Kapporos mishegoss continued

I was discussing kapporos with a non-Jewish friend the other day:

Me: so you swing the chicken around.
Her: right...
Me: And you transfer your sins to it.
Her: What?
Me: I know, I know.

Her: How the Hell does that work?
Me: I don't know if they explain it all that well.
Her: Could you transfer your sins to something else, like a guinea pig? Or a vegetable?
Me: I think it's supposed to be an animal, except of course when you just subsitute money. Anyway, then they slaughter it and you give the meat to a poor family.
Her: WHAT? Why would a poor family want to eat your sin-filled chicken?

She has a point. No one wants a chicken with SARS or bird flu, but someone else's sins are somehow supposed to taste great with matzoh balls? And why a chicken? And why do women need to use hens, and men roosters?

Incidentally, this Village Voice piece had a comment that made me wonder: " Sacrificial birds sell for between $8 and $10, but it's not uncommon to spend up to $100 each. The money goes to charity."

Charity's great, but what's with this bizarre oneupmanship thing? A similar thing happens during Sukkot, where some people seem almost desparate to get the best lulav and etrog. (There was a great example of this in Ushpizin, which taught us the valuable lesson that if you're totally destitute and about to be evicted, and somehow you miraculously get some money, you should immediately go out and buy a 200-dollar etrog.)

Or am I just imagining this?

Provocative

Ok, maybe I'm just thick, but here's a question:

What's more provocative?

A- Jewish settlers attacking Palestinian farmers and preventing them from harvesting fruits on their own land, an act which serves no purpose other than making the settlers feel big and the Palestinians feel humiliated, and which makes the Jews look bad in the process; or

B- Left-wing (presumably) Israeli activists peacefully escorting said farmers to their fields and acting as human shields to protect them from the afore-mentioned vikings settlers.

Well, the IDF says B, and as we all know, the army is always right.

The Israel Defense Forces is demanding that Palestinian farmers not allow Israeli and foreign sympathizers to escort them during the olive harvest to places where military protection is needed against abusive settlers, Palestinian sources in the Nablus region told Haaretz. An Israeli security source confirmed the report, saying that IDF officers have been influenced by statements of settlers, who say they are enraged during the harvest by the presence of Israeli leftists who act as provocateurs. A 2005 memo to soldiers from the Civil Administration regarding the olive-picking season states: "Involvement of various entities, Israeli and foreign, is expected, as an 'aid' to the Palestinians in the harvest and as a motive for creating provocations."

In what ways are the lefties provocateurs? The only theory I can come up with for that interpretation is if you start with the assumption that the settlers have the God-given right to smash Palestinian trees and the occaisonal skull. Now, I don't happen to know what verse that's from, but if the good salt-of-the-dune folks over in Itamar say God gave them the ok, I guess I'll have to take their word for it. It's funny, though, God seems to have said the same thing to a bunch of other folks, too (Inquisition, Cossacks, KKK).

Oh, God, you umpteen-timing whore. And here we thought you only whispered sweet nothings into our collective ear. Where's a daytime talk show host when you need them?

No no no no no!

In case there was any doubt that IKEA had to be stopped...

IKEA is continuing its assault on the religious sector in
Israel. In the next few days, the company is planning to open a synagogue inside
their furniture store in Netanya. The purpose: To attract more shoppers from the
religious sector. The company's management said in reaction that IKEA has many
religious employees as well as visitors, and it was built to give an answer to
their needs.

I'd be interested in hearing about some other businesses that do this. I don't remember hearing that, for instance, Agriprocessors in Postville has a shul in their workplace. What about the diamond industry? Lots of Jews there. And is this common for businesses in Israel? Does Israeli Wal-mart have this?

Using this logic, we should start setting up synagogues anywhere frum Jews are likely to spend a lot of time. Gas stations, dry cleaners', kosher Chinese restaurants...

All I'm saying is it's a slippery (and stupid) slope. People shouldn't be going to services inside a furniture store.

Idolatry?

First, a disclaimer: Yes, I understand why the Western wall is important to millions of Jews (and Muslims, apparently). The temples, yada-yada, fine.

But this is just ridiculous:

The Kotel Hakatan came to public attention in 1972. The Jerusalem municipality temporarily stopped work undertaken by the Religious Affairs Ministry in the Western Wall tunnel, after it severely compromised the structural safety of one of the Arab houses close to the Iron Gate, one of the entrance gates to the Temple Mount compound.

The house became cracked and its residents and their neighbors who lived above the excavation area feared that their houses would meet the same fate as those of the Mugrabi neighborhood, which were destroyed in the construction of the Western Wall's plaza. The initial proposal to declare the house dangerous and wreck it as a public hazard was blocked by the municipality. A city engineer, acting on the mayor's orders, tried to save the building, but his men were very reckless. The city workers drilled four holes in the wall adjacent to the house (the Kotel Hakatan) to provide bar supports for the house.

The country was in an uproar. The drilled wall was the northern segment of the Western Wall. The distance of the drilling from the famous Western Wall, and the fact that it was an innocent mistake did nothing to stop the storm. The Orthodox and religious sector considered the mistake to be a sacrilege. The then chief rabbi, Yitzhak Nissim, conducted a protest prayer service at the site. The rabbi of the Western Wall collected the fragments of the drilled stones and presented them to the congregation in glass jars in the Western Wall Plaza. Dust from the drilling was collected in vases for safekeeping.

