August 7, 2012 | 2:19 pm

Westboro Baptist says Sikh shooter was doing God’s work

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

And if you want to know what the nuts at Westboro Baptist Church had to say about the murder of six people who didn’t share the Westboro belief system, here is what Westboro leader Fred Phelps tweeted:

Beautiful work of an angry God who told Wisconsin to keep their filthy hands off his people (WBC)! #godsenttheshooter!m.cnn.com/primary/wk_art…

— Fred Phelps Jr (@WBCFredJr) August 5, 2012

This comment defies both comprehension and any vestige of compassion. It’s getting difficult to even know how to respond to Westboro Baptist; it seems to be turning into an even more extreme caricature of itself.

August 7, 2012 | 12:04 pm

Shaking the Sikh peace

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Wade Michael Page, 40, is seen in this undated picture from a myspace.com web page for the musical group "End Apathy". Photo by REUTERS/myspace.com/Handout

One of those unfinished project from my days as senior writer at The Jewish Journal was a piece on Southern California skinheads and neo-Nazis. I did the piece about the academic that white supremacists love, but I never finished an “American History X”-type piece.

The reasons such a piece would be of interest to L.A.‘s Jewish community are fairly obvious—specifically years of run-ins with white supremacists and some targeted attacks on Jews. It would have been less obvious to me why, say, the Sikh community would be interested in such a story.

That is no longer the case. Sunday, Wade Michael Page, an Army veteran and known white supremacist, allegedly opened fire in a Sikh temple, killing six.

There has been a long history of hate-based attacks on Sikhs, who bare long beards and turbans, and carry a small dagger (as is required by their religion). They are a peaceful, and misunderstood, religion.

Page, on the other hand, reportedly was not:

Page, who lived in a neighboring community, served in the military from 1992 to 1998, received a “general discharge” and was “ineligible for reenlistment.” A Pentagon official said Page rose to the rank of sergeant before being demoted to specialist and leaving the Army. News agencies reported that Page, who was never posted overseas during his six years of service, was discharged for being drunk on duty and other unspecified misconduct.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that monitors hate groups, Page was a “frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.” He had been “part of the white power music scene since 2000,” when he left his native Colorado on a motorcycle, attended white power concerts in several states and played in a variety of “hate rock bands,” the center said, citing a 2010 interview Page gave to a white supremacist Web site about his latest skinhead band, “End Apathy.”

One question that always gets asks after mass shootings, particularly against a specific group of people, is whether the shooter was a lone wolf or part of a pack.

But you also have to ask what this tragedy will mean for the families left grieving, and for the community that now might wonder just how safe their temples are.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

August 7, 2012 | 11:56 am

Aly Raisman gets the gold for her floor exercise

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Alexandra Raisman of the U.S. Photo by REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Aly Raisman is quickly making American Jews forget about their former golden girl of gymnastics, Kerri Strug. Not only does Raisman perform her floor exercises to “Hava Nagila,” but today she took home the gold at the London Olympics.

From CBS News:

Perhaps energized by her surprise bronze on beam, Raisman’s floor routine had an extra spark. Her tumbling passes were some of the most difficult, and she got such great height on them you could have parked a double-decker bus beneath her. Her landings were not only secure, one was so powerful it practically shook the floor.

Coach Mihai Brestyan was hopping up and down and pumping his fist as she finished, and even Raisman was impressed with herself, mouthing “wow” after she saluted the judges. When her score, a 15.6, was posted, teammate McKayla Maroney yelled “whoa!” so loudly from the stands it could be heard across the arena.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

August 5, 2012 | 11:46 pm

‘Einstein’s Jewish Science’ author on State of Belief

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In his new book, “Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion,” philosophy professor Steven Gimbel talks about how Jewish thinking laid a foundation for Einstein’s breakthrough Theory of Relativity. The New York Times reviewed Gimbel’s book Friday and summarized it this way:

Einstein, Gimbel argues, was especially well put to come upon such insights because he was a Jew. Gimbel is not saying that Einstein was deeply religious. When he talked about “the secrets of the Old One” or God playing dice, he was being a little ironic, using the idea of a deity he didn’t believe in as a metaphor for the laws of the universe. Nor does Gimbel find any particularly Jewish ideas in Einstein’s science or signs that, as the Nazis contended, it was politically motivated. I don’t think many will need convincing on those points. But Gimbel is an engaging writer. In demonstrating the obvious, he takes readers on enlightening excursions through the nature of Judaism, Hegelian philosophy, wherever his curiosity leads.

