Way back in January, I noted an effort by Egypt to ban anti-Israel rhetoric in popular music. Reason has an article about the more contemporary issue of how Arab musicians are responding to the Iraq war. (via Head Heeb)

Haggai's Place presents an interesting, sorta-contrarian argument: if the roadmap to peace and palestinian statehood, etc, was always all about just being the first step to PLO overrunning the entirety of Israel, then why didn't Arafat accept the Barak/Clinton Camp David deal? That would've been just as good a first step as any.
I guess the answer is that no first step was going to be made by Arafat, and we have yet to see whether one will be -- even if a serious effort is made by Palestinian leadership, it'd most likely be by Abu Mazen over Arafat's protests.

A job for Sam? Underwear-clad singing cowboy makes $200G/year. (via Gawker) You might've always wondered how much those street performers make. Now you know.
Says Elder Sam: "I could be a naked surgeon."

From our hit counter: Someone was apparently looking through Jewschool's Google cache, presumably to look over the deleted posts; proof they should remain.

Parshat Behar: I imagine the Rabbi's not going to use this in his sermon. Too bad, too.

Imagine the scene. The ancestral land is dominated by strangers. The people are toiling in (granted, self-imposed, but work with me here) servitude, driven by their human slavemasters. Others groan under the burden of long-overdue debts, suffering the ever-increasing pressure imposed by their merciless creditors. Suddendly, the clarion call of the shofar echoes across the Judean desert. At last, the deadline has come and liberty is proclaimed across the land. The pressure has been relieved, the suffering is over. The slaves go free, the debts are annuled, the ancestral home is restored. And the Texas Democrats can return to their House of Legistlature.

Couple this with some sefirat ha-omer/ wandering through the desert imagery, and this was practically foretold. Even better, Tom Delay could play the role of Pharoah if you take this option.

Hilarious send-up of conspiracy theorists vs. LGF. (via Instapundit)

"Ring, Ring"
"Hello?"
"Zion?"
"No, this isn't Zion"
"Then who is this?"
"This is Steven"
"Oh, Steven, this is Zion's abba"
"Hello, how are you?"
....moving on....
"I'm calling because I want to know what Zion thinks of the piece by HC Kolman on page A19 of the Boston Globe about the roadmap to peace."
....more talk, then end of conversation...
The piece is here.
Basically, it starts off saying how ending settlements is necessary, et cetera, et cetera. Then about halfway through he notices that the roadmap includes such requirements, et cetera, et cetera. But it'd be easier to expect Abu Mazen to be able to cut back on violence if the settlements are dismantled first, et cetera, et cetera. Quote Brit Tzedek V'Shalom, who want the US to pay settlers to move back to within pre-1967 borders as a way of achieving de facto dismantling of the settlements.
Cute idea. A big question on my mind always is: What the hell do these settlers think they're doing? Is it a need to assert dominance? Is it an NRA-like bluster to do whatever one has the right to do? Why sacrifice so much just to live in a different part of the Holy Land?
Of course, the answer might be: maybe they're not sacrificing all that much. Kohlman notes that:

...in a recent poll of settlers, 80 percent said they moved to the territories to improve their quality of life, taking advantage of economic incentives offered by the Israeli government that enabled them to obtain better housing at a lower cost. The same poll revealed that 60 percent of the settlers were prepared to accept a withdrawal from the settlements in exchange for suitable financial compensation.

I just ran into a friend on the subway who's a music person and just got engaged to a person she met at KlezKamp. I guess it's only appropriate that I discover The Klezmer Shack, a blog based on...well, you can probably figure it out.

My Sort of Issue: Interesting article in Ha'aretz about Rabbi Dr. Pinchas Hayman, a Professor of Talmud in Bar-Ilan University, and his controversial new program to bring academic Talmud to High School education. The thinking basically is to try and use the awareness of the historical layers in the Talmud as delineated by modern scholarship as a tool to help kids follow the convoluted halakhic discussions. Being able to actually follow the flow of the discussion makes it easier to understand the argumentation, and the result is having more kids who a) understand whats going on and b) might decide that its somewhat interesting and worth studying more of. Hayman's met with much opposition from the traditional yeshiva camp of the Modern Orthodox world, which remains somewhat suspicious of the academy.

