November 26, 2008 | 2:18 pm

YidVid: ‘Yiddish with Dick and Jane’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

“Yiddish with Dick and Jane” came out four years ago and was reviewed by The Jewish Journal. But thanks to Gruven Reuven I just came across this video. It is the best book promotion I have ever seen.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

Share this post: del.icio.us Digg Facebook Google Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati YahooMyWeb

November 26, 2008 | 2:18 pm

Former leaders of Muslim charity convicted of terror financing

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

How did I miss this news yesterday that five former leaders of the Holy Land Foundation were convicted of terror financing? From the Washington Post:

A federal jury in Dallas convicted five men with ties to a prominent Muslim charity of scores of criminal charges yesterday, handing the U.S. government a significant victory in its largest terrorism financing trial.

The verdicts against former leaders of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once ranked as the country’s largest Muslim charitable organization, came only hours after a federal appeals court panel in New York upheld criminal convictions of three men accused of helping plot deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Together, the developments strengthened the Justice Department’s power to choke the sources of funding that help fuel terrorist schemes—and to use warrantless electronic surveillance to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens suspected of engaging in international conspiracies.

Yet the victories in cases first filed as long as a decade ago underscore the lengthy path through the criminal justice system, which has afforded the government a mixed record in terrorism prosecutions.

Dennis M. Lormel, a former chief of the FBI’s terrorist financing operation section, said the guilty verdicts on the 108 charges in the Holy Land trial amounted to a “validation” of the government’s approach and encouraged his former colleagues to aggressively pursue similar investigations.

But Lormel said the most critical, practical development may have come in December 2001, when authorities raided the charity’s headquarters in Richardson, Tex., and seized its assets.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, law enforcement officials accused Holy Land of funneling more than $12 million to the militant Palestinian group Hamas. The original case against Holy Land and its leaders included more than 100 unindicted co-conspirators, a status that several charities challenged as overreaching by the government.

“For many years, the Holy Land Foundation used the guise of charity to raise and funnel millions of dollars to the infrastructure of the Hamas terror organization,” said J. Patrick Rowan, assistant attorney general for national security. “This prosecution demonstrates our resolve to ensure that humanitarian relief efforts are not used as a mechanism to disguise and enable support for terrorist groups.”

The federal government has had an incredibly spotty shoddy record. The first case against the Holy Land Foundation ended in a mistrial last year. I’d expect an immediate appeal.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

November 26, 2008 | 12:27 pm

Cheny and Bush burn the Constitution

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Patrick O’Connor, a friend from the LA Daily News and the mad genius behind the logo used for God’s Blog, drew this clever editorial cartoon this summer that imagined President Bush and Vice President Cheney taking the places of Barack and Michelle Obama on that controversial New Yorker cover.

I stumbled across the cartoon yesterday while checking in on Patrick’s blog, which hasn’t been updated to regularly lately.

The drawing is pretty much identical except that instead of hanging a portrait of Osama bin Laden over the fireplace in Cheney’s Oval Office—that’s right: Cheney’s wearing the pants in Patrick’s sketch—there’s a picture of Richard Nixon; instead of burning the American flag, Cheney and Bush are burning the Constitution.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

November 25, 2008 | 6:54 pm

Savage says: U.S. ‘most disgusting country on the earth’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I imagine Michael Savage, who in June said the Israeli prime minister was leading his people into the gas chamber, as one of those wind-up dolls, except instead of saying “I love you” and “let’s be friends,” he rants on and on about the end of the world. Even Chicken Little couldn’t handle this guy’s hyperbole.

Last night on his syndicated radio program, Savage said:

“socially, we’re far worse—more degenerate than Weimar Germany. At least in Weimar Germany, men couldn’t marry men and women couldn’t marry women. So we’re probably 10 leagues below the degeneracy that brought about Hitler. We’re probably 50 leagues below the degeneracy that brought about Hitler. We are the sickest, most disgusting country on the earth, and we are psycholo—psychotically—we are psychotic as a nation.”

That remark and several other ridiculous jeremiads are complied here by Media Matters.

4 Comments — Leave your comment

November 25, 2008 | 5:59 pm

Police nab ‘Butt Bandit;’ copy machines and windows rejoice

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Nebraska authorities have arrested a man suspected of being the “Butt Bandit.” (I’m having to do everything I can right now to not follow that sentence up with something obscene. Must ... fight ... sort of funny ... remarks ... ) The Cherry County district attorney charged Tom Larvie, 35, of Valentine, Neb., with nine counts of public indecency and one count of disturbing the peace. You want to know why, right?

