CBS: After Hillary Jews Will Vote for Barack

It's not entirely clear that there will be a groundswell of support. Optimistically, I hope that it's in the cards.

According to exit polls conducted in 30 primary states, Jewish Democratic primary voters overall supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. (AP)

Analysis: Jewish Voters And Obama

More Jewish Voters Went For Clinton In Democratic Primaries, But This May Not Be A Problem For Obama In November

Republican Jewish Coalition Smear-Mail Campaign Labels Barack's Team "Anti-Israel"

Barack is a strong candidate who has made clear his unflinching support of Israel.

His opponents have nothing to assail him with. So they attack his surrogates. And they paint scenarios of fear.

That is to be expected in politics. However the Republican Jewish Coalition has crossed over the line from political discourse to disturbing false accusations.

No one in American government today is “anti-Israel.” Any attack that I see that uses that label is automatically discounted as a scare-mail smear.

The RJC has sent out the email below declaring: “Bonior Joins Obama Team as Latest Anti-Israel Campaign Official.”

This is a disgraceful slander.

There are no anti-Israel officials on the Obama Team.

Signators Suzanne Kurtz and Stu Sandler should be kind enough to issue a retraction for issuing an irresponsible and reprehensible scare-mail.

Call or write to the signators and tell them that it is beneath the dignity of the RJCHQ to continue down this path.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 5-31-2008
Contact: Suzanne Kurtz or Stu Sandler
Office: 202-638-6688; 202-368-6465 (cell)
E-mail: skurtz@rjchq.org

Bonior Joins Obama Team as Latest
Anti-Israel Campaign Official

Washington, D.C. (May 30, 2008) - The Republican Jewish Coalition today responded to the announcement that former Rep. David Bonior will be representing the Obama campaign at the Democratic National Committee meeting this weekend in Washington, D.C. As a Congressman, David Bonior was known for his strong opposition to pro-Israel policies, being called by some "the biggest supporter of the anti-Israel Arab lobby in Congress."[1] The RJC cited Bonior as the latest in a string of advisors and campaign officials to Barack Obama that harbor anti-Israel views.

"Barack Obama's path to strengthening ties with the Jewish community is severely blocked when appointing an anti-Israel figure like David Bonior. While in Congress, Bonior refused to stand by Israel after repeated terrorist attacks, was known as a stalwart opponent to Israel, and is now a representative for Barack Obama. Bonior's appointment is the latest in a series that raises serious questions and doubts about Barack Obama's positions and judgments on the Middle East."

During his Congressional career, David Bonior repeatedly opposed pro-Israel legislation. In 1997, David Bonior was one of 15 Congressmen who signed a letter asking then-President Clinton to pressure Israelis into making concessions to the Palestinians. In 2002, David Bonior was one of only 21 Congressmen who opposed H.R. 392, which publicly affirmed Congress's support of Israel's right to self-defense and called for the dismantling of the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure.[2] In 1990, David Bonior was one of only 34 Congressman to vote against a measure naming Jerusalem as the united capital of Israel.[3] In 1989, Bonior was one of six House members to vote against a bill that prevented US funds from going to UN entities that granted the PLO membership.[4] Throughout his career, Bonior repeatedly opposed US aid to Israel and supported arms sales to Arab states opposed to Israel's existence.

"The appointment of yet another anti-Israel advisor like David Bonior to represent Barack Obama speaks volumes to the Jewish community. The pattern including Tony McPeak, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Robert Malley continues with this appointment. It's no wonder the Jewish community remains deeply skeptical and troubled by Barack Obama."

[1] Jonathan Tobin, Jewish World Review, 7/12/99.

[2] H.R. 392, "Expressing Solidarity with Israel in its Fight
against Terrorism", May 2002, 352-21 (29 voting present).

[3] H.R. 290, "In support of a unified Jerusalem", Apr. 1990,
378-34 (6 voting present).

[4] H.R. 2145, "Prohibiting US Contributions to the United
Nations Under Certain Condititons", May 1989, 396-6 (11 voting present).

True Religion Advances 18% This Year

Only in America could that headline be about a jeans company and not about the faith of our citizens...

True Religion: Just a Name?
by: Brandon Jentzen
Designer brands have long been a significant part of our economy. A recent company that has emerged and proven to be performing well is True Religion (TRLG). They have entered into a niche market that can be highly profitable, if able survive. So far, they have been focusing on producing designer jeans and some other garments such as shirts and sweatshirts. It seems as though you cannot walk anywhere without seeing their tremendously established horseshoe stitch. The price of these jeans defiantly remind you that you are purchasing designer jeans and not just any ordinary denim. Thus far, their jeans have acted like that of a Giffen good in that more and more jeans have been purchased despite high prices.

