Kesher Talk: 12/16/2001

Friday, December 21, 2001

Realtor sorry for ad noting he is not Jewish: Members of the Jewish community in this southern Ontario city are outraged after a real estate salesman mailed out a flyer in which he pointed out he is not Jewish. The flyer was sent to about 200 Guelph homes this month by Peter Ysselstein, a sales representative with Re/Max Realty Specialists Inc., to solicit home-value estimates near the University of Guelph campus.

Israel threatens world peace? The diplomatic career of French Ambassador to Britain Daniel Bernard was said to be in jeopardy yesterday, after he was quoted as having referred to Israel as "that shitty little country" which threatens world peace at a dinner with British media baron Conrad Black. Black's wife, Barbara Amiel , quoted the remark anonymously in a Monday column for the London Daily Telegraph (owned by Black's Hollinger Inc.). "Why should the world be in danger of World War Three because of those people?" she quoted "the ambassador of a major EU country" as asking. The ambassador was subsequently identified as Bernard.

According to the BBC, "Mr Bernard has not denied the remark. Initially he said he could not remember making it, but later insisted that what he said had been thoroughly distorted. He says he is outraged that a private discussion found its way into the media, but has made clear he does not intend to apologise." The foreign ministry in Paris stood by Mr Bernard, dismissing the charges of anti-Semitism as "malevolent insinuations".

The Independent's Deborah Orr writes that "It's a mesmerising, awesome sight when a private conversation goes rogue, and starts crashing about in open society, leaving terror and destruction in its wake."

French media anti-semitism: Uri Dan writes about its brazen-ness in the Jerusalem Post.

Un-Kesher notes: The Blog will be infrequent over the long weekend. I may not celebrate Christmas, but I see no need to work during that time.

Go see Lord of the Rings. Saw it last night with the fiancee, and I was blown away.

Moving the embassy: Seth Lipsky notes that the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, passed passed overwhelmingly by Congress (93-5 in the Senate and 374-37 in the House) "declared that as a matter of American law the embassy should be in Jerusalem, and it gave the president until the end of May 1999, to move it there. When Congress passed the law, it provided a certain amount of wiggle room. It did not allow the president to avoid moving the embassy, it did allow him to dodge the penalty for noncompliance--a curb on funding for the State Department. The president can continue to get that funding if he says that a national-security interest is involved. President Clinton invoked that waiver, and several powerful senators, including members of his own party, reckoned Mr. Clinton was in violation of the law... That's why Mr. Bush drew so much interest when he went before the Jewish community in the middle of his campaign and promised to pursue a different course... Mr. Bush was less than a year into his term when he abrogated his campaign promise by invoking his first waiver of the penalties for failing to move the embassy."

The hate that will not die: Millions believe 4,000 Jews stayed away from the World Trade Centre on September 11. Harmless conspiracy theory? Or sign of a virulent new anti-semitism? Linda Grant writes in the Guardian on how the Arab world is exporting an old hatred to the west. For example, she quotes Dr Ali Aqleh Ursan, chairman of the Arab Writers Association, who wrote in the Syrian publication Al-Usbu' Al-Adabi, February 5, 2000 that "The covetous, racist, and hated Jew Shylock, who cut the [pound of] flesh from Antonio's chest with the knife of hatred, invades you with his money, his modern airplanes, his missiles, and his nuclear bombs. You must face a hard question: Do you, Christians and Muslims, wish to live, survive and fulfill your convictions? Or are you Abraham's bleating lambs on the threshold of the Jewish altar, who are led to be sent to the Hereafter?"

Thursday, December 20, 2001

Well, I'm relieved: "Hamas is studying the issue of suspending martyrdom attacks. It has not been decided yet," Sheikh Hassan Youssef, a Hamas leader in Ramallah, said. (Jerusalem Post)

Religious merger announced - Chrismukah: If anyone knows the source of this piece, please let me know:

Continuing the current trend of large-scale mergers and acquisitions, it was announced today at a press conference that Christmas and Chanukah will merge.

