March 25, 2008 | 9:26 pm

Saban: ‘You made it big, you jerk!’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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I have an article in this week’s Jewish Journal about the $10 million Cheryl and Haim Saban pledged this month to the Los Angeles Free Clinic, where Cheryl was a patient 25 years ago, a few years before she married the man behind “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.” While writing that article, I came across this 15-month-old piece from Ari Shavit, one of Ha’aretz’ great writers, about the family’s Christmas tree and Haim’s journey from Egyptian ghetto to Beverly Hills billionaire.

As the gaping guest walks by the neatly trimmed lawn and the wooden wheel of the imaginary water mill and the windows of the chateau, a heavy door opens for him, beyond which a gigantic Christmas tree sparkles and shines with its decorations. In the long stone corridors that lead to the wood-paneled guest room, the familiar songs of Naomi Shemer play softly: Whatever you wish, let it be. Whatever you wish, let it be.

Saban himself enters a few minutes later. He is somewhat excited. He didn’t really want to be interviewed, but decided there was no choice. At the weekend he will convene the Saban Forum for the third time, and the gathering obliges public relations. Since he lost the hold he had in the White House through his good friends Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution and the Saban Forum have become his levers of influence on political Washington and on Jerusalem. (For the sake of proper disclosure: The author of this article was invited to lecture at the Saban Forum.)

n recent years, the ability of the colorful Israeli-American billionaire to bring together Ariel Sharon and Bill Clinton, Shimon Peres and Henry Kissinger, Tzipi Livni and Condoleezza Rice has become one of the achievements of which he is proud. During the two years in which his personal fortune grew from $2.2 billion to $2.8 billion (according to Forbes), Saban succeeded in adding to the list of power centers he controls this prestigious annual gathering of senior Israeli and American figures for a joint dialogue.

Does Haim Saban understand the suspicions that his large and well-connected fortune arouses in Israel? Does he see the problematic character of the relations between big capital and government? Even before he sits down in his armchair, Saban goes on the attack.

My favorite part is the headline, which seems to have no place in the text: “You made it big, you jerk.”

As for the Christmas tree, Cheryl is Christian; they’re raising their kids as Jews.

March 25, 2008 | 2:37 pm

Bush’s beginning as an evangelical favorite

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

You’ve probably noticed that blogging has been fairly weak the past week. There is a reason for that, and it’s that I’ve been in and out of town and, it seems, too frenetically reporting or writing to thoughtfully blather.

Not that I am going to pick that up again quite yet, but here is an interesting excerpt from Slate of editor Jacob Weisberg’s new book “The Bush Tragedy” that focuses on the religious politics of our 43rd president:

If Bush’s theology is free of content, his application of it to politics is sophisticated and artful. Evangelical politics is a subject on which he has exercised his intellect, and perhaps the only one on which he qualifies as an expert. Bush began his study in 1985 on behalf of his father’s effort to become president. George H.W. Bush regarded televangelists like Pat Robertson as snake handlers and swindlers. Reflecting his parents’ attitude, Neil Bush referred to evangelical Christians in a speech for his father in Iowa as “cockroaches” issuing “from the baseboards of the Bible-belt.” For their part, the evangelicals felt no affinity for Bush Sr. They found his patrician background off-putting and suspected the sincerity of his conversion to the pro-life cause.

To help him with this problem, Bush Sr. brought in Doug Wead as his evangelical adviser and liaison. Wead had been involved in a group called Mercy Corps International, doing missionary relief work in Ethiopia and Cambodia, and gave inspirational speeches at Amway meetings. He was also a prolific memo writer. The most important of his memos is a 161-page document he wrote in the summer of 1985 and a long follow-up to it known as “The Red Memo.” Wead argued for “an effective, discreet evangelical strategy” to counter Jack Kemp, who had been courting the evangelicals for a decade, and Pat Robertson, whom he accurately predicted would run in the 1988 primaries. Wead compiled a long dossier on the evangelical “targets” he saw as most important for Bush. (“If Falwell is privately reassured from time to time of the Vice President’s personal friendship, he will be less likely to demand the limelight,” he wrote.) Wead made a chart rating nearly 200 leaders for various factors, including their influence within the movement, their influence outside of it, and their potential impact within early caucus and primary states. Billy Graham received the highest total score, 315, followed by Robert Schuller, 237; Jerry Falwell, 236; and Jim Bakker, 232.

