November 30, 2011 | 12:12 am

Kobe Bryant shoots hoops at Irvine Jewish center

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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This TMZ “Hanukkah Miracle” video about Kobe Bryant shooting hoops at the Irvine JCC is amazing.

In a segment running less than two minutes, Harvey Levin and his crew show a cluelessness about the fact that Jews don’t just live in LA and NY; that the Lakers train in El Segundo, not at the Staples Center, both of which are off-limits until the lockout formally ends; something that Levin calls the luck of the Jews, which doesn’t really jive with the past 3,000 years.

Whatever. The real reason that Bryant likely showed up impromptu at the Irvine JCC was that he was looking to get some shots up and he thought the place would be empty.

November 29, 2011 | 4:36 pm

Cain campaign reeling amid affair allegations

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Georgia Woman Claims 13-Year Affair with Herman Cain: MyFoxATLANTA.com

Herman Cain is “reassessing” his presidential campaign, and whether he will remain in it, after a woman he identified as a long-time friend said they had a long-term affair. He should. As a Republican, he’s pretty much dead in the water (assuming that he wasn’t already).

But what I find more interesting is the statement that Cain’s lawyer sent to the Atlanta TV station breaking the affair allegations today:

Mr. Cain has been informed today that your television station plans to broadcast a story this evening in which a female will make an accusation that she engaged in a 13-year long physical relationship with Mr. Cain. This is not an accusation of harassment in the workplace – this is not an accusation of an assault - which are subject matters of legitimate inquiry to a political candidate.

Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults - a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life. The public’s right to know and the media’s right to report has boundaries and most certainly those boundaries end outside of one’s bedroom door.

Mr. Cain has alerted his wife to this new accusation and discussed it with her. He has no obligation to discuss these types of accusations publicly with the media and he will not do so even if his principled position is viewed unfavorably by members of the media.”

Obviously, Cain is not a student of American politics. Politicians’ affairs matter. Even when between consenting adults, they are more than just a prurient interest to the media and public. Just ask Bill Clinton. Or John Edwards.

I think that this is especially true for Republican politicians because of the significant portion of the base that is made of the so-called “values voters.” But, even more broadly, a politician having an extramarital affair—let’s just call it what it is: adultery—says something about the politician’s trustworthiness. It is within the public’s right to know, as are most elements of a political candidate’s life these days, and if Cain didn’t want it coming out, he never should have thrown his hat in the ring.

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November 29, 2011 | 1:17 am

New 86-year effort to Tweet The Bible, one verse a day

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m a tech-savvy guy, but I’m not exactly an early adopter. I’m more of a 2.0 adopter. But I appear to be getting in on the ground floor of Tweet The Bible. Actually, I just joined the project at Genesis 1:18.

Don’t worry. There’s still plenty of time for you to follow Tweet The Bible, a collaborative effort to consecutively tweet every verse in the Christian Bible. At one verse a day, the project will take 86 years.

As Beliefnet explains, based on a press release from the Tweet The Bible folks:

The project is the brainchild of Anthony J. Thompson. According to the press release, he and “a group of friends were casually discussing what the early church might have done had they had Twitter and other technological advances we enjoy today. They joked that if St. Paul had had a Twitter, then the majority of the New Testament would have been comprised of millions of tweets tweeted over the years. Thompson, a 30-year-old web developer, says he has always felt called to use technology to edify the global Christian community.”

This is not to be confused with past efforts to Tweet every verse in short order in the Bible or to use Twitter to share selected verses.

Tweet The Bible is worth a follow, but it’s difficult to imagine how sending out one verse a day will be seen by many followers, considering all the noise that fills most users’ timelines.

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November 28, 2011 | 8:28 pm

In re-runs: Small brains and ‘born-again’ Christians

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Remember that study claiming that “born-again” Christians have smaller brains than other Americans? It was reported in May. And I guess the Philadelphia Inquirer missed it.

