You'd think Mel Gibson's current situation would have been instructive, no? Well, guess not: Major motion picture chronicles life of Martin Luther

I spent this shabbas afternoon reading Paul Boyer's chapter on American Christian Fundamentalist Millennialism in Imagining the End: Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America. Then I read Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (Left Behind No. 1), where I found out that Boyer was absolutely right. Interesting stuff, though the Left Behind book had the same self-righteous, condenscending, almost whiney tone that makes most of Augustine unreadable. Also, it was written somewhat poorly, and the storyline ranged from cliched to unbelievable (even given the post-Rapture setting). The fact that it sold x million copies is testament enough to the current state of pop religion.

This isn't as big as Oreos, but....:

In a major development in the ever-expanding universe of kosher food, the Orthodox Union and the Campbell Soup Company jointly announced today that Campbell’s condensed Vegetarian Vegetable Soup is now certified kosher by the OU, the world’s best-known kosher trademark.

The Jewish Internet lay stunned for 2 days, and, being busy and offline, I had no idea that SHE got engaged. And to Peter Pan, no less. What a great way to end the week.

According to the New York Times (and others):

President Bush said today that he had seen no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks

Really great post by Naomi Chana about Jewish History as portrayed by Barbie

Well, its been an especially good week for the Jewish Press Letters Section. A few doozies to discuss, though. (Dr.) Yaakov Stern blames the (alleged) gross materialism in the Frum community for the two Hasidic girl runaway situation. Rachel Altman breaks down the last issue article by article, concluding "last week`s issue (Sept.5) was an especially uplifting and inspiring read." We're glad she thought so, and apparently so was the Jewish Press. So much for insightful dialogue and commentary; now they're into printing fanmail. Jerry Boris comments on The Passion and on the whole deicide thing

What have those ancient fabrications, lies and embellishments to do with us today, whetherperpetuated by Mel Gibson or by some Holocaust denier? If it is not subject to verification, it has no validity. My system of justice is the American system of justice; anything else has no validity to me. The preposterous declaration that the Jews, all of them, are guilty of deicide, cuts no ice with me because there was no trial that adhered to the American system of justice with its rules and procedures designed to produce a valid verdict.
In the case of the screwball charge against the Jews and their relationship to Jesus, there was no trial and no procedures even remotely suggesting the most elementary system of justice and certainly no review by higher courts.
I am a Jew; I am not bound by anything a group of inflammatory propagandists shouted some two thousand years ago. What they did then, as a bunch of rabble presided over by a dictator, has no meaning for me or anyone else. I am an American; I answer only to American law, not the law of propagandists and bigots seeking to blame the Jews for an act of criminality perpetrated by a Roman tyrant.

Continuing on with “Problems in the ‘Hood,” will someone please tell me what the deal is with people and their cars?
Recently, my husband and I were in Boro Park and we could not believe the rudeness,
aggressiveness, and lack of respect for the property of others. While we were parked, our car was bumped numerous times on the sides and front by other drivers who either ignored us or reacted with outrage at our temerity to complain.
What`s the problem?
Is it too difficult to say "I`m sorry" or "Excuse me" — never mind to display some common courtesy and treat the possessions of a fellow Jew with respect?

The JTA reports:

Women and children are setting up camp around Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah to shield him from any Israeli action. The Palestinian Authority president has vowed to use the gun he carries with him to fend off any Israeli effort to exile or kill him.

By the way, to those who've been shopping at Amazon using our link (the horizontal Amazon button on the right), thank you for supporting us with referral fees.

While following a Google search that led someone to Protocols, I came upon this essay in last month's Dissident Voice that advocates you

download a free copy from the Internet, cleanse it of anti-Semitism by replacing "fellow Jews" with "neocons" and make sense of what’s happening in the world today.

in fact a series of 24 mostly articulate, well-argued lectures outlining a plan for world capitalist domination, with sharp political and social analysis, lots of Machiavelli and a Marxian sophistication in its understanding of capitalism and historical processes. Briefly, it outlines a plan of world conquest by first establishing world government by consent. As with any brilliant political analysis, it has been denounced, dismissed, misinterpreted and banned. And made very good use of by those lusting for world power.

