May 18, 2009 | 7:36 pm

‘What would Cheesus do?’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Photo: Preston Hollow People

Sara Bell, a Texas woman, was digging through a bag of Cheetos when she discovered Cheesus, a two-inch tall Cheeto (pictured at left) that she thought resembled Jesus. Here is the story from the Preston Hollow People:

Until she decides what to do with the Cheeto, Bell is keeping it safe, wrapped in tissue inside a box that once held a wristwatch.

“What I’ve been worried about is if I have it around my house, it’ll get eaten,” the retired teacher said. “If not by a person, then by an ant.”

Bell said she hadn’t shown the Cheeto to any ministers at her church (Highland Park United Methodist), but several friends have seen it, including Carolyn Matthews.

“I can’t imagine that anyone looks at their Cheeto closely enough to see that,” Matthews said. “I eat mine way too fast.”

Apparently, Bell isn’t the only person to eat Cheetos slowly enough for a divine experience. In the past 15 months, there have been media reports about similar finds by a Missouri woman and a Houston man.

“God is probably wherever you want to find God,” said the Rev. Diana Holbert, pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Old East Dallas. “It seems like a little bit of a waste of time, but who am I to judge?”

You can read the rest here.

We’ve been down this road before. Just last week it was the Virgin Mary coffee stain spotted by a Jewish reporter who was boxing up his desk. I actually agree that Cheesus is shaped like a person. But there is nothing messianic about it, no reason to believe that the Cheeto resembles Jesus and not an unknown person from history who had long hair and was found of wearing a robe. But, as the pastor said, “God is probably wherever you want to find God.”

(Hat tip: Holy Weblog)

May 18, 2009 | 7:10 pm

God and ‘Star Trek’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“Star Trek” was a fantastic movie, especially in IMAX, one of the most entertaining I’ve seen in a long time. But there wasn’t much about God in the film. After all: “Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.”

Writing for Beliefnet, Paul Asay explains the absence of God from the “Star Trek” series:

When Gene Roddenberry created “Star Trek,” he pictured a future dominated by science and human ingenuity—without a lot of religion to muddy things up. Oh, sure, Federation crew members met scads of religious sentient beings around the galaxy, but it turns out most were worshipping computers, power generators, or toga-wearing aliens. Roddenberry didn’t place a lot of faith in faith.

“Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all,” Roddenberry once said. “For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.”

And yet, Asay writes, the series has had quite the penchant for the Ten Commandments. Here are his 10 examples.

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May 18, 2009 | 6:01 pm

A Jew is New York’s first swine flu fatality

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Despite what I tweeted earlier, I do not have swine flu. But the virus is still going around, though thankfully the hysteria has died, and JTA reports that a Jew was New York’s first fatality from the non-kosher flu:

Mitchell Wiener, an assistant principal at Intermediate School 238 in Queens and an educator for 30 years, died Sunday night at Flushing Hospital Medical Center due to complications from the disease. He was 55 and lived in Flushing.

Wiener was the first person in New York State to die from swine flu and the fifth in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Wiener and his wife were members of the Garden Jewish Center in Flushing, according to news reports. He served for a time on the synagogue’s board of directors.

“He has a very warm personality,” Rabbi Martin Cooper of the Garden Jewish Center told the Newsday daily. “He is very well-liked in the congregation.”

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May 18, 2009 | 1:58 pm

Woody Allen, American Apparel settle ‘rabbi’ lawsuit

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Remember this American Apparel ad for der heyliker rebe? I found the image of Woody Allen dressed as a rabbi, from a scene in “Annie Hall,” at the corner of Alvarado and Sunset in Echo Park two years ago; another popped up in Manhattan.

Days later they were gone, and we quickly learned that was because American Apparel, and its scandalous founder, didn’t have permission to use it. Not exactly an altar boy himself—actually, both Dov Charney and Woody Allen are Jewish—Allen sued. Today the two settled for $5 million.

