WHY IS THIS SITE DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHER SITES?

SUBTITLE:  Women Can Just Stay Home Where They Belong

Micah Stein:  This Sunday, there’ll be a sellout crowd at Citi Field, a rare sight at the home of the New York Mets. But the big draw isn’t a baseball game. It’s an ultra-Orthodox rally against the Internet that had sold out all 40,000 seats more than a week in advance.

An organization called Ichud HaKehillos LeTohar HaMachane (Union of Communities for the Purity of the Camp) raised $1.5 million for the massive rally protesting the “evils of the Internet and the damages caused by advanced electronic devices.” It marks the arrival of online censorship as a primary focus in the ultra-Orthodox community. The rally is not merely about pornography: Rabbi Moshe Drew, who operated the Ichud HaKehillos technology-awareness hotline, identified “Facebook and social networking sites” as the most damaging material online, while others see the Internet as an issue of politics as much as piety. “By having a following that will make no decisions on their own, the ruler sets the tone,” wrote Michael J. Salamon in the Times of Israel, stressing that Internet access—and everything that comes with it—threatens basic rabbinic authority. And then, of course, it is also about porn.  (Mollie thinks we should go back to the abacus; no porn THERE.)

But with the rally just days away, event organizers are struggling with political infighting, a growing protest movement, and a mission statement that remains muddled and contradictory, as it tries to simultaneously advocate “safer” Internet use while also banning the Internet altogether. Organizers have yet to announce what the rally will entail, who will be speaking, or what the “many practical solutions to the internet problem” that promotional materials have promised might look like.

A call to the Ichud HaKehillos headquarters (“Press 2 for Yiddish”) confirmed that the event would be for men only: “This is the first time doing it, and the separate section thing was complicated,” a female representative told me. “Setting up mechitzahs (dividers) and separate entrances was too difficult.”

The websites were accused of being gateways to “the vilest of places” on the Internet, and of spreading “slander, lies, and impurities.” In 2011, Haredi leaders in Israel unveiled an ad campaign claiming that the Internet caused, among other things, cancer. Using gematria, which assigns a numeric value to Hebrew letters, rabbis demonstrated that “Internet” and “cancer” were numerically equivalent. The web was also implicated in causing droughts.  Mollie says . . . WHAT?

You realize, of course, that you’re aware of this meeting because you read about it on the Internet.

“The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian arose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”        – Mark Twain, Harpers Magazine, 1899

From AISH Magazine:  The Jewish people are truly incredible. Jewish Nobel prize-winners are 100-fold in proportion to our numbers. Jewish leaders dominate worldwide in business, the arts, politics and science.

So, asks Mollie, how come there’s still antii-Semitism?

SUBTITLE:  Facebook on the Roof

Knowledge is learning how to set up a Facebook page.
Wisdom is knowing what NOT to put on it.

I will never, ever again tell anyone a secret.  Now excuse me while I plotz.

Reliant on religious parties to help form governing coalitions, Israeli leaders have largely steered clear of cutting welfare subsidies to large ultra-Orthodox families, in which many of the men engage in religious studies full time.

Critics have pointed to the burden they put on the Israeli economy, but moves to cut the payments would spell political trouble for any of the country’s major parties.  Addressing the religious-secular divide, the Supreme Court ruled this year that women travelling on public buses cannot be ordered to sit in the back.  Signs in Jerusalem buses now say people have a right to sit wherever they wish and that harassing passengers could be a criminal offence.  Critics say that in practice, dozens of bus lines are still gender-segregated and that women who want to sit at the front are often subjected to verbal and sometimes physical assaults.  Vey is mir!!  When a woman boards a bus, she’ll have to be seen walking all the way to the back.  Isn’t that counterproductive to the idea that men should be spared having impure thoughts?

David Rakoff, a Jewish reporter assigned to cover a Paris fashion show, on what a designer of $20,000 – $100,000 dresses told him: ”The main thing to remember, he tells me, is that even though much of couture is nonsense, its essential unwearability doesn’t stop ‘the Jews of fashion,” as he calls them, from coming to shows season after season with their sketch pads to copy and produce commercial knockoffs.”

So . . . not to generalize . . .  Mollie gets the idea that the French think Jews are opportunists, immoral, base and grasping gonifs?

From Spiegel, March 12, 2010:  “More and more French Jews are buying homes in Israel amid fears of rising anti-Semitism in France. Many complain of being harrassed in public and feel the country is no longer a safe place to raise their children. In the wake of the Toulouse attacks, the wave of emigration is only likely to increase.”

The Israeli government has asked the High Court to postpone a deadline to evacuate the Beit El neighborhood in a West Bank outpost, to come up with an alternative that still wouldn’t be in line with the court’s decision. “According to legal experts, the government’s request represents a problematic move—breaking the accepted rules for the relationship between the executive and judicial branches,” reports Ari Shavit in Haaretz.

Mollie says:  Look, it’s simple.  Don’t build on disputed land.  That’s just provocation.  Be rational enough to use some patience and realize that there are other places to build.

Definition of a kike:  A Jewish gentleman who has just left the room.

Just for the record . . . I hate and detest the “K” word.   Do me a favor and don’t use it even among yourselves.

From Time Magazine, March 25, 2012:    Protests erupted in Cairo after a military court cleared an army doctor accused of forcibly conducting “virginity tests” on women rounded up during last year’s protests in Tahrir Square. State media said the court acquitted the physician because of contradictory evidence from witnesses. Rights groups counter that the ruling reflects the military’s tight grip on power and has worrying implications for women’s rights.

“Worrying implications” ???????

Could you ever eat an insect? The New Yorker has an article about it that says that 80% of the world’s population eat insects all the time, and not because there’s nothing else to eat. The title of the article is “Grub.” Clever.  Apparently insect-eating is cheap if not downright free, and it’s full of nutrients.  Yet somehow I think I’ll pass. I could walk across the street, climb the rail fence that surrounds the state park, and grab all the ingredients I need for dinner in probably five minutes. Crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts are kosher; that doesn’t mean I’m going to (knowingly) eat any of the three. One suggestion was to take a recipe for brownies and, instead of chopped nuts, use roasted crickets. Crickets are the only insect that I can’t stand to see; our last house had a lower level that seemed to attract them, and I’d grab a toilet plunger and cover it up for Jay to dispose of when he got home.  We’ve been in this house since 1998, and I’ve never seen a cricket . . . which is not to say they aren’t secretly hiding in the basement, planning their attack. Hey, what ever happened to that bedbug scare? It seems to have dwindled away with neither a resolution nor an explanation. Maybe aliens came and took them. By the way, crickets are black. A few species are green-ish (Jiminy Cricket). Crickets : “the other green meat.”
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COMMENT FROM JUDY ROSENBERG:  I’m the same way about crickets.  I know they’re not going to harm me in any way, but they give me the shivers.

SUBTITLE:  Even Philip Roth Has a Separate Office

I maintain an office in a spare room at home.  The IRS hasn’t yet questioned it.  It’s a defined space.  I have a separate phone.  There’s a door to shut out distractions, a computer with e-mail, a printer, a fax, a desk, a bookcase filled with reference works, dictionaries and style manuals, and a good number of office supplies.  It seems to me that I’m working in my home.  But when people ask me what I do, and I tell them I’m a proofreader and how technologically convenient it is, they say, “Oh, so you work out of your home.”  I tell them, “No, I don’t.  I work IN my home” . . . and I’m dismissed as a pedant at best and a fuddy-duddy/stubborn anal nonconformist at worst.

How did we come to explain our place of business in words that convey the exact and literal opposite of reality?  A klog auf dayn kopf (a punch in the face) to the dentist who announces, “I practice out of Seattle” —  when we all know he has one office and all that expensive equipment within the confines of that city.  Another klog to the physician who says, “I’m an anesthesiologist out of St. Luke’s Hospital” when we both know that his work is wholly within the premises of the building.  The very worst is the woman who has gotten herself a license and does child care “out of my home.”

