Newsweek: Limbo is Toast

What? You can do that? Wow.

Letting Go of Limbo
With a new Vatican report, the Pope finally sends unbaptized babies to heaven—and signals that he may be less conservative than his image suggests.
By Matthew Philips

April 24, 2007 - In the world of Vatican reversals, it’s a big one. According to a 41-page report released last week by the Roman Catholic Church’s International Theological Commission, limbo—a celestial middle ground between Heaven and Hell—is no longer necessary. That means that babies who die unbaptized are now free to go to heaven rather than being consigned to limbo, where for the last 800 years they’ve been forced to await the End of Days, unable to share in the beatific vision of God and Jesus Christ with their Roman Catholic brethren....

Haaretz Slams Rabbi Lau

In an editorial, "Rabbi Lau is unworthy" Ha'aretz, the NY Times of Israel, has come out against the prominent rabbi's candidacy for the presidency of the State - calling him "unworthy" and referring to alleged moral shortcomings of the esteemed clergyman. We cannot judge the validity of the caveats...

New Book Imagines Zion in Sitka, Alaska

Michael Chabon's new book is reviewed in the NY Times:

ASIDE from geography, Sitka, a boomerang-shaped island in the southeastern panhandle of Alaska, has very little in common with the imaginary city named Sitka conjured up by Michael Chabon in his latest book, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.”

In this fourth novel, which comes out Tuesday, Mr. Chabon takes a historical footnote, a pie-in-the-sky proposal to open up the Alaska Territory in 1940 to European Jews marked for extermination, and asks: What if? What if this proposal, which in real life was supported by the secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, but killed in Congress, had actually passed? What if Jews had poured into a frigid island instead of the Middle Eastern desert, and the state of Israel had never been created? What if the small settlement of Sitka had grown into a teeming Jewish homeland, a land not of milk and honey but of salmon and lumber?

Ah the imagination of the novelist!

Romney at Yeshiva U

Candidate for president Mitt Romney spoke last week at Yeshiva U. His speech is reproduced here.

It's a weak speech with no specific statement of how he would support Israel. It's heavy on rhetoric and scare tactics - as if he is the first person to discover threats like these -

"Jihadism - violent, radical, fundamental Jihadism - is this century's nightmare. It follows the same dark path as last century's nightmares: fascism and Soviet communism.

"The September 11th Commission reported that al-Qaeda had been trying to acquire or build nuclear weapons for well over a decade. Former CIA Director George Tenet said that Osama bin Laden sees the acquisition of WMD as a 'religious obligation.' Jihadist clerics have issued fatwas authorizing the use of nuclear weapons to... 'defeat the infidels.'

"We are faced with the horrific proposition that those who speak of genocide are developing the capability to carry it out.

"Radical, nuclear Jihad is the greatest threat that faces humanity. It cannot be appeased. It can only be defeated.

We all know this and agree on it. We've seen the videos of 9/11. This kind of politics, implying that he is tough on terrorism - "I am your best hope against evil" - it's dumb. I'd expect more from a man who is supposed to be so smart.

And what about speaking to the issue of religion when at Yeshiva University? Not a whisper of the fact that Romney is a member of a minority religion - something he shares with Orthodox Jews.

I give this speech a C-. C'mon Mitt, surely you can do better.

Chi. Public Radio: Women Rabbis Meet in Chicago

This Sunday, more than one hundred female Reform rabbis from around the world will gather in Chicago. They're discussing the challenges facing female leaders in Reform Judaism. Worldwide, there are 1,800 Reform rabbis. About 500 are women. The movement has been ordaining women since 1972.

Chicago Public Radio's Jason DeRose spoke with Rabbi Lisa Greene of the North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe and Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus from Congregation B'nai Yehuda Beth Shalom in Homewood. Jason DeRose asked Rabbi Dreyfus what it was like being the only female rabbi in the city.
Producer: DeRose, Jason Release date: 4/27/2007

Israel Baseball League IBL Makes it to NPR

Making a Play for Baseball in Israel

by Eric Westervelt

All Things Considered, April 26, 2007 · Professional baseball may be coming to Israel. In a move some believe is quixotic at best, a Jewish businessman is trying to bring America's past-time to Israel. Organizers hope the new Israel Baseball League builds lasting support for the sport and offers an entertaining distraction in a land of conflict.

Holocaust Blame Game Redux

Zionism, Reform, bad fish. Anything but the maniac Hitler and the evil nazis.

Rabbi Draws Criminal Complaint For Blaming Reform Jews For Holocaust
By AMY TEIBEL
Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Members of the Reform Jewish movement filed a complaint with police Wednesday against a former Israeli chief rabbi who blamed the liberal Jewish movement for the Holocaust.