From The New York Times City Room blog:

The settlement means that Mr. Allen, who had initially sought $10 million in the trial, can avoid a trial that could have dredged up potentially salacious details about the filmmaker and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn.

“Threats and press leaks by American Apparel designed to smear me did not work and a scheme to call a long list of witnesses who had absolutely nothing to do with the case was also disallowed by the court,” Mr. Allen said outside the federal courthouse, reading from a statement.

“I suspect this dose of legal reality led to their 11th-hour settlement,” he added.

Mr. Charney, who spoke to reporters afterward, said he did not regret using he image of Mr. Allen dressed as a Hasidic Jew, and that his insurance company had forced him to settle.

“I’m not sorry for expressing myself,” he said. “I wish him the best with his career, and I am looking forward to his next film.”

The settlement brought to an end an episode that pitted controversial figures from the fields of film and fashion against each other in a highly public fashion.

More about what makes those figures controversial here.

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May 18, 2009 | 1:33 pm

Chais and other Madoff investors under criminal investigations

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Bernard Madoff

Stanley Chais, Jeffrey Picower and Carl Shapiro each lost tens of millions of dollars when Bernard Madoff’s monstrous Ponzi scheme fell apart. Their charitable foundations were hammered, and this month Chais was sued by the court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff’s assets, who said Chais was the first number on Madoff’s speed dial and had “intimate knowledge” of the fraud.

Chais fired back and denied being in on the scam. But now he and seven other investors are being investigated for possible criminal violations.

From the Wall Street Journal, via Reuters:

The paper named three investors under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Jeffry Picower and Stanley Chais, two philanthropists who are the target of lawsuits brought by the trustee liquidating the Madoff firm.

Carl Shapiro, a women’s clothing entrepreneur and close friend of Madoff, is also under criminal investigation, the article said.

Investigators have gathered evidence of Picower and Chais telling Madoff how much in returns they wanted and that their accounts would reflect the amounts, the paper said. It said investigators were also reviewing evidence suggesting Shapiro knew his returns were fraudulent.

The paper said prosecutors have not charged any Madoff investors with criminal wrongdoing.

The Journal quotes a lawyer for Chais, 82, and a representative of Shapiro, 96, as saying the men had no knowledge of the fraud. A lawyer for Picower, 67, told the paper his client was not complicit in the scheme and had suffered billions in losses.

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May 18, 2009 | 1:17 pm

Back in action

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s Monday morning, and I’m back in the saddle after a long weekend in Las Vegas. Sorry for the concurrent silence from The God Blog. I can assure you it was for a good cause.

Once a year, my college roommates and I—all Christians—reunite in Sin City. It’s a risky move, what with all the common Christian beliefs about gambling, which is why I had God cover for me on His blog last summer. The Almighty wrote:

Show Me one place in My holy book where I forbid gambling. (Also not in the Bible, promises that if you give your SS check to a televangelist, I will reward you with a new Cadillac.) My ministers will say you should be a good steward of what you’re given and should not attempt to get rich quick or fall in love money. And these words of wisdom are very true. Compulsive gambling, pseudo-professional gambling, these are behaviors I can’t approve. But gambling as affordable entertainment—to rip the industry’s motto—that’s something I would, er, bet on.

Overall, it was a successful trip, which means I made it home and with a few bucks in my pocket. In fact, I was up a little. But like one of the guys in the above news clip, I had wanted the gold.

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May 14, 2009 | 4:47 pm

Arkansas pol fingers Chuck Schumer as ‘that Jew’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Kim Hendren called Sen. Schumer "that Jew"

It’s difficult to mistake Chuck Schumer, the New York senator, for a non-Jew. But referring to him as “that Jew”—not cool, Zeus, or, in this case, Kim Hendren, an Arkansas Republican running for U.S. Senate. The story from the AP:

State Sen. Kim Hendren told The Associated Press on Thursday that he was wrong to refer to Schumer’s religious affiliation during a Pulaski County Republican Committee meeting last week. Hendren said he doesn’t remember the exact wording of his comment, but he was quoted by conservative blogger Jason Tolbert as calling Schumer “that Jew.”