I hear this every day.  Some social force is making us embrace this shorthand form of self-aggrandizement  We want to establish networks and lifelines, and we resort to attaching strings.

I can excuse this in some instances.  FedEx has its main office in Memphis, so it’s acceptable for an employee who delivers packages in Indianapolis to say he works “out of” Memphis; he’s citing his headquarters.  It is marginally suitable for a disc jockey to say, “You’re listening to KIMN out of Denver, Colorado”  because you possibly could be on the receiving end at your home in Casper, Wyoming.  I can tolerate hearing “I work for Hallmark out of Kansas City” because the person could conceivably  (but doesn’t necessarily) travel for business purposes.  Each of these could be more accurate in substituting “based in” for “out of,” except for the fact that it’s current, it’s a fad, and it’s ultra-hip to use these two magic words. And there’s not one thing I can do about it.  Even out of my own house.

(Well, I was busy yesterday.  Go do me something.)

It’s not that money magically makes everything good; it’s just that no money makes everything bad.

SUBTITLE:  Forgive Me, Father, For I Have Had Monomaniacal Visions

Yesterday’s earworm was “Canadian Sunset.” This morning I woke up with “I Walked in the Garden Alone.” Feh. We had to sing that in 4^th or 5^th grade choir, and surprisingly I remember the lyrics:

I walked in the garden alone
While the dew was still on the roses,
And the voice I hear
Whispering in my ear
The Son of God discloses.
And He walks with me
And He talks with me
And he tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share
As we tarry there
None other has ever known.

Rather exclusionary, wouldn’t you say? I’m not even Christian and I’m already pissed that one person thinks he alone has been chosen to have a little chat.  Okay.  So this ignorant John Doe thinks Jesus is talking to him alone and to “none other.” Scenario:  He runs to his friend, very excited, and tells his friend what just happened. The friend says, “Jesus has come to talk with me at dawn TWICE already. Isn’t it wonderful!!” John Doe is offended. How can this be? There’s only one Son of God, and he spoke to John Doe seemingly in confidence. He says to his friend, “But the Son of God who spoke to me was the REAL Son of God. Either you’re making this up or there’s another God altogether.” The friend says, “Nope, mine was the real McCoy. You’ll never convince me otherwise.” It escalates to “My God is better than your God,” so they pull their switchblades.  It’s schism time!  Thus religion continues. There are HOW many sects of Christianity? And there are HOW many sects of Judaism? Let me say again how thrilled I am that Time ran an article (see my post of April 18) — with a picture of the black-hatted men confronting (angrily, judging by their faces) secular Jews in Israel. What must the Christians think of US?  I’d rather not know.

SUBTITLE:  Shikker (Drunk) and Narisch (Stupid)

I was 18 when I was hit with mono at MU.  I was in the hospital over finals and was still recuperating when everyone else went home for semester break.  I stayed on campus with some books I knew I was going to be assigned to read for next semester; I thought I’d get them out of the way.  The campus wasn’t TOTALLY deserted; I ran into a friend of a friend, a grad student at 26, who asked me out.  He took me to a bar just outside Columbia.  I reminded him that I wasn’t old enough to drink and why don’t we just go see a movie, but he said c’mon, he knew the bartender.  I’d really had next to no experience with alcohol, and after the first drink I was so high that I don’t even know how many MORE drinks I had.  It could have been one; it could have been four.  Finally he was driving me back to my dorm but he said he had to stop off at his apartment for something.  I went in with him and sat down while he went to another room.  He came right back out with unzipped pants and this massive erection, which scared the hell out of me.  (Improbably enough, I was a virgin.)  I panicked.  Consider the logistics!!  I didn’t know WHAT to do, but my stomach did; I threw up on his carpet. THERE’S a deal-breaker, although there was no “deal,” implied or not.  Sex was not on my mind when I accepted the date. I was used to going out with Jewish fraternity guys who knew very well that their Jewish dates would stop and consider whether a KISS was appropriate on a first date.  Anyway, I kept throwing up faster than he could clean it up, and he was down on his knees (erection gone) with soap and paper towels, calling me a whore and a tease and some other things. I remember him carrying me to his car (I couldn’t even get on my feet) and all the way back to the dorm he was screaming terrible things at me, and the farther we got, the angrier he got until finally he stopped the car about four blocks short of my dorm, hauled me out, put me on the sidewalk, and drove off.  I think I passed out; I don’t know how but I finally made it back to my room, and I woke up in my own bed the next day, still intact.  I found a psych student who was willing to talk to me.  I remember her being APPALLED that I’d put myself into such a situation.  ”Didn’t you know any better?  Didn’t you wonder what was going on?”   “No.”  “Look, can I tell you a few things?”  ”Yes, PLEASE.”

Looking back, I’M horrified and amazed about my naivety, ignorance, and lack of comprehension.  I repressed the whole thing and it just lately came back to me in a dream, complete with the guy’s name and the particular dress I was wearing . . . and the knowledge that at 18 I was too immature to be let out of my parents’ HOUSE, not to mention turned loose on a big college campus.   Gevalt.

This emblem shows you’re a forward-thinking, science-loving realist who favors rational inquiry and investigation over Dark Ages superstition.  Mazel tov.

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COMMENT BY SUSAN LEVY:   When life hands you fish, make dinner.  You ARE evolutionarily at the top of the food chain.  That double helix is a gorgeous chotskeh.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”                – Samuel Johnson, lexicographer

Doing so is definitely pasnisht (forbidden, if by nothing more than common sense).

The YarMITTka is twice the price.  (Sorry . . . I couldn’t resist.)

SUBTITLE:  Hey, Jude   When I first heard “Hey, Jude,” I plotzed.  I thought Paul McCartney was singing, “Hey, Jew,” and I was looking for the phone number for the Anti-Defamation League.

SUBTITLE:  Hauling Hay   Since the content of the recent depositions I’ve been proofreading is neither water rights nor mineral rights, I’ve been enjoying reading these “stories,” some of which make you wonder if intelligent people ever sue.

Q. What do you do for a living?
A. Drive truck.
Q. Can you be more specific?
A. Drive big truck.

He sounds like a caveman! (Or, rather, sounds like caveman!)  And he surely makes more money hauling hay than I do proofreading his testimony.  Rats.

This is from that incident where the eight-year-old Jewish girl was called a whore by the Haredim, who threw stones at her.  I accidentally cut off some of the text, but here’s the picture.  I’m embarrassed to see it in Time Magazine; what must the non-Jews THINK about this in-fighting?  It’s bad enough what they already think.

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.                                                             – G. K. Chesterton

I love it when a cousin on my mother’s side turns out to be friends with a cousin on my father’s side and neither knows it.  I find this out when I see one or the other copied on an e-mail joke.  I then e-mail them both and say GUESS WHAT.  Kansas City is bursting with Jewish people who have me as a common denominator.

Yes, God delivered us out of Egypt, but who put us there to begin with?  Hint:  Starts with a G.

SUBTITLE:  Kosher in the Rye

You’ll need all those little rye seeds after all that matzoh.  Our parents called it “roughage”; we call it “fiber.”  Nu, go essen.
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COMMENT FROM BONNIE:  Rye?  Because we like you!! — M-O-U-S-E

Albert Einstein:  “Make it as simple as possible. But no simpler.”

This is good advice when you’re considering which Haggadah you want to buy for next year, because surely there was something about THIS year’s Haggadah that you didn’t like.  There always is.

From an ad for a cheeseburger with short ribs:  Is this really FOOD?

Restrain yourself, please, at least until Pesach is over.

My sister’s birthday is in April, and it seemed always — relentlessly – to fall at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of Pesach.  Mom did the best she could with a Pesadiggeh cake, but it was always AWFUL, and her little friends teased her at her birthday parties.  I don’t know where the kosher ice cream came from; remember, this was St. Joseph, 60+ years ago.   Maybe ice cream wasn’t served; at my age, who can remember?  Mom felt bad for her, but what could she do?  Gornischt helfen . . . it couldn’t be helped.  Mom was so frumm!

