Gawker Blames the Jews: Scandalous Affairs Begin at Purim Parties

The Times published a scandalous wedding announcement. Gawker wrote it up. And somehow the Jews get blamed for marital scandals that start at Purim parties.

And no, so far the Times hasn't apologized and then un-apologized for running a controversial wedding story.

This weekend's New York Times wedding section tells the salacious tale of two people who coldly dumped their spouses for each other, and true love. How dare they disgrace the sanctity of the New York Times wedding section!

We are not going to rehearse the details, but we will just skip to the end of the Gawker post where the Jewish analysis of it all kicks in.

But how scandalous is this, really? Gawker weddings expert Phyllis Nefler, who has spent countless hours poring over the Times wedding section, explained that the Times has been probing the darker side of the "how did you meet" story for a while:

It's like the logical extension of a storyline the Times has been building towards for years. They constantly feature stories with questionable timelines that leave the reader thinking, with horror, 'Wait—what about the guy she was living with when they met at the Purim party? Here they just went all out.

The traditional wedding announcement rubs the reader's face mercilessly in a couple's perfection; this one does the same thing with their flaws. Which one would you rather read if you were the guy left behind at the Purim party?

Marriages of Gentiles end in scandals ... and they blame the Jews!

Times: Bragging about Braginsky Hebrew Iluminated Manuscripts

The Times has an article about an exhibit at the YU Museum of the Braginsky Hebrew Illuminated Manuscript collection.

The collection is substantial but clearly this exhibition is premature and primitive. Aside from historical notes, the context of the meanings of the illuminations, the quality of the art, the development of style and continuities or communities of design, just about any critical content of learning, scholarship or analysis about the illuminations -- is lacking here.

We're sorry to say that we've never thought the illuminations on Hebrew manuscripts "amazed" us, as Edward Rothstein ejaculates in his account of the materials. The drawings always look primitive and cartoonish to us, overwhelmed by naive anachronism that continues down to the present day in the sparse Orthodox art that we have.

I don't know what Edward is talking about in his article's poetic opening, "Illuminations of sacred and ritualistic texts are forms of eruptions. Out of familiar and formulaic script leap the strange and extravagant. Rigorous textual arguments give way to decorative ornamentation. Formulaic words submit to a rich brocade of image."

He's being kind, I guess, to a failed exhibit. There really is nothing to say beyond, a rich guy bought manuscripts. Here is where they came from. They have pictures.

He tries to remedy the lack of insight in the exhibit by adding his own, "We see, for example, how particular Jewish communities at particular times imagined the Passover or Purim stories, how they imagined the nature of marriage or the function of commentary. Illumination brings religious text into history and, at times, into biography. The sacred becomes personal." Um, right sure, why not?

He tries again with, "The ritualistic account of the Exodus or of Esther’s rescue of her people becomes allegory, full of color, costume and personal experience" or what he means is, they have pictures.

And just how does a generous Times critic say that the exhibit is a disorganized mishmash? He notes that, "The effect of all this is dazzling and dizzying."

And he concludes with a critic's wit, "Contemporary experience and ancient authority are brought together; the timeless past unites with the varying present: an illuminating collection," or, he says one more time, they have pictures.

(Note that the online link in the article on the Times' site to the YU web site is broken. And the Braginsky site itself has a title on its pages labelling it "Barginsky".)

Exclusive: Celebrity Purim Party Picture

Mel Gibson, Madonna and Elton John 

attend a Purim party in Brooklyn.

Is Depression Good for You?

Some hilarious Purim Torah. Billions of dollars of research have been sunk into understanding the diseases (plural - there are many forms that we have seen) called depression and yet it's like they are constantly starting from square one. What do they spend all that research money on? Seems the more they spend on it, the less they know about depression.

Let's see. You suffer from depression. Should you take pills? Should you go to talk therapy? Should you just grit your teeth and bear the pain? And now the clincher -- Is depression good for you?