For more detail, see LookJed (the Lookstein Institute's Jewish education mailing list) archives on the subject here and here.

Personally, I think that his program might be a little ambitious for high school - it takes a certain famililarity with how Talmud works before a lot of the academic stuff makes much sense, and to teach that stuff first would produce the same confusion and frustration as anything Hayman's reacting to. Then again, the same could be true with hitting high schoolers with traditional lomdus (legalistic theorizing and didactic questions and answers and thumb waving). I do have a certain affinity for academic talmud - see my manifesto on the subject here - and I do think that some aspects of it - specifically, a focus on the flow of the text and how that text uses its own sources - can be very helpful in explaining things on a basic level to help kids attain the comfort level with Talmud that will ultimately help them succeed in either the academy or the beis midrash. I also think that the reaction from the Modern Orthodox traditionalist camp (this isn't even on the chareidi radar) shows how closeminded even smart, educated people can be sometimes, and that's really sad.

AOL has this "Get Your Matrix Name" tool on it's welcome screen. Mine is "Spandam".
Some others:
Avraham Bronstein = "Aphrodite"
Richard Perl = "Rhylin"
William Kristol = "Wilco"
Leo Strauss = "Loki"
Lyndon Larouche = "Lothian"
Nathan Kamenetsky = "Niko"
Norman Lamm = "Niko" (Hmmmm...)
Richard Joel = "Rhylin" (Hmmmm...again)
Dov Zakheim = "Dram"
Talking Fish = "Drev"
Tam Dalyell = "Trev"
Pinchas Shapiro = "Pergoman"
James P. Moran = "Jord"
Sam Singer = "Sayre"
Reader Meredith = "Rhylin" (Trifecta!)
Yehuda Kraut = "Vee"
Special Olympics = "Spandam" (!!!!!!)
Forked Tongue = "Ford"
Joe Liberman = "Jord"
BlissfulKnowledge = "Boxer"
Mobius = "Morgan"
Yada = "Bacchus"
Judith Weiss = "Jord" (?)
Adi Neuman = "Aurora"
Josh Marshall = "Jord"
Mickey Kaus = "Morgan"
Josh Chafetz = "Jord"
David Adesnik = "Dauphin"
Gary Rosenblatt = "Grebel"
Eli Wohlgerlenter = "Erabel"
Matis Weinberg = "Munch"
Maimonides = "Mica"

Just remember, you saw it here first. Style Over Substance Redux. You would think his advisors have a complex about his image or something. Y'know, like maybe they are compensating for something....nah.

Hit & Run points to the Biblical prohibition that would seem to outlaw the apparently popular practice of tongue-splitting. Anybody want to look up etymology on "speaking with a forked tongue"?
BUT READER MEREDITH SAYS, "NOT TRUE":
"not that i'm the bible expert here, but i'm relatively certain that vayikra 21:5 is in reference to kohanim [priests] during morning, exclusively." She then quoteth:

21:1 God told Moses to declare the following to Aaron's descendants, the priests:
Let no [priest] defile himself [by contact with] the dead among his people,
21:2 except for such close blood relatives as his mother, father, son, daughter or brother.
21:3 He may also allow himself to become ritually unclean for his [deceased] virgin sister, who is [also] close to him as long as she is not married.
21:4 [However,] a husband may not defile himself for his [dead] wife if she is legally unfit for him.
21:5 Let no priest shave off patches of hair from his head. Let them not shave the edges of their beards and not make gouges in their skin.

also, parallel against vayikra 19:28, "do not make gashes in your skin for the dead"
the way it was explained to me, the only halakhic issues w/ body modification these days are 1) ensuring that it doesn't qualify as avodah zarah (these days, it doesn't), 2) not piercing the cartilege of your ear, and 3) making sure it's tzanua
you could make a pretty good arguement that tongue splitting is assur on the tzanua bit, i'd imagine
but not vayikra

Torah Will Not Be Forgotten: this is the headline from an editorial (via Dei'ah veDibur) reacting to the across-the-board budget cuts hitting Israel. The issue is that as the Chareidi community is bearing the good deal of the cuts, seeing as though they receive a good deal in terms of government benefits. Obviously, they see this as an attack on their community.