I’m 68; my sister just turned 68, so we’ll be “twins” until June 3, when I turn 69.  Oy, do I really have to update my profile?

Women (and the men who love them):  Breastfeeding does NOT work as a contraceptive.  My sister is living proof.  I was breast-fed, but she was conceived before I was a month old and was a full-term baby; we’re ten months and two days apart.  Down with bubbeh miesies (old wives’ tales)!!!
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COMMENT FROM JUDY ROSENBERG:  Sometimes being too frumm can alienate your children from Judaism.

Seder comes only once a year (well, sometimes twice), so decide what it really means to you.  Seriously.

3,000 Jewish men fought on the Confederate side and 7,000 fought on the Union side.  What were the Jewish Confederate soldiers thinking?  WE WERE SLAVES IN EGYPT, and they were fighting for states’ rights (code word for slavery).  Takke shonda.
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COMMENT FROM JIM SUBZERO:  No, the South was fighting explicitly for slavery.  They didn’t bother much with code words then.  Property rights and states’ rights were argued in support of the main issue, slavery.

That’s it.  That’s my post for today.  You were looking for maybe an essay, a complaint, an idea?  Genug.

. . . to a seder!!  And let them have fun.  But hey . . . watch it with the Mardi Gras comparisons.

Would you please read this and give me your impression?  It’s about Jewish prisoners and Passover / kosher food.  http://www.jewishjournal.com/passover/article/this_matzah_is_kept_under_lock_and_key_so_are_the_people_who_will_eat_it_/

Is a prison really obligated to provide kosher food (and kosher-for-Passover food) to men and women who have strayed so far from Jewish values that they are rapists, murderers, and drug dealers?  How can they be observant Jews AND felons at the same time?

A friend who can be described only as an intellectual said that among all the historic documents in Egypt, there is no mention of Hebrew slaves (see my January 17, 2011 post).  I wrote a rabbi online (AskMoses.com,”here for you 24/6″) and asked him to verify or refute this.  His answer:  “Just because there’s no reference to it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

This he calls an answer?  A seder is a lot of work for the sake of a “maybe.”  Oh well; I’ll enjoy the seder anyway because it’s friends and family, and we can get so wrapped up in matzo balls and parsley that we can enjoy it for what it is.  Dayenu!
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COMMENT FROM JIM SUBZERO:  Your rabbi is right.  However, we can safely say that if the Egyptians had Hebrew slaves, the episode didn’t make much of an impression on them, either the getting, the keeping, or the losing.  They had a lot to say about their other friends, enemies, and assorted neighbors.  They really liked to talk up their conquests (don’t we all?).  So, here’s my thought on how to save the Torah’s face:  Let’s say Jacob’s family went to Egypt, got some help, couldn’t pay their debts, and so they were indentured for a while.  Then they left.  Wrote memoirs, exaggerated a little.  Rest is history.

I love this; so will you.  Just click anywhere in the blue link.  http://www.aish.com/h/pes/mm/Passover_Google_Exodus.html

2 ½ quarts chicken broth
2 sliced onions, 5 stalks celery (sliced), 5 carrots (peeled and thinly sliced)
2 lbs ground chicken or turkey          2 eggs         1 ½ C matzo meal

In a large pot, combine the chicken broth, 1 onion, 3 stalks celery, 3 carrots.  Bring to a boil over high heat; lower the heat; simmer 10 minutes.  In a food grinder or bowl, combine the chicken with the remaining onion, celery and carrots.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Grind or chop the mixture until well blended.  Transfer to a large glass bowl.  Add the eggs, matzo meal and 1/3 C chicken broth from the pot.  Blend well.  The mixture should be soft and light to the touch.

Wet your hands with cold water; shape the mixture into 2-inch ovals.  Place them in the chicken broth in the pot.  Bring to a boil; cover partially; simmer 30 minutes.  Transfer to the glass bowl with the broth.  Cool, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate.  Serve on a bed of lettuce with horseradish.  Makes 16-18 ovals.  See if you can get your children to eat it.

“Yoo-hoo, is anybody?” was Molly Goldberg’s signature schrei, opening every episode. It sounds strange today, but back in the ’20s, people commonly understood it to mean Is anybody around?  The show was on radio from 1929 to 1946, and on television from 1949 to 1956.

Gertrude Berg wrote, produced, and starred in America’s first sitcom.  Mary Tyler Moore she wasn’t, but everyone loved her anyway.  Back then you didn’t have to be skinny and beautiful, and you have to wonder if it wasn’t Molly Goldberg who was the inspiration for the Feminist Movement.
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COMMENT BY ARNIE KAHN:  I remember Molly from the early days of TV.  The whole family gathered around our 16 inch black and white TV to watch the show.

Austrian writer Felix Salten was inspired to write Bambi—yes, that Bambi—during a visit to the Swiss Alps in 1923. Yet, as writer David Rakoff  pointed out in 2006, the novel written by Salten, born Siegmund Salzmann in 1869 and raised in the slums of Vienna, is a far cry from the Disney version that has since overshadowed it. “Bambi‘s forest is peopled (creatured?) with characters by turns arrogant, venal, gossipy, and engaging—as flawed and varied as the cosmopolitan fauna Salten must have encountered daily in his life in Vienna,” Rakoff explains.                     - Stephanie Butnik, The Scroll

Felix Salten was born Siegmund Salzmann, September 6th, 1869, in Budapest, Hungary. When he was three weeks old, his family moved to Vienna, Austria. Many Jews were immigrating into the city in the late 1800′s because Vienna had finally granted full citizenship to Jews in 1867.   What took them so long?

Rabbi Warren Goldstein:  “King David was one of our greatest military and political leaders, who bravely led and defended the Jewish State. King David was known not only for his political power and military genius but also as a great spiritual leader, learned in Torah and imbued with deep devotion to God.”

Mollie thinks it’s interesting that the rabbi would so revere King David, who Peeping-Tommed Bathsheba and ordered her husband Uriah off to a war in which he was certain to be killed.  In the end God forgives him, but I can’t imagine why.

Erin Kopelow and Ariel Beery in The Tablet:   Soon we’re going to bring a daughter into the world. Specifically, we’re going to bring her home to our apartment on Chen Boulevard, in the center of Tel Aviv, the city we’ve made our home, though we were born in the United States and Canada.

Had you asked us six years ago where we dreamed of raising a family, we’d have answered “Israel” without hesitation. But recently we’ve begun to doubt whether we should raise her here. The reason we are concerned is that the government is standing by as war is waged against girls and women.

Since 1948, the Orthodox have had the power to decide who is a Jew and how a Jew can live and die by controlling the mechanisms of marriage, divorce, and burial. What this means practically is that the government body that oversees all major life-cycle events is a religious institution, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Orthodox religious law is the law of the land: Only a man can marry a woman, only a man can grant a divorce. And because of Orthodoxy’s systemic exclusion of women from positions of power—its refusal to allow women to be rabbis, or to recognize female Reform and Conservative rabbis—the interests of women have been disregarded.

You expected maybe a punch line?
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COMMENT BY ARNIE KAHN:  It’s kind of like the Republican right.  Will they start to require ultrasound?

My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.

SUBTITLE:   Gey Avek from the Cameras, Rifka!  Go Back to the Kitchen Where You Belong 

Ads showing women in Jerusalem are routinely vandalized by the Haredim (the ultra-Orthodox).  An agency spokesman said, “Jerusalem is a symbol, a capital, built on mutual respect, holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims. If you want to be tolerant in this city you cannot advertise women.”

Advertising its winter collection, an Israeli fashion company cropped out a female model’s head and cleavage from posters it put up in Jerusalem. In other Israeli cities, the full image ran.

The self-censorship prompted Uri Ayalon, a rabbi who is not a member of the ultra-Orthodox community, to start a Facebook campaign called “Uncensored” in which six women had their photos taken for 150 posters that were put up on Jerusalem billboards.