It’s firmly founded on a plan for capitalist domination through Jewish control of international finance and just happened to appear at the very moment of the founding of the Zionist movement, with its goal of establishing as soon as possible a Jewish state in Palestine, backed by powerful worldwide Ashkenazy Jewish economic interests.
It's as if an especially ruthless and well-read 19th c Zionist, inspired by the Rothschilds and other great Jewish financiers of the time, wrote it or most of it, as I am sure is the case.

BBC

Three Jewish settlers have been convicted by a court in Jerusalem of attempted murder after a failed plot to blow up an Arab girls' school in the city.

Commenter Waxman notes that the Boca Raton Synagogue, which my parents will -- weather permitting -- be attending this Shabbos, has published, "Hurricane Halachot: Shabbat Protocols in Case of a Hurricane".
Unfortunately, while BRS is obvioiusly capable at developing protocols for dealing with weather trends, it hasn't latched on to technological trends in the way that it's coastal neighbor, the Temple Israel of Miami, has.
Though, neither shul actually discusses the hurricane on their own homepages -- these things should be alert centers for the community in general; how hard would it be to add a blog to every shul website out there?

In what could be the most shocking anti-Road Map revelation, BlissfulKnowledge finds a sentence in a Jerusalem Post story claiming that the suicide bomber who killed David and Nava Applebaum was one of the prisoners released this summer by Sharon. Relevant graf talking about Nava's fiance, Chanan Sand:

In response to how he felt about the news that the man responsible for the attack was among the 343 Palestinian prisoners released this summer, Sand said, "I never believed in peace. I knew it was a mistake, I didn't believe the lack of peace could impact me so much."

Dear Steven,
That's because you did your search in English. The Hebrew media reported it in at least one newspaper (I'm not sure if it was Yediot or Maariv) on Thursday morning, Sept. 11, although it's true no one has made a big deal about it.
I have thought to do more with that, as several people have mentioned to me that they are surprised that it hasn't been more widely reported.
I learned of it at the Applebaum home. I was there when Debra Applebaum told US Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer she had just learned of it, and that it added anger to the misery.
He didn't deny it. He could have said, that's not true, he could have said, we're not sure, instead he made a statement about Bush's committment to fighting terror. I took that as confirmation. And reported the conversation as I observed it since I knew the conversation to be true.
I should note that in my quick read of the Hebrew story, which was not so well written, it was unclear to me whether it was the suicide bomber himself who had been released or the man responsible for sending the bomber who had among those released, hence my more vague reference to the man responsible for the attack.
I was particularly struck by it through, because I had done a number of stories prior to the prisoner release about victims of terror protesting the move, sure it would lead to heart ache for more families.
Hope this helps, best, Tovah

A "Gay Talese" writes to the Times:

How can the United States government express reservations about an Israeli official's contemplating the killing of Yasir Arafat (news article, Sept. 15) when this is what the United States is trying to do with those leaders we most loathe in the lands we have invaded and now occupy?
And how can we blame Mr. Arafat for failing to stop the turmoil and terror in the Middle East when our government, with all its muscle and military might, has failed for many months to stop that same kind of terror that is directed at us in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Nazi wine. Bill Maher writes:

An Italian wine-maker has a new line of wines with famous Nazis pictured on the label. It’s sort of the Fascist version of a Wheaties box. Needless to say, it’s a white wine. A very white wine. It goes well with fish, chicken, or annexing the Sudetenland.

AKS decides that news about Israel is too serious and so is letting us know about all the juicy gossip circulating in the Hebrew tabloids.
Be on the edge of your seat with tidbits about:
Ehud Barak's love-life.
The Israeli Bachelorette's love-life with her chosen hunk.
And much, much more!

Another in a recent spate of "Jewish Christian" (pseudo?) scholarly books to hit the market. Anything with a title like The Church's Hidden Jewishness is a little off-putting, because the implicit declaration is "hey, we're the same as you if you go back far enough, so let's all be friends now." As I pointed out in a book review of a similar item last year, it's more than insulting to try and dismiss 1800 years or so of persecution as being the result of a simple miscommunication, and "gee, we're all the same after all. How 'bout that?" Christianity clearly began as a Jewish sect that built itself around Jesus, much as the Qumran sect (the ones that wrote/collected the Dead Sea Scrolls) built itself around its "Teacher of Righteousness". At this point, though, its impossible to ignore the gulf creted by history when dealing with interfaith stuff, and to try and dismiss it out of hand is just being dishonest.

