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For the past 50 years, Nettie Berkson, 91, has attended Dodger home openers religiously. For her grandson Glen Greenberg (no relation to me), the Dodgers have been as much a part of his life as Moses’ law. “When I was born,” Greenberg said while sitting in the family seats a few rows behind home plate during yesterday’s home opener, “it was like, Alright, I’m Jewish and I’m a Dodgers fan.”
Jon Weisman, who writes the blog Dodger Thoughts, took that connection between being Jewish and loving the Dodgers several steps farther.
My 13th birthday came in 1980, which is of some significance to the Jewish people. However, I was never a religious person. I flunked out of Hebrew school after my first year because most days, I stayed home to watch the Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour instead of attending. I was not moved to change my ways when my older brother was bar-mitzvahed in 1976, nor when my sister was bat-mitzvahed in 1978. In the case of my sister, she had herself quit Hebrew school after a couple of years, but then did a crash course at the last minute when she realized that she was going to miss out on a heck of a lot of presents if she didn’t get that bat mitzvah.
Me, I didn’t want the presents that badly. I was a pretty content kid. But as the time approached, my father grew a little concerned that I would follow my sister’s less-than-sincere path. So, in a fashion he compares to “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” he made me an offer. If I gave up my right to have a bar mitzvah, my Dad would give me a lifetime pass to the Dodgers.
Yep, that was the offer. I hope it doesn’t alienate the more righteous of my readers to learn that I snapped that offer up in a second. (I would say that about 10 percent of the people to whom I tell this story are appalled to some degree.) But that’s why, in at least one respect, the Dodgers are my religion.
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Remember when the Dodgers were battling the Giants for a spot in the 2001 playoffs and slugger Shawn Greenannounced he wouldn’t play on Yom Kippur? Well, this story out of America’s heartland is similar, except the superstar is a Christian, and the sport is spelling. From the Indianapolis Star:
Elliot Huck, a 14-year-old from Bloomington who finished 45th out of more than 250 spellers in the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., last year, says competing on Sunday conflicts with his view of the Biblical commandment to rest on the Sabbath.
“I always try to glorify God with what I do in the spelling bee because he is the one who gave me the talent for spelling,” said Elliot, a student at Lighthouse Christian Academy in Bloomington.
“Now I think I’m going to not spell and try to give glory to God in that.”
It opens with a January protest in Irvine sparked by a lecture from Daniel Pipes, a polarizing Middle East expert and a visiting professor at Pepperdine University:
The lecture topic was âThe Threat to Israelâs Existence.â The speaker was Daniel Pipes, a Middle East analyst known for his hawkish pro-Israel views and sharp denunciations of Islamic extremism. The setting was the University of California, Irvine, a campus with a national reputation as a hotbed of anti-Israel rhetoric.
Students wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs clustered in the center of the auditorium.
The stage was set for confrontation.
Sure enough, 15 minutes into Pipesâs speech, just as he had built up to one of his main points â âThe Palestinians must have their will crushed so that they will no longer be trying to eliminate Israel, so they will tend to their own affairs and leave Israel aloneâ â dozens of Muslim students interrupted him with hostile shouts, before promptly marching out of the lecture hall, chanting âanti-Israel, anti-oppression.â
Afterward, the student protesters gathered outside, where they listened to a speaker vow, âItâs just a matter of time before the State of Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth.â
Here’s the nut:
U.C. Irvine though is only the most recent in what can seem like a rotation of California campuses to emerge as the focus of Jewish communal concern. At a number of California public universities, Jewish students have long faced particularly inflammatory rhetoric from anti-Israel activists â a state of affairs that predates even the most recent intifada. While at any given school, such activity tends to ebb and flow, established Muslim student groups in California repeatedly have brought fiery anti-Israel speakers to campus, including one who regularly praises suicide bombers, expresses support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and rails against âZionist Jews.â
âI think the tenor and the tone of the debate and the shrillness of identity politics is meaningfully different in California,â said David Harris, director of the Washington-based Israel on Campus Coalition. âThere are different challenges on campuses across the country, to be sure, but at some schools in California â especially large state schools â Israelâs supporters on campus are confronted with distinct challenges, including strongly heated rhetoric and a lack of respect and common civility.â
Surprisingly, the article offers no voice of moderate Muslims. Only this from Oakland cleric Amir Abdel Malik Ali (pictured):
âWe will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious,â he said. âThatâs how we look at it. And they know that thatâs how Muslims believe.â
I called Shakeel Syed, the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, which overseas area mosques, to see if, in fact, Ali spoke for all Muslims.
