• Move over Mamma Mia! A school for religious musicians will open in Israel and is already considering a “rock opera based on the life story of Rabbi Nachman from Breslev.” [Ynet]

• The South African Jewish Board of Deputies has announced that Richard Goldstone will be attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah after all, and “requests…that all parties immediately desist all public activities on this matter.” We certainly hope to. [SA Times]

• A reminder that Iran doesn’t have a monopoly on all the wingnuts when it comes to explaining natural phenomena: Back in 2008, an Israeli politician blamed gays for recent quakes. [Haaretz]

• Is NYC really not big enough for the Bravo’s two biggest Jewish drama queens? [AOL]

Actually, we completely buy that. Even in a lower-stakes report to the government, the census, the Holocaust looms large for some survivors’ kids. The Nation reports that one such woman who considers being Jewish a racial identity couldn’t bring herself to write it in on the census: “she acknowledged a deep ambivalence about putting that on any official form. She’s the child of Holocaust survivors, and although she said she doesn’t distrust the US government or think that this form—used to patrol against discrimination—bears any resemblance to a yellow star, she admitted that she remains hesitant and torn.”

UBS Tax Evader Cites Holocaust “Survival Behavior” [Reuters]
Not-Black by Default [The Nation]

Meanwhile, though, as New York Magazine‘s blog points out, Schumer stepped into some Palin- and George W. Bush-esque territory by asserting divine provenance to his rule: “My name as you know comes from a Hebrew word. It comes from the word shomer, which means guardian,” he said. “My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov and I believe Hashem, actually, gave me the name as one of my roles that is very important in the United States Senate, to be a shomer for Israel, and I will continue to be that with every bone in my body.” Of course, this tidbit of superstition may have been his way of pandering to his host, who clearly took the proclamation lightly, asking Schumer to be “a shomer against the value-add tax” as well. But if Schumer’s going to assume that God chooses his shepherds via their names, he would do well to remember that “Barack” means “blessing,” and “Emanuel” means “God is with us.”

Is Chuck Schumer on a Mission From God to Protect Israel? [Daily Intel]

One visitor who happened upon a Holocaust Remembrance Day event recently held on the future site approved of the plan. “As to whether a memorial fits in with the scene overlooking the Atlantic,” says the Jerusalem Post, he replied “Where did the Holocaust fit in with life?” Mayor Lorenzo T. Langford sees the location more pragmatically: “The boardwalk is the most densely traveled pedestrian thoroughfare in the nation. If you’re going to have a memorial, there’s no better place to have it.” If nothing else, down on their luck gamblers will have a reminder that it could always be worse.

Atlantic City Boardwalk to Get a Holocaust Memorial [JPost]

Mead’s optimism is at its wildest in his vision of Iran as “a natural long-term ally for both India and Israel once it moves beyond the delusional and dead-end geopolitical agenda of its current government,” but it’s also founded on hard facts: “Israel is India’s largest supplier of arms,” Mead points out. “As two of the leading IT countries in the world, India and Israel also collaborate on a variety of high tech projects, some with military implications.” In addition, in the face of extremism in the Middle East and China’s growing influence, “the United States increasingly favors the emergence of India as a world and regional power,” and therefore supports its unity with Israel.

While Mead dismisses the idea found in terrorist documents from Pakistan that a “‘Zionist Hindu Crusader‘ alliance” between Israel, India, and the United States seeks to wage “war on Islam,” he makes the case that the friendly relations between the three powerful nations does have dire implications for Islamist radicals: “The radicals have imagined a world in which the west and especially America is in decline, Israel faces a deep crisis, and a resurgent Islamic world is emerging as a new world-historical power,” Mead writes. “Suppose none of that is happening. Suppose instead that both the United States and Israel are going to prosper and grow, based in part on their economic relationship with India.”

The “Zionist Hindu Crusader” Alliance Marches On [American Interest]

Kirsch shares the prize with Marcela Valdes, a writer and editor who specializes in Latin American arts and culture. In her acceptance speech, she shared this insight on her craft: “I believe that all good criticism must begin with a serious attempt at understanding… We can all understand a book and loathe it. But without that first step, criticism slides into egoism—and that is the most vulgar corruption of our art.” We hope to hear a lot more from both talented winners.

Adam Kirsch And Marcela Valdes Win The Center For Fiction’s First Roger Shattuck Prizes For Criticism [booktrade]

• Netanyahu, for his part, has indicated that he is open to an interim agreement establishing a Palestinian state with temporarily assigned borders. [Haaretz]

• Club Med has canceled a planned stop in Lebanon on its Mediterranean cruise after the Simon Wiesenthal Center protested the fact that passengers with Israeli stamps in their passports would not be allowed to participate. [WJC]

• The president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain has protested the demolition of a historic Jewish community-owned former hospital in Tangiers, Morocco, despite the fact that the locals had consented to the razing. [JTA]

• The legendary Leonard Nimoy, 79, announced his retirement from show business. [Before It's News]

• The Christian Broadcasting Network features an interview with photojournalist David Rubinger, who has documented much of Israel’s history and describes the face of the first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion as “Like granite.” [CBN]

• Israel’s national museum unveiled a restored Renaissance-era Hebrew manuscript documenting Jewish law and adorned with gold and gems. [AP]

• Los Angeles’s South Robertson Neighborhood Council has elected Orthodox 15-year-old Rachel Lester, the youngest elected public representative in the city. [JTA]

• Virginia has recalled a license plate reading “14CV88,” allegedly a coded reference to Hitler. That may sound paranoid, but check out the photo of the truck that boasted it. [AP via VIN]

In his recent book Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, Jeffrey Herf claims that “The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would have been over long ago were it not for the uncompromising, religiously inspired hatred of the Jews that was articulated and given assistance by Nazi propagandists and continued after the war by Islamists of various sorts.” One example comes from a 1942 message broadcast to the Middle East in which Hitler announced: “Your only hope for rescue is the destruction of the Jews before they destroy you!” The transcript for this and 6,000 other broadcasts were held as classified by Washington until 1977, and two years ago Herf became the first scholar to examine them.

