Despite this apparent rivarly we're having with Ivyjews, I'm declaring a hudna long enough to compliment Larisa for an excellent roundup of self-hating conservative Jews. The only thing I'd add is that Dr. Laura's original statement might just have been a result of feeling disenfranchised with Orthodoxy; I guess she's entitled to feel that way, and I don't think there was anything evil per se in that. However, the fanmail that she put on her website is a bit upsetting:

"I think that you hit the nail on the head when you said that you have Christian friends who are close to God and feel so loved by God. I find it very saddening that some churches or religions put tradition first and the focus of a beautiful, loving relationship with Jesus second."

Thanks for using your status as a Jew to say what we Christians know is the truth but aren't allowed to say because of all those pesky Jews who'll cry anti-Semitism: that Christianity is obviously far superior to Judaism. It's really sad how Judaism is totally devoid of spirituality and obsessed with stupid pointless rituals, and it's great to hear that from an insider.

Ananova - Churches told to ditch 'Jesus on a cross' image:

Traditional approaches such as showing Jesus on the cross and Bible quotations are a turn-off to non-churchgoers, according to one of two suggested advertising campaigns drawn up by agencies.
Instead, advertisers say churches should highlight their community life, the chance to have a good sing, hear a good sermon and have a heart-to-heart chat.

WorldNetDaily: Real-life raiders hunt Ark of the Covenant. Remember, these are the people who think that they found the remains of Noah's Ark, so take whatever they saw with a pillar of salt.

Without Elder I
There's no one to trigger the
ol' senryu floodgates...

Irony of the Day: Islamic Jihad leader accidentally blows himself up. Group vows revenge.

Bryan takes on the Bible Critics by linking to an important article on the range of frum-academic response to the issue going all the way back. I like his comment on education as well:

As I have discussed previously a couple of time, one of the issues currently in the Jewish community is how Jewish education seems to be failing those students who choose to attend a regular university. One of the problems I believe plagues the students is the lack of challenge that the students face in high school. Students are not asked to think about what they are studying, nor are they encouraged that their questions have merit and have been asked for 1000 years in various forms. This is true in regards to philosophical thought, historical analysis, and even the issue of the nature of the Bible. It is not enough anymore to merely recite a serious of Ani Maamin's every morning. We need to understand how the Rambam viewed Torah M'Sinai as well how other medievals dealt with this subject.

I saw the headline "Yeshiva College falls victim to business dispute", and I thought for a second that "Yeshiva College" meant, well, Yeshiva College. However, its really talking about that Austrailian Joe Gutnick thing (see here for more info). Still, not a happy situation.

In case you were wondering, I did some research into my name being attached to a Jewish Press letter I didn't write. In fact, I emailed the editor thusly:

I saw the most recent letters to the editor section on the internet last night, which included a letter from an Avraham Bronstein from NY, NY. This was somewhat startling, since that happens to be my name and address. I never wrote that letter, although I have submitted letters in the past. Therefore, I'm wondering if a) there was some kind of mistake, b) there's someone else with my name in NYC, or c) someone's stealing my identity. I'd appreciate if you could look into this.

Hold the presses! The ONLY Avraham Bronstein on the island of Manhattan spots an obvious imposter or perhaps an editing mix-up and wonders what's going on. Understandable, of course, since the name Avraham Bronstein is so delightfully rare in a city like New York. Unlike the thousands of Dominic Goldbergs, Theresa Halberstams and Yudel Christophers, of course. Can anyone spell EGO?

No blogging for me today; I'm heading on a plane soon.

The Chareidi world discovers Birthright. Reaction? Typical:

Recently it was learned [Birthright] is expanding its activities to include bnei yeshivos from the U.S. Roshei yeshivos and marbitzei Torah from the U.S. issued an announcement warning parents that the program poses a genuine spiritual danger to their sons and daughters, including compromising their standards of tznius and kashrus and presenting opinions inconsistent with the Torah view.
The letter read (in part): "With regard to the tours called `Birthright' that many of those in our community started to participate in -- we come to note that even though the leaders of those tours claim that they are kosher and conducted lefi rucheinu, nonetheless it has become clear to us that this is not so, and these tours have hidden dangers for the chinuch of our children, to cause our sons and daughters to break the limits of tznius and kashrus and to influence them with ideas that oppose our holy Torah.
"Therefore, parents and educators should not send their sons, daughters, talmidim and talmidos to such tours."