An industry source said that the deal had been in the works for about 1300 years.

While details were not available at press time, it is believed that the overhead cost of having twelve days of Christmas and eight days of Hanukkah was becoming prohibitive for both sides. By combining forces, we're told, the world will be able to enjoy consistently high-quality service during the Fifteen Days of Chrismukah, as the new holiday is being called. Massive layoffs are expected, with lords a-leaping and maids a-milking being the hardest hit. As part of the conditions of the agreement, the letters on the draidel, currently in Hebrew, will be replaced by Latin, thus becoming unintelligible to a wider audience.

Also, instead of translating to "A great miracle happened there," the message on the dreydl will be the more generic "Miraculous stuff happens." In exchange, it is believed that Jews will be allowed to use Santa Claus and his vast merchandising resources for buying and delivering their gifts.

One of the sticking points holding up the agreement for at least three hundred years was the question of whether Jewish children could leave milk and cookies for Santa even after having eaten meat for dinner. A breakthrough came last year, when Oreos were finally declared to be Kosher. All sides appeared happy about this.

A spokesman for Christmas, Inc., declined to say whether a takeover of Kwanzaa might not be in the works as well. He merely pointed out that, were it not for the independent existence of Kwanzaa, the merger between Christmas and Chanukah might indeed be seen as an unfair cornering of the holiday market. Fortunately for all concerned, the spokesman said, Kwanzaa will help to maintain the competitive balance.

He then closed the press conference by leading all present in a rousing rendition of "Oy Vey, All Ye Faithful."

Wednesday, December 19, 2001

South African Jews Haven't Learned a Thing: The Washington Post reports on a growing furor in SA about a "declaration of conscience" published in a local newspaper and taking up less than half a page.

Written by two Jewish heroes of South Africa's liberation struggle against the white government's apartheid system, and signed by 220 Jews, the document asserts that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is the cause of the escalating violence in the Middle East and denounces Israel's campaign of violence. Titled "Not In My Name," the declaration acknowledges Israel's right to exist and its valid security concerns but compares Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the oppression of South Africa's black majority under apartheid.

It is pathetic that they cannot tell the difference between a society where Blacks were denied the rights of Whites and one where Arabs were given the same rights as Israelis. They've been clamoring on like this since Yasser Arafat met with Nelson Mandela years ago, and can't seem to understand the meaning of freedom - something Arabs get in Israel, but not in their "own" countries.

The Jews of Bukhara, Uzbekistan: After the fall of the Soviet Union 10 years ago, this centuries-old Jewish community was able to open a second synagogue, a day care center and a school that taught Hebrew and the religious texts. But the Soviet collapse also opened the door for emigration, while the economy of newly independent Uzbekistan plummeted and the overwhelmingly Muslim state began to assert its Islamic identity. The result: Some 18,000 of Bukhara's 20,000 Jews have left, mostly for the United States and Israel.

Rafael Davidov, president of the Jewish community, says he will wait. "When a ship is sinking, it is the commander who goes down last," he said. "While there are Jews here, I will stay."

Bukharan Jews said their ancestors first came to Bukhara some 2,000 years ago. Historians said the claim couldn't be verified, but cited evidence that Bukhara was home to a large community of Jewish silk traders 400 years ago. (Associated Press)

Tuesday, December 18, 2001

More unfiltered polling fun: Just found the new 2001 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion from the American Jewish Committee (conducted by Market Facts, Inc.). I will let you know what I think on it later.

Still crunching the RJC poll of Jews for Bush: I still have not had time to analyze it, but here is Frank Luntz's analysis of the poll results and here are the questions the poll asked. (There's also a cumbersome Powerpoint presentation of the results).