Roots of Islamic Fundamentalism Lie in Nazi Propaganda for Arab World, Book Claims [Telegraph]

Journalist Keren David wants to see synagogue membership fees replaced by a “communal income tax” to support social services, education, cemeteries, and other needs. She cites Amsterdam as an example, where, she says, Jews who opt in “are charged a proportion of their annual income to join—three per cent for the richest members, less for lower incomes.” Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, sees a sukkah/homeless shelter/soup kitchen in London’s Trafalgar Square: “Could we take a symbol of our own homelessness, and turn it into a shelter for those who need no symbolic reminders of what it means to have no home?” Keith Kahn-Harris, another research expert, envisions taking the trend toward multi-denominational Judaism a step further and incorporating members of other religions: “Jews, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus and others should collaborate to build a space that can serve for worship and community activities. This would allow different groups to pool resources, and improve the often strained relations between religions.” While this is a cool idea, and not entirely without precedent, his acknowledgment that “There would, of course, be difficulties in making this kind of community” may be understating the case.

But to us, the most striking idea comes from Neil Bradman of The Centre for Genetic Anthropology, and it’s more of a plea than a suggestion. Bradman laments the disparity between rabbinical dictates and the actual lives of Jews. We are all too familiar with the tendency of religiously inclined folks to say one thing and do another behind closed doors, and even growing up in a rabbinical family, we vividly remember “parking around the corner” at synagogue to avoid the appearance of breaking the Sabbath. “Let us strike a blow for honesty. If this is the way we wish to live, let us appoint rabbis who say it is acceptable to do so,” writes Bradman. “It is a game of ‘we pretend to respect you and you pretend to be respected’. It is unhealthy and it breeds hypocrisy.” Here, here.

We Need to Transform the Community. This is How. [JC]

We’re not sure whether the archive will include film, as the English version hasn’t yet launched (but should be coming soon). In the meantime, a glimpse into the delightfully “degenerate” world of filmmaker Hans Richter in his piece “One More Ghost Before Breakfast,” the original sound version of which was destroyed by the Nazis:

‘Degenerate Art’ Database Shows 21,000 Works Seized by Nazis [Bloomberg]

• Bernard Simon, who served as public relations director for B’nai B’rith International for 20 years and was held hostage when the organization was seized by radical Muslim group in 1977, died this week at 89; his son, David Simon, is the creator of HBO’s The Wire and Treme. [WPost]

• A rocket apparently aimed at Eilat in southern Israel exploded in Jordan; officials are examining possible origins. [Ynet]

• This may sound familiar, but Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has “officially rejected” Obama’s demand to suspend construction in east Jerusalem, just in time for the latest visit from U.S. envoy George Mitchell. [AP]

• Also in confusing news from L.A., the Jewish Journal interviews mega-pastor Joel Osteen (who doesn’t eat pork!). [JJ]

• The Jaffa Gate to Jerusalem’s Old City has been reopened after two months of renovation as part of a $4 billion project, which, shockingly, has caused tension between Israel and the Palestinians. [AP]

• Elswehere in that city, despite a Jewish tradition that it’s good luck to give money to the needy at the Western Wall, security forces have resorted to posting pictures of known panhandlers for exclusion from the area, where they have been gathering in increasing numbers. “[W]e already know them by heart. Some people even dream about them from time to time,” said one guard. [Ynet]

• Gay Israelis struggle with ways to start a family, with increasing numbers turning to U.S. women as surrogate mothers. [MinnPost]

Halkin describes his own decision to move to Israel from the U.S. in 1970 as “very much a Halevian one.” Although he wasn’t nearly as familiar with his future subject then, looking back he can’t help but relate: “For Halevi, living in the Land of Israel was a matter of inner necessity. It was something he had to do for his own integrity, and the failure to do it left him feeling incomplete and inconsistent. Judaism was for him above all a religion of action—and living in the Land of Israel was the ultimate act, the abstention from which undermined the meaning of all else.”

Interested in hearing more? Halkin’s book tour begins tomorrow. Check out the schedule here.

Jerusalem Bound [Alef]

Israel’s stated reason for the ban is that the iPad “does not conform to the European standards used in Israel.” A technology attorney put it well, calling the excuse “really annoying. It was a nonsense explanation.” Some have speculated that the real cause might be the protection of the monopoly of iDigital, “Apple’s sole official Israeli importer,” owned by President Shimon Peres’s son, or concern that the fancy computer might interfere with military frequencies.

One techie fears ominous implications: “Now it’s the iPad. What’s next?” The way we see it, Israel is just protecting its citizens from the early adopter curse, as defined by Rob Walker in the New York Times Magazine: “What these people are likely to get for their consumption daring is a chance to experience every single glitch or flaw that will be tweaked and patched in the months ahead. Also the guarantee that they’re paying full price.”

