October 13, 2008 | 4:16 pm

Fisher-Price doll promotes Islam?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

See that Aryan face? That’s the Little Mommy Cuddle ‘n’ Coo. And believe it or not, that doll is a Muslim emissary.

OK, I don’t believe it. I’m not sure what this doll actually is saying, but I doubt it’s “Islam is the light.” Mattel, which owns dollmaker Fisher-Price, claims the baby just coos and says mama; I don’t hear that either. But, naturally, controversy has followed:

Some shops in the US have removed the doll from shelves after complaints from customers, according to reports. It is available in Britain for £19.99.

“It’s not what you would expect out of a sweet little doll,” said Martina Hollermann of Ramsey, Minnesota, who bought the toy for her children. “Everyone was kind of creeped out.”

A video report from the AP is after the jump:

Read more of this post

October 13, 2008 | 4:00 pm

Newsweek on ‘the fight for the Jewish vote’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

My editor right now is working over my cover story for this week on Jews and the presidential election. It’s certainly been a wild ride. This is always a time of the week when I surf the net and look for bloggable stories, and I just happened to come across a piece in this week’s issue of Newsweek titled “The Fight for the Jewish Vote.” The article deals specifically with the perceived effect of Sarah Palin:

Like many Jews in south Florida, Todd and Jamie Ehrenreich are registered Democrats who have faithfully cast ballots for their party’s presidential nominees as long as they can remember. But this year, they’d decided to back Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate. “We are over the $250,000 tax bracket, and we didn’t want to lose our money,” Jamie says. “We wanted to benefit from our own American dream.”

Then McCain selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate—and “lost us in one fell swoop,” says Jamie, who lives with her husband and two kids in Miami. She finds so much about Palin objectionable that she almost doesn’t know where to begin. There’s the abortion issue, for one. Palin “wouldn’t want anyone to have an abortion even for rape or incest,” says Jamie. “Who is she to judge by telling me how to live my life and overturning the things women have worked so hard for?” Equally disconcerting is Palin’s seeming shallowness on some of the most pressing matters facing the country. “She doesn’t know what she is talking about and makes it up as she goes along,” says Jamie. “The fact that she had to be coached for two weeks [to prepare for the vice presidential debate] tells me she doesn’t know anything. She just talks in circles.”

The Ehrenreichs’ reaction is hardly isolated. Many Florida Jews who had previously been open to McCain appear to share the couple’s aversion to Palin, according to political scientists, polling data and anecdotal reporting. “She stands for all the wrong things in the eyes of the Jewish community,” says Kenneth Wald, a professor at the University of Florida. Among the examples he cites: Palin seems to disdain intellectualism, she’s a vociferous opponent of gun control and she attended a fundamentalist church that hosted Jews for Jesus, which seeks to convert Jews to Christianity. (Palin apparently sat through a speech by a leader of the group in which he said terrorist attacks on Israel were punishment for Israelis’ failure to accept Jesus as the Messiah.) An American Jewish Committee poll taken in the weeks after Palin was picked found that 54 percent of respondents disapproved of her selection, compared to 37 percent who approved. And that was before the onslaught of withering criticism of her interviews with CBS’s Katie Couric.

Such rejection of Palin could prove decisive on November 4.

I agree with that analysis. Obama’s outreach to Jews has been extensive—a bunch of little schleppers went to Florida this weekend to sway their bubbes—and though he is still not polling well, a lot of folks who had been on the fence have been pushed back over to Obama’s side by Palin. Tune in Thursday for a lot more.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

October 13, 2008 | 1:49 pm

Where have I been?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

My friends, I want to apologize for my negligent behavior these past days, my friends. You see, my friends, I lost myself observing the Day of Atonement, and then writing about what it was like to be an actual synagogue-going sort-of Jew. And then, my friends, I spent all weekend writing a cover story for this week’s paper on the presidential election. It was a real bear, my friends, and now I’ve got to finish digging up a pretty interesting story I stumbled across last week. But, my friends, rest assured that I’ll be active on the blog.

(Did everyone else find those two words, repeated over and over, as nauseating as I did?)

1 Comments — Leave your comment

October 10, 2008 | 2:00 am

MLB’s Rays credit wins to saying, ‘Get behind me, Satan’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Sorry for the absence. I’ll have you know my first Yom Kippur was pretty awesome, and I’ve written a first-person account of my exploits—OK, it’s not that sexy—for next week’s paper.

Unfortunately, the Day of Atonement was followed by the Dodgers choking in Philadelphia and giving up Game 1. They’ll have a chance to even the series tomorrow night before returning to Chavez Ravine, where I’ll see them go up, hopefully, 3 to 1 Monday.

