• The United States formally levied the new sanctions on Iran’s central bank. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

• The U.S. has closed its embassy in Damascus and evacuated its personnel, for safety reasons. [WP]

• The BDS Conference, which was over the weekend at the University of Pennsylvania, was criticized for not allowing a Philadelphia Jewish Exponent reporter in. [JTA]

• Prompted by the Eddie Long fiasco, Peter Manseau considers the dubious history of “goyish Jewish mishagas.” [Religion Dispatches]

• Joe Eszterhas discusses writing the screenplay for Mel Gibson’s Judah Maccabee movie. [NYT Magazine]

Cat on the pitch!

This was a game that came down to two big late-fourth quarter plays: Brady’s incompletion to Wes Welker, his (and the League’s) top receiver, which would have extended the Pats’ drive and possibly allowed them, then holding a 17-15 lead, to put the game away; and, on the first play of the Giants’ subsequent drive, Eli Manning’s 38-yard connection with Mario Manningham up the left sideline. The comparisons of this play to the David Tyree helmet catch of four years ago were facile, even obscene: that earlier play was a bizarre, mystical instance of a young quarterback escaping a sure sack and aimlessly chucking the ball down the field, and a no-name receiver guarded by a future Hall of Fame safety miraculously pulling it down; last night’s play was an instance of a proven, clutch, veteran, elite quarterback picking apart a mediocre defense and a favorable alignment with a millimeter-perfect pass. (Here is an excellent dissection of the two plays.)

Analyst Michael Lombardi noted this morning that much credit for the Giants’ two Super Bowls should go to Ernie Accorsi, New York’s general manager for more than a decade, who retired before the season of their last Super Bowl but a few years before had insisted on foregoing Ben Roethlisberger and Philip Rivers for the services of Peyton’s scrawny little brother Eli (he also drafted defensive lineman Justin Tuck, arguably the Giants’ other most valuable player, and hired coach Tom Coughlin). Accorsi is Jewish.

Nextbook Inc. executive director Morton Landowne, a Giants season ticket-holder for 50 years, was privileged enough to be at the game, and emailed last night requesting a tutorial on Coach Bill Belichick’s decision to allow the Giants to score late in the game last night (and running back Ahmad Bradshaw’s seeming reluctance to oblige). Essentially: the Giants had a field position where, if they wanted it, a go-ahead field goal was virtually guaranteed, and they could have run more time off the clock to do it; Belichick was in a sense choosing to need a touchdown to win, with a minute left, over needing a field goal to win, with perhaps fewer than 20 seconds left. This was statistically the correct call. But the Pats were unable to score that touchdown.

And how about that halftime show! (If you didn’t enjoy it, you had set your bar too high.) Yesterday also saw the announcement that Madonna will launch her world tour on May 31 at Ramat Gan Stadium, outside Tel Aviv.

Earlier: Go, Pats

* Green Bay Packers (4), Dallas Cowboys (5), San Francisco 49ers (5), Pittsburgh Steelers (6).

Green Day

10. Principal Skinner. Fought bravely for the Great Satan in Vietnam.

9. Lunchlady Doris. Married a guy named Freedman. Look it up

8. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. Scurrilous polytheist!

7. Whelan Smithers. “As you can see, the real deal with Waylon Smithers is that he’s Mr. Burns’ assistant. He’s in his early 40s, is unmarried, and currently resides in Springfield.”

6. Kent Brockman. “Brockman,” eh?

5. Artie Ziff. Jewish millionaire voiced by Jon Lovitz.

4. Bart. For much the same reason the Czech Communists feared the Plastic People of the Universe: Bart is rock and roll, and rock and roll is subversive.

3. Krusty the Clown. Son of Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky. And they dare deny Jews control the entertainment industry!

2. Lisa. Lisa wouldn’t hurt a fly. Instead, she is an extremely bright, curious, inquisitive young woman who is never afraid to say exactly what’s on her mind. It’s difficult to think what could be more threatening to the mullahs. Except …

1. Maggie. Silent. Ever-watching. Omnipresent. Handy with a pistol. Could Maggie be Mossad? Iran can’t take that chance.

Aw, Man! Bart Simpson Joins Barbie in Iran Ban [Reuters]

Cheap Eats

John Banta and Daniel O’Donnell [NYT]

School Ties

The Fatah-Hamas deal, struck by Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Meshaal with the backing of emerging regional power broker Qatar, is as vague: the only step forward appears to be clear agreement that Palestinian Authority President Abbas, of Fatah, will be president. Yet there is some reason to believe that this deal may stick, at least for a little longer than the last one: both sides need it a little bit more now. The P.A. is losing support, while Hamas is newly active in the West Bank; yet Hamas, which just had to abandon its longtime host in Damascus, is going broke. Just generally, the Palestinian cause needs a shot in the arm right now: as Prime Minister Fayyad pointed out last week, the Arab Spring has sapped what has frequently been the Arab world’s cause célèbre of its usual prestige and glamour. (Fayyad’s future will be a major roadblock as the unity government goes forward: Abbas will want him to stay on as head of government, in part because he is a crucial guarantor of Western support; but the Western-educated, technocratic, relatively moderate Fayyad is anathema to Hamas.)

