July 14, 2011 | 9:13 am

N.Y. clerk resigns rather than certify gay marriages

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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After the California Supreme Court ruled that guys could not be prevented from marrying and before the passage of Proposition 8 amended the state constitution to stop that, one county clerk found a way around performing gay marriages. That wasn’t going to work in New York, and so we get news from Reuters that a town clerk in Barker, N.Y., has resigned rather than be forced to say marriage certificates for gay couples.

Here’s why Laura Fotusky stepped down:

Fotusky was not immediately available for comment, but in her letter, dated July 11, she said she believes the Bible takes precedence over man-made laws.

“The Bible clearly teaches that God created marriage between male and female as a divine gift that preserves families and cultures. Since I love and follow Him, I cannot put my signature on something that is against God,” she wrote.

“I would be compromising my moral conscience if I participated in the licensing procedure,” she wrote.

All that raises an interesting issue. It’s one that a friend and I have regularly disagreed on when we’ve talked about why I think gays should be allowed to marry.

Indeed, our laws should not prevent gays from marrying. But what happens when our laws force others to break what they believe our God’s laws? There is a simple constitutional answer, and then there is a much more complex one.

July 13, 2011 | 1:53 pm

Carmageddon is coming ... to a theater near you?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Those who didn’t find the Carmageddon Hitler meme in good taste may prefer The Jewish Journal’s “Carmageddon: The Movie.”

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July 12, 2011 | 10:16 am

Obama’s Israel problem?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Does President Obama have an Israeli problem?

Pretty sure I asked that question in 2008. The answer was something along the lines of: No. Here’s one instance:

No matter what Barack Obama says —earlier this week it was, “We must never waver in our unshakeable commitment to help Israel achieve its goal of true security through lasting peace with its neighbors”—or how many Jews support his presidential campaign, quite a few believe he spells nothing but trouble for Israel.

Indeed, there are supporters of Israel who see otherwise, and the GOP presidential candidates are looking to capitalize on that.

The Washington Post Fact Checker has a few of these quotes from Romney and Pawlenty and Bachmann. For example:

“I never will do what the president of the United States did to our ally in May. I will never say to Israel you must pull back your boundaries to the 1967 indefensible lines. I will not do that because I am here to declare today in Des Moines, Iowa, that I stand with Israel.”

That was from Michele Bachmann. The Fact Checker, though, doesn’t find a lot of substance to the claims, particularly Bachmann’s:

That’s not true, though she keeps repeating it. However, one could argue that Obama is saying that 1967 has to be Israel’s starting negotiating position. (The administration has not been especially clear on this point.)

The difference is subtle, but Israel would prefer to give up land it seized in war in exchange for concessions from the Palestinians. But the Palestinians — who argue they have already given up much of the historic state of Palestine—want the talks to start on the 1967 lines, which could require Israel to make concessions in order to retain settlement blocks.

Read on here for more.

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July 11, 2011 | 8:37 pm

Youkilis talks about pressure of being a Jewish ballplayer

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

With the Midsummer Classic tomorrow night, I’m enjoying the Home Run Derby right now. What better time to blog about Jews in baseball?

Guys like Ryan Braun and Kevin Youkilis and Hank Greenberg and, of course, Sandy Koufax have made frequent appearances on this blog. (As have the Dodgers. Coincidentally, yesterday was Jewish Community Day at Dodger Stadium.) Koufax is maybe as well known for skipping the opening game of the 1965 World Series as he is for pitching the perfect game seen in the above video. Would any of today’s Jewish baseball stars make the same showing of religious commitment?

The Jewish Exponent has a story asking and answering that question as it pertains to Youkilis. An excerpt:

“I don’t put religion into sports,” Youkilis said recently when the Red Sox were in Philadelphia for a three-game series in what was being seen as a World Series preview. “I consider religion entirely different, so I don’t bring it to the field.

“I’ve never played on Yom Kippur. Hopefully if we were playing, it would be a night game, not a day game.”

Youkilis acknowledged a “lot of pressure” from the Jewish community not to play.

“But you have to stick with your beliefs,” he said. “You can’t worry about people who aren’t influential in your life who say things or tell you you’re wrong.

“I know Shawn Green had a tough time with it. It just depends upon the community. In Boston they probably don’t even care. They’d want you to play.”

(skip)

“I know kids look up to us, but to me the biggest role models in your life are your parents,” said Youkilis, voted Jewish Player of the Decade in 2010 and who recently began marketing a “L’Chaim” T-shirt.

“We don’t make it out to be as big as the Jewish community does,” he said. “We just see ourselves as baseball players. It’s very special to be among a select few; a great thing for Jewish kids, but more so for Jewish fathers and adults.’‘

As regular readers of this blog know, and as I recently discussed in a post about Rays outfielder Sam Fuld, Jewish athletes feel a lot of communal pressure to practice in ways they otherwise might not—sometimes secular or unaffiliated Jews, like basketball player Jordan Farmar, who feel like they’re letting Jews down when they don’t so conviction like Koufax or Greenberg.