“I categorically would dispute the myth that all Muslims feel that way,” Syed said. “I don’t think anybody speaks for all Muslims to beign with. And it is not right for Forward to say that all California campuses—the only controversy that exists on this is at the UC Irvine campus. Both Hillel and the Muslim group are unable to reconcile and both have been quite hostile to each other.”
I left religion out of today’s story about a 91-year-old Dodger devotee because it really wasn’t germane. But it is worth a mention.
Of course, to many Americans, sports are religion. But Nettie Berkson’s Westside apartment isn’t decorated like it belongs to someone who will attend their 50th consecutive Dodgers home opener today. It has no room filled with True Blue memorabilia, and the family didn’t even take photos at the games until her great-grandchildren started attending four years ago.
Instead, her living room walls are lined with her childhood menorah, her father’s shofar and a large portrait of her father deep in Torah study.
Nettie was the only one of 12 children born outside Poland—in Chicago—and she grew up a loyal Cubs fan. Every Friday, she would ditch school early to catch the El to Wrigley Field. Back then, the Cubs played all their games during the day, which was fortunate for an Orthodox Jew like Nettie who had to be home before the Sabbath candles were lit Friday at sundown. Wrigley Field added lights in 1988, but the Cubs still play every Friday home game at 1:20 p.m.
Ending up in the hospital certainly wasn’t what Cardinal Francis George of the Archdiocese of Chicago had in mind when he decided he would bless Easter meals with holy water.
George, 70, was hospitalized after he slipped on a patch of marble floor that had been splashed with holy water and fractured his hip Saturday. From the Chicago Tribune:
He did not lose consciousness and even continued with the blessing. But shortly after the service, the pain in his right hip grew more severe and he was taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood in a private car.
Though the injury was not serious and did not require surgery, spokeswoman Colleen Dolan said George would remain hospitalized for a few days of physical therapy and using a walker, to not apply pressure to his hip.
“He took a fall . . . in his exuberance with the holy water,” Dolan said. “He was concerned when it started to hurt more. That is why he wanted to check, and we’re glad he did.”
Question: How many Jewish-American princesses does it take to screw in a light bulb?
If you’ve heard the joke, that answer is pretty easy. But what is more difficult is determining how many Jewish-American princesses there are, or how many Jewish Americans for that matter.
A new study by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University, an esteemed school outside Boston that is named after the first Jew to join the Supreme Court, reported that the American Jewish community is between 6 million and 6.4 million. Seven years ago, the National Jewish Population Survey estimated American Jewry had fallen from 5.5 million in 1990 to 5.2 in 2000.
“What some people ask is ‘Why does anybody care how many there are?’ ” Len Saxe, director of the Steinhardt institute, told the LA Times. “In the Jewish community the numbers, especially since they all hover around 6 million, have particular relevance. In the wake of the Holocaust, where 6 million were killed, how many Jews are remaining and whether the community is regenerating or not â it’s a very sensitive issue.”
More of Los Angeles’ 600,000 Jews â- second in population outside Israel only to New York—live in the Valley Hills, where 48 percent of affluents residents are Jewish, than anywhere else.
“West Los Angeles is a close second to Valley Hills in the major categories, making the two expensive ‘golden ghettoes’ the most Jewish in the city and country,” the Jewish Journal reported in January.