Techie Mystery: Why Did Israel Ban the iPad? [Time]

• How will Hungary’s government emerge from its current election, in which “campaigning has been overshadowed by barely restrained incitement against Gypsies and Jews”? [Haaretz]

• An Israeli Embassy opened in New Zealand on Monday. The previous one closed in 2002, and relations between the two nations have been strained since two alleged Mossad agents were caught with an illegal New Zealand passport in 2004. [JTA]

• 60 Holocaust survivors who attended the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen are now stuck in Germany because of the volcanic ash cloud. “We already started using black humor and telling jokes about Mengele coming to tell us who goes right and who goes left,” said one. [Ynet]

• Several Jewish groups have organized an anti-Obama protest to be held this Sunday at the Israeli consulate in New York City; one leader accuses the President of “scapegoating” Israel. [Arutz 7]

• In other “pop” news, Gershon Kingsley, 87-year-old composer of the electronic classic “Popcorn,” tells of escaping Germany before the Holocaust and his abiding love for his home country: “If you make a friend in Germany then you have them for the rest of your life.” [NYT]

• A member of J Street’s advisory board beseeches American Jews to stick with President Obama, a “visionary” who “is listening to the American-Jewish community.” [JTA]

• Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen believes that when it comes to Israel, “What’s missing on Obama’s part is not necessarily good intentions but the perception of them. He ought to do what Egyptian President Anwar Sadat did in 1977 to assure Israelis of his sincerity. Go to Jerusalem.” [WPost]

• And at an Independence Day event, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman also echoed the accord with Egypt and affirmed of the city on everyone’s lips that “Jerusalem is our undivided, eternal capital.” [Ynet]

While feminists who find cheerleading chauvinistic have allied themselves with the ultra-Orthodox community, which objects to immodestly dressed women performing in public, they may unwittingly be taking a stand against a field that allows female athletes to shine. “They do lots of acrobatics and create energy, not through feminine movements, but more through strength,” said the cheerleading coach of Hapoel Jerusalem. While she made this remark in an attempt to distinguish her squad of relatively fully clad women from others, we find this distinction between femininity and strength troubling. We’re also bummed out by the conclusion to AFP’s report: “And so it seems Jerusalem’s cheerleaders, unloved, unwanted and definitely not sexy, are here to stay.” These women are not exactly nuns. Watch the video and judge their appeal for yourself.

No Sexiness, We’re Holy City Cheerleaders [AFP]

NBC blogger Edward McClellan seems to support the possibility, asking readers, “Are you ready for a mayor who can speak in complete sentences, even if those sentences can’t always be aired on television?” McClellan points out that Richard M. Daley, 68, will have already beat his father’s record as longest-serving mayor of the city, and that he and Emanuel have a history of mutual support. “While Daley is a character out of Chicago’s past—an inarticulate Irishman from Bridgeport, raised in a political dynasty—Emanuel represents the modern Chicago that Daley built,” he writes. “Emanuel doesn’t eat Polish sausage at a White Sox game. He races triathlons and roots for the Cubs…The best thing about Emanuel is that inside that professional-looking package is a man as profane and greedy as any of Chicago’s old-time mayors.”

Emanuel once aspired to be Speaker of the House, and has been denying his interest in the mayoral position since January. He is committed to remain President Obama’s chief of staff until the end of the year, but could be running for office as soon as the next mayoral election in February, 2011. Your move, Daley!

Rahm Emanuel Wants to Run for Chicago Mayor [HuffPo]
Rahm Emanuel Is Daley 2.0 [NBC]

Whether or not this generalization holds any merit (for a more nuanced perspective on British Jews, check out today’s Tablet article by Margaret Drabble), it certainly seems to be the case, as Alderman states, that Jewish voters have been “pivotal” in the careers of many politicians in his nation’s history. He cites “the epic struggle of Lionel de Rothschild”; MP Samuel Montagu, “a Yiddish speaking banker”; Britain’s last Communist MP Phil Piratin; and Maurice Orbach, “a self-proclaimed Labour Zionist who had conspicuously failed to support Israel during the Suez crisis.” However, Alderman’s disdain for complexity is evident in his willingness to define the Jewish vote as akin to the Zionist vote in discussing the current run of MP Andrew Dismore as well as his smug conclusion that “Whatever the present Anglo-Jewish leadership may wish, the Jewish vote, in other words, is very much alive and well.” Although we’re inclined to agree on that point, we’re not sure why the author of The Communal Gadfly: Jews, British Jews and the Jewish State—who, one imagines, has had some further dealings with the BOD since 1970—seems stubbornly determined to make his case with few statistics and no sources.

The Jewish Vote Really Does Count [Guardian]

• Regardless, the New York Times reports that as Israel marks the holiday, “there is something about the mood this year that feels darker than usual.” [NYT]

• And meanwhile, Egypt is beseeching the UN to pressure Israel to join in “an internationally and effectively verifiable treaty for the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.” [Reuters]

• A Neo-Nazi rally in Los Angeles, counterprotestors threw “rocks, bottles, eggs and other items,” injuring two white supremacists; five assailants (of various races) were arrested. [L.A. Independent]

• Josh Nathan-Kazis responds to a letter written by 13 Jewish organizations trying to secure protection for American college students faced with anti-Semitism with an even bigger, older Jewish question: “Are Jews an ethnic or a religious group?” [Haaretz]