There is the inconvenient but unavoidable fact that Hamas continues to insist on the right to armed struggle and to all of the land between the river and the sea. The peace process, however, has long been premised on the notion that each side is going to give up something. If Hamas will never give that demand up (and it may well not), then neither peace nor the unity government will work. As long as there is even a nominal peace process, however, we are operating under the assumption that Hamas is capable of adopting, as a negotiating precondition, the assumption that Israel has the right to exist. (Again, not saying it will do this, just that if it doesn’t all this talk is moot.) Moreover, Fatah-Hamas unity was going to have to happen to make the peace process work: Hamas’ popularity means it was going to need to be part of whichever group speaks on behalf of the Palestinian people. The best we can do is hope that the prerogatives of power and legitimacy and its being cut off from Damascus and Tehran will exert a genuinely moderating influence on the group. So while Prime Minister Netanyahu is right to repeat the line he used several months ago, during Reconciliation 1.0—that Abbas must choose between peace with Israel or peace with Hamas—we observers can at least entertain the prospect of future Hamas reform.

And it’s telling that, while saying the above publicly (Netanyahu also said the time was “not good” for progress), the Israeli government—which surely knew this deal was coming—has also made some interesting offers privately. It suggested that the current West Bank barrier serve as the future borders of a Palestinian state—which would make for a smaller Palestine than the Palestinians would desire, but that’s why they call it negotiating. And, intriguingly, Israel stepped back from demands for permanent control of the Jordan Valley, insisting only on a “long-term” presence. (Zvika Krieger noticed this change.)

If I were a betting man—and given that I thought the Patriots were going to win last night, thank God I’m not—I’d bet against this working out: Hamas still believes what it believes, which is that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist, and it is not so hard-pressed to change tack. But Reconciliation 2.0 seems a little less ridiculous than Reconciliation 1.0, suggesting it’s conceivable that 4.0 or 5.0, a couple years down the road, will be promising.

Palestinian Factions Reach Unity Deal [NYT]
Support for Palestinian Authority Erodes as Prices and Taxes Rise [NYT]
Fayyad Says Palestinians ‘Marginalized’ By Arab Spring [Bloomberg]
Israel Proposes West Bank Barrier as Border [AP/ABC News]
Earlier: Is Meshaal Stepping Down to Step Up?
On Reconciliation, ‘The Devil Is in the Details’

Timeless

The vetoes brought the 15-member Security Council’s votes to 13 for, two against. Russia’s foreign minister insisted his country was motivated not to protect Assad but to uphold the essence of the Security Council, which “by definition does not engage in domestic affairs of member states.” Thomas Friedman reports that Russia comes by that motive honestly, but out of selfishness: “There is a strong domestic dimension to Russian policy toward Syria,” he quotes a Russian expert. “If we allow the U.N. and the U.S. to put pressure on a regime—that is somewhat like ours—to cede power to the opposition, what kind of precedent could that create?”

The administration was firm in its condemnation of the regime—“Thirty years after his father massacred tens of thousands of innocent Syrian men, women, and children in Hama, Bashar al-Assad has demonstrated a similar disdain for human life and dignity,” said Obama—and of Russia and China: “A couple of members of this council remain steadfast in their willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant,” noted U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. But that is, for now, all talk. What’s next?

Not direct outside intervention. This is not another Libya. More likely, the situation will turn into something more closely resembling civil war, with several outside groups—including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who would love to pull Syria, currently ruled by Shiite Alawaites, into the Sunni camp, and also Turkey, which fears for regional stability and would like to project power more—funding and arming the opposition. Crucially, the United States will be implicitly approving of this. After all, from a geopolitical perspective this concerns Iran and its ability to go through Damascus to threaten U.S. allies Israel, Egypt, and Turkey; the tinderbox known as Lebanon; and even the precarious, U.S.-backed government of Iraq. The United States won’t be arming the Syrian rebels, much less providing them air cover, but it will be looking the other way or winking while other parties do so.

It would be something if the Syria situation brought countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey closer to the United States and even Israel. As I noted last week, realpolitik considerations led Israel to be among the first to openly hope for Assad’s downfall; the Jewish state has as much if not more interest in seeing Damascus pried away from Tehran’s grip as the other countries. Israeli Vice President Moshe Ya’alon observed that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to “developments … some of which could be positive as far as Israel is concerned, like a fissure in the Tehran-Damascus-Beirut-Hamas axis of evil.” (Indeed, accounts are that Hamas has already pulled away.) But don’t bet on the Syrian campfire leading to a Kumbaya moment.

And most of all, don’t expect Kumbaya in Syria. Assad is, as they say, not going down without a fight. On the contrary: As dissidence spreads even to regime strongholds like Aleppo and Damascus, and as the opposition begins to get better arms and more experience, signs are that the regime’s crackdown will likewise grow in intensity. It has Russia’s and China’s protection—why shouldn’t it feel like it can do what it wants?

At Least 200 Reported Killed in Syrian City of Homs [WP]
Russia, China Veto U.N. Action on Syria … and the Blame Game Begins [FP Turtle Bay]
Russia: Sort of, but Not Really [NYT]
Solution on Syria Remains Elusive for White House [NYT]
Syrian Unrest After a Failure of Diplomacy [NYT]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu will address the AIPAC conference next month in Washington, D.C. It is not yet known whether he’ll meet with President Obama, though chances are good. [JTA]

• While we don’t know whether Israel will attack Iran, it seems clear that all the chatter is not merely idle (and not merely intended to bluff). It is on the table in even the most private discussions. [NYT]

• New York police have upped security at prominent Jewish sites in Manhattan, such as synagogues and the Israeli consulate, for fears of Iran’s retaliating for scientist assassinations and other covert actions. [CBS NY/Vos Iz Neias?]

