October 14, 2009 | 4:22 pm

Self-help guru investigated in sweat lodge deaths

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Sweat lodge ceremonies are intense, but not nearly as mind-altering as pop culture would have you believe. Still, there are dangers—tragically, and fatally, learned by two men in Arizona last week. Police have now turned their attention to the self-help author who runs the spiritual retreat.

Speaking last night in Marina Del Rey, the guru James Arthur Ray brokedown in tears and said he’s mourning along with the decedents families:

“We’re looking for answers,” he said. “I’m as frustrated and confused as other people are.”

Ray added that he wrestled with whether to go through with Tuesday’s seminar, which he said was scheduled weeks before the sweat lodge deaths.

“My advisers told me, ‘Don’t do that. You don’t know who’ll show up. They’re going to eat you alive,’” he told the audience. But he said it was important for him to keep his commitments.

“I’m grieving right now,” Ray said. “I’m grieving for the families.”

Read the rest here.

October 13, 2009 | 3:57 pm

Madoff earns some prison yard ‘cred’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Seriously, I’m surprised Bernard Madoff hasn’t gotten shanked yet. He did, however, get into a prison yard scuffle with another inmate who disagreed with the great swindler’s investment advice. From NYPost:

The shouting match got so heated that the inmate pushed Madoff, who shoved back harder with both hands, causing his attacker to stumble.

As the attacker tried to stand up straight, Madoff hovered over him red-faced and glaring, eyewitnesses said.

The stunned attacker went chicken and took off—allowing Madoff to collect some “cred” among his fellow prisoners.

As Jay Firestone points out: “it appears Bernie Madoff has learned a valuable prison lesson about property. Either own or be owned.”

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October 13, 2009 | 3:33 pm

R. Kelly is back and getting ‘Religious’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The VideoJew sent me the new R. Kelly single “Religious,” and I’m never going to forgive Jay for it. The slowjam might make you forget about when anyone last mentioned R. Kelly, but the chorus is good for a laughl:

“Girl ... there’s somethin’ religious about you ... Somethin’ church about you.”

We all need redemption, but this is laying it on a bit thick. Don’t you think?

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October 13, 2009 | 12:47 pm

Jon Gosselin loves the Jews

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jon Gosselin has a PR problem, and he’s clearly entered into the looking-for-sympathy stage of damage control. Why else would Gosselin, who’s dating a Jewish gal and has a Jewish attorney (no joke), be professing his love to ParentDish for history’s favorite victim?

PD: And Christmas?
JG: Christmas, yeah. This is the first year I will celebrate Chanukah. Hailey is Jewish. Everyone in my life is Jewish now, my attorney. I love it. I’m now half Jewish and half Korean. The family values are great. On Christmas, I’ll see my kids during the day for a couple of hours.

PD: Then what?
JG: Hailey is so excited because we’re going to go ornament shopping and I’ll buy her a stocking. News Year’s Eve I’ll be in Vegas hosting Las Vegas Live with Eva Longoria.

PD: That sounds fun. Tell me more about your interest in Judaism.
JG: I just went through Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur and learned about the new year and every Friday is the Shabbat dinner. I love challah bread. I’m learning about Jewish food, going to Zabar’s. I love that place. I’m learning about kosher and when not to order a bacon, egg and cheese and make an ass of myself. Hailey makes fun of me. My mom came to the city on Yom Kippur and asked where all the traffic was. I got from the West Side to Midtown in five minutes. She wants to come to the city every year on Yom Kippur.

PD: Are we going to see you converting to Judaism?
JG: I talked to Rabbi Shmuley a couple of times. He has nine kids. I was really nervous dating a Jewish girl. She’s like the best girl ever. All my friends are like ‘I’m so jealous’ and I’m like, ‘Stay away, she’s mine.’ She’s the rock of my life. She’s been through hell in the tabloids. They made up lies that she’s a lesbian and she’s doing drugs. We’ve both been through all this turmoil. And we just keep on loving each other.

Dennis sent this link on, along with this commentary: “Oy. We need him like we need Michael Richards.”

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October 13, 2009 | 12:12 pm

Why doesn’t CAIR condemn UCI’s favorite anti-Semites?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Interesting dust-up on KPFK yesterday between two names from my past. Brian Levin, as director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, is someone I used to call whenever writing about religious hatred in the Inland Empire; Munira Syeda, now the SoCal spokeswoman for CAIR, was a fellow reporter at The Sun. I’ll let Gustavo fill you in from here:

The two were on to ostensibly talk about the partnership between CAIR and Jewish groups to protest some neo-Nazi Inland Empire morons who are targeting Mexicans and Jews.

That’s not what happened. Instead, Levin mentioned he found it incredulous that CAIR would, on one hand help fight anti-Semites, yet on the other hand maintain a relationship with anti-Semites and refuse to condemn them. Specifically, he mentioned frequent UC Irvine yapper (at the invite of the campus’ Muslim Student Union) Amir Abdel Malik Ali and William Baker. Both are certifiable Jew-haters: Malik Ali claims the recent Shepard hate crimes bill is a Jewish conspiracy to target Muslims, while Baker—who fronts as a Christian man who tries to build bridges of cultural tolerance with others regarding the Muslim faith—was exposed by the Weekly in 2002 as a raving fool.