Counting Jews is notoriously difficult in the United States because the U.S. Census is not allowed to ask questions about religion. There is also the variable of affiliation. When Jewish population surveys are administered, it is challenging to control for the fact that some people will identify as Jewish because they converted and attend synagogue while secular Jews won’t, and vice versa.
As for the original question: The answer was two. One to get a Tab, and one to call Daddy.
Bill Donohue’s Catholic League responded to last night’s “South Park” with this brief press release:
I have no idea why “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker caricature me as a heartless thug. In any event, I stand convicted and have no defense. Now I have to get back to business—I hear someone just took some liberties with the Easter Bunny.
I actually think that was a joke. It certainly was a gentler treatment of Hollywood than Donohue has given in the past. I still can’t find the entire episode on the web, but the “St. Peter” clip at ComedyCentral.com talks about the show’s premise that St. Peter—the first pope—was in fact a rabbit.
“South Park” tonight absolutely skewered Catholic League President Bill Donohue in a ridiculous episode that used the Da Vinci Code formula to claim their was a centuries-old conspiracy to cover up the fact that St. Peter was in fact a rabbit—Peter Rabbit.
Donohue, a firebrand in the culture-wars arena, is so hell-bent on capturing and killing Snowball, a descent of Peter and the rightful heir to the papacy, that he actually imprisons Pope Benedict and Jesus. The blasphemy only grows worse as the episode moves on, peaking when Christ bisects Donohue, who has appointed himself pope, with a throwing star.
It hasn’t been uploaded yet, but it should be here soon.
, a book promoters dream. Collins was written up in just about every major publication, from the LA Times to the Times of London.
Today, a little late on the story, CNN.com posted this commentary from Collins that begins, “I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.”
Collins is not alone among scientists—just a dramatic minority. Several polls have found about 40 percent of scientists believe in God—but only 10 percent of those elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
“It never seemed to me there was a contradiction. ... They are both different ways of knowing about the world,’’ Kenneth R. Miller, a prominent biology professor at Brown University and author of
Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution
, told me last fall for a story about Moorpark College’s Year of Science and Religion. “Science is the best method we have, the only method we have to understand the nature of the material world, how it works, what the history of this planet has been like. And what religion tells us is the meaning of our place in that world. It’s different sides of the same coin.’‘
Miller’s name comes up in a book I’m currently reading called
by Los Angeles Magazine writer Edward Humes. Centered around the 2005 Dover school board debacle, Humes tries to separate myth from fact when it comes to the tenants of evolution, and science from faith when it comes to the origin of species.
Miller, Collins and most other God-fearing scientists have little in common with the Dover board members who decided every student should be taught the gaps in evolutionary theory and be given a supplementary text called Of Pandas and People. Dover was a case study for the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank pushing Intelligent Design, which critics called Creation in new clothes. Dover science teachers, vehemently opposed to
Of Pandas
, wanted to use a text book written by Miller.
Monkey Girl
is a good, fair book, a crash course in the histories of evolutionary theory, creation science and the to-the-grave opinions that separate their polarized faithful. Here is what Collins had to say about evolution in an interview seven years ago with PBS’ Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly:
ABERNETHY: What do you say to your fellow Christians who say, “Evolution is just a theory, and I can’t put that together with my idea of a creator God”?
COLLINS: Well, evolution is a theory. It’s a very compelling one. As somebody who studies DNA, the fact that we are 98.4 percent identical at the DNA level to a chimpanzee, it’s pretty hard to ignore the fact that when I am studying a particular gene, I can go to the mouse and find it’s the similar gene, and it’s 90 percent the same. It’s certainly compatible with the theory of evolution, although it will always be a theory that we cannot actually prove. I’m a theistic evolutionist. I take the view that God, in His wisdom, used evolution as His creative scheme. I don’t see why that’s such a bad idea. That’s pretty amazingly creative on His part. And what is wrong with that as a way of putting together in a synthetic way the view of God who is interested in creating a group of individuals that He can have fellowship with—us? Why is evolution not an appropriate way to get to that goal? I don’t see a problem with that. The only problems that get put forward are by those who would interpret Genesis 1 in a very literal way. And that interpretation in many ways is a—is a modern one. Saint Augustine in 400 AD, without any reasons to try to be an apologist to Charles Darwin, agreed that that was not a particularly appropriate way to interpret the words that are written in that first chapter of the Bible.
