August 28, 2007 | 3:35 pm

What’s wrong with United Methodists?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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“Amazing Grace” is a great hymn, so it’s no surprise that melody is the favorite among Methodists surveyed in 2000 and again in 2006. What baffles me is that “Be Thou My Vision” didn’t make the top 20 either year.

That hymn has long been my favorite. And there is nothing like hearing it sung by the scratchy voice of Pedro the Lion‘s David Bazan, who sadly has lost his faith.

(Hat tip: DMN religion blog)

August 28, 2007 | 3:19 pm

From my inbox: ‘Rag head go home’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Islamophobia is a favorite topic of The God Blog. Add this report from CAIR, which just arrived in my inbox, to the list:

The Sacramento Valley chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SV) reported today that racist slurs were spray-painted on a car stolen from a California Muslim.

CAIR said the Muslim woman’s late-model car was stolen from the parking lot of a shopping center in Sacramento, Calif., earlier with month. When police found the car days later, the hood and truck were spray-painted with slurs such as “rag head go home.”

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August 28, 2007 | 1:11 pm

The Israel Baseball League halfway to hell

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

All summer I’ve been waiting for Sandy Koufax to make his triumphant return to baseball in the Israel Baseball League. Now it seems not even the great southpaw can save the hapless IBL. From TabloidBaby, via Luke Ford:

(T)he result, say many, were more errors than hits: players threatening to strike when paychecks were late; a manager hired to help give face to the fledgling league leaving in the middle of the season, after trashing the league to the media; and a player almost killed by a batting practice line drive, an accident that might have been prevented with proper equipment.

(skip)

“I’ve lost almost 17 pounds since I’ve been here,” said Scott Jarmakowicz, a catcher for the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox. “Over half my paycheck, at least half, has gone to food. It’s not sustainable eating the same schnitzel and boiled eggs three times a day.”

Elli Wohlgelernter’s story goes on for another 3,200 words, detailing players’ myriad grievances. When I was in Israel this month, the Jerusalem Post ran this story about IBL returning in ‘08. The accompanying photo was of empty seats. Not bleachers, but the stackable plastic seats you find at at outdoor food court.

Of the major sports, Jews have been most successful at baseball. But can anything save the Israel Baseball League?

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August 28, 2007 | 10:16 am

Another GOP politician caught in sex scandal

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It seems like twice a week I get an e-mail in my inbox from a certain family member that has a link to MSNBC and says something like the one I received today, “GOP hypocrisy goes on.” Here’s the story:

WASHINGTON - Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who has voted against gay marriage and opposes extending special protections to gay and lesbian crime victims, finds his political future in doubt after pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges stemming from complaints of lewd conduct in a men’s room.

The conservative three-term senator, who has represented Idaho in Congress for more than a quarter-century, is up for re-election next year. He hasn’t said if he will run for a fourth term in 2008 and was expected to announce his plans this fall. (skip) The married Craig, 62, has faced rumors about his sexuality since the 1980s, but allegations that he has engaged in gay sex have never been substantiated. Craig has denied the assertions, which he calls ridiculous.

When I started on the religion beat in San Bernardino, a colleague on the local politics beat thought a should pay more attention to the stories about how socially conservative politicians—the so-called family-values folk—fared when their behavior was unholy. In the two-plus years since then, I can’t even count the number of these stories, from city councils to Capitol Hill, and across party lines, that have arisen.

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August 28, 2007 | 12:33 am

Does ritual meditation belong in schools?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

An editor once told me to avoid quoting officials from Americans United for Separation of Church and State because, he said, they lack any constituency and its executive director, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, often looks like a caricature of a religious libertarian.

But this morning, as I listened to a report on NPR’s Day to Day about more public schools teaching children transcendental meditation, and as I began to ponder how I would blog about the religious implications of such a school program, a lawyer involved with AU was quoted on the segment saying much of what I had been thinking:

“It’s not the business of the public schools to lead kids to inner-peace through a spiritual process. ... If you teach transcendental mediation, you open the floodgates and allow any spiritual or religious group to have access to formal teaching of its edicts in public schools.”

The goal of the program is to “reduce stress, increase focus and bolster achievement,” and the principal of the inner-city school featured on the report said that attacks on TM as religious ritual are overblown. “I’m a Baptist. ... I have one God.”

Still, I have serious reservations about a movement reportedly spreading to 100 schools nationwide by next year. School prayer cannot be institutionally driven when it is Christian or Muslim or Jewish in theme. So why would religious prayer be OK when it has roots in an eastern religion?

Tangentially: A great episode from the third season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”—they’re all great—is “The Special Section,” in which Larry David gives Richard Lewis his meditating mantra, “Jai-ya.” The phrase, which Larry had said thousands of times before, is not actually something that brings peace, but causes more of the chaos common to Larry David’s life. It means “F—- me.”

