July 6, 2007 | 3:01 am

American Jews war-weary

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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I’ve been at The Jewish Journal for two months now, and it seems everybody I meet with or talk to has recently spoken with my colleague Tom Tugend. If you’ll allow me the hyperbole, Tom is to Los Angeles Jewry what Jack Smith was to the greater LA region—a fountain of institutional knowledge, a reporter who knows all and is respected, if not admired, by most. Here is an example from last week.

Born in Germany in 1925, where he remained until immigrating to the U.S. in 1939, Tom has fought in three wars—World War II, Israel’s War of Independence and the Korean War. I was born six decades later in San Diego, where I remained until shipping off to UCLA. I’ve never gone to war, though I did get in a fight in fifth grade. (I won.)

Tom and I have an average age of someone suffering a mid-life crisis and last week teamed up for this story about the first anniversary of Israel’s war with Hezbollah.

This week, as we mark the first anniversary of the war, Israel’s security appears no more certain than it was. With Hamas’ recent expulsion of Fatah from the Gaza Strip and with the three Israeli soldiers still captive, expectations are cresting about the likelihood of another war.

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But if this summer’s flare-ups burn into a full conflagration, would the American Jewish community respond as resoundingly as it did last summer? Would there be countless missions to Israel and hundreds of millions of dollars in aid? Or would American Jewry be overwhelmed by war weariness?

“There is a dispiriting sense of fatigue and apprehension, as if we were confronted by a ‘No Exit’ sign,” said Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom. “Day by day, events are becoming more complex and frustrating, and neither the left nor the right has any answers. We are looking for someone to lead us out of our malaise.

“What do you do in a world gone wild?” Schulweis said. “What are our sources of faith in an insane world? In such a world, optimism is a struggle, but in Judaism, we have to believe in the potential of humanity, in the capacity of people to change in this life, not an otherworldly life.”

July 5, 2007 | 3:50 pm

Who’s afraid of lashon hara? *

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Lashon hara is Hebrew for “evil tongue,” which I imagine looks something like a serpent’s. It is forbidden in Judaism not just to gossip, but to say anything that might hurt another person, even if true. That is why working in the Jewish media—yes that is different than MSM—demands a delicate dance. It seems secular newspapers, however, are concerned about lashon hara as well. (That is an over-generalization; journalists are very good at them.)

The hottest story in LA right now is the rockstar mayor’s failed marriage. Though the LA Daily News recovered nicely this week by being the first to identify TV newscaster Mirthala Salinas as the vixen who sparked Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s divorce, the paper never published this story by Tony Castro, filed in mid-January, that revealed the mayor hadn’t worn his wedding ring since at least September and hadn’t been seen with his wife since before then.

Quite presciently, Castro wrote in that unpublished article, now on his blog, that “(h)istorically, the coverage of marital troubles in the marriages of Los Angeles politicians has made for queezy stomachs among local mainstream journalists.”

The 2003 breakup of then Mayor James K. Hahn, for instance, received scant coverage and apparently was first reported in a dot-dash column of The Wave, a community weekly in South Los Angeles which had long been a Hahn family stronghold.

“If Los Angeles worked like New York City, competitive pressures already would have flushed out any gossip involving the mayor,” Jewish Journal senior editor Howard Blume wrote at the time in his publication.

“Why is it in Los Angeles that the personal life of actor Robert Blake looms more newsworthy than the mayor’s? Is it a reflection of Los Angeles’ civic culture that the mayor barely seems to qualify as a public figure?”

So breaking the news that Antonio’s marriage was on the rocks fell to cowboy blogger/porn watchdog/Orthodox Jewish convert Luke Ford. (Yes, all those adjectives are accurate.) After Ford wrote on his blog Jan. 29 that the mayor and Corina Villaraigosa were separated, the mayor told an LA Times reporter at the Getty House that the blogger’s claim was untrue. Corina, however, couldn’t spare the time to appear at his defense, and Villaraigosa’s ball of yarn began to unravel quite publicly.

Ford, who was profiled last month by Castro in the Daily News’ porn series, is now enjoying the limelight. He got a mention on Slate, interviewed by CNN and a Q & A at LAist.

But what about lashon hara?

* I sent Ford this post and asked him how he balanced the interest of reporting with the gossip taboo. He sent back this synthesis of his thoughts, these related thoughts and this comment about when reporters have the right to rake muck:

Unlimited right to publish about public officials in the public performance of their duty.