Elsewhere in polling, a Qunnipiac University poll has found that 9/11 has changed some Americans' attitudes towards Israel. Quinnipiac claims that 25 percent of Americans say their sympathies have changed. 51 percent (of the 25 percent) now sympathize more with Israel while 13 percent sympathize more with the Palestinians. Overall, 51 percent of all U.S. voters say their sympathies lie with Israel in the ongoing Mideast dispute, while 13 percent say they sympathize with the Palestinians and 36 percent are undecided. Republican voters sided with Israel 62 - 9 percent, while Democrats backed Israel 47 - 17 percent and "independents" back Israel 45 - 15 percent.

Sid Groeneman responds on the poll:

It's very unlikely that Luntz got his hands on a Federation list. They are
heavily guarded. Secondly, to my knowledge there is no single, national list -- only several hundred local lists maintained by local federations. Would it be too cynical of me to suggest that he might have used a list of Jewish Republicans... More seriously, I'd bet he used synagogue or other Jewish organization membership lists.

Jewish population increases in the U.S.: Yes, I will have to look into this one soon. I tackled the Muslims in America numbers first because the numbers seemed so out of whack, and shortly I will turn to other religious affiliations. According to the American Jewish Committee's American Jewish Yearbook, the nation's Jewish population reached 6,136,000 as of 2000, an increase of 75,000 over 1999. The annual obtains population estimates from local Jewish groups. Surveying longer trends, the book said that in 1900, 52% of the 1.1 million U.S. Jews lived in the New York City area, but only 32% of today's total live there. The annual said that since 1995, Las Vegas has seen the largest Jewish increase among U.S. cities, up 35% to 75,000, followed by Seattle, up 27% to 37,200. The biggest drop, a loss of 10,000, occurred in the Miami area.

I wonder if they differentiate between snowbirds and permanent residents down there?

More on the RJC poll of Jewish support for Bush: It has started a small debate on the e-mail list of the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers. Sid Groeneman, of Groeneman Research & Consulting (Bethesda, Maryland), questions the methodology of the poll. I have not looked over the guts of the poll yet (the Republican Jewish Committee just sent me something and I have not had to to check it out yet). But it was conducted by Frank Luntz, who is not well-regarded in profession opinion polling circles. Sid questions how Luntz developed his national sample of Jews.

"I've wrestled with this problem for years... there are major problems to be worked out. I'm guessing that Luntz used some form of listed sample. Most lists tend to over-represent those with relatively strong religious identities (and Orthodox Jews). This might help to explain the surprising Republican tilt in the results. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but it's curious that no one quoted in the story questioned the sampling."

Since Luntz does not always share how he does his polls (grumble, snarl), we get to guess. Let me offer another possibility to Sid's. It is possible that Luntz took advantage of the lists of the United Jewish Federation. In looking at how religion affiliations are counted, I found that organizational source data on Jews was usually obtained from UJF lists. I am told that UJF lists are extremely thorough, because they demand to know how to contact every single Jew in America for their fund raising. And certainly UJF does not discriminate between a Jew who thinks himself Orthodox and one who simply feels an ethnic attachment -- they just want the money. Of course, one can argue that that definition is too broad...

But perhaps the poll is not as skewed as Sid suggests. As I said, perhaps. I will report back soon with my analysis of the RJC poll.

One small leap for Jewish porn: Hey, I don't knock Playboy magazine too much, not that I have read it since I was a kid (what kind of a moral statement that reflects, I have no idea), but for a Playmate to revel in her Jewish identity in its pages (including her bar mitzvah picture next to her breast measurement listing) is too much for even me to take. New York Magazine writes that Miss November is Playboy's first self-proclaimed, synagogue-going Jew:

So she knew that sooner or later she'd have to talk to her rabbi in the Reform synagogue in the small Pennsylvania town where she grew up and still goes to services. The chat went better than expected. "He said there's nothing wrong with what I did. He was more intrigued than anything. He was like, 'How did the nice little Jewish girl I've known since she was a baby grow up to be like this?' "

Bush postpones moving U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem: Reuters reports that U.S. President George W. Bush signed a waiver on Monday postponing for six months any relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but said he remained committed to such a move in the future. The U.S. Congress passed a bill in 1995 aimed at moving the embassy to Jerusalem, but then-President Bill Clinton repeatedly made use of an escape clause in the measure allowing him to postpone the move on the grounds of national security.

