July 23, 2008 | 8:47 pm

McCain accused of exploiting Holocaust

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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McCain on an earlier visit to Israel

I’ve heard people accuse Jews of abusing memories of the Holocaust for political gain. Some people make a career of it. But I’ve never heard a Jew accuse a gentile of doing the same.

With Barack Obama visiting Yad Vashem today and paying homage to the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis, John McCain’s campaign was trying to score political points—and failing miserably.

“Today he says ‘never again.’ A year ago stopping genocide wasn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. Doesn’t that strike you as inconsistent?” aide Michael Goldfarb asked.

I’m going to start by assuming that Goldfarb is Jewish (he would do the same if he met me), but he was speaking here as an emissary for McCain. Secondly, genocide hasn’t been at issue in Iraq since the Al-Anfal campaign against Kurds ended in 1989, two years before the first war in Iraq. Sectarian violence still simmers and hasn’t disappeared, but it is a stretch to imply that ethnic cleansing would return if we left.

Civil war, yes. Genocide, no. While both scenarios would be awful, the former is irrelevant for the issue at hand.

“This is a base, shallow and treif attack that abuses one of the central historical events of Jewish history to smear a presidential candidate,” Richard Silverstein wrote on his blog.

Victims of the Khmer Rouge

Indeed, if genocides already underway were McCain’s concern, why didn’t he speak up when the Khmer Rouge wiped out 2 million Cambodians or during the three-year siege of Sarajevo or when the crisis in Darfur began five years ago? (If he did, somebody put me in my place.)

J Street, which has been looking for opportunities to make its dovish-pro-Israel name known, brought the exploitation accusations against McCain. Their release is after the jump:

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July 23, 2008 | 5:38 pm

Christian guitarist loses his faith, then his band

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Everyone who either grew up as an evangelical Christian or dated one has heard or spoken this line: “It’s not you. I just want to spend more time with God.”

I always thought this line was a crock, not because wanting to spend more time with God wasn’t admirable, but because it was typically used as a cop-out, a way to ease the discomfort of ruining someone’s junior year of high school.

(See, I have this friend, and he had this girlfriend ...)

I think we can agree that few relationships, especially those where both members were Christians, end because one person’s quest for godliness is inhibited by the other’s indifference. But this story from the Christian Post presents a more difficult issue: What to do when the guy in your Christian band stops believing in Jesus?

Christian metalcore band Haste the Day has asked guitarist Jason Barnes to step down after months of spiritual searching by their close friend concluded with his loss of faith in God.

“This is going to come as a shock to many of you,” the group wrote to fans in their official MySpace page Friday. “After much prayer and thought given to the matter, we asked Jason Barnes to step down from his involvement with Haste the Day.”

In their statement, the seven-year-old band from Indianapolis explained that Barnes had been “searching and searching for real meaning in his existence.”

“After several months of reading literature and talking with friends, Jason had determined that he felt there was no God and certainly no Jesus,” the group revealed.

“We as a band do not have problem with those that do not believe in Jesus, nor do we cast judgement (sic) on those that do not believe in Jesus,” the band continued. “We just want to love on people like Jesus would and hopefully share a little bit about what he’s done and doing in our lives.”

After you get over the lameness of the band’s name, which sounds like a rip-off of Saves the Day, you realize this situation doesn’t have a simple solution. From an evangelical perspective, the band members had to weigh whether Barnes was more likely to return to God if he remained in the band or was removed from it. (In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul tells the church of Corinth to expel an immoral brother for his own good, though the reason is for sinful behavior, not lack of belief.) Then, from a music-making perspective, the band needed to decide whether Haste the Day could stand for the same things with a non-Christian in the band.

Churches deal with the same question when they assemble their worship band, an often-rotating group of musicians selected by a worship leader. I have heard complaints before about non-Christians performing during a Sunday service, and I’ve known worship leaders who have stepped down without solicitation because they didn’t feel their lives were congruent with their words of praise.

I can’t think of any parallels from the world of Christian punk culture that I matriculated through, but I do remember when Pedro the Lion lost his way.

David Bazan, the frontman and every-position musician behind Pedro, had written poetic albums about God’s role in curing the human condition, each album written like a book, with plot and theme and characters and beautiful language. But then I bought “Control,” and I noticed Bazan’s message was changing. The album, which I believe was about the struggle to fight the ways of the flesh, particularly materialism and infidelity, was among the most depressing I owned. The next album, “Achilles Heel,” was much more upbeat, but had some shockers like this line from “Foregone Conclusions”:

You were too busy steering the conversation toward the lord
To hear the voice of the spirit begging you to shut the f—k up

Pedro the Lion’s EP “Whole”

“‘Foregone Conclusions’ has to be the sweetest piece of music and melody Bazan has ever produced even though the lyrics are as bitter and cynical as ever,” this art and religion blogger wrote. “Ignore the content of the lyrics and you almost have a feel-good summer hit. I guess that’s one of the things that makes the man compelling. Paradox is his bread and butter – cussing with Christianity; sweet melodies with bitter words.”

