Just in time for Purim: Israel’s entry in this year’s Eurovision — that annual celebration of tact — is a song that many say is about a nuclear Holocaust brought by Iran. (Although it can probably be read in various ways, as “some crazy rulers” could apply to a large percentage of players in the region.)
The world is full of terror
If someone makes an error
He’s gonna blow us up to biddy biddy kingdom come
There are some crazy rulers, they hide and try to fool us
With demonic, technologic willingness to harm
They’re gonna push the button
push the button push the bu push the bu push the button
In an era in which mainstream American Jewish organizations have been hijacked by right-wing partisans, and in which the most visible American Jewish politician holds views that are out of line with those of the vast majority of American Jews (not to mention most Americans), it’s time the community saluted Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, a politician whose convictions are actually consistent with some of the greatest values held by American Jews.
Despite the usual Administration attacks charging that stopping this war means betraying our troops, Senator Feingold has courageously taken steps to block funding for a troop increase — or, to put it another way, to take the keys away from the drunk determined to drive our nation’s security off a cliff.
This is what Senator Feingold said today at a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing he is leading on “Exercising Congress’s Constitutional Power to End a War”:
In the United States of America, the people are sovereign, not the President. It is Congress’s responsibility to challenge an administration that persists in a war that is misguided and that the country opposes. We cannot simply wring our hands and complain about the Administration’s policy. We cannot just pass resolutions saying “your policy is mistaken.” And we can’t stand idly by and tell ourselves that it’s the President’s job to fix the mess he made. It’s our job to fix the mess, and if we don’t do so we are abdicating our responsibilities.
Tomorrow, I will introduce legislation that will prohibit the use of funds to continue the deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq six months after enactment. By prohibiting funds after a specific deadline, Congress can force the President to bring our forces out of Iraq and out of harm’s way.
This legislation will allow the President adequate time to redeploy our troops safely from Iraq, and it will make specific exceptions for a limited number of U.S. troops who must remain in Iraq to conduct targeted counter-terrorism and training missions and protect U.S. personnel. It will not hurt our troops in any way — they will continue receiving their equipment, training and salaries. It will simply prevent the President from continuing to deploy them to Iraq. By passing this bill, we can finally focus on repairing our military and countering the full range of threats that we face around the world.
[Robert] Crumb’s current project has him spending a lot of time in the past. He is illustrating the opening book of the Bible, Genesis, and spends hours in his study deep in the Crumb house consulting translations of Sumerian legends, Hebrew and Christian scholarly interpretations of the Bible and reproductions of illuminated manuscripts.
The work contains biblical scenes populated with classic R. Crumb women, their legs and ankles hearty, their breasts straining through flimsy dresses. But the work is not sexually graphic. Nor has the artist altered a word of the Genesis text.
Interesting little tidbit from Consumerist: For the past six weeks, Walmart has been selling a t-shirt that, intentionally or not, contains insignia from the Waffen-SS. As Consumerist notes, the offending imagery was quite possibly the result of “a hack designer googling for skull pix”. But although Walmart apologized for the error, the offending tee is still in stores.
Watch the whole thing. I don’t know what to make of Blitzer. At first I was pissed he was lobbing softballs, but there’s so much going on here: The even-keeled, anodyne Blitzer trying to keep his mainstream media cool in the face of Duke’s “You’re a Jew!” “You’re a Zionist agent!” attacks.
From the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, released today:
The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush’s June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. This commitment must include direct talks with, by, and between Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians (those who accept Israel’s right to exist), and particularly Syria—which is the principal transit point for shipments of weapons to Hezbollah, and which supports radical Palestinian groups.
The United States does its ally Israel no favors in avoiding direct involvement to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. For several reasons, we should act boldly:
• There is no military solution to this conflict.
• The vast majority of the Israeli body politic is tired of being a nation perpetually at war.
• No American administration—Democratic or Republican— will ever abandon Israel.
• Political engagement and dialogue are essential in the ArabIsraeli dispute because it is an axiom that when the political process breaks down there will be violence on the ground.
• The only basis on which peace can be achieved is that set forth in UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and in the principle of “land for peace.â€
• The only lasting and secure peace will be a negotiated peace such as Israel has achieved with Egypt and Jordan.
This effort would strongly support moderate Arab governments in the region, especially the democratically elected government of Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas.
There’s more in the full Report, including some quixotic recommendations on Syria (that it persuades Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist, that it stops funding and arming Hamas, that it stop murdering Lebanese leaders, that it orders Hamas and Hezbollah to free the IDF soldiers — in return for which it would receive the Golan Heights).
In the Connecticut Democratic Primary, Ned Lamont defeated Joe Lieberman. Naturally, most national Democratic leaders responded by giving their support to Lamont. That’s how democracy works. One would think, after Lieberman ran and won as an independent, he might show a little humility for upending the political process and defying the wishes of his Democratic base. One might expect, perhaps, an apology for treating the Democratic party like a dog on the side of the road.
According to The New York Times, that’s not exactly what is happening.
On Election Night, his son Matthew referred to Democratic leaders as “happy to leave my dad by the side of the road.â€
Really? It was Joe who was left by the side of the road?
But there’s more.
People close to [Joe Lieberman] say he remains miffed, if not bitter, about what he considers the betrayal of allies who supported an unknown, untested and unfamiliar candidate.
… Mr. Lieberman has suggested he has felt especially wounded by Mr. Dodd, Connecticut’s senior senator, with whom he had shared a close bond since arriving in the Senate in 1989. Mr. Dodd had supported Mr. Lieberman in the primary, but endorsed Mr. Lamont after he won. Mr. Dodd’s appearance with Mr. Lamont at a Democratic “unity†rally and in a campaign commercial infuriated Mr. Lieberman, friends said.