Also playing tomorrow night are the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay

Devil

Rays—last year baseball’s worst squad and this year miraculously four wins from the World Series. There’s a divine factor that works into this story, similar to the Colorado Rockies’ run last fall. The Dallas Morning News religion blog draws attention to a phenomenon I thought of earlier this year but never made mention of and, therefore, deserve no credit for. It goes:

Well, last November, they officially changed their name.

Once they threw off their Devil, good things started to happen.

Sorry, Rays. But everybody knows God is a Dodgers fan. Just ask Sandy Koufax.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

October 8, 2008 | 4:00 pm

Younger religious voters have different, more liberal values

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I missed the conference call with reporters 30 minutes ago, but I’ve still got the summarized findings from a new poll by Faith in Public Life. The survey focused on the politics of youngish—18 to 34—religious folks.

“Younger believers—including Catholics and white evangelicals—are significantly more supportive of bigger government and expanding diplomatic efforts abroad.  It’s not surprising, therefore, that they are supporting some of the ideas put forward by the Democrats in 2008. It may very well be that in this election, the conventional wisdom about the ‘values voters’—who they are and what they want—gets turned on its head,” D. Michael Lindsay, author of “Faith In The Halls of Power,” who provided analysis on the call, said.

You’ll recognize a lot of common themes in these bullet points:

Monthly worship attenders swing to Obama in 2008. The greatest shift in candidate preference between 2004 and 2008 has occurred among all voters who attend religious services once or twice a month, moving from 49% support for Kerry in 2004 to 60% support for Obama in 2008.

More Americans think Obama is friendly to religion than McCain. Forty-nine percent of Americans say Obama is friendly to religion, while 45% say McCain is friendly to religion. More than seven-in-ten (71%) say it is important for public officials to be comfortable talking about religious values.

Younger white evangelicals strongly oppose abortion rights but are less conservative and more supportive of same-sex marriage than older evangelicals.  Young white evangelicals are strongly opposed to abortion rights, with two-thirds saying abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. Yet, less than a majority (49%) of younger evangelicals identify as conservative, compared to nearly two-thirds (65%) of older evangelicals.  Among young evangelicals, a majority favor either same-sex marriage (24%) or civil unions   (28%), compared to a majority (61%) of older evangelicals who favor no legal recognition of gay couples’ relationships.

Younger white evangelicals are more pluralistic and more supportive of active government at home and of diplomacy abroad. While less than one-third (30%) of older evangelicals say a person can be moral without believing in God, 44% of younger evangelicals affirm this idea, a 14-point gap. A majority (56%) of younger evangelicals believe diplomacy rather than military strength is the best way to ensure peace, compared to only 44% of older white evangelicals. Younger white evangelicals are also more likely than older white evangelicals to favor a bigger government offering more services, by a margin of 21 points (44% and 23% respectively).

Americans say economy, energy and gas prices, and health care are the most important issues in 2008. Americans rank the economy (83%) and energy/gas prices (76%), and health care (71%) as the most important issues in the 2008 election. Economic issues topped the list of most important issues among all religious groups.

Americans rank abortion and same-sex marriage as the least important issues in 2008. Only 43% and 28% respectively say these issues are very important issues to their vote in 2008. White evangelicals do not rank abortion or same-sex marriage in their top five most important voting issues.

Generation gap on same-sex marriage is large and increasing. Nearly half (46%) of young adults say gay couples should be allowed to marry, compared to only 29% of Americans overall. Over the last two years, support for same-sex marriage among young adults has jumped 9 points (from 37% to 46%), and the generation gap has nearly doubled.

Support for same-sex marriage is significant among young religious Americans. Among young white mainline Protestants and Catholics, close to half (48% and 44% respectively) support same-sex marriage. Young white evangelicals are 2.5 times as likely as older evangelicals to say that gay couples should be allowed to marry (25% to 9%).

You can scan the entire report here.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

October 8, 2008 | 3:36 pm

Catholic priest comes out, supports gay marriage

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Rev. Geoffrey Farrow, a Fresno priest, used the pulpit Sunday to speak out against the Catholic Church’s support of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that would amend the state constitution to forbid gay marriage.

“Farrow said during the Mass that parishioners had asked him for direction and advice about Prop 8. He said he came to the realization that he had to go against the church,” The Bee reported. “Before the Mass, he also told Channel 30 that he is gay.”

Fresno Bishop John Steinbock said the church is not opposing full legal rights for same-sex couples but is fighting for the sanctity of marriage. (I don’t agree with this argument, which I think is a strawman, or Prop. 8, but that’s another discussion.) As you can imagine, Farrow has cleaned out his office and moved out of the parish.