Reader Amitai notes that the word "superstitious" stems from the root word "supersisto", which means "to stand in terror of the deity". Now, the Hebrew term for Ultra-Orthodox Jews is "Chareidim", which literally means "those who tremble [before God]". Does that mean that Chareidim are superstitious or that Chareidi-ism is superstition almost by defintion? Hmmm...

Reader Janik points out that there are other Jews in legal trouble besides the terrrorist co-conspirator. Take Victor Jacobowitz and his three sons, Herman, Jacob and Aaron:

The cosmetics business was not as big as they said it was. The chief executives of one of the largest companies on Long Island lied about that to borrow more money, and defrauded investors, prosecutors say.
On the verge of getting caught, the men hit upon Perfect Solution No. 1: burn down their Brooklyn warehouse, collect $100 million in insurance, and hide the fact that much of the inventory at the family-run health-and-beauty-aids distributor may never have existed, according to a federal complaint.

In Williamsburg, members of the Hasidic community were quick to speak out in support of Victor Jacobowitz, whom they described as well known for giving away huge sums of money, to organizations and individuals.

Amazingly enough, it was again really hard to find a truly Stupid Letter of the Week in this week's Jewish Press. They may be on to me. However, I do think I can pull out a Stupid Passage from one letter, a response to Rachel Weiss, who complained last week about Jews of the female persuasion wishing her husband "Good Shabbas". Weiss marshalled some halakhic sources to the effect of curtailing conversation across gender lines. Sol Zeller responds:

"After reading Rachel Weiss`s letter, I can see why our sages in their wisdom never allowed women to become rabbis. She cites many halachic sources for why a man should not have a conversation with a woman. However only a competent rav can interpret these sources as far
as practical halacha is concerned."

Yuter finds an article with more details on the Jewish terrorist accomplice dude.

Before we begin the Stupid Letter Of the Week competition this week, I want to make a public declaration. The following letter was not written by me:

"Secularist Mindset
Malkah Kaplan should not have been surprised by Mr. Meed’s callous disregard for kashruth-observing Jews. I have dealt with a number of Holocaust-related concerns over the years, and have found the organizations ostensibly representing Holocaust survivors and their heirs to be totally unconcerned with the religious aspects of Jewish life.
On top of that, they’re staffed by cold bureaucrats who, with some exceptions, generally care not a whit for the people on whose behalf they supposedly labor. Now, I don’t know Mr. Meed, so I can’t accuse him of being cold and uncaring, but I’m very familiar with the secularist mindset that permeates survivor and Holocaust-related organizations.
Don’t these people realize that without Torah, there won’t be any Jewish survivors a hundred years from now?
Avraham Bronstein
New York, NY"

Our application to Google AdSense got rejected, because we're of the wrong "Page Type"

Page type: Your website is a type of website that we do not currently accept into our program. Such websites include, but are not limited
to, chat sites, personal pages, search engines, sites that contain predominately copyrighted material, and sites that drive traffic through cybersquatting.

Jewish Ombudsman: Slate's Smear Job, on Hitchens & Pipes.

Great editorial in today's Times on the Fox-Al Franken catfight.
Anyone detect a note of vintage Gail Collins?

Well, it seems that they've started officially pressing charges against the missle-smugglers. More disturbing (thanks to reader Poupko):

A third man, Yehuda Abraham, 76, of New York, is due to appear in federal court in Manhattan later today....Abraham is accused of handling an initial payment of $30,000 for the missile that was smuggled into the U.S. as part of the sting.

Need help on Hitchens.
I'm doing a Jewish Ombudsman on the Hitchens article on Pipes.
One of my criticisms of the piece was Hitchens' sourcing of something he "heard." I recall having recently come upon a blogging of a Hitchens article that raised a similar criticism -- that he'd used a specious sourcing that essentially referred back to himself. Anybody recall this?

Adi Neuman writes an op-ed for Jewsweek about his ba'al teshuva experience.