The Muslim religious leadership was also concerned, for completely different reasons. In late Muslim tradition, the Prophet Mohammed tied his steed to the Western Wall on his night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. The then mufti of Jerusalem suggested summoning Muslim clerics to the Kotel Hakatan to plug the holes with their own hands.

I'm sorry, but it's a freaking WALL! And it's not even the IMPORTANT wall for Jews, because it's really just the retaining wall of the guy who built his temple AROUND the original temple! The original mountain is still there, and the temples are long-gone- stop worshipping bricks! It's just silly!

Not to vastly oversimplify everything, but might this sort of logic be part of why people are still killing each other over there? Land's sacred, sand's sacred, walls are sacred, even dust is sacred, apparently- and no, the dust is rightfully mine, for as it says in the Torah, "thou shalt sweep up my holy dust and deposit in a vase, and if no vase can be found, thou shalt use a coffee can, but not before washing it thoroughly. Thus sayeth the Lord." So, you know, piss off, Khalid.

Seriously, collecting dust from the Kotel? Are you guys nuts? I mean, at least the Chabadniks worship Schneerson's actual chair. Jesus.

Wingnuts, part 2

Anyone ever hear of Zion Oil? No? Then have I got a story for you, courtesy of a 2 and a half year-old Hal Lindsey column. (For the benefit of the ADD-afflicted, I'll paraphrase the boring parts:)

Once there was a small nation named Israel. Israel had a lot of problems- its people kept worshipping idols and had trouble staying in line with what its priests God wanted, so every once in a while the priests had to slap the people around a little. Sometimes they used special people called judges to help defend them against outside enemies. Sometimes they used kings. And sometimes the Israelites just got their butts kicked.

Eventually, the second kingdom of Israel came around, and there were still problems. One group that liked to hear the sound of its own voice was the prophets, a group of malcontents and holier-than-thous who constantly castigated the Israelites for, well, being jerks. But every once in a while they stopped sniffing their crack pipe and prophesying dire destruction or alien abductions, and would deliver some good news, like, "if you do what we God says (for a change), you'll be prosperous! You'll get nice things like goats, cattle, and other agricultural products! Even olive oil!"

The Israelites liked this. Olive oil, in addition to being yummy, was also somewhat expensive, and generally signified wealth (as it did for many Mediterranean societies).

But then, thousands of years later, a group called the Protestants came around. They decided they didn't need to learn Hebrew (King James' banker was Reform), and that they would come up with their own translation of the Bible, which wasn't very accurate. They also ignored, rejected, and sometimes burned all the Jewish commentary of the Bible they could get their hands on. This made for a very confusing document, but the Protestants didn't mind, particularly as they were too busy killing each other, as well as everyone else, to pay much attention.

Enter Hal Lindsey. Hal, would you care to take it from here?

At just this time of world turmoil being brought about
by OPEC, I believe we are about to witness another one of those miracles
promised to Israel. What if Israel were to strike oil? This certainly would make
them wealthy. More than that, it would change the political balance of power in
the Middle East.

A man named John Brown – without much more than his faith – has put together an oil company and purchased leases in a specific place in Israel. It is a in a location that is very much a part of some important prophecies in the Old Testament. He founded the Zion Oil and Gas Company as the result of studying prophecies God proclaimed to two of the sons of the Patriarch Jacob.

...Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring ... By the God of your father who will help you, And by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, Blessings of the deep that lies beneath ... The blessings of your father have excelled the blessings of my ancestors, up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. They shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him who was separate from his brothers.
– Genesis 49:22, 25- 26

Note that it predicts his great blessing will come from "the deep that lies beneath" his land. And specifically on "crown of his head." The land that was allotted to Joseph's two sons forms the profile of a man's head.

Now listen to another prophecy about the blessing of another of Jacob's sons whose land adjoins Joseph's. Moses proclaimed blessings on Jacob's sons just before he died. He predicted concerning Asher:

Asher is most blessed of sons; let him be favored by his brothers, and let him dip his foot in OIL.– Deuteronomy 33:24

The land allotted to Asher looks like a leg with a foot. Its toe points straight at the crown of Joseph's head.

Zion Oil's leases are directly under where Asher's toe points. Coincidence? If it were anywhere other than Israel, I would say it is merely coincidence. But here we are dealing with a nation of miracles in the crosshairs of God's prophetic Word.

At this moment, Zion Oil and Gas is selling stock in order to finish its first well. It is right in the center of an area that geologically looks promising. I believe the main reason others have failed to find oil is that they did not drill deep enough.

Investment in oil exploration is always a big gamble. But, I believe this is a gamble worth taking for the sake of Israel. Besides, I believe God's Word is giving some pretty good clues here.

Of course, Hal was correct. It wasn't just a coincidence- Mr. Brown had specifically chosen that location after consulting his Bible, and, just like Hal, deciding that "oil" could only refer to crude petroleum. Of course, it's been almost three years now and Zion Oil has yet to strike it rich, but that's probably just due to something else. Maybe God is punishing the board of directors for something, like a lack of faith, or religious bigotry, or nepotism.

