Why Don’t You Get a TV Already?
by: Schvach Yid


These challenging words were just delivered to me by my mom. Mothers! My mother owns me
every Sunday. In decades past, my paternal grandparents owned us every Sunday; I was in elementary and junior high schools back then. Now, I’m a grown mensch, and not much has changed.

Back to the TV.

I dumped my TV set into the garbage this past May 1st – May Day. No, I’m not one of those pinko Commies of old; it was simply coincidence. I haven’t gone through a manumission as a result; just a little enhancement of shalom babayit, and this despite the fact that my old (and now deceased) grad school advisor was investigated by the Joe McCarthy Red witch-hunt people back in the 1950’s, and who, as a result, lost his academic position at the University of Vermont (link).

I first cancelled my cable TV subscription in March. I didn’t miss the garbage for a second, and then one fine evening, when I was feeling an enhanced surge of perkiness (despite my shriveled adrenal cortices), I schlepped the thing out of my bayit, down the driveway, and onto the curb for trash collection.

A mechaiya! The incessant dribble and junk – fifty-two bucks and change a month worth – were out of my life. I have yet to miss the thing.

So why don’t I get a TV already? Because life without it is better, that’s why. Because if The Huntley-Brinkley Report was still aired by NBC, I’d probably buy one, but regrettably, CNN has chosen to emulate its emulators, and Huntley and Brinkley have both disappeared from the planet, so all that remains to be watched is programmed crap.

Besides, Jblogs are so much better.

O’ Revolution
by: Schvach Yid


No, not Canada’s independence from Britain, but rather the progenitor of the eastern end of our transcontinental neighbor to the north, France. Bastille Day, my absolute favorite holiday of the calendar (and it ain’t even Jewish!) is nearly upon us, and since today is a celebration America’s day of revolt, and additionally, since I have no patience whatsoever, I’ve decided to jump the gun and do Bastille Day a bit prematurely.

I experienced a great clarifying moment concerning France’s revolt of the common person over
the aristocracy while watching the BBC production (thanks to PBS) of Simon Schama’s Power of Art. You can read a bit of it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/powerofart/david.shtml (get the pun?)

It was a super production, but unfortunately, I barely remember a word of it.
What I do remember of that series was Schama’s (he’s Jewish, as in ‘Sh’ma Yisroel’) discussion of Jacque-Louis David’s Death of Marat. It's at the top folks.


And here is a bit of what Schama had to say about it:

"If there's ever a picture that would make you want to die for a cause, it is Jacque-Louis David's Death of Marat. That's what makes it so dangerous - hidden away from view for so many years. I'm not sure how I feel about this painting, except deeply conflicted. You can't doubt that it's a solid gold masterpiece, but that's to separate it from the appalling moment of its creation, the French Revolution. This is Jean-Paul Marat, the most paranoid of the Revolution's fanatics, exhaling his very last breath. He's been assassinated in his bath. But for David, Marat isn't a monster, he's a saint. This is martyrdom, David's manifesto of revolutionary virtue."

Martyrdom indeed, as Schama might intone.

When I was a lad, elementary school years, living in New York, the World’s Fair came to town at Flushing Meadow Park – 1965. The Vatican had a pavilion there, and offered as the featured attraction, Michelangelo’s Pieta. Watching the Schama presentation of David’s Death of Marat and hearing his account about martyrdom, my brain zipped back to that childhood experience.

David’s Death of Marat is, of course, an emulation of the Michelangelo sculpture – it’s the Pieta without the mommy; even the respective poses of the two sacrificial lambs is the same, although viewed from different spatial perspectives (and as if to make up for the absence of Michelangelo’s female element, one might suggest that David depicted Marat as a rather feminine figure).

In retrospect, it’s a bit odd that, at the age of twelve, what I found the most intriguing about the Vatican’s exhibit was not the grand sculpture, nor its green lighting, nor the motorized walkway that sped visitors past Michelangelo’s masterpiece, but rather, what I thought at the time, were those funny little dishes protruding from the walls as one entered the exhibit. They were filled with green water.

Of course, they turned out to be dishes of ‘holy water’; the green tinge, I now assume, was imparted by the addition of disinfectant, probably an imposed requirement of New York’s Department of Health. Kids!

Happy Anniversary…

by: Schvach Yid

America! My brother and his family live in New Jersey (‘Joisy’ to those in the know), and since that state figured so prominently in our Revolutionary War, perhaps it’s fitting to commemorate the event with Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s painting of our nation’s founding father crossing the Delaware River (with the Red Coats hot on his trail/tail).