• The minutes from the first meeting of Israel’s provisional government on May 16, 1948, have just been made public. The gathered focused on what to call the officials now known as “ministers”; also in the running was “governor,” about which future Prime Minister Moshe Sharrett said: “This word may have the connotation of bragging, but it is a nice Hebrew word with a pleasant sound to it.” [Ynet]

• On the eve of its 62nd birthday, Israel’s population is 7,587,000—137,000 more than last year—made up of 75 percent Jews. [Ynet]

• The New York Times profiles Eddie Feibusch, a zipper merchant who “overcame not just the Nazis but also Velcro” (hyuk!) and once filled an order for Bernard Madoff in prison. [NYT]

To William Faulkner, responding to a defense of Ezra Pound: “What staggers me is that you and Mr. Steinbeck, who have dealt for so many years in words, should fail to understand the import of Ezra Pound’s plain and brutal statements about the ‘kikes’ leading the ‘goys’ to slaughter. Is this—from the ‘Pisan Cantos’—the stuff of poetry? It is a call to murder.”

To Philip Roth, in apology for some perceived slight from a People magazine interview: “If I had been interviewed by an angel for the Seraphim and Cherubim Weekly I’d have said, as I actually did say to the crooked little slut, that you were one of our very best and most interesting writers.”

And to Cynthia Ozick, a high compliment: “[A]lthough we have never discussed the Jewish question (or any other), and we would be bound to disagree (as Jewish discussants invariably do), it is certain that we would, at any rate, find each other Jewish enough.”

We also highly recommend the accompanying podcast, featuring Nextbook alum Blake Eskin interviewing Bellow’s wife Janis, who is responsible for having saved the letters—her husband, she says, would just as soon have “used them to make paper airplanes with.” Janis offers some insight into the mindset that led Saul to correspond extensively with those who found fault with his work: “He was never under the misapprehension that anything he wrote was finished.”

Among Writers (subscription only)
The Great Dictator [New Yorker]

A history lesson from the website American Thinker highlights a potential problem with Clinton’s message: “U .N. Security Council Resolution 242, adopted after the 1967 Six-Day War called on Israel to withdraw from some—but not all—captured territories in exchange for ‘secure and recognized’ borders for the Jewish state. Ever since, UN Res. 242 has been the international template for a permanent peace agreement.” So by using only the word “recognized” in her speech, was Clinton suggesting that Israel should be “settling” for less than secure borders, as suggested by American Thinker, Politico‘s Laura Rozen, and others? Maybe her word choice reflects a shift in perspective, or maybe she thought she had it covered when she said “Our nation will not waver in protecting Israel’s security.” As Clinton mentions, “In 1948 it took President Truman only 11 minutes to recognize your new nation.” If only we could parse her message as quickly.

Hillary Clinton Drops ‘Secure’ Borders For Israel From Independence Day Message To Jewish State [AT]

Maybe because Veingrad had long left any connection to his religion behind—as he says in one of his engagements, his bar mitzvah was his “exit out of Judaism”—he wasn’t creeped out when a stranger named Lou Weinstein called him out of the blue while he was playing for the Green Bay Packers in the 1980s. Rather, he went with the guy to High Holiday services and, says Kalish, Weinstein “instilled in him an obligation Jews have to reach out to their fellow Jews.” By the time he got transferred to the Dallas Cowboys in 1991, Veingrad went eagerly, hoping there he would “have a better chance at finding a Jewish wife.”

“If he wasn’t 6’5″ and dressed in a conservative business suit,” says Kalish of Veingrad, “he might be mistaken for a member of ZZ Top because his beard is that long.” More interesting to us is the fact that, as Kalish reports, Veingrad’s mother “altered his football resume” to give him a better time on the 50 yard dash and help him get onto the team at East Texas State. What Kalish calls “this ‘by any means necessary’ spirit,” reminds us of the good old days when the family would gather to “help” with someone’s school assignment or college application. We can only hope Veingrad inspires his fellow Jews to keep up the tradition.

Alan Veingrad [Only a Game]

• For former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, however, being stuck in Jerusalem is a disruption to his schedule of campaigning for his successor Gordon Brown. [AFP]

• Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak took the national holiday as an occasion for frankness, saying that Israelis “shouldn’t delude ourselves”: “The growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for the state of Israel…The world isn’t willing to accept—and we won’t change that in 2010—the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more.” [AP]

• On Saturday night, the first Jewish book fair in Italy opened in Ferrara, the city that will host the future Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah. [JTA]

• A nuclear conference in Iran concluded with a statement demanding that “the Zionist regime” join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. [AP]

• Mel Brooks will get his very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame later this month. [On the Red Carpet]

• Philip Barak, a 75-year-old race-car driver, said he didn’t start winning until he painted his car blue and white. [Jewish Chronicle]

• Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have proven that the “pleasantness” of odors is determined by molecular structure, which doesn’t help explain why some people salivate over a whiff of gefilte fish, while others run from the room. [WI]

• National Geographic recommends the Jewish Mob walking tour at NYC’s new Museum of the American Gangster. We suggest you check out Tablet’s history of the Israeli mafia. [NG]

According to the website New Europe, “In 73 AD, in crushing a Jewish revolt, the Roman army break into the mountaintop fortress of Masada, only to find its 960 defenders had chosen death over defeat,” launching Jews into a tradition of martyrdom that continues to this day.

In 1947, multimillionaire presidential adviser Bernard Baruch coined the term “Cold War” to describe the shenanigans then going on between the United States and the U.S.S.R., saying of the icy enemies: “Our unrest is the heart of their success.”