• The special “shomer Shabbos” Nevada caucus turned controversial when participants had to sign something about their religious observance and when Ron Paul supporters flooded it and won. (Mitt Romney won most of the state easily.) [NYT]

• The Egyptian gas pipeline. It was bombed. For the 12th time in the past year. [Arutz Sheva]

Congratulations to the New York Giants on their fourth Super Bowl win—all of which have come in the past 25 years. They beat the Patriots 21-17. An even bigger congratulations to those who bet the prop that the first score of the game would be a Giants safety at 60:1 odds or better.

Whether worn by a model or an industry insider or a chic spectator watching the fall collections come down the runway, Ivy League—also known as “trad,” a precursor to preppy style—is definitely back in vogue. Just look at the lettermen jackets going for a thousand dollars in vintage stores, or the models in J. Crew ads sporting penny loafers without socks. The only thing hidden in this resurgence of a quintessentially American style is a sense of its Jewish roots.

The Jewish influence on menswear in general is well-known, from wholesalers peddling the fabrics that make ties, shirts, and slacks, to the tailors and the retailers and the designers themselves—Marc Jacobs, Isaac Mizrahi, and of course, Ralph Lauren (né Lifshitz) continue to define modern fashion. But Jewish designers’ role in creating the Ivy League look has a distinct context, because these designers created the signature style for a world that wouldn’t admit them.

David Weinreich started the tradition in 1896 by opening Weinreich’s, a shop in New Haven, Ct., that sold custom suits. Two years later, Arthur M. Rosenberg opened Rosenberg’s, where “Rosie” would reign as the original Jewish King of the Custom Made Suits in New Haven well into the Roaring Twenties. In 1902, Jacobi Press opened his own store on Yale University’s campus, where he perfected his three-button sack suit jacket and inspired a dozen imitators that catered to the Ivy League’s finest.

Jacobi Press had emigrated from Latvia in 1896 with every intention of continuing his rabbinical studies, but, like many Jews to arrive in America at the time, he put his religious training aside, to work for his uncle’s custom tailoring business in Middletown, Ct. Press’ grandson, Richard Press, carries on his grandfather’s legacy as the preeminent historian of the classic look: He is a contributor at the blog Ivy Style, where he dishes the old gossip and tidbits that would have been otherwise lost to history. Press—who flew the coop for Dartmouth, only to return to New Haven to work for the family company from 1959 to 1991—says his grandfather never forgot his Jewish roots, becoming the first Russian Jew to become a member of the local German Reform temple in 1902, and keeping a collection of Judaica and Talmudic studies in his personal library.

By the 1920s, J. Press had become the choice tailor for everyone from Duke Ellington to Cary Grant. Even though F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have shown up to military training wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, Press says the man responsible for one of America’s greatest novels was, in fact, a customer of his grandfather in the 1920s, and in a 1936 letter to his then-15-year-old daughter, Scotty, Fitzgerald cautioned the teenager to “beware of the wolves in their J. Pressed tweed.”

By the 1950s, the look was inescapable. After Rosenberg retired, two former J. Press employees, Sam Kroop and Mack Dermer, acquired his brand in 1958, shortly after “The Ivy Look” began landing full-page spreads in major magazines, starting with Life magazine’s “The Ivy League Heads Across The U.S.” in 1954.

The Jewish pedigree of this quintessentially American style is undeniable. If you surveyed the Princeton campus on a spring day in 1962 and saw a student from a well-to-do Southern family strolling in a pair of madras shorts with a blue oxford shirt, there was a good chance that shirt was the product of Marty and Elliot Gant: former J. Press stock boys, and the sons of a Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant. The real Ivy League alumni Mad Men who ran the advertising world of New York City wore suits with the Chipp logo from Sidney Winston (another former J. Press employee) on the inside of the jacket. President Kennedy supposedly made the switch to exclusively wearing suits made by New Haven custom tailor Fenn-Feinstein because he admired the ones worn by then Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Abraham Ribicoff, who would become Connecticut’s first and only Jewish governor.

Yet while Rosenberg, Press, and their ilk were free to measure out fabric, sew together, and create the suits for America’s movers and shakers, Jews were routinely denied admission to the Ivy League schools (especially Yale, the epicenter of the Ivy look) and country clubs frequented by their customers. Schools imposed quotas and restrictions to keep Jewish enrollment low. Richard Press recalls stories about Vic Frank, a Jewish football player in the late 1940s for Yale whom the athletic director tried to kick off the team, and another about a “society fellow” choosing to live in a hotel rather than share his dorm room with a Jewish student.

The quotas are gone, but the influence of those Jewish ateliers still endures today, thanks to modern designers who have once again turned the Ivy League look into a billion-dollar idea.

Ralph Lifshitz, a boy from the Bronx, started out as a salesman for Brooks Brothers (the one brand commonly associated with the Ivy look not founded or owned by Jews) and ended up climbing to the top of the fashion world with Polo Ralph Lauren by perfecting the ultimate symbol of modern trad style: his iconic polo shirt. If you walk into a J. Press store today, you will see that not much has changed since the brand’s inception; there are Yale pennants, pictures of bulldogs (Yale’s mascot), leather couches, and of course, suits. Gant has teamed up with popular young designer Michael Bastain, boosting its brand credibility with the young and chic.

