December 29, 2008 | 3:04 pm

The Jewish Forward defends Obama’s selection of Rick Warren

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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As you know, President-elect Barack Obama generated a lot of controversy when he asked the Rev. Rick Warren, evangelical superstar, to pray at his inauguration. In light of ridiculous headlines on CNN like “Pastor Disaster?” and “Prayer Outrage,” Obama quickly defended his decision. Now The Forward—that’s right, the liberal, intellectual, Jewish newspaper from, oh goodness, New York—has editorialized in favor of the “Purpose-Driven” pastor:

More of the same would have spelled disaster, but failure to achieve change isn’t much better. The nation needs an economy that won’t collapse again, one that measures success in mouths fed. It needs to retool at every level for cleaner, sustainable energy. It needs a new foreign policy that seeks dialogue before confrontation.

To get the job done, Obama will need more than an administration backed by half the populace. He needs a nation united behind him. He needs, ultimately, a new governing majority.

That is where Rick Warren comes in. Warren speaks for a vast constituency that once voted Democratic because of bread-and-butter issues, but turned rightward a generation ago, alienated by abortion, gay rights and the broader culture war. After three decades of Republican misrule and free-market fundamentalism, some appear ready to come back. Warren talks about putting issues of social justice back on the national agenda — feeding the poor, healing the sick, saving the planet. Part of his agenda is repugnant to progressives; part of the progressive agenda is repugnant to him. That shouldn’t mean there’s no room for cooperation on vital issues.

Democrats used to know how to build those sorts of alliances. Franklin Roosevelt gave a Supreme Court seat to Hugo Black, a onetime Ku Klux Klan member, and still managed to create the New Deal, defeat the Nazis and set up the first federal civil rights agency of the 20th century, the Fair Employment Practices Committee. Lyndon Johnson worked closely with Southern racists like Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, his lifelong mentor, and yet he still managed to pass landmark civil rights legislation and launch a war on poverty.

What Democrats understood in those days — and what Obama seems to understand now — is that in order to advance the rights of minorities, you must first build a majority. You can’t help the powerless if you don’t have power. An inauguration isn’t a political convention, but a time to speak to all Americans.

Amen.

December 29, 2008 | 1:39 pm

Anti-Semites and Israel’s assault on Gaza

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

And I thought Bernard Madoff brought out the worst in anti-Semites. Don’t be fooled. Nothing can compare to the virulence espoused when Israel retaliates against its attackers.

The latest comment moderated by The Web Guy starts: “Jews are a filthy self-centred - bigoted and arrogant circumsized anthropoids who still beleive they are the chosen one.” And that’s the complimentary part.

Commenter Kirk, whose email address begins with KKK, goes on to promote a modern-day Kristallnacht. That leads me to believe Kirk and this Greek politician, who is comparing Israel’s airstrikes on Hamas compounds in Gaza to Hitler, would get along just swell:

The statements Monday by George Karatzaferis, the leader of the far right LAOS party, come a day after a daily newspaper in Greece blamed Jews for the world financial crisis and the Israeli operation in Gaza.

Karatzaferis released a statement that read, in part, “Someone has to pull the ear of the darling child of the West, Israel. Its aggressiveness and malice against non-combatants, whose only precedent can be found during Hitler’s time, cannot leave the international community indifferent.”

Israeli Ambassador to Greece Ali Yahya said in response to the statement, “Racism is not in Greece’s culture. I’m saddened by the pathetic statement made by Mr. Karatzaferis; it shows, if nothing else, complete historic ignorance. It is the Jewish people that were the prey of racism.”

Meanwhile, the Avriani newspaper led its front page with anti-Semitic accusations for the second time in several weeks. Sunday’s headline read: “After the American Jews acquired once again the world’s wealth and plunged the planet into an unprecedented financial crisis, they started rehearsing for WWIII.”

Midway through the paper’s story on Israel’s operation in Gaza, the story, under the heading “The Plan,” explains that a Jewish plutocracy, having made the “wealth of the century at the expense of the economies of the world,” is preparing to put in motion “war machines” in various hot spots around the world in order to control the price of oil, redistribute the world’s natural resources and start a new cycle of weapons production.