Earlier this month, the Philly paper published a press release about the study on the health page of its website. The press release carried the dateline “May 25.”

In case you missed the study the first time around, researchers found that the size of the hippocampus was measurably smaller in born-again Christians and people of no faith at all than members of other religious groups. Shrinkage of the hippocampus is caused by stress, and so the researchers said:

“One interpretation of our finding—that members of majority religious groups seem to have less atrophy compared with minority religious groups—is that when you feel your beliefs and values are somewhat at odds with those of society as a whole, it may contribute to long-term stress that could have implications for the brain,” Amy Owen, lead author of the study and a research associate at Duke University Medical Center, said in a Duke news release.

The study authors also suggested that life-changing religious experiences could challenge a person’s established religious beliefs, triggering stress.

Time has not made the association between religious beliefs and the size of the hippocampus seem any more plausible to me. But I still don’t know how you otherwise account for their findings, other than an unaccounted for variable.

Thanks for the tip, Dennis.

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November 28, 2011 | 8:51 am

Florida court invokes ecclesiastical abstention doctrine in defamation case

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I mentioned last month the ministerial exception doctrine that is at issue in the case before the U.S. Supreme Court of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC. The Court has long held that religious organizations have the freedom “to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.” That includes the employment of their ministers, which is at issue in Hosanna-Tabor. It also shields religious organizations from liability for alleged defamation associated with moral judgments about an individual’s behavior.

The latter at times bars courts from having jurisdiction in cases like Kaplan v. Kahn. In that New York state case, the defendant pastor allegedly told the plaintiff, who was renting a room to the pastor’s daughter and a married man with whom the daughter was living, that “you are running a house of prostitution and you are a whore, and you have made it just like the house of prostitution that was in the Bible when Hoffney and Phineas took in prostitutes into the temple.” But the court dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

More recently—as in last week—a Florida court invoked the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine to dismiss the case of Allen v. Holmes, in which the plaintiff accused a church pastor of spreading lies about her in an effort to remove her from the church community. But, as Howard Friedman at the Religion Clause explained, the court felt that the question of whether those statements were defamatory or intended to inflict emotion distress turns on determining whether the pastor’s statements were lies or a response to behavior out of line with church doctrine:

Thus resolution of the case would involve an inquiry into church governance and the conduct expected of church members—matters which the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine preclude the court from considering.

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November 27, 2011 | 5:30 pm

Apple removes ‘Jew or Not Jew?’ app

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jews often ask the question: Is he Jewish? In fact, it’s the premise behind the website Jew or Not Jew. But that question takes on another meaning when it’s asked by folks who aren’t fans of the Jews.

I assume that is why French anti-racism groups sued Apple over an app in its iTunes store that was also called “Jew or Not Jew?” Unaffiliated with the similarly named website, the app was developed by Frenchman Johann Levy, who wanted to show pride in Jewishness. From JTA:

“I did it out of healthy intentions. I am Jewish myself,” Levy said in September on French radio Europe 1. “The goal was just to bring a feeling of pride to Jews when they see that such-and-such a businessman or celebrity is also Jewish.”

But the lawsuit, which claimed that the app violated a “French law forbidding the collection of personal data such as a person’s religion or ethnicity without permission from the individual,” led to the app’s removal by Apple. In response, the lawsuit has been dropped.

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November 27, 2011 | 3:35 pm

Pat Robertson asks whether mac ‘n’ cheese is ‘a black thing’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s not quite Christmas yet, and in the above video Pat Robertson is talking about Thanksgiving, but the Christian Coalition founder and former political heavyweight has me thinking about gifts that keep on giving.

As Jim Newell at Gawker explains:

On today’s episode of the 700 Club, not-dead televangelist Pat Robertson was intrigued by a snippet from his co-host Kristi Watts’ interview with Condoleezza Rice. Rice said her favorite Thanksgiving food is mac ‘n’ cheese, a sentiment that Watts seconded. So Pat Robertson hears this, notes that the two ladies’ skins have similarly high melanin levels, and asks, “What is this mac ‘n’ cheese? Is that a black thing?” It is! It grows on trees, in Africa.

