April 22, 2008 | 11:26 am

Fighting over Christ’s grave

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Here’s an odd story from the Holy Land. It deals with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the land where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and raised from the dead:

Christian factions have squabbled for years over who controls which parts of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s divided Old City.

Sometimes they even come to blows.

Priests and worshippers at an Orthodox Palm Sunday celebration on April 20 ended up brawling after Armenian clerics apparently kicked a Greek Orthodox priest out of a shrine at the church — one of Christianity’s holiest.

Police weren’t sure what sparked the fist-fight, but friction between the sects has been simmering for centuries. A Muslim keeps the key, and about 150 years ago, theTurks elaborately carved up territory in the church between the feuding Christian factions.

Police are braced for another punch-up when the eastern churches celebrate Easter on April 27 with the centuries-old “Miracle of the Holy Fire” ceremony.

Insert tongue-in-cheek, turn-the-other-cheek joke here.

April 22, 2008 | 11:04 am

Clinton to Iran: We will ‘totally obliterate’ you

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A pair of Silversteins, Richard and Ken, drew my attention this morning to Hillary Clinton’s promise to wipe out Iran if it were to strike Israel with nukes in the near future. Here’s the story from Ha’aretz:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, facing a crucial primary in Pennsylvania Tuesday, said that if she were in the White House and Tehran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, the United States would be able to ‘totally obliterate’ Iran.

Interviewed on ABC’s Good Morning America program, Clinton was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton replied. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he believes Iran is “hell-bent” on acquiring nuclear weapons, but he warned in strong terms of the consequences of going to war over that.

“Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need and, in fact, I
believe it would be disastrous on a number of levels,” he said in a speech he was delivering Monday evening at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

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April 22, 2008 | 9:45 am

A world without Islam

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Religion scholar Martin Marty—pushing back against an article in Foreign Policy that asks “What if Islam had never existed?”—cites a plenitude of religion-fueled conflicts that have had nothing to do with Islam. He concludes with the fact that great atrocities of the 20th century were committed by secular dictators, and offers this insight:

In truth, the conflicts of such a world would parallel those of a world with Islam. Rather than seek to “destroy” Islam and the Muslims, one infers, it might be better for all peoples of faith to look more in the mirror and less out the window, to promote peace.

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April 22, 2008 | 12:32 am

Case of the missing matzo, and not the afikomen

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

From coast to coast right now, there is a developing story that is a perfect case for the Hardly Boys. (No, it does not involve 9/11 conspiracies.) Passover began little more than 48 hours ago, and one thing is clear: this Exodus remembrance it appears there wasn’t even enough time to bake unleavened bread. The New York Times explains:

On Monday, Allison Mnookin circled the aisles of her local Whole Foods store in San Mateo, Calif., three times. There was no matzo to be found.

“Being out of matzo is like being out of milk,” Ms. Mnookin said. So it was on to Safeway. Nothing. Fearing that the box of stale matzo remaining in her pantry from last year would not cut it, she drove nearly 15 miles to Menlo Park.

Hypothesis: If the shortage had been on gefilte fish, complaints would have been far fewer.

The reasons behind the matzo shortage range from manufacturing problems, decisions by some stores not to carry the product this Passover and vague talk of a possible work stoppage.

“It seemed like the whole region had a problem getting it in,” said Jason Hodges, a supervisor in the grocery department at a Whole Foods in Miami. A person who answered the phone at a ShopRite in Philadelphia said stores there were sold out, as was the Food Emporium in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., in Westchester County.

“We heard there was a strike or something,” said the Food Emporium manager, Frantz Baptiste. “The first shipment we had was a month ago, and we never got another one.”

Phone calls and e-mail messages to the largest suppliers of unleavened bread products, Streit’s, Manischewitz and Yehuda, brought no response on Monday, possibly because executives were off for Passover, which began Saturday night.

But Manischewitz officials have said that problems with a new state-of-the-art oven in its only New Jersey plant caused it to scrap this Passover’s supply of Tam Tam crackers, its little six-sided matzo morsels, as well as some less popular matzo varieties.

Trader Joe’s stores opted not to sell Passover matzo this year, as did some Costco stores.

There were similar stories in Los Angeles, detailed and also debunked at LAObserved.