What We Have Here, Is Failure To Communicate
by; Schvach Yid


No jadies and jents, this is not a reprise of Cool Hand Luke. Rabbi Levi Brackman, who writes an opinion column for YNetNews.com, and who writes his own blog site, has just written a piece on a recent study conducted by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Reform Movement, which reports on the egress of Jewish men from most things Jewish, especially synagogue attendance. You can read it at: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3559850,00.html

Has anyone mentioned that non-Orthodox Jewish men and women have a propensity for not marrying each other, or for matrimony at all?

I think the current trend in non-Orthodox Judaism is best called ‘shooting oneself in the foot’ (actually, in kopf). We Yiddin seem to have become fairly adept at it, me included.

At my local ‘Reform Movement style’ synagogue (no, I’m not a member and I don’t attend; I’ll stick with Chabad), which is a formal member of the United Synagogue of Judaism (in other words, the Conservative Movement), the big deals are significant Jewish religious events such as Sunday morning (never afternoon – who wants to waste a perfectly good Sunday?) bagel sales and ‘men’s prostate health issues’ get-togethers. Some of the ‘guys’ even manage to wile away their local synagogue Shabbat experience by congregating in the parking lot. After all, who wants to hear some dribble about feminism or Darfur? Those topics may make ideal pc social concerns, but they are no substitute for Judaism, to be used as replacements for ‘the religious stuff’ – you know, davening, sermons which are employed as vehicles for Torah shiurim, etc.

R’ Brackman’s article is okay, but he barely goes into the muck and mire of American Judaism’s present day auto-destruct mode. To put it bluntly, we’re wiping ourselves out of existence with political bullshit - and don’t the Jew-haters know it, and love it!

I think we Jews may have taken the bait, swallowed it whole, and now suffer the consequences. Suicide is not painless, not by a long shot, and it’s a violation of halachah.
So much of what the Reform Movement does is a devotion to eschewing and negating the ‘Jewish way’, and it has proven to be utterly self-destructive.

So what’s the news in this new social study of the American Jewish community? Jewish men who go to, or who are coerced into attending, Reform synagogue prefer to opt out. No kidding.
They prefer the swelteringly hot parking lot to the nicely air-conditioned synagogue sanctuary (but not too cool, please, my wife….) where they can behave and feel like men, without the overlord of political oppression dictating that to be labeled a bigot is the worst fate any person can suffer. And of course, as any non-Orthodox Jew knows, traditional Judaism is all about bigotry, right? Just ask the now deceased Joseph Campbell (not Jewish); he absolutely loved the Hebrew Bible.

Judaism is not about equanimity between the genders. When it comes to Judaism and ‘gender concerns’ (don’t you just love pc jargon), men and women are not separate and equal, we’re separate and different. Men this, women that (estrogens are one thing, androgens another). Shul, jadies and jents, is the designated stomping ground of men. Sorry ladies, you aren’t permitted to show up in shul to declare that men’s religious garb is ‘unisex’ and displace us from our religious functions. When that’s done, we guys take a hike, and we have a tendency to stay gone.

So what, one may retort, who needs men anyway? After all, we’re Jewish by virtue of our mothers, and it is she who is charged with the responsibility of providing an [religious] education to her children. The guy’s just a drone. Women can, and frequently have, taken over the major synagogue functions, so who needs the men?

Fine! You’ll find us in the parking lot. When you’re done inside, we’ll drive you home (and on Shabbos to boot!). And please let us know if the thermostat is set too low (actually, if you try wearing a tallis made of wool…).

And if you’re really interested in what guys do when we get together, look here:

This Year, And Forever!
by: Schvach Yid

From Rubicon 3, a truism that shouldn’t quit, and which should never be ignored. No one listens, so why should we accommodate?

And lest we forget about our rightful claims to Jewish turf, no one should forget that the city of Medina was Jewish before Islam's founding father (it's Father's Day, you know) slaughtered us outta there.

Bobby Kennedy on Israel
by: Schvach Yid

Thanks to I*Consult at: http://lennybendavid.com/2008/06/on-bobby-kennedys-40th-yahrzeit.html; chaptem read.

Did you know RFK visited the Yishuv in March 1948, and reported: "The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs, in the 12 years between 1932-1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state...". Of course, RFK made the error of designating 'Palestine' an Arab state.

And the Arabs assert it’s theirs, and that we Yiddin are the intruders.

My Thoughts Exactly!
by: Schvach Yid

My thanks to Gail, the owner and author of Rubicon 3, at: http://northernva.typepad.com/rubicon3/ and, in turn, to Naomi Ragen.

So maybe I was wrong about Jewish bloggers quoting Mr. Zimmerman! Enjoy the video – it’s so true.