So there certainly is a crowd of Democrats that hopes Barack Obama is the messiah their forefathers spoke of. But seriously, this? Last Saturday, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago put on display an undergraduate’s papier mache sculpture of Obama in the Son of God’s robe and with a neon halo around his head.
In the 2008 presidential race, in which Obama is trying to beat out Hillary Clinton and then the Republican nominee, religious beliefs have already become an issue. There were the flimsy reports by the Washington Times’ sister magazine and Fox News that Obama studied as a youth at an Indonesian madrasa (recruitment academies for Islamic fundamentalists). Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun-Times, however, had this more informed, nuanced take on Obama’s faith.
As for odd religious images, the Obama sculpture is hardly alone. The day before it went on display, the planned Holy Week exhibition of a life-size chocolate Jesus—being crucified in the nude, with respect to anatomy—was cancelled after it was widelyripped by Christains. But that’s nothing in the history of outrageous art.
* Updated: As expected GetReligion has, rightfully so, posted a piece criticizing the Obama sculpture reportage:
In all seriousness, the first news report I saw on this item was frightfully poor. A.J. Sterling of Fox News Chicago states glibly that “some may be offended by the suggestion that Christ is black, or that the United States could have a black president, but they donât seem to be at the exhibit this night.” I guess the Grand Kleagle of the closest Klan had a previous engagement.
A New York artist has sculpted a life-size Jesus with his arms spread wide and his feet together, in the position of one being crucified. It’s made of chocolate and Christ is NAKED—endowment and all. (Click here to see.)
The artist’s creation, which will be on display in New York for the week beginning Palm Sunday, is the latest culture-war issue to draw the ire of Catholic firebrand Bill Donohue. The website for his Catholic League has two rants against the artist’s intentions. Here’s part of the first:
As Iâve said many times before, Lent is the season for non-believers to sow seeds of doubt about Jesus. Whatâs scheduled to go on at the Roger Smith Hotel, however, is of a different genre: this is hate speech. And choosing Holy Weekâthe display opens on Palm Sunday and ends on Holy Saturdayâmakes it a direct in-your-face assault on Christians.
All those involved are lucky that angry Christians donât react the way extremist Muslims do when theyâre offendedâotherwise they may have more than their heads cut off. James Knowles, President and CEO of the Roger Smith Hotel (interestingly, he also calls himself Artist-in-Residence), should be especially grateful. And if he tries to spin this as reverential, then he should substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan.
Two years ago, Time magazine published this list of America’s top evangelicals. Newsweek, in its April 2 issue, online now, has decided to rank the nation’s top 50 rabbis.
Not surprisingly, Angelenos and New Yorkers dominate the list. Top honors go to Marvin Hier (pictured), dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Museum of Tolerance and Moriah Films. Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino comes in at 13, described as “the leading Conservative rabbi of his generation.”
What’s the chance that U.S. News & World Report, a staple in the rankings community and third-fiddle among newsweeklies, publishes a list next year of top American imams?
Remember when the Dodgers were battling the Giants for a spot in the 2001 playoffs and slugger 
The Forward published a lengthy article last week titled, “
Ending up in the hospital certainly wasn’t what Cardinal Francis George of the Archdiocese of Chicago had in mind when he decided he would bless Easter meals with holy water.
Question: How many Jewish-American princesses does it take to screw in a light bulb?
“South Park” tonight absolutely skewered Catholic League President Bill Donohue in a ridiculous episode that used the Da Vinci Code formula to claim their was a centuries-old conspiracy to cover up the fact that St. Peter was in fact a rabbit—Peter Rabbit.
Two years ago, 