It’s unclear whether Robertson was surprised to learn of this new fangled dish or whether he was surprised to hear about people eating it on Thanksgiving. I have to imagine that he’s seen a box of Kraft in the grocery store before.

Regardless, we can always count on Robertson to say something that makes him seem either out of touch or off his rocker.

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November 26, 2011 | 4:24 pm

Pakistan bans texting of ‘Jesus’ and 1,600 other words

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has told cell phone carriers that they need to block about 1,600 “offensive” words, including Jesus, Satan, nude and—these are exceptionally baffling—athlete’s foot, headlights and tampon.

There is concern that the censoring will bog down cell networks and impair the clarity of messages being transmitted. Christians also aren’t happy that Jesus’ name made it onto the banned list. Via Beliefnet:

John Shakir Nadeem, Secretary of the Pakistan Episcopal Conference’s Commission for Social Communications said his office would “do all it can to put pressure on the government to eliminate Christ’s name from the list of banned words. We understand the desire to protect the minds of young people by creating a list of obscene words. But why should Christ’s name be included?

“What makes it obscene? Banning it would be a violation of our right to evangelize and it hurts the feeling of Christians. If the ban is confirmed, it will constitute a dark moment in the country’s history; a further act of discrimination against Christians and a clear violation of the Pakistani Constitution. We hope the government will make the opportune amendments.”

According to the Huffington Post, a bunch more banned words can be read here.

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November 26, 2011 | 1:10 pm

Jewish perspectives on the New Testament

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Prologue of the gospel of St. John from the Clementine Vulgate. Photo by Wikipedia/Jastrow

A new book of essays provides Jewish perspectives on the New Testament:

In The Jewish Annotated New Testament, eminent experts under the general editorship of Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Z. Brettler put these writings back into the context of their original authors and audiences. And they explain how these writings have affected the relations of Jews and Christians over the past two thousand years.

An international team of scholars introduces and annotates the Gospels, Acts, Letters, and Revelation from Jewish perspectives, in the New Revised Standard Version translation. They show how Jewish practices and writings, particularly the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, influenced the New Testament writers. From this perspective, readers gain new insight into the New Testament’s meaning and significance. In addition, thirty essays on historical and religious topics—Divine Beings, Jesus in Jewish thought, Parables and Midrash, Mysticism, Jewish Family Life, Messianic Movements, Dead Sea Scrolls, questions of the New Testament and anti-Judaism, and others—bring the Jewish context of the New Testament to the fore, enabling all readers to see these writings both in their original contexts and in the history of interpretation. For readers unfamiliar with Christian language and customs, there are explanations of such matters as the Eucharist, the significance of baptism, and “original sin.”

All of the scholars belong to the small cadre (not cabal) of Jewish experts on the New Testament. Mark Oppenheimer writes about the book for The New York Times:

Jewish scholars have typically been involved only with editions of the Old Testament, which Jews call the Hebrew Bible or, using a Hebrew acronym, the Tanakh. Of course, curious Jews and Christians consult all sorts of editions, without regard to editor. But among scholars, Christians produce editions of both sacred books, while Jewish editors consult only the book that is sacred to them. What’s been left out is a Jewish perspective on the New Testament — a book Jews do not consider holy but which, given its influence and literary excellence, no Jew should ignore.

So what does this New Testament include that a Christian volume might not? Consider Matthew 2, when the wise men, or magi, herald Jesus’ birth. In this edition, Aaron M. Gale, who has edited the Book of Matthew, writes in a footnote that “early Jewish readers may have regarded these Persian astrologers not as wise but as foolish or evil.” He is relying on the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo, who at one point calls Balaam, who in the Book of Numbers talks with a donkey, a “magos.”

