September 9, 2009 | 2:46 pm

He’s not John Bobbitt but ...

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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You may have heard the story recently of a man whose wife and the two other women he was sleeping with, who happened to be sisters, tied him to a bed and then glued his penis to his stomach. If not, he’s a story from the opening of the women’s assault and false imprisonment trial yesterday:

The man said he agreed to be tied to the bed because he and Ziemann had talked about bondage and he had agreed to pay for some nice fabric she would buy to tie him.

He said he was startled by a knock at the door, and worried it might be Ziemann’s husband. He realized the “fun had stopped” after his wife and the other women entered the room.

“The rest came in and the hurting trip began,” said the man, who testified in shackles because he is jailed in an unrelated case on theft and child abuse charges. “It got chaotic real quick, real fast. ... I was asking everybody in the room to cut me loose.”

The man testified that his wife was the first to leave, and that the others left “in a panic” when he began to struggle free of his bonds. It took him another 2-3 minutes to get free and run naked outside and seek help, he said.

Jay sent me this and asked me to find something Jewish in it. My response: Was he circumcized?

If not, he very well may be now.

September 9, 2009 | 11:14 am

The beatification of Barack Obama

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Holy Obama

Love the commentary about St. Barack from The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb, who was the deputy communications director for John McCain’s presidential campaign. Goldfarb writes: “You expect it from Time and Newsweek, but this is from the official White House photo stream.”

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September 8, 2009 | 5:38 pm

Matisyahu’s magic

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Matisyahu is a frequent subject of this blog—whether it’s talking with Christians about Moshiach or being mentioned as a point of comparison for my beard. The latest occasion is a Q&A the reggae rapper did with Rabbi Naomi Levy, who happens to be married to The Jewish Journal’s Rob Eshman:

NL: Yes, I’m curious how you think your words affect Jews and non-Jews.

M: Well, I think there’s definitely a certain kind of pride that Jewish kids get from my music, but I think everyone’s going to come to it from a different place. There’s definitely a large amount of young, Jewish kids out there that might be affiliated, [or] might not be, and the music is their kind of bridge into combining their Jewish identity with mainstream culture. When I was a kid, there was never anything really like that. There was never really any kind of a bridge between those two things, and they were always kind of at odds with each other, coming from a secular background. So I think for those kids, it’s a beautiful thing to have those feelings and that pride.

NL: Most performers, even if they are Jewish, they’re not out there being Jewish while they’re performing. With you it’s so out there, which gives your audience a different kind of connection.

M: Yeah, totally different thing altogether. And then for people that are not necessarily Jewish, you have to give people credit. People, when they’re into music or into something, they investigate it, they study it, they just feel the way it resonates inside of them, and it’s just as powerful for a non-Jew as it is for those kids.

NL: So what is your hope for how your music can affect people, Jews and non-Jews? What would be your dream of what your music could do for people?

M: Obviously I want to be able to sell out stadiums and to sell millions of records and all that and have all those opportunities, but for me the vision part of it is really about being able to really make something happen, something real, and then everything that would come along with that, it would be a reflection.

NL: What would be that thing?

M: It’s like a certain magic that happens sometimes on stage or in the studio, and it’s when you have that moment. It’s this kind of real emotional experience that takes place where it’s kind of a unification, that’s sort of a transcendent experience.

Read the rest here.

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September 8, 2009 | 11:45 am

Prayer before sex

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This headline may require a double-take: “Give us this day our daily… Catholic church issues prayer for faithful to say before sex.”

It’s not really that strange. Maybe unlikely to actually be done in the heat of the moment. From the Daily Mail:

The prayer, which appears in the Prayer Book for Spouses, implores God ‘to place within us love that truly gives, tenderness that truly unites, self-offering that tells the truth and does not deceive, forgiveness that truly receives, loving physical union that welcomes’.

It adds: ‘Open our hearts to you, to each other and to the goodness of your will.

‘Cover our poverty in the richness of your mercy and forgiveness. Clothe us in true dignity and take to yourself our shared aspirations, for your glory, for ever and ever.’

The 64-page book has been published by the London-based Catholic Truth Society.

The group has close links to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.