“We object to the sexist use of women in ads. But it is also important to me that my two daughters grow up in a place where [they are not excluded just] because they are women,” Rabbi Ayalon said.

SUBTITLE:  Tim, We Hardly Knew Ye (But Unfortunately, All Too Well)

Marc Tracy of Tablet Magazine has some advice for Tim Tebow, who is leaving Denver for New York.

• We stand up when we pray for serious, so don’t kneel on the field; we’ll just think you’re tying your shoes.
• Howston. Howston Street.
• Those people in Brooklyn are not Amish.
• You, Jeremy Lin, and Charlie Ward: That’s almost one-third a minyan!
• Maybe don’t mention the abortion stuff!
• Yes, we know Jesus was a Jew, too. Pointing that out is probably the worst way to win us over.

SUBTITLE:  Betcha Groucho Didn’t Know About This (I Soitainly Didn’t)

New book:  When General Grant Expelled the Jews    This riveting account of General Ulysses S. Grant’s decision, in the middle of the Civil War, to order the expulsion of all Jews from the territory under his command affirms Jonathan Sarna’s place as the preeminent historian of American Judaism. Sarna gives us the first complete account of this forgotten episode, which galvanized American Jews, haunted Grant’s election, transformed his presidency, and left a lasting mark on American politics. Sarna’s book sheds new light on one of our most enigmatic presidents, on the Jews of his day, and on the ongoing debate between group loyalty and national loyalty that continues to roil American political and social discourse.  (Spoiler:  President Lincoln immediately overrode Grant’s orders.)              -  from The Tablet

Sign seen at a rally:  “Obama is NOT a foreign-born anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare.  You’re thinking of Jesus.”

SUBTITLE:  “Antisémitisme”  (Even in French, It’s an Ugly Word)

March 19, 2012, The Tablet:  Four Jews, including a teacher and his two children, were killed in an early-morning shooting outside and then inside the Jewish high school that serves as the center of the 25,000-strong Jewish community of Toulouse, France. The gunman is at large. Nationwide, France has closed all streets with Jewish institutions on them.

SUBTITLE:  Coming Soon to a Shtetl Near You

Shell Oil was created by English Jew, Marcus Bearsted, 1^st Viscount (1883-1927). He was also Lord Mayor of London in 1902.  A Jew who’s a Lord Mayor of London I can understand; a Jew who is a viscount sounds totally out of place.  We don’t HAVE an aristocracy!  We have chaverim (friends).  Much better.

YIDDISH TRANSLATION:  Lernen, Boychik!!

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach made a huge splash with his 1999 book, Kosher Sex. The book, along with works including Kosher Sutra and Kosher Adultery, flouts taboos against discussing physical intimacy, desire, and other basic elements of the human experience. Now he’s at it again, taking on perhaps the biggest taboo of all: Jesus. In Kosher Jesus, Boteach argues that Jesus, a faithful adherent and proponent of Judaism, never intended to create a new religion. That turn of events was a corruption of Jesus’ reputation by his followers, argues Boteach, and getting to a place where Jews and Christians alike recognize his Jewishness can only help.  (It couldn’t hoit.)           – borrowed in part from The Jewish Journal

In the Chicago suburb of Skokie, one out of every six Jewish citizens in the late 1970s was a survivor–or was directly related to a survivor–of the Holocaust. These victims of terror had resettled in America expecting to lead lives free from persecution. But their safe haven was shattered when a neo-Nazi group announced its intention to parade there in 1977. The case ignited enormous controversy and challenged our understanding of and commitment to First Amendment values.

The debate was clear-cut: American Nazis claimed the right of free speech while their Jewish “targets” claimed the right to live without intimidation. The town, arguing that the march would assault the sensibilities of its citizens and spark violence, managed to win a court injunction against the marchers. In response, the American Civil Liberties Union took the case and successfully defended the Nazis’ right to free speech.

Skokie had all the elements of a difficult case: a clash of absolutes, prior restraint of speech, and heated public sentiment. The protagonists: Frank Collin, the son of a Holocaust survivor; Skokie community leader Sol Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor who planned a counterdemonstration against the Nazis; Skokie mayor Albert Smith, who wanted only to protect his townspeople; and ACLU attorney David Goldberger, caught in the ironic position of being a Jew defending the rights of Nazis against fellow Jews. While the ACLU did win the case, it was a costly victory–30,000 of its members left the organization. And in the end, ironically, the Nazis never did march in Skokie.

But if he had lost the case, the rest of America would blame the Jews for lack of access to free speech.  Such a predicament David Goldberger was in, oy.

You can skip this.

If you DO like send-ups, a very good Purim satire is:  http://www.bangitout.com/articles/viewarticle.php?a=1196   The first paragraph isn’t funny but you’ll be glad you read the rest, dayenu!

SUBTITLE:  The Jewish Halloween

Set in Persia 2,300 years ago, the Book of Esther – the “Megillah”– recounts how a seemingly unrelated series of events spun together to save the Jewish people from annihilation.

King Ahashveros throws a huge six-month party; Queen Vashti refuses to cooperate. Such a farbissener.  Why did she not think it was in her best interests to please the king?  Vashti, you’re outta here.  Esther becomes the new queen – but does not reveal her Jewishness. Mordechai, Esther’s uncle and the leader of the Jews, uncovers a plot to assassinate the king – putting him also in a favorable position with the king. All this comes in handy when Haman, the king’s top advisor, obtains a decree to have all the Jews destroyed. (Purim is the Persian word for “lottery,” used by Haman to determine a date for his planned destruction of the Jews.)

In the end, through a complex twist of events, Esther gets the decree reversed, Haman is hanged on the gallows, and Mordechai becomes prime minister.

That’s not the WHOLE megillah, but . . . close enough.  I just learned that you’re supposed to fast on the day before Purim.  Gee, no thanks; I’m not THAT connected to Purim.  My mother dressed us up for Purim until we were old enough to protest, and I won the prize one year.  It was a bag of hamantashen.  I’ve never liked poppy seeds, and it’s a tsura  to floss.  Did it count as generosity when I offered to “share” them with all the other kids?

No one said you have to be perfect.  You can fall on your punim or you can fall on your tuchis.  It’s apologizing and getting back up that counts.

Deavid Suissa:  It never occurred to me that I’d have to visit the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail to get a deeper understanding of the Charedi crisis in Israel. I call it a crisis because, in my mind, anything that makes the Jewish religion look really bad is a crisis. If you look like a religious Jew, and you spit on an Orthodox girl because her dress code doesn’t meet your standard of modesty, and the incident is caught on Israeli television and goes viral on YouTube, then you are slandering Judaism and it’s a crisis.

So, here’s my message to religious Jews who publicly and brazenly humiliate women and spit in the face of the Jewish state that feeds them: Don’t slander my religion.

What I witnessed at the county jail on the last night of Chanukah, however, was the opposite of slander. I was there with my 12-year-old son and a small group of local Jews and rabbis — some with long beards and black hats — to light the Chanukah candles with law-enforcement officials, and to bring some holiday comfort to Jewish inmates.

I had been invited by Chaplain Howard Winkler, director of the Orthodox Jewish Chaplaincy Board, who used the occasion to hand out awards. Around long tables serving up kosher doughnuts, drinks and dreidels, people with police badges milled around, listening to a Jew in a yarmulke talk about the inspirational light of Chanukah and the Jewish value of gratitude.

What could have been going through their minds?  Here’s a group of religious Jews coming to their jailhouse to honor these public servants for the difficult work they do — and to thank them for the respect and sensitivity they show to the Jewish community and to Jewish inmates. How could they not respond positively to this “religious” ceremony?

As Winkler handed an award to Sheriff Lee Baca, I reflected on those images we’ve been seeing in the media of enraged Charedim in Israel, and I thought: What a contrast! In Beit Shemesh, a group of religious Jews says “screw you” to the world, while, in a Los Angeles jail, a group of religious Jews says “thank you.”  Only one honors the Jewish religion.