Overall, the changes are liable to bring about distress but unlikely to be so great as to bring about radical change.
This is what the people of Shinui really want: radical change in chareidi lifestyles. They want the economic pressures to be so strong that they will force us to make deep changes in our lives and our values. This they will not get.
The pressures are not so strong and our commitment is not so weak. Pharaoh tried to break us with toil, and tyrants through the ages tried to oppress us with taxation and restrictions. We persisted and, be'eizer Hashem, we will continue to persist. Even if we are weaker than our ancestors, the oppressors are also not as strong.

Really long Tikkun article on anti-Semitism in the anti-war movement. (via (Eyeranian) Incredibly -- though perhaps not surprisingly -- it focuses primarily on the disinvitation (or whatever it was) of Michael Lerner, and doesn't even mention Tam Dalyell or James Moran. Crazy.
ALSO, while you're at Eyeranian, check out the picture of the kissing Ayatollah -- any thoughts?

Instapundit has more on those Jewish NPR protests yesterday. I seem to recall some kind of article about anti-NPR sentiment in Boston before...might try to hunt it down.

Style over Substance? A presidential picture is worth a thousand votes.... (via Drudge)

NYT: In Italian Dust, Signs of a Past Jewish Life

Tim Russert: "I believe very, very deeply that if the world interviewed Adolf Hitler more than they did, and exposed him for what he was and what his views were and what his writings were, we may have not encountered the situation we encountered at the end of World War II." (via Romenesko)

Rushkoff discusses the potential for simulataneously effecting change and embracing continuity in religion.

Harry announces that MTV Europe just got an Israeli VJ, and that he's not it -- apparently he looked "too Jewish." It's not so clear from the article he cites whether they were explicitly looking for an Israeli. Auditions were held in London, but the other finalists were named "Orly Vinerman, Lior Rosenberg, Omer Barnea and Meital Dahan," proof that the long-living conspiracy theory about Jews controlling music television in the Eastern Hemisphere is undeniably true.

Yada seems to be finishing up its redesign, with some sort of late-'50s/pseudo-Bradys kinda feel going on. It's nifty.

Just got off the 6 Train at Astor Place, and there was a Lyndon Larouche crew parked outside selling books & papers, and wearing posterboards promoting Larouche's 2004 candidacy. Of particular note as I quickly passed by was one large poster on the side of the table that said "Don't be a Straussian," with the "ss" drawn as the logo for Hitler's SS was.

I might be the only person in the world still following this, but may that as it be:
Remember that Jewish Press controversy described here last week swirling around one letter-writing Yaakov Stern who insisted that:

While I would agree that Modern Orthodoxy has its fair share of adherents, I believe that it is for the most part spiritually bankrupt and essentially irrelevant...
Would a Modern Orthodox Jew ever ask his friend how his religious studies are progressing — and if so, would he be troubled if they surpassed his own? Not likely, because the group members define themselves by their material possessions.

If we hearken back to the letter which created this firestorm, I defined Modern Orthodoxy as a spiritually challenged movement. Under this rubric, those in the yeshivish-chassidic community whose lives revolve around material accumulation would be deemed Modern Orthodox, while a Long Island Y.U. boy who learns diligently and faithfully deserves the highest encomiums.

Vodka turns 500 this year. In the words of Homer Simpson: "To alcohol - the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

Assuming that The Matrix really does, as previously discussed, contain some sort of Zionist or neo-conservative symbolism, the following story, via NCBuy, takes on an entirely new significance.

a philosophy professor who teaches at Oxford says there's roughly a 20 percent chance that most humans today really are software-generated beings living in a virtual reality.
Dr. Nick Bostrom says there's a good chance technology can mature to the point where life-like simulation programs are regularly run. If that's the case, there's no way of knowing whether right now you're currently living in real history or a simulation of the year 2003.