Ten Orthodox Rabbis who Hate Women

With a heavy heart we post the names of these ten Orthodox rabbis of the Agudath Israel Of America who hate women:

Rabbi Simcha Bunim Ehrenfeld
Rabbi Yitzchok Feigelstock
Rabbi Dovid Feinstein
Rabbi Aharon Feldman
Rabbi Yosef Harari-Raful
Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky
Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler
Rabbi Avrohom Chaim Levin
Rabbi Yaakov Perlow
Rabbi Aaron Schechter

Voz in Neis posted their misogynist proclamation:

Rabbi Avi Weiss has conferred “semikha” upon a woman, has made her an Assistant Rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale where she carries out certain traditional rabbinical functions, and has now given her the title of “Rabbah” (formerly “Maharat”). He has stated that the change in title is designed to “make it clear that Sara Hurwitz is a full member of our rabbinic staff, a rabbi with the additional quality of a distinct woman’s voice.”

These developments represent a radical and dangerous departure from Jewish tradition and the mesoras haTorah, and must be condemned in the strongest terms. Any congregation with a woman in a rabbinical position of any sort cannot be considered Orthodox.

In the strongest terms we must condemn these women-hating-rabbis. Any rabbi who issues such an evil proclamation cannot be considered a nice person.

Do People Think that Sarah Palin is the Reincarnation of Queen Esther?

Yes, a lot of Christians think that Sarah Palin is something like the reincarnation of Queen Esther.

The best Purim Torah is the stuff you can't make up. The notion that Sarah Palin ought to be seen as a modern day Queen Esther is both ridiculous and acutely entertaining. So we bring you the story that the Boston Phoenix ran during the campaign, October 22, 2008.

Travels with Sarah

As Palin tours New Hampshire, signs of Biblical calling, talent on the stump, and a shot at 2012

By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

I found the contraband signs in the damp grass. They had been rounded up and now lay in two piles by the opening in the chainlink fence...

So, while the crowd was still cheering Palin, who had finished her 30-minute speech and had begun signing autographs, I headed to that entrance and found about a dozen handmade cardboard signs.

... two most striking were adorned with Jewish stars. One read “PALIN — TRUE NORTH.” The other, “SARAH — FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS.”

That last phrase comes from chapter four of the Old Testament Book of Esther. Apparently, the idea of Palin as the Queen Esther for our time has made it to New Hampshire.

The theory has been around since before John McCain picked Palin in late August — it was circulating on religious Christian blogs in early June when news outlets reported that she was on McCain’s short list. After the announcement, it picked up steam — particularly after it was reported that Palin, at the suggestion of her pastor, had, upon becoming governor of Alaska, patterned herself after Queen Esther.

Is Tiger Woods Jewish?

Yes, Tiger Woods is a Jew by avatar. The Buddhist golfer has served as the avatar of former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who is a Jew.

Film director James Cameron apologized on all the major networks on Friday for enabling the world's most awful politician Eliot Spitzer to enter the body of the world's greatest golfer and avatar Tiger Woods each night for the last several years.

Cameron said, "Tiger has nothing to apologize for. All the trouble Woods got into is my fault for allowing Spitzer to inhabit Woods' body."

Cameron enabled this to occur because for several years he has been shooting his next film, "Governor Golfer's Avatar Journey on the Titanic."

Happy Purim.

Gotcha! 2010 the Anti-Semitism Edition: Tablet's Marc Tracy on Podhoretz, Foxman, Limbaugh, Obama

Gotcha! You Anti-Semite!

In the past we said that Rush Limbaugh and his fellow Right Wingers love to play the game of Gotcha!

What is the game of Gotcha!? It's the game where you get your enemy or opponent on some technicality. Some Gotcha! players love to review ad nauseum how they caught the media lying and misrepresenting the facts. Other Gotcha! players crow about how they caught some liberal in hypocrisy. We decried all of this long ago. 

Now it seems we have armies of all sorts of politicos sweeping the airwaves and Internet for whiffs of anti-Semitism. Gotcha! back!

Scary Times Op-ed by Jeffrey Goldberg about Benjamin Netanyahu's Beliefs in Amalek

There is a scary Times op-ed today by Jeffrey Goldberg about Benjamin Netanyahu's beliefs in Amalek.

