

The ambassador, in his remarks released by the Vatican, said Israel would do its utmost to help strengthen the Christian communities in Israel as their essential presence in the Holy Land is deeply rooted and historically self-understood.

This is a bit of a different tone from the Holy See than when the Vatican's former ambassador to Israel said, "relations between the Catholic Church and the state of Israel were better when there were no diplomatic relations."

Muslim creationist gets three years prison time

Harun Yahya is the best-known creationist in the Muslim world. Author of the 12-pound, 800-page anti-evolution tome, "Atlas of Creation," Yahya, AKA Adnan Oktar, has also been dogged by legal problems, which culminated Friday in a three-year prison sentence in Turkey "for creating an illegal organization for personal gain."

Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999.

In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case.

Oktar planned to appeal the sentence, a BAV spokeswoman said. No further details were immediately available.

(Hat tip: Science and Religion News)

Obama on 'the kishke question'

Jeffrey Goldberg, who made an appearance here last week, spent part of his weekend asking Barack Obama about being endorsed by Hamas (he didn't care for it), Jimmy Carter's portrait of Israel as an apartheid state ("I strongly reject that characterization"), whether Israel hurts the U.S. image abroad ("no, no, no") and the lingering feeling among many Jews that he can't be trusted.

Here is Obama's response to "the kishke question":

I think the idea of Israel and the reality of Israel is one that I find important to me personally. Because it speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus, it describes the history of overcoming great odds and a courage and a commitment to carving out a democracy and prosperity in the midst of hardscrabble land. One of the things I loved about Israel when I went there is that the land itself is a metaphor for rebirth, for what’s been accomplished. What I also love about Israel is the fact that people argue about these issues, and that they’re asking themselves moral questions.

Sometimes I’m attacked in the press for maybe being too deliberative. My staff teases me sometimes about anguishing over moral questions. I think I learned that partly from Jewish thought, that your actions have consequences and that they matter and that we have moral imperatives. The point is, if you look at my writings and my history, my commitment to Israel and the Jewish people is more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency. When it comes to the gut issue, I have such ardent defenders among my Jewish friends in Chicago. I don’t think people have noticed how fiercely they defend me, and how central they are to my success, because they’ve interacted with me long enough to know that I've got it in my gut. During the Wright episode, they didn’t flinch for a minute, because they know me and trust me, and they’ve seen me operate in difficult political situations.

The other irony in this whole process is that in my early political life in Chicago, one of the raps against me in the black community is that I was too close to the Jews. When I ran against Bobby Rush [for Congress], the perception was that I was Hyde Park, I’m University of Chicago, I’ve got all these Jewish friends. When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I’ve been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends, so when I find on the national level my commitment being questioned, it’s curious.

In other Obama news (analysis), the Crunchy Con discusses the passages he found most interesting from the New York Times' lengthy profile of Obama's rise and on the op-ed page, Edward N. Luttwak argues that Obama is not going to be the miraculous American emissary to the Muslim world that some hope.

A world of hurt

If God is good, why does He let bad things occur? I know we try to answer that question, but some days it just seems so difficult. Today is one of those days.

I opened my computer this morning and the first headline I saw screamed, "Thousands Feared Dead in China Quake." At first I thought the copy editors had made a mistake. That disaster was in Myanmar, and, frankly, it was sort of old news by now.

But then I realized Myanmar had been slammed by a massive cyclone, not earthquake, and when I scanned down the New York Times home page I saw that the death toll there had been raised to 32,000.

And, oh yeah, at least 22 people were killed yesterday by tornadoes in Georgia, Missouri and Oklahoma.

So as we begin a new week, religious leaders around the world will no doubt be asked for a rhyme and a reason for the suffering they are seeing. No answer will likely satisfy, as this guy stated a few years ago.

"If there was a God, how come he let all that happen?" Tom Cotton, 51, of Pinion Hills asked while finishing a burger at a Carl's Jr. in San Bernardino.

"If it's his plan," Cotton said, scanning the restaurant as if he was going to curse, "he's sure got a messed-up plan."

God only knows what that plan might be.

"If God is wiser than we, His judgment must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil,' C.S. Lewis, the Christian philosopher and children's author, wrote in "The Problem of Pain.' "What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His Eyes, and what seems to us to be evil may not be evil."

Gary Stern, who recently wrote "Can God Intervene? -- How Religion Explains Natural Disasters," writes at Blogging Religiously:

There are no easy answers. Each religious tradition has its own way of looking at these things. And it’s complicated.

Yes, Buddhists in Myanmar and China will blame karma. Protestants in Missouri may blame Original Sin. Many people around the world, from many faith traditions, will wonder who is being punished for what.

But on a day like today, when children are buried and thousands of people (bodies?) are missing, what explanation can possibly be satisfying?

As one Catholic priest who advises the U.S. Bishops Conference, Father Thomas Weinandy, told me for my book:

What gets preached from the pulpit and by the bishops is “Let’s support these people, take up a collection and do what we can to help them get back on their feet,”—rather than addressing the theological issues that may be raised. Part of the problem is that there is no simply answer. You can’t get up on a pulpit and say this is why this happened, other than to say that God has his purposes and ways and hopefully it will all become clear in heaven. What is there to say other than that we have to know that God loves us, that we have to trust in him, that he’s on our side in the end? Other than that, what can you say?

As much as I believe I serve a loving and just God, I'm not sure I will ever understand why natural disasters that leave tens of thousands in mourning come with the gift of life.

Benny Morris slams Finkelstein as a 'notorious distorter of facts'

After reading Norman Finkelstein's claim that journalist Jeffrey Goldberg tortured Palestinians while serving in the Israeli military two decades ago, Gilead Ini from the pro-Israel media watchdog CAMERA sent me this story.

In it, Ini had referred to a speech in which Finkelstein's misused Benny Morris, the dean of Israel's New Historians, to validate Jimmy Carter's apartheid comparison. (Morris was, in fact, referred to several times Wednesday at UC Irvine.) Here was Morris' reply to CAMERA, which sounds familiar:

Norman Finkelstein is a notorious distorter of facts and of my work, not a serious or honest historian.