Larvie is suspected of leaving greasy, graphic imprints of his naked behind, and sometimes his groin, on the windows of stores, churches and schools in Valentine since the spring of 2007.

Against the protests of copy machines and stained-glass windows, I hope Larvie is innocent. If not, he better hope his punishment does not include any prison time. Butt Bandit isn’t the kind of name that would earn you much cred in the prison yard, though I’m sure its bearer would be plenty popular.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

November 25, 2008 | 4:27 pm

Christian dating via text messaging

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

When I was graduating high school and entering college, there was a book by Joshua Harris that was gaining traction among evangelical Christians. It was called “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” and what it meant for a few of my friends was kissing their girlfriend goodbye.

To be fair to Harris, the book’s focus was on growing closer to God by giving up dating—a cause the Apostle Paul, and this lowlier apostle, would support. But the book convinced a good many Christian women I knew—for some reason, never men—that they really shouldn’t date. Period. Instead, they should meet someone and if that someone seemed special, they should court; if the courtship survived, then they should get married. Placing purity at a premium, the model overemphasized precaution as a means of avoiding temptation.

I’ve been out of the dating game for quite a few years now, so I’m not privy to today’s M.O. Several of my friends have met their match online, which would have been unthinkable when I was single. And it appears a few companies, according to an email I received from dating-service BluePont, are hooking Christians up via text messaging:

Most Christians truly believe that God orchestrates our love stories. That might sound romantic but it’s true. At the same time, for many Christians, meeting that special someone in the “typical” places like church groups and events hasn’t worked—whether because they’ve been there, done that, or they simply don’t have the time. And most Christians are not going to be looking for their soulmate in secular places like bars and clubs!

So, what’s a single Christian to do?

Technology of course, has offered additional tools—from Christian dating sites, to Christian singles’ groups and dating services and the latest trends in mobile messaging, it is easier than ever for you to find who you’ve been looking for. Because the reality is that God works in ways we cannot see, and uses means we may not have thought of before. He even works through proximity detecting text messaging.

That’s right, text messaging.

Bars and clubs—yuck! Only sinners spend time there. (Gulp.)

This service isn’t quite as lame as it sounds. And the “dating” doesn’t actually occur via text. BluePont just sends a message to your phone when your GPS signal indicates that you are in the neighborhood of someone who matches your profile. BluePont’s website proclaims:

This is magic When someone right is close
Your phones alert you both.
Private-message and meet right away.
Meet naturally by chance plus defy a little distance.
Give Chance a hand.

God works in mysterious ways, but this isn’t actually God at work. It’s technology—not magic—and I’m pretty sure he’s not manning the satellite.

4 Comments — Leave your comment

November 25, 2008 | 3:33 pm

How Jewish is Thanksgiving?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There were no Jews on the Mayflower, but Edmon J. Rodman says Turkey Day is very Jewy. Thanksgiving celebrates a persecuted religious group that fled their homeland for freedom, and, like all Jewish holidays, it includes family gatherings around food. I guess you could call it an honorary MOT holiday.

Rodman writes:

Thanksgiving is one of the few days in America where interfaith cooperation reigns,  with many synagogues and churches holding combined services. Rabbis, ministers, priests and pastors try valiantly to craft services that will be meaningful yet not offensive to their combined congregations.

This year at my Thanksgiving dinner I plan to break bread with the motzi and end with the Birkat Hamazon, the grace after meal that begins, “Let us thank the One whose food we have eaten.”

1 Comments — Leave your comment

November 25, 2008 | 12:57 pm

Israeli reporter: American Jews are ‘obsessed with money’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

UJC head Rieger

Jewish federations, like all nonprofits, are feeling the hurt from the economic downturn. Months ago cutbacks led many organizations to pear down their travel budgets. But the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities, an annual gathering of North American Jewish federations, remained scheduled for Israel, where it is held every five years. The GA ended last week, and I have to wonder if UJC leaders wished they’d stayed stateside this year.