The column is an amazing and penetrating review of Netanyahu's worldviews as they pertain now especially to Iran. As we interpret it, Goldberg argues that in the guise of historical narrative, Bibi was fed by his father a set of religious and mystical beliefs about the nature of antisemitism in the world and the recurring danger of a transcendent archenemy of the Jewish people, who must be labeled by the ancient near Eastern tribal name "Amalek."

My rebbe, the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, lectured frequently on the truth of the two-part Amalek narrative in rabbinic Judaism. In every generation, the first part of the story goes, there is a tribe or nation that rises up to obliterate our people. The Rav proposed that in the 1940s Amalek was the Nazis. In the 1960s Amalek was the Russian communists.

These instances of national antisemitism are political and historical facts that can be examined and verified or falsified. The notion that this trend repeats itself eternally -- well that is a mystical religious belief and one that we really don't want our political leaders to base their decisions on.

The second part of the Rav's (and Judaism's) Amalek narrative is where the religious obligation kicks in with a literal vengeance. You see the rabbis teach that it is a high level mitzvah to attend synagogue to hear the reading of Parshas Zachor -- the ominous warning about Amalek -- on the Shabbat before Purim, before the reading of the book of Esther in which Haman -- a descendant of the Amalek tribe -- proves the religious and mystical theory to be absolute historical fact. In that biblical book's narrative, Haman tries to exterminate the Jews of Persia. But through cunning and guile and an implied divine intervention, Mordecai and Esther foil his plot.

According to the rabbis, and the biblical text is quite clear on this too, the mitzvah in the Torah is to blot out the very memory of Amalek. Hence, and this is what scares me, the very essence of ancient near Eastern account of Amalek is the license to kill. You must obliterate the nation that wants to obliterate you.

Goldberg makes it clear that he believes that Bibi Netanyahu operates under the license of Amalek. What he does not spell out in the Times is that religious Jews believe that gives them a blank check to do anything and everything to their mortal enemies -- including to commit a preemptive genocide against them.We specifically filled in the blanks to spell out the whole religious and mystical narrative of Amalek.

But wait. Today there is more. As if reading the script right out of the Bible, the Persians in Iran recently have clearly proclaimed on their own religious grounds that they are Israel's mortal enemies and that they do in fact want Israel to disappear from the map. Bibi calls Iran's leadership a “messianic apocalyptic cult.”

So yikes. Now we have both sides reading from the religious texts of the ancients -- only they are not in Sunday School. Both sides possess the weapons and armies and are loudly beating the drums of war.

It appears to us that Goldberg comes to the Times with a raw message so urgent that he puts it up in his op-ed's title, "Israel's Fears, Amalek's Arsenal."

Our fears go way beyond Goldberg's op-ed. We fear an imminent conflagration between two sovereign political states -- both possessing great resolve and both possessing way too much religion and mysticism which colors and even guides their worldviews and their policies.

Accordingly, we hope that Goldberg has overstated his case regarding Netanyahu's worldview. We pray that Bibi is not a true believer in the ancient mysteries of Amalek - rather that he is a tough and imaginative pragmatic and realistic political leader and modern-world statesman.

The Talmudic Sutra and Dead Sea Scrolls Secrets for Gevaldig Sex

I like Shmuley Boteach and I always wish him well and hope his books are big smashing successes. Shmuley is a friend of mine (on facebook). I think I saw him once in person in the lobby at the JCC on the Palisades.

Shmuley has a new book out about how to have better sex. One thing you gotta admit about the rabbi is that he has chutzpah -- and that really inspires us. I just don't know where he got his sex therapy training.

I took out my rabbinic school transcript -- to double check. Nope. Not a single course about sex on my transcript. Now, I'm not 100% sure - they may have tried to teach me about eroticism in the Friday homiletics courses. I however was tight asleep in every one of those classes so I wouldn't know what they taught.

There was one seminar on the menstrual laws given to us rabbinic trainees -- by a rabbi who was also a biology professor. But if I recall, that was more about the different colors of menstrual emissions, not something that ever could be mistaken for helping a couple achieve marital bliss in the bedroom.