And in 1987, the Federal Communications Commission decided to “correct an altogether too narrow interpretation of decency,” cracking down primarily on shock jockey Howard Stern and making him the next in a timeless tradition of Jewish advocates for vulgarity.

16 April – Today in History [New Europe]
Bernard Baruch coins term ‘Cold War,’ April 16, 1947 [Politico]
FCC Launches Crackdown on Radio Show Obscenity [LAT]

Although the program “focuses on five Jewish values: truth (emet), not embarrassing (lo levayesh), courage of the heart (ometz lev), taking care of your body (shmirat haguf), and honoring one another (ohev zeh et zeh),” it uses an unconventional method to introduce the topic: clips from the “Sex Ed episode of South Park.” Well, we suppose if the kids’ parents are as clueless as Stan’s, they could certainly use some help. On the other hand, they might also get some decidedly unkosher ideas.

Texas: Believe It or Not, Program Instills Jewish Values in Sex Education [The Body]

If female nerds have had a tough time of it, what a double-whammy female Jewish nerds are faced with. Let’s face it, some of pop culture’s most affable male nerds have been Jews. And they’re real nerds. Think of Neal Schweiber from Freaks and Geeks and Paul Pfeiffer from The Wonder Years. On the other hand, Marcotte herself grants that “portrayals of female nerds are undercut by the smoking-hot-actress problem”; in the case of the Jewish nerdess, even the characters are considered attractive—as Jeremy Dauber pointed out in his essay on Glee for Tablet Magazine, Rachel is a “self-proclaimed hot Jew.” Where Marcotte asserts that “Rachel’s costuming has her stuck in elementary school, with knee socks and childish dresses,” we would argue that her wardrobe has her stuck in a decidedly more prurient place. And when it comes to identification with female characters, especially given the general body-image issues facing young women, hotness negates nerdiness. (Case in point: The absurd valorization of Natalie Portman, particularly in her role in the film Garden State, as the poster child of unabashed female Jewish nerdiness.) In fact, the only true example we can think of of a female Jewish nerd onscreen is the tragic Dawn Weiner in the bleak indie-cult classic Welcome to the Dollhouse. And something tells me she wouldn’t exactly feel empowered by the rise of the sexy, talented, torn-between-two-lovers Rachel Berry.

Rise of the Female Nerds [The American Prospect]
Related: The Outsiders [Tablet]

• Such pressure has led Binyamin Korn, a former executive director of the Zionist Organization of America, to form a group called Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin; Korn calls the former Alaska governor “the most articulate person in the public arena today in opposition to the Obama administration’s shift in policies against Israel.” [NY Sun]

• A potentially crucial Pan-Mediterranean strategy for water preservation was foiled by an argument between the Arab League and Israel over the use of the term “occupied territories.” [JPost]

• Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian gunman at the Gaza border. [Ynet]

• The South African Jewish Board of Deputies denounced the pressure from local groups that led judge Richard Goldstone to decide not to attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah in Johannesburg next month, saying it “deeply regrets that a religious milestone has been politicized.” [JTA]

• The New York Jewish Week finds harmony between Hillel Halkin and Yehuda Halevi, the subject of Halkin’s book for Nextbook Press: “Hebrew literature, Zionism, Israel, the diaspora and its discontents, Jewish thought, the very essence of Jewishness itself—they all come together, over a span of 1,000 years, in the poet/philosopher and in his biographer.” [NYJW]

• Israel’s Communication Ministry has banned the Apple iPad from entering the country, and it’s not just because the company opted against a catchier name—rather, the computer’s “broadcast WiFi power levels are not compatible with Israeli standards,” whatever that means. [Arutz Sheva]

• MyJewishLearning.com is holding a contest to name its new parenting site. The prize is $500! We would offer them some rejects from before Tablet’s launch, but we doubt they will want “Pickle,” “Brisket,” or “Matzah Ball.” (What do you want, we were hungry!) [MJL]

• Eerily banal mug shots of Nazis. [Daily Heller]

• Sign a petition urging the Rabbinical Council of America to put more stock in leadership roles for Orthodox women.

Two Torahs, Two Holocaust Stories and One Big Question [NYT]

While excommunication has traditionally been reserved for the intermarried offspring of the ultra-Orthodox or Baruch Spinoza, apparently in this touchy age of political celebrities, a controversial figure’s notoriety is enough to keep him from the kiddush table. In a practically WASP-ish sentiment, the head of the South African Beth Din (Jewish ritual court) calls the decision—ostensibly Goldstone’s own—”quite a sensible thing to avert all this unpleasantness.” In our experience, that’s just not how Jews roll.

Breaking News: Judge Richard Goldstone Banned From Attending His Grandson’s Bar Mitzvah [Writing Rights]

In response, the Israeli Tourism Ministry referred to a 1995 agreement with the Palestinian Authority placing “the upkeep of holy sites and the determination of tourist visiting-hours under Israeli jurisdiction.” But more to the point, the Tourism Minister as well as the Board of Deputies of British Jews called the prohibition “absurd.” We’re inclined to agree, if only because the Kotel is such a potent Jewish symbol that, advertised or not, it will likely remain a major draw for tourists to the nation, not to mention the fact that, as the Board’s chief exec pointed out, “thousands of tourists and pilgrims pass through Israel every year to areas where their very presence helps the Palestinian economy, and like the flawed argument for boycotts, this objection seems to be being advanced by those who care more about gestures and less about the livelihoods of ordinary people in the region.”