“I ought not to have referred to it at all,” Hendren told the AP. “When I referred to him as Jewish, it wasn’t because I don’t like Jewish people.”

Uh huh. I’m sure some of Hendren’s best friends are Jewish.

What a gaffe. Doesn’t Hendren know Jews rule American politics?

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May 14, 2009 | 2:01 pm

Should Christians be tolerant?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“Was Jesus tolerant?” Greg Stier, president of Dare 2 Share Ministries, asks in an op-ed for the Christian Post. You’ve heard the answer before: Of the sinner but not the sin.

Stier continues:

So are we as Christians called to be tolerant? Yes and no! Jesus was tolerant and intolerant at the same time and we are called to be just like him. The Son of God hated transgression and had no problem calling a sin and a sin (see the woman at the well.) But, at the same time, he had no problem engaging them, even if it meant breaking cultural taboos (see the woman at the well again.)

He hung out with sinners and, maybe even more telling, sinners hung out with him. Throughout the Synoptics he is accused by the religious right of his time of being a partier and of hanging out in places that a man of God should never be hanging out. In Christ there was this strange tolerance/intolerance mix that was like a cattle prod to the religious hypocrites and a spiritual aphrodisiac to the sinners of his day. This strange brew drew sinners in, embraced them fully and convicted them deeply, all at the same time.

The image is from the the “South Park” episode “The Death Camp of Tolerance,” which teaches us all what happens tolerance is taken too far.

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May 13, 2009 | 6:19 pm

Why are evangelicals more supportive of Israel than so many American Jews?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s no mystery that evangelical Christians love Israel. I’ve written about this quite a few times before. Here’s a fresh analysis from Stuart H. Schwartz, who is in the communication studies department at Liberty University, the evangelical school founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who was a big fan of Israel, too. He writes:

Evangelicals are dramatically more supportive of Israel than the nearly half of the six million American Jews who, according to The National Jewish Population Survey, identify themselves as reformed and/or secular Jews, many of whom are hostile toward both Israel and bible-based Judaism. They reject God in favor of “peoplehood.“As Dennis Prager, the columnist and radio talk host who describes himself as a bible-honoring Jew, notes, “their religion is rarely Judaism.” Instead, “it is every ‘ism’ of the Left. These include liberalism, socialism, feminism, Marxism, and environmentalism.” 

The result: God has become the enemy for significant numbers of American Jews, and the enemies of God their allies.  Noted scholar James Q. Wilson, the former Harvard professor who won the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the “moral clarity” of his scholarship, pointed out that, in fact, God stands between the progressive, more vocal half of the American Jewish community and Evangelicals. Evangelicals look upon scripture as a guide to moral living while the former are garden-variety radicals who view God as an oppressive myth.

Thoughts?

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May 13, 2009 | 4:30 pm

Asher Roth: Not a nice Jewish boy

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Asher Roth, who sounds remarkably like that flame-out Eminem and last month released the smash hit “I Love College,” does not consider himself a contemporary of Matisyahu or even an heir to the Beastie Boys. A portrait from The Forward:

With the last name Roth and a first name that is one of the tribes of Israel, it is not surprising that he is taken for Jewish, even if he himself may not publicly identify as such. Although Roth has a Jewish father, he is quick to point out that his mother is Presbyterian. In fact, the “Jewish question” is quite sensitive for him. Just a cursory glance at the Internet, and on discussion boards, one will find such phrases as “G-Unit meets Jew-unit,” “Jews are cutting out the middle men and finally doing the rapping themselves” and “this is proof that tall Israelis are really running rap.”