I am only one of a rapidly growing population of disillusioned young men and women who have fled the secular world of our parents in favor of a more intense and meaningful Jewish life. Many of us went to college and graduate school burning with youthful idealism, only to discover that the aspiring social worker and teacher were no more respected by our peers than the aspiring cosmetic surgeon and tobacco attorney. Money is king in the world of the young, and superficiality and materialism reign supreme.
As an illustration, a rabbi and personal friend once confided in me his strategy for recruiting college students into Torah learning programs. It turns out that the sorority-influenced superficiality of the campus atmosphere is particularly damaging to the self-confidence of young Jewish women, who flock to classes on the superiority of Torah attitudes toward love and dating. And where the girls go, the guys will follow.

Sorry for the longass post, but I have gotten riled up, and my righteous fury needs an outlet:

Larisa from Ivyjews has thrown her hat into the ring on the issue of famililies hiring nannies and maids. Such wicked behavior, we are told, (viz. "subcontracting the raising of one's own children, or the cleaning of one's house") is "extremely unhealthy," and actually breeds racism by teaching children (and Jewish wives) to view their (often foreign - read: Polish, East Indian, Hispanic) help as inferior.
Well, I, for one, feel maligned, coming from a family having empolyed the same live-in housekeeper for over 23 years, a devout, educated and talented woman whom I have as much respect for as I do for my mother, and who has become as much a member of my family (and probably a more productive one) as I am. And Elders Steve and Pinchas can vouch for this point.
But, for starters, some econ 101. I wonder if Larissa objects to hiring a gardener to mow one's lawn or a plumber to unclog one's drain. Is SHE wholly self-sufficient? Does she do her own tailoring? Does she dry clean? Oh, but wait, these are specialized disciplines. Of course. So does she wash her own car, perhaps? Bag her own groceries in big supermarkets? Isn't it possible that her time might more profitably be spent engaging in some other activity than scrubbing floor tiles and doing laundry? I hope so, otherwise there's no justifying those Ivy League tuition payments...
So I've dredged the murky bed of my college econ course, and I came up with something called The Principle of Comparitive Advantage. Now I'm no economist, but it seems that overall production is maximized when countries (presumably people, too, though again, this could be my weak economics background making a false assumption) stick to working on doing the things they do best. So, if Yossi is a high-powered class action attourney, and Miriam is a stellar internist, should one of them sacrifice their careers so they can (healthily, no doubt) wash the dishes and bleach that tile grout? Would their time be better spent changing every one of their kids' dirty diapers? Absolutely, or so Larissa believes.
But, I hear her protesting, she admitted that hiring people for house and kid work might be good for the economy, but nevertheless is "unhealthy" and something to be ashamed of. It causes racism, she wholeheartedly asserts, and interferes with the puritan model of the hard-working, middle class, value-laden self-sufficient family unit. So, it is all of our best interests to forgo that second lexus mommy's (or daddy's, I'm no chauvinist) income brings in. Why? for some nebulous reason that I think Larissa would be hard-pressed to define, but which smacks to me of old-fashioned Republican Family Values and the Moral Majority.
I agree that engaging in quality (and quantity) time with one's children is the noblest activity one can participate in. I beleive that the extra bedtime story, the game of catch in the yard, and the (gasp) learning of torah or doing homework with one's kids are the best way to spend one's time. And I admit that the kids out there who have zero contact with their parents are usually (although, not always....have you MET some of these people???) worse off than those with a traditional welcoming yiddishe mama (or tateh) home.
But what I reject is Larissa's blanket assertion that everyone who hires a maid or a nanny is somehow decadent and corrupt.
At the end of the day, your relationship with your kids is more a function of how you spend your time at home, and not whether or not you employ someone to do the things that, quite franky, there is no earthly reason to do. And I won't even touch upon your relationship with your dirty laundry and interior window shine.
Finally, on the racism point: I'm convinced that bigots will be bigots whether or not they hire people to do their grunt work. They will view third-world workers as below them, whether they employ these people, or simply lock their car doors in lower-class neighborhoods. Jewish racism is a cultural problem with a foundation far firmer than the (relatively new) practice of hiring maids. In my experience, my classmates whose families didn't employ Polish women were as likely to make Polish jokes as those whose families did. Does hiring a maid or nanny induce more cultural understanding? Probably not. But neither does it lessen such empathy.
In short, it sounds like Larissa is caught between the Scylla of liberal White Guilt and the Charybidis of conservative family values (Steve, you like that one, no?). Not a good place to be, I guess. But I hear she's gotten great at folding those undershirts.

Rabbi who solicited sex from a police officer posing as a 13-year-old cops a plea and gets no jail time.

