January 25, 2009 | 10:28 pm

‘A disaster for Catholic-Jewish relations’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

That was how John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, described Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to “rehabilitate” four excommunicated bishops, including a Holocaust denier. You can hear Allen on NPR here.

Haaretz has more on the story:

Bishop Williamson was one of four traditionalist bishops to have his excommunication lifted Saturday, just days after he was shown in a Swedish state TV interview saying that historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

The four bishops were excommunicated 20 years ago after they were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent - a move the Vatican said at the time was an act of schism.

“Even if the revocation of the excommunication is unrelated to Williamson’s comments regarding the Holocaust, what kind of message is this sending regarding the Church’s attitude toward the Holocaust?” Yad Vashem wrote. “Although we understand that Williamson’s statements do not represent the Church’s stance, we continue to hope that the Church will vigorously condemn these unacceptable and odious comments.”

Jewish groups denounced the Vatican for having embraced a Holocaust denier and warned that the pope’s decision would have serious implications for Catholic-Jewish relations as well as the pontiff’s planned visit to the Holy Land later this year.

“I do not see how business can proceed as usual,” said Rabbi David Rosen, Jerusalem-based head of interrelgious affairs at the American Jewish Committee and a key Vatican-Jewish negotiator late last week.

January 24, 2009 | 5:16 pm

GodTube is changing its name and platform

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s just not clear to what. In the above video, the Skit Guys talk about GodTube becoming a YouTube-Facebook-MySpace hybrid. Not sure anyone but Christian bands will be interested the MySpace elements.

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January 23, 2009 | 6:19 pm

The end of Catholic schools?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The New York Times checked in last week on the slow death of the Catholic school system. (Indeed, growth is a real rarity.) The piece is well-written and worth reading. It opens:

It is a familiar drill in nearly all of the nation’s Roman Catholic school systems: a new alarm every few years over falling enrollment; church leaders huddling over what to do; parents rallying to save their schools. And then the bad news.

When the Diocese of Brooklyn last week proposed closing 14 more elementary schools, it was not the deepest but only the latest of a thousand cuts suffered, one tearful closing announcement at a time, as enrollment in the nation’s Catholic schools has steadily dropped by more than half from its peak of five million 40 years ago.

But recently, after years of what frustrated parents describe as inertia in the church hierarchy, a sense of urgency seems to be gripping many Catholics who suddenly see in the shrinking enrollment a once unimaginable prospect: a country without Catholic schools.

From the ranks of national church leaders to the faithful in the pews, there are dozens of local efforts to forge a new future for parochial education by rescuing the remaining schools or, if need be, reinventing them. The efforts are all being driven, in one way or another, by a question in a University of Notre Dame task force report in 2006: “Will it be said of our generation that we presided over the demise” of Catholic schools?

A PDF of that task force report can be downloaded here. For the rest of the NYT article, click here.

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January 23, 2009 | 3:00 pm

The condensed Bible for the working person

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This gem was produced by the Bel Air Drama Department a few months ago. It got lost in my publishing platform, and now that I’ve rediscovered it, I’m marrying it with a story from the Los Angeles Times that I bookmarked a few weeks ago. The story, “A Closer, Faster Walk With Thee,” was about the industry aimed at improving your run—because you don’t have time to walk—with God:

The American style of worship, like everything else in people’s overloaded lives, is speeding up.

This hurried search for the Almighty partly explains the rise of a niche industry of books, DVDs, podcasts, text messages and e-mail blasts that distill the essentials of faith, from creation to the crucifixion.

The materials offer bite-sized spiritual morsels that can be digested in minutes, or even seconds, on the daily commute, aboard airplanes or at the dinner table. As “7 Minutes With God” advises: “Take 7 minutes each day to: build your faith in God, grow closer to the Father, make progress in your spiritual life.”

And what about your over-programmed 10-year-old? Again, religious publishers have an answer: “The Kid Who Would Be King: One Minute Bible Stories About Kids.”

“The audience is definitely anyone who’s interested in a ready-made, quick little devotion they can do every day,” said Tim Jordan, an editor at B&H Publishing Group in Nashville, which produces the “The One Minute Bible.”

“It’s not meant to replace the Bible,” Jordan added. “It’s meant to whet your appetite.”

Unfortunately, the article, which ran in the Times’ once-vaunted Column One slot, really missed the mark. It fails to discuss the real value of religion on the run. I’d say, like faith on your cell phone or drive-thru churches, it’s minimal—and also makes no mention of the lion of quick-hit devotionals, Oswald Chambers’ “My Utmost for His Highest.” Baffling, I know.

Instead, we get this excerpt, which seems like it could have been written by the book publishers themselves:

“If you know how to reach readers of religious materials, you are onto something, because they are devoted,” said Marcia Z. Nelson, religion book reviews editor for Publishers Weekly. “Devotionals and prayer books are perennial sellers.”