Israel is not an apartheid state — rather the opposite, it is easily the most democratic and politically egalitarian state in the Middle East, in which Arabs Israelis enjoy far more freedom, better social services, etc. than in all the Arab states surrounding it. Indeed, Arab representatives in the Knesset, who continuously call for dismantling the Jewish state, support the Hezbollah, etc., enjoy more freedom than many Western democracies give their internal Oppositions. (The U.S. would prosecute and jail Congressmen calling for the overthrow of the U.S. Govt. or the demise of the U.S.) The best comparison would be the treatment of Japanese Americans by the US Govt ... and the British Govt. [incarceration] of German emigres in Britain WWII ... Israel's Arabs by and large identify with Israel's enemies, the Palestinians. But Israel hasn't jailed or curtailed their freedoms en masse (since 1966 [when Israel lifted its state of martial law]).

[Morris later added: "Israel ... has not jailed tens of thousands of Arabs indiscriminately out fear that they might support the Arab states warring with Israel; it did not do so in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 or 1982 — despite the Israeli Arabs' support for the enemy Arab states."]

As to the occupied territories, Israeli policy is fueled by security considerations (whether one agrees with them or not, or with all the specific measures adopted at any given time) rather than racism (though, to be sure, there are Israelis who are motivated by racism in their attitude and actions towards Arabs) — and indeed the Arab population suffers as a result. But Gaza's and the West Bank's population (Arabs) are not Israeli citizens and cannot expect to benefit from the same rights as Israeli citizens so long as the occupation or semi-occupation (more accurately) continues, which itself is a function of the continued state of war between the Hamas-led Palestinians (and their Syrian and other Arab allies) and Israel.

Coincidentally, Morris, whose latest book, "1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War," has received a lot of attention, had an op-ed in today's LA Times that began, "Israel at 60 is a sad place."

"Is there a God?"

Michael Scott asked himself that question on an old episode of "The Office," re-airing last night during an NBC marathon. Scott's answer:

"If not, then what are all these churches for? And who is Jesus' dad?"

The false claim: Obama or Israel

No matter what Barack Obama says -- earlier this week it was, "We must never waver in our unshakeable commitment to help Israel achieve its goal of true security through lasting peace with its neighbors" -- or how many Jews support his presidential campaign, quite a few believe he spells nothing but trouble for Israel.

John McCain tapped into this fear recently. And today, shortly after I received the above video from Obama's office in which he congratulates Israel on 60 years, Israpundit emailed me his blog post arguing that Jews had to choose between Obama and Israel.

While most Jews favour Obama in a run off with McCain because he is a Democrat, they ignore how pro-Palestinian and anti-American he is.

Let me list the ways.

- Obama said “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people,”

- Obama said “If there is an Arab American family [in the US] being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, those are my civil liberties!”

- Everyone on Obama’s foreign policy team, McPeak, Hamilton, Kurtzer, Brezezinski, are anti- Israel and The Israel Lobby. Their policies are closely aligned with Carter’s and Baker’s.

- Obama has been in bed with Jew haters and Islamic jihad for years. Farrakhan and his dear friend Reverend Wright, Obama’s spiritual guru, is a vile Jew hater.

Israpundit lists another nine bits of evidence against Obama, which he writes "cannot be characterized as a smear as they are all true." Let's take a second look, starting with these first four points.

• The Palestinian people are suffering, even Likudniks and the likes of Ruth Wisse agree on that point.
• Jews more than any minority know that when anyone's civil liberties are being infringed, it is as if their own are. Because, in time, the injustice will find them.
• Brzezinski, which is spelled this way, is, according to Obama's camp, "not advising Barack on any Israel issues."
• It appears the case for that last point, that Obama "has been in bed with Jew haters and Islamic Jihad for years," comes from this article in the Yemen Observer. Funny, I would have expected an American journalist to follow up on that. Kind of seems like a big deal.
  

And I guess those kudos to 60 years of a Jewish State must have come from some other Obama '08 office. Here's how the impostor concluded his congratulations:

I am absolutely convinced that our friendship between the two nations is unbreakable. As someone who has had the great honor of running for the presidency of the United States of America, I pledge to you that I will do whatever I can, in whatever capacity, to not only ensure Israel's security, but also to ensure that the people of Israel are able to thrive and prosper and build on the enormous promise that was made sixty years ago.

Torture, Jews and Finkelstein's 'fact-finding'

It's hard to not set aside your mental faculties when sitting down for a lecture from Norman Finkelstein.

Probably American Jews' least favorite American Jew, Finkelstein first made his name with "The Holocaust Industry," in which he accused Jews of exploiting memories of the Holocaust for financial and political gain, and for Israel's sake; it was well-reviewed by a few, such as Noam Chomsky and Raul Hilberg, and panned by the guy Finkelstein said inspired it, Peter Novick, who said it made "egregious misrepresentations" and "absurd claims."

Last year, Finkelstein re-entered the spotlight with a beautiful pissing match with Alan Dershowitz of Harvard. With a little assistance from campus activists like StandWithUs, Dershowitz helped push DePaul University into denying its infamous academic tenure.

When I last heard Finkelstein speak, at Cal State Northridge in February, he was booed and hissed for about an hour by leaders of the Jewish Defense League (a group that, to be fair, might be able to make an anti-Semite out of Abe Foxman). His audience last night at UC Irvine was quite a bit more receptive. Having been invited by the Muslim Student Union, whose members have called for the destruction of Israel, Finkelstein kicked off Palestinian awareness week, which this year carries the theme, "Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust."

"Is Criticism of Israel Anti-Semitic" was the title of Finkelstein's speech, but he didn't get to that topic until minute 83 of his 101-minute address. Instead, he spent most of the time talking about the controversy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he said is "contrived, fabricated" to "deflect attention from, and sown confusion about, the documentary record" -- one that he claims indicts Israel on just about every human-rights account.

