Kesher Talk: 07/13/2003

Saturday, July 19, 2003

Wholesome American terrorist sympathizers Dept. Latest on Charlotte Kates, organizer of the upcoming pro-Palestinian student conference at Rutgers. Of course this admiring profile was in the NYTimes, and of course it was written by Chris Hedges.

Meanwhile, Eric Alterman keeps digging, and digging. Shark is so impressed that he institutes an award in Alterman's honor, kind of like Sullivan's Poseur Award. Nominations are sought.

UPDATE: Steve Silver does a great job fisking the Hedges article on Kates.

FYI. Lots of peace marches planned. I look forward to more entertaining videos and photos from Protest Warriors and Brain Terminal.

Friday, July 18, 2003

An email.

Ninth Anniversary of the Terrorist Attack on the AMIA Jewish Community Center.
Today, July 18 marks the tragic 9th anniversary of a brutal and vicious terrorist attack on the Buenos Aires Jewish community, which left 85 innocent people dead and 230 injured. . . . please join [people] from around the State, Country, and World as we call on our leaders, on this day and at this time, to continue fighting terror determinately and courageously. The origin of this terror is well known, as are the perpetrators. Terror knows no boundaries and the terrorist's contempt of the law must be halted wherever it is found.

We must expect our state, national, and the international community leaders to continue fighting and combating terror, using all possible legal options in this struggle to prohibit the activity of terrorist organizations and their accomplices, so that they must be banned worldwide. Representatives Ros Lehtinen (R-FL) and Lantos (D-CA) and Senators Coleman (R-MN) and Dodd (D-CT) are asking their colleagues to join them in letters to Argentine President Nestor Kirchner thanking him for his decision to open classified intelligence reports on the attack. Please contact our Members of Congress and ask them to "sign on" to the letter to President Kirchner. . . May we all work together to ensure peace throughout our world. B'shalom.

Jews in odd places: Hungary: Andras Heisler, the new leader of Hungary’s Jewish community, is making a vow: If his goals of strengthening Jewish life in Hungary and improving relations with foreign Jewish groups aren’t met within a year, he’ll step down.

“I’d like to see more people in the synagogues and not only during High Holidays,” said Heisler, the new president of the Federation of the Hungarian Jewish Communities.

Wouldn't we all?

Thursday, July 17, 2003

Life After Terror Fund. Mike's Place NYC Benefit t-shirts, regular Mike's Place t-shirts and the Special "Mike's Place Remembers" CDs for sale. All proceeds will be donated to the Life After Terror Fund.
Photos of the NYC benefit.
More about Mike's Place, torn apart by a Pakistani-British suicide bomber, the first incident of people travelling to Israel from elsewhere specifically to perpetrate a suicide bombing.

For US purchases, please email newyork AT mikesplacebars.com or lisathib AT earthlink.net.

T-shirts: $15 each or (2) for $20
CDs: $15 each
Ground Shipping in US: $2 per item

Available:
NYC BENEFIT SHIRTS - Black on White T-Shirt (L or XL) ...FRONT UPPER LEFT: Mike's Irregular Place logo, with special text below STILL HERE! ...
BACK: Benefit Concert (with original logo and rose) Mike's Place Live Music Bars, Jerusalem - Tel Aviv...Shows Band Logos, Venue and the date, Saturday, June 28, 2003 New York, NY

REGULAR MIKE'S PLACE SHIRTS: Black T-shirt (M, L, or XL)
Front upper left: White Ink -- Mike's Irregular Place logo, with special text across the middle of the shirt THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Back: Original logo in Color -- Shows GUINNESS logo, Mike's Place Live Music Bars, Tel Aviv - Jerusalem, LIVE MUSIC

CDs: MIKE'S PLACE REMEMBERS ...THE SHOW MUST GO ON
featuring:

Time Will Change Everything - Barry Gilbert, survived the bombing
Beauty - Yanay Weiss, lost his life in the bombing
Yesterday - Ran Baron, lost his life in the bombing
Blades of Grass - SOBO
The New Funky Blues - CG & the Hammer
Summer '97 - Yanay Weiss
I'll Not Go Sailing Again - Barry Gilbert
What Do You Want - Blues Train
Eyes - Ran Baron
Feels Like Home - CG & the Hammer
Let Freedom Reign - SOBO

More SelectSmart. I got a nice note from the SelectSmart folks, whose Presidential Candidate Quiz I took last week.:

Dear Ms. Weiss,
Thank you for your kind mention of the "2004 Presidential Candidate Selector" in "Kesher Talk".