Personally, I'm looking forward to when they uncover a major deposit of Quaker State.

P.S. Check out Hal's handy-dandy map. Note the captions.

Wingnuttery in Israel

First, in case anyone wasn't sure the "New Sanhedrin" hadn't already lost its mind, take a look at this:

A group of worshipers, some of them from New Sanhedrin,
a group headed by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz that sees itself as the successor to the
original Sanhedrin (religious court that ruled ancient Israel), violated Jewish
law by blowing the shofar on Shabbat during Rosh Hashanah services.

Rabbi Akiva Yosef Schlesinger blew the shofar on
Shabbat 101 years ago, but did so almost clandestinely out of fear of
ultra-Orthodox zealots in Jerusalem. Schlesinger was a Zionist Haredi who
believed that blowing the shofar on Shabbat would halt the spread of the pogroms
in Russia.

Let's see, 101 years ago would be 1905. Well, that totally worked. Well done, Kiv-ster! I wonder what the Sanhedrin thought this would cure. Gays? Arabs? Pork products?

One of the people behind Saturday's shofar-blowing was Prof. Hillel Weiss of Elkana, a major figure in the movement to establish a Third Temple in Jerusalem.

The shock, oy.

A press release issued before Rosh Hashanah by the planners
said that, "Now, when we are facing the war of Gog and Magog (the apocalyptic
war described in the Book of Ezekiel), shall we not postpone the decree ... by
sounding the shofar?"

Well, that answers my question. And who wants to bet that the great apocalypse HAS, in fact, been pushed back for at least another year? Who knew?

For those who don't know, the Sanhedrin is the "Council of Sages" that was the governing body of Jews back in ancient Israel. To use a non-Jewish comparison, the "new Sanhedrin" is to the "old Sanhedrin" what New Coke is to Plutonium. I have to say, I'm happy they managed to restrain themselves and ONLY blew a ram's horn, instead of, say, butchering a cow and sprinkling its blood around. Or stoning a rebellious son (Meir Amar?).

So, ok, I get why it would be totally impractical to excommunicate Chabad as some people like David Berger would like. But can't we at least agree that Steinsaltz has passed out of normative Judaism? I'm not saying we have to burn his books, but I'd at least like to know that guilt-ridden kindly Reform grandparents aren't giving the Steinsaltz Tanya to their grandkids at their B'Nai Mitzvahs.

Or is that throwing the (bearded) baby out with the (insane) bathwater?

Middos

For those who don't know, Middos are "attributes". Good middos are things like kindness, humility, fear of God (or G-d, if you like). Bad middos include selfishness, arrogance, etc. It's all pretty standard.

So I came across a book a few weeks ago purportedly designed to teach Ortho youngsters good Middos. Now, maybe it does this, I can't say, not being frum or five. I can attest however, that like other pedagogical texts from the Ortho world, it has plenty of unintentional humor (and some that even seems intentional from the other. Mazel tov, Rav Chait!)

I have a couple of favorites. One is where they're showing a kind of Goofus-and-Gallant set-up for the various selfish jerks on the boat. One of them is of a yeshiva student stewing in his own... piety, while a cantor (with a cool old-fashioned cassock, no less) screeches out devotion, or something. Maybe he's a Karliner-Stoliner Hasid? Incognito? So the "bad middos" version of the conversation is something like this:

Yeshiva Bocher: I hate you, cantor! You're the worst cantor ever! If you don't shut up I'll make you eat your hat! (Pulls cassock over the guy's head, Andy Capp-style).

Book: NO! BAD, BAD MIDDOS! The RIGHT way to do it is like this.

YB: O dear and exalted cantor! I don't think you realize how important your job is- each one of your prayers has the potential to go straight to Hashem [or G-sh-m if you're super, uber pious]. But only if you speak properly and pronounce each word correctly. Here, let me show you how.

Cantor: Oh, thank you so much! For years I've dreamed that someone would teach me the right way to pray! Now I'll be sure to do it!

To which my reaction was a very upraised eyebrow. Now, I don't know any cantors personally, but if being a cantor is anything like, say, being anyone else, I'm pretty sure I'd be much more likely to give someone a bop in the nose and tell them to shove off than thank them for smarmily correcting my prayers. Or am I just weird?

Another highlight, which I mentioned to a female Ortho friend of mine (who had read the book) in passing:

FY: So, you know the Middos book?
Her: Yeah. Some people seem to have issues with it. I've discussed it with friends and there seems to be a pretty clear split along ideological lines. Some Ortho parents don't like it because they say there are too many words for their kids to read them alone. And non-frum folks had some issues with certain parts, too.
FY: Like what?
Her: Well, like that the only middos the women get are related to shopping (don't brag about your fur coat, don't spend beyond your means, don't wear slut shoes when you're eight, etc.)
FY: Yeah, I noticed some of that, too- like when the Middos people survive their shipwreck and they're washed onto a deserted island, and there's this beautiful 2-page sunset painting with all the men praying and thanking God for saving them, and they're crying and really into it... and then you look over to the bottom right corner and see the four women half-way down the hill, praying in a bush.
Her: (shrug) At least they let them pray!