In other words, fighting symbols with symbols is, well, absurd. But it’s not likely to cease anytime soon. The Kotel’s inherent significance “is not as obvious to the world as it is to us,” said one peace advocate. “Only an agreed upon political solution regarding the future of the city, and for that matter the wider conflict, will prevent embarrassing developments like this.”

UK Bans Kotel from Israeli Tourism Ad [JPost]

• Palestinians are blaming Jews for vandalizing a mosque in the West Bank—a likely guess, as the graffiti found there includes the Hebrew prayer “Praise be onto him for not making me a gentile.” [Haaretz]

• Turkey’s complicated relationship with its neighbor may make it a “wild card” when it comes to sanctions against a nuclear Iran. [JTA]

• Meanwhile, Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, issued an open letter reminding President Obama to focus on the Iran threat and stop picking on Israel. [JPost]

Shidduch Vision is a video conferencing program in which “studios” are set up in the homes of pre-screened “hosts” so that Orthodox singles who have been fixed up by a shadchan (matchmaker) can have video “dates.” There are currently studios in Chicago, Baltimore, and Lakewood, New Jersey, with more on the way. At $18 per 50-minute session, it’s more kosher than Skype, which Shidduch Vision creator Jeff Cohn says puts daters in dangerous online territory, where “you can look at any www site that you want.” It’s more flattering, too (Cohn told Tablet Magazine that a cosmetician in Baltimore has offered to do girls’ pre-date makeup for free).

One problem? As commenter A. Nuran on the site Frum Satire points out: “One of the ways we unconsciously maximize our chance of having healthy children is to smell if they are good candidates for breeding with us. This isn’t much of a concern in the general population. In small ones which don’t have a lot of genetic diversity it has significant health implications. Video shidduch dating throws that all out the window.” For some, then, Shidduch Vision just doesn’t the smell test.

Related: Hard to Match [Tablet]

Sutton, who calls his distinct taste “old new,” wears custom suits lined with sumptuous fabric from vintage women’s dresses. But the centerpiece of his aesthetic is his enormous collection of botanical art. Selections from that collection are on display at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh through the end of June. The images of intricate single flowers, exquisitely detailed diagrams of seed pods, and carefully arranged branches hanging in each room of Sutton’s home serve as a reminder that the baroque handiwork surrounding them was inspired by the lush gaudiness of nature itself.

In keeping with his affinity for the natural world, Sutton, a 46-year-old former stockbroker, now invests his money in eco-friendly endeavors including wind farms and a Canadian geothermal drilling company. He was born and raised in Beirut (his family moved to the Lebanese capital from Syria), and he lived in Israel from 1984 to 1990. It was there that he purchased his first landscape—a work by Shmuel Cheruvi, who fulfilled Sutton’s desire to see someone “paint the Israeli landscape before it gets too built up.”

Sutton has long been committed to environmentalism—in the early 1990s, before a city-wide recycling program was instituted in New York, Sutton would “drive around and pick up my friends’ paper,” he said, and then drop it off at a local recycling facility. He’s also always been a collector, an attribute that’s in his blood. His grandfather collected silver, which he would sometimes trade with Russian refugees for money or bread while living in Istanbul during World War I. “I didn’t know how to have seder not on a massive silver display,” said Sutton, fussily straightening the light above a painting of the Israeli desert. (“We have an aggressive new housekeeper,” he explained.)

On a tour of his upstairs gallery (which abuts a mini-gym and a luxurious bathroom outfitted with a bidet), Sutton, who has little use for contemporary art, expounded on the relationship of art to its time—the 19th century was “fuzzy,” said Sutton, lending itself well to impressionism, while the 1950s presented the unanswerable question of “what is nuclear war?,” he continued, resulting in abstract work like that of Jackson Pollack. As for today, Sutton contends that we’ve returned to nature, and that “realism is back.” Sutton is evidently gleeful at this turn of the tide, which he also sees as a connection to Judaism: “One of the first things in the Bible is that you cannot tear down a fruit tree, even in the siege of a city,” he said. “God tells Adam: ‘Watch over the world.’”

The Michael Jackson Tapes by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach [A.V. Club]

Celebrating togetherness

“Our country is slowly moving in the right direction as far as connecting with one another and appreciated each others differences in background.”

—Letsberealistic commenting on “Happy Hanukkah from a Mormon,” USA Today

“Hanukkah is a wonderful holiday, full of joy and significance, and perfectly appropriate for Christians, including Mormons, to celebrate. Jesus himself made a point of going up to the Temple at Jerusalem for Hanukkah (John 10:22). Last year my wife and I celebrated Hanukkah for the first time with Jewish friends of ours, and we hope to make it a part of our holiday season every year. Happy Hanukkah, Sen. Hatch!”

—That Other Jerry commenting on “Orrin Hatch Does Hanukkah,” CNN

Angered

“One crazy-belief holder praising another crazy belief? Makes sense. Like attracts like. Maybe they all compare crazy underwear at parties.”

—edwcorey commenting on “Orrin Hatch’s Hanukkah Song: ‘Eight Days Of Hanukkah,’” Huffington Post

“Well with friends like Orrin Hatch, who needs enemies?! Let’s just put this out there: Orrin, we are not your f-ing placeholders of the Holy Land until Jesus rises again, ok? And we don’t want your help…. This makes me want to vomit.”