Unbeknownst to Wead, Vice President Bush gave the Red memo to his oldest son. After George Jr. pronounced it sound, George Sr. closely followed much of its advice. For instance, Wead recommended that the vice president read the first chapter of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, a book that had become a popular evangelical device for winning converts. “Evangelicals believe that this book is so effective that they will automatically assume that if the Vice President has read it, he will agree with it,” Wead wrote. Vice President Bush made sure that religious figures saw a well-worn copy on top of a stack of books in his office when they visited the White House and cited Lewis’ condemnation of the sin of pride as one of the reasons “we haven’t been inclined to go around proclaiming that we are Christians.” He also took Wead’s advice on how to answer the born-again question; in courting the National Religious Broadcasters with three speeches in three years; in inviting Falwell, James Dobson, and others to the White House; in cooperating with a cover story in the Christian Herald, the largest-circulation evangelical magazine at the time; and in producing a volume for the Christian book market.

George W. Bush became the campaign’s semiofficial liaison to the evangelical community in March 1987. “Wead, I’m taking you over,” he said at their first meeting, over Mexican food in Corpus Christi, telling him to ignore Lee Atwater, whom Wead had been reporting to. Wead recalls how anxious George W. was in political conversations with his dad. “He was a nervous wreck,” Wead told me. “He wanted his father to be proud of him.” Wead also recalled the son’s expressions of his own political interest. The campaign had prepared state-by-state analysis of the primary electorate in advance of Super Tuesday in 1988. “When he got the one on Texas, his eyes just bugged out,” Wead remembered. “This is just great! I can become governor of Texas just with the evangelical vote.”

The crucible of the campaign forged a close relationship between the two men. Wead, whom George W. called “Weadie,” says the candidate’s son spent an inordinate amount of time talking about sex. But he was so anxious to avoid any whiff or rumor of infidelity that he asked Wead to stay in his hotel room one night when he thought a young woman working on the campaign might knock on his door. “I tried to read to him from the Bible, because by that time he was sending me these signals,” Wead told me. “But he wasn’t interested. He just rolled over and went to sleep.”

Having Wead put him to bed was a way to advertise his marital fidelity, and to reinforce a distinction with his father, who was facing rumors about the Big A. Wead said Bush also liked having him around as an alternative to the company of drinking buddies from his pre-conversion period. But Bush resisted religious overtures as firmly as sexual ones. “He has absolutely zero interest in anything theological—nothing,” Wead said. “We spent hours talking about sex … who on the campaign was doing what to whom—but nothing about God. And I tried many, many times.”

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March 24, 2008 | 9:22 pm

The search for Hitler’s gold

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s March Madness, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the greatest player in college basketball history. So check him out on “The Colbert Report,” in search of Hitler’s booty. (Warning: It’s actually not that funny.)

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March 23, 2008 | 12:49 pm

Pope baptizes pro-Israel Muslim

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

VATICAN CITY - Italy’s most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service.

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book “Long Live Israel.”

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Allam’s head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

“We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another,” Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. “Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close.”

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He did not speak to the press Saturday and his newspaper said it had no information about his conversion.

Allam said in the interview that he had made a pilgrimage to Mecca, as is required of all Muslims, with his deeply religious mother in 1991, although he was not otherwise observant.

“I was never practicing,” he was quoted as saying. “I never prayed five times a day, facing Mecca. I never fasted during Ramadan.”

Allam also explained his decision to title a recent book “Viva Israele” by saying he wrote it after he received death threats from Hamas.

“Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life. And I discovered that behind the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel. Everyone has the right to exist except for the Jewish state and its inhabitants,” he said. “Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life.”

Read the rest here.

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March 22, 2008 | 10:58 pm

And now, the fake news

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Jewish Journal‘s annual Purim cover is out now, and it’s got a few gem jokes that reference news of note mentioned here in the last year. There’s Eliot Spitzer and the whore of Babylon,  the U.N.‘s response to continued rocket attacks on Sderot and, of course, Ann Coulter and The Perfect Jew. My favorite “headline” though is about Israeli PM Olmert’s ridiculously low approval rating. (Truth to be told, his approval rating spiked in July to, gulp, 8 percent.)

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March 19, 2008 | 5:43 pm

A March miracle for the Bruins

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The most wonderful time of the year begins now, with the tip-off of the NCAA tournament. The last few years I have taken work off at the start of March Madness to soak in full days of pandemonium. This year is no different. I’m not sure what to expect, no one ever is. But I’m sure there’ll be a moment or two as memorable as this one.

My wife and I were cheering so loudly during the Gonzaga-UCLA game two years ago, banging the walls and jumping around like apes for a good 20 minutes, that I seriously expected the cops to show up. They never did, and two days later I was in Oakland watching UCLA eek by Memphis en route to another Final Four.

(Last fall I played poker with Adam Morrison, who was peeling off $100 bills like he was feeding quarters into a pinball machine. I was mature enough not to mention the last game of his college career. Coincidentally, the next morning his season ended when he busted his knee in a game against the Clippers.)