To an extent, the alternative perspectives on the New Testament remind me of the Jesus Seminar, except “The Jewish Annotated New Testament” is not about Jesus revisionism but about providing a Jewish perspective on Christian texts.

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November 25, 2011 | 2:44 pm

Haaretz publisher discusses ‘apartheid’ of West Bank settlement ideology

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Startling op-ed from Amos Schocken, owner and publisher of Haaretz, about Israeli settlements and the use of the term apartheid. Schocken takes particular aim at Gush Emunim, the religious and political ideology behind the movement to expand settlements in the West Bank. He writes:

This is a strategy of territorial seizure and apartheid. It ignores judicial aspects of territorial ownership and shuns human rights and the guarantees of equality enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. It is a strategy of unlimited patience; what is important is the unrelenting progress toward the goal. At the same time, it is a strategy that does not pass up any opportunity that comes its way, such as the composition of the present Knesset and the unclear positions of the prime minister.

The term “apartheid” refers to the undemocratic system of discriminating between the rights of the whites and the blacks, which once existed in South Africa. Even though there is a difference between the apartheid that was practiced there and what is happening in the territories, there are also some points of resemblance. There are two population groups in one region, one of which possesses all the rights and protections, while the other is deprived of rights and is ruled by the first group. This is a flagrantly undemocratic situation.

Read the rest here, where Schocken goes on to claim that the “Jewish lobby” in the United States is “totally addicted” to the Gush Emunim ideology.

Agree or disagree, these are weighty words; they shouldn’t be thrown around lightly. I’d say that Schocken’s op-ed is likely to spur debate in Israel, but Israelis already debate and discuss these issues openly. In fact, this isn’t the first time that Schocken has said in Haaretz that Israel is practicing apartheid.

Haaretz is the liberal Israeli paper, and so these comments should be understood from that perspective. But it’s difficult to imagine any Jewish newspaper in the United States saying the same thing. Why?

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November 25, 2011 | 11:20 am

Hurt feelings turn to hate crimes in Ohio Amish community

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s common for there to be hurt feelings and some bitterness when members of a denomination breakaway and form their own group. But there are some truly bizarre things happening in Amish country.

This week, seven men, including sect leader Sam Mullet, were arrested for allegedly forcibly cutting the hair of men and women from the main Amish community. Because of the acts were an attack on the religious character of the Amish individuals—allegedly done by Mullet’s crew to shame the members of the main Amish community for how they have treated the breakaway sect—Mullet’s crew has been charged with hate crimes.

From the AP:

“We’ve received hundreds and hundreds of calls from people living in fear,” he said. “They are buying Mace, some are sitting with shotguns, getting locks on their doors because of Sam Mullet.”

The sheriff added, “Sam Mullet is evil.”

A daughter-in-law and former brother-in-law told federal investigators Mullet allowed the beatings of those who disobeyed him, made some members sleep in a chicken coop and had sexual relations with married women to “cleanse them.”

Read the rest here.

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November 25, 2011 | 11:03 am

Ringing in the holiday cheer by pepper-spraying Black Friday shoppers

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

We’re now in full Christmas shopping swing. That’s because it’s Friday, Black Friday, gotta buy stuff on Black Friday.

I’ve only braved the Black Friday crowds once or twice before. Unless I’m going to save a couple hundred bucks, it’s just not worth the headache. Or temporary blindness.

Black Friday has reached a new level of crazy, and not just because it now starts in mostly full force on Thanksgiving. Instead, blame the woman accused of pepper-spraying a bunch of other shoppers at a Wal-Mart in the San Fernando Valley who didn’t want to share the deals. From the Daily News:

“The female suspect was waiting with other shoppers for some items wrapped in plastic to be released for sale at 10 p.m.,” [Officer] Rimkunas said. “When the plastic was ripped off, she sprayed.”

Twenty people were treated for minor injuries. The woman then reportedly paid for an Xbox and left.

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