—Ellenjudith commenting on ”Mormon Utah Senator Orrin Hatch Wrote a Hanukkah Song,” New York

Disbelieving

“I thought I was reading The Onion here for a moment.”

—MajorKong commenting on “Orrin Hatch’s Hanukkah Song: ‘Eight Days Of Hanukkah,’” Huffington Post

“Did we go through a Worm Hole into an alternate Universe when I wasn’t watching?”

—Steven Bissell commenting on “A Mormon Senator Writes a Hanukkah Song” on Slate

Intriguingly rendered political commentary

“That’s not what I want from you, Orrin. I’d rather you stop legislating like someone who hates humans and freedom. Here’s my list of things I want from you. For the first day, stop obstructing health reform; for the second day, stop obstructing financial reform; for the third day, get your government out of my bedroom. Here’s a though… regulate businesses that do bad things to people…. For the fourth day, read the Fourth amendment and try to imagine respecting it even when the crime is something like copying a song instead of something “minor” like embezzlement or murder. For the fifth day, end the stupid prohibition on marijuana that has us locking up more of our population than any other nation and provides a goldmine for criminals. For the sixth day, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but professionals in the U.S. cannot afford homes anymore because there are more engineers than jobs. Time to throttle back H-1Bs. For the seventh day, stop trying to criminalize programming because someone might use the results for something illegal. What’s next, criminalizing selling of hammers because someone might hit someone with one? For the eighth day, if you’ve done the first seven, write a song. If not, please go away.”

—originalhack commenting on “Orrin Hatch’s Hanukkah Song: ‘Eight Days Of Hanukkah,’” Huffington Post

“To the tune of ‘Oklahoma!’

“Reproductive freedom

comes sweepin’ down the plain

Abortion’s not a crime like extortion

When the desperation comes right behind the pain.

Reproductive freedom,

every night my lover and I

Use every form of birth control it’s possible to try.

“We know our bodies belong to us

And we’re not tryin’ to cause a fuss

When we say:

our lives, our choices

We’re only sayin’

You’re doin’ fine,

reproductive freedom

(we hope.)”

—Lysergic Asset commenting on “Sen. Orrin Hatch Expresses Love of Jews Through Terrible Song,” Gawker

And theological nitpicking (from, of course, Tablet readers)

“Catchy pop tune, but the sentiment is not Jewish. That is, it talks about freedom of belief. The Hanukkah story isn’t about belief, but about practice. The Jews were not free to keep kosher, worship in the Temple according to God’s laws, etc. Putting ‘free to believe’ into the song renders it un-Jewish. The sad thing is that so few Jews today know the difference.”

—Bette commenting on “Watch the Video,” Tablet Magazine

“I am glad that he wears a mezuzah; I suppose that means he is a doorpost. But seriously folks, does it not border on blasphemy to claim that Judah Maccabee saved the Jews? The Hasmonean dynasty which arose from the Maccabean revolt became corrupt and gave rise to sectarian squabbles (the Qumrun sect, Jesus, etc), which paved the way for Roman hegemony.”

—Eric Weis commenting on “‘Eight Days of Hanukkah,’” Tablet Magazine

“Our very minor holiday has been blown way out of proportion in a feeble attempt to keep a light flickering amidst the overwhelming blaze of Christmas decorations. If I am going to condemn the manifold fakery of Christmas, consistency demands that I not play that game by exalting Hanukkah. A pox on both holidays.”

—Scott Abraham commenting on “‘Eight Days of Hanukkah,’” Tablet Magazine

First, Ford chides those who would encircle Chelsea like vultures: “Her spiritual decisions are not some ethno-religious trophy we should seek to display like a white rhino head next to Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Ivanka Trump.” And he cautions against being “overly impressed when the elite of the elite decide to marry the elite of our elite. The kid is the son of two former members of Congress—it’s not like she’s marrying Motel the tailor.” In other words, you’re getting drool on the poor woman; shut your mouths.

This frothy energy, he says, could be better spent examining the way we fetishize winning official conversions from the Gentile halves of interfaith couples:

It is great that Chelsea went with Marc to Yom Kippur services. But if that was the only Jewish connection Marc was going make this year, either with or without Chelsea, then it doesn’t really matter if she converts. However, if Chelsea never feels like taking a dip in the mikveh, but they light Shabbat candles, observe the yearly rhythms of the Jewish holidays, make themselves knowledgeable in Jewish history and practice, and decide to communicate these values and practices to any children they might have … then I think we as a people will still come out ahead.

Of course, one could argue that rooting for merely any sort of increased Jewishness in a super-prominent shiksa is a bit uncouth. But the issue is nonetheless important. As Ford points out, the prize is not so much Chelsea and her man, but rather “the thousands of Marc Mezvinskim who are going to marry non-Jews in the coming years, most of whom will not be presidential offspring.”

Why “Will Chelsea Convert?” Is the Wrong Question [Blog at 16th and Q]

Heschel would probably not approve of a recent trend in American Jewish life: niche siddurim, prayerbooks that reflect ideological differences on traditional ideas such as messianism (Lone Star Siddur ), homosexuality, and even the concept of serious prayer (Comic Book Siddur). But the most recent example may also be the most radical: a Wikipedia-like project called Open Siddur, which allows users to create their own individualized prayerbooks.

