• Eric Joffie, the top American Reform rabbi, called for an East Jerusalem settlement freeze. [JTA]

• Jorge Puello, the alleged human-trafficker who claims to head the Dominican Sephardic community (but probably doesn’t, and may not even be Jewish), was apprehended in the Dominican Republic. [Fox/Failed Messiah]

• Steve Levy is officially running in the Republican primary for governor of New York. [Ben Smith]

• The newly expanded Jewish Museum London sounds really cool! [NYT]

• The UJA-Federation of New York announced new nominees to its presidency and board chairmanship. [UJA-Federation of New York]

• Guys! From tonight to tomorrow night is the National Day of Unplugging! (And not everyone’s on-board.) Or, as observant Jews call it, “Saturday.” [NYT]

Tear the phone out of the wall!

Erdogan late last year.

CREDIT: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The Armenian genocide slaughter whatever-it-was (it was a genocide) is a touchy subject for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as it is for many Turkish people. His button was pushed most recently by the U.S. House of Representatives’s passage of a resolution referring to the Armenian catastrophe of the early part of the 20th century as, for the first time, “genocide.” Most recently, Erdogan vowed that if such resolutions continued, he would deport 100,000 Armenians from his country. Specifically, these are those Armenians—the majority of Armenian residents of Turkey—who are not citizens, but rather visiting workers. (A status that, ironically enough, describes many Turkish people living in Germany and elsewhere.)

What dog do Jews specifically have in this fight? Leaving aside Erdogan’s penchant for making extremely questionable (to say the least) statements about Jews and particularly Israel, the histories of the Armenian genocide and the Jewish genocide—the Holocaust—are intertwined. Most famously, Hitler told his troops as they prepared to invade Poland, “Go, go kill without mercy. Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?”

In other words, if it is to be fully honored, the injunction to “Never Forget” must not apply to the Holocaust, or to the Jews, alone.

PM Erdogan’s Armenian Hostages [Hurriyet]

One of us got an email from the group JONAH International directing us to their special Passover message. “With the holiday of Passover upon us and its important message of freedom,” it reads,

we need help to free others from their own personal “mitzrayim” (slavery). Those coming to us for assistance desire to be free of sexual confusion. The only people in a position to help us are those who know and understand the important work we do. And that’s you!! …
JONAH’s mission of helping men, women and their families break free from the chains of sexual confusion, including unwanted homosexuality, links directly into our past liberation from Egypt. The upcoming Passover celebration reminds us of the aspirations and struggles of those who yearn for physical, psychological and spiritual freedom.

The group also touts the success of its recent Noble Man Weekend.

This a blog: snark is like air to us. I don’t think I can be cute about this, though. I was raised to think of the Exodus as the defining story of liberation, and specifically Jewish liberation. Maybe my favorite part of the Seder is when we wish for the liberation of those Jews around the world still in need of freedom; my earliest Seder memories consist of my parents explaining to me about the condition of Soviet Jewry.

JONAH International is co-opting the joyful message of Passover for its own hateful purposes. It ought to be ashamed of itself.

Take Part In This Season Freedom! [Jonah International]

Pearl (center) during the game yesterday.

CREDIT: Jim Rogash/Getty Images

In a thrilling contest that went down to the last minute late last night, Bruce Pearl’s Tennessee Volunteers—Tablet Magazine’s official NCAA basketball team—held off the San Diego State Aztecs 62-59. Tomorrow, they face 14-seed Ohio, who pulled off a tremendous upset of the Georgetown Hoyas, in Providence, Rhode Island. Once again, they’re the favored team. Go Vols!

Kaplan’s Korner list the Jewish players in the tournament. One is obvious: Tennessee’s Steve Pearl, who shares both his last name and half his DNA with his coach. And it’s not shocking that the Cornell Big Red—RIGHT NOW playing Temple in a first-round game—have a Jew on their team (as does Temple!). But Duke’s Jon Scheyer—the runner-up for ACC Player of the Year—is of the Tribe? Maybe we should all root for Duke?

No, no we shouldn’t.

Jewps ‘Madness’ [Kaplan’s Korner]
Earlier: Go Vols!

President Obama yesterday.

CREDIT: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Everyone is reporting it: now that President Obama has further postponed his trip to Asia, he will be in Washington, D.C., next week when Prime Minister Netanyahu is visiting for the AIPAC Conference. They will sit down together next Tuesday.

I’d like to pause and note that I called this on Twitter several days ago. So if you want tomorrow’s news yesterday the next time, do follow us.

Today on Tablet Magazine, Senior Writer Allison Hoffman profiles (must-read!) Alan Solow, the “King of the Jews” selected to lobby the administration on the basis of his close ties to Obama. Staff Writer Marissa Brostoff considers Milton Steinberg, whose As A Driven Leaf, set among the Talmudic sages, has become something of a cult artifact, and whose The Prophet’s Wife is being released posthumously this weekend. Etgar Keret reflects on love and admiration for his older brother. In his weekly haftorah column, Liel Leibovitz examines the phenomenon of the ba’al teshuva—the unobservant Jew who turns Orthodox. The Scroll undergoes multiple spiritual transformations each day.