The text of Farrow’s homily, courtesy of Pam’s House Blend, is after the jump:

Read more of this post

7 Comments — Leave your comment

October 8, 2008 | 3:12 pm

Anti-Semites piling on as global economy plummets

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Here we go. The holy trinity of Jewish journalism—JTA, Rob Eshman and The God Blog, naturally—have all drawn attention to the blame being launched at The Jews for the economic crisis, which, congruent with beliefs about Jewish domination of global finances, has now spread across the world..

Last week, the Anti-Defamation League noted a spike on anti-Semitic activity online since Lehman Brothers, which was started by three Jewish immigrants, went bankrupt. Over the weekend, “Saturday Night Live” ran a sketch that identified Herb and Marion Sandler as “People who should be shot,” and JTA sought a connection between “SNL’s” joke and comments on the oh-so-white supremacist Vanguard News Network. (You might remember VNN from my article about Cal State Long Beach’s Kevin MacDonald).

“It’s really more like vampires sucking a corpse dry,” wrote the commenter, identified on the site as Sgruber. “Jews are destroyers. They aren’t after their own long-range advantage. Long-range they want the earth plunged into a Dark Ages of endless poverty. This is why the jews must be killed. They are rats eating the grain and the brain of the world.”

And then Rob penned this column: “Wall Street, Main Street and Jew Street.” History is at play here, and it’s not a pretty one. Times of financial difficult have historically been times of persecution and scapegoating of Jews who, yes, have historically been bankers and money changers and, yes, were among some of the leaders of the U.S. financial market.

Rob writes:

It is open season on the big city. In their bid for those elusive independent, middle-class voters, McCain and Obama and their seconds, Sen. Joe Biden and Palin, are fanning the myth that the real America resides in some shining Mayberry on a hill. If only those nasty money changers and culture vultures in the seething cities below would just let them sow their wheat and do their books and raise their children up good.

These tropes are not new to America; they are older than Shylock. The Jews make up the city: corrupt, scheming, complicated; while the common folk, the good people, occupy the farms and villages. The Jews lord over the metropolises, making easy money off the hard labor of others.

There’s an overlooked and ultimately sympathetic 1934 movie, “The House of Rothschild,” which perfectly captures the previous centuries of anti-Semitic caricature.

The film opens in 1750 on Frankfort’s “Jew Street,” as Mayer Amschel, founder of the Rothschild line, scurries to hide his precious guilden from the cruel tax collector.

“They keep us in chains!” he tells his boys. “They won’t let us learn a trade! They won’t let us own land. So make money. Money is the only weapon the Jew has to defend himself with.”

This stereotype and its accompanying rhetoric only ramps up in times of economic crisis. During the Great Depression, anti-Semitism was most virulent not in the cities where Jews lived but in the Farm Belt and Far West, where the image of “the Jew” lived.

Now the Anti-Defamation League reports “a dramatic upsurge in the number of anti-Semitic statements being posted to Internet discussion boards devoted to finance and the economy.”

Scan those Web sites and you quickly see what the candidates themselves likely don’t even realize: For the bigots and haters, Wall Street is code, the city is code, Hollywood—a staple enemy in the culture wars—is code. They’re code for “Jew.”

We shouldn’t be surprised. After all, when Palin said, “We grow good people in small towns,” she was quoting the late Westbrook Pegler, a notorious anti-Semitic columnist who called Jews “geese,” because “they hiss when they talk, gulp down everything before them and foul everything in their wake.”

Our candidates and our talking heads should be ashamed or, at least, careful. Because not only are such black-and-white dichotomies dangerous, they’re dumb.

Read the rest of the column here.

7 Comments — Leave your comment

October 8, 2008 | 12:43 pm

Scalping tickets for Yom Kippur

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The above video, “Bad Karma on the Kippur,” was sent to me by Rachel Axelbank, and it reminds me of another great “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode. You can see a clip from “The Larry David Sandwich,” in which Larry David buys High Holy Day tickets from a scalper, after the jump.

For those who can’t even scalp tickets, or are too lazy to get off the couch, tonight there is an online alternative for Kol Nidre. It’s part of Jay Sanderson’s vision to make Judaism more easily available to the unaffiliated. And it features the wisdom of my boss’ wife, who, I just learned, is Oprah’s rabbi:

Rabbi Naomi Levy, who has spoken with Oprah about spirituality, is allowing her Kol Nidre service, which marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, to be broadcast online at JewishTVnetwork.com. The service starts at 8 p.m. in Chicago.

There is real value to what she is doing. Not every Jew is affiliated with a synagogue or temple. Some are between cities, between jobs, disabled, cannot afford a membership to a congregation or have simply walked away from the faith.

And some are like me: not willing to leave the faith but no longer an active participant. It has probably been a decade since I last attended services for Yom Kippur.

Yet I believe in the notion of Yom Kippur. Not to atone for my sins, but rather as a day spent reflecting about my family, my career, my departed but beloved parents and where this life may be heading.

