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.

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).

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]

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Redux: 'The true meaning of Passover'

In case you missed David Sackman's thoughtful comment here about the Rev. Eric Lee and the true meaning of Passover, his words were reprinted today as an op-ed in The Jewish Journal. To refresh:

I am Jewish, of European ancestry; my wife is black, with Chinese and Native American ancestry included. What shall we tell our son this Passover, when we retell the tale of how his Jewish ancestors were freed from slavery in Africa?

Shall we trade accusations against each other? The statement reputed to have been made at a fraternity event, that some Jews in the entertainment industry exploited and profited from black performers, is probably true. It is also true that Jewish union leaders, lawyers and agents in the entertainment industry have fought for better wages and working conditions for blacks and others in the industry. Many Jews played crucial roles in the struggle for civil rights, and undoubtedly there were some on the other side as well. We can go back farther to trade accusations. Were there Jews who owned slaves and were involved in the slave trade? Probably so; and yet there were also Jews fighting for abolition. Does it matter whether those on one side outnumbered those on the other?

To be honest, I must tell my son that his African ancestors were on both sides as well.

Clinton carries Keystone Jews

Hillary Clinton last night not only won the Pennsylvania primary, but carried the Jewish vote, 62 percent to Barack Obama's 38 percent.

Her margin was similar among whites overall, winning 63 percent to 37 percent. Clinton's performance among white Catholics was particularly strong, winning 70 percent to 30 percent.

"I think much of the Jewish vote voted for their comfort level, and they were more comfortable with Senator Clinton," said Marcel Groen, a Clinton supporter and the head of the Montgomery County Democratic Committee, in an interview with JTA a day after the primary. "I just think generally from a Jewish perspective, Hillary Clinton was a known commodity."

This news really shouldn't be a surprise. When you talk about "comfort level," Obama has had a lot of trouble convincing the Jewish community, and a few others, that he's no sheepskin wolf.

Case of the missing matzo, and not the afikomen

From coast to coast right now, there is a developing story that is a perfect case for the Hardly Boys. (No, it does not involve 9/11 conspiracies.) Passover began little more than 48 hours ago, and one thing is clear: this Exodus remembrance it appears there wasn't even enough time to bake unleavened bread. The New York Times explains:

On Monday, Allison Mnookin circled the aisles of her local Whole Foods store in San Mateo, Calif., three times. There was no matzo to be found.

“Being out of matzo is like being out of milk,” Ms. Mnookin said. So it was on to Safeway. Nothing. Fearing that the box of stale matzo remaining in her pantry from last year would not cut it, she drove nearly 15 miles to Menlo Park.

Hypothesis: If the shortage had been on gefilte fish, complaints would have been far fewer.

The reasons behind the matzo shortage range from manufacturing problems, decisions by some stores not to carry the product this Passover and vague talk of a possible work stoppage.

“It seemed like the whole region had a problem getting it in,” said Jason Hodges, a supervisor in the grocery department at a Whole Foods in Miami. A person who answered the phone at a ShopRite in Philadelphia said stores there were sold out, as was the Food Emporium in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., in Westchester County.

“We heard there was a strike or something,” said the Food Emporium manager, Frantz Baptiste. “The first shipment we had was a month ago, and we never got another one.”

Phone calls and e-mail messages to the largest suppliers of unleavened bread products, Streit’s, Manischewitz and Yehuda, brought no response on Monday, possibly because executives were off for Passover, which began Saturday night.

But Manischewitz officials have said that problems with a new state-of-the-art oven in its only New Jersey plant caused it to scrap this Passover’s supply of Tam Tam crackers, its little six-sided matzo morsels, as well as some less popular matzo varieties.

Trader Joe’s stores opted not to sell Passover matzo this year, as did some Costco stores.

There were similar stories in Los Angeles, detailed and also debunked at LAObserved.

