The Conservative Movement Should Be So Talented
by: Schvach Yid

Chabad bashing by the Conservative Movement of Judaism? Tzvi Fishman of Arutz Sheva – the Israel National News website - and of his own Jewish Sexuality.com website, might call this ‘Yesod envy’. Yet the on-line edition of the Jerusalem Post has posted an article by Andrew Silow-Carroll titled The Chabad Challenge at The Chabad challenge | Jerusalem Post. Hah!

I’m a big fan of Chabad Lubavitch, and contrary to the article’s stated premise concerning the Conservative Movement’s stance toward Chabad, that "Chabad is the religion closest to Judaism", Chabad Lubavitch is undoubtedly the best thing that has ever happened to Jewish outreach. Chabad does in fact ‘beat the pants’ off the Conservative Movement’s number one concern, the quest for so-called ‘Jewish Continuity’.

I attended a Conservative Movement Hebrew school as a child. I spent several months on the Conservative Movement’s kibbutz in Israel. I’ve had various dealings with a few of their synagogues.

I don’t like the Conservative Movement of Judaism. They do, and I think that’s their number one problem.

Why problem? In the November 2, 2007 issue of The New York Jewish Week, Stewart Ain wrote a piece titled Adrift Branch Searches Anew for an Anchor. Not to eschew the role of wannabe poet, Mr. Ain went on to report about the Conservative Movement’s current effort to – well – define itself. After all, they don’t call themselves ‘Judaism’, do they? Their name is ‘The Conservative Movement of Judaism’, so they need a platform – a schtick.

Here’s the link: http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a781/News/New_York.html

And here’s my opinion of what’s wrong with the ‘The Conservative Movement of Judaism’.

First, they are about themselves. The Conservative Movement is about The Conservative Movement. They are all about their organization, not about providing for the Jewish community. They exist to perpetuate themselves and their success as an organization. If they were on the hunt for employees to whom they would provide salaries and employment benefits, they might have a chance, but like all movements, they’re after members. Their concern is with losing members. They’re worried about retention. They might as well run a country club.

A corollary is that The Conservative Movement does not do Judaism. They do surrogates of Judaism. ‘Look at our beautiful synagogue’; ‘look at our beautiful sanctuary designed by that world famous architect what’s-his-name’. ‘Here’s our gift shop; look at the beautiful chotchkas we offer for sale’. ‘Here’s our beautiful ballroom; you can rent it for all the important ‘life cycle’ events in your life. It’s not the least bit ongepotchket’. Minyan? Huh - where’s the bar mitzvah?

These are substitutes for the real thing. The Jewish Community Center in my Bible Belt locale does exactly the same thing. It’s basically a health club with a Jewish theme. Garbage!

Second, The Conservative Movement is about what former Vice President Spiro Agnew called in one of his speeches, ‘effete snobs’. Years ago, on the Conservative Movement kibbutz in Israel, an American Conservative Movement rabbi said of the ‘rank and file’ membership of that Movement, ’they don’t a thing’ about Judaism. What a nice perspective for a rabbi to have of the followers of his Movement. Today, he’s on the faculty of The Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative Movement’s rabbinical school.

Once I had relocated to the Bible Belt, I met another Conservative Movement rabbi who said the same sort of thing. He had been hired by a local Conservative Movement havurah to lead High Holiday services, which he did. He belted out one niggun after another with his mellow, silk-like voice - right into a microphone - on the High Holidays. Yup, he sure do know! After one of the services he said to me, ‘I could sing or do anything, they’d never know the difference’. Nice!

Third, the Conservative Movement has abandoned the ‘Jewish way’ in favor of assimilation. No wonder its members assimilate. Take, for example the Movement’s seminary mentioned above – please! It’s not a yeshiva. Yeshiva University, the so called ‘flagship’ institution of higher learning of the Modern Orthodox, is a real, honest-to-goodness university, with a real, honest-to-goodness rabbinical yeshiva (RIETS) as its rabbinical seminary. But at the Theological Seminary of America, the Conservative Movement has abandoned pilpul for term papers and dissertations. Moreover, they have abandoned traditional Jewish learning for apologetics. Just listen to them the next time some appear on TV, as in a recent rerun of PBS’s Three Faiths, One Gd. Dreck! A university is a university, just as a yeshiva is a yeshiva. When a student changes yeshivas – OK! When a student changes universities and leaves JTS – bye, bye! Judaism as an academic subject is not emunah; it’s not even religion. An academic subject is no basis for personal identity.

I could go on. The bottom line is that the Conservative Movement’s approach of competition against and abandonment of the real thing has never worked, and its snobbery is self destructive.

I have a couple of ditties from my time on that kibbutz, but not now.

Baruch HaShem for Chabad Lubavitch, and for the efforts of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, olav hashalom, and if the Lubavitchers take liberties and do the ‘yechi’ routine, so what.

Lastly, if you’d like to read an entertaining and informative account of how the Conservative Movement got started (it was really in response to the success of the Reform Movement, and rejection of Orthodoxy), read Nathan Glazer’s American Judaism – it’s still in print.

New Jews
by: Schvach Yid

Not to be a bombastic, ego-inflated, boorish know-it-all who presumes dominant superiority – I frequently am/do – but I want to say kudos and a yasha koach to a blog spot I’ve just learned about from this week’s Haveil Havalim posting, #140, by the Life in Israel blogspot, called Jews By Choice (actually, from the comments section of the HH blog).

How thoroughly cool-odox! Yes jadies and jents, I accept the rabbinical interpretation of HaShem’s commandment that a Jew is one born to a Jewish mother, but c’mon, even in Tanach we are presented with ‘Jews by choice’. ‘Oh yeah’, you might say, ‘just name one other than Ruth’. Well, Ruth would be enough, but okay, let’s see, there was Moses’ first wife, Zipporah. She was Midianite, but outdid her most beloved prophet hubby by taking the initiative of circumcising their son, thus staying off a plague. Any doubt that her kids were Jews?

Let’s see, there must have been others, but I’m not that cool-odox (but I am the child of a Jewish mother, and of a Jewish father for that matter). Oh yeah, there’s Rahav in the Book of Judges - maybe she became Jewish. I’m sure there must be others. That’s right, Onkelos, the non-Jew turned rabbi who gave us the now-standard translation of the Chumash from Hebrew into Aramaic. He isn’t Biblical, but he’ll do.

