Jewish in a Gentile World

As I was driving home on Friday afternoon, I heard on the radio a Chanukkah song I had not heard before: "How Do You Spell Channukkahh" by The LeeVees. It was a catchy tune, and at first it was refreshing to hear something other than the perennial Adam Sandler songs. But as the song went on, I was increasingly bothered by the fact that the song had nothing to say about the holiday other than the fact that it was hard to spell! And it's not that hard to spell; it's simply hard to represent any Hebrew word in the Roman alphabet. By the last verse, my brain was screaming CHEIT-NUN-VAV-KAF-HEI!!! THAT'S HOW YOU SPELL IT! But if the topic is confusing enough to justify a song, maybe it's worth a blog entry. The name of the Jewish winter holiday is not hard to spell in Hebrew. The preferred spelling is Cheit-Nun-Vav-Kaf-Hei, shown at right below. An alternate but equally legitmate Hebrew spelling is shown at right. The letter Vav in the middle of the version at righ...

If you follow the weird news as I do, then you have probably already heard the story about the New York grocery store that was selling hams marked "Delicious for Chanukah." The news articles all point out that ham and other pork products are forbidden under Jewish dietary laws, making this shelf tag ironic at best. But every news article I've seen has missed the most peculiar aspect of this advertisement: the forbidden status of pigs is at the heart of the Chanukkah story! The Jews of Seleucid Greece were being oppressed by a tyrant who wanted uniform religion in his lands and outlawed the practice of Judaism. Torah study was forbidden and so forth. But the last straw came when the Jews were compelled to sacrifice pigs on the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. This outrage sparked open rebellion against the oppressive Greek government and the assimilated Hellenistic Jews who chose Greece over Torah. So ham is certainly a part of Chanukkah... but not in the way that the gro...

A certain right-wing pundit recently stated in an interview that she thought Jews needed to be "perfected." The same woman has said in the past that we should send people over to the Middle East to forcibly convert the Muslims to Christianity, which would make them more peaceful (apparently she missed the history class about the Crusades). Suffice it to say that I don't think her remarks are even worth dignifying with a response. Like Howard Stern and Don Imus, this woman makes money by shocking people. Like Stern and Imus, it's not even entirely clear whether she believes the outrageous, insulting, divisive things she says, or whether she just says them to get attention, publicity and of course, money. Why should I give her the publicity she seeks? Frankly, I am far less concerned about her and her remarks than I am about the state of a society that makes such things profitable. I know that a lot of people gleefully listen to "shock jocks" and read extremis...

Mobile phone service provider T-Mobile plans to put a 130-foot tower in Shalom Memorial Park, the Jewish section of non-sectarian Forest Hills Cemetery near Northeast Philadelphia. They will, of course, disguise it to look like a fake tree, but I gather that these fake trees aren't very convincing. T-Mobile is currently trying to use cemeteries for tower locations in several cities, probably because the residents aren't in any position to complain and the owners are happy to take the lucrative lease contracts. T-Mobile currently seeking to place towers in Holyhood Cemetery in Massachusetts and Manoa Chinese Cemetery in Hawaii. The plan at Shalom Memorial Park, however, seems to have generated more controversy than the other plans, with hostile protests at the zoning board meetings to address the plan. Initially, it appears that the objections were primarily directed at the light and noise generated by a tower, but at yesterday's zoning board meeting included testimony f...

When conservative Christian groups agree with gay rights groups, when arch-conservatives in the vein of Ann Coulter line up with the ACLU ... can moshiach be far behind? For those who haven't heard: Earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court rendered its controversial decision in Morse v. Frederick , in which a high school student was suspended for displaying a banner that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" across the street from his school. The student claimed that he simply meant the sign to be funny. It appears that he was seeking attention during the Olympic torch run past his school, and probably wanted to annoy his principal. The principal and the school defended their actions, claiming that this banner was a pro-drug message and they had the right to suppress student speech regarding drugs. The case attracted attention across the political spectrum, and garnered a remarkable array of amicus curiae briefs (arguments by "friends of the court," people not dire...

Last night was "Dining Out for Life" in Philadelphia and many other metropolitan areas. Participating restaurants donate a portion of their proceeds for the nights to local charities that provide quality-of-life services to people with AIDS. (And yes, there are kosher restaurants that participate). I make an effort to "Dine Out" every year, and it always reminds me of Steve, a person I knew in Georgia who died of AIDS in the early days of the epidemic. Apologies in advance to anyone from the old minyan who remembers this story differently; this is how I remember it: I met Steve in the Fall of 1986, shortly after I started law school in Athens, Georgia. Those first few weeks in Athens were quite a culture shock for me, both religiously and generally. I was having a hard time getting my Jewish life in order in such a remote place, and it was very painful. I knew that the college Hillel had an egalitarian Orthodox shabbat prayer group, but it took me a few weeks...