If they do things in their private life that make them vulnerable to blackmail, conflicts of interest, perjury, etc, also fair game.

If someone is flagrant about violating social norms publicly (as Villaraigosa has been over the years with his serial philandering, much of it was Mirthala Salinas was pretty public), then I don’t see a problem with reporting on it.

(Photo: LAObserved)

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July 5, 2007 | 2:09 pm

Being your daughter’s sister

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

That’s the parental/sibling role a woman could find herself in if one day she uses the eggs her mother froze for her. The daughter is only seven now, but she has a genetic disorder that almost ensures infertility. So her mom decided to pioneer something bold. And, of course, the way to report this is to drum up the ethical controversy. Take it away, ABC News.

“I have great concerns about this development,” said Dr. Jeffrey L. Deaton, a reproductive endocrinologist and medical director of Premier Fertility Center in High Point, N.C.

“If the goal is to provide her with a family, why not make it less ethically challenging and consider either donor eggs or adoption? Our technology is progressing more rapidly than our ability to understand the social, ethical and religious ramifications.”

While some are bothered by the development, most ethicists and fertility experts say such concerns are largely unwarranted.

“The dilemma of giving birth to one’s genetic sister I think is overdone,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“I suspect parents will adapt quickly, as do adoptive parents who raise their sister’s kids, or even a younger sibling.”

“Those who object would probably have objected to the invention of fire by mankind hundreds of thousands of years ago, and they definitely would have had moral problems … with [in-vitro fertilization] in general when these shocking new ideas first came upon the scene,” said Dr. Sherman Silber, the medical director of the Infertility Center of St. Louis at St. Luke’s Hospital.

 

I’m not sure what “religious ramifications” Dr. Deaton is speaking of. This, I do believe, would be an order without precedent. Further, historical examples of children being born to a sibling mostly came from a son or father’s fornicating heart. Think about Faye Dunaway’s famous scene from “Chinatown.” (“She’s my sister.” Jake Gittes slaps her. “She’s my daughter.” Another slap. “My sister, my daughter.” Slap, slap. Gittes, “I said I want the truth!” Dunaway, “She’s my sister and my daughter!”)

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July 5, 2007 | 9:42 am

Atheist summer camp

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

We’re now in full summer-camp swing, with youngsters heading off to the wilderness to wrestle with each, and with God. But the Chicago Tribune writes of an Ohio camp of a different ilk.

At the same time youngsters at Bible camps across the nation are reciting, “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” kids at Camp Quest are climbing into their bunks, confident there is no one out there to hear those prayers.

Proudly proclaiming the motto “Beyond Belief,” Camp Quest bills itself as the nation’s first sleep-away summer camp for atheists. Founded in 1996, it has inspired four similar camps across the nation for children whose parents are either opposed or indifferent to religion.

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We wanted a camp not to preach there is no God,” said Edward Kagin, camp founder and American Atheists legal director, “but as a place where children could learn it’s OK not to believe in God.”

The reporter attaches the creation of Camp Quest to atheism’s “revival.” I think that’s a bit hyperbolic but agree that atheism is becoming more acceptable in American society and that a non-theist empowerment movement, pulling terms like “coming out of the closet” from the gay rights movement, is afoot. At the same time America is becoming more secular, though, it also is becoming more religious.

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July 3, 2007 | 1:09 pm

Time to repent, Antonio, or pay the reaper

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

My former colleague Beth Barrett broke the news today that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s divorce was in fact caused by a little—OK, a lot—of extramarital activity. Now Chris Weinkopf, the LA Daily News’ editorial page editor, calls on his fellow Catholic to end the affair and repent.

Please. Look, I make no judgment on their souls—Lord knows, we all have our sins, and we all need mercy—but I’m not afraid to cast judgment on these “lovers’” actions. They are a despicable travesty that are causing great pain to Villaraigosa’s family, a pain that will endure for decades. I refuse to play the game of pretending that this “romance” is cute or healthy, or that it is a “private matter.”

Marriage is, by definition, a public matter. That’s why we hold weddings in public, and get the government to sanction them. Indeed, marriage is the foundational institution of our society. The violation of one’s wedding vows is much more than a private betrayal; its repercussions extend far beyond the couple. No, it’s not our business to monitor what goes on in the Villaraigosas’ home, but it is our duty not to condone adultery, and to support the aggrieved.