Anyway, enjoy the madness and thank God—seriously because the tournament starts this year on Maundy Thursday—that it’s March. I’ll be back this weekend to wish The God Blog a belated happy birthday.

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March 19, 2008 | 10:57 am

Why Jews should vote for Obama

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I first learned of Saigon Bob one day while putting off deadline at the Daily News and refreshing the home page of LAObserved. Bob Kholos had been press secretary for legendary Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, and on his blog, which LAObserved linked me to, Kholos alleged that while running for mayor, Bradley’s campaign had discovered that then-Mayor Sam Yorty once paid for a back-alley abortion that left the young woman dead.

Instead of blasting it in the news media, we decided to use it about 10 seconds prior to a live debate in the San Fernando Valley just a couple of days before the election.

Aide, and future Bradley Press Secretary, Tom Sullivan volunteered to run past Yorty just as the debate started and whisper a name.

Sullivan whispered the name of the person, and Yorty responded, “So, your going to play that game.”

Six months later, Bob contacted me after reading an article I’d written about an eruv dividing Oak Park and its expensive neighbors, Agoura Hills and Westlake Village. I last talked with Bob, whom I believe now lives in Oregon, shortly after I joined The Journal. But yesterday he shot me this note—“This Obama ‘guilt by association’ has the definite feel of the old Tom Bradley 1969 campaign ... in which he lost as Mayor”—with a link to his thoughts on why the Jewish community should support Barack Obama.

Social justice is a four thousand year old tradition in Jewish history(some would say five thousand years..give or take a thousand years)

Of course, that does not mean that every person practices such an ideal, but this strength among the Jewish population has lead to the end of child labor, a movement of Unions, better treatment of animals, and a joining together with other minorities in bringing about the civil rights revolution in America (That’s the short list)

Certainly, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, have also enjoyed wide Jewish support, and deservedly so.

Senator Barack Obama, is a special case.

He is trying to bring about a “post racial” attitude among all Americans.

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As far as Obama’s support for Israel, one Israeli newspaper said that, “Barack Obama is pro-Israel. Period.”

Also, guilt by association, has been the unfortunate hallmark which has been used to destroy many Jewish communities throughout Jewish history.

An angry preacher, and a Black separatist, have supported Senator Obama.  But, nothing could be further from the truth, as to the mind set and political practice of the junior Senator from Illinois.

To blame him for the small mindedness of others is about as “un-Jewish” as you can get.

Barack Obama is his own man, a great candidate, and someone who can bring a nation together.

That is the best reason to support him.

I sense Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein would agree with that logic.

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March 18, 2008 | 5:59 pm

Just simply: Why?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Press-Telegram has an unbelievably powerful op-ed by the surgeon who tried to save the life of an 11-year-old boy gunned down Sunday. The story is awful in its evocativeness and it fully sapped the energy out of me, bit by bit as I read on.

I just finished sewing up a dead boy.

I pronounced him dead at 10:34 p.m. Sunday. It’s now 11:27 p.m. I know I won’t be able to get to sleep for a long time. I feel like I shouldn’t.

I’m a trauma surgeon at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. I was sulking in my call room on Palm Sunday because I missed yet another important moment in my 5-year-old son’s life. A tarantula crawled all over him at his best friend’s birthday party, and my wife had e-mailed me a glorious photo of this big, hairy arachnid on my son’s face. The phone rings, and I am summoned to the ER for a “gunshot wound to the chest.” That’s bad, but around these parts, sadly not a surprise. Then the ER secretary adds, “... in a 12-year-old.” That changes things a bit. As I hurry down to the Emergency Department, I play out several horrific scenarios in my head - a mental exercise in preparation for what certainly was to be a difficult situation.

I arrive to a room filled to capacity with doctors, nurses, techs, volunteers, firemen, policemen and paramedics. The strictly medical people are swarming around an impossibly small figure, in a flurry of needle sticks in search of a vein, monitor-pad placement in search of a vital sign, stethoscopes vainly searching for a breath sound or a heartbeat. The non-medical personnel had formed a concerned and curious peanut gallery. One ER doctor blurts out the important points, “GSW to the chest, pulses in the field but ... ,” while another ER doctor is prepping this small chest for an ER thoracotomy. In English, an “ER thoracotomy” is where you flay open a chest in a soon-to-be-dead patient, in the hopes of finding a hole you can quickly but temporarily fix. Once that is done, it gives you a chance to give the patient necessary things like blood and IV fluids (where they now will not simply flow out of those repaired holes), and get him to the OR so you can fix him properly. It is the trauma surgery equivalent of a Hail Mary football pass. This is not a “difficult situation”; this is a nightmare.

