August 25, 2008 | 2:55 pm

Atheists ask: ‘Jesus Christ had a homosexual relationship?’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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My article this week about anti-Semitism on college campuses discusses at length how the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine often pushes the limits of civil discourse in criticizing Israel. We already know that Muslims feel any critical depiction of the prophet Muhammad goes too far, and, to prove that each of the Abrahamic faiths is at times the target of criticism it finds offensive to the point that censorship or condemnation would be warranted, I present this drama from Ohio.

There the Activists for Atheism club at a community college has incited a lot of ire over a flier questioning whether Jesus was gay.

The question, which seems like the latests iteration of “The Da Vinci Code,” was drawn from the non-canonical Secret Gospel of Mark. Not surprisingly, the image offended a whole lot of people. The local Chronicle-Telegram filed this report, a significant chunk of which I’ve posted after the jump.

Many of the comments are irrelevant to whether the atheist club had the constitutional right to post the flier, though it violated the student code of conduct, and no one quoted does anything to explain that the secret gospel is not accepted as authentic. Offended Christians should have addressed the latter. The Secret Gospel of Mark is a joke, along the lines of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, which dismissed women as undeserving of life.

Now, back to the Chronicle-Telegram:

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August 25, 2008 | 2:49 pm

Jewish jokes and anti-dentites

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The “Yada, Yada, Yada” episode of “Seinfeld” was, without a doubt, one of the best in the series’ nine-season history. It aired again Friday on TBS, and I thought it would be worth posting a short clip for your viewing pleasure. This portion actually isn’t my favorite moment of the episode, but is the only segment I could find on YouTube.

One of the storylines in this episode is that Jerry’s dentist, Tim Whatley, has converted to Judaism, and Jerry suspects he did it for the jokes. This irritates Jerry, and at one point he visits a Catholic priest who is a patient of Whatley’s—during confession, no less—to complain.

“And this offends you as a Jewish person?” the priest asks Jerry.

“No,” he replies. “It offends me as a comedian.”

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August 25, 2008 | 1:10 pm

‘Even if Democrats had picked David Ben-Gurion to run as vice president’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Joe Biden

Now that Barack Obama’s running mate is no longer a tightly held secret—shhhh, he picked Joe Biden—those favoring soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee John McCain can attack the credibility and efficacy of the Democratic ticket. For example, these words of worry from the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks:

“With the selection of Senator Joe Biden as Senator Obama’s vice president, the Democrat’s ticket has now become an even greater gamble for the Jewish community. Throughout his career, Senator Biden has consistently been wrong on Iran and his voting record on Israel has been inconsistent. Like Obama, Biden fundamentally misunderstands the threat posed by an Iran determined to obtain nuclear weapons. Biden has continuously demonstrated poor judgment on Iran. He has voted against significant legislation that would pressure Iran to stop pursuing nuclear weapons. Biden has failed to recognize the serious threat that Iran poses to Israel and the US and its allies in the Middle East,”

To which Ira Forman, head of the National Jewish Democratic Council, responded:

“Biden’s record is clear; he is great friend of the American Jewish Community with extensive foreign policy experience and a strong pro-Israel record. Even if Democrats had picked David Ben-Gurion to run as vice president, the RJC would be charging that he was anti-Israel.”

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August 22, 2008 | 1:27 pm

Files of Fact and Fiction: Academia vs. Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The flier seen here appeared on the campus of San Francisco State six years ago. It, without much imagination, was a spin on the blood libel, and it created quite the stir. At the time, the Second Intifada was in full swing and creating a tidal wave of anti-Israel attacks on a few American campuses. SF State achieved the early ignominy, followed shortly by Berkeley and Columbia University. UC Irvine, during the past few years, moved to the front of the class and has become synonymous with anti-Semitism. I’ve blogged about this many, many, many, many times.

But in today’s Jewish Journal, I assessed the situation at Irvine, which has improved since Michael Drake took over as chancellor, and cast it into the context of the broader academic landscape.

Elsewhere the M.O. for attacking the Jewish state has evolved since anti-Israel campus activism first exploded onto the scene in 2002 during the Second Intifada. It has since taken root in academic departments and been emboldened by the outspoken criticism of a former U.S. president. Although many college campuses appear to have dropped the vitriol and the confrontational protests over Israel, the attacks on the Jewish state have moved deep inside the Ivory Towers. Despite an ethos that university students should question everything, many feel uncomfortable and unprepared in challenging their professors. Apathy, pro-Israel campus advocates say, is quietly eroding support for the Jewish state, even among Jews.