"I got a chuckle out of your items on the 'matzoh shortage' in Los Feliz. As a former resident of that neighborhood I can state that while it's a great place to live on many counts, it has none of the things a more than "semi-observant" Jew needs. I'll be happy to supply directions to Fairfax, Pico-Robertson or my own shtetl of Valley Village, where you can't turn around this time of year without tripping over a box of matzoh!"

To see what some Jews are missing out on, check out this VideoJew installment.

Strange translations of the Four Questions

“Like why is this night, like totally different...”

If at a Passover seder last night you heard that question, asked that way, you probably live in my neighborhood. According to "300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions: From Zulu to Abkhahaz," that is the Valley Girl translation for the first question. Translations for Klingon, Lawyerese and the ever-useful Sumerian, not to mention actual spoken languages, can be found in this Jewish Journal story and at Whyisthisnight.com.

My favorite variation, though came from my VideoJew colleague, in a language he dubbed, and I remember well, College BS:

“There are many interesting and unique variances of this night, however one of the most central issues is its difference from that of other nights. One may ask the question, ‘why?’ But to answer such question with such a response would be to demean the very question at hand. For that reason, I believe this night is differ from others, not simply because of the matzah, seders and reclining, but because of the family, happiness and reunion. In conclusion, to state one reason why any night is different from others would be to degrade that which makes all other nights uniformly pleasant.”

Dodgers strikeout adding Canter's to Koufax

Canter's Deli and Sandy Koufax -- two names that evoke the words 'Jewish Los Angeles' unlike any other. With the Tribe's contributions to Los Angeles' eateries and baseball team, it's fitting that the Dodgers would offer the delicacies that seem as much a part of Judaism as the Passover story: salt-cured beef and matzah ball soup. It only took 50 years for that to happen.

Part of a multimillion-dollar field-level expansion project at Dodger Stadium, Canter's Deli -- an anchor of the Fairfax district since 1948, but with an L.A. history that dates back to 1931 in Boyle Heights -- joined Gordon Biersch, Panda Express and all those Dodger Dog windows. Its menu is truncated but carries the essentials: matzah ball soup, corned beef and pastrami sandwiches and that marriage of the two meats, the Canter's Fairfax.

An avid Dodger fan -- the kind who takes his wife to games on their anniversary -- I was eager to sample the new fare. The line was short and my Canter's Fairfax was served up suspiciously quickly. Indeed, something terrible happens to thinly sliced, heavily salted meat when placed under a heat lamp. It doesn't melt in your mouth -- it flakes.

What I couldn't find at Canter's or any other concession stand was a kosher hot dog. Providing a kosher nosh would require renovating the kitchens at Dodger Stadium and peeling Farmer John's grip from its hot dog monopoly. A Dodger spokeswoman said the club has "no immediate plans" for this.

Fortunately, I don't keep kosher. But plenty of Angelenos do, and for years they've felt like they're missing out of one of the most enjoyable elements of rooting for the Dodgers: Eating a lukewarm hot dog that is never as tasty as you remember.

This is from a piece I wrote for this week's Jewish Journal. Plenty of other stadiums offer kosher nosh, including the Boston Red Sox, who just announced the additional menu item alongside the Fenway Frank. That makes Steve Getzug, an L.A. public affairs executive and founding member of the Lou Barak Memorial Hot Dog Committee (I could be so lucky in death), a bit jealous.

"Our field of dreams," he said, "includes kosher hot dogs."

Seven synagogues torched in Tehran

Seven ancient synagogues in the Iranian capital, Tehran, have been destroyed by local authorities.

The synagogues were in the Oudlajan suburb of Tehran, where many Iranian Jews used to live.

"These buildings, which were part of our cultural, artistic and architectural heritage were burnt to the ground," said Ahmad Mohit Tabatabaii, the director of the International Council of Museums’ (ICOM) office in Tehran.

"With the excuse of renovating this ancient quarter, they are erasing a part of our history," said Tabatabaii.