Kestenbaum even set up a "date" with "Katie" at a Starbucks on Dey Street in the Financial District. He left after "Katie" didn't show up.
But cops took surveillance pictures of him waiting for her, carrying a black bag that a later search warrant revealed contained lubricants and condoms.

Yedidiah annotates the Bangitout frum intellectual list. Given what Elders and readers had to say about the list here and here, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Gedankenpundit's on a bit of a blogging break, so now's a good time to read the debate he had with a reader about Judaism, Islam and terrorism. Start here and scroll up.

Aidel Maidel has a series of interesting posts dealing with anti-Semitism, crime, and the Holocaust, doctor/patient boundaries and shiva calls, kallahs on birth control, and her own struggle to get pregnant. She's doing a great job so far, it'd be interesting to see if she'll keep it up.

I happened to have just checked out the hit counter, and our most recent page view came from the Department of Justice. Uh-oh. If you never hear from us again, you'll know why...

Yuter sends in this Kabbalah Center blurb from an MSNBC.com gossip column:

Kabbalah is the celeb religion of the moment, but the Kabbalah Center’s Rabbi Yehuda Berg insists the group doesn’t seek out stars. “They come and find us, and we treat them the same as everyone else who wants to study Kabbalah,” Berg told the London Daily Telegraph. “Demi Moore just walked in one day and we welcomed her. With Madonna, it was the same.” . . .

Well, in regard to Elder Avraham's last post about the bangitout.com foray into Jewish intellectual typecasting, (non)reader Ari Schick has submitted a rejoinder list that rectifies the original list's flaws. Surprisingly, some of Mr. Schick's comments (composed early midday on August 12) seem eerily familiar to those posted later in response to Elder Avraham's entry bringing the list to our readers' attention. Maybe there is something to this honest-to-goodness Jewish intellectual thing. Or perhaps THEY have formed a secret conspiracy to take over the intellectual world - though between their plot and ours, its amazing that anything gets accomplished at all, what with all these secret cabals working at cross-purposes all over the place.
So, with no further ado (another word that should be yiddish but isn't), I present the fruits of Mr. Schick's intellectual labor:

Wow, this was one of the least funny top tens to come by in a while. The title should at least have been top ten signs you're a neo-rationalist brisker frum intellectual. By the way, many frum intellectuals specifically avoid all shiurim mentioning the Rav in the title - those are really for "keeping the masses in tow" by making them believe that somewhere in between Carlebach minyanim and Yisroel Williger concerts they are actually thinking.

I thus present an equally unfunny alternative Top Ten Signs You Really are a (not so) Frum Intellectual:

10) In your Divrei Torah you frequently use "Kant" as a proper noun, adjective, verb, and pun.
9) You once attended a Carlebach minyan - expecting to hear Elisheva deliver a talk on the Eibshitz-Emden dispute.
8) You studiously avoid attending any shiur whose title contains the phrase "From the perspective of the Rav".
7) Your internet homepage is set to RAMBI.
6) Shul is a good place to shock others with what you're reading. ("But I thought the haftarah was from Corinthians.")
5) You actually know that "The Godhead" is not synonymous with "God" or "The Deity" , and do not consider it a fancy word.
4) Reading James Kugel fulfills limud Torah.
3) Your Divrei Torah often end, ". . . which all became quite apparent with the publication of DJD XXIV."
2) When someone mentions a Menachem Leibtag teaching your response is "Leibtag? Oh, that's cute."
1) Sometimes in a Torah discussion you'll say "there was once an article on this in Monatsschrift für die Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, but then you probably don't understand German."


Pretentious? Yes. But also funny to those of you who DO speak German - and you know who you are...

Bangitout.com has the top 10 ways to tell whether you're a frum intellectual. I'd retitle the list "Jewish pretentious pseudo-intellectual" myself, but I didn't make it up...

Concern about the rise of anti-Semitism in America seems not to have passed by unnoticed by The Christian Right. Gotta love the irony.

Intelligence in Action: "An Air France co-pilot was in police custody Saturday after allegedly telling a security screener at John F. Kennedy International Airport that he had a bomb in his shoe."

TMQ's back!! TMQ's back!! Oh, happy days are here again...