For this story, I spent two days at UCI in May, on the first and last days of Palestinian Awareness Week, which this year was dubbed “Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust.” Despite the improvement Jewish community leaders and student leaders say has occurred, much of which I take at face value, what I saw and hear from Amir Abdel Malik Ali, a rabid critic of the “Zionist Nazis” and Oakland mosque leader regularly invited to Irvine, was disturbing:

“The fall of the American empire, brothers and sisters, means the fall of Zionism, the fall of apartheid!” Malik Ali said in typically fiery oratory. “American empire is going down just like other empires have gone down. So you have to make preparations. Joe and Jane Six-Pack are going to realize that, no, America is not No. 1; no, America is not supreme; no, America is not superior and no America is not the good guy.”

Malik Ali, the imam of an Oakland mosque, was giving the first of his two sermons to conclude Palestinian awareness week. He’s been a favorite speaker of the MSU since early in the Second Intifada. Others have included Muhammad Al-Asi, a Washington imam who calls Israel “the monkey on the American back,” and Finkelstein, who the previous week repeated his claim that Jews abuse memories of the Holocaust and exaggerate anti-Semitism for political gain and said the IDF intentionally killed Palestinian children.

Four Muslim students stood behind Malik Ali while he spoke, holding a large banner proclaiming, “Death to Apartheid.” Some Jewish students were seated in the crowd on the steps above the flagpoles. The president of the Anteaters for Israel was standing behind the large banner, holding a white board on which he wrote statements like “Stop the lies—Israel is a democracy.” Other Jewish students carried signs stating, “Caution—Hate Speech Zone Ahead.”

“The Islamic revival,” Malik Ali continued, “should only be feared by those who support imperialism, colonialism, racism, occupation. Those are the only groups who should fear the Islamic revival. Because when groups like Hamas and Hezbollah—and no these are not terrorists,” he said, bridging into an attack on Israel as an apartheid state and later adding, “The terrorists are the United States; the terrorists are Israel!”

Chants of “Allahu Akbar!” rose from the audience.

Soon after, a group gathered above the steps and, led by Malik Ali and the MSU president, marched down Ring Road chanting:

“Judaism, yes! Zionism, no!”

“Judaism, yes! Zionism, no!”

“The state of Israel has got to go!”

“The state of Israel has got to go!”

After about five minutes, a circle formed and Omar Zarka, MSU president, stepped inside.

“We are not here to feel happy,” he said. “The struggle continues, and it goes on from here today.”

The scene, save for the language of Zarka’s charge, was reminiscent of one from 2007, when a few dozen Muslim students interrupted a lecture by Daniel Pipes, stormed out of the hall and then proceeded through campus, concluding with a pronouncement from one of the participants that “it’s just a matter of time before Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth!”

Often called a radical student organization, MSU has found it difficult to attract good media attention—the Pipes incident was filmed by a Jewish student and aired on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes”—which helps explain why UCI Muslim students are tighter-lipped than a grand jury when approached by a journalist. Numerous attempts at speaking generally with Muslim students about their feelings toward Jews were deflected to MSU leadership.

But after Malik Ali’s speech and before being interrupted and told not to speak with this reporter, one of the students holding the “Death to Apartheid” banner opened up.

“Jews are a people of a religion, a faith. Zionism was seen as an idea to bring together, to reinvigorate the Hebrew language and Judaism,” said the unidentified student, who sported a short beard, white kaffiyeh and black headband with “There is one God—Allah” in Arabic script. “But as soon as it turned into exiling a people from land, that’s when it turned from an angelic thought to a satanic thought.”

The official message from the MSU is that they don’t hate Jews, just Zionism.

“I can’t tell by looking at someone if they are Jewish,” Zarka said in an interview limited to one question. “If someone tells me they are Jewish, I don’t assume they are a Zionist. But if somebody tells me ‘I am an imperialist; I think we should go pillage countries,’ obviously I will have a problem with that.”

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August 21, 2008 | 10:35 pm

Return of the Montauk Monster

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The one on the left

The Montauk Monster is back—not to terrorize Long Island beaches but to jam The Jewish Journal Web site. I know, what an anti-Semite.

The trouble began about noon when I noticed that an old post about the monster had received new life. Some 2,500 people have stopped by since.

I went looking for whom to blame and found this: a photo gallery from Newsweek that link to The God Blog. I appreciate the blip, but lets hope the monster does reek the same terror it did before.

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August 21, 2008 | 8:01 pm

South has more plans to get guns in churches

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

First Georgia, now Tennessee. I know they just had a big church tragedy, but you have got to be kidding me.

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August 21, 2008 | 3:15 pm

Democrats don’t get ... atheism

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Since I voted in my first presidential election—in the year 2000—Christians have been kvetching about how Democrats just don’t get religion. In 2004 we were told so-called “values voters” were key to George W. Bush’s re-election. And this campaign season we’ve seen Democrats go way out of their way to prove they care about religious folk and that they get religion.