I'm sure then that Shmuley picked up a lot of stuff about better sex either before or after rabbinical school.

Stimulated by Rabbi Shmuley, we actually have been doing some research into ancient texts and some of our own thinking about the subject. There are plenty of sex stories in the Talmud. Again, none of that was ever taught to us in class. At the yeshiva I went to, all of the sex stuff was in the aggadic textual sections that we skipped over -- so we could get to the good parts of the Talmud -- the laws. (Curiously, that is not at all parallel to the way that we read our Ian Fleming books as a teenager.)

So far, we have read only the free pages on Amazon of Shmuley's newly published book, "The Kosher Sutra: Eight Sacred Secrets for Reigniting Desire and Restoring Passion for Life."

Mostly, Shmuley's work now does not seem to be a very Jewish guide. The editors probably had him rewrite the eight sacred "secrets" for a more "general" audience.

We think that Shmuley originally must have written eight other more Jewish "secrets" for re-ignition and restoration of erotic life, based on the actual content of his intensive rabbinic training and on Judaism.

Amazingly, we've been able to uncover the original more Jewish title of his book, and we've been able to recover -- from a gardener who found it hidden in a cave in the cliffs of the Palisades -- a fragmentary manuscript of the table of contents of what could be the actual first draft of the more Jewish book by Shmuley. This mysterious text comes with an introductory instruction and an ensuing text. It reads as follows:

"The Talmudic Sutra and Dead Sea Scrolls Secrets for Gevaldig Sex." ((Instruction: "After reading each chapter title, the reader must wink and say, 'If you know what we mean...'"))

1. The First Secret: The King and Vashti - Have a Purim Party of your own...
2. The Second Secret: Play Hide the Afikomen, even when it's not Passover...
3. The Third Secret: Stay up All Night to Mount Sinai and Reveal Your Two Tablets of the Law...
4. The Fourth Secret: Blow this Shofar...
5. The Fifth Secret: Put Your Lulav into that Esrog and Shake it...
6. The Sixth Secret: Light my Hannukah Candle and Come Get Your Present...
7. The Seventh Secret: Kiss My Mezzuza and I'll Make Kiddush for You...
8. The Eighth Secret: Let Me Kiss Your Tzitzis...

Okay, enough narishkeit for today.

A Kabbalah Purim for Madonna and Jesus Child on the Upper West Side

Revelations from The Mirror last week to explain Queen Esther's costume:

Queen of pop Madonna looked like she had raided her teenage daughter's wardrobe while out at a fancy dress party last night.

The singer wore a dark wig, Converse baseball boots and fishnets for the bash to mark the Jewish celebration of Purim at the Kabbalah centre in New York.

The eighties-style outfit, finished off with stripey arm warmers and a smiley face signet ring, wasn't a million miles away from 13-year-old Lourdes’ signature look.

Toyboy Jesus Luz also joined in on the fun, arriving as The Joker, complete with green wig, pinstripe suit and full make-up.

The 22-year-old male model arrived at the party accompanying Jessica Seinfeld, wife of comedian Jerry, who was dressed as Cleopatra.

The further details of the deep theological and philosophical background from The Mirror:

Madonna's new boyfriend Jesus Luz has given up his life in Brazil to move in with the superstar singer in New York – just three months after they first met.

Jesus has ditched his modelling agency in Rio de Janeiro and signed with elite agency Ford Models in the Big Apple.

And he’s set up home with the star in her Upper West Side apartment.

His new millionaire surroundings are a far cry from his life in Rio just a few months ago, when Jesus was an unknown jobbing model earning about £160 a shoot.

Madonna, 50, and Jesus, 22, have settled into such domestic bliss that she’s even cooking meals for her young boyfriend most evenings.

They have been attending Kabbalah meetings together and he has grown close to her three children Lourdes, 12, Rocco, eight, and David, three.

A source close to the couple said: “Jesus has left his old life and his old friends behind. His whole world has turned on its head since he met Madonna."