The Rt Rev Paul Hendricks, who is the Auxiliary Bishop of Southwark and sits on the charity’s board, said he thought the prayer’s inclusion was ‘brave but good’.

‘I suppose it is a bit idealistic but it is recognising that God is at the heart of the marriage relationship between husband and wife,’ he said.

‘It is important for the Church to affirm the value of marriage and family life and I suppose this is a particular way of doing that.’

Read the rest here.

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September 7, 2009 | 5:40 pm

Bush or Obama: the bigger faith-based offender

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway argues that President Obama has done nothing substantial to change former President Bush’s much maligned Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. (Semantic name changes do not count as substantial.) But for some reason no one seems to care anymore. Mollie writes:

If the claimed mission and structure of the office are the same, the pivotal difference between the two presidents’ approaches was supposed to be hiring policy. President Bush advocated exempting religious organizations that accept taxpayer funding from regulations forbidding religious discrimination in hiring. President Obama said he would overturn that policy.

“If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help, and you can’t discriminate against them—or against the people you hire—on the basis of their religion,” he said on the stump. But when he rolled out his office in February, he tabled that issue, sending it to the Justice Department for review. The Bush administration also asked Justice to handle the issue.

Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, was a vocal critic of Mr. Bush’s faith-based office. Now, under Mr. Obama, he serves on the advisory council’s task force to improve the functioning of the office. Explaining his turnaround, he said he doesn’t view Mr. Obama’s office as partisan—the way Mr. Bush’s was. But acknowledging that there was no substantive difference between the offices yet, Mr. Lynn said: “We have a guarded optimism that when the advisory council, Justice and the White House act and get down to the nitty gritty, they will make this a constitutionally protected program. However, we have no proof of that and no guarantee.”

Now that is the audacity of hope.

Read the rest here.

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September 7, 2009 | 4:16 pm

Judge orders Christian girl into public school

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I had a lot of friends growing up who were homeschooled. Some were well socialized, others weren’t; most were educated that way because their parents either disapproved with what public schools taught or with the environment it would put their children in.

I disagreed with both perspectives. But, as I’ve written before, there are plenty, particularly Christians, who think that homeschool is what’s best for their kids.

But now a New Hampshire judge has ordered a 10-year-old Christian girl out of homeschool and into the public education system because of her “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs.”

Yes, it’s an odd story. Here’s the news from the Washington Times:

According to court documents filed in Laconia, a small city in the central New Hampshire’s Belknap County, Amanda is a well-adjusted child whose parents were divorced in 1999.

The mother has primary physical custody of Amanda, whom she has home-schooled for several years in math, English, social studies, science, handwriting, spelling and the Bible.

The course load, except for the Bible study, is similar to what public students get and the mother’s home schooling has “more than kept up with the academic requirements of the [local] school system,” the judge’s statement said. The child also takes supplemental public school classes in art, Spanish, theater and physical education and is involved in extracurricular sports such as gymnastics, horseback riding, softball and basketball.

Her parents have been feuding for years over how she should be educated. The father tried to get Amanda removed from the mother’s tutelage in 2006, but another judge ruled against him. However, the court did appoint Janice McLaughlin as a guardian of the child’s legal interests.

The father continued to push for some changes in the way his daughter was educated.

“[Mr. Kurowski] believes that exposure to other points of view will decrease Amanda’s rigid adherence to her mother’s religious beliefs and increase her ability to get along with others and to function in a world which requires some element of independent thinking and tolerance for different points of view,” Judge Sadler’s ruling said.

The ruling quoted Mrs. McLaughlin as saying the child “appeared to reflect the mother’s rigidity on questions of faith.” The child would “be best served by exposure to different points of view at a time in her life when she must begin to critically evaluate multiple systems of belief and behavior,” it added.

The ruling also said Amanda told a counselor she was distressed by her father’s refusal to accept her religious beliefs and that “his choice to spend eternity away from her proves that he does not love her as much as he says he does.”

According to the brief filed by the child’s mother, Mrs. McLaughlin dismissed critical evidence and key witnesses in the case because they were “connected to Christianity.”

When the mother tried to give the guardian material on home-schooling, Mrs. McLaughlin reportedly said: “I don’t want to hear it. It’s all Christian-based.”