Year to date, the company has been up around 18.4%, which is great in the current economic environment. The P/E ratio is defiantly on the higher end, signaling that many investors have high hopes for the company in the future and are willing to pay a premium for their earnings.Their forward P/E ratio is much less than the industry's, all awhile their growth is only slightly lower indicating a good buy. With sales growth estimates as well as earnings estimates being extremely high, this defiantly is a long position in my portfolio.

On top of the great growth outlooks for the company, they have a solid balance sheet. Their current ratio and acid-test ratios are phenomenal. Being unleveraged, they look great as far as solvency is concerned. Overall, this an exploding company with sky-high potential, and a great buy for a long position.

Times: Mosquito Nets Make a Cool Bar Mitzvah Project

A new charity generates new energy. At first glance I was doubtful about the legitimacy of this effort. But it looks kosher to me.

A $10 Mosquito Net Is Making Charity Cool
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Donating $10 to buy a mosquito net to save an African child from malaria has become a hip way to show you care, especially for teenagers. The movement is like a modern version of the March of Dimes, created in 1938 to defeat polio, or like collecting pennies for Unicef on Halloween.

Unusual allies, like the Methodist and Lutheran Churches, the National Basketball Association and the United Nations Foundation, are stoking the passion for nets that prevent malaria. The annual “American Idol Gives Back” fund-raising television special has donated about $6 million a year for two years. The music channel VH1 made a fund-raising video featuring a pesky man in a mosquito suit.

It is an appeal that clearly resonates with young people....

...most of the contributions have been modest, raised by students.

Yoni D. P. Rechtman, a seventh grader on the undefeated middle-school team at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, organized a 3-on-3 basketball tournament as part of his “mitzvah project,” the tradition of raising money for a good cause before one’s bar mitzvah. Unfortunately, he said, it rained that day; but the nine players who showed up anyway had family pledges totaling $1,900....more

WHO: Ban All Cigarette Ads Worldwide

Do it now!

WHO Calls on Governments to Ban Tobacco Advertising
By Diane Smith

The World Health Organization (WHO) called on all governments to forbid all sorts of tobacco advertising. The main goal of this measure is to protect the world's youth from becoming addicted to tobacco. WHO estimated that tobacco could cause as much as one billion premature deaths this century.

The call was made by the WHO on World No Tobacco Day. The surveys carried out by the U.N. organization have shown that the young people who are more exposed to tobacco advertisement are also more likely to start smoking and less likely to quit.

WHO officials accused tobacco producers of using increasingly sophisticated marketing techniques to ensnare young people. The most exposed segment of the population is the girls in poorer countries.

The U.N. organization said only 5% of the world's population was covered by comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

The WHO also said the existing restrictions aren’t enough to efficiently care for the world's 1.8 billion young people who are targeted by tobacco advertising through the internet, magazines and films.

According to the survey, the number of female and adolescent smokers has tripled in the last 10 years in Russia, a country with very few laws against smoking. On the other side, in Canada, a country which severely restricted tobacco advertising, the number of smokers is at its lowest in 40 years.

"The tobacco industry continues to spread its deadly product as the vector of the tobacco epidemic. The tobacco company spends tens of billions of dollars to market its products and tens of billions of dollars a year around the world to particularly develop and study and market to young people, especially in developing countries," said Dr. Douglas Bettcher, the director of WHO's Tobacco Free Initiative.

WSJ: Scholars Compare Barack to Rabbi Heschel's Ideal of the Prophet

Leave it to those scholars to compare Barack Obama favorably to the ideal prophet as described by the famous Rabbi Heschel.

...Yet a collective yearning to attribute the properties of the prophet to a political figure could lead to a misinterpretation of Rabbi Heschel's teachings, according to others who have studied his work. The political left has in recent years come to embrace the term "prophetic." But whether Rabbi Heschel believed that a politician could be a prophet or that a prophet could be a politician remains an open question.

Edward Kaplan, the rabbi's biographer, later told me: "Heschel saw the Hebrew prophets as being in sympathy with God's point of view, what he called the divine pathos. Heschel's judgments about American racism, economic inequality and the unjust Vietnam war were passionate and extreme." Still, Mr. Kaplan emphasizes, that the rabbi "was suspicious of politics as representing the perspective of expediency, which often includes lying."

"The problem is that to win votes and to tell the truth presents an inherent conflict," said Mel Scult, a professor of Judaic studies at Brooklyn College, in an interview. "The prophet is a social critic who speaks out and disregards the consequences." Which might be a little hard to do if he's the one in power. Still, Prof. Scult argues that, in Heschel's interpretation, a political figure "could be prophetic if he had the courage."