But the influence that those Jewish-owned and -operated companies have is most evident when you look at a generation of Jewish undergraduates decked out in wares by Ivy imitators Steven Alan and Band of Outsiders. They don’t worry about being part of a Jewish quota, or whether or not their roommates will vacate because of their heritage; their biggest worry now is whether or not they’ll ever get back that blazer they lent out to a fraternity brother and if he’d even bother to dry clean it first.

Try a new fruit, late bloomers. One step at a time.

Test your nature knowledge. Then do it without Googling.

Have a Tu B’shevat Seder. An ancient Kabbalistic custom called for a Seder similar to the Passover meal to celebrate Tu B’Shevat, incorporating figs, dates, pomegranates, olives, grapes, wheat, and barley—or some combination of all of them (think pilaf!)—and red and white wine. This tradition has been embraced by the Jewish student group Hillel, which offers free, downloadable materials to help you with your own DIY Tu B’Shevat Seder.

Resources for sustainable Seders abound, with most suggesting Seder hosts offer local foods and organic wine and, of course, recycle afterward. You should probably also go green—as in, paperless—with the invites.

Take a walk, and really pay attention to your surroundings. It might help to be listening to this Vox Tablet podcast about Jewish environmental activism.

Fig out. Take advantage of the nutritional benefits of the fig, Tu B’shevat’s mascot and a high-fiber source of detoxifying vitamins. Keep it healthy with these flaxseed, fig, and walnut crackers or indulge with this pecan macaroon and fig tart. Fig juice—blended, not juiced—can be tricky to make, since it’s not a particularly juicy fruit. Premade is always an option; this variety touts potassium, calcium, and iron.

Or sit back and make Ruth Reichl happy by ordering a jar of Fig and Olive Spread from online gourmanderie Gilt Taste. (These vegan, kosher, gluten-free coconut macaroons won’t arrive until after the holiday, but they’re probably still worth it.)

Make like a tree and compost. It’s not hard! Even urban dwellers can do it, with these new freezer bins. And you never know what might happen in your own backyard.

Go classic. Plant a tree in someone’s honor or in memory of a loved one, or gift a tree to be planted. Trees are, after all, the gift that keeps on giving.

Walk through Tal Schochat’s paradisiacal forest. The Israeli photographer shoots single trees against black backdrops, to stunning effect. Or what The New Yorker called “a set designer’s version of Eden—extravagantly bountiful but oddly unnatural.”

Read The Pagan Rabbi, Cynthia Ozick’s 1971 book of short stories, including the title story, in which a rabbi gets a little too intimate with nature.

See the film Tree of Life. Or don’t. For what it’s worth, Brad Pitt probably loves nature.

Happy Birthday, trees!

Among all the arts, Western classical music is the only true innovation of the modern West: We can read Aeschylus or Pindar just as we do Shakespeare or Keats, but the ancient world produced nothing that resembles Josquin des Prez, let alone Mozart. Alone among the arts, classical music is an artifact of the modern Christian West, and it is hard to extract it from its Christian context.

On a Good Friday some 30 years ago, in an undistinguished church in a mid-sized German city, I heard the most remarkable musical performance of my life: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with a combined amateur-professional orchestra, the church’s amateur choir, and hired vocal soloists. The Passion sets parts of the Gospel interspersed with devotional poems. It is ill-suited for the concert stage, for when performed as intended in church, on the saddest day of the Christian calendar, congregation and performers join the liturgical drama. (Strictly speaking, as an observant Jew, I shouldn’t have been in a church at all, although some Orthodox rabbis permit Jews to enter evangelical churches that contain no religious iconography, such as the one where this recital was taking place.)

Music helps the Christian to mourn the death of Jesus of Nazareth, and Bach’s great work makes this intensely personal: A palpable hush came over players and congregation when the bass soloist sang his last aria, “Make yourself pure, my heart—I want to bury Jesus myself.” As Franz Rosenzweig wrote in The Star of Redemption of Christian music, “He who joins in singing a chorale, or who listens to the mass, the Christmas oratorio, the passion … wants to make his soul stand with both feet in time, in the most real time of all, in the time of the one day of the world of which all individual days of the world are but a part. Music is supposed to escort him there.” But during the nine days before the saddest event in the Jewish calendar, the 9th of Av, rabbinic law forbids Jews from hearing any music at all; the most lugubrious hazzan in the world is of no help.

***

This past July, I dined in a kosher restaurant in Vienna with a young priest from an Austrian Stift who is finishing his studies in philosophy in Rome. As we finished the wine, Father A. challenged me: “What is your definition of beauty? My opinion of you will depend a great deal on your answer.” That is an important issue for Catholics, who believe that an earthly institution, namely the Church, holds the keys that unlock what is locked in heaven. If that is possible, God must make himself knowable in some way to humans, for example, by taking human form. One of these ways is beauty. Adapting Plato, Catholic theology equates the good and the beautiful by making them attributes of God.

“Beauty has two components,” I offered. “One is what we might call harmony: It unites all the elements of the object of perception into a whole in which the parts have a necessary relation to the whole.” That was right out of Plato, and Father A. flashed an arachnoid smile as I feinted toward the web.

“The other element is surprise,” I continued.

“What do you mean?” asked Father A., himself surprised.

“There are any number of things that meet the criterion of harmony—for example, geometrical constructions, crystal patterns, and so forth—but we don’ t necessarily consider them beautiful,” I went on. “They may be as dull as they are harmonious. The experience of beauty requires the sense of discovery of a harmony we hitherto did not perceive and whose existence we did not suspect.”