The complaint accused Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu of defamation after he told an ultra-Orthodox radio station last week that the Holocaust was punishment for Reform Judaism's liberalization of the religion. Israeli media reported his remarks on Wednesday. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed that an official complaint was lodged and said police would look into it.

Asked by a radio interviewer what was the sin of the 6 million Jews who were killed by the Nazis, Eliyahu quoted a biblical verse about divine punishment for altering a ritual and added, "Those people (victims) were not to blame, but the Reform movement began in Germany. Those tinkerers with the faith got their start in Germany."

Divine wrath, Eliyahu added, "doesn't distinguish between the virtuous and the evil." The lesson, he said, was not to make "even the slightest change" to Jewish practice.

The comments sparked the criminal complaint by a group of Reform Jews, including some Holocaust survivors, according to Gilad Kariv, an Israeli Reform rabbi. One of the complainants, Avraham Melamed, is chairman of the Israeli Reform movement and sits on the board of Yad Vashem, the country's Holocaust memorial authority.

By blaming Reform Jews for the Holocaust, Kariv said, Eliyahu was playing into the hands of anti-Semites who say Jews were responsible for what befell them.

Eliyahu, 77, who served as chief rabbi for Israel's Middle Eastern Jews from 1983-1993, did not respond to requests for comment faxed to his office.

In 2005, Eliyahu raised a similar stir when he blamed nations "that don't help Israel, but want to ... interfere in our affairs and harm us," for causing the devastating 2004 tsunami that killed nearly 230,000 people in Asia and Africa.

Things that I just don't understand

Recently I have been shaking my head more and more at a whole bunch of things. To me - Ecclesiastes-like - it is clear that the more I read, the more I study, the more I travel, the more I work, the more people I meet, the more I blog, the less I understand about the world.

I never understood anything about the Holocaust. I don't understand how people can tolerate the military-industrial complex that takes us into needless wars. I don't understand how people can allow the cigarette industry to kill 460,000 people a year in the US. I don't understand how people can allow the gun industry to provide weapons to maniacs to kill innocent people. I don't know why any single American would tolerate $3.00 a gallon gasoline. I don't understand how Bush got elected, and then re-elected. I don't understand corporate greed and white collar crime. I don't understand the anger of the rightists. I don't understand bigotry against women, gays, Jews, Arabs, blacks, Zionists, Muslims, anyone.

I'm talking as a positivist. I simply don't know how civilization can tolerate these evils.

Yashar Books - Highly Recommended

We received this notice from Yashar Books publisher Gil Student. He is a tireless worker who publishes some first rate books and the top Orthodox Jewish blog on the Internet.

We give him and his book catalogue our highest recommendation.

Dear friend,

Welcome to a new newsletter from Yashar Books, in which we send you complete chapters from a recent book of interest. This issue’s book is Rabbi David M. Feldman’s Where There’s Life, There’s Life.

The book addresses emotional and ethical issues that arise for friends and relatives in the care of elderly and sick loved ones. With an aging “Boomer” population and the rise of what has become called “The Sandwich Generation”—people who have to care for their children and their parents—this book could not be more timely.

Rabbi Feldman, long known for his scholarly writings, decided to write this book in a popular, easily read format rather than a scholarly style. In this book, he wants to address the average person struggling with life-and-death decisions and point out the inspiring attitude that Judaism has to offer. Please read below Rabbi Feldman’s chapter on suicide and the right to die. Given the sensitive yet fundamental nature of this discussion, this should be of great interest to you.

More information about the book can be found at the Yashar website. It can be purchased at your local Judaica store, on Yashar’s website and on Amazon.com.

The goal of this newsletter is to spread Torah and to introduce you to books that you might find interesting, without the risk of you having to pay first. In that end, please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested or to quote it entirely or in part in your blog, newspaper or magazine. Just please be sure to note the author’s name and the book’s title: David M. Feldman, Where There’s Life, There’s Life.

Thank you,

Gil Student, www.YasharBooks.com

If you cannot read this e-mail then click here: http://www.YasharBooks.com/Chapters0101.html

Chinese Scholar Xu Xin in the Forward

I met Xu Xin in Nanjing in 1991. I'm happy to say that I helped answer some of his questions while he was engaged in translating the Encyclopedia Judaica into Chinese. When he visited NJ he stayed with us in our home.

He's written a nice article this week for the Forward:

Chinese Open New Chapter With the People of the Book

Xu Xin | 04/20/07

The Chinese and Jewish cultures are both great, rich civilizations. These two major societies developed highly civilized forms in ancient times and persist until today, keeping continuous recorded accounts of their origins. Each of them has had a significant impact on world history, although the two cultures seldom met. As a result, not much was known in China about Jews, Jewish culture and Israel until recently. During my first visit to Israel and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in 1988, I made the sweeping statement that…Read more