How cool. Temple Israel of Miami has a list of Jewish Resources that includes blogs, among them, of course, Protocols. They write on their homepage:

Temple Israel of Greater Miami is a paradox. We’re the oldest Reform shul in Miami with the oldest temple building in town. But we also have some of the most cutting-edge religious and educational programming not only in our region, but anywhere. We’re building new traditions on the shoulders of the old ones.

A reader points to a bio of Wesley Clark found via a Yiddish Chicago message board. The bio says his father was an Orthodox Jew who died when Clark was five years old. His mother then remarried a Baptist. The obvious question here is how his father could be both Orthodox and married to this woman at the same time. The site, unsurprisingly, doesn't make any effort to reconcile this, but notes that Clark was raised a Baptist.

Attending Lishmah
Two days late, and after the non-blogging has already been noticed, here's my wrap-up of what happened.
I'm pitching around a few pieces on it, so won't go into tremenous detail.
First, the attendance: Eli Stern said at closing that more than 1,500 had come; Judith says 1,200. Stern's more likely to be correct, but either way it was a very large event given the low-key nature of its publicity. This means that it was a bigger draw per amount of publicity than many other conventions, so a very high level of demand.
Since I went with the intention of coming out with articles, my perspective on it is skewed. I attended three feminism-related sessions when I might have attended fewer if my intention wasn't to come out of there with a story on feminism at the conference. A couple of notes about that: 1) This ended up also being the first real gathering of feminists from across denominations and generations, with intriguing results; 2) Men were disproportionately under-represented at the Conference as a whole, it seemed, yet disproportionately over-represented (relative to attendance) at two of the three feminism-related sessions.
Overall, the conference seemed a lot more frenetic, a lot more valuable, than Edah conferences have been. This probably owes in part to there being no meal-times at Lishmah, but even the sessions themselves were generally more action-packed. I didn't attend any of the more esoteric, arts-related workshops or lectures, which might be less dense than the other types of sessions, but I didn't attend those at Edah, either. One aspect that may be a reason for a difference is that I heard a lot of pulpit rabbis speak at Edah, and few at Lishmah.
Attendance was significantly yarmulke-wearing. I don't have any numbers or any way to tell if those yarmulke-wearers were Orthodox, but it seemed worth noticing.
Within the sessions themselves, I also noticed a greater ability and interest in engaging the content than at Edah, whether text or speech. The audience as a whole seemed, in the sessions I attended, to be more expert.
There were a lot of old people, by which I mean Boomers, but very few old-old people, who tend to be a big part of Edah. There seemed to be fewer young people than I'd expect at such an event, and this may be because it failed to market to these kids: were announcements made and flyers distributed at the campuses that just now returned to classes? The conference took place very early in the school year, which can also have an effect.
The multidenominational aspet was surprisingly unemphasized. If I weren't reporting on it and specifically looking for that interplay, I might not have noticed it very much. When non-Orthodox spoke about or engaged Orthodox and the reverse, there wasn't any making of demands or sniping or dismissal, so whatever differences these people had, they kind of flowed off their backs. The only time that there was anything even remotely unlike that was when one non-Orthodox panelist said that every woman regardless of denomination should make demands to stifle the agunah situation -- and this was greeted reasonably by the Orthodox panelist.
At all sessions, the denominational make-up seemed to be very well mixed, such that I didn't notice more Reform at a session led by a Reform professor, and so forth.
As well, none of the content that I witnessed or heard about could be heretical or antithetical to any other's hashkafa or canon. This isn't to say that it absolutely didn't happen at the conference, but to indicate that issues such as those raised in certain comments to my preview article were largely unfounded. I don't think anything I heard would be actually objectionable to an Orthodox person or anyone else; they might disagree with some of what was said, but certainly no worries about kefirah or what have you are warranted. The only thing I saw that, say, Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb could reasonably object to would be kol isha in the music performances at the end, for which only around half of the attendees stayed, anyway.
Most controversial moments were had at a panel on the Lanner affair, with Eli Stern, Gary Rosenblatt and Suzanne Stone on the panel, and Marc Stern moderating. After the panelists gave their introductions, Marc Stern rose and said, "If I weren't moderating, I would say..." and then went on a few-minute diatribe about how the panelists failed to "give balance" to the fact that Lanner was considered a "brilliant educator" and that these things need to be taken into consideration when discussing such a situation, especially when good educators are so hard to find. I was quite surprised that none of the panelists responded in the disrespectful fashion that such a comment deserved, and especially surprised to see Eli Stern be the most restrained of the three. As well, the audience remained entirely in-line, not interrupting or shouting -- again, a shocker; I can't imagine Marc Stern leaving unharrassed from Edah after saying that. Marc Stern continued to shock the audience throughout by saying some absolutely incredible and clearly false things and being rather rude to panelists, as well. Forget Edah, the way this panel went with Marc Stern seemed in many ways more suited to an OU convention. As I said, I was shocked by the audience's respectful silence at what he was saying, and equally shocked when I spoke with audience members afterward and found how respectfully they expressed their disagreement with him.
What was also interesting to find was the mix of left-right political perspectives (in regard to Israel), and how little they could be grouped along denominational lines.
These are my summarized reactions. I might post more as specific aspects of it become relevant to what we're talking about in Protocols.
Oh, and to respond to Judith's not seeing Elders with laptops, mine broke, so I couldn't blog from there. That's also why my blogging hasn't been up to par of late. I hope to have it back soon.