It’s a good day, actually, spiritual in its own sense and one I’ve come to embrace. It’s my current reflection of religion.

But I like to keep every door open, even it’s virtual, and I’m intrigued by Rabbi Levy’s approach to Judaism. She’s started a movement called Nashuva, which translates to ‘we will return.’

“The mission of Nashuva is reach unaffiliated Jews and those that have become disconnected from the religion, for whatever reason,” she told me, adding that surveys show about half of American Jews—more in urban areas—no longer feel affiliated with the faith.

Her services, which are held in a church in Brentwood, Calif., take a non-traditional approach to traditional prayers. She uses a band stocked with studio musicians, not all of them Jewish, and they bring country, gospel and African rhythms to the service.

“We’ve had services on a beach and in a meadow at a state park,” Rabbi Levy said. “We try all different approaches to reach Jews.”

Being online is an obvious extension of Neshuva. But is it for me? It certainly appeals to my techie persona, but will it appeal to my religious beliefs, even if they are somewhat nebulous?

As I previously mentioned, I’ll be spending Kol Nidre at IKAR. It’s my first time. Should be interesting.

Read more of this post

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 7, 2008 | 9:24 pm

Open thread: Presidential debate

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Unlike with the veeps debate last week, tonight I’ll be watching but not liveblogging the potential presidentials brouhaha. Sites that will be dissecting the every words of Barack Obama and John McCain include The Caucus, Top of the Ticket and probably Christianity Today’s politics blog.

Any predictions?

1 Comments — Leave your comment

October 7, 2008 | 9:16 pm

Oregon judge rules against 13-year-old’s circumcision

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

TimeOut NY

A legal case playing out now in Oregon is steeped in questions of family law, religious freedom and foreskin. The AP reports:

PORTLAND — The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an Oregon dispute between a father who wants to circumcise his 13-year-old son against the wishes of the boy’s mother.

The case now goes back to an Oregon trial judge to determine whether the boy wants to undergo the procedure.

James Boldt converted to Judaism and says his son wants to be circumcised for religious reasons.

But his ex-wife, Lia Boldt, claims that her son is afraid to tell his father that he does not want to undergo the procedure.

Circumcision, constantly under attack from reformers as barbaric, is a perennially hot topic, and this is not the first time we’ve broach adult, or at least young adult, circumcision on the blog. It doesn’t take a First Amendment expert to recognize how significant a case this could end up being.

“It is not going too far out on a limb to come to the conclusion that this case prevents freedom of religion, and is an invasion of privacy,” Rabbi Yonah writes.

Man, high school is bad enough. Imagine how embarrassing it would be if the lawsuit your father filed to remove your foreskin—SFW—made it all the way to the Supreme Court and was talked about in major papers and on NPR, maybe even someday referenced in other cases like Cartman v. Broflovski, a clip of which is after the jump.

Read more of this post

10 Comments — Leave your comment

October 7, 2008 | 8:02 pm

Has Mike Huckabee lost his way?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I just came across two blog posts that suggest

Church Norris

Mike Huckabee is no longer the populist proponent of a new evangelical dialogue.

When campaigning in the Republican primary, Huck definitely went overboard in promoting himself as Jesus’ pick for president and in saying that we need to “change the Constitution” for God. But he also added poverty, education and the environment to his agenda. There was hope this was joining the chorus of diversity on the evangelical political spectrum.

Now, though, Mark Silk writes that now Huckabee, who got a show on Fox News (I wouldn’t know), is rallying soldiers in war against the bailout, and Dan Gilgoff of God-o-Meter reports that Huck has returned to the red-meat Republican issues:

That big-tent Huck seems to be in much shorter supply now. An email the Arkansas governor just sent out soliciting donations for his political action committee—whose beneficiaries include John McCain and Sarah Palin—asks fors $5 for each of these five red meat issues:

1. Protection of Human Life 2. Traditional Marriage 3. Tax policy that doesn’t punish people for working, but rewards them 4. 2nd amendment rights 5. Supreme Court and Federal Court judge selection

11 Comments — Leave your comment

October 7, 2008 | 6:52 pm

Christian pre-fall-fundamentalists celebrate naked mass

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Seriously, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. This installment from the pre-fall-fundamentalist Christians of the Netherlands.

Naked celebrants abandoned plans to hold a second service after media coverage of their first mass, held in a nudist park during the summer, led to a flood of threatening phone calls and emails from more orthodox Christians.

“We are just a group of Christians and we want to hold a church service.”

OK, seriously, what is wrong with that first sentence? More orthodox Christians ... You mean, everybody beside the wacky Christian naturists.

I hope these naturists aren’t Catholic. It would be really awkward having to genuflect.

(Hat tip: Friendly Atheist)

68 Comments — Leave your comment