Listening to Finkelstein, you get the impression that Jews really do run the world, and that, as Kevin MacDonald argues, anti-Semitism is just what they had coming. Of course, Finkelstein repeatedly reminded the audience that Jews like he were cast off like chaff for challenging the establishment.

I was drifting in and out, thankful to have a tape recorder, when he said something that caught my attention. On the topic of civilian casualties, Finkelstein indulged a criticism of a familiar target.

There is this journalist writing for The New Yorker magazine, now he writes for The Atlantic magazine; his name is Jeffrey Goldberg. And recently he came out with a book called "Prisoners," and it was his account of his life in Ansar Three prison camp during the First Intifada. He was a guard in the camp. He also tortured Palestinians, which is to say he is the perfect expert for The New Yorker on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Finkelstein went on to discuss a scene from the book in which Goldberg snaps at a Hamas official that at least Israeli soldiers don't try to kill children. (You can hear more of the audio here.) Finkelstein claimed that, in fact, they do. But that is not the point I want to discuss.

I read "Prisoners." In fact, I really enjoyed "Prisoners," which I discussed here last summer. Though a mission of hope, the book is, in the end, a lamentation of Israel's unresolved future and of Goldberg's time at Ketziot (AKA Ansar Three), where he served as a guard after making aliyah and living on a liberal kibbutz. What I couldn't recall in his penance was any discussion of torturing Palestinian prisoners.

A good two hours later, as Finkelstein was being hurried from the podium to a book signing for his fellow travelers, I asked him where he had discovered this information. His answer: In Goldberg's book.

"He said he sent people to the zinzana; he sent people to the refrigerator," Finkelstein said. "That is an accessory to, or a, torture."

Such deduction says a little something about Finkelstein's insights into human-rights reports. Previously, Finkelstein had claimed that Goldberg was at least aware of the torturing that must have gone on at the prison camp.

Although admitting that he personally sent prisoners to the zinzana, and although liberal in his outrage at the "cruelty" of the tortures Palestinians inflicted on each other, Golderg rejects (albeit indirectly) the insinuation that he himself might be an accessory to torture, if not a torturer himself. When the guards needed "someone to go solitary" for a minor infraction of prison rules, Goldberg recalls at one point , "twenty Arabs immediately volunteered." He processes this not as a demonstration of their solidarity and courage but rather as vindication that the "Arabs want to be our victim" and "the Geneva Convention said nothing about prisoners who asked to be punished."

But this was a new indictment.

The zinzana, for that matter, was not described as a room where Palestinians were waterboarded. Translated in rough Arabic, the word means solitary confinement -- something you would find at most any prison in the world.

Finkelstein's scholarship has been discredited before; here are criticisms from the London Review of Books and the right-wing pro-Israel, some would say hawkish, groups CAMERA and StandWithUs. So I e-mailed Goldberg with the subject, "Finkelstein accuses you of torturing Palestinians," and he immediately called my cell.

"That is just ridiculous. I never laid a hand on anybody," Goldberg told me. "One of my principle roles there was making sure the prisoners had fresh fruit.

"Norman Finkelstein is a ridiculous figure and he is lying and purposely misreading my book. The dishonesty is stunning, but we've come to expect it. He is a malignant fantasist. I'd expect nothing less from Hezbollah's foremost Jewish American spokesman."

How do American Jews love Israel?

My boss, Rob Eshman, contributed a commentary to KPCC yesterday on Israel's 60th anniversary. His argument was that most American Jews love Israel like little girls love Hannah Montana:

But the problem with crushes is that the instant our crush disappoints us, we become disillusioned. The problem with crushes is we overlook faults until they turn dangerous and tragic.

Israel at 60 is a wonderful achievement. But it also faces monumental problems that cannot be overlooked: it desperately needs to improve the quality of its democracy. It needs to narrow the gaps between rich and poor, between secular and religious, between Arab and Jewish Israelis. It needs to pursue agreements with its enemies. It needs to reject the ideologies that have mired it in the folly of settlements for the past 40 years.

And we who love Israel have to learn to scold it, to correct it, to not stay away out of disillusionment or keep quiet out of deference. The father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, once said, "Nothing happens as one hopes, nor as one fears." A real state in the real world doesn't demand reverence, it demands we raise our voices and get involved.

Crushes are fine when we're young. But Israel is turning 60; it's time we grew up too.

Also on this topic, Shmuel Rosner wrote a piece Wednesday for Slate.com that recommends dropping the phrase "pro-Israel" because it is so widely used, it's lost any meaning.

Long Beach professor justifies anti-Semitism

I do not think Jews are living in 1938 Germany. But it really has seemed lately liked I've transitioned to the anti-Semitism beat. Besides posting several items on the topic during the past few days, I spent last night at UC Irvine, listening to a speech from Norman Finkelstein, who has certainly been called an anti-Semite, and that followed two weeks of researching and writing a profile of Kevin MacDonald, a psychology professor at Cal State Long Beach whose books have been compared to "Mein Kampf."

In the above video, which is 41 minutes long, MacDonald appears on the TV program "Current Issues," hosted by Palestinian American Hesham Tillawi. The focus of their conversation is the negative influence and clannish behavior of Jews. At the 17-minute mark, MacDonald describes his opinions, detailed in a three-volume series and subsequent essays that can be found at kevinmacdonald.net, as "rational" anti-Semitism.

MacDonald once served as an expert witness for Holocaust-denier David Irving, and many of his theories of Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy" are controversial. The least palatable are that Judaism has a built in eugenics program -- the study of Talmud, which, he claims, stemmed the reproduction of dumber members of the Tribe -- and that anti-Semitism, even Nazism, were gentile responses to Jewish success.

He's been on the faculty of Cal State Long Beach 23 years now, having achieved full tenure in 1994. But the university is under increasing pressure from some of MacDonald's colleagues and outside organizations to denounce his writings, which, obviously, have very little to do with child psychology and, to his credit, have been kept out of the classroom.