Read the rest here.

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September 7, 2009 | 1:02 pm

Pastor prays Obama ‘dies and goes to hell’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I voted for Barack Obama, and I’m pleased to say that his efforts since taking office in January have validated that decision. He wasn’t just handed one or two messes to fix, but a plethora. And I’d say thus far he’s done about as well as anyone could have hoped for—except for on the whole health reform debate; that’s been a bit indecipherable.

But no matter what else he does in office, some will not be able to reconcile approval of Obama’s job with disapproval of his stance on abortion. At the top of that list would be Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Church:

“Why should Barack Obama melt like a snail? Why should Barack Obama die like the untimely birth of a woman? Why should his children be fatherless and his wife left a widow, as we read in this passage?” Anderson asked in a sermon heard in the above video. “Well, I’ll tell you why: Because it Barack Obama thinks it’s ok to use a salty solution—right?—to abort the unborn. Because that is how abortions are done, my friends, using salt. And I would like to see Barack Obama melt like a snail tonight.”

Scary stuff, indeed. I don’t think it’s part of the trend that CNN’s Rick Sanchez seems to fear. But certainly scary.

Anderson isn’t my kind of Christian, and it’s upsetting to think that he is the shepherd to some misguided flock. But over at GetReligion, E.E. Evans looks at how the media has covered this story and whether Anderson should be seen as more than just some radical nutjob.

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September 6, 2009 | 1:18 pm

End of an unusual NBA career

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Lance Allred was one of the NBA’s more unusual stories. The deaf native son of a polygamist Mormon community, Allred scored a total of just three points in his 10 minutes as an NBA player. He has been a journeyman in the truest sense. But now he’s getting some attention for his memoir and his new life as a writer.

Yeah, he’s still mad at his first college coach, Rick Majerus.

Here’s Adrian Wojnarowski writing about Allred for Yahoo! Sports:

Allred has had a dark, confusing journey. In a sport of stereotypical actors, where owners and executives, coaches and players, can be easily compartmentalized, Allred defies it all. His first book is on the shelves and a second manuscript is nearly completed: historical fiction on the 14th century Teutonic Knights in Germany. No, Lance Allred doesn’t make the bus trips through the NBA D-League with an Xbox in his bag.

“They fought in the Baltics, a bunch of bad-asses,” Allred said of his latest subjects.

Allred never would’ve considered himself one of those, but his staying power, his resiliency, have proven him so. He survived as the grandson of Mormon royalty – a descendent of Rulon C. Allred, the prophet of the fundamentalist sect. He survived three years with Majerus, whose relentless abuse included declaring Allred a “disgrace to cripples” and telling him he had “weaseled his way through life using his hearing [loss] as an excuse.” Allred said Majerus tortured him in ways overt and subtle, pushing him to the brink of a nervous breakdown and ultimately post-traumatic syndrome. Majerus denied saying such things and was cleared of discrimination after a university investigation, but he resigned shortly after Allred’s revelations were made public in 2003, citing health problems.

“That took me a long time to get over,” Allred said. “I’ve owned up to my own shortcomings at Utah. Had I been more emotionally healthy and got some help, I might have been better prepared to handle something that nobody should ever have to endure. It seems so absurd now, but I was looking for a prophet to lead me. I wasn’t comfortable with myself and got myself into a bind.

“But in turn, I give Majerus no credit for my success. I’ve learned to combat it all, but every now and then, I still have a nightmare about him where I wake up in a cold sweat and then I just think, ‘Thank God I’m not playing for him anymore.’ ”

Read the rest here.

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September 5, 2009 | 6:12 pm

‘Jesus Loves You’ gets the business from Westboro Baptist Church

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Craig Gross has dedicated himself to ministering to people living, as he calls it in his first book, “The Gutter.” He’s the founder of XXXChurch, an evangelical outfit sharing the gospel at porn conventions and handing out Bibles that say on the cover “Jesus Loves Porn Stars.” Now Gross is the co-author of “Jesus Loves You ... this I know.”