I guess the moral here is that if you happen to be stranded on an island and want to make an open-air, outdoor, "au naturel" shul, you don't need to go to all the trouble of making a fancy grille, balcony, or even curtain for your mechitza. A bush works just as well.

Fallout from Foley-gate

It's official: there is no Republican sin that cannot be blamed on Democrats. On the car radio this afternoon, I got to hear a conservative opine that the "real" issue was the left-wing media that was trying to use this in the election. Riiight, because we all know scandal-mongering and wedge-issues haven't been prime election fodder for say, ever.

Then we get into really fun apologist stuff- I heard one person say that there had never been any Senate page sex-scandals before the 1990s, which sounds like a stretch to me. I mean, if we have people boinking slaves (Jefferson) and maids (Thurmond), I don't think a page is so far-fetched.

So then I started looking on FOX to see what their reaction was- O'Reilly apparently has no sympathy for Foley and called him a predator. His guest Ann Coulter said that she felt sorry for him, but also mentioned that Democrats just "didn't get" why Christians weren't going to react to the Foley story the way Dems wanted them to (you know, with revulsion, horror, and more than a little outrage that the party that runs on family values is also responsible for Senators helping each other to cover up sexual misconduct, and, in Hastert's case, possibly willfully turning a blind eye to events that should have been investigated)

Nooo. Coulter started out with this gem: "Democrats... look, if I knew as much about Islam as they know about American Christians, I'd be guilty of a hate crime." Yeah, because we all know there's nothing Christians like more than homosexual pedophillia. (Please leave all choirboy jokes at the door.)

Ann continued: "No, we Christians, we feel sorry for people like Mark Foley. I hope he gets the help he needs. It's a tragedy. But we really do feel sorry for Foley... just like we feel sorry for women who have abortions."

Wow. I didn't realize those were, um, part of the same end of the moral taint scale. Good to know.

What else... Hastert was on the radio covering his ass, claiming he doesn't know a thing about anything, and he doesn't know whose job it was to tell him, but obviously they dropped the ball, and it's really too bad the Dems are piling on this issue, because so what if he missed that some page was getting "over-affectionate" emails, I mean, after all, he was trying to deal with the budget and the war on terror. Kudos, Denny.

Oh, and Hannity bitched out the various conservatives who are calling for Hastert to resign- "he didn't know about it, and it's outrageous, and why aren't you ashamed of yourself for defaming a good man like this." Yes, because we all know that in politics, if someone says something in an interview, that must be THE TRUTH . I mean, that's totally how Republicans react to Dems in scandals, right? (That reminds me, Coulter tried to deflect by mentioning a sex scandal involving a Democrat and page a few decades ago- "Nobody went after Tip O'Neill". Touche.)

The best part about all this is the suggestion that the Republicans didn't do anything about Foley because they were trying to be "gay-sensitive". Or, as Gingrich and Coulter both put it, "Can you imagine the reaction from the Left if Republicans had started investigating a gay Senator just because he asked his page what he wanted for his birthday?"

That's right, I forgot, it's the Democrats' fault. Just like everything else.

You know, I just have to wonder what the reaction would have been if this was an openly gay Democratic senator?

The Masons: They'll make you such a deal

Poor Masons. Apparently they're so hard-up for membership that they're actively recruiting- and relaxing their membership requirements.

But the Masons’ numbers have been steadily dwindling — whatever their secrets are, they apparently do not have one for avoiding death — and their ranks have been graying. So the New York State Masons have followed other state Masonic societies in doing something that they would have once considered heretical: they are actively reaching out for new members. And, in the process, a famously reticent fraternal organization that now puts a premium on its community service has lifted its veil of secrecy just a bit. ...the Masons are giving public tours of the New York
Grand Lodge Headquarters.

You know, I'm sure there was an issue of "Justice League" or "Superfriends" that went like that: "And here, Timmy, is the doomsday device."

"Wow, Batman! Can I press it?"

"Don't be retarded, Timmy. Stupid kids won't be accepted as Junior Members."

"Aww, but you let Aqua-Lad in!"

The lodge also hired a public relations firm to spread the word about its 225th anniversary, which was last month.

First, public relations firm, no. Second, this firm obviously dropped the ball, because usually you're supposed to let people know about anniversaries BEFORE they happen. That's like if people spread the word about the bicentennial in November.

And the Masons have run advertisements in movie theaters and run one-day classes to award the first three Masonic degrees in a single session. Until then, would-be Masons had to spend months learning what they needed to know to rise from Entered Apprentice to Fellowcraft to Master Mason.

“We’re still not thinking of it as recruiting or trying to amass people,” said Thomas M. Savini, the director of the library at the New York Grand Lodge Headquarters, on West 23rd Street and the Avenue of the Americas, “but I think we’ve reached a point where we realized that not saying anything isn’t making it any easier.”
They had also reached a point where they could not ignore what others were saying about them in “The Da Vinci Code” and other bestsellers like “The Book of Fate” by Brad Meltzer. “What ‘The Da Vinci Code’ gave us was an opportunity to say, ‘Here’s what we are,’” Mr. Savini said.

Man, we Jews totally should have done that after "The Passion". "Next week's sermon: Jews- it's been a long time since we spoke Aramaic and covertly denounced crazed would-be Messiahs God made flesh."