Interesting interview at Beliefnet with Al Franken about the Bush administration's religiosity. Hilarious story about the team faking Bible study, among others. Then there's this exchange on the second page:

In another part of the book you argue that Jerry Falwell is “a nut” because, while he said the Anti-Christ is a living Jewish male, he has not yet fingered Marvin Hamlisch.
Well he actually said he didn’t know if it was Hamlisch or not.
So he was hedging?
Yeah, I thought you could rule out Hamlish. I thought a sane person could say Marvin Hamlisch is not the Anti-Christ. Why would the Anti-Christ write Chorus Line? Why would the Anti-Christ write The Way We Were?
Chorus Line, you might get an argument on.
Nah, I don’t think so.

I just received a third-or-more-hand forward of Benyamin Cohen's "Meet the Metrodox" article. The only articles I've received in such a fashion from other publications have been about Baruch Lanner or something similar, and this isn't the first time I've received a Jewsweek article in this fashion. This gets more to the point of what I was talking about in my first post about the story and in the resulting comments. Jewsweek is creating new ideas for stories that speak to a more global Jewish audience; it's a content that is clearly in high demand. There've been rumblings about syndicating Jewsweek's content to the print publications in some way, and if I were editor of a local weekly, I'd be trying to make sure that happened. This, of course, is not to say that all of Jewsweek's content is top-notch -- but as it goes along, it gets better, and with the growth in readership and cash infusion that syndication would bring, it'd get all that much better. It's almost without question that there're at least a few stories on Jewsweek every week that all Jewish weeklies are missing and would print if they had the chance, and could buy from Jewsweek for cheaper than getting it done in-house. This is a new model for Jewish content, and I'm very interested to see where it goes.

The publishers of Revolve, the Teenage Magazine Bible get interviewed in yesterday's NYT.
Highlights:

Some literary scholars have suggested that the Holy Bible would have been a better read if they had left the New Testament out. But you chose to exclude the Old Testament from ''Revolve.''
The Old Testament is three times longer than the New Testament, so how could we have included it? That would have made for a magazine about the size of a Sears, Roebuck catalog!
But you found room to include sidebars on fashion and romance and to raise the question ''Are you dating a godly guy?'' What translation of the Bible did you use?
We use the New Century Version. It translates the Bible thought for thought instead of word for word. The King James translation reads at a 12th-grade reading level. Most people in our country today do not read at that level. The New Century Version reads at a fifth-and-a-half-grade reading level, which is about the average where people can comprehend.

Culturalal jihad, anyone?:

Dr Hawass later told reporters that “if the British want to restore their reputation, they should volunteer to return the Rosetta Stone because it is the icon of our Egyptian identity”. He then added: “I don’t want to fight anyone now, but if the British Museum doesn’t act, we will have to employ a more aggressive approach. The artefacts stolen from Egypt must come back.”