It’s understandable. By all means. We all need heros, and often those heros taken on mythical characteristics. They become giants—until those heros let us down. But it isn’t really fair.

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July 11, 2011 | 2:17 pm

Terrorist parodists have fun, fun, fun with ‘Guns, Guns, Guns’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Remember Caroline Glick’s “We Con the World” parody of “We Are the World” and the flotilla debacle last summer? The link to the video was circulated by the Israeli press office, which then issued an apology:

“It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it.”

Well, the above video also comes from Latma. In it, the Audacity of Dopes band sings “Guns, Guns, Guns” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Fun, Fun, Fun.” Among the lyrics: “We keep using slogans of peace, we know the world is senile ...”

Comment below.

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July 11, 2011 | 10:11 am

For ultra-Orthodox, it gets besser

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A lot of people have contributed to the “It Gets Better” video project aimed at gay teens. The above video is a little different:

IT GETS BESSER is a video project that compiles images of individuals who grew up in ultra orthodox Jewish communities (Hareidi/Hasidic/Yeshivish etc.) and have chosen to break of out of the confined lifestyle they were raised in to pursue their own individual goals and aspirations.

Courtesy of Dennis.

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July 10, 2011 | 4:16 pm

Jewish numbers dropping in Congress

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Sarah Pulliam Bailey sent me a CNN blog post that caught my eye. The focus was what some are claiming is the “end of the Jewish golden age on Capitol Hill.”

Here’s an excerpt:

“The massive overrepresentation of Jews on Capitol Hill, long a source of pride for the community, has been shrinking in recent years and could drop in the coming election cycle from 41 to the mid 30s, a level last seen 15 years ago,” Nathan Guttman recently wrote in The Forward, the Jewish newspaper.

Perhaps a golden age of sorts is coming to an end.

“It is the drawing down of a generation that believed in civil service,” Jacques Berlinerblau, director of Georgetown University’s Jewish civilization program, told Guttman, citing generations of post-World War II American Jews who, as Guttman phrased it, “saw special value in entering public service and also in reaching beyond the interests of their own community.”

Now what’s wrong with this picture. (Besides the awkward lede, which I left out.)

First, let’s define in recent years. Here Guttman was talking about really, really recent years. In fact, it was less than five years ago, at the end of 2006, that Jewish representation in Congress hit a record high. I know because I wrote about it at the time:

After a handful of victories in Tuesday’s election, Jews are poised to have their largest congressional representation ever. This U.S. community of roughly 6 million people - about 2 percent of the nation’s population - will contribute 30 members to the House. With 13 Jewish members of the Senate, the proportion in the upper chamber will be 6 1/2 times greater than that in the general population.

“Jews are just political animals,” said Steven Windmueller, dean of the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

“Politics sort of is the Jewish religion,” he added. “There is just such a passion for being in the game, in the process. Jewish life thrives in societies where democracies work, and that is why there is such a heavy buy-in into the American political process.”

Like Catholics, Jews long ago abandoned their early 20th-century reputation for living on the fringes of society in immigrant ghettos. Since the 1960s, they have risen sharply in politics, falling short of only the presidency and the vice presidency (although in 2000, presidential candidate Al Gore’s running mate, Joe Lieberman, came within 537 Florida votes of the White House).

The Nov. 7 election may have been a turning point for Jewish pols, who have typically represented Jewish communities. They were elected to Congress not just in California, Florida and New York, but also in Arizona, Kentucky, New Hampshire and Tennessee.

“If you would have told me in the ‘50s and even the ‘60s that (some of these states) would elect someone from the Jewish faith, I would have said, `You’re crazy,”’ said Rosalind Wyman, who in 1953 was the first Jew elected to the Los Angeles City Council.

And now five years later we’re being told the tide has turned again? I don’t really get the panic.

Second, Jews will still be represented in Congress at a rate almost four times their proportion in the U.S. population. (That is, of course, different than saying Jews control America.)

That being said, Berlinerblau makes an important point about a changing of the guard being affected by a different cultural emphasis. Jews have been very involved with American politics for quite some time. But maybe the Elders of Zion are slipping.

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July 9, 2011 | 3:52 pm

Hitler rips Carmageddon

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I tend to find the Hitler meme pretty tired. But if you live in Los Angeles, and you are preparing for apocalyptic traffic when they close eight miles of the 405 next weekend (aka Carmageddon), then you’ll probably enjoy this.

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July 8, 2011 | 1:30 pm

So an undocumented Jew immigrates to the United States ...