However, he says its equally likely that humans will become extinct before they can develop such advanced computer simulations or lose their interest in simulations entirely.

Glenn notes: "I DON'T KNOW WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE, but they're mad at NPR's mideast coverage, and they're protesting it in quite a few cities today."
He's referring to theCoast-to-Coast NPR Protest being organized by The Jewish Action Taskforce, a project of the Boston Israel Action Committee.
Thus far, there's not a whole lot of info about these folks, or how they managed to organize nationwide protests. Send more links & info my way.

Jewish Krishnas

Mobius has responded to my recent post by e-mail; he's removed all his posts about our discussion, and asked me to post his response. I have posted it here. Suffice it to say that I was not asking for him to express regret -- quite the contrary, part of the whole idea of debating in this format is to see just how deep the rabbit-hole of argument can go: what places can it take you and what new discoveries you can make.
I think it's a shame that Mobius has decided to take this route, and hope he reconsiders.
Lastly, I don't, and never did, consider what we were doing a "useless argument" -- a lot hangs in the balance when determining what is and is not anti-Semitism, and I don't think I'll ever let that go very easily.
There's still a lot of apology for anti-Semitism in what Mobius wrote in this post. But you can read my previous posts on the topic to understand what it is and why it's wrong.

Daniel Drezner is all over the neo-Con conspiracy theories with a gazillion-link post. I'll try to get to most of it when I can.

Interesting Jewsweek.com interview with David Klinghoffer, author of The Discovery of God (which I do want to read now, or after finals, anyway), the second recent book to be written about Abraham and how he has been interpreted through the millenia. Its obvious that these sorts of things would be popular nowadays, since, as Klinghoffer says:

The struggle between radical Islam on one hand and Christian America and Jewish Israel on the other is a contest for the heritage of Abraham. In our time we have witnessed an amazing historical realignment, with the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the children of Jesus (whom Christian tradition regards as the preeminent seed of Abraham) joined as brothers in a mutual act of cooperative defense against a people who trace their spiritual ancestry to Abraham and his son Ishmael...

Americans, however, will learn something really surprising. I argue that while America's religious heritage is apparently Christian; at a deeper level it is not Christian, not Jewish, but Abrahamic...Catholic scholar Michael Novak has written powerfully about what he calls the "Hebrew metaphysics" that underlay the American Founding. The founders were Christians -- sort of -- but they bequeathed to America a Christianity different from the European varieties, uniquely imbued with reverence specifically for the Hebrew part of their Bible...To understand Abraham is thus, in a way, to understand America.

A little late, but I'm now ready to follow up on my earlier promises. In the meantime, though, Mobius has posted again. I'll go in order of the posts, so the first one first.
He starts off with the headline "I Didn't Expect This Sort of Spanish Inquisition," which is overwhelming hyperbole -- usually, you'd say this is simple and standard exaggeration, but as you read on in this post and the subsequent one, you get the idea that Mobius really does feel he's being persecuted by what we're writing here. More on that later.
He writes:

I'm not going to argue the historical points of this debate because, honestly, these guys do know better than me—I'm a college dropout and not much of a history buff. And of course, the more they explain, the more I learn, and the more I appreciate and welcome their perspectives. The points about AIPAC, Buchanan, and Dalyell, I will concede: You guys are right, I don't know shit. This Jew's been schooled.

Apologizing for the non-violent kind [of antisemitism] (if it can be said to exist) simply because one cannot come to agree with a country's policies is precisely that: apologizing for anti-Semitism. Mobius should be have no misapprehension that this is what he is doing. [Emphasis Mobius']

Is it all that audacious for a Jewish person to believe that the behavior of some Jewish people could have a negative impact on others' view of Jewish people as a whole? How am I apologizing for antisemitism by postulating what it is that makes antisemitic ideology palatable to radicals? Or by saying, "Considering the way many Jews with power and influence act, I can see where people get their impressions?" I don't believe that's an apology as so much as an adomonition of Jews who abuse their influence and therefore only further perpetuate these myths about Jewish conspiracies.

