Is The End Nigh?

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Luke Ford

Daniel Pipes writes:

Ali ibn Abi-Talib, the seventh-century figure central to Shiite Islam, is said to have predicted when the world will end, columnist Amir Taheri points out. A "tall black man" commanding "the strongest army on earth" will take power "in the west." He will carry "a clear sign" from the third imam, Hussein. Ali says of the tall black man: "Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us."

Barack Hussein in Arabic means "the blessing of Hussein." In Persian, Obama translates as "He [is] with us." Thus does the name of the presumptive American president-elect, when combined with his physical attributes and geography, suggest that the End of Times is nigh – precisely what Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been predicting.

Posted in Barack Obama, Islam | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Is The End Nigh?

Creating God In Our Image

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Luke Ford

Through prose that is deeply poetic and critically compelling, in the latest issue of the Shofar journal, Professor Monica Osborne takes quite seriously the Talmudic assertion that “there is always another interpretation.”

She writes about Alicia Striker’s new book, "For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book":

Much of Ostriker’s work speaks to what she interprets as our own contemporary needs, specifically our collective desire for peace, and this book is no exception. “We need,” she writes, “a God who can encourage fewer crusades, jihads, occupations, massacres, and assassinations, and more treaties; a God whose primary metaphors are not hierarchical, imperialistic, and dualistic; a God to help us survive the nuclear age” (p. 4). The implication here is that we, as thinkers, dreamers, and believers, are responsible for creating a God who speaks to the needs of the contemporary era. The God that we have placed in the heavens thus far has not proven himself to be consistently attentive to the sufferings and longings of a generation that has been cracked and splintered by events such as the Holocaust, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the genocides of Darfur and Rwanda among other terrors and tragedies. But while Ostriker proposes the need for an alternative God, she implies that the creation of such a God is our own responsibility. And in this way she taps into one of the primary tenets of the Torah and of Judaism itself, which is to love one’s neighbor—an infinite responsibility that also burdens us with the task of envisioning not a God of children, who doles out rewards and punishments, but a God of adults, who inspires us to engage in meaningful dialogue with one another.

…It is this ambiguity and mystery, the multiplicity of twists and turns, confusions and contradictions, that force us away from imagining God as the source of morals, ethics, and justice. It is we mortals who must be this source “if justice is ever to be established on earth,” and further, perhaps “the Holy One waits for us to issue our challenge. Perhaps God does not know how to be just until human beings demand it” (p. 134).

While my mate Joey would be gushing, "Oh, you are so right, Monica," I fear that the sentiments above are the fiercest heresy and it is with great trepidation that I place them on my blog. Oy, I fear that weak minds will be corrupted. Oy, I’ve placed a stumbling block before the blind. Oy, I am a man of unclean lips.

Posted in Bible, Monica Osborne, Torah | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Creating God In Our Image

California Music Theatre Artistic Director Eckern Issues Apology For Supporting Prop 8

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Luke Ford

 The NJG:  BULLIES
 The NJG:  complete TOTAL bullies!
 The NJG:  that’s the Gay Agenda

From Playbill:

California Music Theatre and Sacramento Music Circus artistic director Scott Eckern has issued an apology regarding his financial contribution in support of California’s Proposition 8 legislation.

Eckern’s $1,000 contribution to the measure that would amend California’s state constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to a union solely between a man and a woman was discovered through public record. Proposition 8, which was approved by a vote of 52.3 percent on Nov. 4, overturns the May 2008 California Supreme Court decision granting marriage equality.

Word spread quickly throughout the theatre community via e-mails sent by Tony Award-winning Hairspray composer Marc Shaiman and Tony-nominated actress Susan Egan (Triumph of Love, Beauty and the Beast), as well as a blog post from Tony-winning Avenue Q book writer Jeff Whitty, all of whom took issue with Eckern’s support of a measure that was created to deny gays and lesbians the right to marry. The official title of Proposition 8 ballot reads: "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry."