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

If you feel like you’ve read before The Forward story about the unspoken of illegal immigrant—undocumented Jews—that’s probably because you saw a similar story in The Jewish Journal in 2006.

If you haven’t seen either, here’s an excerpt of The Forward’s story, which focuses on living “in the shadows of U.S. society.”

Yamzi Rosen has been living in the United States for nearly nine years. Rosen said she and her family moved to Brooklyn from Israel after she lost her son to a violent murder in her hometown of Netanya. The family hoped the distance would help them overcome the tragedy. The seven family members crammed into a one-bedroom apartment, and began working odd jobs for which papers were not required.

But the American dream turned out to be hard to achieve. A lawyer dealing with their request for obtaining a green card, which grants legal residence in the United States, was arrested for fraud. Meanwhile, a temporary work visa expired, and Rosen was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery and chemotherapy. ...

The Rosen family is reluctant to request any kind of welfare assistance, fearing that it will hamper their hopes to achieve a green card in the future. But most difficult, Rosen said in a recent phone conversation with the Forward, is not being able to leave the United States and visit Israel, since being undocumented ensures that she would not be allowed back in. “I just want to see my son’s grave,” she said. “Is there anything worse in life than a mother who cannot visit her son’s grave?”

It’s a good read, and always an interesting story, even five years later. Read on here.

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July 7, 2011 | 7:42 pm

Catholic diocese to bid on Crystal Cathedral

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In what is starting to feel like daily Crystal Cathedral news, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange is considering buying the landmark church site as the home for it’s new diocesan cathedral.

Here’s the word from the Los Angeles Times:

The announcement by Orange Bishop Tod Brown came one day after Chapman University made a $46-million bid for the 40-acre site. The Crystal Cathedral had earlier reached a tentative agreement for a sale and lease-back deal with a real estate developer, subject to approval by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Kwan.

A sale to the Catholic Church would solve a longstanding problem for the Orange Diocese, which has no central cathedral for its 1.2-million parishioners. It has been planning for more than a decade to build a new, 2,500-seat cathedral in Santa Ana, but has gotten only as far as hiring an architect.

The Crystal Cathedral, designed by the late Philip Johnson, would provide an instant, 3,000-seat architectural landmark at roughly half the $100 million that was previously estimated for the Santa Ana project.

This is a surprising possibility. The Crystal Cathedral is very not Catholic, and such a purchase would likely be no better for the congregation than the tentative agreement to sell the property to a real estate developer. Maybe even worse because under that scenario the church would have leased back use of the sanctuary.

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July 6, 2011 | 7:39 pm

Goodbye to GetReligion

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Almost since I started this blog in March 2007, I have claimed as a motto: “There is no god blog but The God Blog.”

Yet for the past two years I have served two masters. (No, I’m not including law school in that.) I also was a regular contributor to GetReligion, which is a blog about how the media covers religion. That’s different than a blog about religion or religion reporting, so I always felt that I was able to keep the different aspects of my journalistic product separate: the religion blogger, the religion reporter, the blogger about religion reporting.

Alas, as I prepare for my third year of law school, I realized I could no longer give both blogs and my legal education all the time they deserved. (I think something about my wife belongs in that sentence too.) So Monday I wrote my final post for GetReligion.

An excerpt of what it was like writing about the media instead of writing for it:

The emphasis became not only what did the reporter do right, but what did he or she do wrong; not just the details that were included but those that were omitted. The process of identifying these holes seriously challenged me to think about how I, as a religion reporter, approached similar stories.

Sometimes my advice back to the reporter through this forum would be couched with the disclaimer: Do as I say, not as I now realize I wrongly did in the past.

Read the rest here. Better yet, become a regular reader of GetReligion.

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July 6, 2011 | 6:19 pm

College hoop dreams

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

No apparent religion angle here, but Rivals High, a Yahoo! Sports site covering high school athletics, has a pretty heart-warming story about a charity competition at Compton High School.

The concept was simple: Hold a free-throw shooting contests for eight lucky students drawn at random, with the only requirement being that they have a GPA of 3.0 or higher; the kid who hit the most free throws would get a $40,000 college scholarship provided by a guy who knows a little about college (one of the screenwriter behind “Old School”). But it didn’t go down as planned.

Rivals High reports:

Three months after winning the $40,000 top prize, Allan Guei donated all of his winnings to the seven other finalists.

Guei, a star player on the basketball team who is headed to Cal-State Northridge on a full scholarship, said he felt the others could use the college cash more than he could. He wanted to give his classmates a chance to make their academic dreams come true, too.

“I’ve already been blessed so much and I know we’re living with a bad economy, so I know this money can really help my classmates,” he said in a release from the school. “It was the right decision.”

Baller ...

(Hat tip: Beliefnet)

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