 

Adultery is not a new thing for Villaraigosa, as Connie Bruck wrote in The New Yorker in May.

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July 3, 2007 | 10:12 am

Jews look back through haze to summer of hope

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Since shortly after the counter-cultural days of the Summer of Love, Jews have been at the forefront of the medical marijuana movement. What’s more, the spirit of the ‘60s had a lot in common with Jewish values, according to a piece in this week’s j., the SF Jewish weekly.

It was a dream that took shape in Haight-Ashbury, where everyone wore flowers in their hair. It was a dream that burst into psychedelic glory in Golden Gate Park, where thousands gathered in the summer of 1967.

With the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, Jewish veterans of the long strange trip can’t help but look back. Though the pan-spirituality of the times allowed no room for traditional religion, Jews who were there agree Jewish values informed much of the hippie worldview.

Chabad of S.F. Rabbi Yosef Langer, at the time a San Jose State University student, today sees beyond the peace signs and roach clips. He perceives something more significant coming out of the Summer of Love.

“The yearning for utopia, in spiritual terminology the promise of the Prophets, is what this generation was all about: Everyone is looking for the time when we will live in peace and harmony. That’s what happened with the busting out of the hippie and political revolution.”

It was indeed a revolution.

Consider the confluence of social upheavals: The civil rights movement, anti-war activism and the popularity of mind-altering drugs. All of that swirled around baby boomers with the revelatory power of a burning bush.

And for young seekers, the Promised Land was the city by the bay.

 

“The counterculture project as it emerged from 1965 to 1967 was not ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out,’” Michael Rossman told the j. “It was to make a more authentic life between people generally. A large part of it was Jewish — Red-diaper babies who wanted to repair the world.”

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July 2, 2007 | 2:05 pm

Mosque gets restraining order against ‘crazy’ convert

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Craig Monteilh showed up at the Islamic Center of Irvine in September wanting to convert. But quickly he began talking about jihad and a “9/11-type operation” against U.S. military targets, so the mosque asked him to leave and Friday won a restraining order, according to the LA Times.

Many were offended and some Muslims left the mosque because of Monteilh, who changed his first name to Farouk (not to be confused with Farfur). Affad Shaikh, civil rights coordinator for CAIR’s LA-area chapter, compared the shock of “crazy lunatics” like Monteilh joining the mosque to a Catholic discovering their priest had been molesting children. He writes at This American Muslim:

I don’t know what to do about a person who hijacks my religion and talks about “jihad” and “violent actions against American military” targets!!! This guy should be behind bars, he must be flight risk, HE MUST KNOW OF OTHERS or at least the FBI should be working on figuring this out.

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July 2, 2007 | 11:09 am

Hamas depicts Israelis killing ‘Mickey Mouse’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In May, I wrote about Farfur, the Hamas propagandist in the mold of Mickey Mouse. A video had turned up on YouTube in which Farfur teaches a program for Islamic world leadership and “liberate the Muslim countries invaded by murderers.”

Now this video on YouTube shows Farfur being martyred by an Israeli agent after refusing to give the Palestinian land to “terrorists” (Israelis).

(Hat-tip: DMN religion blog)

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July 2, 2007 | 9:55 am

Religions: Different paths to the same point?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

They are not, according to an article in the current Newsweek by religious scholar Stephen Prothero that asks whether the major religions are all alike. But “since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful—and all are true.”

According to this multicultural form of wisdom, the world’s religions are merely different paths up the same mountain. But are they? Religious people do agree that there is something wrong with this world. But they disagree as soon as they start to diagnose the problem, and diverge even more when it comes to prescriptions for the cure. Christians see sin as the human problem and salvation from sin as the religious goal. Buddhists see suffering (which, in this tradition, is not ennobling) as the problem and liberation from suffering (nirvana) as the goal. If practitioners of the world’s religions are all climbing a mountain, then they are ascending very different peaks and using very different tools.

You would think that multiculturalists would warm to this fact. But instead they try to flatten out diversity by pretending that the differences between, say, Judaism and Taoism are more apparent than real. How fulsome is religious diversity if all the religions are essentially the same, and a little interfaith dialogue can talk it all away?

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