Syeda brushed off Levin’s claims, insisted CAIR condemns anti-Semites, and said she didn’t “appreciate” the professor “smearing CAIR’s name the way he did.” But the fact is, Levin was speaking the truth.

No doubt there have been plenty of anti-Semitic incidents at UC Irvine. In covering those, and others closer to home, I’ve often found myself writing about Malik Ali (that’s him at the podium). And Gustavo’s correct: he’s a rabid anti-Semite, er, “anti-Zionist.” That’s what Malik Ali would say, though there’s little dressing up the things he says.

Jewish students and community groups have been trying for years to get the UCI administration to specifically condemn the rhetoric of individual speakers, as opposed to just anti-Semitism in general. It would be impressive to see CAIR step up first.

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October 12, 2009 | 3:55 pm

“Family Goy’s” Jewish secret

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I don’t watch “Family Guy,” for reasons that Cartman and “South Park” so brilliantly illustrated, but after seeing the chatter last Monday, I knew I was going to have to watch the “Family Goy” episode.

I finally did yesterday. And though I couldn’t overcome my dislike for the show, the episode gave me a few good laughs:

The Jewish plotline begins when a breast cancer scare leads Lois (voiced by Jewish actress Alex Borstein) to discover that her mother, Barbara Pewterschmidt, is a Holocaust survivor who gave up her Judaism to help her husband get into country clubs (“It was the right thing to do, dear,” Mrs. Pewterschmidt says).

“So Grandma Hebrewberg is actually Jewish?!” Lois asks.

“Yes, when she moved to America, her family changed their name. It was originally Hebrewbergmoneygrabber,” her mother says.

That’s from the GeekHeeb. Much more there on the storyline (or lack thereof) and the jokes that work and those that don’t.

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October 11, 2009 | 10:25 pm

Sarah Silverman: ‘Sell the Vatican, feed the world’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

You know Sarah Silverman videos get some love from The God Blog. There was her comparison of blacks and Jews, her take on Kabbalah and her stumping for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Now, tired of feeling bad when she sees commercial of starving children, she’s turning her attention to ending world hunger. “Then it hit me: Sell the Vatican, feed the world.”

After all, she says, no one is more poised to be a hero than the pope. “He’s literally a caped crusader.”

Silverman has some more choice one-liners in here. Still awaiting reaction from Catholic League president Bill Donohue.

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October 11, 2009 | 6:25 pm

Mahmoud still not a Jew

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

"On the other hand ..."

Remember the London Telegraph report last week claiming that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a crypto-Jew?

I’m not sure that many people were buying it; certainly Karmel Melamed, who writes the Iranian American Jews blog, wasn’t. On the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog, Meir Javedanfar gives Karmel some support:

Professor David Yeroshalmi, author of The Jews of Iran in the 19th century and an expert on Iranian Jewish communities, disputes the validity of this argument. “There is no such meaning for the word ‘sabour’ in any of the Persian Jewish dialects, nor does it mean Jewish prayer shawl in Persian. Also, the name Sabourjian is not a well-known Jewish name,” he stated in a recent interview. In fact, Iranian Jews use the Hebrew word “tzitzit” to describe the Jewish prayer shawl. Yeroshalmi, a scholar at Tel Aviv University’s Center for Iranian Studies, also went on to dispute the article’s findings that the “-jian” ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews. “This ending is in no way sufficient to judge whether someone has a Jewish background. Many Muslim surnames have the same ending,” he stated.

Upon closer inspection, a completely different interpretation of “Sabourjian” emerges. According to Robert Tait, a Guardian correspondent who travelled to Ahmadinejad’s native village in 2005, the name “derives from thread painter – sabor in Farsi – a once common and humble occupation in the carpet industry in Semnan province, where Aradan is situated”. This is confirmed by Kasra Naji, who also wrote a biography of Ahmadinejad and met his family in his native village. Carpet weaving or colouring carpet threads are not professions associated with Jews in Iran.

According to both Naji and Tait, Ahmadinejad’s father Ahmad was in fact a religious Shia, who taught the Quran before and after Ahmadinejad’s birth and their move to Tehran. So religious was Ahmad Sabourjian that he bought a house near a Hosseinieh, a religious club that he frequented during the holy month of Moharram to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hossein.

Moreover, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mother is a Seyyede.

In other words, Ahmadinejad’s mother was a female descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Of course if you’re predisposed to seeing cover ups, that’s just further proof that Mahmoud’s family really was Jewish.