I Woke Up on the Roadside, Daydreaming
About the Way Things Really Are

by: Schvach Yid

Famous words by Bob Dylan. What Jewish blogger doesn’t quote Dylan (probably most!)?

Like the opening lyric of Idiot Wind, I too get paranoid, all too often, and then muster enough common sense to wake up and face reality.

So why do I imagine seeing fellow J-bloggers on the road when I commute to work, or when I shop at a local supermarket? If I included a photo of myself on my blog site, perhaps I would imagine running into myself as I move around town.

It’s paranoia vs rationalization. Such angst.

Even a Pigeon Knows
by: Schvach Yid

This morning’s daven was enhanced, just a bit, by a dove. Two doves have decided to nest in the rain gutters of my house, one at each of opposite corners of my house. As I davened by a window that looks over one of the nesting doves, I glanced down to notice that the bird had removed herself from her eggs to stand perched on the edge of the rain gutter, looking upward at the window where I stood with yarmulke, tallis, tefillin, and siddur. Although I’m used to seeing doves nest in this location, I have never seen one off her eggs, and certainly not peering at the window. In fact, when viewed from the driveway, one can only notice the bird’s tail feathers protruding over the edge of the gutter.

So why stand? Perhaps she’s Jewish and wanted to be motzi.

Look What I Got in the Mail
by: Schvach Yid

The folks at Nextbook publish a magazine – news print style – called Nextbook Reader. I’ve been graced with a copy of this literary ditty. One can access this sales vehicle on-line; just search.

Thanks to Leon Wieseltier’s 1998 contribution to the world of Jewish writing, Kaddish (perhaps my favorite book of all time), a ‘new’ word has been re-introduced into Jewish circles – solipsist. Every time I encounter this word I have to run to the dictionary; I’ve never heard it in the course of conversation. A one page article appears in this magazine titled (you guessed it) ‘The Solipsist’. I haven’t read it.

But the real story (as far as I’m concerned) in this edition of the Nextbook Reader comes from that lamenting author of Foreskin’s Lament, Shalom Auslander. Straight from the wooded mountains of Woodstock NY (I should be so lucky; how I lament my continued exile from the northern Catskills of NY – Route 28 beckons), Mr. Auslander bewails his dilemma of going through life carrying an official Tribal membership card, yet arguing against it. Still, he sticks to it like a fly sticks to flypaper, all the while making a lot of annoying noise with his fruitless wing beating, while getting absolutely nowhere. Poor Shalom.

He knows how to write folks. Not that I’m qualified to critique an author’s work, but even I, with nothing to speak on my behalf as an amateur writer, am capable of recognizing his talent.

Here http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=727 he writes about Avraham avinu. Depicted above Auslander’s article is an artist’s conception of Jewish patriarch #1, represented as a not-yet graying (he’s bearded) mensch clad in traditional Arab garb, complete with a scimitar at his side, his left hand clutching the weapon just below the hilt, his right hand placed over his heart (could this be a sign of angina brought about by a foreknowledge of Auslander’s opinions?). In the background, barely visible in the lower left corner, one can just discern the Greek/Roman columns and entablature (thank Gd I saved my copy of Janson’s History of Art) of a building. Auslander definitely has some hefty unresolved issues!

His essay is titled Civilization and Its Discontented. He should know – he knows how to write, and he’s pissed.

Auslander brags that rather than teaching his son the Chumash, he instead instructs his son about Yossarian, the lead character in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 – very Jewish. Boy, does Auslander have unresolved issues, or what (I wonder if Yossarian, a Sephardic Jew, knew Ladino)?

Auslander calls for action. We shouldn’t teach our kiddies about the Gd of jealousy and vengeance, Auslander asserts, or to invoke his lexicon, f*ck accountability (yes folks, he even has his version of Avraham avinu, to whom he assigns the moniker ‘Abe’, speak this most famous word of the English language). He even refers to the Aybischter as a you-know-what (not to be repeated by me). This guy really has unresolved issues (the English ‘issue’ sounds like the Hebrew assur which, as we all know, means ‘forbidden’. Mr. Auslander should learn this).

The point is Mr. Auslander has painted himself into a corner. He invokes Avraham avinu as a rebel who rejected what he saw around him (Auslander’s interpretation, not mine), yet the heroic Avraham accepted every commandment given to him by HaShem (and by his wife Sarah imanu), including the mitzvah of circumcision.

Auslander, you big dummy, maybe you should teach your son about Fred Sanford!

Don’t get me wrong, Jadies and Jents, Auslander is no foreigner spitting on the Tribe. I harbor no animus for Mr. Auslander; I just disagree with him.

The real point, however, is that this mag is a sales vehicle for the Nextbook series, of which I am a fan. One book in this series, David Mamet’s The Wicked Son, is another of my favored writings.