Now, I don't know how to feel about this. The penny-pinching Shylock in me is rubbing his stingy, almost crablike pincers together at the thought of getting a master mason degree in only one class- that might almost make up for not going to grad school- but then I came across this:

Geometry is but one of the seven liberal arts. A Mason who could not remember the other six would need only to look up, for they are written on the ceiling: arithmetic, rhetoric, logic, grammar, music and astronomy. The four cardinal virtues — ortitude, prudence, temperance and justice — are written there, too.

Never mind, I'm out.

The best part of all this is that the Masons still aren't accepting women, which makes total sense- after all, there's desperate and then there's, well... desperate.

You have GOT to be kidding me

WorldNetDaily, I hate you very much.

A new study is confirming that if you want to make money in the movie business, get out your Bible and read the values it teaches.

No, see, if you're just exploiting those values to get gullible people to spend money to see the movies... oh never mind.

...Hollywood movies with strong Christian worldviews make two to seven times as much money as those flicks with explicit sex and nudity.

And we all know that C.W.movies have nothing else in them that would make anyone watch them, right? Say, talking vegetables or lions? You make it sound like Narnia was a 2-hour Billy Graham revival tape.

The assessment looked at nearly 2,700 of the top movies at the box office from 1996 through 2005, and said while pundits and advertisers like to believe that sex and nudity sells, nothing could be further from the truth.

"For example, in 2005, movies with a very strong Christian worldview, such as 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,' averaged nearly $65 million at the box office, but movies with extreme, explicit sex and nudity, such as 'Sin City,' and 'Inside Deep Throat,' only averaged $11.2 million or $11.7 million," the report said.

Narnia was also marketted to children. How much does the average Disney movie make? Am I just missing all the Christ imagery in "Aladdin" and "Shrek"?

"The vast majority of moviegoers, which includes the 141 million Americans who go to church every week, prefer positive Christian movies with morally uplifting content," the report said.
"If Hollywood executives and filmmakers want to make more money at the box office, they should make more movies that reflect a very strong Christian worldview with very strong moral values," the study said.

Which is how we got THIS bit of spine-tingling news.

So let's recap- Christians are now saying that they WANT Hollywood to sell their religion back to them in dumbed-down entertainment. Yeah. I wonder how long that'll last. Any bets that we'll still be hearing about Hollywood "co-opting" and "overcommericalizing" Christianity next 'holiday season'? Anyone?

Kapporos

I've never done it. I've never seen anyone do it. The thought of someone swinging a chicken over their head and then slaughtering it seems kind of wrong to me (though also a little funny, in a cartoony-kind-of-way).

So I'm kind of conflicted- on the one hand, part of me was cheering DovBear's rant about the "shlugging masses" a few days ago. Then I read this on Ynet- Reform Rabbis saying that doing kapporos is mean and verging on the un-Jewish, and my first thought was, "shut up, Rabbi. Get back in your yurt and pass the free-trade guacamole". I wonder if this is an example of how criticisms from within a tradition or community are somehow seen as having more validity? It's interesting; DovBear doesn't seem to say anything in his post that is substantially different than these Reform rabbis (in fact he actually goes farther, implying the practitioners are stupid and potentially engaging in idol worship), yet I only have the gut-reaction to the Reform guys. Maybe I'm more of a denomo-snob than I thought. (Or maybe this issue just plays more into the common Reform stereotypes.) Maybe it's the fact that DB is more angry and less whiny?

In principle, I support people's right to do what they want as part of their religion, but there's the sticky issue of "as long as it doesn't harm anyone else". This ritual certainly harms the chickens, but considering that they'd be slaughtered anyway (except without their complimentary 'last roller-coaster-ride'), I just don't know how to look at this one. And you also get into the problems of where the border for animal rights should lie.

Tricky, very tricky.

Haredi man dies, comes back as a dog (or so his neighbors say)

This dog looks confused. Or, you know, reincarnated.

Wait a minute, I see a real problem here- if people can come back as animals, who's to say the Messiah (Schneerson or not, take your pick) hasn't been hanging around here for a while and we just haven't noticed! Wait, did that pigeon just look at me funny?

Moschiach! Come back! I'll feed you breadcrumbs!

Hat-tip: Failed Messiah.

Path to 9/11 controversy continues

Is the Great-Uncle Milt in your life giving you grief because you still don't want to watch "Road to 9/11" on his TiVo? Americablog has a list of some of the more eggregious bits:

Here

Here

Here

More

and More

And don't forget the Internet's favorite lady of the night.

Americablog is also pushing for various people defamed in the film (like American Airlines, whose crime was that its name sounds "too familiar" to U.S. Airways, which is the airline company that actually let Mohammed Atta onto the plane in the scene) to sue Disney/ABC. Not sure how I feel about this, but it's all very interesting.

Speaking of Evangelicals...

Is this a good thing? Is the Evangelical movement really likely to change, at least in how it gets its message across? Or is it more likely that this will be used as a PR move to help encourage more people to join the movement and to try to blunt criticism? I for one know that it's sure more difficult to go after Rick Warren than Jerry Falwell.

What a world.

Passion, p.2? The son of the Trinity Broadcast Network's founders is making a movie about the Book of Esther. Well, sort of about the Book of Esther. Don't get me wrong, creative lisense is a wonderful thing (remind me to tell you sometime about my idea for a comic book based on the Book of Judges), but am I the only one who hears something like this and gets a little, I don't know, alarmed?