You may also be interested in visiting our Belief System Selector and our American Judaism -- Movements/Affiliations Selector. We'd certainly be interested in knowing your results and your opinions of the selectors' accuracy.

Best Regards,
Curt Anderson
SelectSmart.com

I took the Belief System Selector test. Here were my results:

# 1. Reform Judaism (100%)
# 2. Unitarian Universalism (98%)
# 3. Liberal Quakers (97%)
# 4. Bahá'í Faith (88%)
# 5. Neo-Pagan (86%)
# 6. Sikhism (82%)
# 7. Secular Humanism (76%)
# 8. Mainline - Liberal Christian Protestants (75%)
# 9. New Age (73%)
# 10. Islam (70%)
# 11. Orthodox Judaism (70%)
# 12. Mahayana Buddhism (65%)
# 13. Jainism (58%)
# 14. Scientology (58%)
# 15. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (56%)
# 16. Taoism (55%)
# 17. New Thought (54%)
# 18. Orthodox Quaker (53%)
# 19. Theravada Buddhism (53%)
# 20. Non-theist (53%)
# 21. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (43%)
# 22. Hinduism (43%)
# 23. Mainline - Conservative Christian Protestant (38%)
# 24. Jehovah's Witness (32%)
# 25. Seventh Day Adventist (27%)
# 26. Eastern Orthodox (26%)
# 27. Roman Catholic (26%)

I took the Jewish Movements test and came out with:

#1 - Reform
#2 - Reconstructionist
#3 - Renewal
#4 - Conservative
#5 - Humanistic
#6 - Orthodox
# 7 - Hasidic

Well, I daven Conservative, go to Renewal retreats on occasion, study with Conservative and Orthodox teachers, and after years with a Reconstructionist havurah, I still find Mordecai Kaplan's theology describes my belief system pretty well. I used to occasionally attend a Reform service because that's where the Jewish singles in my town would hang out. I was a Neo-Pagan for 10 years, but I have never had any interest in Unitarianism, Quakerism, or Bahai. So, Curt, I do believe your quiz needs some massaging, and I'll have to think about specifics.

Off the top of my head, you may be mistaking the official Jewish denominational positions for how Jews actually practice or why Jews choose a particular movement. Many of us live Reform (don't observe halacha stringently and have liberal political positions), but find Reform services too "churchy" and prefer more traditional liturgy. At the same time many of us relate to the Reconstructionist approach to Jewish identity and practice, but again, prefer more traditional liturgy or congregations large enough to make a daily minyan. I think the quiz would be more accurate if it focused more on what Jews actually do.

Jewish ethics: How much risk must a doctor take on?

Physicians have been treating contagious diseases for millennia. As a result, the death toll in the medical profession has been high in times of epidemic. What does the Torah teach us about the obligation of the physician to treat weighed against the prohibition of endangering one's life?

Dr. Daniel Eisenberg examines what Judaism says about required risks for doctors, using the context of the epidemics like SARS and AIDS.

Does the physician have to endanger his own life to treat a patient with a dangerous contagious disease?

...While mandated to heal, the Torah also commands him to zealously guard his own health. The doctor must ask himself the question: May I expose myself to a questionable danger to save someone else from a definite danger? The answer to that question is the subject of dispute.

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Just a reminder. Charles reminds us:

Before you post, remember the LGF prayer:

Lord, grant me the serenity to ignore the trolls,
the courage to debate with honest opponents,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Tobacco Road Fogey expands upon it:

For every blog, there is a troll,
And a time for every trolling in the blogiverse:
A time to read, and a time to ignore;
A time to provoke and a time to rebut;
A time to scorn, and a time to revile;
A time to rebuke and a time to denounce;
A time to revise, and a time to delete;
A time to warn and a time to ban.

Amen.