Avriani is the same Greek paper that on Nov. 4 ran on its front page this headline: ““The anticipated victory of Obama in the U.S. elections signals the end of Jewish domination. Everything changes in the USA and we hope that it will be more democratic and humane.“

There is no question that the loss of life in Gaza is a tragedy. And Israel’s military has before been too careless when operating in civilian areas—human shields or not. But Israel’s weekend assault on Gaza needs to be understood as an attack on Hamas militants that for years have been shelling the border towns. Not Jewish settlements, but communities well within the Green Line of 1948. Those actions, by operatives of the government, should be seen as hundreds of acts of war.

Regardless, no one is “winning”—or stands to. As Ruth Wisse says, the Palestinian refugee crisis—60 years later—is still about the political power of the Palestinians’ neighbors. The question is what should the Israeli response be.

Many are calling now for a ceasefire; Egypt is trying to broker one. Here’s what the Jewish Alliance for Peace & Justice had to say:

Though some Israeli action is an understandable response to continued rocket fire from Hamas, and the idea of contained surgical strikes may be compelling, these airstrikes represent a huge escalation of the conflict—a crisis that may end in a wider war in which many more Palestinians and Israelis die in the weeks to come.

The now familiar sequence of escalating mutual hostility, invasion, and withdrawal without security arrangements has never worked—in Lebanon, the West Bank, or in Gaza itself. The United States and the entire world community must intercede to help reestablish a ceasefire, put an end to rocket attacks on Israel, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Brit Tzedek calls on President Bush to initiate an international effort aimed at negotiating an immediate ceasefire. Such a ceasefire must halt all attacks from both sides and allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

Further, we call on President-elect Obama to make clear that he will, as President, urgently assert US leadership to achieve a comprehensive diplomatic resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts.

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December 29, 2008 | 1:04 pm

Can Guitar Hero save Christian music?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

For many, the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s is a built-in break from work. For me, it’s a welcomed opportunity to return to productivity.

Don’t get me wrong: I had a few great days of rest, capped off with a great day of sports yesterday (first watching the Bruins thump the—uh ... what are the Louisiana Tech’s?—and then seeing the Chargers pound the Broncos). But I fell well short of my goal of finishing Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” which has a few interesting religion angles, and Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America,” a particularly appropriate book to be reading will moderating anti-Semitic comments on this blog.

The blame, I’d have to say, falls squarely on “Guitar Hero World Tour.”

I spent a good two days playing the game, a gift from my wife, with my brother-in-law, and we still need a lot of practice before we go on tour. On tour? That’s right—at least we could:

LOS ANGELES—“This song is dedicated to Debbie Harry,” flinty-eyed Lisa Hsuan purrs into a microphone on the red-lit stage of Hyperion Tavern. It’s a cozy dive where patrons drink Coke and beer from bottles and a fading chandelier dangles overhead.

Her tribute is intentionally ludicrous: The 30-year-old veterinarian is about to belt out “Call Me,” which Harry—fronting the group Blondie—released 28 years ago. Accompanied on fake guitars and drums by three Web programmers who drove in from the refinery-dotted coastal suburb of El Segundo, Hsuan launches in as a smoke machine puffs nearby.

They’re playing the video game “Rock Band 2,” which along with “Guitar Hero” is rocking bars and living rooms across the country. Many songs’ sales have more than doubled after release in one of the games, and well-known bands have started lining up to provide new music direct to the game makers. Now record labels—noticing what they are missing, and struggling as compact disc sales tumble—are looking for a bigger piece of the action.

Although labels get some royalties from the play-along games’ makers, they are often bypassed on image and likeness licensing deals, which the bands control and which account for a rising proportion of musicians’ income. Meanwhile, the Recording Industry Association of America pegged its U.S. members’ sales at $10.4 billion in 2007, down 11.8 percent from the year before, with a further drop expected for 2008. By comparison, sales of music video games more than doubled this year, hitting $1.9 billion in the past 12 months, according to NPD Group. And they’re expected to keep growing.