“I got a chuckle out of your items on the ‘matzoh shortage’ in Los Feliz. As a former resident of that neighborhood I can state that while it’s a great place to live on many counts, it has none of the things a more than “semi-observant” Jew needs. I’ll be happy to supply directions to Fairfax, Pico-Robertson or my own shtetl of Valley Village, where you can’t turn around this time of year without tripping over a box of matzoh!”

To see what some Jews are missing out on, check out this VideoJew installment.

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April 21, 2008 | 6:41 pm

Department of Aliyah: I’m moving to Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Well, not really. But it’s comforting to know that I could not only move to Israel but in fact become an Israeli citizen. At least that is how I understand a recent ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court, relayed here on the CT Liveblog:

Last week, the Supreme Court of Israel, ruled on a case involved 12 Messianic Jews who sued the government Ministry of the Interior for their legal ‘right of return’ (and then to become citizens of Israel). The court in its ruling said:

The parties have submitted to us the following notification:

  “In their notification dated 13.04.08 the Respondents declared, that the fact that a person is a “Messianic Jew” has no bearing on an application according to Sec. 7 of the Law of Citizenship, as well as an application according to Sec. 4(A)(a) of the Law of Return (as long as the person applying according the abovementioned section of the Law of Return is not considered to be Jewish, as described in section 4B of the Law of Return).

The Respondents declare that in accordance with their notification they will process the applications of all Petitioners as soon as possible, as well as the application of Alvetina Zibareva, and Valentina Zibareva who requested to join the petition on 01.04.08 to the extent that their request is similar.

Due to these circumstances the representatives of the Petitioners requested to remove the petition without a ruling regarding court costs. The Petition is removed by consent as aforesaid.

One blogger explains the ruling this way:

  I received a communication today that clarifies the settlement reached yesterday in Israel… The ruling would not cover all Messianic Jews, but would cover many of them: If a person was not a Jew previously (religious definition) but is a descendant of Jews, then they can make aliyah (citizenship) without discrimination for their current faith in Yeshua.

To be sure, I am not a Messianic Jew. Nor do I have intentions to be. But I match the characteristics outlined by the court: The grandchild of Jews though not previously a Jew by religious measures.

I think I’ll head south from Tel Aviv. I hear Sderot is beautiful in the spring.

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April 21, 2008 | 3:19 pm

The future of Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“Our army is big, we have this atom bomb, but the inner feeling is of absolute fragility, that all the time we are at the edge of the abyss.”

That sobering sentiment is offered by Israeli author David Grossman in Jeffrey Goldberg’s cover story for this month’s Atlantic, which I mentioned earlier. The article asks what seems like the eternal question: “Is Israel Finished?”

Israelis have violently contradictory feelings about their future. Their country is, by almost any measure, an astonishing success. It has a large, sophisticated, and growing economy (its gross domestic product last year was $150 billion); the finest universities and medical centers in the Middle East; and a main city, Tel Aviv, that is a center of art, fashion, cuisine, and high culture spread along a beautiful Mediterranean beach. Israel has shown itself, with notable exceptions, to be adept at self-defense, and capable (albeit imperfectly) of protecting civil liberties during wartime. It has become a worldwide center of Jewish learning and self-expression; its strength has straightened the spines of Jews around the world; and, most consequentially, it has absorbed and enfranchised millions of previously impoverished and dispossessed Jews. Zionism may actually be the most successful national liberation movement of the 20th century.

Yet 60 years of independence have not provided Israel with legitimacy in its own region. Two of its neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, have signed peace treaties with Israel, but it is still a small Jewish island in a great sea of Islam, a religion that seems today more allergic than ever to the idea of Jewish independence. Iran poses the most ruthless threat to Israel’s existence—no other member of the United Nations has so insistently, and in such baroque terms, threatened the destruction of another member state.

The internal threats to Israel’s existence are severe as well. Israel’s greatest military victory, in 1967, led to a squalid and seemingly endless occupation, and to the birth of a mystical, antidemocratic, and revanchist strain of Zionism, made manifest in the settlements of the West Bank. These settlements have undermined Israel’s international legitimacy and demoralized moderate Palestinians. The settlers exist far outside the Israeli political consensus, and their presence will likely help incite a third intifada. Yet the country seems unable to confront the settlements.