And they’re fueling interest in traditional religious texts, publishers say.

The Christian Booksellers Assn. says that eight to 10 of the nation’s 50 top-selling Christian books are devotionals or other texts that provide daily spiritual guidance.

“Christian publishers and retailers realize that today’s busy consumers are looking for . . . spiritual food that can be consumed in a convenient way,” said Bill Anderson, the association’s president.

Such books stand to fill a growing spiritual void.

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January 23, 2009 | 1:36 pm

Muslim cleric says it’s cool for men to beat, even rape, their wives

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

No additional commentary needed:

Samir Abu Hamza, who runs an Islamic centre in Melbourne, ridiculed Australian laws banning forced sex within marriage.

Hamza told a male audience in Sydney: ‘Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?’

He added that wives must immediately respond to their husbands’ sexual demands.

The firebrand preacher also said a man was entitled to use ‘limited force’ as a last resort to punish a disobedient wife.

He explained: ‘After you have advised them for a long, long time, then you smack them, you beat them and - please brothers, calm down - the beating that the Muhammad showed is like the toothbrush that you use to brush your teeth.’

‘You are not allowed to bruise them; you are not allowed to make them bleed,’ he added in a video of the 2003 lecture in Sydney recently posted online.

‘You don’t go and grab a broomstick and say that is what Allah has said.’

I grew up in San Diego County, and I remember the story of how one JV baseball player at Rancho Bernardo High—The Factory that produced Cole Hamels, Hank Blalock and a friend of mine who was in the Dodgers farm system—was, um, “hazed.” The legal term was “sodomized;” it involved Ben-Gay and a broom handle.

Anyway, the video of Hamza’s sermon, which is 50 minutes long, is after the jump:

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January 23, 2009 | 11:57 am

‘Defiance’ director talks about Jewish power, Hamas and Nazis

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s not something I bring up in polite company, but I often discuss Jewish power—“two words which, by themselves, can be harmless but which together form a verbal missile of hate”—right here on this blog. Why? Well, it’s an important topic, and it’s too easy to stay away from it for hear of upsetting any delicate sensibilities.

The important thing, I think, is discussing Jewish power in the lovingly critical and intense way that J.J. Goldberg did it with his seminal mid-‘90s book on the subject—and knowing the difference between that and this or, worse yet, this.

In light of Ed Zwick’s new film, “Defiance,” which I am still itching to see, Jeffrey Goldberg spoke with the director about Daniel Craig smashing the stereotype of the weak Jew and recent comments comparing Israelis to Nazis. Here is a snippet of Goldberg’s interview:

Jeffrey Goldberg: You’re opening in Europe. We’ve heard a lot of talk in Europe comparing what Israel does in the Occupied Territories to what the Nazis did to the Jews. Are you worried about the way the movie will be understood in Europe right now?

Edward Zwick: You know, the argument comparing what the Jews are doing and what the Nazis did is just such a preposterous exaggeration, because one when one uses the word genocide, you have to ask: If Israel were interested in genocide than they have more than the means necessary to accomplish such a thing, and given that, in context, they’re using a certain amount of restraint. Yes, I know the word “restraint” is hard to talk about, given what’s happening in Gaza, but it is a type of restraint. What I’m responding to is equivalence. Words are important. Genocide is a word thrown around too easily. This is happening now in Poland and Lithuania. There’s an attempt to make an equivalence between alleged war crimes of the Bielskis and the Holocaust.

JG: Do you see any equivalence between Israel and Hamas?

EZ: What I see is that there is a double standard, that on one side you have an organization dedicated to creating the maximum amount of destruction and horror, and doing it in a way that is deliberately bloody-minded and terrorizing. On the other hand you have an extremely powerful state with all the means at its disposal to create a horrifying result, and yet trying, despite the resulting horrible casualties, nonetheless seeming to use extraordinary restraint. It’s really an interesting contradiction.

JG: Let’s talk about Jewish self-defense. In Schindler’s List, the Jews are the sheep and Schindler is the shepherd. Here, they’re fighters.

EZ: I think this has been a long odyssey. In the context of this, I’ve read a lot about Orde Wingate, or the Jewish battalions in World War I, but I think it might have been Leon Wieseltier who led me back to read the Book of Judges or the Book of Joshua to see just how much of a warrior culture this always was. The notion of self-defense is implicit in the David and Goliath story, in the Maccabee story, in the Bar Kochba story. It was all there. I would say that Schindler’s List, as powerful as it was, seemed to have continued with a particular iconography of victimization and passivity. That was the iconography with which I had grown up and to which I had grown accustomed.

You can read the rest here.

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January 23, 2009 | 1:03 am

I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK ...

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Yesterday, I changed my profile photo on Twitter and Facebook to the one pictured at left. The move has generated a few funny comments from friends, but it’s also caused me a bit of misfortune. Like when I watched “Life of Brian” a few weeks ago, the tune from Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song” has been on a mental loop.