Jewsweek's Benyamin Cohen is engaged. Given who he is and what he does, I guess it's interesting that he chose to announce it on OnlySimchas. On the off chance that an Elder gets engaged anytime soon, I imagine we'll blog it. And one picture? Come on, man.
Anyway, mazel tov & so forth. May you build a website ne'eman b'yisroel.

Was browsing through upcoming books, and came upon this title that promises to be interesting. I don't have time at the moment to check up on the author's credibility/reputation, but he certainly seems creative:

When Joseph revealed his identity to his kinsmen who had sold him into slavery, he told them that God had made him "a father to Pharaoh." Throughout the long history of ancient Egypt, only one man is known to have been given the title "a father to Pharaoh"--Yuya, a vizier of the eighteenth dynasty king Tuthmosis IV. Yuya has long intrigued Egyptologists because he was buried in the Valley of Kings even though he was not a member of the Royal House. His extraordinarily well-preserved mummy has a strong Semitic appearance, which suggests he was not of Egyptian blood, and many aspects of his burial have been shown to be contrary to Egyptian custom.
As The Hebrew Pharohs of Egypt shows, the idea that Joseph and Yuya may be one and the same person sheds a whole new light on the sudden rise of monotheism in Egypt, spearheaded by Queen Tiye and her son Akhnaten. It would clearly explain the deliberate obliteration of references to the "heretic" king and his successors by the last eighteenth dynasty pharaoh, Horemheb, whom the author believes was the oppressor king in the Book of Exodus. The author also draws on a wealth of detailed evidence from Egyptian, biblical, and Koranic sources to place the time of the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt during the short reign of Ramses I, the first king of the nineteenth dynasty.
Ahmed Osman was born in Cairo in 1934, where he studied law. He is the author of Moses and Akhenaten, Out of Egypt, and The House of the Messiah. He has lived in England since 1964.

"What’s Next?"

At the risk of sounding like a leftist minion only capable of repeating the inflections of Sam and others who have had the tenacious audacity to speak out against the Radical Right in Israel, the current state of dialogue and debate allows me to be silent no longer.

What the hell is going on?

The Jerusalem Post, for better or worse is an oft read and referenced newspaper of the Jewish and Israeli right. In the last two years, it has criticized the Sharon government from the right on more than one occasion. This past week it found itself on Sharon’s right again. Just as Israel’s “Security Cabinet” was voting on a measure calling for Arafat’s removal from Israel and the surrounding territories, the Jerusalem Post called for his assassination.

Getting involved in a protracted debate with proponents of this position would be futile. To speak of precedent, morality, law or political expediency would yield at best a disagreement to disagree.

There is only one question to ask and it can be done in the words of the most revered fictitious U.S. President ever, Jed Bartlett: “What’s next?”

Assume Yasser Arafat has been killed, and maybe even the invalid, near-centenarian leader of Hamas has been nailed as well, have we changed the situation on the ground? Have the buses stopped exploding, will the blood cease to flow? Do we expect the Palestinians to admit their wrongs, apologize for their years of violent disobedience and retreat to their refugee camps? Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and all the rest will surely disarm and admit the failure of their campaigns.

Is Arafat’s assassination justified as moral justice and therefore must not submit to the test of political expediency or rationality? What is achieved and what happens the morning after his assassination? Is the simple gratification at seeing him dead an end in itself even if it radicalizes thousands of his supporters willing to ‘martyr’ themselves in the name of their perverse “Islamic Nationalism”?

The last time the world was in such a terrible state the notion of assured mutual destruction was seen as a deterrent, now we have joined the terrorists in making it our raison de’tra. For shame.

I'm not sure if its funny or sad when a Mr. Wiener has to respond to claims from a Rabbi Metzger that his client, a Ms. Ross, is an anti-Semite. I'm pretty sure its sad, though.

I recently spoke with a prominent reporter of a leading Israeli newspaper. The writer insisted that Ariel Sharon was the Jewish State’s worst Prime Minster. He justified his statement by arguing that in the last decade about 1,100 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks and that over 80% of those deaths came since September 2000. He further insisted that Jerusalem was the only western city in the world where Jews were regularly killed because they were Jewish.