The aim of Open Siddur is to catalogue the vast breadth of Jewish liturgy and commentary, allowing all Jews access to all prayers, from the ancient to the new-age, in a sort of museum-cum-buffet. While still in the process of compiling a database of liturgy and in need of transcribers, translators, and programmers, Open Siddur’s creators hope it will allow individuals or groups to peruse a vast array of liturgical material culled from libraries, publishers, and individuals, and create prayerbooks that suit their specific needs and interests, which they can then print out as PDFs or have bound.

In a religion that places a high value on communal prayer, these developments are prompting a reevaluation of the very concept—if we all worship as Jews, but say different things, are we still praying “together”?

There are those who say no, or at least, not quite—from this perspective, a siddur that would be unrecognizable to any Jew is a siddur unworthy of its duties. But Aharon Varady, one of Open Siddur’s founders, says that the project promises to take what has become a modern mainstay—the synagogue prayerbook committee—and “expand it across the entire world.” Indeed, rather than looking at the recent influx of niche siddurim as emblematic of a “crisis of prayer,” Varady—along with co-founders Efraim Feinstein and Azriel Fasten—say they see a crisis only of logistics, and an opportunity to use the web to universalize the vast canon of Jewish liturgical ideas.

Not everyone is as hopeful. A number of critics argue that Open Siddur’s “choose your own adventure”-style of Judaism is in conflict with the communal essence of the tradition. “Even if you don’t feel bound by the law,” says Rabbi David Berger, head of the Jewish Studies department at Yeshiva University, “the siddur has emerged as a very important source of Jewish unity, in that its essentials are the same worldwide, so that I could go into a synagogue of Egyptian Jews and pray there in a way that is not entirely unfamiliar to me.”

But Feinstein argues that the idea of a “communal standard” of prayer is misleading. “The idea that there are really only three viable texts is relatively new,” he says. “I don’t see Open Siddur as anything divisive.” By “relatively new,” Feinstein means the era before the advent of Conservative and Reform movements in the 1800s. And while there may have been a wider range of accepted texts in this pre-modern past, the variety was mostly a result of organic changes that came about because of geographic and ethnic differences, while there remained remarkable consistency in the core of the prayer service. But with the advent of Web 2.0, our concepts of community and even the idea of “organic” change, are shifting enough that we may see an enormous degree of variety develop, in spirit much the same way that inconsistencies between, say, Mizrahi and Hasidic Jews did in the past.

Berger acknowledged that people feel disconnected from certain parts of the siddur but says he’s comfortable with the age-old practice of simply skipping over them. “There was a comment by [rabbi and scholar] Yitz Greenberg: ‘The difference between the Orthodox and Conservatives when it comes to some of morning prayers is that the Conservatives leave them out of the siddur and the Orthodox just don’t say them,’” Berger says.

But this is precisely the sort of thinking that frustrates Varady, who argues that it compromises one of the values of traditional Judaism, all the dearer in a rapidly changing landscape: kavanah, or intention, a deep spiritual connection to one’s prayer ritual. Varady argues that the siddur’s “symbology,” removed from spiritual and legal significance, has the tendency to alienate those who struggle with prayer—and there’s little comfort in knowing that you could experience that same alienation in any synagogue in the world.

But even some who are naturally sympathetic to Open Siddur’s mission, including Elie Kaunfer, executive director of Mechon Hadar, have reservations. “When people are not satisfied by traditional prayer service, is it the words or the performance of the prayers that’s tripping them up?” asks Kaunfer, who says that the independent minyanim he has seen “by and large use traditional prayers,” but experiment with the format of services. “What these guys are betting on is that the words are holding people back,” says Kaunfer.

In fact, though, it may be that words and performance are not as separate as one might think. While many of the new minyanim may pray with traditional texts, their radically altered service structures often involve unconventional inclusions, from moments of silence for the plight of Sri Lankan textile workers, to poems about atheism, to entreaties for the continuing safety of ultra-Orthodox settlers in Israel. The Open Siddur team welcomes the possibility that people will feel moved to upload their original work, or relevant passages from literature, along with little-known songs and melodies from disparate communities. More than being simply “post-denominational,” Open Siddur’s founders say it seeks to transcend numerous boundaries, from geographic to political to aesthetic, and promote “all the beautiful traditions that are inherent in the geographically disperse communities, and sometimes made very obscure by historical siddurim that many people don’t have access to.”

“Our own personal theology does not need to be reflected on each page of the prayer book,” argued Rabbi Leon A. Morris, executive director of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning in New York City, in a recent article tackling the subject. “Rather, our evolving theology can emerge from the encounter with the siddur and its words. ‘This I hope to be true but am skeptical.’ ‘This I have real problems with.’ ‘This I understand in my own way.’” But many Jews may be turning away from religion for the very reason that they don’t want to make room in their personal spiritual practice for ideas they find problematic, outdated, or incomprehensible.

And perhaps the best argument in favor of Open Siddur is the fact that, as Kaunfer points out, “You have people who weren’t connecting anyway. What American Jewish society needs is a dose of ‘let’s get invested in the fight.’ If you love the aleinu, then this site forces you to articulate what it is about the aleinu that’s important to you. That’s what people are thirsting for.”

Correction: This article originally stated that the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning was in Los Angeles. It has been changed to reflect the organization’s correct location, New York City.

Although a blogger on Jezebel notes, “I invite you to find a subset of the population that porn has not at one point or another fetishized,” that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t rejoice in our status. Ladies, let’s throw on those cheerleader uniforms, get us some “goyfriends,” and take over the world!

The Rise of the Hot Jewish Girl [Details]