“That’s interesting,” Father A. allowed. “I hadn’t thought about it quite that way.”

“Would you agree,” I added, “that the concept of surprise is bound inextricably to the concept of expectation? I can only be surprised if something happens that differs from what I anticipated.”

“I suppose that is true,” said Father A.

“Let’s take the example of Mozart. Close to the end of the Andante of the 21st piano concerto, Mozart brings back the opening F-major theme not in its original key, but rather in the remote key of A-flat major. Would that qualify as a beautiful surprise?”

“By all means,” said Father A. He admires Mozart.

“And the surprise depends on our expectations about musical form, in this case, the practice of recapitulating a theme in its original key?”

“I suppose so.”

“And someone who had never heard Western classical music might have no experience of musical form, and no such expectation?”

No answer this time. Father A. guessed where I was going with this.

“And someone who was so used to post-Romantic chromaticism, where tonality changes all the time, might not find it surprising to hear a recapitulation in a remote key?”

“Perhaps not,” he said.

“If the perception of beauty requires surprise, and surprise depends on expectation, have we not reached the conclusion that beauty is not absolute, but depends in some way on the expectations of the beholder?”

“I will have to give that some thought.”

“Let us consider another side of the problem,” I continued. “Is the beautiful good, and vice versa?”

“That is what I believe.”

“Can beauty be placed in the service of falsehood and immorality?”

“Not the truly beautiful,” he said.

“What about Mozart’s opera Così Fan Tutte, in which music as beautiful as any Mozart ever wrote promotes outright lies.” The opera involves two young men who set out to test the faithfulness of their fiancées, by seducing the other’s intended. There is not a single sympathetic character in the work, whose music is on par with the Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni. That may explain why it is less popular: The men are cynical and the women slutty.

“If art employs beauty to promote falsehood, then I cannot consider it truly beautiful,” Father A. decided. “If you exclude Così, your idea of beauty won’t convince a single classical musician,” I said, and we moved on to dessert. The Greek idea of beauty, naturalized into Catholic theology by St. Thomas Aquinas, is entirely alien to Mozart’s quirky humor. One might even speak of Mozart’s Jewish sense of humor, for his librettist in Così Fan Tutte was the converted Jew Lorenzo Da Ponte, and his ironic view of Christian society belongs to a peculiar mode of Jewish irony.

***

Judaism does not accept the Greek concept of beauty carried over into Christianity. But how does Judaism—Torah and the rabbinic tradition—understand beauty? Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, director of the Strauss Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, observes that not once does the Tanakh call God “beautiful” (yafeh). God is called adir (splendid), and his voice is called hadar (majestic). As Rav Aharon Lichtenstein wrote:

The verse says (Tehillim 29:4), “Kol Hashem ba-ko’ach; kol Hashem be-hadar—The voice of God is power; the voice of God is splendor.” We perceive God in one sense as boundless, unbridled power. In another sense, we perceive Him in terms of values, of truth and goodness. … Hadar is presumably some kind of objective beauty, a moral beauty, a beauty of truth.

But that is moral beauty, not visual or sonorous beauty as in the Christian definition.

Continue reading: Eternity

It seems now the Israelis are signaling they may act and conduct a strike inside Iran at their nuclear sites, sooner than latter. Do they have your full support for that raid?
I don’t think that Israel has made a decision on what they need to do. I think they, like us, believe that Iran has to stand down on its nuclear weapons program. And we have mobilized the international community in a way that is unprecedented, and they are feeling the pinch, they are feeling the pressure. But they have not taken the step that they need to diplomatically, which is to say, ‘We will pursue peaceful nuclear power, we will not pursue a nuclear weapon.’ Until they do, I think Israel, rightly, is going to be very concerned and we are as well.

Has Israel promised you that they will give you advanced warning to any such attack? Should they give you that warning?
You know, I won’t go into the details of our conversations. I will say we have closer military and intelligence consultation between our two countries than we ever have. And my number one priority continues to be the security of the United States, but also the security of Israel, and we are going to make sure that we work in lockstep as we proceed to try to solve this, hopefully diplomatically.

When you talk about the security of the United States, Iran has had a long time to contemplate how they might respond to such an attack. Do you fear they will wage attacks within the United States—on American soil?
We don’t see any evidence that they have those intentions or capabilities right now. And again: our goal would be to resolve this issue diplomatically—that would be preferable. We’re not going to take options off the table, though. Obviously, any kind of additional military activity inside the Gulf is disruptive and has a big effect on us: it could have a big effect on oil prices; we’ve still got troops in Afghanistan, which borders Iran; and so our prefered solution here is diplomatic—we’re going to keep pushing on that front. But we’re not going to take any options off the table, and I’ve been very clear that we’re going to do every thing we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and creating an arms race, a nuclear arms race, in a volatile region.

Then they started talking about the economy.