There were some worthwhile speeches, but the four-day event went largely unnoticed by its hosts. In fact, Hebrew-speaking journalists were not only absent from most of the conference but had a few choice words—words that coming from a non-Jew might be perceived as anti-Semitic—for their American brethren. Check that: At least one of these reporters wouldn’t consider many American Jews to be members of his tribe.

Speaking to journalism students this week, Ma’ariv Diaspora affairs reporter Eli Berdenstein admitted he did not know a great deal about American Jewry, but in any case rejected the idea that US Jews who claim they are “Jews by choice” are authentically Jewish.

Danny Ababa, Diaspora reporter for Israel’s largest daily, Yediot Aharonot, told The Jerusalem Post that “this whole business [the GA] is one big kiss-up to rich people. American Jews are not authentic; they’re obsessed with money; there’s something annoying about them.”

Read the rest from the JPost here. Considering all the money American Jews pump into Israel—whether we’re entering into, stuck in or coming out of a recession—it amazes me that Diaspora affairs reporters, of all people, could have so much disdain for such an important part of the Diaspora.

5 Comments — Leave your comment

November 24, 2008 | 9:44 pm

What the Huck: former presidential candidate says Palin ‘looks better in stilettos’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In addition to Prince and Proposition 8, The New Yorker recently found cause to catch up with Mike Huckabee, the evangelical fan favorite during the Republican presidential primary. In this postmortem—though I don’t think his political career is dead—Huckabee points out that he was ahead of the curve regarding the economic meltdown; says he would have run a more successful campaign than Bring the Pain McCain; and makes one of his characteristically cheesy jokes about the former vice presidential nominee and archetypal sexy Puritan, Sarah Palin:

“It was funny that all through the primary—I mean literally up until McCain got enough delegates to win—people said, ‘You know, Huckabee’s really running for Vice-President. Gee, Huckabee would be a great Vice-President.’ And from that day forward, when I actually was no longer running for President, nobody ever said, ‘Gee, Huckabee would be a great Vice-President.’ ” Neither was he quite so unperturbed by the Palin pick: “I was scratching my head, saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute. She’s wonderful, but the only difference was she looks better in stilettos than I do, and she has better hair.’ It wasn’t so much a gender issue, but it was like they suddenly decided that everything they disliked about me was O.K. . . . She was given a pass by some of the very people who said I wasn’t prepared.”

You can read the rest here.

I was hard on Huckabee during the primaries. I didn’t buy his different brand of Jesus juice and I was uncomfortable with his declaration that we should change the Constitution for God. But I too would have found him to be a better choice for McCain than Palin.

Don’t cry for Huckabee, though. He has been busy lately pushing back against his detracting and preparing for quite the future.

In his book he took shots at Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney. He’s got his own show on Fox News. And last week he countered this column by Kathleen Parker and said that the GOP needs to re-stake its claim to the God voters.

If I had to guess, I’d say Huckabee is still thinking about 2012.

3 Comments — Leave your comment

November 24, 2008 | 6:08 pm

Mormon housewives pole dancing for good health

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It appears the pole-dancing-for-fitness has made it’s way to Utah.

“If you remember this fad being big a few years ago, you’re right; I like to picture Utah kind of like the Middle East, where it takes about 20 years for pop culture to spread. The new Pat Benatar cassettes are just hitting Tehran now,” SPORTSbyBROOKS writes (hat tip: The Web Guy).

The stories scared me then—and that was before I knew guys pole danced too. What makes this even more frightening is that these folks, in the heart of Mormon country, are joining others around the world in an online petition to get “pole fitness” into the 2012 Olympics.

“It’s on par with ice skating and everything else that’s in the Olympics,” one enthusiast, ehem, says.

That’s right: softball—you’re out. We need to make room for fully clothed exotic dancing. And, oh yeah, ice skating—that’s not a summer sport; not sure about “everything else.”

I’m a bit curious as to religious limitations Mormon women would have on pole fitness. Any takers?