Listen to Gimbel talk about his book in the above video.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

August 5, 2012 | 9:31 pm

Jews, Jews and more Jews travel to a football stadium to celebrate study of Talmud

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A celebration of Siyum HaShas at MetLife Stadium last week was the “largest celebration of Jewish learning since the destruction of the Second Temple.” I’m a bit behind on this story, but if you haven’t seen it, here’s the word from JTA:

The excitement was evident in the furrowed brows of concentration on congregants’ faces during the prayer services, in the impassioned speeches onstage, and during the heady singing and dancing that followed the end of the special Kaddish marking the completion of the Talmud.

“Fortunate is the person who sees, who experiences, this great gathering,” declared Rabbi Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz, the emcee of the Siyum HaShas. “Try to visualize the singing and dancing that’s going on right now in shamayim [heaven] watching tens of thousands celebrating the masechtos [tractates] they worked on so diligently!”

For the organizers of the Siyum, the event was an opportunity to showcase the strength of so-called Torah Judaism and its resurgence in America following the Holocaust. Indeed, the Holocaust was the first subject that the chairman of the event, Elly Kleinman of Agudath Israel of America, talked about in the night’s opening speech, and the Jews’ survival and religious resurrection since the Nazis was a recurrent theme throughout the evening.

But the night’s official theme was Jewish unity, something one speaker tried to hammer home with a remark about the lure of the Daf Yomi for all Jews: those with black hats, shtreimels, knit yarmulkes and even baseball caps, he said.

That description, of course, left out a few slices of the Jewish community, even if it covered pretty much everyone at Wednesday’s Siyum celebration (except the few thousand women relegated to an upper tier).

Yet, despite the challenges of doing the Daf Yomi – moving at a relentless pace through thousands of pages of dense argumentation covering complex Jewish legal matters and odd tales narrated without punctuation in an arcane language – daily Talmud study is spreading beyond the confines of those categorized by Orthodox headgear.

In some cases, it’s happening in very unorthodox ways.

More details here.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

August 3, 2012 | 4:31 pm

Jesus meme: ‘I said I hated FIGS’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Via George Takei

The Story Time Jesus meme is pretty played out, but the above image—“OMFG you guys. I said I hated FIGS.”—definitely made my wife LOL. It was shared on Facebook by George Takei, who shares a lot of funny images.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

August 3, 2012 | 10:28 am

Ahmadinejad says world’s effort should be the ‘annihilation’ of Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Photo by REUTERS/Nacho Doce

It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned a plea from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to erase Israel. I feel like that used to be a regular feature on The God Blog. JTA reports on the latest:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the objective of the world must be the “annihilation” of Israel.

Ahmadinejad met Wednesday with ambassadors from Muslim countries to convey his wishes for the holy month of Ramadan.

Much of his speech, according to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, focused on what Ahmadinejad described as Zionist control of the world, which he said stretched back 400 years.

“The president pointed out that in order to evolutionize the status of the world, decision-making is needed, the forces must get united, and their ultimate objective must be the annihilation of the Zionist regime,” IRNA reported.

“The Zionist regime is both the symbol of the hegemony of the Zionism over the world and the means in the hand of the oppressor powers for expansion of their hegemony in the region and in the world,” the news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

August 2, 2012 | 5:26 pm

Another Presbyterian congregation leaves PC(USA)

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Amid the ongoing debate in the Presbyterian Church USA over the church’s treatment of homosexuality, evangelical wings of denomination continue to split and join with a more conservative line of Presbyterianism. From the San Ramon Express:

Danville’s Community Presbyterian Church recently seceded from its mother church in favor of joining a more conservative organization. Amidst differences in opinion on gays in the clergy and interpretation of the Bible, CPC split from Presbyterian Church USA and moved to Evangelical Presbyterian Church on June 3.

(skip)

Among CPC’s reasons for securing a gracious dismissal from its mother church is “creeping tolerance of theological purism,” or varying interpretations of the Bible. A large percentage of PCUSA pastors have taken positions that are inconsistent with the historical tenets of Christian Faith, CDC officials allege on their website.

“Rather than complying with the Book of Order, the denomination has urged us to live together with an ever-increasing theological diversity,” documents state. ” There is no longer agreement within the church and its leadership about who Jesus is and what he did. The Book of Confessions has not changed so we appear, on paper, to have an orthodox faith, but the truth is that the PCUSA is functionally pluralistic.”