Stiller earlier this month.

CREDIT: Angela Weiss/Getty Images

Greenberg, the new film from writer/director Noah Baumbach and starring Ben Stiller, comes out today. Considering it last week, Tablet Magazine’s Marissa Brostoff reported that while “there is little overt Jewishness” (except for the title!), Stiller’s protagonist fits squarely in the venerable tradition of the Jewish shlemiel. (Among other things, he writes letters to random famous people, a la Saul Bellow’s Herzog.)

Jewish or no, reviews pretty overwhelmingly suggest that it’s a recommended weekend activity.

• A.O. Scott of The New York Times calls it “the funniest and saddest movie Mr. Baumbach has made so far, and also the riskiest.”

• In the line that most makes me want to see it, the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman raves, “This is Stiller’s juiciest role since he cast himself as Zoolander, and here, he’s even more comically self-absorbed.”

• The Los Angeles Times’s Betsy Sharkey is one of the few unenthusiastic voices: “It’s sometimes difficult to figure out whether it’s [Stiller’s character] Roger or Baumbach who has lost his way.”

• “Greenberg pulls you in,” says Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers. “Even when you laugh, like in the climactic party scene, it hurts.”

• David Denby, of The New Yorker, concludes, “Honorably, the movie is not the usual rigid-arc fable of redemption. It insists that screwed-up people have a right to their oddities, but it also holds out the hope that they will learn a little bit about life and move on.”

Related: Look Out! [Tablet Magazine]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu called Secretary of State Clinton to propose a series of “mutual confidence building” (“building”!) steps that Israel and the Palestinians could stage to “improve the atmosphere” and pave the way to talks. [NYT]

• U.S. envoy George Mitchell will head to the region after all, this Sunday. His trip last Tuesday had been cancelled as the United States awaited a satisfactory Israeli reply to its concerns. [LAT]

• The Mideast Quartet—made up of the U.S., the E.U., the U.N., and Russia—condemned settlements and, for the first time, endorsed a two-year timetable for a Palestinian state. [WSJ]

• The Israeli Air Force bombed six Gaza targets to retaliate for a rocket yesterday that killed a Thai worker in Israel. [WSJ]

• The Anti-Defamation League publicly criticized Gen. David Petraeus—a hugely popular figure—for linking (to whatever extent he did) the Palestinian conflict and the safety of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Haaretz]

• A new poll finds that the majority of Israelis actually think President Obama has been fair with Israel in the past week. [Haaretz/Forward]

• President Obama further postponed a trip to Asia, meaning he’ll be in town early next week, when Prime Minister Netanyahu is as well. Will they break bread? [Laura Rozen]

• Visiting Moscow, Secretary of State Clinton asked Russia to delay finishing a nuclear plant it’s building for Iran. [Haaretz]

• Jeffrey Goldberg points out that if Kadima leader Tzipi Livni had agreed to join Netanyahu’s coalition, this would be a much more moderate government and last week’s mess probably wouldn’t have happened. [Jeffrey Goldberg]

• One writer points out that Netanyahu has no back-channel point man for dealing with the American administration—which may sound ordinary, but is in fact unprecedented for an Israeli prime minister. [Haaretz]

• An interview with Tablet Magazine contributing editor Judith Shulevitz on her new book, The Sabbath World. [The Jewish Star]

• “I just flew back from the Middle East, and boy are my arms tired!” is not the joke Vice President Biden made last night. Instead he said, “I just got back from five days in the Middle East. I love to travel, but it’s great to be back to a place where a boom in housing construction is actually a good thing.” [Haaretz]

Come one, come all—or at least as many as can fit into the Laurie Beechman Theatre—next Thursday, March 25th, for the debut performance of Everything’s Coming Up Moses. The (mostly) original musical, presented by Tablet Magazine, comes from the truly unique brain of contributing editor Rachel Shukert. There’s no possible way I could improve upon the description the Beechman gives:

Lift the staff! Part the sea! We got nothing to do but be free! Everything’s Coming Up Moses is a musical retelling of the Exodus as seen through the larger-than-life journey of Moses, the original pushy stage mother. Through an irresistible blend of Broadway razzle-dazzle, old-fashioned show biz moxie and soon-to-be musical classics like Some Hebrews, Mose’s Turn and of course, the title number, Moses tirelessly shepherds the Children of Israel to the Promised Land—whether they like it or not.

With Broadway stars Seth Rudetsky as Moses, Matt Cavenaugh as Pharaoh, and special guest (and contributing editor) David Rakoff as God!

It’s going down at the Beechman, on 42nd St. and 9th Avenue in Manhattan. There is a $15 cover, plus a $15 food/beverage minimum (what, you should starve?). For reservations, call 212.695.6909.