But by last summer, it became clear that Bazan’s bitter words had found a soft spot. He’d lost his faith. “I just find myself on the other side of this line that I wasn’t on before,” Bazan told the Daily Iowan.

The thing is: His music still shakes my soul. It is beautiful and bitter, obsessed with pain and sadness and joy and doubt and all the other things that make life so wonderful. And his early albums still share the redemptive message found on “Whole.”

So—back to Haste the Day—what to do when a band member loses their religion?

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July 23, 2008 | 3:50 pm

Jewcy: ‘Hell hath no fury like a pissed off Jewish mother’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

At the expense of again-unprepared-for-marriage Sacha Baron Cohen—you know him as Borat and Bruno and Ali G—Meredith Gordon wrote a very funny piece for Jewcy recently about Jewish moms and marriage. She wrote:

It’s safe to say that hell hath no fury like a pissed off Jewish Mother, and to add insult to injury, Mama Baron Cohen isn’t just mad, she’s…how do I say this…disappointed. Disappointment is the Achilles heal of all Jewish children, who would arguably prefer listening to Paris Hilton’s debut album from beginning to end than having to hear their mother utter the word “disappointed” in reference to them.

For a Jewish Mother, a wedding is the Senior Prom, the mother of all parties. It’s her opportunity to shine. For anyone who has been a bride or a groom at a Jewish wedding, you know that while you may be getting married, your Mother is getting recognition. It’s her day to show the world that she was such a good mom someone else actually finds her child desirable enough to take him or her off Mom’s hands. And while M.B.C. has the brass ring for aging Jewish Mothers—a grandchild—she hasn’t gotten the Crown Jewel of motherhood: a wedding.

While most Jewish parents would be thrilled to have a child like Sacha, whose religion is so important to him that he’s willing to wait to get married until he and his bride are of the same faith, M.B.C. is a reminder that when a pregnant woman says she just wants her child to be happy and healthy, she’s lying. Mothers want the trifecta: Happy, Healthy, and Married. Sacha Baron Cohen created the top grossing movie of last year, is often referred to as a genius, and even boasts a degree from Cambridge where he graduated Summa Cum Everything, and yet his mother is still disappointed because he’s not married.

All around the world, Jewish Mothers are united not by their religion but by disappointment when they can’t marry their children off fast enough. You might have just found a solution to bring peace to the Middle East and chances are your Mom is still going to say, “But solving the world’s problems leaves you no time to date.”

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July 23, 2008 | 3:03 pm

South Park and what really happened on 9/11

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve referenced the “South Park” episode mocking 9/11 conspiracy theories countless times. Now, thanks to this shortened version of the episode I found on YouTube, you’ll know just what I’m laughing about.

The premise is ridiculous. One of the boys has gone No. 2 in the school urinal, and the search is on for the culprit. This weaves into a story about 9/11 conspiracy theories and a very insecure American president.

The above clip includes Cartman’s sensational terror theory fingering Kyle, the fourth grade’s only Jew, as the mastermind behind 9/11.

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July 22, 2008 | 9:23 pm

The Dark Knight and post-modernism

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve been waiting for tonight for about six months. In fact, three months ago when I first saw a trailer for the long-awaited “Dark Knight,” I no longer had much interest in the movie I had paid $10.75 for a midnight showing of. “Batman Begins” has been my favorite comic-book movie since it came out, surpassing “X2” and “Spider-Man 2.” And “The Dark Knight” looked so much, um, darker. Some friends have said they left the theaters feeling shaken or a bit sick to their stomach, and ready to see the movie again.

It’s difficult to imagine a film living up to this much hype. But everything I’ve read and heard says “The Dark Knight” does. And one of the comments I’ve heard over and over is that director Christopher Nolan really forces you to think. Not like watching an arthouse movie, but to think about the nature of man and the distinctions between good and evil, which is exactly where Hollywood Jesus picks up this “war of worldviews.”

The Dark Knight is a battle between the post-modern world view and that world view of absolutes. In fact, the Joker is the poster boy for post-modernism. He absolutely believes (and yes, I understand the irony of using that emphatic to express a post-modern viewpoint) that everything is relative, that the world would be better off if it let go of its delusions of order and a civilized society governed by laws. What’s more, the Joker believes that all it takes is some nudging and people will naturally embrace his style of relativistic thinking. When the circumstances are extreme enough, people will see there are no absolutes beyond what they believe is right for themselves. The Joker embraces this way of thinking so completely, that he has multiple realities to explain his scars and his creation, all equally plausible and real in his own relativistic mind.