Aerosmith made more money off the June release of “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith” than either of its last two albums, according to Kai Huang, co-founder of RedOctane, which first developed “Guitar Hero.”

“The kind of exposure that artists can get through the ‘Guitar Hero’ platform is huge,” said Huang, who remains RedOctane’s president, after it and the “Guitar Hero” franchise were taken over by Activision Blizzard Inc. in 2006. “Rock Band,” meanwhile, is made by Viacom Inc.‘s MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts Inc.

In other words, it looks like video (games) are saving the aging radio stars. Even the Disney phenomenons, which drew their popularity from TV audiences, have a sing-along karaoke game.

It’s only a matter of time, I imagine, before Steven Curtis Chapman and Delirious team up with the guys who brought you “Left Behind: Eternal Forces.”

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December 27, 2008 | 2:52 pm

Israel strikes Hamas compounds; at least 200 dead

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wasn’t bluffing. Airstrikes on Hamas security compounds just began. From the AP:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israeli warplanes retaliating for rocket fire from the Gaza Strip pounded dozens of security compounds across the Hamas-ruled territory in unprecedented waves of airstrikes Saturday, killing more than 200 people and wounding nearly 400 in the single bloodiest day of fighting in years.

Most of those killed were security men, but an unknown number of civilians were also among the dead. Hamas said all of its security installations were hit, threatened to resume suicide attacks, and sent at least 70 rockets and mortar shells crashing into Israeli border communities, according to the Israeli military. One Israeli was killed and at least six people were hurt.

With so many wounded, the Palestinian death toll was likely to rise.

The strikes caused widespread panic and confusion in Gaza, as black clouds of smoke rose above the territory, ruled by Hamas for the past 18 months. Some of the Israeli missiles struck in densely populated areas as children were leaving school, and women rushed into the streets frantically looking for their children.

“My son is gone, my son is gone,” wailed Said Masri, a 57-year-old shopkeeper, as he sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, slapping his face and covering his head with dust from a bombed-out security compound nearby.

He said he had sent his 9-year-old son out to purchase cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. “May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn,” Masri moaned.

The offensive began eight days after a six-month truce between Israel and the militants expired. The Israeli army says Palestinian militants have fired some 300 rockets and mortars at Israeli targets over the past week, and in recent days, Israeli leaders had threatened to launch a major offensive.

“There is a time for calm and there is a time for fighting, and now is the time for fighting,” said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, vowing to expand the operation if necessary.

The New York Times has lots of photos. For a window into life in the Israeli communities that are shelled daily by rocket fire from Gaza, check out this story I did about Shabbat in Sderot.

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December 26, 2008 | 6:32 pm

Schulweis: Madoff mess more than ‘one rotten apple’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Rabbi Harold Schulweis

Bernard Madoff, bad for the Jews. You’ve thus far heard the refrain. Rabbis Elliot Dorff and David Wolpe have weighed in with their thoughts on the lessons and responses to the Madoff affair. Many others have too.

Now, if we wanted to complete the holy trinity of Conservative rabbis we should really find out what Rabbi Harold Schulweis thinks. It just so happens I spoke with Sculweis, founder of Jewish World Watch and the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, for my article this week; His synagogue lost aout 8 percent of its endowment:

“It’s tragic. And it has to be understood beyond one rotten apple. You have to look at the barrel. We are living in a culture, and have been living in a culture of greed, of success at any price, and we have allowed that scene in the movie ‘Wall Street’ to become reality—greed is good, and you know that as long as money comes in it is justified.”

And here is a nugget I left out:

“I’m not an economist. But my mother used to say, as your mother used to say, If they tell you it is too good to be true, then it’s too good to be true. That is elementary. and it would seem to me that if you get back 10 percent, no matter what, in good times and bad times, then it is too good to be true. That is the sad part: One has to be so untrusting. There used to be a day when the deal was done with a handshake. That has been lost. Now, shrewdness, manipulation, exploitation has been sort of accepted as the way it’s done.”