HUGE NEWS: ADL ATTENDS SCREENING OF THE PASSION. I'm checking out of the office, and will post more later. Lots to talk about. (Thanks, James)

During a meeting last week, the new White House liaison to the Jewish community, Tevy Troy, told a cute story meant to highlight the tenacity and determination of American Jewish organizations. [Here is a paraphrased version of the story]

In January 2001, after an accelerated transition between administrations, the White House switchboard was a mess. The main line to the White House had no way to direct calls to anyone. The list of officials corresponding to their offices did not exist. People within the White House could not reach each other and those outside the WH could not get in.

For quite some time, WH personnel were reduced to hand delivering memos and correspondence usually reserved for fax and email.

Adam Goldman the WH Jewish liaison received calls to his direct line with no trouble. Puzzled as to why he was receiving calls while others did not, Goldman asked one Jewish leader who called:

AG: How did you reach me?
JL: How do you mean?
AG: Well, with the transition, we have been having some difficulties, how did you get connected?
JL: I called you directly
AG: But how did you get my number?
JL: Oh, well, I had the number to the last Jewish liaison and I just figured it would be the same, so I dialed directly.

If you haven’t JihadUnspun yet, you are truly missing out. Their headlines alone are worth the trip. Please note that there is not such thing as Israel and even the Zionist Entity does not exist. I think that if the authors had it their way, Jews would not exist, but that is jut this commentators opinion.

Read about how today Occupation Authorities Demolish Palestinian House

Both of today’s suicide bombers came from the same Palestinian refugee camp in Nablus

And so, we pay tribute and offer thanks the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for handling the Palestinian refugee camps so well. Without the education, stewardship and financial support of UNRWA, these teenagers may never have grown up to be the martyrs they were today.

Exit US stage right. Kabul is no longer President Bush’s problem, Afghanistan as a whole is next. Too bad, Bush cannot shift the federal deficit to NATO’s control too, or can he. Hmmm…

To be fair though, Bush has said from the beginning that the U.S. is not in the business of nation building. That is what radical Islamists do; we just destroy their evil regimes and then leave. Unless of course there is oil in the country, in which case we stay as long as necessary but not a minute longer. For those of you wondering when exactly “as long as necessary” is, it comes right after Octebruary and just before a minute longer.

Having gotten over my burst of sentimentality, I revert to my usual sardonic cynicism...

Apparently, Palestinian “Militants” (I guess there is supposed to be some moral equivalency that makes militants better than terrorists…) have difficulty with the English language, Via the AP:

Israel's military says there have been 120 shooting incidents in the West Bank and 10 mortars fired on Israeli targets in the Gaza Strip since the cease-fire was declared.

cease-fire or cease•fire
n.

2. Suspension of active hostilities; a truce.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Just when you thought you'd seen it all, a shul in Israel takes the Chumra-Of-The-Month Club to a new level (Hebrew). Apparently, seperate seating is only the beginning.

IvyJew's Larisa uncovers our plot in California:

The other recent [Gray] Davis appointee to the UC Board of Regents is Howard Blum who is the husband of U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein. Feinstein as well as the other California U.S. Senator, Barbara Boxer, are both Jewish. These two additional Jewish UC Regents signifies the vast consolidation of their power within the University of California and greatly diminishes the hopes that a Latino will be appointed Chancellor of UC Riverside to replace outgoing Chancellor Raymond L. Orbach who is also a Jew. The other two Zionists are Norman J. Pattiz appointed September 21, 2001 and Sherry L. Lansing appointed March 11, 1999. These machinations reminds us of Protocol 16 of the yet unauthenticated and much debated "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion". Protocol 16 calls for the taking over of the universities in order to control higher education and the "mind conditioning" of youths.

I'd been hearing that people have been getting Jewsweek and The Jewish Week confused, which I thought was impossible, since they're such different publications and, really, they are different names. I thought it was impossible, that is, until I saw it confused in a blog.

Well, Terry Tate, Office Linebacker, is officially running in the California recall election. Can we stop taking this seriously yet?

Julian Sanchez wonders why you can't get a drink at something called "the Gestapo Bar," but stopping by "the KGB Bar" is perfectly OK.

Hassidic Musician is becoming the Henny Youngman of the J-blogosphere, rattling off one-liners frequently. Yesterday, he wrote

If a new Yisroel Williger CD is released, and no one buys it, will it still make a sound?