And beyond that, they should keep from provoking any bigotry and intolerance at all, particularly in the form of Zionism. Creating such divisions between people is counterintuitive to tikkun olam, which I believe is the greatest mitzvah we can aspire to.

And can I just say, DUDE, that write-up on Yada is sooooo unfair. I said Dalyell was "sort of right" only because there are a fair number of pro-Israel Jews in Bush's adminstration. I didn't say they run America! And as far as Buchanan's remarks—tell me the ADL doesn't blacklist anyone who looks at Abe Foxman funny! He's like the Al Sharpton of Jewish reactionaries! Thus, the only point of Buchanan's I was agreeing with was that Jews use the label of antisemitism to silence critics, even when those critics aren't really antisemites and that that is unjust. Cut me some freakin' slack here!

Steven I. at Protocols writes,
It's been light blogging (in fact, no blogging) for me today, but I'm catching up this evening, and I'm going to try to get posts in that:

1) Show Mobius a -- hopefully -- final smackdown in response to his latest post. He's becoming kind of like that persistent palooka who just won't give up ("stay down!").

[...]

3) Have some words on the Bronfman Eminem marketing gimmick, responding to some degree to posts at InstaConfused and Jewschool.
See, to me, this isn't an intellectual battle I'm out to win. This is about open discourse. If you disagree with my views, if you feel I'm ill-informed, or if you think I'm just plain wrong, that's fine—please, speak what's on your mind. Share with me your feelings, your thoughts. I'm eager to learn. But don't clobber me over the head. Don't make it your personal mission to make me out to be an asshole. You're not going to win anyone over that way, and in fact, you're just breeding that same sort of Jew-on-Jew antisemitism that Hasidic Rebel's talking 'bout.

It's been light blogging (in fact, no blogging) for me today, but I'm catching up this evening, and I'm going to try to get posts in that:
1) Show Mobius a -- hopefully -- final smackdown in response to his latest post. He's becoming kind of like that persistent palooka who just won't give up ("stay down!").
2) Remark upon Friend of the Elders Yishai's recent Op-Ed.
3) Have some words on the Bronfman Eminem marketing gimmick, responding to some degree to posts at InstaConfused and Jewschool.
4) Introduce a spat between Elder Pinky and his elder brother...
Keep comments coming.

Much thanks to Blissful Knowledge for his ringing endorsement of what we're doing here. Blissful Knowledge, by the way, is a very cool blog that everyone should visit.

All this talk about The Matrix and Zionism sort of brought back a conversation I had with Rabbi Klapper of the Summer Beit Midrash about X-Men and Zionism. Fortunately, I found a link to an Avi Green column that I can work with. Green writes:

And then, there’s professor Charles Francis Xavier himself. Him I can see as being inspired by two templates in one: Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin, and probably more the former than the latter. What do Jabotinsky and Xavier have in common? Jabotinsky wanted to live in friendship with the Arab and the non-Jewish world, but did not want to give up parts of the land of Israel, which would mean endangering national security and committing national suicide. Xavier wanted to live in friendship with the non-mutant, non-powered humans of this world, but did not want to have to give up his freedom by registering with the government, as envisioned by the X-Men’s late political nemesis, senator Frank Kelly, which could very easily end up enabling the government to exploit him for their own evil purposes.
A most amazing thing about Xavier is that Lee and Kirby, you could say, came up with this bald superhero mentor several years before Menachem Begin himself went that way! The prophecies can be most astonishing, when you look at them more closely.
And the X-Men and their academy itself, the Xavier Institute, was inspired by the Irgun/Lehi/Etzel movements, since they too had to work in all but secrecy. And the Sentinels, you could say, take the place of the British mandate soldiers occupying this country who constantly sought to destroy them for daring to be Zionist/Patriotic and loyal to their country. And, for the record, the Etzel's headquarters, located on the coast of Tel Aviv, now a museum, is in some ways similar to the Xavier institute, since it's also a base from which the courageous crimefighters would go out to fight the evil British imperialists occupying their country.

