July 7, 2008 | 3:08 pm

On the sly, abortions up in Mideast

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Borzou Daragahi, the LA Times’ ace in the Mideast has one of those story that is, understandably, really hard to quantify:

BEIRUT—Unmarried and pregnant, Ranya gathered up her courage and confided to a friend that she was considering a drastic step: an illegal abortion.

She braced for criticism. But to her surprise, her friend disclosed that she had had one too.

Ranya asked another friend, who also said she’d had an abortion. And another gave her the phone number of a doctor in Beirut who would perform the procedure on the sly. The doctor used no anesthetic. The pain lingered for days, but the guilt engulfed her weeks later.

“It doesn’t make me feel guilty because of Islam,” said Ranya, 29, a short, brown-haired artist, struggling with her words. “It’s a very complicated guilt to explain. I tend to philosophize things. I feel guilty in a weird way. It crosses my mind all the time.”

Despite legal and religious restrictions against abortion in much of the Arab world, changing social values and economic realities as well as demographic shifts have contributed to an apparent increase in the number of the procedures in the Middle East.

“There’s definitely an increase compared to 10 to 15 years ago,” said Mohammed Graigaa, executive director of the Moroccan Assn. for Family Planning. “Abortion is much less of a taboo. It’s much more visible. Doctors talk about it. Women talk about it. The moral values of people have changed.”

Increasing abortions in the Middle East, surgically reclaiming virginity in Europe—is this the hand of the Great Satan?

July 7, 2008 | 1:17 pm

The media and Jesus mythbusters

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo: Boston Globe

In light of the hype surrounding the unveiling of an ancient tablet that suggests some Jews were expecting the messiah to rise from the dead after three days, Mollie at GetReligion has some strong words for the media’s affinity for sensationalizing any report that will supposedly—supposedly—shake the bedrock of Christianity:

There is nothing the media like more than to sensationalize undeserving stories. Usually this involves either the disappearance of young, attractive white women or alleged revelations about Jesus. in the latter category, we’ve read that Jesus walked on an ice floe (not water), that he wasn’t crucified in the manner in which people think, that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier named Pantera, not Joseph, and that Jesus didn’t die on the cross so much as pass out after being doped up.

Usually these stories “break” around major Christian holidays. Remember Easter 2006? When National Geographic argued that Judas was unfairly maligned by Christians? The story was covered far and wide by all the major media outlets. Two years later, the news that National Geographic rushed the story and engaged in shoddy scholastic work (daemon translated as “spirit,” etc.) was not covered in any way approaching the same degree.

The latest example shows the difficulty journalists have in resisting the shock angle on stories. A completely legitimate and interesting story gets turned into yet another thing that is supposed to shake the very foundations of Christianity. Come on! Enough already! Or can the media at least come up with a better spin, hoax or overblown discovery?

(skip)

Um, newsflash to the New York Times. Christians pretty much think the entire story of Jesus life, death and resurrection is part of a “recognized Jewish tradition” at the time. In other words, Christians read much of the Old Testament as prophesying about Jesus. They see Jesus as the fulfillment of those prophecies.

She makes some great points. Read the rest of her post here.

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July 7, 2008 | 12:34 pm

The fake Israel—post-Zionism in the Valley

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

We’ve already identified that there are a lot of Israelis living in Los Angeles. Just how many, though, is a source of heated debate among community leaders; it’s somewhere between 50,000 and 250,000. (Of course, there are those who claim that émigrés who have spent the past two decades here aren’t really Israeli anymore.) This has cast an obvious cultural spell over parts of Los Angeles, particularly Tarzana, my favorite place to pretend I’m in Israel.

The mercury has moved past 100 degrees, the desert air is dry and accented with Hebrew. Chicly dressed Israelis sit on a café patio, sipping Turkish coffee and noshing on Jerusalem Bagel Toasts. This is not Israel. It’s Tarzana, which a former aide for U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, who is Jewish and represents the area, once called the greatest threat to the Jewish state. “It looks like Israel; it feels like Israel; and the people all speak Hebrew.” Indeed, most American Jews, having visited Israel once or never, could be forgiven for mistaking this slice of Ventura Boulevard for the outskirts of Tel Aviv. There’s a concert billboard for Mosh Ben Ari, a hookah bar and Aroma Bakery Café, filled daily with Hebrew-speaking people; Jerusalem Pizza, Shalom Pharmacy and the home office of the Council of Israeli Community; and, most importantly, Encino Glatt Market, which regularly stocks both Maccabee and Goldstar beers.

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July 6, 2008 | 1:57 pm

Was Jesus’ resurrection culturally expected?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There is an article in today’s New York Times that is bound to generate a lot of debate and hand wringing. It purports that the story of Jesus’ resurrection might not have been so unique after all. The claim is based on the discovery of a stone tablet that precedes Jesus’ birth and speaks of a coming messiah who will rise from the dead after three days. It’s three-feet tall and 87 lines long. The story, which explains how the tablet was translated, is after the jump.