The Dark Knight also demonstrates what happens when one completely embraces the post modern belief of relativisim: it destroys everything. Everything descends into chaos, fear, uncertaintly, hopelessness, and darkness. Of course standing against this is Batman, the Dark Knight. He believes that order and law are necessary, and he’ll do whatever it takes to enforce that belief… even if it means breaking the very laws that he believes are necessary. If that sounds contradictory to you, then you’re beginning to understand what makes Batman such a fascinating and complex character.

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July 22, 2008 | 6:57 pm

Obama ‘praying for the Jews to leave him alone’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I often appreciate Jeffrey Goldberg’s quips and agree with his logic here:

It appears that Barack Obama has a busy day tomorrow in Israel, including the obligatory visits to Yad Vashem and Sderot, and, as a nightcap, a visit to the Western Wall, where, my friend Dina Kraft suggests, Obama will undoubtedly spend his time praying for the Jews to leave him alone.

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July 22, 2008 | 3:45 pm

Saudi textbooks: Faithful Muslims shoud hate Christians and Jews

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Yesterday I linked to Ali Eteraz’s classic blog post deciphering the Quranic passages that refer to Jews as “apes” and “swine.” Coincidentally, Slate was on a similar path last night with this report about what textbooks in Saudi Arabia really say about Christians and Jews.

Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question that appears in a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, Monotheism and Jurisprudence, in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish “true” from “false” belief in god:

Q. Is belief true in the following instances:
  a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.
  b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.
  c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers.

The correct answer, of course, is c). According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn’t enough just to worship god or just to love other believers—it is important to hate unbelievers as well. By the same token, b) is also wrong. Even a man who worships god cannot be said to have “true belief” if he loves unbelievers.

“Unbelievers,” in this context, are Christians and Jews. In fact, any child who sticks around in Saudi schools until ninth grade will eventually be taught that “Jews and Christians are enemies of believers.” They will also be taught that Jews conspire to “gain sole control of the world,” that the Christian crusades never ended, and that on Judgment Day “the rocks or the trees” will call out to Muslims to kill Jews.

These passages, it should be noted, are from new, “revised” Saudi textbooks. Following a similar analysis of earlier versions of these same textbooks in 2006, American diplomats immediately approached their Saudi counterparts about the more disturbing passages, and the Saudis agreed to conduct a “comprehensive revision … to weed out disparaging remarks towards religious groups.”

Wow, what an improvement.

This is a major reason some American Jews believe peace in Israel is impossible: Many in the Muslim world are being groomed, through TV and their textbooks, to hate their Zionists enemies. I mean, they killed Farfur.

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July 22, 2008 | 10:04 am

Barack Obama: Shabbos goy

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Newsweek had another article recently about what God means to Barack Obama. I know, I’m really tired of this too, but the article had a great tidbit about Obama serving as a Shabbos goy after he joined the Illinois State Senate:

In 1999, while still in the Illinois State Senate, he shared an office suite with Ira Silverstein, an Orthodox Jew. Obama peppered Silverstein with questions about Orthodox restrictions on daily life: the kosher laws and the sanctions against certain kinds of behavior on the Sabbath. “On the Sabbath, if I ever needed anything, Barack would always offer,” remembers Silverstein. “Some of the doors are electric, so he would offer to open them … I didn’t expect that.”

If only Heeb had known. Maybe Obama could have penned these confessions last fall. I know he’s trying to smooth things over with all his Jewish friends.

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July 21, 2008 | 10:43 pm

Quran’s description of Jews as ‘apes’ and ‘swine’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Ali Eteraz writes a really good blog. At least, he did. His Internet home went dark last month. He can still be found writing for Jewcy and has a new site under construction, but that is taking a back seat to his book, “Children of Dust,” which is about freedom and fundamentalism in Pakistan. Eteraz grew up there, and two years ago today he wrote an excellent post recalling his revulsion the first time he heard Jews described as “apes” and “swine.”

The words, I believe, were spoken by his Islamic tutor, a reference to two Quranic verses that have been a historic source of anti-Semitism. Before Eteraz’s blog went offline, I saved a portion of the post, viewable after the jump:

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July 21, 2008 | 6:24 pm

Iran, Israel and an anxious greeting for Obama

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Barack Obama arrives in Jerusalem tomorrow as part of his trip to countries with a lot of American foreign policy investment (the others were Afghanistan and Iraq). On the eve of this trip, Yossi Klein Halevi, who writes from The New Republic, welcomes Obama on behalf of Israelis who have been intrigued by his candidacy but remain anxious with his plans for handling Iran.