Hasidic Rebel suggests that the relationship between Jews and anti-semities (see the extended, multi-blog discussion we've all been having - most recent post here, from Elder I) is similar to that between anti-religious and ultra-religious Jews. To whit:

There is an often-cited verse in the Talmud saying that an Am-Ha'aretz (unlearned person) wishes to tear up a Talmud Chochom like a fish. According to Charedim, this Gemoro clearly substantiates the claim that the non-religious bear an irrational hatred for the religious. Of course, most secular Jews would vehemently object. They would say that if only the religious Jews wouldn't be so self-righteous, and if they'd only show some respect for other denominations like Refom and Conservative, and if only they'd not be so loud, and pushy, and not suck so much money out of the government, and and stop wearing those riciulous looking clothes, etc, etc.... ...then they would be loved and respected.
I can't help but see a striking parallel to the Jews and the antisemites. Just a thought to munch on...

What they wouldn’t teach you in Day School….

Disclaimer: Sophisticated text searches on the internet enable nerdy researchers and policy wonk types to gain almost unlimited access to a wealth of published information. The search employed by this user is not graphic or image based.

We now take a moment to turn to the inner folds of that venerable and world-renowned publication, Playboy for an inside glimpse into what “Judaism” has to say about, as the editor’s put it so eloquently, “Sex.”

Now you can truly assert, “really baby, I just read it for the articles, honest, just the articles baby.”

For the sake of brevity that I failed to exhibit in my last post, I have chopped up the accompanying article from what I believe to be the most recent issue of Playboy, June 1, 2003, No. 6, Vol. 50; Pg. 50 (because elder Steve scolded me just moments ago, our reading audience will deprived of Islam’s, Buddhism’s, Christianity’s, Hedonism’s and Hinduism’s views of this titillating topic):

In God we lust: the prevailing beliefs about sex from the world's major religions; Forum.

Thomas, John D.

….Judaism

MASTURBATION: Some rabbis condemn masturbation as wasteful of the seed (see Contraception, below). For the most part, there is little embarrassment attached to sex. One scholar points out that Leviticus, which is filled with instructions about prohibited sexual activities, is the book traditionally chosen to begin teaching biblical Hebrew to children.

PREMARITAL SEX: Most Jews view sex as an act reserved for a husband and wife. However, one liberal rabbi says she believes that "mutually respectful relationships for the purpose of intimacy and pleasure are within the Jewish tradition."

INFIDELITY: The bonds of marriage are sacred, so adultery is out.

CONTRACEPTION: Some conservative rabbis advise against the use of condoms because it is forbidden to spill one's seed (hashchatat zera). But more-liberal teachers believe that if a couple cannot afford to have children, contraceptives are acceptable. Forms of contraception that do not involve spilling semen, such as the pill or diaphragm, are not a problem. The consensus on condoms is changing because of their effectiveness in preventing STDs.

ABORTION: Most Jews believe that life begins at birth. However, most condemn abortion as a casual method of birth control.

HOMOSEXUALITY: This is one of the more controversial issues in Judaism. Most orthodox Jews condemn homosexual acts and reject the idea of gay rabbis, based on the admonition in Leviticus that "you should not lie with a man as with a woman." But like liberal Christians, a good number of Jews argue that if homosexuality can be shown by science to be a natural state, then it must have been created by God and cannot be considered wrong.

CLERGY: The Torah instructs all Jews, including rabbis, to "be fruitful and multiply."

I missed this one in YU Today. I wonder what Yeshiva's problem was with Planned Parenthood. I further wonder which Yeshiva building currently houses Planned Parenthood....