(I was very suspicious when the reporter insisted that these views were never written in the paper because of pressure and fear of reprisals from members of the popular right and the government until I saw a CNN reporter claim that the same occurred in the States.)

A writer in the Jerusalem Post recently took pride in declaring that the current situation finally showed that Oslo and all of its proponents were stupid. He quoted the same figure that reporter who spoke to me did. Only this one failed to mention the 80% since September 2000, he only said that since Oslo began, over 1,100 Israelis were killed.

No one will doubt that Israeli security measurers are doing wonders for stopping terrorism. For every attack we hear about there are literally dozens more that were thwarted by Israeli security forces. But one must wonder whether targeted assassinations, demolition of homes and other “collateral damage” yield the same results.

A former U.S. general said that after every military mission the outcome is examined to find lessons: What went right, what went wrong and what should be changed based on the degree of success and failure of the mission. The Israeli right is fond of insisting that no peace can work because Oslo failed. What then of the reprisal-oriented military approach? Has the overwhelming success of that program justified its continuance?

So Tom Friedman's column in yesterday's NYTimes doesn't say anything new and innovative. But it does clearly lay down the only possible outcome of the current policies of the Sharon government, not to mention the even more harebrained ones being kicked around the Israeli right wing media (great idea guys! Kill Arafat. THAT will stop terror...).

How dense is the majority of the Jewish public? How many times does it have to hear an idea before it gets through its skull? Israel will cease to be a Jewish state in our lifetimes. Unless there is unilateral separation from the Palestinians - NOW! TODAY! - there is no way on earth that Israel as we know it can survive.
And guys? Unilateral separation does not mean a wall that incorporates 50% of the Palestinians into Israel. It means a contiguous country, on most of the West Bank with all of them over there. That is the minimum level of concession that the right has to get used to at this point.
This is not even a matter of liberal and humanitarian values (though perhaps, as Ghandi said of Western Civilization, those sound like a good idea). It is, plain and simple, a matter of Israel's survival. The only other option is a de facto binational state in a few years, and as Friedman points out, the Palestinians (the smart 30%) have realized this.

I wonder what trenchant rebuttals people will come up for this one? Of course, I can think of one inspired by the consulting firm of Larry, Curly and Moe Inc. - the people that brought us targeted assasinations. In fact, I think its the only possible answer that the right can offer to this question other than mindless cries of "Traitor!" I can see the text now, on the editorial page of Jpost: deny a vote and citizen status to the Palestinians - living, under our control in land we have annexed with a fence and tanks. Yup. That's a great idea.
Maybe we can put them to work in the sugar plantations next. When you've lost sight of reality and are living in a triumphalist dream world, the sky's the limit.

Wow, so this guy couldn't post a comment on my last posting - so he emailed it to me instead.

I sense satire afoot here (perhaps with a kernel of earnestness) but I'll let you be the judges:


Sorry Sam, this time the preacher man has your number. Shul-talking does count. Being the husband of a descendant of the Shlah, I know whereof I speak.

Haven't you noticed the drastic decline in infant mortality over the past century and a half? Haven't you wondered why lifespans have in general gotten longer?

It seems pretty obvious that this otherwise inexplicable bracha min hashamayim corresponds to a century and a half of growth of a Jewish movement opposed at its core to shul-talking and other forms of indecorum. I refer, of course, to Reform Judaism.

Those who wish to take seriously the mitzvah of ushmartem et nafshoseichem (sic - ss) and are not, ba"h, zocheh to have a Reform shul nearby, should at least be makpid to arrive in shul after the shmoneh esreh, v'kol hamarbeh harei hu mishubach.

-- Reb Yudel, http://www.shmoozenet.com/yudel

Well, I'm generally not in the habit of publicly mocking rabbinical pronouncements, but this weekend, an itinerant preacher type came and spoke in my shul. Expecting (since this rabbi was the same fellow who angrily castigated the OU for having Karen Bacon as its keynote speaker last year) a message of some controversial, or possibly even genuinely insightful nature, I was amazed and amused by his petty choice of harrangues. Essentially, he argued that the greatest sin facing us today is talking in shul. Yes, he meant you.
To bolster his point, he argued that improper shul decorum is the cause of all sorts of bad things, like cancer and suicide bombings, and noted that the Shlah Hakadosh's father had said that the Chmielnicki pogroms of 1648 and 1649 were due to the talking in shul of the time.