In this real world, you visit jail wardens to say thank you. And if there are Jews whose wardrobe annoys you, you don’t spit on them; you invite them over for Shabbos.

Lighting Shabbos candles is a mechiah and a mitzvah; cleaning the candlesticks is a tsura.   So sometime on Friday afternoon, spray the inside of the holder with a thin coating of Pam before dropping in a candle.  After the candle has burned down, the remaining wax will slip out.  And if it doesn’t, then — after you see the three stars on Saturday night – run hot or boiling water over the stubs till they float out.  Don’t procrastinate with the Pam, although I don’t think the act of spraying is one of the things proscribed as “work.”  It takes the same amount of effort as . . . uh-oh . . . flipping a light switch.

SUBTITLE:  Paper, paper everywhere, and not a sheet to recycle

I don’t have a single page to proofread; the court reporter’s three jobs this week canceled.  At least they let her know beforehand; usually she drives 40 miles and from one small town to another, and when she gets there,  they say, “Oh, didn’t you hear?  The case settled.”  NO, she didn’t hear; that’s because no one told her.  They pay her $30 as an appearance fee and wave bye-bye.  Then she schleps all her equipment home.  The half-life of a reporter is about 10 years; then she gives up and looks elsewhere for a way to make money.  Depositions are being videotaped more and more. The paper industry will go out of business along with the entire field of court reporting.  I’ve got a basement full of reams and reams of used paper, printed on both sides (I’m hugging every last tree).  So far there’s no market for it.  I could recycle it with my newspapers every week, but that’s a service our trash collector does . . . for money.  I want someone to pay ME.  Well, it’s gonna be a firetrap, so I’ll start putting it out for the trash guys, who get paid gantzeh gelt for what they do.  I’m doing heavy research and reading for spelling, grammar, AND sense, and they’re using their upper-body strength to shlep neatly packaged bags of trash into a truck.  They’re under no obligation to pick up anything that isn’t “packaged.”  You practically have to gift-wrap it.  Then they go on strike and get paid by the union until they finally get more money for their mindless work.   Here’s an idea.  We should be paid according to our IQ.

Athena was a Greek goddess. She was the daughter of Zeus and was born fully-grown from his forehead.  People used to BELIEVE this.  There’s an entire code of sacrifices to be made and ceremonies to be observed.  We laugh at it and call it mythology, but it was very real at the time.  Millennia before THAT, cavemen sacrificed virgins to appease the volcano gods.  Now fast-forward 5,000 years from today. . . will some of us still believe in the Trinity, others in the holiness of water sprinkled onto the head of a newborn, and others in a God who does not show himself  other than (and only once) as a burning bush?  Thoughts, anyone?  Larry?
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COMMENT BY JUDY ROSENBERG:  Larry?  Who’s Larry?
REPLY FROM MOLLIE:  See my January 16, 2012 post. He made a comment that seems to indicate that he doesn’t like me.
COMMENT BY ERIC GROSS: The Bible is Creative Writing 101.  Whoever comes up with the most colorful and distressing story (Jacob fooling his blind father into thinking he’s Esau; Lot’s two daughters conspiring to get him drunk so that he sleeps with them; Lot’s wife morphing into the pillar of salt) wins.

N. Shuldig, The Jewish Magazine: California students will be the first in the country to receive mandatory lessons about the contributions of gays and lesbians under state laws set to take effect at the start of 2012. A California law will add gays and lesbians and people with disabilities to the list of social and ethnic groups whose contributions must be taught in history lessons in public schools. The law also bans teaching materials that reflect poorly on gays or particular religions.  Here’s my source.

The key to understanding what is happening is the statement: “The law also bans teaching materials that reflect poorly on gays or particular religions.” Now anyone who has read the Bible (and hopefully more than just a handful of people) will realize that this will prohibit Bible studies since it is the Bible itself (as the Word of God) that calls homosexuals abomination. It is stated in Leviticus: “And if a man lie with another man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination, they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” (20:13) Now according to the new law will this negative passage in the Bible which reflects poorly on gays be eliminated? Does this mean that Bible study must ignore or pervert the word of God because it reflects poorly on homosexuals?

Mollie’s opinion: Only if you think it’s “the word of God.” Not all of us do. And there’s something dreadfully wrong with a rabbi /scholar (N. Shuldig) who see everything in black and white. He advises you to drop Judaism and take up another religion if you “choose” (his word) to be gay.

Looking for inspirational life lessons?  You sure won’t find them here.

The Jewish calendar’s reference point is
traditionally held to be about one year
BEFORE  the Creation of the world.

Well, that’s what it says on Wikipedia.   Really.    (Including the capital C)

SUBTITLE:  Premature Fabrication
SUBTITLE:  Ths Is Your Brain on Desperation and/or Chutzpah

In my freshman year at MU-Columbia, the professor told the class that we MUST go see the drama school’s production of Look Homeward, Angel that weekend.  Hey!  I had  dates on all three nights, and I wasn’t about to give THOSE up, so I went to the library and read the book standing up in the aisle.  I went to class the next Monday, and the professor said, “If you didn’t see the play, please leave now and you’ll take an “F” for today.”  Half the class walked out, but I sat tight.  After all, I knew the plot and the characters.  How hard could it be?  This hard:  He said, “I want you to write an essay on the production — NOT the plot, NOT the characters.  I want to see how you critique the presentation.  This IS Journalism 101, and I’m teaching you how to be a theater critic.”   Well, I couldn’t leave THEN, duh, so I found a pen and wrote absolute pure fiction about how the lighting was mishandled in Act I but improved in Act II, the subtleties of the stage setting, the nuances of character placement in relationship to the size of the stage. (I didn’t know if it was tiny or huge; I just said that the character placing was aesthetically pleasing and how that enhanced the production, etc.)   I threw around words like “masterful” and  ”lamentable” and . . . I got an A.

My motto back then was “Cheat, and if you get caught, lie.”  I grew out of THAT.
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COMMENT BY JUDY ROSENBERG:   Oy!  Just an ‘A’ is all you got?

I wrote this last week but forgot to post it.  Let’s pretend it’s today.

We’re snowed in . . . but not under. I had a dentist appointment for this morning at 11:00. It’s an official snow day — all schools are closed; the usual announcements are in a ribbon across the bottom of the TV screen, and that generally means that NOTHING can be considered as open for business except hospitals and the police and the Mafia. The dentist charges $50 for a no-show, so just to protect myself, I called the dentist’s office; my call went directly to the answering machine, which said I’m calling after hours and to leave a message if it’s an emergency. It wasn’t an emergency, but I left a message anyway. No response. I called twice more; still nothing. I e-mailed them; no answer. This is nebbisheh; the dentist has access to his message machine from his home, and he has home access to the office computers and e-mail. He also can look at the names of today’s patients and take a half hour to call them all. He didn’t. So at 11 Jay drove me over (I could have walked; it’s about six blocks). It’s a  gahntzeh BLIZZARD; Walmart was open but PetSmart and Bed Bath & Beyond were closed. The dentist’s office was locked, so Jay taped a message to their door that I had written in advance: “It’s 11:00. I’m here. Where are you? Mollie Newman” The owner next door was at HER place of business — movie rentals. Since everyone knew 24 hours in advance that we were expecting two feet, she probably stayed there overnight . . . watching movies.

This is Colorado. You’d think that a big dental office would have SOMEONE with enough foresight to keep a change of clothing and a toothbrush and a pillow and some non-perishables (what do people think Spaghetti-Os are for? Emergencies! Basic sustenance!) in order to spend the night at the office, just in case. Any of the dental chairs serve nicely as a bed. There are TVs above every dental chair and lots of magazines in the waiting room. They also have nitrous if you get bored.

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COMMENT BY JUDY ROSENBERG:  What Would Jesus Do if he couln’t get out of his garage?
COMMENT BY ERIC GROSS:  Eat. Pray. Love. Find a snowplow.
MOLLIE’S RESPONSE:  I never met a snowplow driver I didn’t love at first sight.