The book has been out for a little while now, but the folks at Westboro Baptist Church just got around to reviewing it. If you don’t know much about the church that pickets soldiers’ funerals and favors the slogan “God Hates Fags,” I’ll just tell you it was unlikely they were going to give Gross and co-author Jason Harper any praise:

This “book” is a collection of perverse platitudinous probably-plagiarized ditties designed to cast off the bonds which the good laws and statutes of God impose on the human heart.  The “authors” went into the bowels of this dark-hearted nation, and pulled forth some of the most motley grungy rebellious proud sinners and chronicled their misery.  News flash girls: You live a life utterly contrary to all your Creator has told you to do and – no flippin’ duh – you’re miserable!  This life is vanity; it’s laden with misery; and if you focus all your energies sowing to the flesh, and ignoring the spirit and your duty to God, of course you’ll be miserable.  The only hope for people in that mess – as well as the power-mongering wealthy fancier proud sinners of doomed-america (from the least to the greatest) – is the truth.  Obey God and he will bless you; disobey him and he will curse you, in every way, every day, in this life and after.  Unless you tell your fellow man to obey God and rebuke him for his sin, you hate him.  So – like all the rest of the lying whore false prophets of this nation – of whatever brand of poison – craig and jason hate their fellow man.  They offer this sappy-floppy-pretend-love for one reason only – to make the bucks!

That last line is pretty comical, but it gets better here.

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September 5, 2009 | 1:35 pm

The evolution of a high school controversy

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Humorous story from the Sedalia Democrat about an uncalled-for controversy at a Missouri high school. The spark was this image used for its band t-shirt. Under the Smith-Cotton high school name and the evolution timeline are the words “Brass Evolutions 2009”:

Assistant Band Director Brian Kloppenburg said the shirts were designed by him, Band Director Jordan Summers and Main Street Logo. Kloppenburg said the shirts were intended to portray how brass instruments have evolved in music from the 1960s to modern day. Summers said they chose the evolution of man because it was “recognizable.” The playlist of songs the band is slated to perform revolve around the theme “Brass Evolutions.”

The band debuted the T-shirts when it marched in the Missouri State Fair parade. Summers said he was surprised when he received a direct complaint after the parade.

While the shirts don’t directly violate the district’s dress code, Assistant Superintendent Brad Pollitt said complaints by parents made him take action.

“I made the decision to have the band members turn the shirts in after several concerned parents brought the shirts to my attention,” Pollitt said.

Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned.

“If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing,” he said.

Band parent Sherry Melby, who is a teacher in the district, stands behind Pollitt’s decision. Melby said she associated the image on the T-shirt with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”

Right ... because they don’t teach evolution in the high school’s biology courses. Hmmm.

Read the rest here. And thanks for the link, Dennis.

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September 4, 2009 | 10:12 pm

‘Basterds’ and Jewish beliefs

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve been talking about it for a while, but I’m finally going to see “Inglourious Basterds” tonight. In light of that, here’s some good reading from Religion News Service:

Yet the film also represents a growing genre of Jewish-themed films in which the victims become the victors. Anne Frank is no longer hiding in the attic; the fate of Judaism no longer depends on benevolent gentiles like Oskar Schindler.

In short, the Jews are fed up. And they’re not going to take it anymore. But does Judaism condone such retribution?

Rabbis and academics point out that Judaism distinguishes between acts of self-defense and vengeance and Jewish law frowns upon torturing an enemy—even Adolf Hitler himself, said Rabbi Joel Roth, a professor at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

“On the other hand, I also understand the human emotion,” he said. “Dispassionately, do you want to see them scalped? No, but you have to consider the context. And, if it’s a greater deterrent that would save other people’s lives, maybe one could defend it.”

Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a New York-based Jewish think tank, heralds the film as a long-overdue “fun action Jewish-revenge fantasy.”

Read the rest here.

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September 2, 2009 | 6:20 pm

The second coming of ‘My Jesus Year’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I didn’t realize it had been requisite for books to be accompanied by YouTube trailers. But, then again, I’ve yet to break into that economy. The best part about this trailer for Benyamin Cohen’s “My Jesus Year”—wrote about it here and here and here—is the score, which reminds me of the scene from “Home Alone” (1 and 2) when the are running through the airport. The concluding quote, in Cohen’s best Mr. Roboto, isn’t bad either:

“Must. Keep. Kosher.”

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