July 31, 2007 | 6:22 pm

It’s like Match.com for adulterers

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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It’s difficult to believe this billboard is real, not a doctored photo for The Onion. Sad really. But it is, and it can be found in LA at the intersection of Wilshire and San Vicente, near the Jewish Federation building (not that there is any connection). LAObserved points out the ad for the website “for women seeking romantic affairs — and the men who want to fulfill them.”

Trademarked tagline: “When monogamy becomes monotony.”

July 31, 2007 | 2:35 pm

Jews and Arabs working together

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A Jewish attorney is suing two Brooklyn schoolgirls on behalf of his Arab client, a 10-year-old boy the girls allegedly bound with tape and tossed in a closet. That would be a little more interesting in Israel, but this story is still a whopper. From the NY Daily News:

The boy suffered “severe personal injuries - humiliation, ridicule and gross embarrassment” from the incident in his fourth-grade classroom at Public School 114 in Canarsie on Oct. 26, said his lawyer, Michael Lazarowitz. The suit blames the city and Education Department for failing to supervise the school. Education officials declined to comment.

Lazarowitz said the girls attacked Abdulla from behind, taped his arms behind his back, put tape on his nose and mouth, then locked him in the closet.

As Abdulla, who was born in Yemen, struggled, Lazarowitz said the girls hurled “racial and ethnic slurs to the effect - ‘go back to your country, we don’t want you here.’”

 

And I thought I had elementary school bad.

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July 31, 2007 | 12:00 pm

Which nation persecutes Bible distributors?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Bible Belt Blog gives us this bit of trivia:

Earlier this year, two men standing on a public sidewalk were arrested for passing out Bible within 500 feet of a school. The nation has laws guaranteeing freedom of religion for its citizens, human rights observers say, although critics say these rights are sometimes ignored. The arrests took place in A.) Iran, B.) The People’s Republic of China, C.) Saudi Arabia, D.) Russia, E.) The Vatican, F.) The United States.

Well, Turkey’s not on the list, so it must be ... the United States. So obvious you never would have guessed it, right? Here’s the scoop from the Alliance Defense Fund:

PLANTATION KEY, Fla. — A judge dismissed all charges Friday against two members of The Gideons International who were arrested while attempting to distribute Bibles on a public sidewalk outside Key Largo School. Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman represented the two men. 

“Christians cannot be treated as second-class citizens,” said Cortman. “These two men have the same constitutional rights as everyone else to pass out literature on a public sidewalk. We are pleased that the court agrees that these men should not have been arrested and dismissed the charges against them.”

OK, this certainly was a ridiculous case the government tried to level, but give me a break. When was the last time Christians were treated as “second-class citizens” in the western world. Such rhetorical dishonesty only discredits complaints about real discrimination when it does occur.

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July 31, 2007 | 10:17 am

Giving up on Israel—‘The Apostate’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, doesn’t hit the beat often these days. But the stories he’s written in recent years have been memorable—a probing profile of the wandering politician, former President Clinton, an analysis of what it meant when Hamas seized the Palestinian Authority parliament. Like someone who speaks infrequently, Remnick’s occasional byline demands a careful reading.

In this week’s New Yorker, Remnick, the New Jersey son of secular Jews, visits Zion and reports on the repercussions of the loss of faith by a fervent believer in the dream of a Jewish state. (That was Avraham Burg, a former Speaker of Knesset, last month saying that Israel is “dead. We haven’t received the news yet, but we are dead.”)

“For the so-called head of the Zionist movement to say all this—to say, ‘Get another passport for your kids,’ ” Avishai Margalit said to me. “It’s like the Pope giving sex tips.”

Remnick visits Burg at his home in the village of Nataf, and gets an earful about how Israeli politicians talk too much about the Holocaust (a sentiment he shares with Europeans).