Israel’s people are among the world’s most patriotic—in a recent survey, 94 percent of Jewish Israelis said they are willing to fight for their country (by contrast, 63 percent of Americans are willing to fight for theirs), but 44 percent of Israelis said they would be ready to leave their country if they could find a better standard of living abroad. There are already up to 40,000 Israelis in Silicon Valley (and more than a half million across the U.S.), and the emigration of Israel’s most talented citizens is a constant worry of Israeli leaders. “Jews know that they can land on their feet in any corner of the world,” Ehud Barak, the defense minister and former prime minister, told me. “The real test for us is to make Israel such an attractive place—cutting-edge in science, education, culture, quality of life—that even American Jewish young people want to come here. If we cannot do this, even those who were born here will consciously decide to go to other places. This is a real problem.”

This article, which also discusses the fact that Jews main soon become become the minority in Israel, is far from the first to raise these issues. Avraham Burg, once a strong voice of Zionism, shared the same sense of failure last summer, a change of heart compared to “the Pope giving sex tips.”

(Image: Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam blog)

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April 21, 2008 | 10:12 am

Carter: Hamas open to peace with Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This just in from Reuters:

Hamas would accept a deal creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip if it was approved by Palestinians in a vote, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Monday after talks with Hamas leaders.

Carter said he had “no doubt that both the Arab world and the Palestinians, including Hamas, will accept Israel’s right to live in peace” within pre-1967 war borders.

But some of Hamas’s commitments to Carter, in talks he held with the Islamist group’s top leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, were short on details and remarks by a Gaza-based Hamas official suggested the movement was not abandoning long-held positions.

In a speech, Carter said he heard from Hamas leaders they would “accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders if approved by Palestinians.” He was referring to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and a referendum on a deal Washington hopes to clinch this year.

“It means that Hamas will not undermine (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas’s efforts to negotiate an agreement and Hamas will accept an agreement if the Palestinians support it in a free vote,” he said.

Right ... Hamas has really shown its willingness to live in peace. Carter, who may very well be the United States’ most gullible self-appointed diplomat, was widely criticized for his decision to meet with Hamas leaders. For a review of why he is generally loathed by Jews, read this.

(Image: AP)

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April 21, 2008 | 10:10 am

Pope Benedict wins

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Before he arrived in the United States last week, many American Catholics held old notions of Pope Benedict XVI as “God’s Rottweiler,” as completely unlike his pastoral predecessor. My how quickly the current can change.

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April 21, 2008 | 9:48 am

When religion is evil

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Faith Central, one of two religion blogs on the Times of London’s site, has held a special place in my heart since they plucked The God Blog, seemingly out of thin air, for their list of the 30 best religion blogs. It is one of many faith blogs I read intermittently, and this morning I noticed a post about some undue hype given to a report that noted religion as a 21st century source of evil. Read on:

Fascinating, the way surveys get reported.  Yesterday with some glee it was reported that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, set up by a deeply religious Quaker,  had with delicius irony done a survey which concluded that a great 21st century evil is religion - which “not just in its extreme form - is intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution”.  So the paper said.  So the National Secular Society echoed, with glee.  The faith school issue, clearly, has fuelled this view, as has Islamist terrorism.  The Bish of Southwark is wheeled out to protest.

But get this…a fuller reading of the research makes it utterly clear that long before they got to religion people were worried about violence, gun crime, binge drinking, knives, drugs, child exploitation, poverty and inequality.  Moreover, somewhat bigger than religion was the observation that the media “propagate negative and damaging attitudes”  and that the big businesses which fund them “fuel inequality and consumerism”.  Moreover, earlier Rowntree research points out the usefulness of much religion as “social capital”.

I think we all can agree that religion—defined sociologically as a body of thought that bonds people in community and connects them to something greater than the world we know—can, has and will continue to be used for evil. The Crusades. The Inquisition. The Holocaust. The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. The 9/11 terror attacks. The writings of Dan Brown.

Indeed, we see barbarism and abuse in all religions, throughout history. (Yes, Hindus do it too.) But does this make religion evil or does it speak more to the depravity of man?

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April 20, 2008 | 1:38 pm

Strange translations of the Four Questions

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“Like why is this night, like totally different…”

If at a Passover seder last night you heard that question, asked that way, you probably live in my neighborhood. According to “300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions: From Zulu to Abkhahaz,” that is the Valley Girl translation for the first question. Translations for Klingon, Lawyerese and the ever-useful Sumerian, not to mention actual spoken languages, can be found in this Jewish Journal story and at Whyisthisnight.com.