The ER doctor hands me the knife, as if to say, “Here. It’s yours.” I think the kid is dead, or if not dead, then he certainly is “unsalvageable,” which is a horrible word to use for a human being. I don’t think he’s fixable. However, if he is to have any hope of survival, the only way to save him is to crack him open and try to plug up the holes. Cracking open an 11-year-old boy (he was two months shy of his 12th birthday) is going to tear my own heart in half, I think to myself, but this is part of what I do, so I slip the gloves on and take the knife.

There is precious little skin to cut through, and I’m in the chest in a few seconds. His chest cavity is filled with blood, which spills out of his chest like a macabre waterfall to the floor. There’s a shredded tear in his lung, and a big, ragged hole in his heart. All the IV fluids that my associates are pouring into the patient are flowing out this hole and on to my shoes. I put my finger in this hole - such a big hole in such a small heart - but blood and fluids still flow unfettered. My other hand finds another, larger hole on the other side of his heart. My fingers touch. His heart is empty. Mine breaks.

I’ve read C.S. Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain,” and I know that God is wise beyond ways and endlessly merciful and just. But could somebody please explain to me again the mysteries of theodicy?

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March 18, 2008 | 4:10 pm

‘Why Shariah?’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Noah Feldman had an article in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine that hasn’t generated nearly the blowback that his now notorious “Orthodox Paradox” essay did. The recent article was titled “Why Shariah?” and it began with an equally notorious rhetorical outburst by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, last month.

The archbishop noted that “the law of the Church of England is the law of the land” there; indeed, ecclesiastical courts that once handled marriage and divorce are still integrated into the British legal system, deciding matters of church property and doctrine. His tentative suggestion was that, subject to the agreement of all parties and the strict requirement of protecting equal rights for women, it might be a good idea to consider allowing Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts to handle marriage and divorce.
Then all hell broke loose. From politicians across the spectrum to senior church figures and the ubiquitous British tabloids came calls for the leader of the world’s second largest Christian denomination to issue a retraction or even resign. Williams has spent the last couple of years trying to hold together the global Anglican Communion in the face of continuing controversies about ordaining gay priests and recognizing same-sex marriages. Yet little in that contentious battle subjected him to the kind of outcry that his reference to religious courts unleashed. Needless to say, the outrage was not occasioned by Williams’s mention of Orthodox Jewish law. For the purposes of public discussion, it was the word “Shariah” that was radioactive.

In some sense, the outrage about according a degree of official status to Shariah in a Western country should come as no surprise. No legal system has ever had worse press. To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed. By contrast, who today remembers that the much-loved English common law called for execution as punishment for hundreds of crimes, including theft of any object worth five shillings or more? How many know that until the 18th century, the laws of most European countries authorized torture as an official component of the criminal-justice system? As for sexism, the common law long denied married women any property rights or indeed legal personality apart from their husbands. When the British applied their law to Muslims in place of Shariah, as they did in some colonies, the result was to strip married women of the property that Islamic law had always granted them — hardly progress toward equality of the sexes.
In fact, for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world.

Feldman goes on to argue that we are too quick to associate Shariah with punishment for rape victims and stonings of adulterers and homosexuals.

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March 18, 2008 | 1:54 pm

‘Ha! Ha! Your medium is dying!’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“The Simpsons” seem a bit late on this joke, which is so sad because it’s so true.

(Hat tip: The old boss.)

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March 18, 2008 | 12:37 pm

McCain in Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is making the rounds, arriving today in Jerusalem to a “celebrity welcome.”

McCain began a two-day visit with a stop at Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. As his motorcade pulled up, dozens of tourists greeted him and chanted “Mac is back,” while he shook their hands and posed for photographs.

McCain is on a weeklong trip to Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Britain and France. He has said the tour is a fact-finding, mission, not a campaign photo opportunity.

During his 90-minute visit at the memorial and museum, McCain was visibly moved, his eyes welling with tears as he viewed photographs from Nazi death camps.

He laid a wreath in memory of the 6 million Jewish Holocaust victims and lit a memorial flame, wearing a skullcap placed on his head by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who accompanied him along with Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina.

It never hurts to work on those pro-Israel creds, especially when you’ve got Joe Lieberman, and not John Hagee, by your side.

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March 18, 2008 | 10:04 am

Obama’s speech on race in America

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Sen. Barack Obama gave a much-anticipated speech this morning on race in America and the preachings of his former pastor (you know, that guy who praised Farrakhan). I’ll hopefully come back to this later today when I am off deadline, but for now here’s a link to the New York Times’ coverage.

11:14 a.m. Mr. Obama has been describing what he calls “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.” Here are some key passages:

  I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely.

…

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.
…

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.
…

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

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