Now I'm all for shul decorum, and I think that there's something to be said for gentle mussar in that department. But is he really trying to pin all of theodicy on shmoozing during chazaras hashatz? Is that all the substance this particular rabbi could come up with a week before selichos?

So this kind of got me depressed, since it suggested that the message theyve been shoving down my (and presumably everyone else in or on the fringe of the haredi community) throat is more or less unchanged in style and content from the one I got in 8th grade.
No sophistication. No new insights.
Just the attempt to explain the inexplicable with the absurd.

Maybe I WILL go to Lishmah tomorrow.

Also, in the department of abstruse literary theorists turned obtuse political analysts:

Times Arts and Ideas Section runs a piece on Tzvetan Todorov, and his breathtaking idea that Europe need to develop a first-rate fighting force so it can challenge America, and be able to "defend western values and interests."

Now, while all this talk of fighting (even against the evil imperialists) for the sake of peace rings no less hollow coming from the mouths of continental philosophers than it does from the Bushies, I'm more disturbed by a few isolated points in the interview.

"Indeed, the most radical recommendation of his new book, "The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European," is that Europe should abandon its "pacifism and passivity" and rearm. He celebrates the fact that war is no longer possible within Europe. "But the whole world has not been pacified," he said in an interview in his Left Bank home. "Our potential enemies are no longer inside Europe. We must join forces to defend ourselves against these external enemies.""


Note that thd article (and, I'm guessing, Todorov) leaves unclear the niggling detail of which enemies of the European way of life he's referrring to. However, read just so, the article and this phrase can mean the US, which makes this a fairly disturbing point. Call us unilateral and imperialist, if you will, but please, reserve the term enemies for the folks that trying to blow people up.

Also, a bit of historical revisionism:

"Mr. Todorov accepts that there are occasions when the use of force is necessary, but he notes that the West did not intervene to halt the two greatest genocides since World War II, in Cambodia and Rwanda. More often, he added, other forms of pressure on a repressive regime are more effective and less dangerous, not least the containment policy used by the West against the Soviet Union. But for this, he believes, it is better for the United States to work hand in hand with a Europe that can also defend Western values and interests."


I see. In what way, exactly, was the containment policy more effective than open war? It certainly was a necessity, what with Mutually Assured Destruction as the only other option. But how did it stop Stalin from killing 20 million people? How did it prevent the Soviets from dominating and repressing all of Eastern Europe for 40 years? And how did it still almost bring the world to the brink of numclear war on numerous occasions?

Truth be told, the containment policy was necessary, but not optimal. If the USSR were a fifth of its size and didn't have nuclear weapons, I wonder whether containment would have been the chosen option of the mid-century White Houses.

Once again, the right is blind and objectionable, but the left more or less rivals it in engendering my distaste, leaving me, sadly, pragmatically, in the center.

Doug Rushkoff considers a new preface for Nothing Sacred. If nothing else, its a lot more upfront about what he's all about.

Yeah, so my critique of the newfound friendship between Israel and India notwithstanding, it's still fun to watch the Pakistanis shit their uniforms about it.
One particularly amusing quote comes from the Jpost article:

"Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday said Israel's relationship with India is "extremely" threatening to Pakistan's interest and "if they are trying to unite to create an anti-Muslim military alliance, it is the saddest day in the history of the world," he told reporters.

President Pervez Musharraf said that a strategy is being evolved to ensure that the Indo-Israel relationship is not used against his country. "


Uh huh. Some bluster, anyone?

Much more important than Arafat being "removed", whatever that means):

Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, regarded as one of the leading rabbinical authorities in the world, was hospitalized in serious condition Friday night after suffering from difficulty breathing.
Magen David Adom medics were called to Elyashiv's house in Jerusalem and he was taken to the capital's Shaare Zedek hospital but was transferred to the intensive care unit at Hadassah Hospital in Ein Karem shortly after, when doctors realized that the rabbi was suffering from blood cell hemorrhaging.