Jews in odd places: the American Prairie:

Though small, there are Jewish communities in prairie towns such as Omaha; Des Moines, Iowa; and Tulsa, Okla. They are often vibrant, close-knit communities with high rates of affiliation — the trouble is, few people want to live there. Jewish communities across the Great Plains have seen their numbers dwindle in recent years, some with alarming alacrity. According to population statistics in the American Jewish Yearbook, between 1972 and 2002, North Dakota saw its Jewish population drop from 2,000 to 450, South Dakota from 2,050 to 300, Nebraska from 9,200 to 7,000 and Iowa, 9,500 to 6,100.

Small-town communities have been the hardest hit: In 1960, there were 119 Jewish communities in the Midwest, while in 1997 there were 96. In Duluth, Minn., the Jewish population has dwindled so dramatically that the local community federation closed two years ago. In Cheyenne, Wyo., the small community's Jewish cemetery is maintained by the Cheyenne Jewish Cemetery Association — headquartered in Hollywood, Calif.

In Omaha, the community of some 6,500 Jews has remained relatively stable throughout the decades. But a dark cloud looms on the horizon. As the population ages — and many seek retirement in booming Sun Belt communities — replacements aren't waiting in the wings. "The reality is many of our children don't come back," said Jan Goldstein, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Omaha. "They want to go to larger cities."

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

News tidbits. Yes, Muammar Gaddafi is still a nutcase.

The British are coming, the British are coming!

This is a weird little story about fantasy, media, and cross-cultural misunderstandings.

And a heartwarming story about a "scrappy local newspaper struggling for survival."

Let's discuss subtly rigged elections. While following a trail of links a few weeks back, I came upon this provocative collection of links: Why It May Be Impossible For The Democrats To Ever Win Another National Election: How ChoicePoint Rigged the Playing Field of Electoral Politics. I would really like to see the blogosphere investigate and discuss the mechanics of the election process, especially as we gear up for another presidential election. I followed the Florida shenanigans closely at the time, and nobody's hands were clean. I think we all want a transparent, fair, honest, electoral process.

Lieberman having trouble raising money -- from Jews: It appears that part of Joe Lieberman's fundraising troubles in his presidential run stem from being Jewish -- and the money bags that won't fork over the cash are other Jews. Joe's floundering continues...

Monday, July 14, 2003

From one cult to another. Susanna heard Rutgers pro-Palestinian conference mastermind Charlotte Kates on the radio the other day, and says she is scary.

She sounded almost robotic, her points the same ones you hear over and over, her hatred for Israel not hidden in the slightest. It's an "apartheid state", it's "colonized" Palestine, and the United States is prime conspirator in keeping the Palestinians under the heel of vicious Israel. It was actually a bit frightening to hear her speak, because you could tell she is a true believer with no rough edges in her slick logic where you might start a discussion. I could imagine her sending off suicide bombers with a shrugged, "What are you going to do? They forced it on us." And that convinced me that this conference isn't about free speech, but hate speech.

Remember that Ms. Kates went from Scientology to the ISM, i.e. from one cult to another.

PS More on ISM here, and follow the links back.

Blogger victims unite! The latest stupid weird Blogger bug: all posts on Kesher Talk since Sunday night point to the same permalink. Not only that, it is not any of the posts which point to it. Not only that, it is a post from next week. (If I am doing a series, I like to write up some of them ahead of time and pre-date them.) Not only that, it is an earlier version of a post from next week which should have been overwritten when it was revised. In other words, it is a ghost post, a post that no longer exists! (Begin either Monty Python routine or Twilight Zone soundtrack here.)

So please bear with us while we once again try to resolve minor technical difficulties. Ahem.

This week's Pintele Yid recommendation - For our gentile friends and Jews who want to rediscover their heritage - recommending quintessentially Jewish cultural works (books, TV specials, CDs, Torah teachers, poets, websites, and more) which transport you inside a Jewish skin and show you the world through Jewish eyes.

Last week's recommendation.
Introduction to the series and first recommendation.

The Book of Letters: A Mystical Aleph-bait, Lawrence Kushner.
Hebrew characters have long been used by Jewish philosophers to generate mystical as well as concrete meanings. Last week Rabbi Green gave us the words, now Rabbi Kushner gives us the letters, in his own calligraphy.

I recommend this book because I used to be a calligrapher, and because Judaism is the only ethnicity I know of where literally the letters of its alphabet are intricately woven into its theology. (They don't call us the People of the Book for nuthin'.)

Week 4.
Week 5.
Week 6.
Week 7.
Week 8.