Under the headline, "The Professor Anti-Semites Love," MacDonald carries this week's cover for The Jewish Journal. It's a long profile -- from his childhood in Oshkosh to the origins of his research to the contents of his books and the battle against him -- so I'll just mention now the biggest problem MacDonald has had: his anti-Semitic admirers.

As a warning, there will be some very vulgar language from someone who would like to see the fulfillment of the Final Solution:

In the second of two recent interviews, MacDonald said he is not a fan of anti-Semitism. But he also described his opinions on a Palestinian American TV news program in 2005 as "rational anti-Semitism" and has joked that being branded a Jew hater was a "badge of honor," the knee-jerk reaction of a scared Jewish establishment.

The chief concern over MacDonald's writings about Jews is directed at his fan base: white supremacists like Stormfront.org and Vanguard News Network -- whose motto is "No Jews. Just Right." The members of these online communities have become his loudest defenders, often in language that is as offensive as possible.

"So the goddam Kikes are getting their way yet again, putting the thumbscrews to a White scholar whose ass they are not worthy to lick.... At least this oppression proves that Prof. MacDonald's great work is hitting the scum hard," a Vanguard commenter wrote in February below a republished story about MacDonald from CSULB's student paper.

"How much more of this humiliation is our race going to take? How long before this motherf---ing plague of repulsive, hook-snouted ticks is given a real Zyklon fumigation, as opposed to the fairy tale one?"

MacDonald repudiated such rhetoric as "crazy stuff" but said he supports the ideology behind it.

"White people have legitimate ethnic interests. To the extent that that is all they believe, then we are on the same page," he said. "I don't like to use words like white supremacists. You could say that Koreans in Korea are Korean supremacists if they want to maintain their culture. It is kind of a loaded word; it is a politically charged word of the left, basically, to pathologize any sense of having an ethnicity and culture by people like me. I reject that."

"I certainly reject the tactics and the rhetoric of these people. It's very crude," MacDonald added. "But to the extent that David Duke is trying to advance a white ethnic interest and so on, I don't have any problem with that."

I'll post later about the basis for MacDonald's research, which rests on an assumption of "Jewish Genius."

Obama: 'Never waver in our unshakeable commitment to help Israel'

Seeking to dispel rumors, and some news reports to the contrary, Barack Obama has stated several times that he is a passionate believer in a Jewish state in Israel. Obama has won the vote of quite a few Jews, but others remain unwilling to enter the fold. As Israel approaches its 60th anniversary, Obama pledged last night what sounds a lot like unconditional American support.

While threats to its existence have endured, Israelis have built their nation into a strong, vibrant democracy, with a prosperous economy, a rich cultural life, and a deep friendship with the United States that benefits both our peoples in so many ways. Even in hard times, Israelis have so much to be proud of. As the Jewish State continues to grow and prosper, the United States will always stand with Israel to ensure it can defend itself against threat of terrorism and violence, from as close as Gaza and as far as Tehran. We must never waver in our unshakeable commitment [to] help Israel achieve its goal of true security through lasting peace with its neighbors.

Leading evangelicals to condemn group's politicization

Big statement coming from evangelicals today:

Conservative Christian leaders who believe the word "evangelical" has lost its religious meaning plan to release a starkly self-critical document saying the movement has become too political and has diminished the Gospel through its approach to the culture wars.

The statement, called "An Evangelical Manifesto," condemns Christians on the right and left for "using faith" to express political views without regard to the truth of the Bible, according to a draft of the document obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

"That way faith loses its independence, Christians become `useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology," according to the draft.

The declaration, scheduled to be released Wednesday in Washington, encourages Christians to be politically engaged and uphold teachings such as traditional marriage. But the drafters say evangelicals have often expressed "truth without love," helping create a backlash against religion during a "generation of culture warring."

"All too often we have attacked the evils and injustices of others," they wrote, "while we have condoned our own sins." They argue, "we must reform our own behavior."

The Evangelical Manifesto, to be presented at the National Press Club, carries a lot of the mainstream voices that teeter between liberal and conservative politics -- a refreshing bit of news for a brand of Christianity that has become far too aligned with political power and the Republican Party.

David Neff, the top editor at Christianity Today, to which I regularly contribute, told The Seeker that it was high time evangelicals reflected on what it has meant to be seen as a political bloc.

By clinging too tightly to the Bible as a political platform, Neff said, evangelical messengers often fail to reach the general public. Not only does biblical reasoning fail to persuade everyone in the public square, it also creates a backlash that damages how people perceive evangelical Christianity, he said.

"Faith is a very humble thing and ideology is a severe master," he said. "Faith is a humble trusting in God and a willingness to proceed not always knowing where we’re headed," he said, adding that ideology replaces a "confidence in God" with "confidence in a particular set of precepts."

Remember, Christianity is a religion of cultural change, not political dealings.

Religion as a figment of human imagination?

Ever wondered why animals don't practice religion? It's a fair question, especially when considering the multitude of beliefs humans have held. The answer, according to economist Maurice Bloch is that animals didn't evolve the proper mechanics to imagine a universal order.

That leaves hanging a really strange chicken-and-egg question about creation and evolution, but it's worth reading Bloch's essay, published here in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and discussed in this article on NewScientist.com. As you may have surmised from Bloch's background, his article is based more conjecture than lab work:

Uniquely, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unify with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead. The transcendental social also allows humans to follow the idealised codes of conduct associated with religion.

"What the transcendental social requires is the ability to live very largely in the imagination," Bloch writes.

"One can be a member of a transcendental group, or a nation, even though one never comes in contact with the other members of it," says Bloch. Moreover, the composition of such groups, "whether they are clans or nations, may equally include the living and the dead."

Modern-day religions still embrace this idea of communities bound with the living and the dead, such as the Christian notion of followers being "one body with Christ", or the Islamic "Ummah" uniting Muslims.

No animals, not even our nearest relatives the chimpanzees, can do this, argues Bloch. Instead, he says, they're restricted to the mundane and Machiavellian social interactions of everyday life, of sparring every day with contemporaries for status and resources.

And the reason is that they can't imagine beyond this immediate social circle, or backwards and forwards in time, in the same way that humans can.