Most commercial leases contain restrictions on a tenant's ability to assign the lease or sublet the space. A typical restriction permits the tenant to assign or sublet subject to the landlord's consent, provided such consent is not "unreasonably withheld." Tenants often ask the landlord for "consent," and when the landlord, refuses the question is often litigated as to whether the landlord unreasonably withheld its consent to an assignment or sublease.
Under New York law, in order for a landlord's refusal to consent to an assignment or sublease to withstand judicial scrutiny and be deemed "reasonable," it must be based on "objective criteria", i.e., readily measurable criteria of a proposed assignee's or subtenant's acceptability from the view point of any landlord. According to New York courts, such objective criteria consist of the financial responsibility of the proposed assignee/subtenant, the identity or business character of the proposed assignee/subtenant, i.e., its suitability for the particular building, the legality of the proposed use, or the nature of the proposed use.
[...]
If a refusal is based on "subjective criteria," i.e., criteria based on the peculiar needs or dislikes of the landlord, it is likely to be deemed unreasonable by the courts. For example, American Book Company v. Yeshiva University Development Foundation, Inc., the Yeshiva University Development Foundation was the landlord of a commercial building. It rejected a proposed subtenant for the building. Planned Parenthood, because the Foundation found Planned Parenthood's activities to be "'inconsistent with the present use of the premises and with the education activities of [Yeshiva] University.'" The rejection was challenged in the courts and the tenant prevailed.
The court found that the grounds asserted for the rejection were based on ideological differences between the Foundation and Planned Parenthood and therefore were were subjective and thus unreasonable. The court went on to hold that "when a religious or religiously affiliated or educational institution...owns commercial property, it is to be held to the established standards of commercial responsibility, its acts and conduct being vested with no greater and no lesser sanctity than those of any other owner."

Courtesy of April 24th's New York Post’s “Page Six"

ALAN Wilzig, the conservative Wilzig brother who runs Trust Company Bank, is getting married to his longtime girlfriend, Belgian beauty Karin Koenig, who just finished a year at Yeshiva University and has converted to Judaism. Alan, 38, sold his share of the notorious Castle in Water Mill for $1.7 million to his brother Ivan, 46, who is pursuing a music career. Alan is settling down with Karin in a $4.7 million TriBeCa townhouse with a garage for his 14 Ducati motorcycles. The Wharton grad inherited the bank from his father Siggi, a Holocaust survivor. The groom is flying 50 guests to Caesarea, Israel, to see him swap vows with Karin on Aug. 14 and then party in an ancient Roman amphitheater.

Pop Quiz: You've got a choice of commencement speakers, between Presidential Bioethicist Leon Kass and Middle East Gossip Academic Daniel Pipes -- who do you choose? Apparently, if you're Yeshiva University, you choose the latter. YU announced Pipes as the speaker some time ago, but the link didn't work -- now it does, and apparently Kass will be there, but not invited to speak; peculiar and stupid.

Light blogging today...on deadline for a project with Powerhouse Books and an article on Nick Denton. Meantime, Yada is looking pretty with a new redesign, and Jeff Jarvis has a lot of required reading on Iranian bloggers.

Thomas Friedman gets back to writing about Israel (yesterday, actually, but better late than never), now that the Iraq situation's moved into something of a holding pattern. In particular:

This is a critical moment. For the first time, the Palestinians have produced a prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas; a finance minister, Salam Fayyad; and a security chief, Muhammad Dahlan, who understand how badly the Palestinian Authority lacked proper institutions and how disastrous for the Palestinian people was the Arafat strategy of suicide terrorism and double talk with Israel.

In order for our discourse to be clear, our Palestinian people will not accept anything less than practicing their right to self-determination and establishing their independent sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital that is free of settlements in all territories occupied in 1967

Matrix/Zionism keeps on moving. Found an interesting link in the comments to Mike Silverman's post (it calls for a boycott of Matrix: Reloaded).

More on the Matrix/Zionism front: Reader Duvie notes, "Neo is obviously a neo-con." Cute.