That's from Adnkronos International, via Solomonia. I noted in January a similar effort to destroy historical buildings in Old Damascus.

* Update: In a comment below, Sam Kermanian of the Iranian American Jewish Federation says the synagogues were razed but not torched:

The synagogues in question were in the old Jewish ghetto which has long been evacuated by the community and the synagogues themselves were deserted for decades and essentially decayed. Although they are part of Jewish History, the truth is that none were of cultural, historical or archituctral significance.

A porn-free Passover

Passover, which begins Saturday night, is about being delivered from bondage, and Luke Ford blogs that this will be his first porn-free Pesach in six years, and only the second since 1995. He posts this reaction from a rabbi:

Glad to see you cut your ties with the porn industry, that will make it easier for you to investigate your spirituality - it’s hard to ride with one foot on one horse & one foot on the other (esp. when the 2 horses are going in opposite directions).

Spirituality & sexuality are closely related, as Swaggart & Friends can tell you. But, out-of-control sexuality is probably the biggest enemy of spiritual connection.

The harder piece to shake may be the cynical attitude, esp. since you’ve seen so much hypocrisy & people not being what they claimed. If our Orthodox Jews had 100% integrity, that would be easy, but we’re as prone to human failings and hypocrisy as any other group. The only thing we claim is that we try to live with wisdom, try to do G-d’s Will, and every once in a while, get to establish a fleeting connection with the Divine (while attempting to achieve Deveikus, a constant and conscious connection with Him). It’s worth fighting that cynicism, even if only in the privacy of your mind, because the fruits of victory are close relationships with yourself, others and G-d.

Beckham's boy to enter Jewish day school

If Jews and anti-Semites have one thing in common, it's that they spend all day talking about who is and isn't Jewish. David Beckham has been the subject of much of this discussion. Further fueling speculation that the Galaxy's biggest salary is more than just "half-Jewish," he and Posh Spice have decided to enroll their 3-year-old son at a Jewish school:

The former Manchester United and England captain moved to Los Angeles in 2007, after signing a five-year contract with L.A. Galaxy.

The Sun states that the couple last week visited the nursery school, which is "attached to a Jewish temple in Los Angeles," to meet with staff.

However, the report quotes a source as saying that there is "no plan" for three-year-old Cruz "to be educated in the Jewish faith."

David Beckham is often reported to have Jewish roots on his mother's side, and, according to The Sun, he recently referred to himself as "half Jewish."

The Beckhams have matching Hebrew tattoos showing a line taken from the Song of Songs. The tattoos read: "I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me."

In Los Angeles, where schools are so bad, people go through a lot of measures to avoid sending their kids to public schools.

'Family Guy' finds 'Jewish' doc

You know, I've really been looking for a Jewish ophthalmologist who performs laser eye surgery.

The best rabbis in all the land

In a scoop reserved for the Jewish Journal's often-irreverent Up Front feature, Amy Klein got an advanced copy of this year's list of America's top rabbis, which followed last year's inaugural expedition in ranking the rabbinate.

Last year, when Newsweek published its inaugural list of America's 50 most influential rabbis, Jay Sanderson, one of the list's creators, said he was surprised by how much buzz it generated.

"We had hoped it would be provocative and it would open up conversation about religious leaders in America today," Sanderson said.

But he was shocked at how many newspapers and bloggers -- more than 100 -- picked up the story. Even the Aryan Nation Web site used the list to show how the Jews run Hollywood, he said.

Jews around the country -- including many rabbis -- were talking about who made the list, who didn't make the list, who shouldn't have made the list and what would be a better list.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, again topped the list of influentials. A new category was added this year, though, that ranked top pulpit rabbis, and it too was headlined by an Angeleno: Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple, who at this time seven years ago gave one of the more memorable Passover sermons in a long, long time.

Sanderson collaborated on the list with News Corp EVP Gary Ginsberg and Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton, whose Jewish journey I profiled last fall. Newsweek's got the list up now.