Anyway, I think it’s both flattering and correct that non-Jews who feel a gravitation-like pull toward Judaism accept us to the extent that they decide to become us. There’s nothing like sincerity in choosing a shared life. In a way, this mimics a successful marriage, just as long as the conversion to Judaism is sincere and not a cover for an attempt at some covert infiltration for the purpose of proselytizing Jews away from Judaism.

Chassidus/Kabbalah have a bit to say about conversion to Judaism, in relation to the transmigration – ibbur – of souls. Just consider for a moment what happens to all the souls of slaughtered Jews; surely, they must be available for reincarnation, even if the number of Jews in existence at any one moment is too small to accommodate all the available Jewish souls. Make sense? Besides, it improves the gene pool. Geneticists call it heterosis – genetic vigor resulting from out breeding (not a pc term when applied to human populations).

If you’re interested check out the Jews By Choice blog site at http://jewsbychoice.org/.

And the answer is no – I don’t think we Jews should proselytize. Chabad Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, on the other hand,
does.

And the Kristall-Globe Award Goes To…
by: Schvach Yid

…us! It’s awarded to us Jews. Sound silly? Well, just consider the matter for a moment and consider the Nobel Prize. A commentator on one of the cable TV news channels commented about Al Gore’s award of the Nobel Prize, followed by the comment, ‘who doesn’t want one of those?’

Nu, what’s the big deal with this Nobel Prize already? The cash? The prestige? Why is it so prestigious? Is it because one gets to sup with the King and Queen of Sweden? Perhaps it’s because of the big names of one’s antecedent Prize recipients - you know, like joining a club.

The Nobel Prize is named after Alfred Nobel; actually, he named it after himself. Alfred Nobel is known for his Prize (no, he didn’t award one to himself), but should also be known for his invention. Alfred Nobel was a chemist who invented dynamite; he accumulated his personal financial fortune from the manufacture and sale of his invention, and left a foundation to posterity. Fortunately, AIDS wasn’t known back then, and so his financial resources weren’t commandeered to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa (just ask Bill Gates and Warren Buffet). Personally, I think we’re much better off with the Nobel Prize!

Alfred Nobel was a Jew.

People all over the world run after this prestigious accolade. Why do so many Jews ‘win’ the Nobel Prize? I dunno, but I think it’s nice that we share our Prize with everyone else, don’t you?

Why are relatively so few Moslems awarded the Nobel Prize? Because they hate Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish State of Israel, that’s why! Because during the Second World War, the Arab Moslem leadership conspired with the Third Reich to annihilate us. Because they interceded against European Jewish immigration to Britain’s Mandate in Palestine, thus condemning so many millions of Europe’s Jews to death. Because after the War, Arab Moslems recruited the defunct, on-the-run Nazis to provide them with tactical and strategic training in the Arab war against the Yishuv. Because Arab Moslem professors in Western universities formulate careers in Jew-hatred. Because the Arab Moslems are this generation’s Nazis, that’s why!

Two billion people world wide – one third of everyone – worships a Jew as their ‘Savior’. Don’t you think we Jews deserve a prize for that?

They’re after us. It seems that almost every group in the world chases us, frequently to our demise. Christians and Moslems we know about. Pogroms, Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust we know about. Why have former Hindu co-workers walked up to me in the lab were I used to work and asked about Jewish theology, only to spit venom in response and tell me ‘you got that from us’. And the Hindu-turned-Christian professor mentioned in my earlier blogs might as well have a neon sign flashing over his head announcing his disdain for Jews.

And American Black people (to paraphrase a former Black co-worker, ‘if I wanted to say African-American, I would have’)? ‘Follow the Jews’, ‘emulate the Jews’ are the instructions pronounced by some Black people, or at least this used to be the case. It’s my not so humble opinion that this has not led to the best situation for us Jews, or as a Black nurse once said to me, ‘Why are you people all the doctors; why don’t any of you work?’ Emes! Well, to use her rationale, I ‘worked’; in fact, I ‘worked’ with her, and I was never welcome to do so.

Back in the old days, in a hospital in Brooklyn NY, I wandered into the nurses’ station. Seated there was a Jewish physician, surrounded by several nurses (not Jewish). As if on cue, he began a soliloquy to the nurses about how he had, as a student, worked part time driving a meat delivery truck. He related how he had taken home a ham, and how much he had enjoyed it. The nurses stared at me as if to drive home the point. They succeeded. I wasn’t religious. I didn’t wear a yalmulka or keep kosher, but still, they apparently had a need to lay down the law – their law – with me, as though my mere presence demanded it.

Three years later, in the Bible Belt, I sat at a lab meeting. The company ‘alter’ sat across from me at the conference table. She was a lab technician with seniority points based on her years of attendance at one of the numerous local churches. The subject – an upcoming party for the new division boss. The űber-boss was there, as well as all the underlings, Ph.D. faculty members included. What flew from her mouth as she stared at me? Ham! ‘We’re having a ham for the party’ (I had never mentioned religion at work), ‘and you know what fine quality that means’, nodding her head up and down. Everyone else at the meeting groaned. The űber-boss was silent. She remained; months later I was asked for my resignation.

More than a decade later the divisional administrator at another research institution where I worked was fond of displaying a computer printout depiction of Jesus. One fine day, just prior to Christmas and a few days prior to the Division’s annual Christmas party, she confronted me as I walked into the office. I had declined the invitation to the party by RSVP (Friday night, no less). She shouted (I mean it), ‘if you know what’s good for you, you’d better be at the party, mister’! This theater was staged in front of the Divisional Director’s office. He was in. His door was open. Not a peep (he wasn’t Jewish).

Alan Dershowitz, in his book Chutzpah, encourages Jews to not be shy. Speak up! He’s right. The isolated Jew is fodder. In the workplace I keep my mouth shut about politics, my religious convictions and about my genealogy, and I’ve paid.