Ms. Heschel agrees. Though she thinks her father was careful not to use the word "prophet" too loosely, she does believe that a political figure can possess a prophetic spirit. "Would it be possible for a politician to embody certain kinds of moral values, to speak about those moral truths from a higher vantage point, and be willing even to criticize the country -- to speak at some remove? I would hope so," she continued. "It's possible to have a prophetic moment, even from a president." Of course, there is a difference, Mr. West noted after the event, between a statesman and a politician. "Great statesmen," West pointed out, "are able to fuse the prophetic with the prudential."

Prophet Sharing: Discussing the Legacy of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
By JORDANA HORN

"The main task of prophetic thinking," Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72) wrote in his seminal book, "The Prophets," "is to bring the world into divine focus." For two hours at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage last week, Dartmouth Prof. Susannah Heschel (the rabbi's daughter) and Princeton Prof. Cornel West used Rabbi Heschel's words to discuss whether there is a "prophetic spirit" in modern America.

The answer, more than a century after the rabbi's birth, was a resounding "yes." But the question of how that spirit can manifest itself -- and in whom -- turned out to be more complex.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, born in Warsaw, was the descendant of two Hasidic rabbinic dynasties. He grew up in Poland and received his doctorate from the University of Berlin. His dissertation was later published as "The Prophets." In 1940, he left Europe for the U.S., and in 1945 he became a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

Heschel's writings -- studied extensively in Jewish and Christian communities alike -- give great consideration to the relationship between man and God and the potential for individuals to imbue their own lives with a sense of sanctification and purpose. "We are called upon to be an image of God," he said in an ABC interview in 1971. "You see, God is absent, invisible, and the task of a human being is to represent the divine, to be a reminder of the presence of God."

Rabbi Heschel's legacy as a religious and civil-rights leader stems from his strong personal sense of justice, in part derived from the writings of biblical prophets. Prophets speak words filled with indignation, Heschel explained in his book, and they are intended to wrestle listeners out of complacency: "Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people. Few are guilty, but all are responsible." Religion without that indignation at political evil, he believed, was not religion at all. It is this spirit that led him to march in Selma, Ala., with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to speak out against the war in Vietnam.

The recent evening's discussion of Heschel's legacy gravitated, over and over, to the subject of Barack Obama. First Ms. Heschel and Mr. West brought up the presidential candidate and then the audience did. "He's a gift to this country," Ms. Heschel said, to great applause. It was as if everyone in the room were intoxicated with the idea that a politician could embody the prophetic. As she explained: "Today, there is a yearning for redemption. We want to be redeemed from cynicism and corruption. We want our politicians to turn swords into plowshares."

Yet a collective yearning to attribute the properties of the prophet to a political figure could lead to a misinterpretation of Rabbi Heschel's teachings, according to others who have studied his work. The political left has in recent years come to embrace the term "prophetic." But whether Rabbi Heschel believed that a politician could be a prophet or that a prophet could be a politician remains an open question.

Edward Kaplan, the rabbi's biographer, later told me: "Heschel saw the Hebrew prophets as being in sympathy with God's point of view, what he called the divine pathos. Heschel's judgments about American racism, economic inequality and the unjust Vietnam war were passionate and extreme." Still, Mr. Kaplan emphasizes, that the rabbi "was suspicious of politics as representing the perspective of expediency, which often includes lying."

"The problem is that to win votes and to tell the truth presents an inherent conflict," said Mel Scult, a professor of Judaic studies at Brooklyn College, in an interview. "The prophet is a social critic who speaks out and disregards the consequences." Which might be a little hard to do if he's the one in power. Still, Prof. Scult argues that, in Heschel's interpretation, a political figure "could be prophetic if he had the courage."

Ms. Heschel agrees. Though she thinks her father was careful not to use the word "prophet" too loosely, she does believe that a political figure can possess a prophetic spirit. "Would it be possible for a politician to embody certain kinds of moral values, to speak about those moral truths from a higher vantage point, and be willing even to criticize the country -- to speak at some remove? I would hope so," she continued. "It's possible to have a prophetic moment, even from a president." Of course, there is a difference, Mr. West noted after the event, between a statesman and a politician. "Great statesmen," West pointed out, "are able to fuse the prophetic with the prudential."

Even so, Alan Mittleman, a philosophy professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, suggests that there is a danger in using prophetic language too much. "The rabbis say in the Talmud that a wise man who engages in dialectical text interpretation is preferable to a prophet," Mr. Mittleman notes. While he says that he "can appreciate the moral passion that wants to wrap itself in the mantle of prophecy, there's something politically imprudent about it."