“The most optimistic years in the state of Israel were 1945 to 1948,” he said to me. “The farther we got from the camps and the gas chambers, the more pessimistic we became and the more untrusting we became toward the world. It was a shock to me. Didn’t we, the politicians, feed the public? Didn’t we cheapen the sanctity of the Holocaust by using it about everything? Some people say, ‘Occupation? You call this occupation? This is nothing compared to the absolute evil of the Holocaust!’ And if it is nothing compared to the Holocaust then you can continue. And since nothing, thank God, is comparable to the ultimate trauma it legitimatizes many things.” Burg said that contemporary Israelis “are not at the stage to be sensitive enough to what happens to others and in many ways are too indifferent to the suffering of others. We confiscated, we monopolized, world suffering. We did not allow anybody else to call whatever suffering they have ‘holocaust’ or ‘genocide,’ be it Armenians, be it Kosovo, be it Darfur.”

Remnick concludes the story by making this case: The future of Israel depends not on the dream of Zionism but on the sanctity of the Israeli economy.

“Will the young people take the job offer in London from Goldman Sachs or will they stay here and wait for the missiles to fall?” (Harvard Business Review contributing editor Bernard) Avishai said. “The question is, is this a good enough place to come back to when they are married and have children? Finally, the Israeli government has to confront its own crazies and create a national consensus on democratic ideals, enact a secular constitution, and really confront the settlers. So far, the government is only willing to say that it is making ‘painful’ moves. We are told that we have to grieve with the settlers, think about making deals, but quietly let on that we actually think these are the real Israeli pioneers. Bulls—-. Avrum Burg might not express the need to change in the most effective way, but at least he has the courage to insist on it.”

Overall, the piece—not just Burg’s comments—offer little hope for Israel’s future. But do you think such fatalism is correct?

(Photo: Telegraph and New Yorker)

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July 30, 2007 | 7:42 pm

Seeking better sex from a Muslim sage

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jeffrey Fleishman is one of my favorite reporters at the LA Times. For years his was delivering unusual dispatches from Germany and Eastern Europe as the Berlin bureau chief. Now he’s relocated to Cairo, and immediately he found a story about a Muslim sex therapist. Here goes:

CAIRO — In the delicate realm where the Koran meets human desire, Heba Kotb, a Muslim sex therapist in a ruffled gold head scarf, has strong opinions on vibrators, foreplay, premature you-know-what and why more men can’t seem to locate the G-spot.

An hour in her clinic, where some women wear black abayas that reveal only their eyes, is a liberating venture into a culture that has traditionally relegated talk of sex to a family whisper. Demure she may appear, but Kotb’s voice is strong and unapologetically public. The Koran, she said, forbids sex outside marriage, but within that union carnal satisfaction is a requisite for happiness.

“I deal with pleasure, desire, orgasms, masturbation, sexual frequency and erection problems,” said Kotb, whose TV show, “Big Talk,” is popular across the Arab world. “Neither the Koran nor the Sunna, however, address masturbation. My advice is that it’s OK to masturbate, but only if you need it badly. Masturbation has become more prevalent here because sex is forbidden outside marriage.”

In a society in which male clerics issue fatwas, or religious edicts or opinions, addressing all layers of family life, a feminine voice on something as intimate as sex has made Kotb a celebrity and a cultural revolutionary.

Some conservative clerics accuse Kotb of catering to sinners and Western-influenced permissiveness, but, overall, there has been little outcry about her frankness. Kotb’s advice on sex is meticulously framed within the context of matrimony, which she says is a gift from God.

“Everyone is searching for better sex, but people aren’t having the best sex,” she said. “Sex within Islam is the best. It covers the man’s rights and the woman’s rights. Islam is the ultimate sexuality. It’s beyond the stereotypes of Islamic oppression. I’m replacing that template. I’m replacing the stereotypes.”

(Photo: LA Times)

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July 30, 2007 | 6:08 pm

Rudy not pro-choice?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I don’t think it would make Rudy Giuliani any more popular with social conservatives if he dropped his support for abortion—he’s still pro-gun control and, man, talk about a lack of family values.