Shaiman contacted Eckern and also issued a mass e-mail that stated, "The idea that money from his salary that was, in a small way, made from a production of Hairspray had now been put to use to pass this bigoted Proposition truly hurt and sickened me and that no future project of mine would ever play his theatre."

Posted in Homosexuality | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on California Music Theatre Artistic Director Eckern Issues Apology For Supporting Prop 8

Vincent Bugliosi on giving Bush the “Alice Walker” benefit of doubt!

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Luke Ford

This clip confuses me for my friend Joey Kurtzman, who was the one who asks the question here at AJU:

Posted in AJU | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Vincent Bugliosi on giving Bush the “Alice Walker” benefit of doubt!

The First Basket

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Luke Ford

From TheFirstBasket.com:

Did you know that a Jewish kid from New York scored the first basket in the NBA?

A New York movie if ever there was one, The First Basket follows the little-known history of Jews and basketball at the beginning of the 20th century.

When Ossie Schectman, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn , made the first basket for the New York Knickerbockers back in 1946, who knew it was the precursor of today’s NBA?

Though basketball was invented by Dr. James Naismith in Springfield MA , the game spread like wildfire through turn-of-the-century New York settlement houses and proved a perfect fit for urban Jewish kids. For Jewish immigrants, especially youth, sports played an important role in helping them become American. By the 1920s, basketball had become a staple of life in American Jewish communities, and many of the top teams grew out of these neighborhoods.

The First Basket is the first comprehensive documentary to examine both the role that Jewish players had in the evolution of the game and the impact that basketball played in the assimilation of American Jews. The First Basket explores the profound influence that these Jewish pioneers had on the evolution of basketball as it grew from a game played with ash cans on tenement steps to the second most popular sport in the world.

In The First Basket, writer/producer/director David Vyorst and narrator Peter Riegert explore the little-known, yet very important, Jewish history of the game. Chock full of vivid anecdotes and distinctive characters, the film brings back famous as well as unsung basketball legends such as Red Auerbach, Red Holzman, Dolph Schayes, Red Sarachek, Barney Sedran, Eddie Gottleib, Abe Saperstein, Ossie Schectman (that above-mentioned kid from New York who scored the eponymous First Basket), Ralph Kaplowitz, Sammy Kaplan and many more. These legendary players of professional basketball became role models and heroes to generations of fans and changed the face and perception, to this very day, of Jews in all athletics.

Laemmle/Zeller Films will release The First Basket in New York on October 29th exclusively at the Village East Cinema in Los Angeles on November 14th exclusively at the Laemmle Music Hall ( Beverly Hills) and Laemmle Town Center (Encino), with more cities to be announced.

 CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE FIRST BASKET TRAILER ON YAHOO MOVIES!

Ella Taylor writes for the Village Voice:

Though hardly the first testament to Jewish physicality, which is as old as Samson, David Vyorst’s clear-eyed, jaunty documentary briskly walks us through the history of American Jews in basketball, a sport many believe belongs to blacks and very tall white goyim. Along with boxing, the low-cost sport served as a major avenue of upward mobility and cultural assimilation for working-class Jewish immigrants, beginning with the Settlement House teams on the Lower East Side in the early 20th century and progressing through the professional leagues all the way to the NBA. Narrated by actor Peter Riegert, with period footage and lively testimony from sports historians and wonderful old gents in New York and Florida (including the late, irrepressibly belligerent Red Auerbach) who once played or coached, The First Basket is more than a triumphalist screw-you to those who think Jews don’t play sports. Vyorst skirts neither the anti-Semitism that attended Jewish success in basketball (one journalist blithely concluded in print that it was the ideal sport for Jewish trickery and deceit) nor the culpability of Jews and blacks in the point-shaving scandals that rocked City College and other urban universities. With success and suburbanization, Jews drifted away from this quintessentially inner-city sport, and today, Jews play pro basketball mainly in Israel, where the sport is "huge." But, as one commentator from within the tribe gleefully notes, basketball, like crime and entertainment, was one of the easiest ways for a Jew to become an American.