Bloch believes our ancestors developed the necessary neural architecture to imagine before or around 40-50,000 years ago, at a time called the Upper Palaeological Revolution, the final sub-division of the Stone Age.

At around the same time, tools that had been monotonously primitive since the earliest examples appeared 100,000 years earlier suddenly exploded in sophistication, art began appearing on cave walls, and burials began to include artefacts, suggesting belief in an afterlife, and by implication the "transcendental social".

Once humans had crossed this divide, there was no going back.

Nuns prevented from voting in Indiana

In the comments to the post about the Israel Bible Quiz, Stan Meyer said that Jim Crow is alive and well. Maybe, maybe not. But at least the spirit of exclusionary laws were evident last night in Indiana when nuns were turned away from the polls for lack of ID.

The nuns, all residents of a retirement home at Saint Mary's Convent near Notre Dame University, were denied ballots by a fellow sister and poll worker because the women, in their 80s and 90s, did not have valid Indiana photo ID cards.

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"It's the law, and it makes it hard," said Sister Julie McGuire, who was working at the polling place and had to explain to the nuns that they could not vote. "Some don't understand why."

Indiana requires voters who come to the polls show a photo ID issued by the state or the federal government. The law was pressed by Republicans citing voter fraud and opposed by Democrats and the ACLU, who argued that it would disenfranchise voters.

Jew hatred grows as Jewish life does, too

More from the anti-Semitism beat, the NYT has this interesting article about the rise of Jew hatred alongside burgeoning Jewish life in Hungary:

BUDAPEST — Ostensibly, a rock concert sparked it, reminding us that culture is not the exclusive province of liberals, certainly not here in Europe. A young woman (who knows whether she was just intending to make trouble) walked into a ticket office in the traditionally Jewish 13th District in this Hungarian capital several weeks ago and asked about Hungarica, an obscure extremist far-right band.

The woman said the ticket agents called her a fascist and threw her out. The agents said that she spouted anti-Semitic abuse when told the office didn’t handle that event. A little later somebody tossed a Molotov cocktail outside the office. Then a blogger, Tamas Polgar, with the screen name Tomcat urged neo-Nazis to rally at the ticket office, and about 30 turned up on April 7 along with 300 counterdemonstrators. Tomcat called for a second rally, four days later, and about 1,000 more extremists were met that time, across police barricades, by 3,000 antifascists, including the beleaguered Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, and the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

It’s hard to know whether to feel disheartened by the large showing of neo-Nazis or encouraged by the larger opposition to it. It turns out that aside from the well-documented rise of the far right, Jewish culture has also been conspicuously on the rise here.

That said, anti-Semitism can thrive even in the absence of a single Jew. History has proved that repeatedly. Hungarica served its purpose without having to play a single note.

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Peter Gyorgy ... like everyone ... acknowledged that anti-Semitism is more out in the open today.

“Hungary is a deeply traumatized society since the First World War, and the Holocaust, of course,” Mr. Gyorgy said. “After the early years of Hungarian Communism, to be Jewish was one’s private affair. Then after Communism, in the early ’90s, when the multiparty system started, we missed our chance for a public discourse about this situation. Now there’s a confluence: the instability of the government, the hatred for the prime minister and the fact that Jewish culture has become more conspicuous. A new generation of Jews has emerged, which behaves like Jews.”

It's 'alleged' anti-Semitism: a-l-l-e-g-e-d

Like the Wall Street Journal last week, the liberal Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, carried a story this week that convicted the Rev. Eric Lee of saying, "The Jews have made money on us in the music business and we are the entertainers, and they are economically enslaving us."

Prominent California reverend and black activist Eric Lee has apologized for anti-Semitic comments he said last month at a Los Angeles event commemorating the assassination of Martin Luther King.

The Los Angeles Times on Friday reported a "reconciliation" meeting between the Pastor and Daphna Ziman - an Israeli-American philanthropist and the recipient of this year's Tom Bradley Award for community service, for whose honor Lee made the keynote speech at an award ceremony in Los Angeles.

During his speech, Lee, the local president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights group, is reported to have suddenly launched an anti-Semitic rant, stating that Jews have made money on blacks in the music business.

In fact, there has been much dispute, which I reported several times over, about exactly what Lee said. And the word missing from the above story is "alleged." It is what Lee is "alleged" to have said. But Ha'aretz' Shlomo Shamir, like so many people who read Lee's apology, assumed, apparently without talking with Lee or Daphna Ziman, the Jewish philanthropist whose emailed account of Lee's speech went viral.

The difference between Shamir's news article and the Wall Street Journal op-ed by MLK's former lawyer is just that: One was news and the other opinion. Both, though, need to be accurate.

We likely will never know what exactly Lee said during his April 4 keynote before members of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. Ziman and Lee, however, appear to have moved on with the ceremonial breaking of bread. My colleague, Tom Tugend, has a report from the publicized meeting.

Judging by the determinedly upbeat comments of the participants, their private deliberations had touches of a peace summit, a revival meeting and an exploration of past, present and future relations between the African American and Jewish communities.

Ziman and Lee, sitting side by side and occasionally linking hands, were a picture of amity and good will, with both crediting their reconciliation to "divine intervention."

Ziman noted that in the past three weeks she had moved "from shedding tears to a sense of hope" and stressed that those present had a responsibility not to damage future generations through prejudice.

"I request the pledge of every religious leader in the United States that no racism be spouted in public places and places of worship," she said.

Lee described Ziman and himself as "two passionate and well-intentioned people who both love God."

(Thanks to Richard Silverstein for emailing me Shamir's dispatch)

'Not Israel's deepest thinker'

That was Jeffrey Goldberg's response to a comment Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave him. It appears in this month's Atlantic cover, and its good fodder for piling on:

I asked Olmert about a flaw of personal concern to me: Why is Israel less physically safe for Jews than America?