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August 27, 2007 | 4:25 pm

Michael Vick loves the Lord

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Well, Michael Vick did it. He did what ever other celebrity does when they get in trouble. Like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton already did this summer, Vick, the dog butcher I used to find so exciting to watch as QB of the Falcons, found Jesus:

I’m upset with myself, and, you know, through this situation I found Jesus and asked him for forgiveness and turned my life over to God. And I think that’s the right thing to do as of right now.

Like I said, for this entire situation I never pointed the finger at anybody else, I accepted responsibility for my actions of what I did and now I have to pay the consequences for it. But in a sense, I think it will help, you know, me as a person.

I hope he did. I really do. But—call me a cynic—I’m always a bit skeptical when public figures use Jesus to boost their popularity.

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August 27, 2007 | 12:50 pm

Lamenting Jewish ‘exceptionalism’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I like prodding my wife, who is not of Jewish descent, with claims of a special Jewish intelligence. I bring home issues of The Jewish Journal like this one and e-mail her essays like Charles Murray’s “Jewish Genius.”

But in this week’s New Jersey Jewish News (hat tip: Bintel Blog), Editor-in-Chief Andrew Silow-Carroll laments Jewish exceptionalism.

Of course, we have no one to blame but ourselves for the inordinate amount of attention we attract. We learned a lot of things in the desert but never quite got the hang of camouflage. When fate was handing out professions we picked finance, law, medicine, and movie-making. When God was handing out land, we said sure, we’ll take that one, the one sitting in the middle of about a gazillion Muslims. Maybe they won’t notice.

And we make our own claims for exceptionalism, proudly but not always wisely. We’re happy to be included among the world’s “Three Great Religions,” and then we’re shocked by “God’s Warriors,” a six-hour series on CNN that devotes as much time to our crazies as it does to the Muslims’ and Christians’. I’d be happy to be demoted to the list of the world’s Not-So-Great Religions if it meant never having to suffer through another Christiane Amanpour interview with a Jewish extremist who is best known for failing to blow up the Dome of the Rock.

But that’s the price of exceptionalism: Specious comparisons between a tiny people’s relatively marginal record of terrorism, versus state-sponsored mass murderers who have destroyed untold numbers of mosques and shrines in Iraq and Hindu temples in India and Pakistan, not to mention the occasional synagogue.

The problem I have with this statement begins with “When God was handing out land.” I don’t recall God saying to Moses, “Where do you want to build my kingdom?” It was: “That occupied land over there—yeah, the one with the giants living in it. That’s where I want you to live. Go take it.” Secondly, there were no Muslims then, and there wouldn’t be until 500-plus years after the destruction of the Second Temple. Nonetheless, Silow-Carroll‘s point is an important one: Jews seems to suffer more as a group and are held to a higher standard than others. Like Silow-Carroll, a lot of Jews have been bemoaning the attention dedicated to the Jewish extremists in “God’s Jewish Warriors.” Here was what Robert J. Avrech, a Orthodox screenwriter, had to say at his blog, Seraphic Secret:

The whole two hours of this Al Jazeera program is such typical, and poisonous Arab propaganda that Karen and I are kind of fascinated. This huge lady [Christiane Amanpour] with the really bad hair interviews guess who as experts on Israel? Jimmy Carter. Karen Armstrong.  John Mearsheimer. There’s the obligatory angry loser from Peace Now — dude, clean your office, it looks like cat litter. And a couple of Israeli lefties who are so far gone they might as well be living in Damascus. Gee-willikers, Al Jazeera lady forgot to interview Hizbullah/Iranian-proxy strongman Hassan Nasrallah; his views on Israel are pretty much the same as the usual suspects above. He’s always ranting about the evils of the Israeli occupation. And he vehemently denies that he’s a Jew-hater. Like Carter, Armstrong and Mearsheimer he insists that he’s merely anti-Zionist.Yup, Nasrallah gets positively indignant when he’s accused of being an anti-Semite. Sheesh, can’t anyone criticize and bomb Israel without being accused of being a Jew-hater? There’s this long segment on the — horror musical sting here — Israel lobby. Obligatory shots of well-dressed, um Jews, tables of food, which I suppose is proof of evil, people chatting and looking, y’know, conspiratorial. I’m waiting for Al Jazeera lady to start quoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, because that’s really what this segment is all about, but I suppose she’s too cool for that. This is after all Al Jazeera. They are , allegedly, civilized.   Then fullback lady pulls out the big guns: Actual Jewish terrorists. She comes up with Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir, and a group who rigged explosives to the car of an Arab Mayor they suspected of aiding terrorists and who planned on blowing up an Arab girl’s school, Disgusting and wrong, but they were caught and arrested, by Jewish cops, thank G-d.  That’s it for Jewish terror. Personally, I think the Jewish people have shown remarkable restraint in the face of a genocidal enemy.