Posted in Jews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The First Basket

Nathan Englander At AJU’s Book Festival

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Luke Ford

Here’s an excerpt of my report:

The second speaker I catch at AJU is Nathan Englander. He’s interviewed by Beverley Seehoff. (Listen)

When I hear her described as graduating from college in South Africa in 1983, I’m expecting a crone. Oy, to have to look at all that age for 45 minutes. It’s too much. Then she comes out and she’s totally hot. She has gleaming black hair and shining white teeth and long legs. She gives an adulatory introduction to Nathan Englander. She’s all quivering with excitement over him.

He shambles on stage with his hands in his jeans. He’s short with stumpy legs.

She has him read a section of his book. He does for five minutes with feeling.

"I love that you chose that scene," she gushes.

She loves it! She loves it! She loves it!

She asks him questions like he’s God Almighty and she’s HaShem’s number one cheerleader.

I fear she’s going to hurt her neck the way she nods so vigorously whenever Nathan completes a phrase. It’s like his words are nectar from the gods and she’s slurping them up and asking for more.

"Yes, yes," she sighs and flashes her white teeth and shakes her black hair and stretches her long legs and sighs again in sheer Nathan Englander-drunk ecstasy.

Nathan says he moved to Israel [circa 1993] to "make peace."

"I began to understand that there are multiple realities in this world and governments create their own reality."

"Bibi worked out at the same gym I did. George Bush has his own treadmill. Not for long!"

"We all choose stories. I got interested in good and evil and black and white and all the gradations in between. I chose Argentina [for his novel The Ministry of Special Cases] because it was extreme. It was pure evil. We made up the war to invade Iraq. We made up facts that were sold to us… Argentina declared war on themselves. They didn’t even pick an enemy. That to me was supreme."

"There’s a middle class in Argentina which there isn’t in many South American countries. People want to move up, they don’t want to move down."

Beverley asks him about symbols in his novel.

Nathan says writing "is a form of monkishness…. When you write, you have an obligation to the text. When I’m writing, I don’t get to go outside… It’s what the book demands. It becomes all-consuming… I’ll write a 40-page speech that I might crush it down to a single line."

"My next book will be wholly different from first two. I’m always obsessed with boundaries. When you fly around the country, you look down and everything is in perfect squares."

"Every community is based on boundaries. The guy in Austria who kept his daughter in his basement and had babies with her. Why is that a story after day one? Because we’re obsessed with that this is not OK… That’s the line and you’re on the wrong side of it… I’m obsessed with failures in community. I always picture myself as a historical coward. I’m the guy in World War II who says, ‘The Jews are behind the book case.’"

"I’m interested in getting into that mind… The failure of society to keep up… I’m living that. Habeas Corpus [you hear the charges against you] is the most important thing in the world to me and I still went on tour, I still finished my book, I still went to yoga. Our government says, it’s not about us, it’s about terror. We should’ve been flipping cars in the streets and I should’ve been setting fires… The greatest shame we have known, we are living right now. People have a right to challenge their detention."

Nathan says Jews became pimps and prostitutes in Argentina to survive. "There can’t have been a more miserable job. We think of prostitution as like Pretty Woman… It was a crappy job…. These women were Jews. They wanted to go to shul. They wanted to be buried as Jews. And the community says, we’re ashamed to be buried with you. To look at another Jew and say, ‘I won’t be buried with you,’ that to me is a failure of community… For someone to feel so pure and to judge others in that way.

"It’s like when some Russian immigrant to Israel dies in defense of Israel and the rabbis say, ‘He can’t be buried as a Jew.’ He died as a Jew, he should be buried as a f—ing Jew."

Applause.

Nathan did not visit Argentina until after he wrote the novel.

I ask the first question. "Why do you write first and research later?"