And so, on the day preceding the anniversary of Kristallnacht, this year’s Kristall-Globe Award goes to ‘The Jews’. Us. And why not? We seem to ‘catch it’ all the time. We’re about to ‘catch it’ again in Annapolis on the 18^th of this month. And my heartiest congrats go all the non-Jewish recipients of the Nobel Prize. Don’t forget, boys and girls, it’s we Jews who've given you something to kvell about.

Homeless in November - Kristalltag
by: Schvach Yid

The anniversary of Kristallnacht is this Friday, erev Shabbos. The night of November 9, 1938 was a night of rioting and brutality committed by the Nazis in cities all over Europe. Their targets were the Jews of those communities.

Kristallnacht constituted a personal and group defining moment forJews in Germany, Austria, and everywhere else it occurred. For them, it wasn’t a gruesome and heart rending news event (as would be the tragic assassination of President Kennedy). Life had turned against them; their countrymen had betrayed them. My mother, Vienna-born and raised, said she had no idea of the extent of Nazi sympathy in her native city, but during the day of November 10, 1938, the party pins came out of the pockets and onto lapels and blouses and as a result, a great wisdom was provided to the victims - the great betrayal had been placed on public display. My mother’s school teachers, and parents of friends of my mother whom she had never suspected of Nazi leanings, let alone of Party membership, had revealed their true selves as Jew-hating Nazi nationalists.

In his great volume on the subject of Nazi Germany titled The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer calls the event of Austria’s annexation by Germany, ‘The Anschluss-The Rape of Austria’. Baloney! Those who ‘came out’ for the ‘great’ event didn’t witness any violation of Austria’s national integrity. Instead, the witnesses observed joy and jubilation by the ‘good’ people of Vienna. Jumping onto the bandwagon never constituted rape; indeed, skirts were lifted for an entirely different reason - it was more of a homecoming than anything else (Hitler’s ‘triumphant’ entry into Vienna had occurred on March 14, 1938; he was a native of Austria and not of Germany, you will recall).

On November 7, 1938, a seventeen year old German Jew named Herschel Grynszpan had shot and killed Ernst von Rath, the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris (who, according to Shirer, had himself been targeted by the Gestapo because he had never shared the Nazi penchant for Jew-hating; Grynszpan had actually been on the hunt for Count Johannes von Welczeck, Germany’s ambassador to France).

The night of November 9, 1938, the night of the Nazi rioting for which Kristallnacht is named and famed, marked the annual celebration of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923. Hitler and Goering were the guests of honor at that year’s fête, after which the glass-shattering progrom began in cities throughout Europe.

Kristallnacht went way beyond drunk and disorderly; it was a planned event organized by the SS’s number two man in the driver’s seat - that no friend of any Jew – Reinhardt Heydrich, who had also served as the mastermind of the ‘Final Solution’ planned at the Wannsee Conference in January, 1942.

One may recall Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant Reformation, was born November 10, 1483 (as opposed to 1938 – get it? Hitler, Goering, and pals wish you many happy returns, Marty).

Do you know what Martin Luther said about Jews? Have you ever read his ditty titled The Jews and Their Lies? Liberty Bell Publications publishes their version of this slim tome. The publisher’s comments are just as telling as is Luther’s text.

Well, just as day follows night, Kristallnacht turned into ‘Kristalltag’. My mother, then fourteen years old, was home alone. My maternal grandparents had left their apartment on Westbahn Strasse in the Seventh Bezirke (district) of Vienna in yet another desperate attempt to appeal for entry visas to – anywhere, as long as it was off the continent of Europe. At around 9:00am a knock came at the door. The voice of the apartment building’s female superintendent – hausmeisterin – announced through the closed door that my mother was required to allow her into the apartment, that some men were with her and that they needed to speak with her.

Upon opening the door, my mother viewed the familiar hausmeisterin and two men standing in the entrance. The men were dressed in the standard SA uniform – brown shirts and trousers, black boots, with red arm bands that bore swastikas. They walked into the apartment and the men, who according to my mother were very polite and proper, informed her that she and her parents had to vacate their apartment. They then escorted my mother to the apartment immediately below theirs, occupied by another Jewish family.

Her parents returned to be greeted with the bad news. Several Jewish families had been corralled into that apartment; they remained there until their exit from ‘their country’ (their citizenship had already been confiscated), but later that day, my mother and grandparents were permitted to briefly return to their apartment to gather a few things, only to discover that it had been thoroughly ransacked; according to my mother, ‘everything was taken’.

If you think this isn’t the worst that could have happened, you’re right. My mother’s maternal grandparents were still in Slovakia (my maternal grandmother was native Slovak) and refused to leave. By War’s end my grandmother had received a letter from the International Red Cross informing her that her parents had perished in Auschwitz.

A similar event occurred with my father’s family in Bremerhaven, Germany, except that the rioting Jew-haters tried to break down the front door of their house in an attempt to do Gd knows what; thank Gd, they didn’t succeed, but the following day, November 10, 1938, my paternal grandfather was ‘collected’ and shipped off to the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen. Fortunately, their entry visas to the United States arrived, and after something like a two week incarceration in Sachsenhausen, they (my father, uncle, and paternal grandparents) were permitted to leave Germany for the US. They too had been kicked out of their home on November 10^th.

Overt reminders of lousy life events have a habit of popping up after the fact. In the late 1980’s my parents and I attended an ‘air show’ – a display of primarily military aircraft, both on the ground and in flight, complete with various re-enactments of WW 2 air battles. As we left the show grounds, we passed a stand of men dressed in WW2 German military uniforms, complete with red swastika arm bands, black boots – the whole spiel. My father, who had served in the US Army during the Second World War as a hospital medic on Guadalcanal and Guam, looked at me in amazement and asked, ‘why are they dressed like that?’

Autumn Kvetch
by: Schvach Yid

In the 1973 remake of The Three Musketeers (you remember – Michael York, Raquel Welch, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Faye Dunaway, Charlton Heston), a freelance executioner (have ax, will travel) demands additional payment from his clients for transporting their condemned prisoner by boat across a lake to her execution site (Bastille Day is my favorite holiday), proclaiming, ‘I’m a headsman, not a sailor’.