Back to Silow-Carroll, who notes that Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse “thinks the world insists on Jewish exceptionalism as part of a ‘culture of blame’ — as a way for countries and cultures to distract their followers from their real problems.” He then concludes with this:

I’m proud of the Jews. I really am. But sometimes I’m with Tevye. “I know, I know. We are Your chosen people,” says the hero of Fiddler on the Roof. “But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?”

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August 27, 2007 | 11:00 am

Change of address

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

At some point today, The Jewish Journal‘s web editor will move The God Blog to its new home at jewishjournal.com/thegodblog.

I’ll continue publishing through Blogger, so you’ll still be able to get to The God Blog through bradgreenberg.blogspot.com and thegodblog.org

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August 27, 2007 | 9:57 am

Months in making, AG Gonzales resigns

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

If Alberto Gonzales had stepped down in February, no one would have been surprised. But he refused and President Bush backed him, which makes today’s announcement quite the about-face. The Lede puts it this way:

The resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, reported this morning in The Times, appears to have achieved the distinction of being both highly expected and, somehow, not expected all.

Once Bush’s golden boy behind Karl Rove, Gonzales had fallen out of favor with what seems like every American outside the Executive Branch.

Religion never played as prominent a role in Gonzales’ political behavior as it did in that of his predecessor, John Ashcroft. And I’d say that was a good thing.

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August 24, 2007 | 3:59 pm

Britons aren’t Islamophobic but Semitophobic

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve written a bit about Muslim fears of growing Islamophobia, but Emanuele Ottolenghi, director of the Transatlantic Institute and a regular contributor to the Commentary blog Contentions, says there is a more disturbing trend in the United Kingdom:

A recent poll now offers us a new perspective on this issue. The good news is that, according to the Harris Interactive/Financial Times survey, the majority of Britons—59 percent—thinks that “it is possible to be both a Muslim and a Briton.” The bad news is that 29 percent disagrees. Still, given the circumstances, one can interpret these data to mean that Britain remains, overall, tolerant. Of Muslims, that is. But when asked to respond to a similar proposition about Jews in a recent Anti-Defamation League sponsored poll (”Jews are more loyal to Israel than to Britain”), 50 percent of Britons answered yes.

This is strange, to say the least. Jews have had no problem integrating in the UK. As for Israel, its sound and solid relation with Great Britain derives from a commonality of interests and values. Jewish extremists have not blown themselves up in the London tube. They do not advocate the establishment of a global Jewish theocracy to dominate the world—as Hizb-ut-Tahrir does—and when they get angry or offended at depictions of their beliefs and habits, Jews will at most write angry emails and letters to the editors, not call for the beheading of those who insult Judaism. Nevertheless, half of England doubts their loyalty.

British attitudes to Muslims could, and should, be better. But it is British attitudes towards Jews that truly expose intolerance.

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August 24, 2007 | 2:22 pm

America’s next invasion: Vietnam

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m not one for opinion columnists, and this piece has little to do with religion (except maybe that our heavenly picked president could use some divine intervention), but Rosa Brooks goes sort of Jonathan Swift on President Bush’s speech Wednesday.

      Re-invade Vietnam!

Oh yes. You thought the Bush administration was fresh out of ideas? You thought that with Karl Rove leaving, the administration that brought us the war in Iraq and “Mission Accomplished” had no more tricks up its sleeve?

Think again.

On Wednesday, speaking before a Veterans of Foreign Wars audience, President Bush did something he had previously avoided: He compared the Iraq war with the Vietnam War, agreeing that Vietnam does hold lessons for U.S. policy in Iraq.

Can’t argue with that. For most Americans, the lessons of Vietnam were reasonably clear before we invaded Iraq and have been painfully reinforced by the ongoing disaster there:

Don’t fight needless wars; don’t go blundering around in countries where you don’t know the language, history or culture; don’t underestimate the power of nationalism, ethnicity and religion to bind together—or tear apart—people whose interests otherwise seem to diverge or converge; and, most of all, don’t imagine that military force can solve fundamentally political problems.

But the president, who has his own very special set of history books, drew the public’s attention to some entirely different lessons from Vietnam. To Bush, the “unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens.”

Right! To Bush, the tragedy of the Vietnam War is that we didn’t let it drag on for another decade or so.

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August 24, 2007 | 10:53 am

‘This is where the Jewish people are at’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s weird watching the tides of content interest on the Web. For almost two months, a link I posted about the origin of UCLA’s Undie Run as part of a comment on LAist.com got almost no clicks. In the past two days got more than 70.

Similarly, the discussion of my Q&A with The Forward on the paper’s Website only had three comments the first week it was up. But yesterday there was a flurry of back and forth. This reaction from yehudis particularly caught my attention:

I actually cried reading this interview. This is where the Jewish people are at right now, and it is a very sad story from any angle you examine it.

When I write in birthday cards to my mom, I enjoy moving her to the point of tears (usually of joy). But I can’t boast the same about yehudis’ sentiment, which I think is related to this recent dialogue on Jewcy.

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