Is Bush as committed as he was when moving the embassy was a part of his presidential campaign? Perhaps at the time, he was simply trying to woo Jewish votes, but it was also a way to take a different, strong stand on Israeli issues. It is a shame that he has not felt the need to actually follow through on the concept.

On the other hand, he has finally seemed to come around, at least a little bit, on the importance of Israeli security. So, a pointless diplomatic gesture to play nice with Arab states on the one hand, while making a small tangible effort to help Israel on the other. A give and take, but Isrqael must take what it can get.

The Jewish vote: While we are on the subject, now is a good time for Jewish Americans to reconsider their knee-jerk political allegiances. While Hillary Clinton is now one of Israel's most staunch defenders in the U.S. Senate, she only recently transformed from a moral equivocator -- presumably to appeal to her Jewish voting base in New York. While it is good to see that Jews have sway with some pols, it is unfortunate that more Jews do not notice how little sway they have over the Democratic party. Similar to African Americans in some respects, the party takes Jews for granted. While it takes certain stands in order to appease them once in a while, the party leadership knows that Jews do not deviate from the party too often, no matter what the party does.

I am not proposing the abandonment of the Democratic party. That would be stupid. I propose, as I did during the 2000 elections, that Jews should at least play it cagey rather than be taken for granted. You should vote for whomever you want, just don't be an automaton. The sooner the Democratic party realizes that the "Jewish vote" is up for grabs, the sooner they will realize its higher importance.

On the opposite side, the Republican party tends to lean in favor of a secure Israel, but to appease the neo-conservatives and the Christian fundamentalist voters. But since Israel is not at the top of their lists of importance, these blocs do not always get the party to come through where it matters most. The party has taken to writing off Jewish votes, not even bothering to try to solicit them much anymore. That is a mistake, both for them and for Jews. They need to be shown differently, and that can only come in polling numbers, and votes.

There was an interesting intra-conservative battle this summer over wooing Islamic votes to the Republican party. Why shouldn't they have those kind of debates about Jewish votes?

Scientists seek key to disease in Jews' genes: Genetic sleuths in Israel are collecting thousands of blood samples from Jews of European origin in a race to uncover the genetic causes of such diseases as schizophrenia, asthma and Parkinson's. IDgene Pharmaceuticals is the only company in Israel with government approval to study the genetic makeup of Ashkenazi Jews in the hope this could help it home in on the genetic causes of common diseases. The relatively uniform genes of Ashkenazi Jews are a boon for geneticists who must sift through three billion human DNA sequences and about 40,000 genes in their search for the genetic causes of common and often deadly diseases. "The population of Ashkenazi Jews is relatively homogenous, which facilitates gene discovery," said Ariel Darvasi, IDgene's president and a geneticist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. The genes that cause diseases are easier to track in a homogenous population because there are fewer genetic differences in their DNA. "The homogeneity reduces the genetic noise and the signal comes out more clearly," said Dr. Darvasi. (Reuters)

Lock up the Jews - the JDL, I mean: Jonah Goldberg, editor of National Review Online, says "Lock 'em up." The "two criminal members of the Jewish Defense League, a fringe group of zealots rejected by the overwhelming majority of Jews" deserve "the stiffest punishment allowed by law."

In fact, my feelings about hate crimes notwithstanding, I'm hoping the United States will be extra tough on these guys — because they're Jews. In the chaotic realm of public opinion at home and abroad, Jews have a hard enough time. In the United States, Jews still face the charge of "dual loyalty" to Israel. Abroad, they are pilloried for being "no better" than the terrorists of the Middle East. The last things Jews should be doing is helping either of these slanders.

