Is Lou Dobbs Jewish?

No, judging from his background we feel it is safe to say that Lou Dobbs is not a Jew.

Dobbs claims he was born in Childress County, Texas, son of Frank Dobbs, a co-owner of a propane business, and Lydia Mae Hensley, a bookkeeper. When Dobbs was 12 he claims his family moved to Rupert, Idaho. He claims to have attended Minico High School in Minidoka County, and claims to have earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University in 1967. We have not seen his birth certificate or his high school or college transcripts and diplomas, so we cannot vouch for any of these claims.

We cannot watch this guy on CNN.

UPDATE: And we won't be able to - because he is leaving!

He calls himself as a populist but we call him a droner, incessantly babbling on subjects that are out of the mainstream. He spouts off his personal views on American immigration policy, international trade and off-shoring.

Of late Dobbs has been under fire for joining the kooky birthers in questioning the birthplace of President Barack Obama.

Lou Dobbs challenges his own CNN network
By DAVID BAUDER (AP)

NEW YORK — He's become a publicity nightmare for CNN, embarrassed his boss and hosted a show that seemed to contradict the network's "no bias" brand. And on top of all that, his ratings are slipping.

How does Lou Dobbs keep his job?

It's not a simple answer. CNN insists it is standing behind Dobbs, despite calls for his head from critics of his reporting on "birthers" — those who believe President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States despite convincing evidence to the contrary. The "birthers" believe Obama was born in Kenya, and thus not eligible to be president.

Dobbs' work has been so unpopular that even Ann Coulter has criticized him...more...

//orig post 8/5/09//

Was Martin Heidegger a Nazi?

Yes, philosopher Martin Heidegger was a Nazi. A newly translated book argues that his work should be shunned and that all work based on his philosophy is tainted. We agree.

From the Times:

An Ethical Question: Does a Nazi Deserve a Place Among Philosophers?
By PATRICIA COHEN

For decades the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been the subject of passionate debate. His critique of Western thought and technology has penetrated deeply into architecture, psychology and literary theory and inspired some of the most influential intellectual movements of the 20th century. Yet he was also a fervent Nazi.

Now a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be called philosophy. As a result Mr. Faye declares, Heidegger’s works and the many fields built on them need to be re-examined lest they spread sinister ideas as dangerous to modern thought as “the Nazi movement was to the physical existence of the exterminated peoples.”...more...

Times: British Jews in a civil war over conversion

Raw Jewish identity politics at play in Britain. And this is not such a complicated case. It's a shame they let this issue get so far and become so public without reaching a conciliation within the community.

Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question
By SARAH LYALL

LONDON — The questions before the judges in Courtroom No. 1 of Britain’s Supreme Court were as ancient and as complex as Judaism itself.

Who is a Jew? And who gets to decide?

On the surface, the court was considering a straightforward challenge to the admissions policy of a Jewish high school in London. But the case, in which arguments concluded Oct. 30, has potential repercussions for thousands of other parochial schools across Britain. And in addressing issues at the heart of Jewish identity, it has exposed bitter divisions in Britain’s community of 300,000 or so Jews, pitting members of various Jewish denominations against one another.

“This is potentially the biggest case in the British Jewish community’s modern history,” said Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper here. “It speaks directly to the right of the state to intervene in how a religion operates.”

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews’ Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London’s Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts...more

[hat tip to mimi]

Thanksgiving Hagaddah and Thanksgiving Mishnah for Jews

I. Thanksgiving Hagaddah

In 2006 if you checked your NY Times Magazine or your New Yorker Magazine at this time you found a copy of America's Table stapled inside.

It was a "Thanksgiving Reader" that you could take to the dinner table and take turns reading.

Sounds like a Passover Hagaddah, no? You can go to the AJC web site and download the booklet as a PDF file.

The Jewish Standard had an article by Lois Goldrich about the booklet which described how the project took shape. The contents as described by Goldrich are,

The format — a "universal" narration, which remains constant each year, accompanied by profiles of men and women whose lives "illustrate the power of diversity and democratic values" — was designed to help Americans find common ground in a world where, often, differences are considered threatening, said Schept. The people profiled are recommended by AJCommittee chapters and are largely drawn from their interfaith contacts.

I found the readings so-so. There are so many classical statements of our "diverse roots and shared values" that could have been used in the booklet. And many stories of great Americans that should have been included. Take a look. Maybe it works for you.

II. Thanksgiving Mishnah

One year when I was teaching a course called Intro to Judaism at the University of Minnesota I asked the students to write a little creative assignment -- a Mishnah chapter for Thanksgiving based on what they were studying in their course readings.

The text we used was meant to teach the characteristics of the Mishnah is chapter 8 of Berakhot which contains the disputes between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai concerning the detailed order of the rituals and mannerisms of the Sabbath meal.

All the students did a wonderful job devising their own Mishnahs -- except for one. Surprisingly she was an Israeli student who actually knew what Mishnah was even before taking my course.

Here is the twist. When she came to me to discuss why she could not do the assignment she said, "Sure I know what is Mishnah. I learned about it in school is Israel.

"The problem is that I just came to the US and I have no idea what is Thanksgiving."

Ah, the problems of teaching at the multi-national midwestern university. [Annual repost.]

Picture of a Pile of Murdered Jews on a Banner - "National Socialist Health Care Dachau Germany 1945" at Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman's Anti Health Care Reform Protest Rally

Just broadcast on MSNBC - An outrageous picture of a pile of murdered Jews on a banner labeled - "National Socialist Health Care Dachau Germany 1945"displayed by people attending Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman's Anti Health Care Reform Protest Rally.