If you’re not familiar with the sketch, there is footage below of its performance at the Hollywood Bowl below. I was a huge fan of Monty Python growing up. But please don’t read too much into the lyrics.

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January 22, 2009 | 10:32 pm

Religious Freedom Day no place for Bibles

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s called National Religious Freedom Day, but this year the superintendent for schools in Collier County, Fla., wouldn’t let a familiar face, Jerry Rutherford, hand out Bibles at the local high school:

“This rejection is a slap in the face,” Rutherford said. “The decision to deny access to community groups that are religious in nature is censorship and bias.”

There’s no indication that any other religious texts were welcomed onto campus. Maybe it’s supposed to be called Freedom From Religion Day.

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January 22, 2009 | 8:49 pm

Obama’s rabbi cousin offers advice on Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It wasn’t too long ago that we learned Michelle Obama, now the first lady, had a cousin who was a rabbi in Chicago. In a new development, it appears Obama’s cousin, Rabbi Capers Funnye Jr., is quite the peacenik, as can be seen from the above video, in which a number of rabbis urge President Barack Obama to push for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was shot for Brit Tzedek v’Shalom – Jewish Alliance for Justice & Peace:

“We are seeking and looking for peace between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people,” Funnye says. “There is no time left to walk softly and hope for the best. The consequences of failing to establish a durable peace are grim.”

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January 22, 2009 | 4:16 pm

Anti-Semites say the darndest things

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A lot of really ugly things were said about Jews during Israel’s war in Gaza. They were compared to Nazis; they were called “filthy self-centred—bigoted and arrogant circumsized anthropoids;” they were told to “go back to the oven.”

Similar comments could be found on the Website of StandWithUs, which organized a number of rallies in support of Israel and just sent me a release with a litany of hate-filled comments. Among them: “Hitler was right!! Wish he finished the job!”; “Admit to the thousand year old talmadic zionist bloodlust”; and “Drop dead jew.”

“All Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, should be deeply concerned by this increasing anti-Semitic bigotry and its violent language, by the license many people seem to feel they have to express it so openly, and by the effort to intimidate into silence those with whom they disagree,” StandWithUs international director Roz Rothstein said. “This trend suggests that our country is moving in a dangerous direction. All Americans must stand up and denounce it.”

I far from think this is the beginning of the end for American Jews. But I’m always surprised by how virulent and deep-rooted anti-Semitism appears at times like these.

All the comments left on the StandWithUs site can be seen here. My personal favorite—and I use that word sarcastically—is this little bit of hate-filled brevity:

“SAY HI TO LUCIFER FOR ME”

For the story behind the image above, watch the video after the jump:

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January 22, 2009 | 3:03 am

‘To all who think Rick Warren is the greatest thing since deodorant’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Rev. Rick Warren, who delivered the invocation yesterday at President Obama’s inauguration, has become a real lightning rod for critics—both on the left and far right. Liberals don’t like him because of his stance on homosexuality and gay marriage. And the far right, well, they don’t like him because he isn’t enough of a fundamentalist—despite what Jeff Sharlet calls Warren’s “big-tent fundamentalism.” An example comes from this e-mail I received today from a reader:

“To all who think RW is the greatest thing since deodorant,  I’d encourage them to do a little research on him which will reveal a lot of very troubling problems.

“In a nutshell,  the Bible and Jesus Christ are VERY offensive to the unbeliever and any pastor who is faithfully preaching and teaching what the Bible says and who Jesus is and what he requires to be His follower is going to be extremely unpopular.  RW is the most popular preacher in the US and probably the world which says volumes about what he’s teaching.  Rick,  as do all pastors in the “seeker friendly” church movement,  preaches a shallow,  watered down, generic, feel good “gospel” devoid of any doctrine designed so as to entertain, not to offend anyone and to attract large numbers of people to their churches.  Unfortunately,  most of his followers are headed for hell.”

There are so many hilarious lines in there, I don’t even know where to start. But the point worth making is this: Warren’s church belongs to the Southern Baptist denomination, which belongs to the conservative branch of the American church, and if a fellow traveler, albeit a far more fundamentalist one, can’t even see those in Warren’s congregation as legitimate Christians, what hope is there for peace in the Middle East?

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January 21, 2009 | 8:44 pm

Papal pastrami

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

After enjoying a wonderful pastrami sandwich at Langer’s deli, in Los Angeles’ forgotten formerly Jewish neighborhood of MacArthur Park, I walked past this mural on the side of a Salvadoran restaurant. I’ve walked past the mural of Pope John Paul II many times before, but something different struck me about it this time. It felt both completely out of place and altogether beautiful at the same time. Not sure why.

If I remember correctly, the mural was painted to honor the late pontiff on his 1987 visit to L.A.

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