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July 6, 2008 | 1:42 pm

Getting fed by The God Blog

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The last time I tried plugging a subscription to The God Blog’s RSS feed, the feed was inexplicably down. It’s been working since, so here goes again: If you want to receive notifications of new content without having to check the blog, click on the orange-and-white icon to the right, just below “contact,” or on this link.

Sign up today. Come on, do it.

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July 6, 2008 | 1:16 pm

Post-Zionism: giving up on the Jewish dream or Judaism?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Post-Zionism is not new.

There is nothing new in this moral blindness and these historical distortions, but it is worth remembering: This is not a matter of post-Zionists, but rather of anti-Zionists of the old school. The absurdity is that anti-Zionists of a different breed, the people of the ultra-Orthodox movement Agudat Yisrael, for example, have accepted the historical fact of the existence of the State of Israel. The other anti-Zionists, who are accustomed to calling themselves the people of the world of tomorrow, are still captive in the snares of the past. Indeed there is nothing new under the sun.

Still, post-Zionism is accepted as something new. And Brian Britt, writing for Sightings, argues that it is an underlying theme of two new movies, the second of which I can proudly say I have not and will not see: “Restless” and “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.”

IDF soldier leaves for NY

Both films conclude with father-son reunions. When Tzach’s mother dies, he finds and angrily confronts his Moroccan-born father, who fled Israel’s wars and ethnic discrimination twenty years earlier. After a standoff at gunpoint, Tzach and Moshe reconnect over a bowl of homemade soup. Zohan’s father, who earlier mocked his son’s hairstyling ambition, finally asks his “faygele” son for a haircut. Away from Israel, the sons and fathers preserve their families and some sense of group identity.

But this group identity includes neither Zionism nor Judaism. Our protagonists do not reflect the biblical warriors David and Samson so much as Joseph, the diaspora hero who succeeds on the basis of good looks and skill. Exiled by choice, these fathers and sons retrace the steps of earlier immigrants to New York, networking and seducing their way to housing, jobs, and social support. Zohan, Moshe, and Tzach escape their warrior culture in un-warrior-like moments of weeping, cross-dressing, and heartfelt poetry; but they have given up their stakes in a Jewish homeland.

They are not alone: New York turns out to be full of Israeli-Americans.

So too is Los Angeles. But it’s inaccurate to dub as post-Zionists those who simply have left Israel. Very few of these people, I suspect, are strongly working against the dream of a Jewish state; they’ve just stopped working for it.

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July 5, 2008 | 8:06 pm

How I spent the Fourth of July

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Surfing in San Onofre

I was celebrating at a great friend’s wedding—not, in case you were wondering, surfing naked, which the LA Times says the state will stop allowing at San Onofre. Hang ten?

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July 5, 2008 | 12:04 pm

The trouble with seeking Muslim moderates in Iraqi prisons

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

U.S. Commanding Gen. Douglas Stone just completed a year-long mission to improve detention centers in Iraq. His focus, though, was not only on prison conditions but on instituting programs that isolate Muslim extremists and empower moderates. The programs

feature Islamic civics courses, a directory of radical refrains with responses from moderate passages of text, and religious discussion groups, run by imams who teach from what Stone calls a “moderate Hadith.” It’s all part of a viral marketing campaign, designed to get the detainees and their ilk to spread Islamic moderation by word-of-mouth.

In reality, this is what we should expect. The amorphous war on terror is a war that can only be won on the ideological battlefield, even if the physical battlefield is so bloody. But, as Andrew K. Woods writes in Slate, what is surprising is just where Stone chose to wage this war:

Rather, it is remarkable that the Pentagon would have the chutzpah to locate what Stone calls the “battlefield of the mind” in its own detention centers.

Prisons are where so many Islamist identities are born, nurtured, and plugged into violent networks. It was in Cairo’s prisons that Sayyid Qutb crafted an intellectual framework for modern Islamist terrorism, and Ayman al-Zawahiri underwent the transformation that would lead him to launch al-Qaida. Or think of our own little “jihad university” on Guantanamo Bay. Detention centers present a second-order problem, too, in how the global public receives them. The torture at Abu Ghraib may have been the best thing the United States ever did for al-Qaida. And now, along comes a Marine reservist from California, hard as hell, McKinsey-savvy, who claims he can turn detention facilities into a strategic asset. Can it possibly work?

Looking at similar programs in other countries, the answer seems to be “maybe,” but only if the focus is on fulfilling basic human needs rather than interpreting Islamic texts. Any mention of religious doctrine will make the project look more like a war on Islam than a war on terror. And after our Christian president invaded and destroyed Baghdad, our legitimacy on that front isn’t great.