And in other Mormon news, it’s been a few days since someone has mentioned the role Mormons played in the passage of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure, now before the state Supreme Court, that will amend the constitution to prohibit gay marriage. Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker obliges and takes this swipe:

You might think that an organization that for most of the first of its not yet two centuries of existence was the world’s most notorious proponent of startlingly unconventional forms of wedded bliss would be a little reticent about issuing orders to the rest of humanity specifying exactly who should be legally entitled to marry whom. But no. The Mormon Church—as anyone can attest who has ever answered the doorbell to find a pair of polite, persistent, adolescent “elders” standing on the stoop, tracts in hand—does not count reticence among the cardinal virtues. Nor does its own history of matrimonial excess bring a blush to its cheek. The original Latter-day Saint, Joseph Smith, acquired at least twenty-eight and perhaps sixty wives, some of them in their early teens, before he was lynched, in 1844, at age thirty-eight. Brigham Young, Smith’s immediate successor, was a bridegroom twenty times over, and his successors, along with much of the male Mormon élite, kept up the mass marrying until the nineteen-thirties—decades after the Church had officially disavowed polygamy, the price of Utah’s admission to the Union, in 1896. As Richard and Joan Ostling write in “Mormon America: The Power and the Promise” (2007), “Smith and his successors in Utah managed American history’s only wide-scale experiment in multiple wives, boldly challenging the nation’s entrenched family structure and the morality of Western Judeo-Christian culture.”

3 Comments — Leave your comment

November 24, 2008 | 5:17 pm

Rabbi Hier responds to criticism of Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Last week I linked to a few recent op-eds critical of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s plans to build a Museum of Tolerance atop an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. Rabbi Marvin Hier, the center’s dean and founder, wasn’t happy with either of the op-eds.

A spokesman, who passed along links to a fact sheet and excerpted passages from the Israeli Supreme Court ruling in favor of the center’s plans, said Hier intended to write a letter to The Forward regarding Buzzy Gordon’s column; he had already sent one to Haaretz, which ran Bradley Burston’s piece. Hier wrote:

What he deliberately hides from his readers is that the land was given to the Simon Wiesenthal Center by the government of Israel and the City of Jerusalem, who presented petitions to the Supreme Court in support of the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem.

He also obscures the fact that the Simon Wiesenthal Center is not building on the nearby Mamilla cemetery, but on the adjacent site which, for nearly a half-century, served as Jerusalem’s municipal car park where every day hundreds of Jews, Christians and Muslims parked their cars. Electric cable and sewer lines were laid below the ground.

During all this time, not a single Muslim group or individual, including today’s most vociferous critics said a word in protest although as they argued before the Court they knew all along it was a cemetery, yet kept silent for a half-century.

As the Supreme Court concluded in its ruling, “Israel is a small strip of land, of great antiquity, with a history that extends over thousands of years… In our case, the area of the museum compound was separated from the Muslim Mamilla cemetery as long ago as the 1960s, and it was classified as an open public area… and it was made available for various kinds of planning activity. A multi-storey car park was built on it, a road was paved on it, and plans were made to construct multi-storey buildings on it.”

“For decades this area was not regarded as a cemetery by the general public or by the Muslim community… no one denied this position. Not only was the compound not identified as an area with religious sanctity… but it was the subject of planning for various purposes throughout decades, without any objection for reasons of the sanctity of the site.”

Furthermore, what Bradley Burston ignores is that when the design was completed, the model was on display at Jerusalem City Hall and newspaper ads were taken out and posted in the Hebrew and Arab press - again, no protest from any Muslim group whatsoever.

They were silent because, as the High Court said, “...the area has not been classified as a cemetery for decades.” The bones found during construction were between 300 and 400 years old. They were unaccompanied by a single marker, monument, or tombstone, family name or religion.

Read the rest here.

6 Comments — Leave your comment

November 24, 2008 | 3:18 pm

‘Obama skips church, heads to the gym’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

My initial reaction to that headline from Politico was: So what?

Barack Obama has probably been awfully busy since winning the presidential election. Maybe he hasn’t had time to find a new church in Washington or hasn’t been around Chicago on Sunday mornings.

But I guess the Obamas have been in Chicago and according to an aide didn’t want to disturb other worshipers at their church with the heavy security that would accompany them. (President Reagan was a member of my church, Bel Air Presbyterian, and I’ve heard the small army of Secret Service was, um, a bit distracting.) Still, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both made a point of going before God after being elected:

In November of 1992, Clinton went to services in Little Rock, Ark., on the three weekends following his election, taking pre-church jogs on the first two and attending on the third weekend a Catholic Mass with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, with whom he was trying to smooth over lingering campaign tensions.

The issue of where he worships is, of course, fraught.

Bill Maher usually thinks he is right, but I wonder if he is start to feel confident in his hope that Obama was just faking it.

0 Comments — Leave your comment