But wait, stop the presses. We just had a comment on another post that claimed something remarkable: "Lindsay Lohan is a soon-to-be Jew, by the way." Details anyone?

Times: Spring Break? Women Pack Purim College Party Bus and Rabbis flash their megillahs

We are just wondering where you can order the DVD of this spring break party bus? And... Is that a megillah in your pocket or are you just happy to see those girls?

A Celebration on Wheels in Observance of Purim
By KATIE ZEZIMA

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. — “Are you ready to get on the Purim party bus?” Rabbi Saadya Notik screamed Tuesday to a group of women, many in costume, standing on a sidewalk at Mount Holyoke College.

The women rushed to the charter bus, a virtual nightclub on wheels, where neon lights pulsed, smoke billowed from underneath the seats and music blared.

“Party people, can I get some noise?” Rabbi Notik, 25, shouted as the women whooped and threw their hands in the air. “This party’s got wheels.”

Welcome aboard the Purim party bus, a mobile festival conceived by rabbis of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement as a way for students at the Five Colleges — Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst — to celebrate Purim. It is a holiday observed with fanciful costumes, plenty of food and copious drink (although the party bus served only iced tea and water, because many students are under 21).

Purim celebrates a story in the biblical Book of Esther, also known as the Megillah, in which Queen Esther saves the Jewish people from a plot to destroy them hatched by Haman, an adviser to the king...

The bus spent about an hour at each of the five colleges, with about 10 minutes dedicated to the reading of the Book of Esther in Hebrew. Many students were happy they could hear the reading without having to venture off campus or miss class.

“It’s wonderful that Purim is coming to us,” said Sarah Shapiro, 20, a Mount Holyoke student...

Haman, Hitler and the Nazi Priest Giulio Tam

Maybe David Bowie can talk some sense into these creatures...

Ground control to Father Tam. Ground control to Father Tam.
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ground control to Father Tam: Commencing countdown engine's on
Check ignition and may God's love be with you...

The Austrian Times -

Williamson priest's Hitler salute was a blessing

A right wing Italian priest who is a member of Richard Williamson's Pius fraternity caught giving the Hitler salute at a neo-fascist rally claimed he was just trying to bless his flock.

Catholic priest Giulio Tam, well known for his extremist right views, raised his right arm when speaking at a rally of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova party in Bergamo, northern Italy.

The ultra-conservative Pius fraternity hit the headlines recently as British Catholic bishop and Holocaust denier Richard Williamson is a member.

After a picture revealed Tam raised his right hand, he argued: "The young people of the Forza Nuova wanted me to bless them. I'll always be on their side."

Tam regards Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as a martyr and calls for blessing the fascist leader. In the past, Tam held masses at Mussolini's grave.

"God's Favorite Prayers" where Tam Tams are served at the Kiddush

The continuing soap opera of the legal woes of fallen Jewish financiers Madoff, Merkin and their ilk

Yes, we are weary of the Madoffs, the Merkins, and all of their ilk. They are in the system now.

The papers report, no surprises, more people have sued J. Ezra Merkin (cityfile, with court documents appended) and sob, sob, he wants the judge to give him his money baaaack (Times).

Another big surprise. Madoff did not act alone, someone helped him make up fake trading tickets -really?

Can you imagine? Victims of Madoff are clamoring to holler at him when he pleads guilty on Thursday... I am not shocked.

Ruth Madoff needs her own lawyer. No! Really?

This is Purim brothers, for Jewish heroes - a happy holiday.
This is Purim brothers, for Jewish villians - stay away.

Real Purim lyrics --->

Welcome to our Purim Guest Bloggers Henry, Yochanan III and Mimi

We get letters with blogworthy and insightful suggestions so here are the best guest submissions received yesterday... in honor of the holiday...a real megillah.

Henry sends this from the Atlantic which he notes is an insightful analysis--we agree...

How the Crash Will Reshape America - The Atlantic (March 2009)... an essay on "the evolution of the global economy in recent years" and what it means for the future.

Yochanan Hashlishi sends us from Iowa an an alarming survey article from USA Today, "Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds," by Cathy Lynn Grossman, "When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers...."