He answered: “I’ll tell you something that you have to realize, and this is the most important thing and this is the most significant thing. First of all, no people are safe anywhere, okay? Let me tell you, Jews are not safer in Israel than they are in other parts of the world, but there is only one place that Jews can fight for their lives as Jews, and that is here. They can fight as Americans, they can fight as Australians—but as individuals.” He banged on his desk. “Jews were persecuted, Jews were attacked, Jews were suppressed, Jews were killed. But they could never defend themselves as Jews.”

So the success of the American Jewish community doesn’t lessen the necessity for the state of Israel? “Never, never, no way,” he said. “By the way, Jews in Germany—and I don’t draw any comparison at all—Jews in other parts of the world were very successful all their lives, and that didn’t provide them with safety.”

The prime minister of Israel should be able to muster an argument for the necessity of his country without forecasting a Holocaust in America. His was a careless and cynical statement, one that supports the notion that he is not Israel’s deepest thinker.

NY Post: Financier allegedly bribed Israel's Olmert

A Long Island mogul is at the center of a sensational bribery scandal that could bring down embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, The Post has learned.

Millionaire financier Morris Talansky -- who runs an investment firm out of his tony home in Woodmere -- allegedly passed money to Olmert while the politician was mayor of Jerusalem in the '90s, sources said.

In a highly unusual move, Israeli authorities have barred the country's media from publishing Talansky's name - revealed now in The Post - saying it could hamper their investigation. Israeli media has referred only to the involvement of an "American businessman."

Talansky is apparently set to sing to Israeli authorities about his alleged role in the scheme, sources said.

"It looks serious, and it looks like they have a state witness" in Talansky, one source said.

Talansky - a philanthropist and political contributor to everyone from Rudy Giuliani to Bill Clinton - is in Jerusalem, where he has an apartment, preparing to head to a closed-door court hearing as early as today, sources said.

The 75-year-old was earlier questioned about the alleged scheme almost immediately after arriving in the country for Passover, and he implicated Olmert, sources have said.

It was unclear what the alleged payments to Olmert were for, but sources said they involved hefty amounts of cash.

Talansky repeatedly appears - sometimes under the nickname "The Laundry Man" - in the logs of financial dealings kept by Olmert's longtime aide, Shula Zakan, a source said.

Olmert was grilled by investigators Friday. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Let's see: A botched war against a terror outfit, an approval rating in the single digits, a reputation as spineless but arrogant. Olmert's outlasted every good reason for a resignation so far. I wander what happens next.

Messianic Jew causes boycott call from Bible Quiz

And you thought Jeopardy! was dramatic:

A group of religious Zionist rabbis have called for a boycott of this year's International Bible Quiz after discovering that one of the four finalists from Israel is a Messianic Jew who believes Jesus is the true Messiah.

"Messianics are missionaries who proselytize in very sophisticated ways," said Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, one of the rabbis calling to boycott the quiz.

"It is forbidden to give them legitimacy by allowing them to take part in the quiz."

Other rabbis that have called to boycott the quiz include Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, Ya'acov Yosef, son of Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Tzvi Tau, head of Har Hamor Yeshiva.

The call to boycott the quiz came after Yad L'Achim, a haredi anti-missionary organization, discovered that one of the finalists, Bat-El Levi, an 11th grader from a high school in Pisgat Ze'ev, was a Messianic Jew.

Levi won this year's national bible quiz for state schools and will be one of four finalists from Israel competing for the International Bible Quiz Championship on Independence Day.

The Education Ministry said in response to a query from The Jerusalem Post that the "Global Bible Quiz for Jewish Youth" was open only to Jewish pupils. Regarding Messianic Jews, the pupil in question was Jewish, and therefore, according to the ministry's legal department, was not disqualified from participating.

That is an interesting argument made by the Education Ministry, because my understanding has been that most Jews consider Messianics to be Christians, not Jews. Messianics, generally, consider themselves to be Jews who believe in the divinity of and salvation offered by Yeshua; I've attended a few services and rarely heard the words "Jesus," "Christ," or "Christian."

Reuters appears to have spoken with a relative of Levi, who said the family was unfairly being attacked by the anti-missionary organization.

The relative, who declined to be named, confirmed that Levy and her family “believe in Yeshua Ben-David, the saviour from Nazareth” — Jesus’s Hebrew name. But Yad L’Ahim was wrong in branding Levy a missionary, the family member said.

“The family keeps its faith to itself. To these people, anyone who disagrees with their version of Jewish belief is the enemy. I hope God pays them back in kind,” the relative said.

Sub teacher fired for 'wizardry'

I hope Jim Piculas was a bad substitute teacher, but the excuse his supervisor offered for firing him was a doozy.

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

"I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue, you can't take any more assignments you need to come in right away,'" he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell and went much farther than he'd hoped.

"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he asked.

(Hat tip: Pharyngula)

Awkward introductions: 'Call me God'

Steve Kreuscher has let his status as a denizen of Zion (Illinois, that is) go to his head. He's asked a judge to legally change his name to the motto that backs our money: In God We Trust.

Believe it. First name, In God. Last name, We Trust. The Daily Herald has a detailed story that is striking for its lack of lame jokes and offers other interesting name changes:

Santa Claus: Robert Rion of Mundelein, 1997

GoVeg.com: Karin Robertson of Virginia, 2003

Megatron: Michael Burrows of Washington, 2007

Optimus Prime: Scott Nall of Ohio, 2001

Pro-Life: Marvin Richardson of Idaho, 2008

Low Tax: Byron Looper of Tennessee, 1998

Jesus Christ: Jose Espinal of New York, 2005

My favorite funny name, though it may be apocryphal, is "Sh--head" (pronounced: Shah-TEED).

(Hat tip: DMN and BBB)

Remembering the 'nakba'

Mondoweiss has been fascinated lately with the term "nakba," an Arabic word that means "catastrophe" and refers to the creation of Israel, including its appearance in mainstream American journalism like The New Yorker and New York Times. This got me wondering: How often has this term appeared in The Jewish Journal?

The answer, since our online archive began 10 years ago, is 14 (three more if you include the alternative spelling). This piece from 1998 -- the 50th anniversary of Israel's modern statehood and before the Second Intifada -- was the most interesting.