Such intense labeling has provoked some backlash from Roth himself. When asked about any discrimination he may have encountered because of this perception, Roth replied that if anything, it may come from Jews themselves. “People have a negative reaction when I explain I am not Jewish,” Roth said. He related the scene at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, where he played a show headlined by Matisyahu. “He attracts a Jewish crowd, and they were bummed out [that I wasn’t Jewish]. But if I lost that fan, I don’t think I wanted that fan to begin with,” Roth said.

He is clearly focused more on overcoming the “white-black” divide rather than negotiating the Christian-Jewish difference. Reaching out to a new demographic that hasn’t traditionally been drawn to hip-hop, old timers of rap joke about how he is bringing “high-heels and Vespas” to hip-hop shows. Roth is looking for a wide field of new people to bring in, while trying to convince many others that he himself belongs there at all. When he says, “I’m turning believers into nonbelievers ... I wake up in the morning and prove some people wrong,” he’s referring not to religion, but to the plausibility of a white, suburban rap star.

“Hip-hop is still alive. I am living proof,” he says.

Read the rest here.

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May 13, 2009 | 3:20 pm

Zionism and ‘The Jewish Body’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Heard enough about the scrawny, weak-limbed Jew? (Not all of us can be Scot Mendelson.) Well the latest book from Schocken’s Jewish Encounters series is called “The Jewish Body,” and it focuses on the way the Jewish body has been seen throughout history and how Zionism transformed it.

From Haaretz:

If there is a thread that organizes all these themes, it is this: The world made the Jews weak, so weak for so long that even they became convinced that the only strength they would ever have would be mental. ... They came to mistrust the physical. ... But two great events of the twentieth century − one the worst thing that ever happened to the Jews and the other the best − turned the tables on Jewish weakness forever. Strength prevailed, because the very best powers of the Jewish mind became allied to a new physical strength, rising out of the ashes and blood of six million murders.

“The Jews tried mind alone for eighteen hundred years; that led to defenselessness, contempt, isolation, pogroms and finally mass murder…. The world has been, is, and will be a very dangerous place for Jews. They tried weakness - oh, how they tried; indeed, they were better versed in it than anyone else on earth. Strength is better.”

(skip)

The remarkable alchemy of early Zionism was not that it turned mice into lions or made Schwartzes into Schwarzeneggers; rather, the birth of the state served as evidence that a nation without Schwarzeneggers could still prevail. And it did this, largely, through the yiddisher kop, by placing an emphasis on brains over brawn. For a kid like me, raised in America, the biggest surprise upon enlisting in the Israel Defense Forces was not the powerful build of my fellow soldiers, but the way their puny stature disappointingly resembled my own. The average reserve company brings together pot-bellied, bad-backed chain-smokers into a deft fighting unit. The IDF is a brains-over-brawn outfit, and much the same can be said about all of Israel and its high-tech driven economy.

Read the rest of the review here.

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May 12, 2009 | 9:54 pm

Holocaust survivor, 103, to share story in LA

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Every year, usually around Yom HaShoah, which just passed, mainstream reporters write feature stories about the harrowing tales of Holocaust survivors. Invariably, those stories include an important mention: that every year the ranks of survivors shrinks, and pretty soon they’re be no one left to recount the horror of extreme hatred.

If only more survivors had the strength of Leopold Engleitner. At 103, Engleitner, a Jehovah’s Witness forced into a camp because he refused to join Hitler’s army, is the oldest known male survivor of the Holocaust. He’s speaking Thursday at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and next week at UCLA.

The visits are part of his third U.S. speaking tour. (For other engagements, click here). A bit about at talk at Moorpark College from the Ventura County Star:

He will be joined by Bernhard Rammerstorfer, who told Engleitner’s story in the book, “Unbroken Will,” and documentary, “Unbroken Will USA Tour.” The documentary will be shown at the Laemmle’s Theatre Sunset 5 in West Hollywood from May 15 to 21.

“He had the strength to say no,” Rammerstorfer said by phone from Austria. “He didn’t join the army. He was only an ordinary farmer, but his story reminds people, especially young people, that they in their lives should listen to their conscience.”

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