Idiotarian finds a shocking BBC article on Egyptian anti-Semitism, which basically allows members of the media there to deny that they're being anti-Semitic, while justifying their assertions that the situation in Israel is comparable to Nazism. Usually, in a piece dealing with such outrageous comments, there will be a follow-up discussion that will wonder about whether opposing viewpoints should have been presented; the question becomes "Aren't the statements ludicrous enough on their face, and won't offering a response to them justify it?" But not only does this article seem unconcerned with contesting the viewpoints expressed, but, in the conclusion, actually agrees with them:

The use of anti-Semitic imagery in the Egyptian media may seem bizarre, racist and anachronistic to outsiders.
But it is not based on any historical hatred of Jews as a race.
It has more to do with the need to be seen supporting the Palestinians, even if only in a purely symbolic way.
That means that if and when real peace comes, the Egyptian media are likely to quickly forget their anti-Semitic line.

I've updated my Hitchens post a few times tonight; it's now about six screens long, and I think I'm pretty much done. We'll see what comes of it.

And finally, on the politics making strange bedfellows front:

The Chassidimand the Israel High Court of Justice are apparently on the same side of the Goose Liver issue.
As (and I know I'm stretching my use of sources here, but they spell Halacha funny, which is usually a dead giveaway of Harediism, but where else can I find a discussion of cruelty to animals and Chassidim online???) aishdas.com attests, Chassidim in Hungary never ate force-fed geese, since it was cruel to the animals.


If the Frummer and the animal-rights people are sharing a bed, I hope the quilt isn't filled with down....

Pantheists of the world, unite!

The article ends:

The organization now has more than 2,000 members and anticipates that there are millions upon millions of pantheists out there who just don’t know there is a name—or group—for their beliefs. But here’s the question: If pantheism has been around forever, why organize now? After all, modern pantheists seem to pride themselves on how amorphous and unstructured their practice actually is. It can be a religion, a philosophy, or simply a way of life; rituals are strictly optional—some pantheists choose to celebrate solstices and equinoxes and Thoreau’s birthday; others, like Harrison, choose to spend at least half an hour every day exploring nature—and many pantheist traditions seem right in line with the environmental activism already espoused by many organized groups.
“Some people think that pantheists should just commune with trees alone and bump into other pantheists only by chance,” Harrison says. “That’s fine as long as they’re happy with it. But we know that many pantheists feel quite isolated, especially in largely Christian America.” Harrison believes millions of people are becoming dissatisfied with traditional religions and are searching for alternatives. “We want to make sure that there is a rational, evidence-respecting, nature-revering option on offer.”

And in the English as a Second language Department:

From the Jerusalem Post article on the upcoming Palestinian Day of Rage devoted to the West Bank Fence:

"Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, who has repeatedly condemned the fence as a 'big crime against humanity,' has instructed the Palestinian media and leadership to put increased emphasis on the issue with the hope that US and European pressure would force Israel to halt the project or change the route of the fence. "

WorldNetDaily: God strikes 'gay' radio station with lightning?:

A homosexual webcasting radio station claims its facility was struck by lightning, frying critical phone equipment, and that an anti-'gay' activist's prayers are responsible for the hit.
Washington, D.C.-based Outlet Radio Network, a commercial webcaster, says the blow came on Saturday. The lightning strike caused the cancellation of a two-hour call-in show Sunday because guests and callers could not reach the hosts by phone, the station said.
'We were shocked,' Outlet Radio principle partner and talk-show host Christian Grantham said in a statement. 'Just as we were about to start the show, we noticed a key piece of equipment had been fried by the lightning strike.'
The station claims the lightning strike came just weeks after it had Maggie Phelps on as a guest, saying Phelps had prayed God would 'strike the station.'

Whichever one of you readers got to this page by searching for "chassidish naked girls"...well, um...forget it. I have nothing to say here at all.

Apparently President Bush requested the services of Jack Van Impe Ministries International. Based on the "Prophecy Movies" page on their website, I hope Bush was treating them like I treat LandOver Baptist. Probably not, though.

Religion and universities. Yesterday's NYT fronted this story on the legal question of whether teaching religion in a university context could be raising First Amendment issues. The main subject, Teresa Becker, had a state scholarship revoked when she declared herself a Religion major, receiving a letter that said:

"Students enrolled in a course of study leading to a degree in theology, divinity or religious education are not eligible to receive an award," it said, paraphrasing a state law. "Your award has changed from $2,750.00 to $0.00."