Back to Auslander. If he thinks he’s going to get away with going through life with one foot in and the other out, then he has another guess coming. It’s not that he wants to equivocate, but he does. His dilemma is that he is solidly in the Tribe – he just won’t fess up to it.

Those Jews who hate Judaism, who think they’re above and beyond it, who think Judaism has nothing to offer, that it’s wrong, archaic, bigoted, irrelevant, etc, have a strong tendency to leave it. They don’t resort to the Reform Movement for escape and denial. They just leave and never look back. This is not Auslander’s chosen life. Auslander is a kvetch, and he evidently likes it that way – he’s entitled, and he’s obviously making a good living at it. His is the old Immigrant’s Son’s Tale, the sort of character one finds in the fiction of The Jazz Singer and Leon Uris’ Mitla Pass. When one is confused, embarrassed, self-conscious about one’s identity, when one can’t make up one’s mind, then that person is in a wee bit of a quandary.

Poor Shalom Auslander. Identity is not a pursuit - just ask any recovering BuJu.

But take heart guy. There are lots of you out there. You have lots of company for solace and emotional support. What you’ll probably never enjoy is resolution.

A Multiple Personality Disorder
by: Schvach Yid

It’s weird, but true. Accompanying the April 4^th 2008 edition of The New York Jewish Week was an inserted magazine titled Israel at 60. Baruch HaShem the Jewish State of Israel is about to see its 60^th birthday – it should enjoy many, many more, for all time, but the jubilation is mixed, as highlighted by this magazine. On the one hand, great articles were provided that celebrate Jewish ‘diversity’ (uch, that word again) in the Holy Land, in two spreads showing olim hadashim in various locations throughout the Jewish State. These can be accessed at:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c361_a6844/News/Israel_At_60.html# ,
and http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c361_a6843/News/Israel_At_60.html# .

And of course, Jonathan Mark added his literary views on life in current day J’lem at:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c361_a6848/News/Israel_At_60.html . Yasher koach!

But, like, oh my Gd, enough of the mag deals with doom and gloom – Jewish Israel throwing in the towel. Similar articles have recently appeared on the Arutz Sheva website. These rants of desperation sound almost suicidal. The ‘analysts’ who come up with this stuff must be nuts.

‘Where do we go from here’; ‘nothing has worked’. Such tzuris. Such limited vision. Such absurd career chasing.

If you want my advice, stick with the positive. Yom Ha’azmaut is on the way. Israel certainly has problems, about which I have posted my unqualified opinions in past blogs, but who in Israel, or elsewhere, is about to take my advice?

Israel likes to feign expertise (I can just imaging Dan Gillerman saying the the United State Secretary of State, 'you know Condi, I'm going to explain something to you'), never playing the international game by the established rules, always pretending to know better (like me!). So be it. So they’re in a rut, having painted themselves into a corner. So all their self-proclaimed high-minded political strategies and academic analyses have failed. So the Arab Moslems who hate us and who insist on annihilating us aren’t so dumb after all. What to do?

Don’t worry; be happy! Yom Ha’azmaut is on the way. Who knows, maybe the Israelis will finally wake up to the demands of life in the international sphere and ‘do what they gotta do’.

It’s not as though they’ve been given a choice.

And Now For Something Completely Revealing
by: Schvach Yid

At: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410

and at: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125728,

And from Atlas Shrugs at http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/03/islam-and-the-n.html

The Rightful Place of Sarcasm
by: Schvach Yid

‘Wipe the blue off the flag and talk to Hamas’, Jonathan Mark urges the Israeli leadership in a piece he wrote for the March 14^th edition of The New York Jewish Week, at:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c40_a4861/News/Israel.html

He, like so many other Jews, is evidently sick and tired of spectating Israel’s ineptitude and impotence at dealing with its foremost problem – Moslem hatred of Jews and Judaism, acted out as maniacal homicide.

No, the ‘pc’ Liberals among you might say? Just consider the machinations of the Arab national leadership in the years leading up to the Second World War to bar Europe’s Jews from immigrating to what at the time constituted the British Mandate of Palestine. That’s Jew hatred!!!

Mark is right in this piece. The Israeli habit of emulating the old British Mandatory Authority’s practice of blowing up the homes of ‘Palestinian Jews’ suspected of activities that countered Britain’s interests in the area, by blowing up the homes of Arab terrorists, achieves nothing for Israel but bad press.