… Earlier in the day, [Mr. Dodd] attended a Capitol Hill news conference that drew every Democrat in Connecticut’s Congressional delegation except Mr. Lieberman.
… Mr. Lieberman classifies himself as an “independent Democrat†and has said that recent events left him feeling “liberated†and “unshackled,†not exactly reassuring words to Democrats.
… Mr. Lieberman restated that it was possible he could join Senate Republicans, but he added, “I’m not going to threaten on every issue to leave the caucus.â€
Clearly, friends say, he is relishing his sudden ascent from Democratic reject in Connecticut to Senate kingmaker in Washington. “He is just sitting there in the catbird seat, and it must be delicious for him,†Ms. Collins said.
So it wasn’t Lieberman who betrayed his party after he lost the primary, but his party that betrayed Lieberman for not, essentially, cancelling the wishes of the primary voters. And now, for the next two years, Democrats will have to tiptoe around Jumpin’ Joe, lest he switches sides. Such humility in the most nationally recognized model of traditional Jewish ethics.
In an apparent effort to prove its bona fides as the paper of record for the culturally tone deaf, the New York Times sent its movie blogger, “The Carpetbagger,” out to explain to the world why he doesn’t find Sacha Baron Cohen funny. In the midst of his lamentation, he notes:
Baron Cohen is reportedly an observant Jew, give or take an appearance on “Saturday Night Live,†so he has license to use anti-Semitism to expose anti-Semitism.
So now the NYT is clueless about the most basic Jewish tradition? I guess it’s sort of understandable — it’s not like any Jews live in New York.
In case you haven’t heard, CNN has censored Bill Maher’s outing of Ken Mehlman on Larry King last week. (Maher subsequently censored himself, but that’s a separate story. Unless it’s the same story, since Time Warner owns both CNN and HBO. Hmmm….) Anyway, intrepid youtubers have kept the outing alive. Here’s one delightfully subtle remix:
Truth Spoken In Jest Department: Scroll in to the seventh minute to see Bill Maher’s interview with New York Senator Charles Schumer. When asked about the possibility of a Jew becoming president, Schumer quips, “There are some anti-Semites in this country, but most of them would vote Republican anyway.” He kids, ladies and gentlemen, he kids!
Condemning Jews and all other “heathen” to an eternity of suffering seems to be a recent requirement for the office of Governor of Texas.
SAN ANTONIO, Nov. 6 (UPI) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry has drawn criticism from rival candidates for saying he agrees non-Christians are condemned to spend eternity in hell.
Perry was among some 60 mostly Republican candidates for Tuesday’s midterm election attending a Sunday service at San Antonio’s Cornerstone Church, where pastor John Hagee said in his sermon non-Christians were “going straight to hell with a non-stop ticket,” The Dallas Morning News reported.
Afterward, Perry told reporters there was nothing in the sermon he could disagree with, prompting quick condemnations from opponents.
Kinky, God bless him, came back with a rejoinder comparing Perry to the Taliban.
J. Hoberman is, to my mind, the first reviewer to link Borat to John Murray Cuddihy’s The Ordeal of Civility.
It’s a measure of Baron Cohen’s dexterity that he plants his alter ego on both sides of the Jewish Question. “Kazakhstan”— actually shot in Romania—is a nightmare Eastern Europe where peasants bunk with livestock, torment Gypsies, and stage a traditional “Running of the Jew,” chasing giant-fanged puppets through their muddy village. But as a native of this barbaric shtetl, Borat is also a non-Christian other who—by virtue of his primitive nature—ridicules the hypocrisy of the dominant social order.
The ADL identifies Baron Cohen as an “observant” Jew. (I’m not sure what that means, but it seems less revealing than the subject of his Cambridge dissertation, namely the role of Jews in the American civil rights movement.) In any case, this comic has a distinctively Jewish sensibility. As sociologist John Murray Cuddihy notes in The Ordeal of Civility, his classic account of newly enlightened Jewish thinkers assimilated into the modern world, Marx, Freud, and Claude Lévi-Strauss were all similarly obsessed with “the raw, the coarse, the vulgar, the naked” and exposing the way in which these things were sublimated by the civil “niceness” of Western culture. So too, Borat (who might add the superstitious, the stupid, the sexist, and the xenophobic to that list).
Ph.D. candidates will be poring over the Ali G and Borat phenomena for generations hence. I would add to Hoberman’s analysis that Borat is a uniquely Jewish form of revenge on societies – both Eastern European and rural American – that have long viewed Jews as strangers at best. Baron Cohen is a Jew subverting the majority culture by prancing around in anti-Semitic drag. It’s a mark of how far Jews have striven and succeeded that so many of us celebrate this satire. That’s one reason it’s Jewish humor, and it’s also a reason why it is so thrilling to watch him. Revenge is sweetest when it’s smart, subversive and drop-dead hilarious.
This week’s “Modern Love” essay in the NYT brings out a couple truths that seem self-evident, yet are frequently lost on those living in Jewish bubbles: First, despite the smattering of alterna-veggie-indie minyans, for the majority of American Jews, the tenets of Jewish ritual and theology are almost unapproachably meaningless. Second, historical connection and guilt are insufficient bases for making life choices, not to mention perpetuating Jewish identity.
Enjoy. And expect Letters to the Editor from each of the denominations, and from each of the post-denominations, arguing that the author couldn’t possibly understand the essence of Judaism, etc. etc.
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