Roses are sort of red;
Violets are blue-ish.
St. Valentine wasn’t
Exactly Jewish.

But go ahead and celebrate!  The poor schlimiel has been demoted anyway.  Vatican II, the landmark set of reforms adopted by the Catholic Church in 1969, removed Valentine’s Day from the Catholic Church’s calendar, asserting that “though the memorial of St. Valentine is ancient… apart from his name nothing is known… except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on 14 February.”  Remaining very much alive, however, are Hallmark, the flower business, Russell Stover, and jewelers.

Bad Valentine’s Day Gift Decision

Uzi Silber:  With the passage of the twin alcohol-friendly celebrations of Simchat Torah and the lesser known, but more suggestive, Festival of the Water Bearing, my thoughts turn to the seemingly contradictory relationship between Jews and booze.  Jews seem to be genetically predisposed to be resistant to the intoxicating effects of alcohol. We’re a tribe that drinks, but we’re not drunks — so the story goes. That gallon bottle of Manischewitz sits in the kitchen cabinet for 15 years, while liquor left over from our bar mitzvahs sits patiently in a closet, waiting for our engagement parties.

And we’re not violent drunks.  There’s liquor on Simchat Torah and Purim, but it’s all good-natured: Police don’t dread a spate of Jewish barroom brawls on days of festivity.

The seeming paradox of the sober Jewish drinker was captured in a somewhat dated, if entertaining, 1958 Time Magazine article. Research by the Yale Center of Alcohol Studies showed that among all religious and ethnic groups, Jews produced both the fewest teetotalers and the fewest alcoholics.

Moreover, Hebrews seem to have developed, as early as 26 centuries ago, a better ability than non-Jews to tolerate alcohol. A 2010 research paper on the genetics of Ashkenazi Jews, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, claims to have identified a genetic trait enabling Ashkenazi males to better absorb alcohol, a finding that provides a biological basis for the low rates of alcohol abuse by Jews.
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COMMENT BY SUSAN LEVY:  What, they don’t include females in their study?

It is not enough to let our people go. We have to take them somewhere. In retrospect, was the Middle East really the best place? It depends on your flexibility as to the word “holy” as used in “The Holy Land.” In 2005 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that he would use a nuclear weapon “to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.”  That’s been the Arabs’ dream since long before 1948.

It was an innocent part of my parents’ generation’s vocabulary, and all it means is “black,” with no judgment or put-down implied, but I’ve noticed that its use has become déclassé.

The black comedian Chris Rock said, “I have millions and millions of dollars, three houses, a cook and a chauffeur and fancy cars, and there’s not one of you white people in the audience who would trade places with me.”

Can’t we all just hold hands and sing “Kumbaya”?

A Jewish doctor bagel-ed me.  He said, “You have an unusual accent.  Are you from New York?” —  which is another way of asking, “Are you Jewish?”  I told him I’d grown up near Kansas City and had lived in Denver for 47 years, so it must be the Yiddish cadence of my immigrant grandparents that I’d picked up.  He said, “Ah-HAH!!!”

Don’t yell “fire” in a crowded Hadassah meeting; eventually you’ll have to atone.

Telling people to relax when their team is losing the game is not as aggressive as shooting them, but it’s right up there.

Our Most Valuable Prayer, Tim Tebow, was strangely not to be seen.  Or so I’m told . . . I didn’t watch the game.  There were people to schmooze with!  For a change, I knew who was playing.   Flashback: Click here.

My granddaughter, age 4, asked for bagel and cream cheese.  I gave it to her and she said, with a perfect Yiddish cadence, “What, no lox?”

Maybe it’s inborn.

The Talmud insists that God did a favor for the Jewish people by dispersing them throughout the world (Pesachim 87b) because our geographical exiles serve to secure our physical survival.  Should Jewish life be threatened in one country, Jewish communities elsewhere on the globe can (a) help them escape or, barring that, (b) let the rest of the world know who the oppressors/mamzers are, take revenge, mourn, and flourish.

I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn’t.    -  Jules Renard  (1864 – 1910)

When I tell people where I’m from (St. Joseph, MO), half of them say they’ve never heard of it.  Is it a suburb of St. Louis?  Is it maybe in the Ozarks?  I tell them JESSE JAMES!!   The PONY EXPRESS!!  Ronald Reagan’s first wife!!  Big Chief Tablets!! and  . . . Cherry Mash.   The last time I had a Cherry Mash was when I was pregnant with my 40-year-old.  There’s one candy store in Denver that sells them, and on my way to the OB/GYN for a fifth-month checkup, I decided that if I hadn’t exceeded the weight gain he was limiting me to that month, I was going to treat myself to a Cherry Mash on the way home.  His scale showed that I’d gained two more pounds than I was supposed to, and I cried all the way home but I stopped at that candy store and had a Cherry Mash anyway.   And it tasted jusssssst swell.
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COMMENT BY EMILY G:  I didn’t know those came from your home town!  It’s the Chosen Candy, yummm.
COMMENT BY MOLLY-WITH-A-Y:   What is a Cherry Mash?  Did they ever make their way to Kansas City?
RESPONSE BY MOLLIE:   It’s a candy bar (Lady Godiva it isn’t), and I’d rather not know what exactly is in one, but here’s a picture.

It’s MUCH better than the mustard-and-jelly-on-white-bread sandwich that I favored when I was a child

http://muqata.blogspot.com/2011/03/talmud-study-now-mandatory-in-south.html    Even the “debunking” on Snopes is confusing.

True:  Woody Allen made a New Year’s resolution to take lessons and learn to fly a plane.  The more he thought about it, though, the more he convinced himself that he was perhaps not cut out for the flying life. “Am I crazy? A 76-year-old Jew piloting a plane isn’t a New Year’s resolution; it’s a death wish. And if I die, how am I going to turn out a Woody Allen movie every year?”
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COMMENT BY JUDY ROSENBERG:  Woody Allen, the Chosen Pilot?  Naaaaaa . . .

Tom Teicholz:  Mel Gibson’s self-destructiveness has cost him his marriage, much of his fortune, his standing in Hollywood and — depending on what happens next — could lead to criminal prosecution for domestic violence.

Rewinding through Gibson’s oeuvre and focusing on “Braveheart,” “The Man Without a Face” and then “The Passion,” the consistent theme appears to be that violence and harsh confrontation beget redemption. Gibson then made “The Passion of the Christ.” I would argue that each generation gets the version of Christ it deserves. So, if “The Greatest Story Ever Told” was made for the post-World War II “Greatest Generation,” “Godspell” for the ’60s flower children, and “Jesus Christ Superstar” for the “me” decade 1970s, then “The Passion of the Christ” embodies a rift in American culture, a moment when war and existential threats seemed everyday experiences. When Gibson said he was being true to the Gospels in making his movie, he was not wrong. But it was his specific choices from among the versions that reflected Gibson’s own character.

Then there were the rumors that he had a girlfriend, followed by denials, then his wife filing for divorce, and the announcement that not only did Gibson have a girlfriend, but she was pregnant with what would be Gibson’s eighth child.

Did Gibson think being famous, being wealthy, put him in control? I’m sure he was warned. But an affair and a child with a much younger woman? What did he think would happen? Gibson may pray for things to work out or for forgiveness from family, friends and colleagues; and others may pray for him. But I won’t be one of them.

Being a minnow in Lake Superior is nothing to be ashamed of;  however, in the words of Tevye, it’s no great honor either.

In Israel there are dining halls and other spaces to be rented for weddings and bar mitzvah parties and celebrations.  The people running this “event venue” are subject to inspection and certification as to kashruth and to questioning exactly what is taking place there.