And don’t be concerned with public outrage voiced as accusations of apartheid and Nazism pointed at Israel for its management of the problems foisted the Jewish State by the Moslem Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs are anything but innocent; they’re waging murderous war against the Jews of Israel. By contrast, the Jews of Germany, and of elsewhere in Europe, waged no war against the Christians of Europe in the decades prior to World War Two. No political spiel by Germany’s Jews advocated freeing the land of Germany and replacing German rule with Jewish governance.

No Jew advocated running the Christians out of Europe or ever blew up Christian civilians in a trolley car in Vienna, Austria.

Quite the contrary, Yiddin were busy jumping onto the bandwagon. It’s called assimilation. Wissenschaft des Judentums was the fodder for this mass egress of Jews from the life of frumkeit. We never sought to overthrow or destroy Christian Europe and replace it with a Jewish government. The Jews of Germany were German patriots until they were informed in no uncertain terms their fealty was no longer welcome.

My paternal grandfather served in the German coastal artillery in the First World War; my maternal grandfather simultaneously served as a cavalry officer in Austria. No assertion of a separate nationalism was ever made.

This is in utter contrast to the Arab Palestinian ‘plight’ invented by the Arab Palestinian leadership (remember Yasser Arafat?) and the mass media. They have only one problem, and they’ve foisted it onto Israel – Jew hatred.

Jonathan Mark is right. Ariel Sharon needs to be reinvigorated and made young again so that his former strength on behalf of the Jewish State could now be applied to Israel’s present predicament. So too with the former leadership provided by R’ Meir Kahane. It’s a sad day when one has to invoke fantasy in defense of a country and one’s self interest. Fantasy is no substitute for substance; the current administration in Israel is no substitute for Israel’s former leaders.

Hitler’s aggression was directed at victimizing and annihilating innocent people; people who were otherwise eager and productive participants in the health and welfare of the European countries of their births. The smear of comparing Israel with the Nazis is pure imposture – and it’s vile. It’s right up the Arabs’ alley. It was the Arabs who courted the Nazis and who leveraged the British against us.

In honor of Ariel Sharon’s former self, and to properly memorialize Rabbi Meir Kahane, perhaps Israel should found yet another political party, to be named Zachor!. Perhaps its leadership would do something tangible in defense of the Jewish State of Israel.

Putting On The Bris
by: Schvach Yid

One of my favorite topics is up and running, or at least was, in the March 21^st edition of The New York Jewish Week. Yesiree jadies and jents, it’s the topic of Jewish circumcision, better known to us members of the Tribe as Brit Milah.

George Robinson reviews a new (?) documentary on this subject by film maker Eliyahu Unger-Sargon titled, ‘Cut: Slicing Through the Myth of Circumcision’ (sorry, the review is not listed on The New York Jewish Week web site).

Here is my very personal admission concerning this ‘controversial’ subject. I’m circumcised. I should know – I was there when it happened (and not by coincidence) although I don’t remember a thing about the event (in that case perhaps I shouldn’t know!). It’s not that I have to ask about the matter to be certain of the fact; it’s just that I should, and do, know.

My circumcision was not a religious ritual, but medical. If I recall correctly, back then the New York City Department of Health (I’m a native New Yorker) required circumcisions of all newborn males. Despite this fact, my mother informed her obstetrician that she wanted me circumcised, and according to my mother’s account, she (that’s right, a female obstetrician in 1953) answered ‘well, I’m not a rabbi, but I’ll do it’. Voilà!

Thanks to my mother’s acceptance of this important mitzvah, I’ve spent my life to date with the ability to sit at a Pesach seder with a clear conscience.

Have I ever been self-conscious about my circumcision? Not at all! I surely wouldn’t want my you-know-what to look like some wűrst in the display case at Schaller & Weber.

Personally, I love being circumcised. It’s one of many facts of my life that lets me know in no uncertain terms that I’m a Jew – of the male variety. Sorry jadies, but you can’t have one – you have nothing to circumcise (and the Aybischter never commanded bris milah for females).

This brings my spiel to the point of the matter. George Robinson’s review reveals that Unger-Sargon’s flick serves, at least in part, as an apologetic. The various introspective and social/political issues seem to have been covered (I haven’t seen this documentary), but less we forget, we Jews should all be reminded that we circumcise our infant sons, hopefully on the child’s eighth day post-partum, in compliance with HaShem’s mitzvah to do so, and not for reasons of health promotion, politics, social confrontation, marital isolation, or any other ‘pc’ concern.

It’s a part of Judaism – we do it because Gd has commanded us to do it.

And I thank my parents, as well as HaShem, for my medical, as opposed to religious, bris. A bissele wine for an eight day old is okay, but in the matter of circumcision, Betadine beats the pants off saliva, every time.