And Mimi from Teaneck recommends as blogworthy the speech by Rupert Murdoch to the AJC because Murdoch makes it clear that he is not a Jew, "Over the years, some of my wildest critics seem to have assumed I am Jewish. At the same time, some of my closest friends wish I were..."\

Guest bloggers are welcomed... send your suggestions to us anytime.

Purim Shpiel Party in NYC '09 with [Wyatt Cenac and] John Oliver

Purim Party '09 with [Wyatt Cenac and] John Oliver
Featuring The Shushan Channel Battlestar Megilactica. Frost/Haman. Hebrew School Musical. [John Oliver in person was a riot. Wyatt Cenac showed up... on a projected video clip...]
"Join The Shushan Channel for its seventh hit year. Featuring all-new pop-culture Purim takes by writers from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Simpsons, Frasier and more, this year’s extravaganza will be headlined by The Daily Show's Wyatt Cenac, John Oliver and New York's most-Purimtastic comic talent. Warm up for the show by entering our costume contest and you could win free tickets to 92YTribeca events. Get your grogger on and stuff yourself with Chef Russell's gourmet hamantaschen. This is one party you won't want to miss.

"Actors Daniella Rabbani and David Ingber provide a fresh take on the story of Purim during a hilarious, interactive Megillah reading narrated by 92YTribeca Rabbinic Intern Hayley Siegel and 92YTribeca program coordinator Maya Wainhaus."
10:30pm: Purim Spiel with the Shushan Channel. Price includes 1 free beer or glass of wine.

Campaign Against Jewish Children Smoking Cigarettes on Purim

Ultra-Orthodox children in Israel are given their first cigarette on Purim.

This Israeli anti-smoking campaign is clear - smoking cigarettes is killer number one.

Rabbis to battle smoking in haredi public
'Cigarette- the number one killer' - Anti-smoking campaign launched...
Jerusalem Municipality, leading haredi leaders join forces to fight widespread phenomenon of smoking in sector through halachic rulings, educational campaign
by Neta Sela

Leading rabbis and the Jerusalem Municipality have joined forces in a battle against the widespread habit of smoking in the haredi public, in light of studies indicating that the sector has the highest rate of smokers in Israeli society.

The Health Ministry and local haredi authorities will also take part in the effort.

In a campaign that will be launched Thursday, rabbis will issue halachic rulings banning smoking. The rulings will be posted on bulletin boards and buses, and published in the community's pamphlets.

The decision to launch the campaign ahead of Purim was based on the fact that during the holiday it is usually considered legitimate for children to smoke cigarettes.

"Studies have shown that most haredi smokers smoked their first cigarette during Purim, as part of a defective practice which permits teenagers, and even children, to smoke on the holiday," Jerusalem Municipal Council Member Shlomo Rosenstein, explained.

"The campaign was made possible in view of the realization among all the bodies entrusted with this issue, that the haredi sector needs a campaign that speaks its language and addresses its codes," added Rosenstein, who heads the project.
Highest smoker rate

In addition to the distribution of relevant halachic rulings, the municipality also plans to institute educational programs on smoking prevention in schools and yeshivot, and open a special training program for educators.

Furthermore, rabbis and yeshiva heads will soon publish a petition slamming the practice of "the first cigarette" on Purim.

Yair Amikam, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said that medical studies indicate that smoking is more prevalent in the haredi sector than in any other sector in Israel, with the rate of smokers standing at 18.5%.

"In the haredi population it is very common to smoke in public places such as yeshivot, reception halls and so on," Amikam added.

[repost from 2008]

Video: Young Frum Orthodox Jews Turning to Barack Obama and Joe Biden

The young and frum (religious) Orthodox Jews in Teaneck are finally and correctly rejecting John and Sarah and they are turning to Barak an Joe.

For instance, perhaps because we have had an Obama sign on our lawn since before Purim, a the mom of a frum, young, educated and thoughtful family on our block told my wife today that they were for McCain but now they are seriously considering voting for Obama.