But Mark Kleiman, a professor at UCLA who writes at the insightful, and way left, blog The Reality-Based Community, argues that the former New York mayor really couldn’t be considered pro-choice because he wants to re-arrange the Supreme Court in a way that would spell the end of Roe v. Wade.

So when Rudy Giuliani says he would appoint “strict constructionist” judges, he’s pledging to appoint more justices willing to overturn Roe v. Wade; the fact that he sortakinda takes it back by saying there would be no litmus test doesn’t really matter. Nor does the fact that, as a private citizen and a local politician he supports abortion rights; on the one issue where a President has to act on abortion he’s fully committed to the RTL position. And Justice Stevens isn’t getting any younger.

Thus it’s not really right to describe Giuliani, the Presidential candidate, as someone who “supports abortion rights.” 

It’s not clear how much this will help or hurt Giuliani in the primaries. But it could make all the difference in the general should Rudy be the nominee. To get the swing votes he would need, Giuliani would want to run as a “moderate” on abortion, which is about as close to the truth as his claim to be an “expert” on terrorism.

  I’d like to hope that the press wouldn’t let him get away with it.  But perhaps I’d be wiser to hope for a pony.

(Photo: Salon)

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July 30, 2007 | 11:42 am

The evangelical problem

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The problem in this case has to do with most people’s understanding of the term “evangelical,” which is commonly used as a synonym for conservative Christian, non-Mainline Protestant or, least often accurate, fundamentalists (while fundamentalists are certainly evangelicals, most evangelicals are not fundamentalists).

GetReligion has a good post up today that gripes, yet again, about how poorly people understand what it means to be an evangelical.

(W)hat caught my eye this time was a recent New York Times story by veteran religion writer Laurie Goodstein, which makes a solid attempt to add some clarity on the diversity of “evangelical” views on at least one issue that is hard to label as “liberal” or “conservative.” 

Thus, the headline: “Coalition of Evangelicals Voices Support for Palestinian State.” This coalition is stressing that both Jews and Palestinians have rights “stretching back for millennia” to territory in the Holy Lands. These leaders have issued a letter calling for the creation of a Palestinian state that includes the “vast majority of the West Bank.”

Now, who are these people?

The letter is signed by 34 evangelical leaders, many of whom lead denominations, Christian charities, ministry organizations, seminaries and universities. They include Gary M. Benedict, president of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, a denomination of 2,000 churches; Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary; Gordon MacDonald, chairman of World Relief; Richard E. Stearns, president of World Vision; David Neff, editor of Christianity Today; and Berten A. Waggoner, national director and president of The Vineyard USA, an association of 630 churches in the United States.

“This group is in no way anti-Israel, and we make it very clear we’re committed to the security of Israel,” said Ronald J. Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, which often takes liberal positions on issues. “But we want a solution that is viable. Obviously there would have to be compromises.”

 

Once again, you can see how hard it is to use political labels in this context — especially in a short news report.

What in the world does it mean that Sider and company often take “liberal positions on issues”? That is simply far too vague. What issues? Is it “liberal” to favor economic justice? Is that politically “liberal” or theologically “liberal”? Sider, by the way, is consistently pro-life and a doctrinal conservative on sexuality issues.

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July 30, 2007 | 11:25 am

Armageddon, Simpsons style

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

That’s me on the right, inspired by the “Simpsons” movie. I saw it Friday night, and found it funnier than any combination of episodes I can remember.

As usual, religion and morality are strong undercurrents in the latest Simpsons snafu. Marge has a minor crisis of faith, Homer goes on another hallucinogenic spiritual journey and Grandpa ends up rolling around the church floor screaming “Twisted tail, a thousand eyes, trapped forever! EPA! EPA!”

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July 30, 2007 | 7:29 am

God Blog Lite

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Posting will be light until later today. But, in case you missed them, here are a few choice posts from last week:

Nothing’s sacred when sportsmen are such sinners

Gawker: Jews will do anything for a dollar

Mourning and planning for the Third Temple

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July 28, 2007 | 3:40 am

Summer reading—Goldberg’s ‘Prisoners’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This week I finished Jeffrey Goldberg’s wonderful book “Prisoners: A Muslim and Jew Across the Middle East Divide.” In it, Goldberg, who recently left the New Yorker for the Atlantic Monthly, details his Zionist evolution for socialist camper to Israeli prison guard during the First Intifada to Middle East correspondent for The New York Times Magazine.