Recently there have appeared in print several Schreie about circumcision. The first, as I recall, was a book written by a Moslem author who suffered through a Moslem circumcision at the prescribed age of thirteen years (in emulation of Ishmail in the Chumash).

Now two Yiddin have deemed appropriate to jump onto the bris-bitch bandwagon. The second of these, who’s publication pre-dates the first, is Shalom Auslander with his book ‘Foreskin’s Lament’; I haven’t read this ditty, but here’s a website by and for the author: http://www.shalomauslander.com/book_foreskins_lament.php; there’s even a video on this site.

Here’s the URL to a review of the book, complete with a brief bio:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/14/RV2QSB9D0.DTL

Auslander just happens to live in Woodstock, NY, situated just off Route 28 out of Kingston (NYS Thruway exit 19). Woodstock is an old childhood summer haunt of mine; back then, it was the hippie hangout of the Northern Catskills.

What can I say? I’m satisfied.

The World of ‘Jews By Choice’ According to Schvach
by: Schvach Yid

I’ve recently taken up the habit of reading blogs by self-labelled ‘Jews by Choice’. I enjoy their accounts of discovery and self-fulfillment realized through the aegis of religious conversion to Judaism, which they relate through their writings.

First, I want to extend a hearty mazel tov to them all. Secondly, I wish to invite each and every one of them to stop sweating over their decisions to convert to Judaism. Lastly, I encourage these Jews to once and for all accept themselves as Jews. Evidently, some of them don’t; I do!

We Jews come in a great variety of sizes, shapes, complexions, nationalities, races, etc. You get the point. Some of us have succeeded in tracing our Jewish genealogies back many generations. A Simple Jew has posted one such account at http://asimplejew.blogspot.com/2008/01/guest-posting-by-rabbi-shlomo-slatkin.html; it’s a beautiful story told by Rabbi Shlomo Slatkin.

If you’re like me, then the account of one’s Jewish roots can only be traced for four generations or so, yet we are taught by our rabbis that we are Jews by virtue of our matrilineal descent from Sarah. The Kabbalistic account deals with ‘misplaced’ neshamot and their rediscovery. Frankly, I have no idea if my family’s Jewish identity extends back to Sarah, but my ‘Jewishness’ has never been called into question. It could be that my claim as a so-called ‘Jew by birth’ is an unintentional fraud – how can I knowledgably and accurately account for my maternal lineage from a Jewish Biblical origin?

Despite this very real possibility, I have never questioned my Jewish identity; I’m a Jew – the genuine article, and so too I accept converts to Judaism, without proviso.

For the purpose of highlighting our varied forms (I hate using the term ‘diverse’ – it’s become so politically charged, clichéd, and trite), here are some bits from YouTube. Again, the message is clear.

Some Birthday
by: Schvach Yid

Today is my father’s birthday. He’s 86 years old, and I mean old. He doesn’t know it’s his birthday; in fact, he no longer seems to know anything. Four years ago he suffered a stroke, superimposed on an already evident yet incomplete senility. Then, perhaps a year following his stroke, his caretaker, in a moment of unintended(?) negligence, allowed him to fall, crashing his noggin against the concrete patio. Back he went into the hospital, and upon discharge, was little more than a vegetable.

So my father has suffered three cerebral insults. There’s not much left to him. He sits in a wheelchair clad in a diaper, fully dressed and fully nonfunctional.

My mother feeds him, dessert included. Just put some food in front of his mouth and down it goes. He has a hemiparesis, so he regularly chokes on his food, but so far he’s managed to avoid aspirating the stuff.

The brain department was never my father’s strong point. Oh what the hell, he was always a dumb ass. I know I shouldn’t say such things about one of my parents, but it’s true. He grew up as the pee-on of his family, eclipsed by his older-by-one-year brother, who didn’t amount to a hill of beans but was nevertheless his mommy’s favorite, so my father paid. Regrettably, this family collusion followed him into, and has remained throughout, my father’s adulthood. He never learned how to manage the situation. Learning wasn’t one of his talents.

I shouldn’t eulogize my father – he’s still alive. His birthday is not the occasion for his obituary. This is no time to recite Kaddish, but his brain is dead, or mostly so, so perhaps a Kaddish for my father might be appropriate. He can no longer think, ergo, he isn’t, but thinking was never one of his talents, so just what’s the loss?

He was never a nice guy. He was never a bad person. He was always angry, and always vulgar, specializing in dishing out ridicule and belittlement. I was always ‘you schmuck’, ‘the biggest schmuck in the family’, a ‘schmuck mit zwei Ohren’ (a penis with two ears). My mother was ‘that f*cking woman’. There were lots of insults. Can you say primitive? He no longer can.