Let me say that the tide is turning finally - in the right direction for Jews who care about Israel, who worry about the economy, who fret over health care, who want the best for our country, our society and above all for our children.

Please take a minute to watch this young frum Orthodox mom in Boston who made this quite professional and eloquent YouTube One Jewish Mom for Obama video:
[H.T. to Teaneck Progress blog]

WSJ: The Jewish Republicans are Coming

Here they come!

Joseph Epstein ought to come visit our gilded ghetto of Teaneck NJ and its environs, where he will find a few remaining Orthodox Liberals surrounded by hoards of fabrent (rabid) lox-eating and yarmulka-wearing Bush-loving Republicans.

On the holiday of Purim in March, my lonely Obama lawn sign was swapped by a frum (religious) prankster with my neighbor's Hillary lawn sign as a way of telling the both of us that we were interchangably confused.

On a recent Friday night I sat and celebrated the birth of a neighbor's baby boy at a shalom zachor (baby welcoming) where we ate glatt kosher food only. The balabus (householder) welcomed me into the shabbos song singing conclave and to make me comfortable he sat me next to what he said was "the other Obama voter" - our only Reform Jewish block resident.

My misguided attempt at Democrat sympathizing political chit-chat with one of the many uber-McCainites in attendance that evening was roundly ridiculed.

These folk solidly were saying - pass the chopped liver please and vote for our heroes McCain and Palin. We believe with complete faith, they declared, that it is the 11th commandment.

Thinking Outside the Lox
By JOSEPH EPSTEIN
September 15, 2008; Page A23

Today, class, we shall take up the oxymoron, the figure of speech in which two contradictory words appear in conjunction. Here are some prime examples: amicable divorce, congressional ethics, definite maybe, military justice and Jewish Republican. Jewish Republicans may be rarer than Jewish coal miners. Let's face it, no one gazing at the crowd of the Republican convention in St. Paul last week would have mistaken it for Sam and Becky Lebowitz's grandson's bar mitzvah party.

The reason it is so difficult for Jews to vote for Republicans is largely historical. The GOP for many years seemed the party of the large corporations, the excluding country clubs, the restricted neighborhoods -- all institutions dedicated to keeping Jews out -- so that even now the Republican Party is associated, in the minds of Jews of a certain age, with anti-Semitism.

I have Jewish friends who believe in free markets, are deeply suspicious of big government, view the general bag of leftist ideas as callow if not dangerous, yet would sooner tuck into a large plate of pigs' feet than vote for a Republican for president. They just can't bring themselves to do it.

Like most Jews, I grew up in a house that was Democratic and devoted to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The reason for this devotion is that, in opposition to the isolationists then known as American Firsters, FDR, an internationalist, saw the need to go to war to stop the Nazis, who were systematically murdering the Jews of Europe. Only much later was it learned that Roosevelt could have saved many more European Jews by enlarging immigration quotas, but his policy was instead the mistaken one of trying to save the Jews by winning the war as quickly as possible. As we now know, the war wasn't won quickly enough.

Owing to the overwhelming Jewish support for Roosevelt, few were the Jews who openly declared themselves Republican. As a boy, in the early 1950s, I knew only one: a man named Hyman Skolnick, the father of a friend, who was an executive for a Jewish-owned scrap-metal company in Chicago. An immigrant, Mr. Skolnick had an inborn gravity that derived from what I took to be his high competence and mastery of facts. I sensed that he was a man who, if you woke him at four in the morning, could tell you, within $20, the exact amount of the gross national product as of the hour.

I did not meet another Jewish Republican until the early 1960s, when I met Irving Kristol -- who, after a career as a Trotskyist lasting for roughly 27 minutes while he was a student at the City College of New York, did not impede his philosophical and temperamental conservatism from steering him toward the GOP. For this Irving Kristol was considered, stupidly, by Irving Howe and other Irvings and not a few Seymours, a great heresiarch, nothing less than a traitor to his people.