Today is Yom ha-Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, on the Jewish calendar, a day to remember the tragic loss of 6,000,000 Jewish lives, the brutal pruning of one-third of the branches on our collective family tree. Over the years, I've seen many exhibits about the Holocaust, showing the camps, the packed trains, the luggage left behind, the walkways made from tombstones taken from Jewish cemeteries, the crematoria and so forth. It tends to provoke in me a bit of a cringe, but mostly a "yeah, yeah, seen it," reaction. When the atrocities are explicitly and repeatedly displayed, we become desensitized to the horrors of that era. The exhibit that moved me the most showed none of these atrocities. It was a collection of hundreds of photographs of Jews in Poland before the war, titled "And I Still See Their Faces: The Vanished World of Polish Jews." I saw the exhibit several years ago, when it came to Lancaster PA, and it still brings me to tears to think about it. ...

With Pesach (Passover) coming up next week, I thought I would pass along this amusing true story about a seder I attended in college. My Hillel (Jewish student organization) used to hold a seder every year. Usually our advisor, Herb, came to the seder with his family, but one year Herb did not come. In the absence of adult supervision, the college students drank (ahem) more than the halakhically required amount of alcohol. To give you some idea of how intoxicated we became: when we got to the part of the seder where we hold up the maror and say, "These are the bitter herbs...", someone called out, "I thought he wasn't coming"! (sorry, Herb: not a reflection on you, but only a reflection on our blood alcohol level!) At the end of the seder, after most people had gone and only a few members of our Hillel board remained, someone looked over and noticed the Cup of Elijah. Elijah is a biblical prophet who, according to tradition, will return as the herald of the Mess...

I was looking for some information about James Cameron's "Jesus tomb" film (more on that in a later post) when the above headline caught my eye. For those who haven't heard about it: there was a high school basketball game in Virginia between a Catholic school and another school, which was marred by an "antisemitic chant" and "antisemitic graffiti." The "antisemitic" chant was, "We love Jesus," and the "antisemitic" graffiti was the word "Jew" painted on the gym wall below the name of the home team. I confess, I was a bit puzzled that anybody would perceive "We love Jesus" as an antisemitic chant. They weren't even playing against a Jewish school: the game was on the night of February 2, and no Jewish school would host a basketball game on a Friday night, Shabbat! But apparently, the hosting school is known to have a significant Jewish population, and anti-Jewish sentiment was the essence of the...

The problem with getting most of your news from Comedy Central is that I was very late to pick up on this news story... Frank D. Hargrove Sr., a delegate to the Virginia legislature, made headlines last month when he expressed his opposition to a resolution expressing regret for slavery. He commented, "Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?" Let's stop and think about that statement for a moment before we jump to a knee-jerk condemnation. Let's be clear: Mr. Hargrove did not demand that Jews apologize for anything; rather, while opposing Virginia's apology, he said that Virginia's apology would be as wrong as demanding an apology from the Jews. If what he's saying is, today's Virginians are no more responsible for slavery than today's Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus, that today's Virginians do not owe an apology any more than today's Jews do ... is that such a bad thing to say? It is, after all, the e...

At my office, our Human Resources director loves small children and jumps on any excuse to bring children into the office. I tease her that her policies are "speciesist." We celebrate "Bring Your Daughter or Son to Work Day," but we don't have "Bring Your Cat or Dog to Work Day." We have a Halloween costume parade for human children 5-15, but I wasn't allowed to bring in my 6-year-old tuxedo, Ritz. I could put her in "costume" as a black cat, perfect for Halloween! But no dice. At our admin meeting earlier this week, our HR director unveiled her latest excuse to bring children into the office: Holiday Breakfast with Santa! But she jokingly apologized to me, saying that this was another speciesist event and I wouldn't be able to bring my cats. Without missing a beat, I said, "That's OK. My cats are Jewish."

On this Martin Luther King day, I thought I might share a few words from MLK. From his I Have A Dream speech: "Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring — when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children — black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" During an appearance at Harvard University shortly before his death, a student asked Dr. King about Zionism, in a tone clearly hostile to Zionists. Dr. King responded: "When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism."

I applaud Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison for asserting his constitutional right to take his oath of office on the scripture he holds most dear: the Quran. Our founding fathers, though all Christians, were a very diverse group of Christians. Many of their sects were persecuted in Europe for their non-standard beliefs, but they held those beliefs so strongly that they or their ancestors were willing to be persecuted for them. None of them would give up their own brand of Christianity in favor of another, so the framers were wise enough to include this clause in the Constitution: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. United States Constitution,...