The Nakba is an event burned into the memory of all Palestinians. In a low-key way, with lectures and exhibits, they are commemorating it in some cities of Gaza and the West Bank. It is a somber, bitter commemoration, in starkest contrast to the celebrations Israel has in mind.

The 600,000 Palestinian refugees of 1948 left about 100,000 Arabs behind -- those who did not flee. These 100,000have grown to nearly 1 million today -- Israel's Arab citizens, who,ever since the intifada, have become more open and defiant about their identification with their former countrymen -- in many cases their blood relatives -- now living in the territories. As American Jews say of their relationship with Israelis, so Israeli Arabs say of their relationship with the Palestinians: "We are one."

That leaves the question: When Israel's Jews are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of their country,what will Israel's Arabs be doing?

Mourning the displacement of their Palestinian brethren and protesting the 50 years of discrimination they've suffered themselves, say Arab members of the Knesset and other leaders of the community.

As Israel has its committee to plan the anniversary celebrations, Israeli Arab leaders have set up a preparations committee of their own. During the panel's meeting this week, members considered declaring Israel's Independence Day, May 15,as "The 50th Anniversary of the Palestinian Calamity." Proposals were made to treat it as a day of mourning, and to publish a "Black Book"that listed the Arab villages which emptied out and vanished during the war.

No coordinated plan has been adopted, but,clearly, Israeli Arabs see their country's 50th anniversary as a day of anger and grief. "What exactly does Israel want me to celebrate?"said Knesset Member Taleb a-Sanaa, who recommended that Israeli Arabs mark the day with "a minute of silence in memory of all the Palestinians killed between 1948 and today."

The Palestinian refugee crisis remains a tragic affair. So, too, was the Jewish exodus -- quick and slow -- from Arab countries after the Arab-Israeli War.

Last of failed Hitler assassins dead

The last living man who tried to kill Adolf Hitler, the 1944 briefcase bomber Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, died Thursday. He was 90.

Von Boeselager was part of a group of officers who tried to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, supplying explosives for the operation led by Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg.

The von Stauffenberg plot is the basis for the upcoming Tom Cruise film ''Valkyrie'' in which the American actor plays the aristocratic colonel.

Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a conference room where Hitler was meeting with his aides and military advisers but escaped the blast when someone moved the briefcase next to a table leg, deflecting much of the explosive force.

Almost immediately afterward, von Stauffenberg and many of his cohorts were arrested and executed in an orgy of revenge killings that saw some hanged by the neck with piano wire. Though many of those rounded up by Nazi officials were tortured in the hopes they would give up other conspirators, von Boeselager's name was never divulged and he was never found out.

Still, he carried a cyanide capsule with him until the end of the war in case his secret was revealed.

Von Boeselager, who lived in Altenahr, near Bonn, was first recruited by von Stauffenberg coconspirator Maj. Gen. Henning von Tresckow in 1942, he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview three weeks ago that was published Friday.

He said he knew that Jews were being systematically killed and that Germany was waging a war of annihilation along the Eastern Front with Russia and that he never considered declining taking part in the plot.

By 1942, he said that ''It was no longer about saving the country, but about stopping the crimes,'' the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Lord Hameed: suicide bombings 'un-Islamic'

No kidding. Maybe someone should share Lord Hameed's recent speech with those young American Muslims who think Islam sometimes justifies suicide attacks ... on civilians:

Many now viewed and with scepticism Islam’s message of peace and compassion, for if this were true, why, they asked, is it associated with violence and intolerance towards non-Muslims and the poor treatment of women? The answer is that both Muslims and non-Muslims use the Quran selectively. The events of 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London and in Spain, Bali, and other places, were despicable acts committed by misled youths wrongly in the name of Islam. My Lords, Islam prohibits not only the killing of the innocent but is also most severe on the act of suicide. There is a clear Quranic instruction against taking ones own life. I therefore have no problem, my Lords, in stating from the August floor of your lordships’ House for all to hear, specially my co-religionists from the Muslim world, that exploding bombs as an act of suicide to kill innocent people in buses, bazaars, aeroplanes, trains, schools, places of worship or anywhere else, is totally un-Islamic and against the teachings of the Quran. All Muslims, therefore, must do everything to stop this evil depravity.

'Between the pulpit and pews, a gulf on Obama's ex-pastor'

LUMBERTON, N.C. — The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., under fire for statements that have embarrassed Senator Barack Obama’s campaign, has found staunch support in the pulpits of black churches around North Carolina. The people in the pews, however, are far less accepting.

In interviews at churches in cities and towns including Charlotte, Greensboro, Lumberton and Goldsboro, ministers expressed the view that Mr. Obama and Mr. Wright had been attacked by a superficial and biased news media. Many said they were teaching Mr. Wright’s sermons in Bible study classes. They are delivering lectures on the roots of Mr. Wright’s style of ministry and preaching against what they see as attempts to make Mr. Wright a divisive figure.

“People get fired up when they see people trying to scapegoat a presidential candidate because of a pastor,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro and the president of the state branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “And No. 2, the fact that you’re beating up on someone that’s very profound and very prophetic.”

But many parishioners are not nearly as sympathetic to Mr. Wright, saying they are disappointed with him for taking a personal dispute public with little concern for the harm it would do to the Obama campaign. (This sentiment is particularly strong among younger voters.) Others call Mr. Wright arrogant and untrustworthy, and still others say he is fighting old fights.

“He needs to take the political and keep it separate from the spiritual,” said Rita Harrison, 48, an Obama supporter who was cutting hair at Allison’s Salon in Whiteville. “Why would you risk this man’s campaign because of some personal comments? Because that’s what it is, it’s personal.”

This is a common phenomenon discussed in this New York Times article, and it's an early lesson of religion reporting: Don't just call the pastors and rabbis and imams, or the diocesan and federation leadership -- talk to lay folk who hold a variety of opinions, often divergent from their leaders and in conflict with their co-religionists.