The Democrats' record on things Jewish is finally not all that strong. Joe Kennedy, the so-called founding father of the Kennedy clan, was pro-Hitler and famously anti-Semitic. Jimmy Carter, in his sentimental idealism, has called Israel an apartheid state, comparable with South Africa. I always thought that Bill Clinton, in his vanity, would have done his best to convince the Israelis to give up the West Bank and the East Bank, and toss in Katz's Delicatessen on Houston Street at no extra charge, in his eagerness to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Despite all this, Jews cling to the Democratic Party. The Democrats, they claim, remain the party most interested in social justice, and it is incumbent upon Jews, who have known so much injustice in their own history, to be on the side of social justice.

The only Democratic administration in the past 50 years that may be said to have made good on a program of social justice was that of Lyndon Johnson, himself today much less admired, by Jews and others, for his efforts in this line -- the civil rights voting acts, the war against poverty -- than despised for his policy in Vietnam. As for social justice, who is responsible for more of it, on a world-wide scale, than Ronald Reagan, in his helping to bring an end to tyrannous communism?

I only voted for my first Republican candidate for president in 1980, when I voted for Reagan. Even then I did not so much vote for Reagan as against Jimmy Carter. What made me vote against Mr. Carter was his vapidity and weakness. I remember a photograph, on the front page of the New York Times of Mr. Carter, in jogging gear, after having fainted during a run on the White House lawn, being held up by two Secret Service men. My God, I thought, this pathetic man, with his hot-combed hair, cannot be the leader of my country. I have voted for Republicans for president ever since, with the exception of 1996, when I found I could not vote for either Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, and took the high (if somewhat lumpy) ground of not voting at all.

I shall probably vote for John McCain in this year's presidential election. But I am not locked in on my vote, and if the McCain-Palin campaign gets dramatically stupid, I could go the other way. I make no claim to be an original political thinker, but, unlike so many of my co-religionists, I feel a nice sense of freedom, knowing that I am able to think, so to say, outside the lox.

Mr. Epstein is the author, most recently, of "Fred Astaire" to be published next month by Yale University Press.

UK Sun: Madonna's Guy Goes Sane and Dumps Kabbalah

Now this is not just a piece of gossip about celebrities. This blog is not into that cheap tabloid stuff.

This is an item describing a profound theological shift by a thoughtful public figure.... gotcha!

Kab for Ritchie

GUY RITCHIE and MADONNA’s marriage has been thrown deeper into meltdown after he told her he’s quitting Kabbalah.

Madge has become increasingly involved with the mystical Jewish religion, but her film director husband is a step closer to hitting the road after losing his faith.

Friends say his recent revelation has widened the gap between the pair, who are leading separate lives despite officially remaining man and wife.

Yesterday I revealed how they barely spent any time together during a three-day break in the romantic Italian city of Milan.

Now a source close to the couple has revealed: “Guy has turned his back on Kabbalah once and for all.

“He has gone hot and cold on the religion in the past, but now he’s given up on it altogether. It has always been her thing and is more a part of her life than ever.
Swerve

“Guy threw himself into it at first and even filled his movie Revolver with obscure references to the faith.

“He was genuinely into it and it helped the bond between them. But then he backtracked a little with his gestures of public backing, like wearing the bracelet, because he didn’t like being such a high-profile follower.

"He also became suspicious of all the Kabbalah crowd living off her money.

“But he always told Madonna he had kept his faith — until now.

“A few weeks ago he told her he doesn’t want anything else to do with it. It didn’t go down well.”

In March the Snatch director was snapped at his wife’s side at the Purim Jewish Festival at London’s Kabbalah Centre.

They have turned up to the annual event for the past few years dressed in elaborate fancy dress costumes — which helped make Guy a poster boy for the movement.

But it looks like Guy will give the event the swerve from now on — assuming their odd marriage survives until next March anyway.

Earlier this year The Sun revealed the couple were sleeping in separate beds, but were staying together for the sake of their kids, Lourdes, 11, Rocco, seven, and adopted two-year-old David.

The source added: “The cracks are widening and Guy’s latest revelations about Kabbalah has just taken a sledgehammer to them.”

If this was a relationship being held together by a thin red bracelet, it may have just snapped.