Eleven states prohibit aid for the study of theology. In addition to Michigan and Washington, they are New York, New Jersey, Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wisconsin, according to a supporting brief filed in the Supreme Court by five state attorneys general.

Notre Dame and Georgetown are Catholic but celebrate their diversity and intellectual openness. Brandeis, near Boston, says it is a "Jewish-sponsored university" that welcomes students and faculty of every nationality and religion. New York's Yeshiva is an independent university "under Jewish auspices" that touts its commitment to scholarship through "Jewish and secular studies."

The "Superfreak Rabbi" is actually a real Lubavitcher, and Jewsweek interviewed him for its upcoming issue. Here's a teaser:

Roger Marks may not be a household name, but if you're flipping channels late at night you may catch the lubavitcher -- beard, back hat, and all -- dancing on TV. Dubbed the "super freak" rabbi from those ubiquitous BuyMusic.com ads, Marks is making a career out of playing a Chassidic rabbi from Malcolm in the Middle to a Burger King commercial. But Marks is not alone. At open casting calls, he's not the only rabbi look-alike on hand. "I did a Snickers commercial and it was like dueling rabbis ... we had a chuckling contest," he told Jewsweek. A full profile of the Lubavitcher actor will appear in the upcoming issue of Jewsweek.

Christopher Hitchens wants to lay the smackdown on Daniel Pipes. I'm no fan of Pipes, and neither is Hitchens, apparently. In typical Hitchens fashion, he focuses on a few key incidents from Pipes' past to try to discredit the individual entirely. He writes of the lifting of the fatwah on Salman Rushdie,

But not to Pipes, who weighed in with a sour, sophomoric article arguing that nothing whatsoever had changed and that the Iranian authorities were as committed to Rushdie's elimination as ever. His "sources" were a few clips from the Iranian press and a few stray statements from extremists. That was five years ago. Today, Salman Rushdie lives in New York without body guards and travels freely, and there are leading Shiite voices raised in Iran in favor of the coalition's successful demolition of the Iraqi Baath Party. To put it bluntly, I suspect that Pipes is so consumed by dislike that he will not recognize good news from the Islamic world even when it arrives. And this makes him dangerous and unreliable.

Then, I heard recently, Pipes has maintained that professor Edward Said of Columbia University is not really a Palestinian and never lost his family home in Jerusalem in the fighting of 1947-48.

In the February 2003 issue of Commentary magazine, he wrote an attack on the "road map" proposals, which included the words "the so-called Palestinian refugees," and which by other crude tricks of language insinuated that there had been no Palestinian dispossession in the first place. In which case, there is obviously nothing to negotiate about, is there? It's one thing to argue, as many Palestinians are prepared to do, that not every refugee can expect "the right of return." It's quite another to deny history and to assert that there is no refugee problem to begin with.

A bedrock condition of such a strategy—and one no less frustrating in the short term—is that Palestinian acceptance of Israel is a binary proposition: yes or no, without any in-between. This suggests, in turn, the futility of negotiations—at least until the Palestinians do accept the Jewish state. Such matters as borders, water, armaments, the status of Jerusalem, Jewish communities in the West Bank and Gaza, so-called Palestinian refugees—in brief, the central issues of the Oslo period—cannot productively be discussed as long as one party still aims to murder the other. In principle, something along the lines of the Oslo agreement could turn out to be workable—but only after the Palestinians definitively and unequivocally, and over an extended period of time, demonstrate that they have made their peace with the existence of the state of Israel as an irreversible fact.

Pipes himself was forced to concede grudgingly that he had been in error when he described professor John Kelsay of Princeton and professor James Turner Johnson of Rutgers as having denied that the term "jihad" had any military meaning. I admire those who admit their mistakes, especially under the pressure of fact. But Pipes hasn't just been engaged in a dispute in print with other academics. He is the founder of Campus Watch, a Web-site crusade that purports to expose heretical or subversive teachers in America. It's not pleasant to think of such an organization being run by somebody who won't, or who can't, read the published work of more distinguished colleagues.

His "sources" were a few clips from the Iranian press and a few stray statements from extremists.

One of the most frontal challenges from Islamic theocracy came in February 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a sentence of death upon Salman Rushdie. There then followed a long campaign by writers and scholars and diplomats, culminating in September 1998 in a formal repudiation of the fatwa by the Iranian regime.