In other words, one doesn’t get ahead by functioning as an oarsman. An oarsman doesn’t care where he goes, just as long as he gets paid and doesn’t lose his life in the process or fall off the edge of the Earth, as in the opening skit of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

Israel has a deadly date in Annapolis, and historically, this is a month for Jewish disasters. Not to sound astrological – I have no use for astrology – but still, I get nervous during the month of November. In the Northern Hemisphere the hours of daylight reduce, people seem to become sluggish, hibernating animals get ready for their annual big snooze; in other words, this half of the world seems to be falling asleep. Emotional depression sets in. Face it, for various reasons the month of November is a bummer.

As if to presage impending disaster, CNN chose to rebroadcast its recent ditty, Gd’s Jewish Warriors – you know, diamonds and schmooze. One of Christiane Amanpour’s ‘great’ lines from that production, ‘…defiance of international law comes dressed in diamonds’ just about sums up the world view of Jews and Judaism (she’s married to a Jew, you know).

I kvetch about this often. I’ve lived much of my life either witnessing or functioning as the target of Jew hatred. The stuff stinks (in my little Bible Belt locale, the powers that be have decided to build the municipal sewer treatment facility perhaps 1/10^th of a mile from an Orthodox synagogue, and believe me, that stinks on several levels).

I’m tired of it, but there’s evidently a lot more on the way. The only consolation was that this rebroadcast of media-sponsored anti-Jew tooth-nashing occurred on the evening of Halloween (last evening in October, by us, ‘erev November’). Get the message?

I’ve managed to change my view of Christiane Amanpour’s report about Jewish activism in and for Israel. At first I shrugged it off, but since re-viewing it several times it has now succeeded in grading against me. I now think it’s pure venom, and more is on the way, in Annapolis.

November 1938, the month of Kristallnacht, was all about capitulation. Granted, I don’t think anyone can blame the Jews of Europe (not just of Germany and Austria) for shying away from the political demands of the moment, given our long history as residents of Europe. We pretty much had been put and kept ‘in our place’ over a period of 1½ millennia. But more is on the way, and this time, it’s our Jewish Homeland that’s up for grabs.

The solution, according to the savvy meisters, has been to find ‘common ground’ on which all can agree. This makes for pleasant and low anxiety conversations at meetings. The chosen common ground is global terrorism. It must be stopped. Damn right! But this is no solution to the problem (and I don’t mean issue) confronting Israel. This so-called common ground of stopping global terrorism is a euphemism, or better yet, a distraction maneuver, from the real problem – Jew hatred. No happy talk with Arabs who demand the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel will solve anything; their position hasn’t changed, and won’t, and no third party mediation will change a thing.

For all intents and purposes, it’s November 1938 all over again.

Brass Bris
by: Schvach Yid

According to a recent article on Ynetnews.com, the wife of Yigal Amir – the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin, may he rest in peace – has just given birth to a son. Mazel tov! The bris is scheduled for the 12^th anniversary (Gregorian) of Rabin’s murder. Some coincidence!

Apparently, prisoners in Israel, and these include incarcerated Arab terrorists, are allowed conjugal visits. Schlecht? But the resulting celebration is a bit too inappropriate, and cruel

I didn’t agree with Rabin’s policies towards the Palestinian Arabs, but Amir should have killed Arafat, not Israel’s Prime Minister; that would have been courageous.

If you’re interested, here’s the link: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3464974,00.html

Here’s a digression. Decades ago, when I worked in a hospital, a group of nurses struck up a discussion about a yalmulka-wearing physician’s assistant who had recently done a bris in the same institution. How they yapped about how ‘he took off the whole thing’. One of them turned to me and in a voice most angry asserted ‘you don’t have to remove the whole thing, okay!’, leading me to realize that brass is provided in various forms.

What To Do On A Rainy Day In Annapolis
by: Schvach Yid

Easy. Play Pin the Tail on the Donkey – and guess where the tail goes.

Lebensraum Fűr Der Juden
by: Schvach Yid

The Upcoming Fête in Annapolis
by Schvach Yid

This November, which is just two weeks away, and during which we Jews will mark the 69^th anniversary of Kristallnacht (Nov. 9, 1938) and we Americans will mark the 44^th anniversary of the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy (Nov. 22, 1963), promises hold nothing good for Israel or for the Jewish community in general. The upcoming fête is scheduled to take place in the City of Annapolis, the capitol of the State of Maryland, right here in the USA. It will be, of course, the same old drill, second only in its pain to the dentist’s drill. Our experiences in dealing with the Palestinian ‘cause’ have taught us to expect nothing but rancor, accusation, and a demand for Jewish self-abandonment. We Jews after all are the offenders, the non-Jewish world asserts.

The State of Maryland, by the way, whose bucolic countryside is plenty beautiful, and Annapolis is no exception, is named for Christianity’s ‘Mother of Gd’ – Mary. Jewish history has been determined, in no small measure, by her followers/worshippers.

In the Oct. 12 2007 edition of the New York Jewish Week McGill University professor of History Gil Troy has reminded his readers of a little ditty espoused by Azzam Pasha, the Arab League Secretary, on Sept. 16 1947. He reportedly said, ‘Nations never concede; they fight. You won’t get anything by peaceful means of compromise…only by force of arms…we shall try to defeat you’. The article continues, ‘The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem called for …jihad, or holy war’.

Prof. Troy’s article continues to relate that in the course of the campaign of violence launched by the local (Palestinian) Arabs in response to the Mufti’s call for jihad, 1,256 Jews were killed during the 5 month period between the Mufti’s call for war and Britain’s egress from its mandated territory in the Levant.

I think it’s fair to state that the position of the Palestinian Arabs, and that of the Arab world in general, hasn’t changed.

Here’s a bit that appeared on cable TV this past Tuesday night, courtesy of the National Geographic Channel (which referred to itself as ‘Nat Geo’ – how utterly cool, huh?) in a presentation titled Decoding the Dead Sea Scrolls. In a discussion concerning the ‘Copper Scroll’ of Dead Sea Scroll fame, Robert Feather (author of The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran) stated that there appears within the Hebrew writing of the Copper Scroll, at apparently arbitrary intervals and for no apparent reason (like Jew-hatred), solitary Greek letters which when strung in consecutive sequence phonetically spell the name of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. According to this discussion, Akhenaten was the first to give the world monotheism, and that the 3 ‘great’ monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – all owe their monotheistic beliefs to pharonic Egypt.