My favorite variation, though came from my VideoJew colleague, in a language he dubbed, and I remember well, College BS:

“There are many interesting and unique variances of this night, however one of the most central issues is its difference from that of other nights.  One may ask the question, ‘why?’  But to answer such question with such a response would be to demean the very question at hand.  For that reason, I believe this night is differ from others, not simply because of the matzah, seders and reclining, but because of the family, happiness and reunion. In conclusion, to state one reason why any night is different from others would be to degrade that which makes all other nights uniformly pleasant.”

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April 20, 2008 | 1:16 pm

The vanishing American Catholic

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The changing landscape of American Catholicism—the fact that 1.3 million Latino Catholics have joined Pentecostal churches since immigrating—is considered the elephant in the room for the future of the church. Still, it’s story that has been told before, and in light of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States this week, and maybe in order to fill all that copy dedicated to his trip, it’s being told again here.

“I feel whole here,” Mrs. Calazans, 42, said one recent Sunday in the Astoria sanctuary, the Portuguese Language Pentecostal Missionary Church, as she swayed to the pop-rock beat of a live gospel band. “This church is not a place we visit once a week. This church is where we hang around and we share our problems and we celebrate our successes, like we were family.”

(skip)

For if Latinos are feeding the population of the church, many have also turned to Pentecostalism, a form of evangelical Christianity that stresses a personal, even visceral, connection with God.

Today, it has more Latino followers in the United States than any other denomination except Catholicism; they are drawn, they say, by the faith’s joyous worship, its use of Latino culture and the enveloping sense of community it offers to newcomers. As the Pew survey revealed, half of all Latinos who have joined Pentecostal denominations were raised as Catholics.

They are part of a global shift. Pentecostalism, the world’s fastest-growing branch of Christianity, has made such sharp inroads in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, that in an address to bishops there last year, Pope Benedict listed its ardent proselytizing as one of the major forces the Catholic Church must contend with in the region.

Benedict’s visit concludes today with a packed Mass at Yankees Stadium.

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April 18, 2008 | 11:29 am

‘Expelled’: Ben Stein promoting Intelligent Design

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Ben Stein, the monotone voice of Visine, conservative politics, that game show I watched in junior high and Ferris Bueller’s civics teacher, has a controversial new movie out.

“Expelled: No intelligence allowed,” which has been flogged by liberals, like this one, “assumes the position not only that the theory of evolution and the faith-based hypothesis known as “intelligent design” are on close-to-equal scientific footing, but that there’s an Illuminatian cabal among the science community, no doubt sitting in a Star Chamber somewhere, seeing to it that any developmental view but Darwin’s is suppressed at all costs.”

Stein recently spoke with Beliefnet about what he thinks is wrong with Darwinism.

Why did you make this film? Why was it important to you?

The creator is Walt Ruloff and his merry band. I decided to work on it because I’ve always had questions about Darwinism. I have always been very concerned that Darwinism gave the basic okay to terrible racism and to the idea of murder based upon race. And I think most people don’t realize what a sinister role Darwinism has had in the history of the 20th century, and I guess part of the history of the 19th century too.

As I got working on the movie, I got to realize how many holes there were in Darwinism and how little of the world’s great questions about existence and life Darwinism answered, and I wanted to share my understanding and learning on that subject with the wider world.

Then, I got to be very concerned about the academic suppression that goes on in terms of not letting people who have differing views from the Darwinists have any place at the table for talking about their scientific insights.

Aren’t there plenty of scientists who might subscribe to Darwin’s theory of evolution but not accept social Darwinism?

I don’t doubt that there are. It is extremely well documented in a book called “From Darwin to Hitler” by an author named Weikart that the people who read Darwin’s book in Germany and then became important influential thinkers in German political life believed that Darwin’s views could be translated into the social realm. [They believed that] immediate actions should be taken to put those ideas into effect, especially by attempting to exterminate entire native African tribes.

The explicit connection of Darwin’s work with the Holocaust and with the belief of the Nazis that they were furthering Darwin’s agenda and Darwin’s discoveries and theories is explicitly documented in not just one, but many annals of the life and death of Nazi Germany.

Of course, today with the current intellectual beliefs, nobody’s going to say, “I’m in favor of exterminating the indigenous tribes in Southern Africa,” but they were then. And they explicitly said, “And Darwin says it’s the right thing to do.”

That echoes some thought made last fall by William Saletan at Slate. As for Intelligent Design, you can read more about that here.

(And on an unrelated note, Ben Stein wrote a great column about the housing market for the New York Times 24 years ago that could have been found in the paper last summer.)

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