After serving at the Ketziot prison, Goldberg returned to Israel and the Palestinian territories to start talking with some of his former prisoners. One in particular, Rafiq Hijazi, now a professor in UAE, has captured Goldberg’s imagination: He is convinced the two can become friends, an act with symbolic meaning for the solution to that seemingly eternal crisis in Israel.

The back of the book comes with praise from far greater journalists than me, so I’ll just say it’s worth your while to pick up a copy. For an Israel ignoramus like myself, the book really helps you understand the landscape and the latent ideologies manifesting themselves in suicide bombings and the difficulty of discussing peace when two people want such divergent things.

The book is, in parts, disturbing, such as when Goldberg interviews Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a founder of Hamas:

Hamas, more than any other force, transformed the dispute between Arabs and Israelis into one between Muslims and Jews. There was no category called “Israeli” in Rantisi’s bifurcated understanding of the world. There is umma, which represents light, and then there are the Jews, who are darkness. “The Quran says that they will be behind violence and wars everywhere,” he said. “This is true throughout history. They stole money from everyone. People always talk about what the Germans did to the Jews, but the true question is, What did the Jews do to the Germans?”

A resounding theme is the difficulty of working toward compromise when fundamentalism is at work. History is rarely right; the Quran always is, Goldberg learns.

Clearly, this fundamentalism, which UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl told me comes not from true Islamic scholars but politically motivated clerics, is becoming more prevalent in Muslim countries and Europe. It’s the reason Bernard Lewis has said, “Bring them freedom or they destroy us.”

But can Western ideals and Islamic fundamentalism live side-by-side? Or are American Muslims pushed to act in a way that is haram by living in a free society?

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July 27, 2007 | 7:02 pm

‘What self-hating Jews can teach Muslims’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Self-hate, in the Jewish context, is assailed by traditionalists, quantified by sociologists, catalogued by hobbyists, ribbed by comedians, feared by parents.

It is also underrated.

Simply put, we have much to learn from the self-hating Jew. Like the paranoid who is under actual surveillance, the Jew who is viciously critical of matters Jewish - or for whom Jewishness and Israel are sources of shame - may shed light on issues we may wrongly choose to ignore or accept.

That is the thesis of Bradley Burston’s piece earlier this week in Ha’aretz. It’s worth a read, as are some of the blog posts responding to it. He argues that Muslims learning a little about self-hate would do more stability in Israel than peace talks.

May we, Muslim and Jew, have the wisdom to address our own failings with the vigor with which we attack each others’.

Let’s hear it for healthy self-hate. It may just be what the world needs now.

(Photo: Ha’aretz)

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July 27, 2007 | 3:47 pm

Second Coming: ‘I hope he comes tomorrow’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve written before about the relationship between Christian Zionists and Jews. Two weeks ago, Max Blumenthal went to the Christians United for Israel conference in Washington. The video is embedded below. Here is a note someone sent me regarding the gist of the conference.

CUFI has an ulterior agenda: its support for Israel derives from the belief of Hagee and his flock that Jesus will return to Jerusalem after the battle of Armageddon and cleanse the earth of evil. In the end, all the non-believers - Jews, Muslims, Hindus, mainline Christians, etc. - must convert or suffer the torture of eternal damnation.

Over a dozen CUFI members eagerly revealed to me their excitement at the prospect of Armageddon occurring tomorrow. Among the rapture ready was Republican Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. None of this seemed to matter to Lieberman, who delivered a long sermon hailing Hagee as nothing less than a modern-day Moses. Lieberman went on to describe Hagee’s flock as “even greater than the multitude Moses commanded.”

Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour from huffpost and Vimeo.

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