Parity has now been established by Robert Feather and National Geographic between Judaism and its 2 spin-off religions and accordingly, what claim does Judaism have - on anything, let alone the ‘Holy Land’.

What telling timing, considering the upcoming meeting in Annapolis. Sail into Annapolis with that one.

I think Ehud Olmert, and all Left-leaning Jews should pay much closer attention to the goings on, as well as to the history, around us. Der Altneuland of Theodor Herzl was a novel – a utopian dream; the real world specifies other requirements.

Jewish Public Image
by: Schvach Yid

I’m troubled about the way some Jews portray themselves, and by extension the rest of us, on TV.

Take – please – for example The Learning Channel’s televised ditty Miami Ink. This reality TV series (I haven’t caught it in a while – is it still on cable?) portrays the goings on in a tattoo parlor located in Miami’s South Beach (never been there). One of the two partners, and without question the absolute dominator of the scene, is an Israeli-born American Jew (left Israel at the age of 12 according to his self-disclosure spiel). He’s Jewish, and covered in tattoos from base of neck to ankles. He tattoos people for a living - that’s what the show is all about.

He has two tattoo specialties: Japanese art (it’s nice – no, not the tattoos - I like Japanese art, not to mention that culture’s literature), and Jewish themes. In one episode he tattooed a hamsa onto the dorsum of a young lady’s foot. In another episode, he tattooed the Hebrew word koach (in Hebrew letters) onto the arm of another customer, after much verbose discussion about ‘dots’ (evidently this Jewish tattoo artist and bearer has never heard of dagesh and cholom, despite his Israeli roots). He did however display his erudition of Hebrew in a phone consultation about the placement of ‘dots’ in the word koach (it means strength). With a tone of disgust he talked about religious Jews who show up in his shop to obtain tattoos.

We are commanded in Torah, Parshas Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:28): You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, nor print/dig any marks on yourselves. The Hebrew word used by the parsha in this context is ka’aka, which according to Rashi, is a reference to digging, as in the hangman’s pole which was dug into the ground and from which the condemned were hanged (get Rashi’s message?).

Ka’aka is also the modern Israeli Hebrew word for tattoo. When I was a very young child, Kaka was a baby term for feces.

The flagrant violation of Jewish religious law and Jewish social values, by Jews as flaunted on TV, disgusts me, and the hell with that guy’s criticisms of religious Jews who saunter into his shop to get tattooed. What about him? So he’s not frum. He’s not exempt.

Then there’s Rabbi Shmuel (Shmuley) Boteach’s gig on the same cable channel. It’s called Shalom in the Home – you know, shalom b’byit. What’s wrong? This! In one episode he evidently was wrapping things up (I was ‘flipping’ through the channels looking for something to watch when I caught this), when he attempted to hug the wife who, along with her husband, was the subject and intended beneficiary of R’ Boteach’s intervention. She declined. Her husband was at her side. She, the non-Jewish woman, knew better than R’ Boteach. It’s called Shmiras Negilah among Jews; others probably call it tact, or perhaps propriety.

Shmiras Negilah is the rabbinical injunction forbidding a man from making physical contact, especially of the amorous or affectionate kind, with any woman other than his own wife. R’ Boteach has smichah (rabbinical ordination) from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. To understate the matter, he should know better. Placing on display to a portion of the TV-viewing world his Jewish identity by announcing himself a rabbi, and wearing a yalmulka and beard, I think he has the obligation to ‘play by the rules’ – it’s not that difficult as a TV performer.

There are undoubtedly other examples of which I’m uninformed, but you get my message.

And what about a graphic of a tattoo? Not on your life!

The Best Defense…
by Schvach Yid

We Yiddin are fond, even certain, to take our wisdom from Torah, both Tanach and the teachings of generations of our sages. Great truisms are, on occasion, offered from other sources which have at least the potential for practical application in our Nation’s dealings.

Whether or not we are able to muster an ability to identify with, and inculcate, such philosophies is beside the point. Necessity is the mother of invention, and need is, or at should be, the great motivator. Survival, and provision for our young, are paramount.

In America, football season has recently begun. It’s football, not baseball or basketball or hockey, that is the great American sport. It’s not just competition for its own sake. It’s controlled combat. The players even dress for this parody of war, like knights in armor. And like all combatants in the midst of battle, in football too there is an offensive force that lines up and battles a defensive force. Ground (land) is gained and lost. The whole thing is regulated by referees, and by the clock. It’s controlled and limited. Often, but by no means always, the participants go home safe and sound. On a few occasions, tragedy strikes.

I have no use for sports. For me they have always lacked information and entertainment. I’m not much into competition, and competition for its own sake makes no sense to me; I have my fill of it in the real world - I don’t need parodies.

Once upon a time there was a football coach named Vince Lombardi. According to football mavens (experts) and American sports folklore, Lombardi was the greatest football coach – ever. He was the celebrated coach of the celebrated Green Bay Packers football team.

Mr. Lombardi died in 1970.

Vince Lombardi made a significant contribution to the world of philosophy; I suspect, just about everyone has heard it. I have, and I know nothing about football, and I mean nothing!

The great Mr. Lombardi intoned: ‘The best defense is a good offense’. Surely you’ve heard this.

Evidently, Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister of Israel, and his pals have not. This philosophy of Vince Lombardi’s is about winners and winning. Ehud Olmert’s philosophy, as yet undefined and unannounced by him, is apparently not. Unless Mr. Olmert has some trick up his sleeve, unless he’s playing rope-a-dope games of one sort or another, Israel and the Jewish people in general are hurling headlong into another national tragedy.

Whether or not Olmert and Company can enunciate Vince Lombardi’s philosophy of strategy is unknown to me. What is certain is that weakness, the position of hiding from one’s own fear by playing the role of superiority and condescension, never works. One’s enemy will only smell blood, and will demand it. Swift, decisive action works - just ask Vince. One’s adversaries won’t even consider the possibility of the value of one’s possessions if the possessor proclaims his eagerness to abandon them. The simple capitulation of agreeing to talk about divestment sends a crystal clear message to our foe – that we can be dismissed, absolutely literally, from our land, that it lacks value for us. There is only one possible response, and there’s no need to worry about accusation and unkind offensive analogies. Those who are in the know, know. Vince Lombardi knew, and just played a game. Israel’s continuation as the sovereign Jewish State is no game.