I cannot think of any more offensive violation of human dignity in the pursuit of a perverse political agenda.

Was Claude Lévi-Strauss Jewish?

Yes, the great anthropologist who just passed away at age 100, Claude Lévi-Strauss was a Jew and the grandson of a rabbi.

The Times' obituary article describes with great clarity the methodology and substance of his work and the highlights and impact of his career, including the following:

...Claude Lévi-Strauss was born on Nov. 28, 1908, in Belgium to Raymond Lévi-Strauss and the former Emma Levy. He grew up in France, near Versailles, where his grandfather was a rabbi and his father a portrait painter. His great-grandfather Isaac Strauss was a Strasbourg violinist mentioned by Berlioz in his memoirs. As a child, he loved to collect disparate objects and juxtapose them. “I had a passion for exotic curios,” he says in “Conversations.” “My small savings all went to the secondhand shops.” A large collection of Jewish antiquities from his family’s collection, he said, was displayed in the Musée de Cluny; others were looted after France fell to the Nazis in 1940.

From 1927 to 1932, Claude obtained degrees in law and philosophy at the University of Paris, then taught in a local high school, the Lycée Janson de Sailly, where his fellow teachers included Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He later became a professor of sociology at the French-founded University of São Paulo in Brazil...more...

Scripture in the Prayers of the Synagogue

It seems obvious to us that scriptural passages from the Tanakh should be cited liberally in the prayers of the synagogue. The Tanakh is replete with examples of prayer and praying.

There is a short book of collected essays on the subject that calls the process of using biblical verses in Jewish prayer "scripturalization". We call it citing and interspersing Tanakh passages into prayers.

Just to see how the verses of scripture are interspersed in the prayers more graphically for the Shaharit service (morning prayers) we put the references into a spread sheet.

Our columns are prayer name, page in Koren/Sacks Siddur, biblical (or occasional Talmudic) source, and comment (on whether or not it uses a full chapter).

Scripture in Shaharit

In the cases listed - there is little to no distinction or demarcation between the rabbinic prayers and the earlier biblical passages. Some uses of scripture are obvious and stand out and some intermingling of verses is seamless and would not be recognized by the average reader without a reference to point it out.

The choice of what verses and chapters to use was not accidental. Accordingly they analysis of the materials tells us a great deal about the theology of the framers of the prayer services.

We also wanted to have handy a catalog of the explicit annual Torah and Prophetic readings in the synagogue. So we culled this table and put it out there as well. It is based on a yearly cycle that most Orthodox synagogues employ. Keep in mind that the triennial cycle of Torah readings was practiced until the middle ages.

Torah and Prophets in the Synagogue

The processes by which the prophetic materials were selected appear for many instances to be based on a straightforward thematic coherence with the Torah portion for the week. Beyond that, where selection is not based on obvious associative principles, by examining the selections we can learn something about the theological agenda of the later synagogue leaders who canonized the haftarot.

Was Leo Frank Jewish?

Yes, Leo Frank was a Jew. He was convicted of a murder and then lynched in Georgia by an angry anti-Semitic  mob in 1915.

The story will be dramatized on PBS TV show tonight.

Television Review
Reverberations of a Trial and Its Shocking Aftermath
By NEIL GENZLINGER

“This case has it all,” someone will often say about a particularly gruesome or scandalous court proceeding — the O. J. Simpson trial, for instance, or anything involving John Gotti Jr. But you won’t find a case with more “all” than the one nearly a century ago surrounding an Atlanta pencil factory superintendent named Leo Frank. It is mesmerizingly recreated and explored Monday on PBS in “The People v. Leo Frank,” a film by Ben Loeterman that even those already familiar with this ugly piece of history are likely to find unsettling. ...more...

Video: Check Writer and Mega-Blowhard Michael Steinhardt Disrespects Jewish Leadership for Doing Gournisht

A highly flawed self-serving survey came out claiming a program called Birthright Israel which sends Jewish youth on free trips to Israel has diminished intermarriage.

Nonsense. The kids who elected to go on these trips already decided to affirm their Jewish identities by choosing to participate. The program's cohort is skewed from the get-go towards those youth who decided being Jewish is a high value. The program itself probably had little to  no measurable effect on these already decided committed young people.

About this softly articulated but strongly insulting video clip, Steven I. Weiss says, "Billionaire philanthropist Michael Steinhardt delivered a bold speech indicting Jewish leadership for not doing enough on Monday. The speech came at an event touting a study claiming Birthright Israel, which was founded in part by Steinhardt, has ... achieved quite a lot to combat intermarriage."

The notion that Birthright created change and nothing else matters is just baloney. Guys like Steinhardt want to feel good about the checks they wrote. Credible researchers are happy to oblige with studies that validate the expenditures and programs. Nobody faults a rich guy for wanting to feel good about his lucre at the end of his greedy life. Philanthropy can be a virtuous afterthought of a life of bullying and stepping all over weaker and more naive people.

What is going to change the appalling level of Jewish education in the non-Orthodox world Steinhardt asks? Simple. Get Jews to read more books every day. Taking a trip is a nice vacation and recreation and yes may be informative. But it ends and the youth go back and either they read books or they don't. Schools and courses and tedious hard study will alleviate ignorance.

Three minutes of saying, "I did something useful by writing a check and none of you guys do anything meaningful in your sustained careers," - well the only reasoned answer those Jewish professionals and academics can possibly have to that claim is, "Go to hell Steinhardt."

Video: The Jewish Channel Newsdesk Week in Review

These guys like Steven I. Weiss at TJC are doing a great job and getting better at it each week.