Hat tip to RealClearReligion. This denomination is different than the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians, which launched this year as a destination for congregation’s unhappy with the PC(USA)‘s softening on homosexuality.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

August 1, 2012 | 10:27 am

Snoop Dogg—er, Snoop Lion—gets religion

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

That Snoop Dogg will now be known as Snoop Lion, promises to never rap again and has gotten Rastafari religion might be the most surprising news of my day.

Of course, Snoop is an entertainer, so no surprise on the movie tie-in. The documentary of his journey to Rastafarianism is called “Reincarnation.”

1 Comments — Leave your comment

July 31, 2012 | 12:07 pm

Romney to get little poll help from Israel visit

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo by REUTERS/Jason Reed

Mitt Romney traveled to Israel Saturday to improve his chances with American voters interested in US-Israel relations. In particular, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate is trying to shore up his support among Jewish voters.

But he shouldn’t expect to much of a bump at the polls. At least not according to a new report that says American Jews will vote in November how they typically vote: primarily for the Democratic presidential candidate.

RNS reports:

The report, “Making Sense of the Jewish Vote,” predicts Jewish Americans will follow historical precedent and largely vote Democrat this fall. Moreover, Jewish voters will have a negligible effect on the presidential election’s outcome, even in swing states, said Jim Gerstein, a pollster with polling firm GBA Strategies who compiled the report.

(skip)

As with most Americans, the economy is Jewish voters’ greatest concern, not Israel, according to Gerstein, who cited a 2010 poll that found only 7 percent considered Israel a top priority.

Read the rest here.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

July 31, 2012 | 8:00 am

‘Fifty Shades of Grey’—bigger than the Bible?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

I haven’t read “Fifty Shades of Grey” and I know nothing about it—other than that there are stacks and stacks of the book at Costco, and it was not written by Jonathan Franzen.

But the book is a smash hit—think “Twilight” for non-tweens. And a hotel in the Lake District of England has opted to replace the Gideon’s Bible with a copy of E.L. James’ novel in each room.

On his blog, the innkeeper explains:

In this secular age it seems distinctly odd that anyone would expect to find a religious book in a hotel bedroom. But I won’t be giving all our Gideon bibles to the Help The Aged charity shop – I’ll keep a couple behind the reception desk so that if any guest whose preferred bedtime reading happens to be the bible finds that they have forgotten to pack their copy, they’ll be pleased to read in the guest handbook that they can borrow a copy from the receptionist.

Via Forbes.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

July 30, 2012 | 12:22 pm

Jonah Lehrer resigns from New Yorker over fabricated Dylan quotes

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jonah Lehrer. Photo by Lori Duff

I closely followed the revelations last month that Jonah Lehrer, the wonder boy pop-neuroscience writer who had just landed at the New Yorker, had a habit of being a bit repetitive. On several occasions, it was discovered that Lehrer had almost verbatim copied from himself.

I thought that the reaction was overblown. I found it to be a bit of schadenfreude (as did my blogging colleague Danielle Berrin).

Still Lehrer’s act wasn’t “self-plagiarism”—it was, as Jack Schafer termed it, “onanism.” It was dishonest with readers, but it didn’t violate a cardinal rule of journalism.

I regularly recite my own work on this blog. The difference is just that I identify and cite to the original publication. (Example.)

I also didn’t want to believe that someone whom I had come to respect since interviewing him for The Jewish Journal before the release of his first of three books had questionable journalism ethics. After all, he hadn’t lifted someone else’s work or fabricated any information.

But then today came this news:

Jonah Lehrer has reportedly resigned from The New Yorker on the same day Michael Moynihan makes pretty convincing case in Tablet Magazine that Lehrer invented, deceptively patched together, or at best could not provide documentation for several quotes he attributed to Bob Dylan in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Lehrer already found himself in a bit of a journalism scandal last month when he got caught copying his own work from earlier publications and using it for posts on his newly created Frontal Cortex blog on The New Yorker’s website, but Moynihan’s accounts of quote fabrication and lying about one’s sources points to a journo-crime of an entirely different degree. The New York Times’s Julie Bosman reports that according to his publisher, he’s resigned, and they will stop shipping his book.

An archived version of the Tablet story is here (there website is down, presumably from traffic). And here is a statement from Lehrer:

Three weeks ago, I received an email from journalist Michael Moynihan asking about Bob Dylan quotes in my book Imagine,” Mr. Lehrer said in a statement. “The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes. But I told Mr. Moynihan that they were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan’s representatives. This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said.

0 Comments — Leave your comment