The Big Rub
by: Schvach Yid


Here's what Israel can expect at the forthcoming meeting in Annapolis:










Here's the solution:

Bringing Up Baby – Properly
by: Schvach Yid

At the risk of coming across as entirely inappropriate I just have to inform you. Last night I went to the local Barnes and Noble Booksellers outlet to do some recreational print browsing (my mouse is not my life). There it was, albeit on the bottom-most rack, but an attention-grabber all the same - Muslim Girl magazine, a tznius-pushing pictorial magazine for something - teen religious Moslem females.

Lots of photos of Moslem girls socializing and ‘doing their thing’, almost all in traditional attire. One pictorial was titled Aikido Angel, about Amira Mehter who takes lessons in the martial art of Aikido from her dad, Yousef. She, unlike her contemporaries featured in this version of Islam’s answer to Seventeen Magazine, but with a dominant religious theme, was not dressed in traditional Moslem garb, except for her head covering, or hijab; the rest of her was clad, as was her silver-bearded father, in the standard ‘fists of fury’ foot-to-the-opponent’s-jaw outfit, complete with combat stance.

Talk about a showcase for empowerment, and wholesome to boot – a young woman learning to assert herself with martial arts lessons from her silver-bearded father.

Another article challenged the reader to take ‘Our Ramadan Quiz’. And there was a lot more.
Here’s the link: http://www.muslimgirlmagazine.com/web/index.cfm.

At first I was amused. I found it to be both cute and quirky – a standard Western recipe with a novel (to me) application.

Then I saw the wisdom in this. I tried to imagine an analogous publication, in English, for Jewish kids, à la (not Allah) derech hatznius, published by a commercial publishing house rather than by a religious organization like Chabad, and whether we Jews have a young population that would purchase and use such a magazine. In my Bible Belt community Moslems out-populate Jews almost 4:1, and most Jews ‘down’ here are not Orthodox (no kidding).

We Jews do have Chabad Lubavitch and its worldwide network of Chabad Houses that provide for our youngsters, including programs for Jewish kids hooked on drugs and alcohol. I have no idea what goes on among the Moslem young. I don’t know if this magazine even sells, but I’m still envious.

The Glee of the Gentiles
by: Schvach Yid

In Yiddish it’s called goyim nachas, but I don’t like the ‘G-word’, so I don’t use it. Biblical Hebrew is unfit to be perverted for pejorative use, and anyway, I have no reason to insult 6+ billion non-Jews worldwide.

So there I was, perched in front of my TV set. Just before Shabbos licht benchen. Watching Glenn Beck. Oy, the hazards of using a TV remote control!

Beck had in his lair Rev. John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church of San Antonio Texas, founder of CUFI (Christians United For Israel), author of at least two books on the subject of Jews, Israel, and Christians (Jerusalem Countdown, and In Defense of Israel), and all around evangelizing pastor. Ostensibly, he’s very pro-Israel, which might lead one to assume he’s also pro-Jewish. Here's a link to one of Rev. Hagee's pro-Israel spiels, delivered at the AIPAC Policy Conference in March, 2007:

http://www.aipac.org/Publications/SpeechesByPolicymakers/Hagee-PC-2007.pdf

In the course of the interview, Rev. Hagee, as he has often done in the past, expounded on the fate awaiting ‘The Jews’, according to Christianity’s Book of Revelation. In brief it goes something like this: ‘the Rapture’ will occur, in which those individuals faithful to Christianity’s Savior will be ‘saved’ by sublimating into Heaven from wherever they happen to be at that moment. Those who are not ‘believers’ – Jews – will then suffer at the hands of the ‘anti-Christ’ courtesy of atrocities more severe and horrific than have ever before been known to humankind.

No kidding! After 1½ millennia of rabid Jew hatred, a ‘pro-Israel’ evangelical preacher needs to inform Jews about this ‘vision’ of one of Christianity’s apostles. Surprise! We’re going to suffer the inconceivable, and Christians will have Gd in Heaven.

Thanks to an article by Nathan Burstein posted on the on-line edition of the Jerusalem Post I’ve learned that Vanity Fair magazine has compiled a list of the 100 most ‘powerful’ people, and that more than half are Jewish. Here’s the link: (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1191257286817&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). The highest ranking Jews occupy third place – Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google.

What is one to think? Is there news here? Is something wrong? Should we Jews take pride in this, or should we circle the wagons? Our history has taught us to duck.

Jewish apologists will wane inane about social Darwinian selection pressures; you know, those individual Jews who managed to survive over the past 1½ millennia were the most talented, astute, insistent, motivated survivors, and their talents for social survival have been passed ‘to a new generation’ of Jew who, having been turned off to our religion, have succeeded wildly at secular pursuits.

Others, like Dennis Prager, have written that we Jews, after all, are Gd’s ‘chosen people’; we’re supposed to succeed. That we, as Gd’s-designated ‘nation of priests’ are commanded to function as a ‘light unto the nations’ (in biblical Hebrew ‘nations’ is goyim – the forbidden ‘G-word’ of pejorative application).

Then there’s my opinion. Sorry to get unpleasant, but I’m about to get unpleasant.

Does it occur to our Christian neighbors that the Savior of Christianity, the person they worship – some as the ‘Son of Gd’, and others as Gd Himself – was a Jew? The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church states that the Church is Jesus on earth. A simple syllogism will lead one to the conclusion that the Roman Catholic Church is a Jew. I’m certain there can be no objection to Jewish social success from that quarter, nor that we Jews are damned to suffer for our refusal to share Christianity’s belief.

One day at work, one of my many former co-workers, from one of my many former jobs, announced for my aural pleasure, and for no other apparent reason, that he was Catholic. We were employed in an academic research lab in a university medical school. We were the only two employees in that lab, and we each worked for separate faculty members. ‘I’m Catholic’ he said, out of the clear blue.