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December 25, 2008 | 6:26 pm

Olmert issues Christmas day warning to Hamas

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Seraphic Secret

Unfortunately, mistletoe doesn’t hang over the Israeli border with Gaza.

Hamas won’t stop shelling nearby communities with Kassam rockets. So Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert—yeah, he’s still around—issued a “last-minute” warning to the Islamic Resistance Movement: stand down or force will be used.

Reuters reports:

His comments were the clearest indication yet that Israel was preparing a possible Gaza offensive which could result in heavy casualties on both sides and fuel a humanitarian crisis.

Israeli political sources said Olmert’s security cabinet approved a “staged” military escalation, beginning with air strikes against a wider range of Hamas targets in the densely-populated enclave.

A large-scale operation has yet to be authorized but could get a green light depending on Hamas’s response, the sources said.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said Israel would “pay the price” for any attack.

Olmert told Al Arabiya television, an Arab broadcaster widely watched in Gaza: “I didn’t come here to declare war.”

“But Hamas must be stopped—that is the way it is going to be. I will not hesitate to use Israel’s might to strike Hamas and (Islamic) Jihad. How? I will not go into details now,” Olmert said, according to a statement issued by his office.

No one is winning in this quiet war. But never ceases to amaze me that the international community condemns any Israeli response to the rocket attacks against its own civilians.

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December 25, 2008 | 5:22 pm

Fake Santa goes nuts, kills at least five

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Bad Santa

Talk about Bad Santa.

Right around the time I was asking my wife where Santa was last night—I guessed Lawrence, Kan., though I’m not sure why—a man dressed like Old St. Nick showed up at a Christmas Eve party in the San Gabriel Valley, about 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, and opened fire on partygoers:

Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, 45, knocked on the front door of a home on the 1100 block of Knollcrest Drive in Covina around 11:30 Wednesday night, said Covina Police Lt. Pat Buchanan. Thought to be someone hired to entertain children at the party, Pardo was let in the house and immediately opened fire with a handgun, Buchanan said.

Shortly after, the two-story house located at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac was fully engulfed in flames, fire officials said. It took about an hour and a half to extinguish the fire.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting three dead; The New York Times says at least five. It’s not clear if Pardo knew he people in he house or if entertainment had been hired. He eventually killed himself outside his brother’s house.

So much for silent night.

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December 24, 2008 | 6:07 pm

Does Santa deliver gifts to Iraq?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The rest of “Red Sleigh Down” can be seen here. I love the opening scene, where Cartman’s accountant tells him he’s been so naughty that he’s going to owe 306 presents this year. This is probably one of the more outrageous episodes, complete with Jesus going postal on Santa’s captors and then getting shotgunned by one, so watch at your own risk.

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December 24, 2008 | 1:34 pm

More toys: Legos from the Bible

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Turns out there are more ways to customize your Legos besides turning them into Nazi soldiers and holy warriors. Jackass Letters sent me this link to The Brick Testament, a company that transforms your ordinary Legos into characters and stories from the Bible.

You can scroll through Jesus’ parables—check out the parable of the tortured debtor—or learn the Lego version of the Exodus. My favorite though are the characters from the Book of Job. That’s Job pictured at left, covered in boils and soars and being cursed by his wife.

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December 24, 2008 | 3:05 am

Rick Warren loves Muslims

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It all makes sense now: President-elect Barack Obama asked the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration because Warren, one of the world’s widest-read Christians, is, in fact, a Muslim.

Yep. The proof is below: Warren delivering the keynote address over the weekend at the annual conference organized by the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

“I love Muslims. I also happen to love Hindus and Jews and Buddhists. Now this one will shock, I happen to love Democrats and Republicans. And for the media’s purpose, I happen to love gays and straights. ... We don’t have to see eye to eye to walk hand in hand.

“I always thought Christians were misunderstood until I started hearing about Muslims. I’ve noticed two things: the media almost never gets it right, and the media love conflict. ... Al-Qaeda no more represents Islam than the Klu Klux Klan represents Christianity.