If the event is a wedding, in theory the issue is the legality of the marriage; meaning that the rabbinate controls all marriages in Israel and two women or two men cannot legally get married here because gay marriages are not recognized by the rabbinate (nor are marriages where either the bride or the groom is not Jewish according to Orthodox law). There is no such thing as a civil marriage in Israel.  If a venue were to lose its certification, everyone would know why (same-sex ceremonies, women actually dancing with men [eek]); then the non-Orthodox could continue to utilize that space, and it would prosper . . . encouraging other such venues to follow its example.  The ones which keep their certification will still be available to the Orthodox and Chassidic crowds.  Onward and upward with the separation of shul and state.

Bacon is chazzerei, said Mollie’s mother.  Mothers (of attentive and want-to-please children) have superpowers.  Wonder Woman could take lessons from Adele Saferstein.

Evangelical missionary David Herzog stooped to a new low deceiving the Jewish community with ads which intentionally avoided any mention of their Christian evangelical agenda.  The half-page ads ran for several weeks in the Jewish Journal. They promoted a Beverly Hills event offering “supernatural healings” based on what the ad termed Jewish mysticism.  The ads were devoid of any phone number or website that would have facilitated an easy investigation into the true nature of the program.

Herzog’s duplicity was intentional. He writes on the “In Jesus” website that “due to the highly sensitive nature of these 100% evangelistic meetings dubbed as lectures to the Jewish community we cannot give out the location or details.” [Mollie wonders:  How does the meeting take place if people don’t know where to go?] A number of Jewish students attended the recent event, only to discover they had been duped by the Herzog ads.  Once the Jewish Journal realized Herzog’s true intentions, it refused to accept any more of his ads.

Herzog has appeared on many of the growing number of messianic television shows. He is part of a long line of Christian faith healers running revival meetings. However, in his case, Herzog has a Jewish name and he gloats at his success at conducting major “Jewish Outreach” on the East Coast, West Coast and Israel. “Even the Jewish newspapers are begging us to put our ads in their next Health Issue,” he wrote online.  In a pitch to solicit donations, Herzog claims his historic outreach meetings will be “packed with unsaved Jewish people wide open to the gospel presented with healings and miracles.” As to past meetings, Herzog claims, “miracles broke out, many were healed, and American and Israeli Jews received salvation after God powerfully healed them.”

The Herzog episode demonstrates that attempts to convert Jews have not diminished. They have simply used new tactics and taken advantage of the Internet to reach unsuspecting students and young adults.        – by Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz  11-2-11

“The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.” — Bernard M. Baruch

But it’s so much more fun (and a whole lot easier) just to pout. — Mollie Newman

Last week’s news says that 27% of first graders in Israel are UO (ultra-Orthodox = the Haredim). Yes, that would be the children of the madmen who called an eight-year-old girl a whore and spit on her because he wasn’t dressed as modestly as they would like (what, we should wear burkas?) and think that their brand of Judaism is the only “right” one. Women must yield the sidewalk to men; their women cannot become rabbis; they see to it that public transportation even for secular (or Reform all the way up to Orthodox) (or put it this way: Orthodox all the way up to Reform) is unavailable on Shabbos.  If you’re the child of a convert who didn’t become Jewish “their” way, you’re not Jewish and won’t be able to get a marriage license.  Divorces are granted only by panels of males.  Want more? Click here .

Remedy: Build a wall. They leave us alone, we leave them alone. Meanwhile, the Haredim seem to constitute a perpetual money pit (many UO don’t work but instead receive government funds to pursue religious study), while giving back nothing but spits and insults and violence. Let them declare themselves a state and then secede from Israel. They can call themselves Israel.2.

P.S.  It’s Martin Luther King Day.  Keep the dream alive.
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COMMENT BY LARRY (Mollie has no idea who he is)   27% of children are children of madmen? You are sick! Do you really think all the UO’s agree with a few extreme nuts? You are guilty of lumping 20% of Israelis into a catagory [sic] because of a few lunies [sic]. You should have your brain checked for such narrow minded anti religious hatred. shame [sic] on you.

Okay, so it’s a little late — it’s the 20th day of Christmas — but I only just now thought of it.  It’s Winter Vacation (the famous euphemism) 1977.  My sons are three and six.  I get a call from my (Jewish) in-laws.

Q:  Can we have the boys today?  We want to get their picture taken with Santa Claus.
A:  What?  Who?  No.  I’m trying to raise them Jewish.
Q:  But Santa Claus has nothing to do with religion.
A:  You’re right; he doesn’t have anything to do with OUR religion.
Q:  Oh, but he’s just a fun symbol.
A.  Of what?
Q:  Ummm . . . Christmas.   Okay, can we have them for the day today anyway?  (Yes!  Sure!!)

My immigrant Orthodox grandmother, who grew up in a Balkan/Serbian country where they had no such nonsense, had pretty much the same conversation with my mother about taking my sister and me when we were tiny.  My grandmother was misled into thinking “Senta Close” was a colorful symbol of wintertime.  Her daughters, born here, learned soon enough.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison is the highest Jewish person ranked on Forbes magazine’s annual list of world billionaires, coming in at sixth with $28 billion. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was the next Jewish person at 17th, with $16 billion, followed by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (both Jewish), who were tied for 24th with $17.5 billion each. George Soros landed in 35th with $14 billion.

Other Jews to make the top 100 included Brazilian banking and investment mogul Joseph Safra, at 64th with $10 billion, and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, 73rd with $9.3 billion.

Sixteen Israelis made the list, including shipping magnate Sammy Ofer at No. 79 with $10.3 billion.

Lantzmen, can you spare a dime?

I do a little origami and my friends give me their picture calendars at the end of each year.  The calendar on my wall is a specialty calendar from some cult.  I’m taking it down because of a flaw in it. I knew Monday was going to be the 2nd, but this calendar placed the 2nd in the far-left column where we’re used to seeing the Sunday line-up.  The heading was “Monday.” These calendrists count their weeks as beginning on Monday, and they end their weeks (appropriately called “weekends”) with Saturday and Sunday.  I could get used to it, but the problem with getting used to it is that I won’t then be able to use a normal calendar effectively.

Who put the bomp in the bomp-sh-bomp-sh-bomp?
Who wrote the Book of Love?
Who put the Monday dates in the Sunday slots?????  Sohntag will never be the same.

Actually our calendars are Judeocentric; God rested on the 7th day, right?

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

Last month a Public Religion Research Institute poll found that more than 40% of all voters would “not be comfortable” with a Mormon as president. The flip side to THAT is from Jules Farber of The Washington Post:  “The time is at hand when the wearing of a prayer shawl and skullcap will not bar a man from the White House, unless, of course, the man is Jewish. ”
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COMMENT BY SUSAN FEDER:  The Constitution explicitly says that religion is a non-issue.
COMMENT BY DAN LEVY:  Eat, Pray, Love, Discriminate

Definition:  The apikorsim are doubters, skeptics, and nonbelievers.

I read an extremely interesting article about Humanistic Judaism, containing justification and instructions on how to be Jewish without believing in a supernatural being.  It’s rather long, so I’ll just openly identify myself with it, pass it on to you, and hope for your comments.  I wish I had a punch line, but all I have is:  http://www.shj.org/FAQs.html
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COMMENT BY JUDY ROSENBERG:  Why don’t you pray for a punch line?  If one comes to you, then you’ll have to conclude that there IS a God.

The Obama administration is engaged in a full-court press to persuade Israel that Iran’s nuclear threat can be contained short of war. The U.S. lobbying has received a mixed reception from Israel, where the Netanyahu government has not ruled out a unilateral strike on Iran. Iran, meanwhile, is taking an aggressive stance in response to mounting sanctions.       – JTA

I want the world to honor a new year’s resolution, and I’ve made it into a poem so it’ll be easy to remember:

Peace
In the Midde Eas

I can sympathize with people’s pains but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.  Then there’s schadenfreude . . .