He worries that Heschel and his admirers today may rely too heavily on ambiguous claims of a prophetic spirit. "I think it makes a lot more sense to admit that what we're doing is arguing, as fallible human beings, out of the best reasons we can produce for the validity of the moral views we're trying to defend," he adds. "The basic rabbinic understanding of religion and ethics as taking place in the world of text interpretation, and the back and forth of rational justification, is a much better basis of life in a democratic society than these presumptive claims to prophetic authority that lean on God in the absence of real divine speech," Mr. Mittleman concludes.

Perhaps Rabbi Heschel's greatest contribution to our modern political debate, then, is to remind us not to rely too much on politics.

Ms. Horn is a lawyer and writer at work on her first novel.

Israelis Mostly Ignore the NYC Salute to Israel Parade

Mainly, the Israelis don't like parades, says the Times:

For Parade Celebrating Israel, an Effort to Include Those Closest to It

...up and salute has almost never shown up: Israelis. There are an estimated 400,000 Israelis living in the New York metropolitan area...for the first time tried to reach out to Israelis and other Jewish communities long underrepresented...

By PAUL VITELLO - New York and Region

Times: Mea Culpa on Luttwack v. the Facts

How did the Times make such a mistake? They published an alarmist opinion that was factually absurd. Op-Ed Contributor: President Apostate? (May 12, 2008) Military historian Luttwack claimed that Muslims consider Obama to be an apostate, one who converted out of Islam, and thus will be in danger in a Muslim country because he is worthy of the death penalty. Luttwack checked with the Quran. The Times fact checked the opinion. Only problem -reality! Military historians and journalists simply do not have the expertise to interpret religion....

From the Public Editor, Clark Hoyt:

...Did Luttwak cross the line from fair argument to falsehood? Did Times editors fail to adequately check his facts before publishing his article? Did The Times owe readers a contrasting point of view?

I interviewed five Islamic scholars, at five American universities, recommended by a variety of sources as experts in the field. All of them said that Luttwak’s interpretation of Islamic law was wrong...

When writers purport to educate readers about complex matters, and they are arguably wrong, I think The Times cannot label it opinion and let it go at that.

Times: Baseball Screams Diversity

Screaming diversity yes, but according to profiles. Notice that Jews are the owners in both cases, etc. on down the lines.

Sports of The Times
Measuring Success by Double-Sided Yardstick
...In New York, the Mets’ Jewish owner hired a Dominican general manager who hired an African-American manager. There is a similar model in Chicago, but with a twist: the White Sox’ Jewish owner hired an African-American general manager who hired a Venezuelan manager.

“It screams diversity,” Kenny Williams, the White Sox’ general manager, said Friday. “So when you walk through our doors, you have no choice but to understand the different cultures and aspects of what makes people people...”

Times: The Last Jews in Iraq

Baghdad Jews Have Become a Fearful Few

By STEPHEN FARRELL

BAGHDAD — “I have no future here to stay.”

Written in broken English but with perfect clarity, the message is a stark and plaintive assessment from one of the last Jews of Babylon.

The community of Jews in Baghdad is now all but vanished in a land where their heritage recedes back to Abraham of Ur, to Jonah’s prophesying to Nineveh, and to Nebuchadnezzar’s sending Jews into exile here more than 2,500 years ago.

Just over half a century ago, Iraq’s Jews numbered more than 130,000. But now, in the city that was once the community’s heart, they cannot muster even a minyan, the 10 Jewish men required to perform some of the most important rituals of their faith. They are scared even to publicize their exact number, which was recently estimated at seven by the Jewish Agency for Israel, and at eight by one Christian cleric. That is not enough to read the Torah in public, if there were anywhere in public they would dare to read it, and too few to recite a proper Kaddish for the dead.

Among those who remain is a former car salesman who describes himself as the “rabbi, slaughterer and one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Iraq.”

Although many of his Muslim friends and immediate neighbors know he is Jewish (“I’m proud, I’m Jewish, not ashamed. I’m not hiding,” he wrote at one point.), he was wary of being named because it could draw more dangerous attention to him or his friends. To protect him, he is referred to as Saleh’s grandson, because his or his father’s name would be too easily recognizable here. Interviews with him were conducted by correspondence over the course of several months.

He lamented that Jews in Baghdad had had no meeting place since the Meir Tweig synagogue, the last in the city, was closed in 2003, after it became too dangerous to gather openly.

“I do my prayer in my house because we closed the synagogue from the war until now...

Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images for The New York Times

The tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel in Kifl, south of Baghdad, used to be a pilgrimage site for Jews. It is one of few traces that remain of a once-vibrant Jewish community in Iraq. A pogrom in 1941 and other traumas led to a sharp decline in the Jewish population.

Jews were once a wealthy and politically active part of Iraqi society. Then came an exodus.