Crouch concluded his talk by plugging his audience’s power to shape the destiny of his newest movie. “I can’t get New Yorkers to see this film,” he said, “but you can.”... Crouch, 44, is the CEO of Gener8Xion Entertainment Inc., a Los Angeles-based production company that creates what he calls “value-based” — code for Christian content — films. His latest project, “One Night With The King,” features Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia who saved her people from annihilation, as its heroine and is set for nationwide release October 13.

... “It’s Christian money paying for a Jewish film,” he added.

Taking the opposite tack as Gibson, Crouch — who may have learned a lesson or two from the icy reception in Jewish circles to “The Passion of the Christ” — is going out of his way to court Jewish support for his film in advance of its release. Screenings for rabbis and leaders of Jewish organizations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are in the planning stages, according to Juda Engelmayer, a public relations executive with strong ties to the Jewish community who is in charge of organizing the previews. A screening before the Knesset, which Lapin facilitated, had to be canceled following the outbreak of the war with Hezbollah, Crouch said.

That's funny, I didn't know "Knesset" meant "multiplex." Thanks, Rav. But wait, Lapin says it's kosher, right? So what's the problem? Oh yeah, Lapin's a crackpot.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a close ally of Christian conservative leaders and one of the most vocal Jewish defenders of “The Passion of the Christ,” has also lent his support. The debate surrounding Gibson’s movie, which drew fierce criticism from some Jewish communal leaders and commentators, is not something Crouch or his film’s advocates would like to repeat, they said.

...During the editing process, Crouch turned to Lapin — whose defense of Gibson and attacks on Jewish communal leaders have made him a controversial figure in the broader Jewish community — for guidance on biblical accuracy. Lapin, who in recent years was the host of a television program for TBN, said that while fictional elements that don’t appear in the Book of Esther are woven throughout the film, as they are in “Haddassah: One Night With the King,” the novel by Tommy Tenney on which the script is based, it is done “sensitively in a way that no Jew can take offense.”

Translation: if you're offended, you're a whiny "oversensitive" type. Probably even a PC-er, you dirty pinko, you. How dare you impede the great art being done here? You're probably the same type of "Biblical-accuracy" Nazi that yelled at Mel for having Jewish Temple guards toss Hay-seuss off a bridge. It was totally in the Bible- in his MIND! Duh! (See Book of Mel, chapter 5: the Deadening, now with Jews!)

Back to Lapin:

“This is the only blip on the radar screen of history where Christians are making a dramatization of a book of the Bible that is totally respectful,” said Lapin, calling the film “historical.”

Hey Rav, first, dramatizations and historical generally don't jive together too well. Also, how are you an authority on this? I must have missed the spot on your wall that mentions your "Near-Eastern archaeologist/cultural anthropologist" degree (though I'm sure if you spend some time on it, you'll be able to come up with a nifty template in Photoshop). Reading the Book of Esther really doesn't give you the qualifications to determine whether of not a given depiction of Esther's world is "historical", particularly since it, you know, happens in PERSIA.

And again, "respectful" is a really tricky term. Mel thought he was being respectful (and you agreed with him) when he said "we all killed Christ". Sorry, that's not my idea of respectful, we simply have to agree to disagree there. But you don't get to say, "Yes, on the basis of me being a rabbi (rabbis get quizzed on ancient Persian history all the time, as I'm sure my educated readers know), I'm positive that my OLD BOSS' kid has done a fine job on his dinky movie. Anyone who says otherwise is a self-hating Jew, or even better, a Christian-hating liberal."

Still, Lapin acknowledged that some would undoubtedly use the film as a tool for proselytizing Jews.

Duh?

But on the whole, he praised the movie’s producers and the evangelical population in the United States for their friendship with the Jewish people. “Exactly the same people who made and support this movie are the same people keeping Bush’s toes to the fire on his support of Israel.”

Because that's totally topical. Has your check come yet, Danny-boy? Well, if the Rav's on board, I guess this film must be good for the Jews. After all, he's never steered us wrong before.

The ADL comment is interesting, too:

Eric Greenberg, associate director for interfaith affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, said he had not seen the film, but expressed skepticism that a movie based on a novel by a Christian pastor could accurately portray the story from a traditional Jewish perspective. Greenberg said that the film should not be presented as “either historical or biblical.”

It's a great point, but it also makes me wonder if an evangelical could ever make a movie about a Jewish theme (or character, or story) that I or many other Jews would accept. I think it would ultimately depend on how willing they were to sublimate their own POV (which would quite likely be heavily informed by their belief system and, in particular, specific interpretations of a given narrative that they were taught as children or adults) to mainline Jewish ones.

Round-up

-Effi Eitam decided he'd rather be more like Meir Kahane than Rav Kook. But the Forward's J.J. Goldberg suggests that Eitam's suggestion that Israel kick out its Arab citizens has more to do with fear of "giving up the 40-year-old dream" of the settlements than anything else. What's really interesting is the reaction (or non-reaction) of Eitam's Religious Zionist peers. "Eitam? Who? Isn't that a kind of pancake?"