A cult is a religion with no political power.      – Tom Wolfe, author and journalist (b. 1931)

Israel seems to be developing a Hared-ocracy.  They will be the majority within one more generation.  This is not good for Israel.  It’s already not good for the Jews.  The violence created (by admittedly a minority of Haredim, but they get all the press) is confusing to my Christian friends.  “Isn’t Israel a country for Jews?” – they ask me.  I tell them that there is extremism in every religion.  Next thing we know, the Haredim will be drawing a line in the sand which mainstream Jews won’t dare cross. Will we come to the point where there’s a North Israel and a South Israel?  Maybe that would be an improvement, as long as they agree to leave each other alone already.
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COMMENT BY YAM EREZ:   Your (presumably American) Christian friends have never heard of the Moral Majority? Evangelicals? Fundamentalists? Christocracy (no, I didn’t coin that)?
RESPONSE BY MOLLIE:  Sure, but I’m their connection to Judaism, and they’re bewildered by the in-fighting.  So am I.

Or, more importantly, GOT RESOLUTIONS? Quote from Jef Mallett: The future and the past are pretty close to the same thing, except when you try to change the one it’s called “ambition,” and when you try to change the other it’s called “lying.” When you try to change them both it’s called “writing.”

If all you have is milk, warm up a cup, add some Ovaltine, drink it, and go to bed early. The streets will be full of drunk drivers. Otherwise, aside from that farbissiner bit of wisdom, Happy New Year’s Eve!

Yesterday’s Denver Post ran a prominent story – three-quarters of page two, mit pictures of Ultra-Orthodox Jews (the Haredim) and, separately, the eight-year-old girl they spat on and called a whore while she was walking to school.  Her offense?  She was only Orthodox, not Ultra-Orthodox.  Certainly I’m upset that they saw fit to spit on her and call her names; I’m even more upset at the apparent rate of increase in such attacks; and I’m even more upset thinking about what non-Jewish readers are thinking when they read this.  This can’t be good for the Jews.  Where are the police?  Where is the government?  Where is the seychel?

My cousin Yam described this better than I ever could; she lives in Israel and blogs at this website. Read the top post; it’s dated December 28, 2011. 

Light the candles
This last night of Chanukah;
Then relax and sit back with a
Gin and a tonnikah.

Nash didn’t discriminate; nothing rhymes with Christmas either.
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COMMENT BY MOLLY-WITH-A-Y:   Christmas and Isthmus–but who cares?
REPLY BY MOLLIE:  All right, Miss Smarty Pants, you got me.

News from last week (when my blog was down): The interior of a mosque in a village near Ramallah (the capital of the Palestinian National Authority) on the West Bank was torched after being soaked with gasoline on Thursday morning. The attack comes a day after an historic unused mosque in Jerusalem was set on fire, damaging its exterior, and Palestinian vehicles were destroyed in the West Bank. Right-wing extremists have been blamed for the attacks.
Whoever is involved in this: STOP IT. You’ve got tzimmis for brains if you think such low, mean, sneaking and stupid behavior will earn the approval of nations who advocate your right to exist. Diplomacy has failed so far; you think THIS is going to work?
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COMMENT BY SUSAN FEDER: I’d like to tell the Israeli Defense Force: You have the ability to destroy the Palestinians’ possessions; you just don’t have the grace NOT to.

Until yesterday, I haven’t been able to post anything for nine days. The scary thing is, nobody said, “Hey! What happened?”
If my blog were a book, I don’t think it would be on the Times best-seller list. Is anyone reading this?
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COMMENT BY JUDY ROSENBERG: No. (Can an oxymoron be one word?)

Martin Rees, cosmologist and astrophysicist (b. 1942): I’d like to widen people’s awareness of the tremendous timespan lying ahead — for our planet, and for life itself. Most educated people are aware that we’re the outcome of nearly four billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. Six billion years from now, it will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

Here we have a divorced couple who practiced Catholicism.  The husband converts to Judaism and wants to have their nine-year-old son circumcised.  The son is resisting. The father is insisting.  The mother says NO and wants sole custody.  Petitions from the father and injunctions by the mother have been filed in court.  Now what?
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COMMENT FROM JUDY ROSENBERG:  Just take the pork off  the shopping list.  You can insist on dietary laws, but circumcision?  For a nine-year-old?  It’s outrageous.
COMMENT FROM SUSAN FEDER:  I’m presuming the father had had his own (adult) circumcision performed during the conversion ritual?
COMMENT FROM EMILY G.:  Mohels are listed in the phone book; that doesn’t mean you should call one.
COMMENT FROM DAN LEVY:  Is the father KIDDING?  Is he SERIOUS?  He needs a psychiatrist, not a pediatric urologist.  No mohel could possibly agree to do this.

SUBTITLE:  I Don’t Have the Chutzpah to Write This Post

Here’s a difficult question. If you want to tell a story involving an African-American but don’t wish to imply that you’re racist, how do you do it? I can insist all day that I’m NOT racist; I even carry a membership in the NAACP. I want to do whatever I possibly can to advance their agenda, but I’ll still sound like a racist with this story. Here’s what I CAN’T POSSIBLY put on my blog:

I was sitting in the optometrist’s waiting room. An 18-year-old African-American girl was sitting next to me. The optometrist, who was new and didn’t know either one of us, came out, looked at his chart, looked at me, looked at her, looked back at me, and said, “LaKeesha?”  She laughed first.

Letter to the editor of The Denver Post, “Disenfranchised by Tebow’s More Intolerant Fans”:  “I am thrilled for the success that Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow has enjoyed over the last few weeks. However, I am dismayed that because of his success, fundamental and evangelical Christians have co-opted the team, essentially crediting Christianity for its success. In the last few weeks I have heard calls to sports talk radio stations quoting Biblical scripture, stating that one ‘cannot be a Broncos fan if they are not Christian,’ referring to the Broncos as ‘God’s favorite team’ and even damning those of the Jewish faith to hell if they refuse to accept Jesus. So because of Tim Tebow’s success, non-Christians have been disenfranchised by those Christians who demonstrate no tolerance for those of other faiths. And Mr. Tebow has yet to dstance himself from this bigotry. And that is why I’m no longer a Broncos fan.”   – Steve Feld

Some thoughts of my own on prayer:  The minyan — why do you need it? Does it count less if you pray alone or with only eight other people? It seems like superstition to me. Prayer in school: Don’t let it happen. If you want to pray for a day in which you’ll learn well, pray beforehand alone or with your mother as she buttons up your coat. Prayer in sports: Don’t do it on the baseball diamond, the basketball court, or the football field. If you want to pray beforehand for God to allow you to use your strength and skills, do it alone and silently. Displays like this are unseemly and undignified because they’re public. Your relationship with God . . . who surely isn’t concerned if you score a touchdown or not . . . should be extremely personal.
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COMMENT FROM ARNIE KAHN:  Yes, God does seem to follow all sporting events and helps those teams and players for whom he a fan.  That’s why so many teams and players pray before and after games.  At least that’s the only reason I can think of for this behavior.  It’s interesting.  Half of Christians in the US, when asked who they are, respond “Christian” before “American.” In almost all European nations the answer is almost always “French” or “German” etc.  Christians in the US actually attend church, unlike European Christians.

From Jerry Lewis’s book I Almost Died Laughing:  I’m preparing the big finale for my 1960 film Cinderfella. The setting is a ballroom with a majestic staircase with 64 steps. I’d flown in the Count Basie Orchestra from New York, so the soundstage is packed with hundreds of crew members, actors, extras, musicians, and visitors. Now I’m ready to film. I make my entrance at the top of the stairs. I do my choreographed routine, going from the top stair all the way into the ballroom. Then I ran back up those 64 stairs in nine seconds flat . . . and I had a heart attack at the top of the stairs. [Click here. He does a crazy funny routine 4 ½ minutes into the show; be patient — it's worth it]. The film and everyone in it are on hold for eight weeks because I’m now inside an oxygen tent. We’re talking 1960, so it’s a huge canvaslike affair — square, with zippers. That night, my father comes into my room. He opens the little flap on the oxygen tent, sticks his face inside, and says, “Do you know what you’re doing to your mother?”