That's why I have no sympathy for Jonathan Pollard, the convicted spy who gave classified U.S. materials to Israel. Pollard betrayed his country, and for that alone he should rot in jail. But he also betrayed the hard-earned trust Jews have earned in the United States, and for that American Jews should denounce him.

Similarly, these twisted yutzes in Los Angeles seek to tear down the one thing on Israel's side: moral authority. For Israel's critics, Jews everywhere are, in effect, Israelis. And when these morons plot to blow up mosques and possibly kill civilians, they make all Jews guilty by association in the eyes of much of the world. Israel and its defenders have a hard enough time combating the notion that Israel's military attacks on legitimate military targets (e.g. terrorist cells, bomb-making factories, etc.) aren't "terrorist" acts akin to the deliberate murdering of teen-agers in pizza joints and discos.

The recently released videotape of Osama bin Laden reveling over the murder of innocent Americans is obvious proof of what happens when a religion or cause gets hijacked by murderers. There's little chance that the Jewish community would ever follow the lead of the likes of Mr. Rubin, but even unsuccessful hijackers should get the book thrown at them.

Monday, December 17, 2001

Iraq Watch: The useful website Iraq Watch monitors Iraq's progress in building weapons of mass destruction, describes key Iraqi organizations and sites, lists their foreign suppliers, and provides access to U.N. and other documents that describe Iraq's activities.

Starving, Bandaged Bin Laden Offers U.S. One Last Chance To Surrender: An emaciated and heavily bandaged Osama bin Laden offered the U.S. a final chance to surrender Monday. (The Onion)

4-6 Million? Excuse me? 4-6 million Muslims in America? Is this the same New York Times that reported on Tom Smith's and ARIS's accounting of less than 2 million? See my article on how many U.S. muslims.

Can it last? Doubtful: Impressed with his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks and wowed by his unwavering support for Israel, US Jewish voters are switching allegiances away from the Democratic Party to President George W. Bush, according to a new poll commission by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC). (Jerusalem Post)

Star Trek and Judaism: Leonard Nimoy would be the first to admit that Mr. Spock might find certain religions illogical, but that didn't stop the actor from introducing different Jewish and spiritual ideals into "Star Trek" during his years with the series and subsequent films. With Dec. 16 being Rosh Chodesh Tevet and Dec. 17 marking the end of Chanukah, Nimoy recently talked to Mark Pinsky of The Orlando Sentinel about how Judaism has worked its way into "Star Trek," and how "Star Trek" in turn worked its way into Judaism. "There are strong Jewish concepts in 'Star Trek': social justice, meritocracy and the idea of tikkun olam, the healing of the universe," Nimoy, 70, said. "My own contribution was the Vulcan hand salute," a reference to the spread-fingered gesture used by the Jewish priestly caste to bless the congregation. (SyFy Portal)

Indonesia's Jews: The AP has a story about the few Jews remaining in Indonesia. As mosques called worshippers to prayer throughout the world's largest Muslim nation, Rivka and her daughter Hannah lit candles for the traditional Sabbath eve prayer in the country's only synagogue. Far from major centers of Jewish life, the 20 people in this tiny community in Indonesia are descendants of Iraqi and Dutch families who arrived here nearly 200 years ago.

From the "too little, too late" files: Bill Clinton: "We will never let Palestinians get rid of Israel."

Still a ways to go: Democracy, yes, but imperfect.

Women working in state offices in Turkey "have won the right to wear trousers at work after a nationwide protest last week," according to a local newspaper. Thousands defied the dress code last week by wearing pants to the office (Los Angeles Times, 12/14). (From The Hotline World Extra)

Kesher Talk

Friday, December 21, 2001

Thursday, December 20, 2001

Wednesday, December 19, 2001

Tuesday, December 18, 2001

Monday, December 17, 2001

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