You know those scenes in the psycho/serial-killer movies where the detective or friend or family member or whomever finally walks into the killer's room and realizes something very abnormal is afoot. The background music suddendly turns omnious as the good guy steps into the room and turns on the light, noticing the walls covered with pictures and news clippings of the murders, maps, and other assorted inidications of pathological obsession...you know what I mean, right?
That's almost how I felt when I saw this post on FR. Someone needs to stop listening to Rush.

Vanity Post: Rabbi Wieder's shiur final is tomorrow, wish me luck. For a bit of shameless self-promotion, click here for the review sheets that Friend of The Elders David and I wrote and mass-distributed. For more on Rabbi Wieder himself, click here and then on his picture

For More of The Same on Leo Strauss and his connection to today's conservatives, see this NYT article. For a hard-core conspiratorial spin, see Jusin Raimondo (who else?).

The first entry in the Matrix/Zionism contest, from Adi Neuman; though it appears he found it elsewhere (but hasn't said where). I'm waiting for word back from him.
UPDATE: Reader Yitzchak has been fact-checking Neuman's post, and finds a problem with the graf:

CAIR representatives furthermore point to the resemblence of Matrix bad-guy Agent Smith (a brilliant Hugo Weaving) to Muslim intellectual Edward Said.

Mike Silverman writes:

If the capital of the free humans in The Matrix is Zion, does that mean that Neo and friends are Zionists? And will CAIR put out a statement denouncing the movie for being anti-Islamic because of this?
There's a great fake press release waiting to be written by a talented satirist out there...

Boston Globe's "Ideas" Section:Profile of Leo Strauss and small piece on Straussians Abroad.

In what is definitely the best line yet about the Israeli stripper cop, Grant Stoddard writes: "Reportedly, the policeman was able to extricate himself when his partner called for reinforcements, and the revelers were fined for trying to induce the Gaza strip."

Is there any specific relevance to the fact that Powell visited Jerusalem, as opposed to, say, Tel Aviv? He didn't meet with Arafat, btw.

Readers take note: it's now 12:06 EST -- if you haven't called your mother, do so now.

Just how disproportionate are Jews in the halls of American power? It seems a reasonable question given what we've been discussing. According to US-Israel.org Jews comprise 11% of the Senate, and almost exactly 6% of the House. According to this, 11% is a record number first achieved in '98, which saw a dropoff to 10 in the 107th Congress (and Paul Wellstone's death made it 9 for awhile).
What is the proportion of Jews in the Bush administration? I've got no clue, but there's a list of them at that link. We know there's no Cabinet-level Jew for the first time in a long time, so there's disproportionately less influence in that area. Anybody with ideas about how to figure out the proportions with that list should write in.
An interesting question: How did Jews in Congress vote on the war with Iraq?
House 19/27 Yeas = 70.3%, versus the House in general at 68.5%.
Senate 5/10 Yeas = 50%, versus the Senate in general at 77%.
The thing is, party affiliation is generally a factor: more Dems voted against the war than Republicans, and Jews in Congress are overwhelmingly Democrats:
In the House, where only 2 Jews are Republicans, Jewish Democrats voted at 70.8% for the war, where Democrats voted in favor by only 39.1%, a very significant difference.
In the Senate, where 9 of the 10 Jews are Democrats, they voted 44.4% in favor, versus 58% for Senate Democrats in general, also a significant difference.
One note: in going through the list of members of Congress, there seemed an awfully large amount I hadn't heard were Jewish -- if anyone has some fact-checking on that and wants to ge back to me, please do.

Well, now that we've hit valedictorian season, its also time for the annual game of valedictorian-related lawsuits. Here's a classic one (via CNN), about a NJ girl who sued (and won) a case to be named the sole validectorian of her high school as opposed to sharing it with two other girls with lower GPAs. The case now moves into the damages phase, with the lawsuit asking for $500,000 in compensatory and $2 million in punitive damages, as well as legal fees and costs. Obviously enough, she wants to be a lawyer when she grows up.