For whatever reason, and I'm open to explanations, leaders at the pulpit are quite often out of touch with their people in the pews. A glaring example of this is seen throughout the U.S. Catholic Church; while many observant Catholics pick and choose the teachings of the church they will follow, leaning particularly liberal on family planning and at times homosexuality, priests and bishops tend to be more doctrinaire (except, of course, for those priests who we hope are no longer employed).

Tribal Affairs: Boxing's Golden Boy was Jewish

There is a long history of Jewish fighters who embraced Irish names and boxing as vehicles out of the LES ghetto. Art Aragon wasn't one of them, at least not until later in life.

Boxing's "Golden Boy" -- a sports celebrity on par with Joe Namath, though never a world champ -- was raised Catholic in East L.A. But his second wife was Jewish, and Aragon converted so he could marry her (and presumably his third wife, who also was Jewish; his fourth, however, was not). From a short appreciation I wrote about Aragon for this week's paper:

"My grandfather wouldn't let my mother marry him because he was a real swinger," Aragon's son, Brad, recalled recently. "So he offered him $100,000 to just leave. And my dad said, 'I can't be bought.' Then my grandfather said, 'Well, Irene, he's not Jewish.' So he converted."

Aragon, who died last month at his Northridge home after suffering a stroke, was buried at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park, a worthy resting place for someone who shrank his conversion certificate so he could be a "card-carrying Jew." He was 80 when he was buried on April Fools' Day.

"Everybody expected, because he was such a joker, him to wink his eye and say, 'Just kidding,'" Brad Aragon said.

Julian Eget, the EVP of the World Boxing Hall of Fame, which inducted Aragon in 1990, told me that the Golden Boy might not have been an observant Jew, except for enjoying the food, but he was certainly a proud one.

"It was incredible for me," Eget said. "It just doesn't happen; most of the time it goes the other way, people changing their names and trying to hide from being Jewish."

Aragon was so proud of his heritage that Eget believed had made the rare Abrahamic decision to receive an adult circumcision.

"No. That's not true," Aragon's son assured me, offering some details I left out of the story. "My dad had his sh-- clipped when he was a kid."

Islam's 'Jesus Christ Superstar' -- sort of

Jeffrey Fleishman is pretty much the only remaining reporter at the LA Times whose stories I have to read when I cross his byline. He carried the Column One Tuesday with a piece about an Iranian film that critically casts Jesus as a prophet and Christianity as a sham. (Click here to read about Jesus as a talk radio host.) Fleishman's article was titled "Jesus through the lens of Islam," and it delved into far more than just entertainment:

Jesus sat and peeled an orange as his companion, Nader Talebzadeh, began to speak, precisely, so as not to be misunderstood on a matter so sensitive. The Iranian director's new film is based on the Islamic version of the life of Jesus, depicting the man Christians believe to be the messiah and son of God as a tormented Judean prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim faith.

One might imagine such a tale may not screen well in the red states of America. The film, nearly 10 years in the making, draws on the Koran and the putative Gospel of Barnabas, considered by many Western scholars a medieval fable. The premise of "Jesus, the Spirit of God" is that Jesus was compassionate and performed miracles, but was not crucified or resurrected from the dead. The message implies that Christianity, a faith of 2 billion people and the core of much Western philosophy, is based on a falsehood.

"I pray for Christians. They've been misled. They will realize one day the true story," said Talebzadeh, whose film has been screened at international film festivals and is being marketed for wider release.

"People might use this film as a strategy to further demonize Iran," he said. "They may succeed. But I hope once you see that the focus of the film is sacred, it will overwhelm. No one would have imagined that an Iranian would make a film to glorify Jesus."

Not to mention an Iranian who supports President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and believes 9/11 was partly a U.S. government conspiracy. "Someone masterminded something," he said. "And this is the cause for a lot of evil America is doing in this part of the world."

There is another irony. The actor who plays Jesus, Ahmad Soleimani-Nia, once was a soldier in the Iranian army and later a welder for Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, which the Bush administration accuses of pursuing nuclear weapons. Such footnotes don't seem odd when talking with Talebzadeh, who has kept Nia in Jesus character -- flowing hair, beard, mystic pose -- for seven years because he never knows when he might shoot new sequences for the film.

"Jesus, the Spirit of God" comes out of Iran at a time of hostile rhetoric between Washington and Tehran and a divide between Islam and the West that has produced jihad websites, DVDs on the apocalypse, editorial cartoons lampooning Muhammad and a recent Osama bin Laden tape condemning Pope Benedict XVI for a "new crusade" against Islam.

Religion has long been at the heart of tensions between East and West, but it is being swept into a wider cultural war played out on the Internet, film and satellite TV in which icons and sacred texts have been attacked and manipulated. A new Dutch film by a right-wing politician, who compares the Koran to Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," depicts Islam as a violent faith. In response, a Saudi blogger posted a video suggesting that the Bible could be read as a document for war.

Talebzadeh knows that his Jesus walks on volatile terrain; one wonders, given the tenor of the times, how many fatwas would be issued if a Western director made a film suggesting that Muhammad, whose depiction is forbidden under Islamic tradition, was someone other than the prophet.

"There is so much wrong with this man's understanding of Jesus and Christianity," wrote an incensed Christian blogger, referring to Talebzadeh in a conversation about the film that is unfolding in cyberspace. "It's another piece of Satanic propaganda intended to accomplish no meaningful purpose in this world."

I don't doubt that conjecture of a double standard. Cartoons about Muhammad stir enough trouble, and we saw what happened when "Family Guy" tried airing a two-part episode about Peter's previous exploits with Islam's great prophet (at least, we saw the "South Park" rendition of "Cartoon Wars").

The film first hit Iranian theaters in January. Who knows when it will make it to Los Angeles?

More from the Rev. Wright files

I am completely bored with continuing coverage, seemingly nonstop coverage, of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which is why until now I didn't even bother mentioning the story that was on the cover of every major American paper Wednesday. Today's NYT attempts to pinpoint Barack Obama's breaking point with is former pastor. Yawn. ...

Read on if you like hearing the same info over and over.