• Roseanne Barr announced her candidacy for the Green Party ticket. The Green Party cautioned that she’d still have to be nominated at the July convention like anyone else. [Page Six]

• Ayatollah Khamanei, Iran’s supreme leader, made an unusually blunt threat of retaliation on Israel and the United States in the event of an attack. [NYT]

• Tel Aviv: Silicon Valley of Europe. [WSJ]

• And Canada wants to make itself the Israel of North America, high tech-wise. [Reuters]

• Tablet Magazine contributor Tevi Troy’s epic paean to Ed Koch. [City Journal]

• And catch Koch talking about Israel’s future (along with senior writer Liel Leibovitz and other luminaries) on Super Bowl Sunday in New York. [92Y Tribeca]

• Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center gets an Oscar vote. No, but you should totally continue to get angry when the wrong movies win Oscars. [NYT]

• Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is mulling a run for Congress in his Republican New Jersey district. Says Shmarya Rosenberg: “Now you can hate him for another reason.” [Failed Messiah]

• Benny Morris looks at Greece and Cyprus and why they are newly friendly to Israel. [The National Interest]

• Living up to the name, Diasporist columnist Irin Carmon snapped this shot in Guatemala City’s Plaza Israel. [@irincarmon]

• Marina Weisband: she’s hot, she’s German, she’s Jewish. [Heeb]

• Three Jewish Super Bowl snack recipes. [Kveller]

• Jews of Super Bowls past. [Joint Media Service/Jewish Journal]

Where were you four years ago?

Ah, dear commenter. You know us not.

Our new feature, by contributing editor and genius lyricist Rachel Shukert, has only been up a few hours, and it’s already doing its job of enlightening, challengingm and infuriating people. Called The Tattler, Rachel’s column will be a funny and sassy yet incisive take on what people are talking about—or should be talking about—each week, from big ideas and prominent culture stories to a single photograph, a cameo in one episode of your favorite television show, or, yes, a stray New Yorker cartoon. Think of it as the pleasure of cultured conversation without anxiety, guilt, or even the need to leave home.

• Shmuel Rosner notes that Jews aren’t trending toward the Republicans so much as away from the Democrats (and toward independent status). He also notes that in the context of this Pew poll, the 2011 results actually see an uptick in Jewish identification with the Democrats over the 2010 results. It’s still down since President Obama’s election, though.

• Jonathan Tobin has no proof for his contention that Israel is the prime reason that, since Obama’s election, Jews have disproportionately turned away from the Democratic Party … but I largely buy it. What else would it be? (How many lefty Jews disgusted by Obama’s various compromises, for example, would have identified as Democrats in the first place? Also, c’mon?) I also agree that this is important because Pennsylvania and Florida are going to be in play.

• Tobin also writes, “Liberal Jews remain far more afraid of conservative Christians than Hamas terrorists.” I suppose this is technically, semantically true, but I think there is probably a fairer way of putting it, hmm?

• If we saw Jews turn away from a sitting Democratic president, the operative word might not be “Democratic” but “sitting”: as Dan Klein reported in Tablet Magazine, since Nixon, and excepting George W. Bush, Jews have disproportionately turned against every elected president running for re-election.

• The 2011 poll had a Jewish sample size of 330 and a margin of error of 6.5 percent.

Jews Shift Toward GOP, Survey Claims [Forward]
Related: Do We Now Have Proof Jews Are Trending Republican? [Jewish Journal Rosner's Domain]
Obama’s Israel Problem Cause of Democrat Losses Among Jews [Commentary Contentions]
Sitting Duck [Tablet Magazine]

Soviet Unions

This week’s winner is Eli Spielman, who added the following insight to Matthew Hiltzik’s (Alec Baldwin-approved!) comparison of Jewishness to New York Jets fandom the following insight: “Being a Jets fan is like a microcosm of Jewish history: Decade upon decade of martyrdom punctuated only by a brilliantly game-planned upset in the late 1960s.”

Come to think of it, an eyepatch would have totally worked on Joe Namath.

Spielman gets a copy of Shimon Peres’ biography of David Ben-Gurion, the Weeb Ewbank (or perhaps Sonny Werblin) of the Six Day War.

Nyets
Ben-Gurion [Nextbook Press]

Planned Parenthood probably shouldn’t declare complete victory yet: it will be interesting to see how well new grant applications are fulfilled (and you can rest assured we will have an answer, as they will be watched closely). In another sense, though, Planned Parenthood had this major organization affirm its legitimacy; got people talking again about the vast panoply of services it provides for women’s health; and raised $650,000 (!!) in the 24 hours following Komen’s first announcement. And good on Hadassah for joining the chorus of Komen supporters expressing their concern and outrage—outrage that, given what a P.R. fiasco this has been for the breast cancer group, probably won’t immediately subside.

UPDATE: Hadassah just sent out a statement. It reads, in part:

Hadassah is proud to continue our longstanding role as an advocate for a woman’s right to choose and a strong supporter in the advancement of women’s health. There is no time to waste. Komen should never again allow this type of controversy to erode the integrity of its well-known and much-admired name in fundraising for breast cancer treatment research and awareness.

Hadassah applauds the millions of women who have united in a shared message to ensure that together, women will continue to receive much needed services and that our focus on women’s health will be continuously strengthened, never derailed again.

Earlier: How Will Pro-Choice Hadassah React to Komen?
Komen Pulls Planned Parenthood Funding

Helpless

When? Tomorrow.

Who dropped out? Since Florida, nobody, although you could argue that a part of Mitt Romney dropped out by dying inside when Donald Trump endorsed him yesterday at—you knew this was coming—Trump Las Vegas Hotel on the Strip.

The remaining candidates: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum.

Our sentimental favorite: Fred Karger. Also, Red 19.

Percentage of state population that is Jewish: 2.8.

Where that ranks: Ninth out of 50.