Their latest gimmick is the “first-ever faith caucus” that they invited to the Democratic National Convention next week. (Though one of their big gets, Cameron Strang, the evangelical publisher of Christian pop-culture magazine Relevant, pulled out of the caucus yesterday because he didn’t want it to appear he was endorsing Barack Obama over John McCain.)

But now, proving that for action in American politics there is a comical reaction, atheists are upset, and hell hath no fury like an atheist’s scorn.

But what about those Democrats who are not “people of faith?” Are they not invited? Or invited just to watch others pray? Should their own outlook not even be acknowledged?

If the Democrats are trying to strike unifying chords among their entire kaleidoscopic range of liberals, moderates, and progressives, it should be obvious that secularists cannot dare be left out of the “big tent” event, and that it should be about beliefs and values, not solely about religion.

Secularists remember all too painfully one of the most dramatic presidential addresses in American history. At the National Cathedral three days after September 11, 2001, the president’s speech so filled with religious language that it was virtually a sermon.

As he delivered it, Bush stood flanked by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian representatives, with no one invited to stand alongside them whose presence might acknowledge the existence of the tens of millions of secular Americans.

At this most important collective moment in the recent history of the United States, it was as if their president was telling them that they did not exist. The United States had become a nation of believers.

Yet one of the most remarkable implications of the data presented in the new Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey is that atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and believers in an impersonal God or universal spirit—people who do not believe in God at all or who do not believe in a traditional God—will be a huge share, perhaps as much as 40 percent of Democratic voters in November.

Another Pew discovery: Two out of every three Americans say that their moral values do not come primarily from religion. In other words, whatever their faith, these are people who live largely or wholly secular lives.

First, this country has always been one of believers, just not one limited to believers. Additionally, atheists recently have made more of an attempt at being big-tent than Unitarian-Universalists. That number Ronald Aronson, who wrote the above op-ed and the book “Living Without God,” is really a stretch in that it includes many religious devotees who are uncertain of their God’s existence.

The Friendly Atheist further discusses this snub and points to an incredible op-ed from the Colorado Springs Gazette that compares Hitler’s vision for a Judenrein world to a billboard from the Freedom From Religion Foundation that stated “Imagine No Religion.”

Are you f—-ing kidding me?!

Since when are words on a billboard the equivalent of killing 6,000,000 Jews?

They go on to write about what would happen in a religion-less world — apparently, there would be more Pol Pots, more Stalins, far fewer charities, no Golden Rule, and we’d be rid of most hospitals and great universities.

As I read that, I wanted to respond to each point separately… and then I read the end of the piece:

Democrats will nominate a Christian gentleman who respects others. It’s likely they didn’t invite atheists to their faith service because they didn’t want embarrassing guests. Atheists might bring pseudointellectual proselytizers, who are intolerant, self-aggrandizing and rude. Atheists should fund universities and hospitals. They should feed and clothe starving kids. They should act more like Christians and Jews. If they do some of that — if they contribute to a diverse humanity — they might get better party invites.

I know you’ve heard this before… but you replace “atheist” with “Muslim” in that paragraph and lots of people would be out of a job.

Yeah, but, as everybody knows, only atheists—and Jews—eat Christian babies. (Speaking of blood libels—there’s a phrase I never expected to utter—Peter Manseau has a related excerpt from his new book, “Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter,” at nextbook.org. Will blog later.)

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August 21, 2008 | 1:54 pm

And now, the new fake news ...

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Ad from the Fake L.A. Times

“A good newspaper, I suppose,” playwright Arthur Miller famously said, “is a nation talking to itself.”

A good blog, by contrast, often reads like one person talking to themselves. I often feel like I’m talking to myself, and its encouraging to be reminded that someone is listening in. Hence this post.

When Roy Rivenburg launched Fake L.A. Times, he wasn’t sure if it would be a dynamic organism. But I, and I imagine others whose input he considered more valuable, suggested he update it from time to time to keep the site fresh and us consumers of the fake news coming back.

LAObserved just directed me to the big news—that Sam Zell bought California and the real L.A. Times is adding a Playboy section. I also discovered the Vatican and Warner Bros are working together on a remake of St. John of the Cross as a Batman medieval prequel, “Dark Knight of the Soul.”

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August 20, 2008 | 7:15 pm

Circumcision wars: Christians opt for Jewish bris

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Let me get this straight: At the same time some Jewish parents are
moving away from circumcision, Christian parents are using Jewish mohels to consecrate their sons’
covenants with God. Yeah, that makes sense.