-Turns out Senator George "Macaca" Allen is half-Jewish. Even better, he's also black (well, Sephardic. Half-there.)! But, you know, he doesn't want to talk about that, because for him, politics is supposed to be about the music issues:

“To be getting into what religion my mother is, I don’t think is relevant,” Allen responded angrily. “Why is that relevant – my religion, Jim’s religion or the religious beliefs of anyone out there?”
...“ We in the Allen household were simply taught that what matters is a person’s character, integrity, effort, and performance – not race, gender, ethnicity or religion. And so whenever we would ask my mother through the years about our family background on her side, the answer always was, ‘Who cares about that?’"

Yeah, you Jewbag reporters, have some common decency! Wait, no, it's ok, see, he's Jewish, so it's really just an inside joke!

I wonder if he'll find out he's Indian next?

-The Jewish Journal has a fun article about Jewish pirates. Not bad, but we all know the REALLY cool black sheep are Jewish ninjas (and the occaisonal Jewish clown). Come on, Kaifeng was, like, right next door! Also, enough about the Sephardim already. BO-ring!

- The whole "90% of Americans" believe in God thing is stupid and inaccurate. Tell all your idiot friends, neighbors and relatives (hi, Uncle Milt!) to stop referencing it in order to justify burning a Christmas tree on your front lawn. You know the ones.

[A new study] went further by asking respondents what sort of God they believed in. The results put the perennial debate over the role of religion in public life in a new light.

The survey identifies four conceptions of God, which it labels A, B, C and D.

In your face, F! That's right, Fafnir, Norse God of arm-wrestling, you're officially out of the running. But thanks for coming out.

The WSJ has more on this. (Hat-tip: Conservadox.)

-Lastly, if you're like me, you've probably heard a few Hitler (or Holocaust-era) jokes in your time. (I can list five right off the top of my head- the bicycle-riders, the fake tiger, the man who rescues Hitler from a car crash, the left-handed can-opener, the Jewish boy in a classroom, and the Jew who wanted to change his name. Come to think of it, that's six.) Anyway, there's a new book out about Nazi-era humor (no, not NAZI humor, stupid, that would be different and cater to a much different audience). It looks pretty interesting- and it also offers some fascinating insight into the "Hitler hypnotized the Germans" theory that's so often trotted around. Apparently, during the middle-years of the war, a fair amount of the population was already starting to think twice about "der Mustache"- and one of the safe(er) ways of spreading this discontent was through humor. Worth a look.

Middle Ground, I'm sure it's around here somewhere.

So, confidentiality and the war on terror. I get it. Some things need to stay classified. But there needs to be a way of determining and enforcing that secrets are actually, you know, secret-worthy, and not just people in the govt or armed forces trying to cover their asses. Cause, you know, that's not cool and stuff.

Case in point: Mike Spann. It's two months shy of five years since Spann was killed, and the CIA
still won't tell his parents how he died. Now, I'll fully admit to not having worked for "the Agency". I don't even watch it on TV. So it's possible there's something here I'm missing. But I don't see how, half a decade after the revolt at Mazar-e-Sharif, there could be that much sensitive info for evildoers to exploit.

And then there's this secret prison thing. Again, I get the idea- but this really doesn't sit well with me. First of all, I don't see why the prisons had to be secret- it made no practical difference. Khalid Sheikh Omar was still sitting in a cell.

There's the torture stuff- not cool. Yes, I am glad we are not pulling body parts off, but waterboarding is right on the line of acceptability, and I'm not sure that it isn't crossing the line,
either. Yes, I realize these are bad people. Awful. Evil. And we're getting information that's saving lives. But... damn. I just don't know.

Tie the CIA's hands? No. Use all means at our disposal? I can't make that call. But politicians and agency vets should be looking at this information and making clear-cut distinctions on what is and isn't permissable. Should the US follow international law? What happens if we don't? These are important questions and conversations to have, but we aren't talking about them, instead we're getting into mudslinging bullshit all over again.

And please- stop the BS doublespeak. People supporting these programs should at least have the balls to call it by its name- sorry Mr. O'Reilly, but yes, waterboarding is torture,
keeping someone up for however long without sleep is torture, too. It doesn't matter if you don't think it counts as torture, it meets the legal definition of it. (You also don't think certain things count as sexual harassment *cough*) It's immaterial. This is not a matter of opinion, but of law. Now, if we want to talk about breaking the law, that's one thing, but we have to at least start by acknowledging what the hell we're doing in the first place. Covering up the real discussion with crap like "Coerced interrogation" and "Persuasive force" is counterproductive. Call it what it is. Torture. No, it's not a nice word, but if you're going to advocate using it, at least have the honesty to call it what it is.

Oh Lazer, we can always count on you...

For a laugh. Or eighteen.

The dear rabbi (who obviously means well) has set his sights on yet another... um... interesting, target: World of Warcraft. Before we start, let me just state that I had a friend drop out of school because of WoW, so I'm well aware of its effects.

That said... this is stupid.

Lazer:

expressly forbidding the use of a computer for anything other than commerce or word processing, and specifically prohibiting the use of a computer for games and movies by adults and children alike. In addition to their sources in the Gemorra and Rishonim, they write: "Allowing a child to absorb himself in computer games turns his mind from Torah and his heart to idleness… this creates a drastic setback in a child's spirituality."