Jewish issues? Not really, except that this is Gingrich backer Sheldon Adelson’s home state, and there has been much talk that a phone call he placed was responsible for the holding of a special caucus, which theoretically could be gamed, after sundown for observant Jews. He denies it; the special caucus is being held at the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Educational Campus, but they’re this close to naming the town after him anyway.

Is this a further sign of the bad influence of money in politics, like his Super PAC donations? Sort of. Many have judged the special caucus a malign thing, as though religiously observant Jews should be declared ineligible, making the caucuses even more farcical than normal. That’s absurd; the special caucus is a good thing. But Adelson’s being able to engineer it himself (if he did) is bad. As the poet said: no one man should have all that power.

Percentage of state population that is Mormon: 6.47.

Where that ranks: Fourth (admit it, you thought it’d be second).

You see where I’m going with this? Yes, Romney’s going to win.

By how much? Probably 20 points at least. But since it’s caucuses, other contestants could pick up delegates by winning an individual caucus, which is why Rep. Ron Paul did not largely ignore Nevada: his goal is to accumulate as many delegates as possible heading into the Republican National Convention.

Number of delegates to the Republican National Convention: 28.

Which casinos are you going to hit? The Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand.

These are Terry Benedict’s places! Yes they are.

Think he’ll mind? More than somewhat.

What’s next? Maine’s caucuses will be held from tomorrow through a whole week. Caucuses!

Didn’t Perot do well in Maine? I bet Paul’s expected to do pretty well there. Yes and yes.

Closing thought:

There was this kid I grew up with; he was younger than me. Sorta looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the street. Things were good, we made the most of it. During Prohibition, we ran molasses into Canada, made a fortune, your father too. As much as anyone, I loved him and trusted him. Later on he had an idea to build a city out of a desert stop-over for GIs on the way to the West Coast. That kid’s name was Moe Greene, and the city he invented was Las Vegas. This was a great man, a man of vision and guts. And there isn’t even a plaque or a signpost or a statue of him in that town! Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn’t angry; I knew Moe, I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself: this is the business we’ve chosen! I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!

Brazilian-Jewish writer Clarice Lispector’s family immigrated from a Ukrainian shtetl to Recife, Brazil, when she was two months old, and she soon swapped out Yiddish, the language her family spoke at home, for Portuguese. In 1944, at the age of 24, she published her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart, which told the story of a middle-class woman’s sheltered upbringing and loveless marriage. The stunning, enigmatic writer, who rarely addressed Jewishness in her work (though she was fixated with Brazilianness), died of cancer in 1977, and is buried in the Jewish Cemetary of Caju, in Rio. Benjamin Moser, who wrote a biography on Lispector, spoke with Vox Tablet in 2009.

As Anderson Tepper wrote longingly in 2008,

And so I carried on, and was bewitched by the rest of her fiction as well—eerie, existential vignettes, savant-like parables and prophesies of modern angst seared by the Brazilian sun. Her work called to mind a tropical, female Kafka with sensory overload.

Read Dizzy With Life, by Anderson Tepper

• The U.N. Security Council is getting closer to a resolution that would outline a plan for Syrian regime change, but any authorization of force, either now or in the future, seems unlikely. [FP Turtle Bay]

• Jackson Diehl outlines the vast repercussions the Syrian crisis is having across the region. [WP]

• Iran may have freed as many as five al-Qaida operatives from jails recently. [WSJ]

• Rabbi Menachem Youlus, the Maryland-based Torah-saving “Jewish Indiana Jones,” admitted in court that he is a fraud. [NYT]

• How wrong and stupid and offensive is this video of prominent pastor Eddie Long? A fellow Christian clergywoman helpfully counts the ways. [Huff Post]

To find the place, we had to turn on a few side streets, go down a discreet staircase next to an apartment complex, and press a button beside an unmarked black door. Three short rings later, we were greeted and quickly ushered inside by a round Russian man with a shiny bald head.

“It’s exclusive,” Dasha whispered to me as we traipsed down the stairs. “They don’t want to bother with just anybody.”

Dasha, Anastasia, and Nastia, native Russians in their twenties, made the orders: pomegranate hookah, tea with milk, tea with lemon, chocolate-covered almonds, and fruit beer. Dasha, an icy blonde, and I sat next to each other at the low table while the other two women sat across from us smoking gold-tapered cigarettes.

We began with talk about the stinginess of Dasha’s recent ex. “A Russian woman should only have to pay for her candy and stockings,” Anastasia, draped in fur, informed me. As the newcomer, having just moved here from New York on a fellowship, I had Russian romance lessons to learn. We continued with necessary nastiness about his new girlfriend. “In this day and age, if a Russian woman isn’t beautiful by 30, she’s just stupid,” Nastia, very tall with black hair, said, making the case that plastic surgery solves everything. Dasha had new prospects: an Italian diplomat and a Finnish entrepreneur. “We look for foreigners,” Dasha explained.

Soon the conversation turned to me. I mentioned a few disastrous dates I’d been on since arriving and then made the typical four-single-women-at-a-lounge conclusion: “Men are impossible.” Anastasia and Nastia murmured their agreement, blowing smoke rings.

“Except Jewish men,” Dasha interrupted. The three of us looked at her. She crossed and uncrossed her legs and signaled to the waitress for another drink. “The best men are Jewish.”