Sunday, July 13, 2003

An oldie but goodie. I should probably save this till the Road Map gets to the point of divvying up Jerusalem, but maybe things won't get that far.

The following "letter" by a Jew to the Gentile world first appeared as an editorial in the long-defunct "Jerusalem Times" in 1969. Twenty-seven years later, most the feelings and thoughts it conveys remain uncannily appropriate.

I AM a Jerusalemite - like yourselves, a man of flesh and blood. I am a citizen of my city, an integral part of my people.

I have a few things to get off my chest. Because I am not a diplomat, I do not have to mince words. I do not have to please you, or even persuade you. I owe you nothing. You did not build this city; you did not live in it; you did not defend it when they came to destroy it. And we will be damned if we will let you take it away.

There was a Jerusalem before there was a New York. When Berlin, Moscow, London, and Paris were miasmal forest and swamp, there was a thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which you nations have rejected ever since you established yourselves - a humane moral code.

Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightning. Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, fought oft waves heathen would-be conquerors, bled and died on the battlements, hurled themselves into the flames of their burning Temple rather than surrender, and when finally overwhelmed by sheer numbers and led away into captivity, swore that before they forgot Jerusalem, they would see their tongues cleave to their palates, their right arms wither.

For two pain-filled millennia, while we were your unwelcome guests, we prayed daily to return to this city. Three times a day we petitioned the Almighty: "Gather us from the four corners of the world, bring us upright to our land; return in mercy to Jerusalem, Thy city, and dwell in it as Thou promised." On every Yom Kippur and Passover, we fervently voiced the hope that next year would find us in Jerusalem.

Your inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, the ghettos into which you jammed us, your forced baptisms, your quota systems, your genteel anti-Semitism, and the final unspeakable horror, the Holocaust (and worse, your terrifying disinterest in it) - all these have not broken us.

They may have sapped what little moral strength you still possessed, but they forged us into steel. Do you think that you can break us now, after all that we have been through? Do you really believe that after Dachau and Auschwitz we are frightened by your threats of blockades and sanctions? We have been to hell and back - a hell of your making. What more could you possibly have in your arsenal that could scare us?

I have watched this city bombarded twice by nations that call themselves civilized. In 1948, while you looked on apathetically, I saw woman and children blown to smithereens, after we agreed to your request to internationalise the city.

It was a deadly combination that did the job. British officers, Arab gunners, and American-made cannons. And then the savage sacking of the Old City, the willful slaughter, the wanton destruction of every synagogue and religious school; the desecration of Jewish cemeteries, the sale by a ghoulish government of tombstones for building materials, for poultry runs, army camps - even latrines.

And you never said a word.

You never breathed the slightest protest when the Jordanians shutoff the holiest of our places, the Western Wall, in violation of the pledges they had made after the war - a war they waged, incidentally, against the decision of the UN. Not a murmur came >from you whenever the legionnaires in their spiked helmets casually opened fire upon our citizens from behind the walls. Your hearts bled when Berlin came under siege. But you did not send one ounce of food when Jews starved in besieged Jerusalem....

The only time you came to life was when the city was at last reunited. Then you wrung your hands and spoke loftily of "justice" and the need for the "Christian" quality of turning the other cheek. The truth is - and you know it deep inside your gut - you would prefer the city be destroyed rather than have it governed by Jews. No matter how diplomatically you phrase it, the age-old prejudices seep out of every word.

If our return to the city has tied your theology in knots, perhaps you had better re-examine your catechisms. After what we have been through, we are not passively going to accommodate ourselves to the twisted idea that we are to suffer eternal homelessness until we accept your saviour.

For the first time since the year 70 A.D. there is now complete religious freedom for all in Jerusalem. For the first time since the Romans put a torch to the Temple everyone has equal rights. (You prefer to have some more equal than others.) We loathe the sword - but it was you who forced us to take it up. We crave peace-but we are not going back to the peace of 1948 as you would like. We are home. It has a lovely sound for a nation you have willed to wander over the face of the globe. We are not leaving. We are redeeming the pledge made by our forefathers. Jerusalem is being rebuilt. "Next year" - and the year after, and after, and after, until the end of time - "in Jerusalem".

Kesher Talk

Saturday, July 19, 2003

Friday, July 18, 2003

Thursday, July 17, 2003

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Monday, July 14, 2003

Sunday, July 13, 2003

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