Nathan: "That’s the shortest first question I’ve ever received. Normally when someone shoots up their hand they’ve got a long speech to give over."

At the end, Beverly says to Nathan, "We are so grateful…"

Posted in AJU, Nathan Englander | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Nathan Englander At AJU’s Book Festival

The Morality Of Blogging

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Luke Ford

Is blogging good for the Jews?

Orthodox Rabbi Gil Student writes:

Blogs have gotten a lot of bad press in the Jewish community (e.g. here and here), and with good reason. There are blogs that do any of a number of improper things, such as reveal private information, mock and insult communal leaders, undermine Jewish tradition, and generally promote disobedience to the Torah’s commandments. If all that is true, does it mean that blogs are bad?

I suggest that to answer this question we first need to ask a different question: Are telephones bad? Telephones allow for the quick spreading of slander, gossip and ideas that are contrary to the Torah. However, I think most readers of these words will agree that telephones are merely a tool and, while they can be used for bad, they can also be used for good. The same telephone that allows for the transmission of lashon ha-ra also allows for comforting a mourner, keeping in touch with a distant parent and sharing Torah insights.

Posted in Blogging, Judaism | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Morality Of Blogging

Was Obama’s Victory Due to the ‘the American alliance of Jews and Negroes’?

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Luke Ford

I was shocked, shocked to read this virulent racism from Europe, but I admit it also made me laugh.

These are dark days for conservatives and we’ll take our humor where we can get it.

I love how Europe loves to lecture us on racism. As Dennis Prager says, "we have more racism in America because we have more races in America."

Until the past decade, the presence of a black man on a British television show was usually reason enough for mirth.

Here’s a classic line from Fawlty Towers — of course, I am even more appalled than you are: The Major: And the strange thing was… throughout the morning she kept referring to the Indians as niggers. "No no no," I said, "the niggers are the West Indians. These people are wogs."

From the Washington Post:

The day after Obama’s victory, a leading Austrian television journalist said on camera that he "wouldn’t want the Western world to be directed by a black man." A Polish lawmaker stood up in Parliament and called the election result "the end of the white man’s civilization."

…"Africa Conquers the White House," read a headline on the Web site of the National Democratic Party of Germany, a political party that sympathizes with neo-Nazi groups. In an accompanying article, Jürgen Gansel, a party leader and an elected lawmaker in the German state of Saxony, blamed Obama’s victory on "the American alliance of Jews and Negroes."

Offensive opinions have also originated from the other end of the political spectrum. Die Tageszeitung, a Berlin newspaper that supports socialist and leftist causes, predicted Obama’s election in June when it published a large front-page photo of the White House under the headline, "Uncle Barack’s Cabin."

…In a later interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, [Klaus Emmerich} said that "blacks are not as politically civilized." He also called Obama dangerous and implicitly compared him to Hitler, citing his "rhetorical brilliance" and his ability to "appeal charismatically to people."

…In a speech Wednesday, Górski called Obama "the black messiah of the new Left" and a "crypto-communist" who would undoubtedly prove a "disaster." He added: "Al-Qaeda is rubbing their hands with glee that the new president wants peace, not war."

"This marks the end of the white man’s civilization," he said. "America will soon pay a high price for this quirk of democracy."

Posted in Race | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Was Obama’s Victory Due to the ‘the American alliance of Jews and Negroes’?

A Bit Portly

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Luke Ford

A friend from childhood emails:

Luke you probably don’t remember me, but I can still picture you running down the road exercising in Angwin. You were just a boy maybe around 13 or 14. I remember you giving me advice once that it’s good to lock your doors since even in Angwin there might be a bad apple around somewhere.
It seems to me that those Angwin years bring back all kinds of memories. That was a hard time for many people. I’m sorry if you were hurt by all the things that occurred around your family and you- it seems like it would have been hard on you just being a kid. I was studying theology at PUC at that time, so I can attest those were difficult and confusing days for a lot of people and for me as well. What helped me go through them was that I loved the Lord Jesus. More importantly I knew that he loved me and He was committed to me. Time went on- life went on- and I’ve been able to use my gifts for the Lord.
 