Hey, what about fun Christian games like Saints of Virtue? Just because the rabbis don't KNOW about games that combine spirituality with... um... computers, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You know, like how the Talmud says lice come from sweat. Same thing.

As far as movies go, the Rabbeim cite Shulchan Oruch O.H. 307:15 that prohibits "war books" (adventure stories) because of tomfoolery

So, no book of Judges? What about the upteenth story about how the Baal Shem Tov defeated the Wolfman, the Mummy and Shabbetai Zvi, or how Reb Nachman convinced a prince that he was really a reverse-vampire rooster trapped in the body of a moron? Or Joseph Karo and his daemon? Or Nachmanides winning a disputation with the Inquisition, or Rambam doing pretty much anything? Hey Lazer, what about this, or this? Berel Wein says they're kosher. Does that make him a heretic?

But don't trust the rabbis, let's go to Rav Lazer's own favorite kind of compelling evidence- anecdotal!

In every single case I ever handled of a boy or a girl that went off track, the parents were viewers of DVDs and/or the kids owned computer-game or watched DVDs themselves.

Hey, Rav, I have bad news for you- you know that whole "Haskalah" thing? It happened before computers. Before TV, even. See, it turns out people have this thing called a voicebox... well, never mind. Besides, what about the rate of people who return to Judaism from secular lifestyles (or, God forbid, are even raised secular) who are raised in homes with computers and DVDs? The way you're talking, you'd think only Amish kids became Baal Teshuvahs.

Computer games and DVDs kill time and murder brain development.

Arguable. It depends on the game, the gamer, and how they play, as well as a whole list of other things. You can make almost any activity into a brain-suck if you try hard enough. Even studying Torah. Just ask the kollel-prisoners in Israel, haredi men who could care less about learning Talmud and who are stuck there because they don't have job skills and don't want to serve in the army.

A passive brain – like a passive body – becomes flabby and lazy.

Ah yes, I forgot about the world famous "Shlomo's Gym", of Bnei Brak. Tell them the Vilna Gaon sent you (in a dream, of course) and get half-off your first weight-training session.

You can't learn Gemorra with a flabby and lazy mind, so if your child is a computer game or DVD freak, forget about sending him to a Yeshiva; it's a miracle if he or she will remain Shomer Shabbos. Computer games/DVDs and Torah simply don't mix.

You know, Lazer, this would be a lot easier to swallow if your site didn't have this nice sidebar that hawked EVERY single CD you've ever accidentally touched. As a tech-savvy person, presumably you understand that the media itself is not the problem, it is how it is used. Any hobby can become an addiction, any activity can potentially become a time-suck. (And yes, opinions on exactly what constitutes a time suck can be relative.)

I'd post more on Lazer's actual WoW post, but having read his newest quiz, feel I should really go to bed. (Will next week's quiz will be "Is your beard out of control? How untrimmed is too untrimmed?" Oh, the joys of a post-Cosmo magazine world.)

More tomorrow.

Nothing's Sacred (or so I'm told)

Apologies for the slow-down in postings- it's been a busy few weeks. But eventually something would get my goat enough to post. And don't worry, this one isn't about crap in Israel. No, lucky me, I found bullcrap right in my good ol' USA.

9/11 5 years after. I hate it. I hate every news network splashing a graphic showing a plane hitting a tower. I hate them playing that fucking clip over and over again. I hate the nonstop American flag montages. I know what all these things look like, thank you.

I hate that we still don't have Bin Laden, that Iraq is still a shithole, that Afghanistan is verging ever further out of control, that Iran and North Korea are tooting their war horns, that Putin is engaging in fairly shady-dealings over in Russia, that we're all still driving gas-guzzlers, praising the "moderate Saudis" and that the best Bush and his people can come up with is "people who disagree with me might have maybe liked Hitler, maybe."

I hate that the response to a fraudulent and defamatory movie about 9/11 and the Clinton Administration is to point to that dumb-ass Reagan movie incident. I hate that the collapse of Air America is being used as evidence to suggest that somehow liberalism is an unsuccessful ideology- (half the country voted Democrat in the past two Presidential elections, I don't think Air America going the way of the DoDo really reflects that Democrats are suddenly "waking up").

Am I ashamed of my country? No. But I am saddened by the fact that the political discourse is such that the only way to address questions about the War on Terror (is Iraq a success? Will it be? Is torture justified? Is what we're doing torture? Should US troops be able to be tried for war crimes?), Patriotism, (can you criticize the President? Can you criticize the administration? Can you criticize his opponents? What can you say? What can't you say? Who can you call and not call Hitler? What if you simply think the US flag is ugly?), and basic issues of common sense, accurate research, issues of objectivity, and just plain decency in the media, government, and general society in America today, are being reduced to a zero-sum game.

I don't want to call anybody Hitler. I don't want to pass problems around like the proverbial "doobie". I want to help fix them. I want to have a conversation, understand the other side... and, God forbid, fix something. That's all.

More to come when I have time.

(And no, this doesn't mean I won't still be fisking people. I just might be a little more gentle about it. And stop calling people things like "Chamberlain" or "Goebells-esque".)

Hey, now there's an idea!

I wonder if this would work in the Middle East, too?