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October 11, 2009 | 3:15 pm

National Jewish umbrella gets another new name

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The umbrella organizations for North American Jewish federations is still in search of itself. Across the United States, local federations are re-envisioning their methods and their missions. (See: Los Angeles.) And the United Jewish Communities, which formed a decade ago when the United Jewish Appeal, Council of Jewish Federations and United Israel Appeal merged, is looking to keep up with the re-branding.

The organization, which like many other nonprofits has fallen on hard times, has given itself a more recognizable name: The Jewish Federations of North America.

Makes sense.

The official word from The Fundermentalist.

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October 9, 2009 | 11:49 am

President Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize and morality

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Congratulated by the Montauk Monster

No, he’s not really the Messiah. But President Barack Obama is more popular than Jesus and he certainly has no image problem.

Most of the response this morning to Obama’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize has focused on two things: the widespread shock and surprise that his name was drawn, and so early, and what exactly this means for redeeming the United States’ moral authority.

Eliezer Wiesel, a fellow Nobel Peace laureate discussed this on NPR a few minutes ago. But he’s a friendly. What are they saying in parts of the world where the US hasn’t been so popular?

Saleh al-Mutlaq, a senior Iraqi Sunni Muslim lawmaker, told Reuters: “I think he deserves this prize. Obama succeeded to make a real change in the policy of the United States — a change from a policy that was exporting evil to the world to a policy exporting peace and stability to the world.”

More opinions gathered by Reuters here.

Part of what Obama was recognized for, in addition to his aims for nuclear disarmament, was his immediate involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What kind of grade does he get, eight months in, on that subject? That just so happens to be the cover story for this week’s Jewish Journal. Read those differences of opinion here.

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October 7, 2009 | 1:05 pm

Supreme Court to hear Mojave cross case

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s been a long-time waiting, but the Supreme Court will hear today arguments concerning a cross in the Mojave Desert that was erected as a memorial to World War I veterans. This is a legal battle that’s been going on for the past decade, and I remember delving into it a bit when I was at The Sun.

It’s a familiar conflict: Supporters argue the cross is not a religious symbol, civil liberties advocates claim it infringes on any passer-by’s First Amendment rights. For a while now, it’s been covered up by a wooden box.

As powerful as these pro and con arguments are, the Supreme Court may focus more on a technical question that could resolve not only this case but potentially all others involving religious symbols — and perhaps more than that.

It is the gatekeeping question of standing: Who has standing in court to challenge the placement of a religious symbol on public property? The government maintains that an individual who is offended by a religious symbol has not suffered a real injury that justifies a court challenge.

In addition, the government contends that the congressional transfer of the land to the VFW ends any government endorsement of religion. The ACLU counters that the government still favors the cross, by the terms of the land transfer, which designates the cross as a national memorial and declares that the VFW only keeps the land if it also maintains the cross.

If the government and the VFW win on this point, it could mean that for all practical purposes, a government — whether local, state or federal — can put up whatever religious symbols it wants, and there would be no way to challenge it in court.

“If they want to put a cross on every street corner, they could do that,” says Laycock. “There would be no limits on abuses. Government could promote religion as much as it wanted to. And if taking offense at a display doesn’t give standing, the next step might be to say that taking offense at a religious ceremony or prayer isn’t enough to give standing.”

The rest of that NPR report can be found here. For more background, check out the front-page piece from last week’s Washington Post and tmatt’s discussion of it at GetReligion.

Judgment day is still many months away.

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October 7, 2009 | 11:28 am

When vaccines were an affront to God’s sovereignty

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Great guest blog post at On Faith by Diane Winston, a friend and the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. It’s tied to the coming general availability of the H1N1 vaccine. But the story is much older. Try almost three centuries older.

In 18th century Boston, physicians and regular folks were opposed to taking a vaccine to fight a small pox ripping through the community. Cotton Mather—yeah, that Cotton Mather—was a leading advocate for inoculations.

Winston wrote:

Mather and his backers persevered, and as the debate deepened, medical fault lines paralleled religious and political divisions. Anglicans led the fight against inoculation, arguing that the practice was medically unsafe and theologically unsound since it challenged God’s sovereignty over human life. Eager to win support, the anti-inoculation camp started The New England Courant, a newspaper dedicated to attacking Mather, his allies and their campaign for preventive medicine. Supporters of both the British episcopacy and crown, the Courant’s writers opposed the Puritan majority’s religious independence and feared its nascent bent for political autonomy.

(skip)

In the guise of refuting Mather’s experiment, the Courant valorized divine authority and an acceptance of human limits. But other papers trumpeted the cleric’s call: God gave human beings the ability to reason in order to better their situation. Over the next several months, an all-out newspaper war used the disagreement over vaccination as a proxy for debating societal divisions over political power, individual autonomy and the role of God in everyday life.

Mather’s camp won the day when facts bore out his speculation: the fatality rate for those who were inoculated was much lower than for those who had not received shots. But even after the epidemic ended, the New England Courant kept up the fight—until its backers were finally worn down. The argument, however, remains salient today. Some believers still prefer to put their trust in God rather than in doctors and their medicine.

Read the rest here.

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