As time went on he would, on occasion, pipe up with a spontaneous and inappropriate statement about his Catholic identity or my Jewish identity. One fine day I had enough of his jibes and so, in response to yet another of his off the cuff statements I asked him ‘where was Jesus crucified?’ He screwed his face with a most perplexed look and questioningly uttered ‘Rome?’ I then informed him of one of Christianity’s most fundamental facts, that the Savior of his religion had been crucified outside the wall of Jerusalem in Israel, then under Roman occupation (and I thought Hebrew school was lousy). This person, by the way, had a Bachelor’s degree, and was employed to do biochemistry.

My boss in that lab was a junior faculty member of that sponsoring institution. She too was Catholic (and co-habited in seemingly connubial bliss with a Jewish physician whose office was located next to hers). One fine day, following one of my co-worker’s forays into the wonderful world of comparative religious identity, she assured him that she ‘would take care of it’, a statement she made in my presence, and evidently for my benefit.

In the meantime, another bit of glee for and by the gentiles, and in the same lab. A Jewish physician (not my boss’ lover), a clinical practitioner, came to the same lab to participate in a lab-based research project. He was an Orthodox Jew whom I had previously met in one of the few Orthodox schuls in the area. His lab task was to dissect piglets (that’s right) that had been desiccated in an oven. And guess where the porcine baking oven was located? Yup, adjoining the lab in which I worked, and the only door leading into the ‘oven room’ opened into the same lab. He was assigned a bench opposite mine.

The Jewish MD put up with this apparent humiliation, as did I. He didn’t stay long, and was replaced by a lab technician.

Eventually I was asked (told) to submit my resignation. To this day, 20 years later, I’m still blacklisted from employment by that medical school (Bible Belt location).

Somewhere along the line I learned a tale/report of the sort of humiliation heaped upon Jews and our rabbis, which had to do with herding a town’s/city’s Jewish population into the public square; in the presence of all the rabbi was required to kiss the hindquarters of a statue of a swine, upon which pig feces had been smeared. I can easily believe it.

I Hated Hebrew School, And How!
by Schvach Yid

I hated Hebrew school. Yet, I get up every morning, and after the standard first-thing-in-the-morning routines, I put on tallis and tefillin, and daven.

I loathed Hebrew school. I couldn’t stand Hebrew school. Hebrew school was the worst junk, garbage, nonsense – Uch!!!

I attended a Conservative Movement Hebrew school (since renamed the Conservative Movement of Judaism) located somewhere in the City of New York. For five full years – that’s right, count ‘em, five full years - I attended elementary school-level Hebrew school. Two afternoons during the regular week, and Sunday mornings, I attended Hebrew school.

How does one kill a kid’s weekend? Send him to Hebrew school Sunday morning – for five consecutive years.

I hated the building in which the Hebrew school was situated. I hated those lousy chairs on which we sat. I hated the metal stairs that led up and down that lousy building – it was brand new, still under construction, when I was registered for ‘Kitah Aleph’ in the autumn of 1960.

I hated the green blackboards.

I hated the odor of the building. I don’t know from whence it came – the ventilation system, the paint, the people; perhaps the place was built on some ancient burial ground, and bad odors are the means by which offended spirits vent their displeasure.

I hated those fucking lousy little yellow raisins we kids were given on Sukkos. I hated those lousy little Israeli flags we were given to wave on Simchas Torah. What the hell is the connection between Simchas Torah and Zionism? Simchas Torah and Torah I understand, but Israeli politics? Israeli politics as a defense against Jew-hatred I understand, but not as indoctrination for American school children.

I hated my Hebrew school teachers. Actually, one I liked. He was the only American. With pleasure I announce his name – Rabbi Rothman! I have no idea what he used as a first name. I loved that guy. He wore a fedora in class. He worried. All the other teachers, and the principal, were recruits from Israel. They were brought over and employed to indoctrinate us – not in living lives of Torah and mitzvos, but in conditioning us to make aliyah. I couldn’t stand this foreign political indoctrination.

I hated being required to pronounce Hebrew in the Israeli-Sefardic manner, only to hear the Yiddish-Ashkinazic pronounciation at home (I have nothing against the Sefardim, or for that matter, Israel’s choice to honor the Sefardim by adopting their pronounciation of Hebrew as the official ‘brand’).

Our cantor was a native of Vienna, like my mother and her family. He did his chazzanus training in Vienna. He was super – just like home. He had two sons; I attended the Hebrew school with the younger. I hated his guts. To this day, he is by far the most overtly obnoxious person I have ever met – nolo contendre! Foy!

I hated those lousy miserable notebooks – machberet. What the heck were those uninterpretable double blue lines about? Where was I supposed to write? In five years time not one teacher told me.

I hated our siddur – please forgive me (sorry for sounding like Don Rickles). No English translation, just Hebrew. The Shilo Siddur. I still have it. It’s water stained, but intact, very usable, and on my shelf. What was the point? Teaching first grade, brand new, never before studied children the Hebrew nusach without translation? We were each handed a copy for keeps, and immediately were led in davening. The son of the cantor knew how; the rest us….. Five years later, I still couldn’t translate one word from the siddur, but I could parrot any nigun (and Yiddish was verboten – the Israelis hate Yiddish).

I loved my bar mitzvah. My folks, the rabbi, and the cantor knew how – baruch HaShem This was a term I never heard, even once, in Hebrew school. Sheket b’vakasha (shut up, please) we heard incessantly, but never baruch HaShem.

Hebrew school planners, curriculum writers, and teachers have been screwing up for a long time, not to mention that Jewish day schools (full time private schools) cost a fortune.

‘New wave’ Jewish education for the young, new, innovative curricula, are bs. They too are junk. Let’s make it interesting and engaging doesn’t work. Public grade school isn’t innovative and engaging. The obligation to obtain a basic grade school education is law – go, or else. If you drop out, you’ll spend your life living in the gutter.

A quality Jewish education is no option for our Jewish young, and bs has no place. Judaism is a religion, not engaging entertainment, and it needs to be full time, and it can’t ‘cost’.

Good luck!

The ‘Bad Boy of Baltimore’
by: Schvach Yid

That was H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken folks. Sorry, but I can’t mention Friedrich Nietzsche without writing something about Mencken, who died in 1956, although his most famous literary work may be the multi-volume The American Language.