Okay, okay, life hit him in the face with a shit pie. He grew up in Germany under the rise of the Nazis. He was marched to the front of one of his classes, as a child, and used as an object lesson on the physical characteristics of a member of a genetically inferior race - after all, he’s Jewish, so link that experience to his family’s lack of savvy in raising their children, and voilá.

When things got too hot in his home town of Bremerhaven his parents sent him off to Berlin to attend a vocational school for carpentry run by Beitar and the Jewish Agency. The goal was to train Jewish German youth for export to British Palestine. During one of their classes the Brown Shirts strolled in and trashed the place, then set it on fire. What a joyous childhood experience.

Off they went to America – by the hairs on their chiny-chin chins. No English. Ah, New York; no school. My father found work with a furrier, pushing ‘Jewish airplanes’ (racks of fur coats) from one building to the next. That’s the way to go through adolescence.

The he was drafted. The Army and the Pacific; Guadalcanal and Guam, as a medic. Well, at least the Army made him an American citizen, but not before he successfully completed basic training – citizenship was conditional. Decades ago I got a peek at the letters he wrote to his parents from the Pacific – in German. I asked him why in German. Simple – at that point he still couldn’t manage much English. His lousy brother, and their lousy cousin, neither of whom was ever nice to my father and who both would gang up and insult him in the presence of the rest of the family – I was there – both got to stay in the US for their Army service.

Isn’t life grand? Well, at least he got out of Germany and away from the Nazis. Good thing we won the war, eh?

So today is Dad’s birthday. Happy birthday Dad, and with whatever remains of your brain, why don’t you tell life to go f*ck itself!

The Deception of Christian Zionism
by: Schvach Yid

It’s nothing new. President Bush is presumed to be something of a Gospels totter, yet his support for Israel has been lax, to say the very least.

Take ‘the West Bank’, properly termed Judea/Samaria – YESHA. The Moslems refuse to share this Jewish turf with Jews, so too for the Temple Mount. According to the Western (read Christian) world, if the Moslems want Jewish turf, it’s theirs, and we Jews have nothing to say about it.

Of course, the whole argument is couched behind platitudes about human rights (for the Palestinian Arabs, not for Jews), the need for understanding and accommodation (on behalf of Palestinian Arabs, not Jews), the obligation of the ‘well off’ to condescend to and provide for the less fortunate – you know, the standard politically Liberal line for the benefit of Palestinian Arabs at the expense of Jews, as though Israeli Jews are wealthy and Middle East Arab Moslems are poor, and lastly, that great icon of secular Western Jewish existence, education. We are well educated compared to the Palestinian Moslem Arabs, therefore we pay.

At the heart of this conflict over Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland is the conflict that under rides Western religious existence, namely, the assertion that each one of the three Western religions trumps the other two – the ‘true faith’ assertion.

Never mind the fact that Western religions numbers 2 and 3 are both knockoff attempts at emulating and surpassing Judaism. This, of course, will never be admitted by adherents to either of those two other faiths.

No, the admission of a Jewish right to sovereignty in the Holy Land by Christianity would of course negate Christianity’s claim of legitimacy, even if that Christian support of a Jewish State were made to counter the Moslem claim. Islam’s acknowledgement of an inherent Jewish right to the land would likewise serve as an admission by Islam of its own illegitimacy.

The claims of religious efficacy rest entirely on the claim of Gd’s revelation. Each of the three Western religions invokes its scripture in support of this. The Jewish claim to the Land of Israel is based on HaShem’s revelation to us, given in Torah. Acknowledge that, and the rest follows, because Gd’s word is Gd’s word.

The Christian Zionists are well informed about this. So too are the Moslems. The British ‘promise’ of a Homeland for the Jews in the old Mandate of Palestine, and beyond, was, and continues to be, slowly and gradually eroded to virtually nothing. Britain was a Christian nation; its leaders were Christian and understood very well the need to negate the claims of Judaism as a requisite of their own claims of religious legitimacy. So too for the dynamic duo of Bush and Rice. So too will it be for their successors.

The eagerness, or alternatively the complacency, of Israel’s leadership to fall in line with the demands in support of the religious claims of Christianity and Islam serves only to negate Torah. In an apparent paradox, the century-old scam of disguising religion as politics by the Christian world has been met by Israel’s refusal to recognize the identity of the beast. There is no peace on the horizon for Israel, at least not until the Israeli populace finds its brain and uses it.

I Didn’t Know He’s Jewish, Either
by: Schvach Yid

That’s Bernard Lewis jadies and jents, the famed and very oratory British chochom on the subject of Islam, now an elder gentleman and Professor Emeritus of Princeton University.

I first heard him – a real treat, and I mean it – on an edition of C-SPAN’s Book TV years ago, and I’ve been a fan of his ever since.