“Religious congregations are the only set of organizations on earth that can successfully combat the five global illnesses of spiritual emptiness, corrupt leadership, disease pandemics, dire poverty, and illiteracy, and we must actively and directly cooperate with mosques to get the job done.”

What’s that? Warren previously spoke at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles? So then he’s not Muslim; just not a Christian cloistered in his own holy huddle. Huh.

So what’s all the inauguration fuss about again?

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December 23, 2008 | 5:05 pm

NYT realizes Jews aren’t just mad about money lost by Madoff

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

We’ve been writing about this for a while, but I guess now it’s news since The New York Times is reporting Jews feel particularly hurt in the Bernard Madoff mess not just because they lost money but because they feel it was stolen by a member of their own family. Rabbi David Wolpe, who previously discussed whether Madoff should be excommunicated, appears in the lede:

There is a teaching in the Talmud that says an individual who comes before God after death will be asked a series of questions, the first one of which is, “Were you honest in your business dealings?” But it is the Ten Commandments that have weighed most heavily on the mind of Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles in light of the sins for which Bernard L. Madoff stands accused.

“You shouldn’t steal,” Rabbi Wolpe said. “And this is theft on a global scale.”

The full scope of the misdeeds to which Mr. Madoff has confessed in swindling individuals and charitable groups has yet to be calculated, and he is far from being convicted. But Jews all over the country are already sending up something of a communal cry over a cost they say goes beyond the financial to the theological and the personal.

Here is a Jew accused of cheating Jewish organizations trying to help other Jews, they say, and of betraying the trust of Jews and violating the basic tenets of Jewish law. A Jew, they say, who seemed to exemplify the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes of the thieving Jewish banker.

So in synagogues and community centers, on blogs and in countless conversations, many Jews are beating their chests — not out of contrition, as they do on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but because they say Mr. Madoff has brought shame on their people in addition to financial ruin and shaken the bonds of trust that bind Jewish communities.

“Jews have these familial ties,” Rabbi Wolpe said. “It’s not solely a shared belief; it’s a sense of close communal bonds, and in the same way that your family can embarrass you as no one else can, when a Jew does this, Jews feel ashamed by proxy. I’d like to believe someone raised in our community, imbued with Jewish values, would be better than this.”

Read the rest here.

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December 22, 2008 | 8:14 pm

Comparing Madoff to the killer in ‘No Country for Old Men’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme had violent, or at least life-changing, consequences. Richard B. Woodward, writing for the Huffington Post, compares Madoff to Anton Chigurh, the assassin in “No Country for Old Men,” played on screen by the terrifying Javier Bardem:

A symbol of the terrifying randomness that in the author’s view governs the universe, Chigurh in one scene decides if a man will live or die on the flip of a coin. To meet him is to chance a quick and violent end.

It may sound hyperbolic to link Madoff with a serial killer. But in their relative swathes of destruction, Chirugh was just a local hit man. (“Some will rob you with a six-gun/Some with a fountain pen,“go the words to Woody Guthrie’s ballad “Pretty Boy Floyd.”) Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, would probably have no trouble with the analogy. He told the “Wall St. Journal” that hearing about Madoff’s alleged crimes was “like finding out your brother is a murderer.”

Barbara S. Fox, president of the Fox Residential Group, is one who felt the wings of death from Madoff brush her cheek. She begged him to take her money; it didn’t vanish only because, for unknown reasons, he turned her down. (This seems to have essential to his poisonous charm; only a select few had access to his financial acumen.)

Like Chigurh, he had the profound ability to alter the fate of lives by the simplest of means. Those he met and wished to ruin, he could allow to invest with him. On the other side of the coin, those he chose to pardon he turned away. It was a curse of intoxicating power, the Midas touch, except in reverse.

When I spoke with Tobin, he actually likened the Madoff revelations to “finding out that somebody who is very important in the family is a felon.” Murderer definitely sounds worse. By his own admission, he’s certainly ruined plenty of lives.

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