Someone once asked me a long time ago, "have you heard from Dr. Ford lately?"

I hadn’t.

Then they told me that they had stumbled onto some movie production work that you were doing or had done and that you had converted to Judaism. Since I come from a Jewish home I found that interesting.
 
I did go to a presentation given by your father in Loma Linda recently. I went on You tube to hear an interview about someone who was at that forum and that is how I stumbled onto your website.

I don’t think that I would have recognized you walking down the street, you have become a bit portly since your youth.

Jane emails:

B”H   Reb Luke,   Having just stumbled across your many sites while searching the blogosphere for Orthdox Jew…..and many hours later…..I chose to write.   (The thought was, “I just HAD to write”, but that’s not the truth;  all we truly have in this world are our choices.)        I don’t know where you are currently holding, but I sure hope you’ve still got a shul, a good chevrusa, and some community around yourself.  I want to give you chizuk to do what you know is right and keep dragging your yetzer hara to the beis medrash.    You are not only a ger, but a baal tshuvah…again and again and again.  Keep working on it til you get it right!    You’ve definitely had some rough breaks (childhood tragedy,multiply  disrupted bonding, CFS, etc.), so it would be a little odd if you WEREN’T a bit disturbed; you come by it honestly!  Yes, I think you are probably at least a shadow syndrome of borderline personality.  And that you can become spiritually great anyway. Maybe even healthy in mind, body  and soul.    And that you could perhaps become a good married baalabos someday too.    

      They say it’s good to excel in the mitzvahs in the areas where you went off the path.    So I look to you to become a role model and a light to the world in the areas of tznius and in rightful speech.  Please, do it.    Then where you stand, no tzadik will be able to stand.    And maybe it won’t earn you a living. And you probably won’t get that delicious attention that I bet you still crave.    But your spiritual reward will be ENDLESS.  And I will have such nachas from you.  (but that’s MY trip.) And who am I?    ONE WHO CAN RELATE TO YOUR STRUGGLE,  TOTALLY.     So, kol tuv, chazak chazak; hoping to hear good news soon.  

PS  Have you checked out the Jewish 12-step movement?   There might be something there that could give you both the community you need and deserve, and the support in resisting your addictive pulls. 

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on A Bit Portly

Who By Fire

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Luke Ford

I’m enjoying this new novel by Diana Spechler.

Was Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach the epitome of Jewish love? I always thought so until the past few years.

From Diana’s new book:

A wise Jew says: "And it’s not your fault you lived treyf for nineteen years. But my guess is that you weren’t having much success in life before you became frum."

"All you Ba’alei Tshuva [penitents]…you’re all messed up in the head. Nowhere to turn, so you turn to us. Of course you’re searching for acceptance. Of course you care what we think." (Pg. 172-173)

From page 65: "Yosi told me all about the Zeff House, where he had been praying every day for seven years. Internationally, the Zeff movement is a niche for artistic hippie Jews. A musician/rabbi, Yudel Zeff started it up back in the sixties. He died in 1994."

From page 69:

Back in Boulder, I did some of my own research about the Zeff Movement, and what I learned made me sick. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Rabbi Yudel Zeff had sexually assaulted young Jewish women and molested Jewish girls. He never even got in trouble for it. This was the man Yosi was so starry-eyed about?

"You’re the ones who have something wrong," I finally told him. "This isn’t Judaism. You make a joke out of Judaism, with your music and your hippie stories. And the way you idolize that" — I gestured toward Rabbi Zeff’s picture — "that pig!"

Yossi’s smile faded from his lips. "You’ve been listening to rumors," he said. "Don’t believe everything you hear."

Posted in Jewish Literature | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Who By Fire