Prof Said, who teaches literature at Columbia university in New York, was reported to be travelling in Europe yesterday, but his friends denounced the attack as baseless and politically motivated.
They insisted that the Said family, including the 12-year-old Edward, left Jerusalem in 1947 when it became too dangerous to remain in the crossfire between Arabs and Jews over the city's future. Christopher Hitchens, a US-based British journalist and a Said family friend, said: "There's no question. The Saids decided to go because life was made hard for them. It became difficult and dangerous for him to go to school."

Then, I heard recently, Pipes has maintained that professor Edward Said of Columbia University is not really a Palestinian and never lost his family home in Jerusalem in the fighting of 1947-48. I have my own disagreements with Said, but this is a much-discredited libel that undermines the credibility of anybody circulating it.

IN Justus Reid Weiner's article, "'My Beautiful Old House' and Other Fabrications by Edward Said," which appeared last month, the sentence (page 25, column 2), "In that city lived Wadie Said's brother Boulos Yusef, his wife Nabiha, and their five children" should be amended to read: "In that city lived Wadie Said's sister Nabiha, her husband (and cousin) Boulos Yusef Said, and their five children." We regret the error.

WWBT? I'm not sure what this says about the state of Eastern spiritual traditions, but a Temple in Tokyo recently held a ceremony thanking pachinko (pinball) machines for being one of the few growth markets in Japan these days.

In Friday's solemn ceremony, Buddhist monks in purple robes chanted sutras in front of a candle-lit, brocade-draped altar adorned with a golden replica of a pachinko machine.
Executives from firms that make pachinko machines and parts for them offered incense before bowing their heads and praying to honor those machines that have come to the end of their working lives over the past year.
"So many people play pachinko," said Hitoshi Osawa, an executive with leading pachinko machine maker Heiwa Corp . "We want to tell the machines, 'Thank you very much for all your hard work.'"

For some reason I never got around to posting this before, but you should all check out Kavvanah, Professor Of The Elders Dr. Alan Brill's attempt to get us all spiritual about Judaism. The website needs work, but the thought's a good one...
[All it needs is a blog! -- SIW]

Any Jersey J-bloggers out there? A reporter's doing a story and would love to hear from you. E-mail me for details.

The real reason Meredith had to stop blogging; she couldn't avoid comparisons with these people:

Does anyone know where I could purchase oversized stuffed dice (the kind you roll) for use as wedding shtick? (Think: BranDEIS)

CNN.com - HK store's Nazi theme sparks fury - Aug. 10, 2003:

German and Israeli diplomats have lashed out at a Hong Kong fashion company for using swastikas and other Nazi party symbols in a clothing line and to decorate its chain of stores.

I spent most of Shabbas afternoon reading Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael Oren, a really well-written and comprehensive account of the Six Day War. To quote every book report I ever wrote in grade school, "I enjoyed it greatly, and strongly recommend it to everyone in my age group." Despite being somewhat technical, it was a really really fun read, and the pace is close to Clancy's after he gets wound up (think the last 300 pages of Executive Orders or the last 200 pages of The Bear and The Dragon). The best passage in the book comes at the end, where the author has a discussion with Foud Ajami, professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins.

FA:Could you let your readers in on one or two changes in your outlook that happened by the time the work was complete?
MO:Prior to my work in the 1967 war, I believed the politics in the Middle East -- as elsewhere in the world -- were the product of rational decision making, a reflection of cogent analyses on the part of Arab and Israeli leaders. Today I know differently. Of all the insights I gleaned from my research -- the extent of Egyptian war planning, for example, or the depth of Israeli fears -- none altered my thinking more than the realization that politics in the Middle East are, more often than not, random and unpredictable, arbitrary in their course and potentially explosive in their outcome.

New York Magazine's "Sexiest Rabbi," Balfour Brickner. Perhaps indicating a general age bias, the guy's really old. A while ago, I was asked to submit my pick for sexiest rabbi, and sent them over some pics of him; guess I just don't have the right vision for these things.
Oh, and Mort Zuckerman is the sexiest media mogul, while Jon Stewart (whom we are hotter than) is sexiest comedian...and Eliot Spitzer's "Sexiest Prosecutor."

Meredith's blogging career, from Girlhock to Rejew seems to have drawn to a seemingly untimely conclusion. It was fun while it lasted...