He was a journalist in the ‘old mold’ – he supposedly sloshed lots of booze down his gullet, smoked lots of cigars (his German-derived family manufactured them in Baltimore), and wrote whatever he damned pleased. He was the first to write a book on the works of Nietzsche in English.

He founded his own magazine, The American Mercury, and worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun newspaper for most of his career. His name is ensconced in the lobby of the Baltimore Sun.

Where Yiddin are concerned, I think, Mencken has left his mark as a controversial figure. Some remember him as having been unfriendly to Jews. Some have labeled him an anti-Semite. Others say no, that he befriended Jews during the rise and rage of the Third Reich, that he took Jew-haters to task in his writings, and that he chose Alfred A. Knopf, a Jew, as his long time publisher.

I have no idea concerning Mencken’s tilt concerning Jews. He died a half century ago, in an age that pre-dates political correctness. Back then, one could write what one wished without fear of losing one’s career (except, of course, in matters concerning communism and the late Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin). Had he lived today, who knows, he might have contributed to Arutz Sheva.

Credit: The 'Bad Boy of Baltimore' is taken from the subtitle of Marion Elizabeth Rodgers' biography of Mencken.

The Käse of Wagner
by: Schvach Yid

That’s Richard Wagner, the 19^th Century musical composer, principally of opera. Last night, WFMT, the Chicago-based public radio station, aired a re-broadcast of a concert given by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, conducted by its current director, Leon Botstein, who also provided some explanatory comments. Chief among these were comments about Richard Wagner and Israel’s outright rejection of his music.

Decades ago Zubin Mehta, formerly the Director of the New York Philharmonic, and much more, served as the Director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1981 he programmed a Wagner piece to be performed in concert. Well, the response was plutonic – Israelis shouted and stormed out of the concert hall; Holocaust survivors were aghast. In response, and by way of apology, Mehta was offered the Directorship of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for life, which he accepted.

In 2006, Maestro Mehta admitted in an interview his error in performing Wagner in Israel.

Here’re two links to an article about Zubin Mehta and his long association with the Israel philharmonic scene:
http://parsikhabar.net/the-israel-philaharmonic-and-zubin-mehta/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120100298_pf.html

So what’s with Richard Wagner and the Jews? But first, Richard Wagner and this Jew.

My father is German (and hated Wagner); my maternal Oma (grandmother; Slovak born and raised in Vienna) loved Wagner’s music. Wagner’s compositions are basically good old Teutonic marching music. I hate to admit that the stuff courses through my veins (and I’ve never set foot in Germany), but it does.

There has to be a gene that determines this taste in music, at least in my case. I grew up hearing my father play nothing but ‘classical’ music on his ‘hi fi’, but never Wagner (both my parents grew up during the rise of the Third Reich, my father in Germany, my mother in Vienna). Yet no sooner had I gravitated to ‘classical’ music than I zeroed in on Wagner. It must be genetic – it couldn’t possibly be environment.

The fact is Richard Wagner is rejected by the Jewish community because he was a screaming Jew-hater. He made no bones about his disdain for Yiddin. So vehement were his vocal and literary outpourings of Jew-bashing that his close friend and confident, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, felt the compulsion to terminate his association with the composer. Nietzsche wrote a ‘Turinese Letter’ titled The Case of Wagner – an essay in which Nietzsche labels Wagner as ‘one of my sicknesses’. Nietzsche was openly critical of Wagner’s vitriol against Jews. According to those in the know, Nietzsche was not a Jew-hater – he was purported to have written, according to one account, that all anti-Semites should be shot.

And the Nazis? All of us know about those people. Not only did they conquer and murder galore, but took and did as they pleased. This included absconding with any music and philosophy that suited their whim, including the works of Wagner, and Nietzsche, and Franz Joseph Haydn, and Gd-knows who else.

We Jews don’t hate Haydn or Nietzsche, but we do hate the rantings of Wagner. Music, however, is another story, regardless of how it may have been adopted for spurious purposes. After all, two of the world’s greatest exponents of Wagnerian opera are James Levine (the past Musical Director of the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York) and Daniel Barenboim. Both are Jewish (but let’s not discuss Barenboim's political views concerning Israel).

In 2001, when the then Director of the Bayreuth Festival, Giuseppe Sinopoli, literally dropped dead on stage of a heart attack while conducting a performance of Aida just months prior to the start of that up-coming summer’s Wagner Festspiel in Bayreuth, who was tapped to fill the gap? Daniel Barenboim, the Jew.

And here’s a link to a piece on The Controversy Over Wagner:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Wagner.html

Britain’s Bulldog for the Jews
by: Schvach Yid

The great Jewish British writer and historian, Martin Gilbert (right), has contributed a biographical piece to this month’s edition of Hadassah Magazine titled A Well Spoken Friend, on the efforts of Winston Churchill on behalf of world Jewry. Gilbert’s new biography on the same subject, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship, is due to be released later this month (Henry Holt and Co., publishers).

According to some sources (not Gilbert’s Hadassah Magazine article), Churchill’s American mother, Jenny Jacobson, was Jewish.

Martin Gilbert paints a picture of Britain’s former Prime Minister and oratory hero of the Second World War as a vehement opponent of the anti-Semitic persuasions of his day, that in 1922 he asserted that the Jews were in ‘Palestine’ by right, and as a virtual lone warden who sounded off against the Jew-hating tirades of the founder and leader of the Third Reich in the early 1930’s with stern warnings against the consequences of appeasement. Gilbert further represents Churchill as a supporter of Zionism who opposed Britain’s cessation of Jewish immigration to British Palestine in 1939.

At the War’s conclusion, Churchill is said to have had hopes of persuading the King of Saudi Arabia to accept a sovereign Jewish State in British Palestine, but as Gilbert writes, then President Franklin Roosevelt delivered a ‘sucker punch’ by scooping Churchill’s visit with the Saudi king and assuring the King that the US would do nothing to aid Jewish endeavors in conflict with Arab interests. Nice! (Wasn’t FDR supposed to have been descended from a Jewish Dutch immigrant family?)

Martin Gilbert’s article is concluded with an informing bit about the continuing racial hatred by Jew haters and their views of 'beneficial' political policies. If you can get a hold of the October issue of Hadassah Magazine, please do.