I, being a self-professed chochom of sorts, suspected that Prof. Lewis might be Jewish, but I didn’t know. Now, thanks to Ruthie Blum of the on-line edition of The Jerusalem Post, I do. Mazel tov Schvach! Here’s the link: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204546415778&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

In the C-SPAN interview, the interviewer innocently asked Prof. Lewis which translation of the Koran he uses as his source material. He gave bit of a start and answered, ‘the original Koranic Arabic, of course’ (he didn't add 'you dummy', but it was implied).

On the flip side is our very own Yiddishe mama of meteorology and weather reporting, Stephanie Abrams, of The Weather Channel (if you think I’m a Jewish chauvinist, how right you are!). Recently I’ve taken to watching The Weather Channel, and Ms. Abrams appears to have ramped up her entertainment gig a bit, complete with views of her trousseau and décolletage.

Surely, someone can cue her into derech hatznius, but I’m proud of her anyway.

During one report, she blurted ‘oy vey!’ – emes. Such nachas I get from her, and I don’t even know her; I wonder if The Weather Channel management put words on her afterward. I am sure.

The Bestiality of Islam
by: Schvach Yid

Thanks to the obsession the various cable news channels have with the current presidential primary race, I didn’t learn about the latest tragedy in J’lem until today, since regrettably I don’t have a computer of my own. I hope they’ll revert to reporting the news, rather than pursuing their habit of turning the current bid for the presidency into a knockoff sports event. Until then, I think I’ll cancel my TV cable subscription.

According to the ‘Protocols of Political Correctness’, there are Moslems, and then there are ‘Islamists’. ‘Islamists’ are supposed to be the extremist minority within the world’s general Moslem population. Baloney! ‘Islamist’ are nothing other than the military wing of the world’s general Moslem population, and like all military forces, they constitute a small percentage of the total population of their society. They don’t have formal uniforms, you may counter? They

don’t indulge in ritual pomp and ceremony, you may protest? Schmonses; they constitute a citizens’ militia, but unlike the Minutemen of the American Revolution (in whose honor a class of America’s ICBM’s are named) the ‘Moslem Citizens’ Militia’ commit murder in the ‘cause’ of Jew-hatred.

This past week, eight Jewish kinder – yeshiva bochurim all, were murdered in cold blood as sacrifices in Islam’s hatred against Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish homeland. These eight Jewish youngsters were all made of ‘The Right Stuff’ – proud Jewish youths who loved their people, Torah, and Israel.

And to what end was this atrocity committed? The arabist throwbacks to T. E. Lawrence’s day might inveigh Arab nationalism. The UN, in its long established convoluted way, would assert ‘humanitarianism and world peace’. The current administration in the US would figure out something – anything – supportive of ‘Palestinian rights’, and Olmert and his crew?

Who can successfully decipher the ways of Olmert and the Israeli Left? I don’t know if that bunch really means what they do in their endless pursuit of capitulation, or if their backs are truly against the wall. Olmert, after all, is not only the Prime Minister, but also a prime assassination target. I imagine that not too much is needed to position a Palestinian Arab assassin to do the dirty deed.

What is clear is that the proud days of Israeli chutzpah, at least in terms of national defense, are over, replaced by luxury high rise condominiums in J’lem and the expulsion of Jews from Judea/Samaria. Ah, the legacy of the Olmert administration. ‘World peace’ might as well be ‘whirled peas’.

By comparison to this past week's tragedy, 'only' seven people were murdered in the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Valentine's_Day_Massacre). The ‘Moslem Citizens’ Militia’ has been out-doing Al Capone for a very long time – just count the Jewish corpses.

And here, courtesy of A Simple Jew is a lesson to be learned from Gemara, at:
http://asimplejew.blogspot.com/2008/03/sderot-tel-aviv-lesson-from-gemara.html

photo credits: top-Arutz Sheva; bottom-Wikipedia

A Great Find Has Been Found

by: Schvach Yid

At the Atlas Shrugs blog site at: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/02/jerusalem-is-je.html

According to Pamela Geller, author and founder of the Atlas Shrugs blog site, this past Thursday Israeli archeologists announced the unearthing of a 10 centuries-old artifact that proves the Hebrew biblical claim over ancient Jerusalem.

An ancient seal bearing an archaic Hebrew inscription dating back to the 8th century BCE has been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Thursday.

Geller then provides a list of responses to offer any individual who might take issue with our rightful Jewish claims over Jerusalem.

Perhaps to counter our assertion, the Waqf of Jerusalem would like to provide some archeological evidence that Islam’s prophet ascended to heaven from the Temple Mount.