Kushner snips, Watsons watch

Nicole Neroulias, who joined me as a Gralla Fellow two years ago, explains by observing Mark Kushner at work:

The shawls went back into his black bag. But to Megan and Christopher Watson’s happy surprise, the mohel—pronounced “moyle,” the title for a Jewish ritual circumciser—had copies of several prayers appropriate for the Presbyterian parents to read for the occasion.

“We thank You for the miracle of human experience in the birth of our child,” they recited, as Kushner gently rocked their infant before the procedure.

Kushner, who is based in Philadelphia, and Philip Sherman, a mohel in the New York City area, say they have performed more than 30,000 circumcisions since training together in Israel in the 1970s. Most of their business comes from traditional brit milah ceremonies for 8-day-old Jewish boys. But in recent years, they have increasingly catered to Christian families who eschew a hospital procedure in favor of a $300 to $800 house call—a trend Sherman has dubbed “holistic circumcision.”

“They want their babies circumcised in the comfort of their homes surrounded by family and friends, and they want it performed by someone highly experienced, who brings spirituality and meaning to the practice,” he said. “And it’s over in 30 seconds, compared to what hospitals do, which can be from 20 to 45 minutes, with the baby strapped down.”

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August 20, 2008 | 3:51 pm

Columnist: Rick Warren wins, America loses

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister—no matter how beloved—is supremely wrong,” Kathleen Parker writes in her column in today’s Washington Post. “It is also un-American.”

Since Barack Obama and John McCain appeared on stage at Saddleback Church on Saturday, the discussion has centered around who gave the most meaningful answers to the Rev. Rick Warren’s questions about good and evil, and whether McCain had an unfair advantage by speaking second.

It’s natural by now for someone to take the contrarian’s position and indicate a fundamental flaw in the whole process. But Parker has a very valid point. As I’ve said over and over again, the religious litmus for presidential office that developed during the past eight years is a very bad thing for American politics.

Randall Balmer, editor-at-large for Christianity Today writes about this evolution in “God in the White House,” which he discusses on NPR’s “Fresh Air” today. (Audio and a book excerpt here.) And Parker gets it right when explaining why this should make us uncomfortable, and in indicating that we shouldn’t trust what we hear. She continues:

The past few decades of public confession and Oprah-style therapy have prepared us perfectly for a televangelist probing politicians about their moral failings. Warren’s Q&A wasn’t an inquisition exactly, but viewers would be justified in squirming.

What is the right answer, after all? What happens to the one who gets evil wrong? What’s a proper relationship with Jesus? What’s next? Interrogations by rabbis, priests and imams? What candidate would dare decline on the basis of mere principle?

Both Obama and McCain gave “good” answers, but that’s not the point. They shouldn’t have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that “Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him,” or that McCain feels that he is “saved and forgiven”?

What does that mean, anyway? What does it prove? Nothing except that these men are willing to say whatever they must—and what most Americans personally feel is no one’s business—to win the highest office.

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August 20, 2008 | 2:52 pm

Rabbi to give invocation before Obama’s acceptance speech

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Barack Obama’s outreach to Jews continues. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, though he might want to focus on the general electorate, with which Reuters reported today he is trailing John McCain by 5 percentage points.)

I mentioned Sunday that Rabbi David Saperstein had been invited, along with many Christian leaders, to participate in a faith caucus at the Democratic National Convention next week. What I didn’t know was that Saperstein, director of the Religion Action Center of Reform Judaism, is scheduled to deliver the invocation before Obama’s acceptance speech on the final day of the convention.

“In both the Democratic and Republican conventions there are thousands of people whose sole focus is on making America better,” Saperstein told The Forward. “It is perfectly appropriate for them to ask for God’s blessing and God’s guidance. I don’t see it as a partisan issue.”

Perfectly acceptable, indeed. But cynical old me suspects the Obama campaign is more concerned with Isaac’s blessing than God’s.

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August 19, 2008 | 8:21 pm

Top ten reasons for Israel’s poor Olympic performance

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

American Jews have had a much better showing at the Olympics than those shlemiels from Israel. (No offense. Some of my best friends are Israelis ...) They’ve yet to medal in Beijing, and Ha’aretz thought such ineptness warranted recapping their Olympians’ top-ten excuses. Here are the top five:

5) Alexandr Shatilov, gymnastics:
“This is the first time I’ve fallen like that.”

1) Sergei Weisbrod, Shatilov’s coach:
“It’s all politics. It’s because of the Korean judge - he wants the Asian guy in the final.”

They may not know how to lose graciously, but that’s not entirely the athletes’ fault. Israel’s not really a country that believes it can afford to lose.

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