Still, as much as Israelis want to embrace you, there is anxiety here about your candidacy. Not that we doubt your friendship: Your description of Israeli security as “sacrosanct,” and your passionate endorsement of Israel’s cause at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington, were greeted with banner headlines in the Israeli press. Instead, Israelis worry that, as president, you might act too hastily in trying to solve the Palestinian problem, and not hastily enough in trying to solve the Iranian problem.

On the surface, the Israel you will encounter is thriving. The beaches and cafes are crowded, the shekel is one of the world’s strongest currencies, our high-tech companies are dominating NASDAQ, our wineries are winning international medals, and we even export goat cheese to France.

But beneath the exuberance lies a desperate nation. The curse of Jewish history—the inability to take mere existence for granted—has returned to a country whose founding was intended to resolve that uncertainty. Even the most optimistic Israelis sense a dread we have felt only rarely—like in the weeks before the Six Day War, when Egyptian President Gammal Abdul Nasser shut down the Straits of Tiran, moved his army toward our border, and promised the imminent destruction of Israel. At the time, Lyndon Johnson, one of the best friends Israel ever had in the White House, was too preoccupied with an unpopular war to offer real assistance.

We feel our security unraveling.

This article comes on the heels of some new bomb-Iran hysteria, sparked Friday by an op-ed Israeli historian Benny Morris penned for the New York Times. Here is what Gershom Gorenberg, Bernard Avishai (”the patients have the floor”), JTA’s Uriel Heilman and conservative gentile blogger Rod Dreher had to say about that.

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July 21, 2008 | 4:40 pm

Do Messianic Jewish prisoners deserve kosher meals?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Of course they do. If eating kosher is an important observance for them, and it is for some, they should be permitted kosher meals. It doesn’t matter that they are, in fact, Christians.

Ohio prisons, however, disagree. I wonder if the fact that non-kosher meals cost $0.95 while kosher meals cost $5 to $6 has anything to do with it.

The Mansfield News Journal has a really basic story, with some bad information (like a Christian chaplain interpreting kosher food as the Jewish version of communion) and rabbis stating Messianics aren’t Jews, via Religion Clause.

“You’re going to have different views on different things,” [a Messianic pastor] said. “There are little differences within the camps of Messianic Judaism. They all believe a little differently, but are all grounded in the Torah. I think we can all agree, we use the Torah as a basis for our beliefs on kosher. If this is a matter of conscience for them, I would say they should be allowed to eat the kosher food. If they’re sincere in their beliefs and faith, and they want to eat kosher meals, I don’t see why they shouldn’t.”

Some inmates agreed and have filed grievances within the past month, alleging discrimination by a Christian-led prison system.

“This grievance is all about discrimination of a religious sect, and the conspiracy for the deprivation of rights secured by the Constitution,” Richland inmate Ronald Lutz, 64, wrote.

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July 21, 2008 | 3:54 pm

Texas approves high school Bible course

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m a bit late to this story:

Elective Bible courses in Texas high schools received the blessing of the State Board of Education on Friday, but local school officials will have to figure out how to design those classes so they don’t violate religious-freedom protections.

Board members approved the new class, which will be in some high schools this fall, even though officials are awaiting an opinion from the attorney general on whether the state law authorizing the course requires all school districts to offer it.

The board adopted general guidelines for the course on a 10-5 vote, disregarding the advice of several members of the House Public Education Committee who urged approval of more specific requirements to head off the possibility of constitutional violations and lawsuits.

Critics say their concern is not so much that a Bible course is being offered at a public school—I took two, from different religious perspectives, at UCLA—but that the statute is vague and leaves too much discretion to individual schools:

Mark Chancey, associate professor in religious studies at Southern Methodist University, has studied Bible classes already offered in about 25 districts for the Texas Freedom Network.

The study found most of the courses were explicitly devotional with almost exclusively Christian, usually Protestant, perspectives.

It also found that most were taught by teachers with no academic training in biblical, religious or theological studies and who were not familiar with the issues of separation of church and state.

“Some classes promote creation science. Some classes denigrate Judaism. Some classes explicitly encourage students to convert to Christianity or to adopt Christian devotional practices,” Chancey said. “This is all well documented, and the board knows it.”

With the proper guidelines, it really seems like a Bible course could be taught without constitutional concerns. I don’t recall anyone protesting Professor Rosenbaum’s Bible as literature course; I do remember one of my friends trying to climb out a 20-foot-high window because of boredom.

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