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July 4, 2008 | 11:49 am

The blood they gave lasted less than a day

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It sounded like a typical summer trip the Holy Land for 32 members of L.A.‘s Temple Isaiah, many making their first pilgrimage. They toured ancient ruins and Jerusalem; they hiked and kayaked and floated in the Dead Sea; they visited American Friends of Magen David Adom so some could donate blood. They donated blood? Only in Israel can I imagine vacationers seeing the expediency of rolling up their shirtsleeves and asking someone to needle them.

And they were right. Fourteen hours later, on Wednesday, a terrorist in a bulldozer plowed through Jerusalem’s streets, injuring 66 and killing three.

“We gave blood yesterday,” said Cantor Evan Kent. “How sad that our blood was needed so very soon.”

More information from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), the Israeli rep for American Friends of Magen David Adom, after the jump.

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July 2, 2008 | 6:36 pm

Not so special after all

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m man enough to admit when I’ve been wrong. It turns out that substitute teacher I had in sixth grade, the one who told me I wasn’t special, was right. He didn’t know it, but he was right.

Since becoming a religion reporter, and particularly since joining The Jewish Journal last year, I thought there was something unique about being a Christian named Greenberg—get out! In fact, I am not alone.

David Brody, Christian Broadcasting Network’s senior reporter, was raised Jewish and converted to Christianity, as did Joshua Goldberg, whose very, very Jewish byline I stumbled across yesterday at ChristianPost.com.

I e-mailed Goldberg to confirm what I suspected. He said he met Jesus during college, still appreciates his Jewish background and now considers himself a “Jewish Christian.” Sounds pretty Messianic, but he didn’t elaborate.

Unlike the former Jews reporting for Christian media, I became a Christian quite young and am now embracing my Jewish roots more than before. But, to reiterate, I do not consider myself a Messianic Jewish hybrid of keeping kosher and sacred Shabbats and Easter Sundays and prayers to Yeshua; I’m a Christian with curly hair, plenty of guilt and, at times, lots of beard.

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July 2, 2008 | 5:09 pm

Evangelical on same-sex marriage: Quoting Scripture not enough

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Opening the gate to gay marriages in California was unavoidably as much a religious story as it was a legal one.

But just how religious folk feel about same-sex marriage, well, as this LA Times article demonstrates, that depends on who’s being asked:

Richard Mouw

“Homosexual intimacy is out of bounds. It’s not what God created us for,” said Richard Mouw, president of the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

Mouw cites Romans 1 in the New Testament that decries men and women abandoning “natural relations” and men “inflamed with lust for one another” committing “indecent acts with other men”—behavior that carried death as punishment.

“Sexuality within the context of marriage is the order of creation,” he said.

Muow is a respected figure in the evangelical community, like a thinking-man’s Pat Robertson if Robertson really were relevant. But, clearly, his words mean little to the non-like-minded. Which prompted Mouw to muse on his blog about the role of Scripture in public policy.

The basic rule for understanding the present-day relevance of Old Testament prohibitions for the New Testament church is whether the New Testament reaffirms what we find in the Old. And I take it as obvious that the first chapter of Romans does reaffirm the prohibition against same-sex intimacy. This is turn reaffirms the more general teaching of the Old Testament about God’s creating purposes—what is “natural”—for human sexuality.

In the debates about public policy, however, I know that I cannot simply quote Scripture or cite ancient theologians in order to defend my position. I do not believe that everything that is declared sinful in the Bible ought to be decalred illegal in contemporary pluralistic societies. Here we enter a more pragmatic arena where we need to explore with our fellow citizens whether we have any common assumptions about what makes for a healthy society, and whether we can then figure out a workable arrangement that can accommodate our respective moral convictions.

Mouw goes on to say his “worries are variations on the old slippery-slope concern.”

Suppose, after five years of legal same sex unions three lesbians insist that their three-way relationship should be given the same legal status. (A case like this has actually come up in the Netherlands.) Or suppose the claim is made on behalf of, say, a forty year old man and a 13 year old boy ...

Possibly to the dismay of my gay friends—actually, I doubt they care what I think God thinks—I agree with Mouw’s reading of the book of Romans. I understand homosexual behavior to be one looked down upon by God. So too is gossip and gluttony and arrogance and avarice. But there are very few sins for which God’s children are generally treated as others and outsiders.

What disappoints me about Mouw’s “slippery-slope” statement is that he essentially uses a weak premise to foretell tolerance of NAMBLA. Yes, the California Supreme Court has forever changed the definition of “marriage.” But the beginning of the end? I doubt it.

(Hat tip: My now-retired college pastor, Rhett Smith)

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July 2, 2008 | 1:08 pm

New UC president a godly figure

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The new president of the University of California, Mark Yudof, and his wife are, to say the least, Super Jews. They keep a kosher house and received the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award; he served on the board of a handful of Jewish organizations; she is the past president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and sits the boards of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Hillel International.

In fact, Yudof, who will soon take the reins of a 10-campus system with 220,000 students, seems to know Torah so well that he speaks like its Central Character:

“I am what I am.”

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