I turned to Dasha. “You’re Jewish?” I asked. She smiled, fiddling with the diamond cross around her neck. “Of course I am Jew,” she said. “Jewish men are stylish and important men. And they are the most generous. You must date Jewish men.” Anastasia and Nastia nodded seriously, as though Dasha were imparting the secret to successful dating.

I leaned back and took a deep drag off the pomegranate hookah. I was in St. Petersburg—a city that 100 years ago had forbidden Jews’ residency. The only exceptions had been Jews who openly converted to the Russian Orthodox Church, or Jewish merchants with connections. In rare cases, Jews who had served in the czar’s army for 25 years were permitted to live in the city.

When Daniel Chwolson, a great early 20th-century intellectual in St. Petersburg, was once asked why he had converted to Russian Orthodoxy from Judaism, he answered: “Out of conviction.”

“Out of what conviction?” he was asked. His answer: “Out of the conviction that it is better to be a professor in St. Petersburg then a melamed [Hebrew schoolteacher] in Shklop.”

Now, in a trendy lounge, a young Jewish Russian woman was flaunting her Jewishness and her trysts with Jewish men like it was a fabulous accessory, akin to her black fur coat.

***

When thousands of Russian immigrants began flooding Israel in the 1990s, the joke was that for the first time in history, people were trying to alter their official papers to say that they were Jewish. Since my move to St. Petersburg this fall, I’ve been taken aback by a similar trend: Everyone I meet is excited to have their metaphorical Jewish papers. Jewishness has a new social currency—especially when it comes to dating.

Before my move, my sole association with Russian Jewry, like so many American Ashkenazi Jews, was that of my lineage. Unless I was discussing the refusenik movement of the 1970s or taking the occasional subway ride to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, Russian Jewry was the family photographs on my living-room walls.

In one, my great-grandfather, a Hasidic rabbi from a shtetl outside of Minsk, Belarus, looks out sternly from an oil portrait above our piano. In another, my grandfather and great-aunt, from the same shtetl, gaze with somber eyes in faded black and white. On a table in our foyer is another black-and-white photograph of another great-aunt, a classic babushka.

Russian society was deeply anti-Semitic when those photographs were taken. Pogroms were government issued. There was little to eat. I am reminded of a Yiddish shtetl song my mother, a Yiddish translator by profession, once taught me: Zuntik bulbes, montik bulbes, 
Dinstik uhn mitvoch bulbes, 
Donershtik uhn fraytik bulbes. 
Ober shabbes in a noveneh a bulbeh kuggele 
Zuntik vayter bulbes. (Translation: Sunday potatoes, Monday potatoes, Wednesday potatoes, Thursday and Friday potatoes. But on the Sabbath for a change a potato pudding.) Between this and the lyrics to Fiddler on the Roof’s “Anatevka”—overworked, underpaid—my stereotype of Russian Jewry was complete.

As I prepared to move, I thought about how my Belarusian grandfather had come to New York City 80 years ago in order to learn English and make a life for himself and his family. And as I began to study rudimentary Russian, I couldn’t shake the lingering and lovely thought that this was my grandfather’s childhood alphabet. Learning simple greetings and the words for “black tea” connected me to him and his lost world, both of which I longed to understand.

The next time I met Dasha, over wine in a fashionable, factory-style café above an art gallery called the Loft, I pried her about the comments she made at the club. She waved to various artists drinking at different tables and then turned back to me. “It’s simple. If you don’t like a man, I tell you it’s because he is not Jew,” she said in her accented English.

Continue reading: The rabbi’s daughter dances

There’s a cartoon in this week’s New Yorker. A couple—shlumpy, but clearly urban—are seated at a coffee table, reading a newspaper that, judging from its sheer girth, can only be the one of record. The woman looks toward her bald, bespectacled companion with what seems to be a triumphant gasp. “They found the nebbish gene,” reads the caption. Cue the mildly amused titters.

My question to this: Are you sure it’s just the one gene? Surely only some intricate combinations of chromosomal abnormality could result in the entire Nebbish spectrum of the past 40 years: the Hipster Nebbish (crumpled tweed jackets and phobic hand-wringing of early Woody Allen); the Slacker Nebbish (one of Judd Apatow’s sheepish heroes, with bong in one hand and an Xbox controller in the other); the Toxic Nebbish (see George Costanza, the most irately Jewish son of Tuscany ever committed to film). There’s the Nebbish Who Never Gets Laid, the Nebbish Who Screws Up Getting Laid, the Nebbish Who Is Inexplicably Laid by Gorgeous and Understanding Shiksa, also known as Wish Fulfillment Nebbish. (Mattel, if you’re listening, I am available to design action figures.)

Still, all varietals of Nebbish have a few noxious traits in common: fear, helplessness, and overwhelming Jewishness. The Nebbish is always Jewish, even if he’s not actually a Jew, to the point where he’s become synonymous with Jewish manhood itself, embedded, if you will, in his DNA. Which is weird, because in the first half of the 20th century, Jewish men were depicted in popular culture as plucky young strivers eager to leave behind the stultifying Old World for the sexy and welcoming embrace of the New (a la Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer) or scrappy immigrant street kids and shtarkers getting ahead by any means necessary, an image helped along by the real-life exploits of Jewish (or Jew-ish) boxers like Max Baer and Jake LaMotta, and less flatteringly, the rise of Jewish gangsters like Dutch Schultz and Louis Buchalter. As the poverty—and subsequent criminality—of the urban ghetto began to fade, a new archetype of Jewish masculinity began its ascendance. Call the representatives of this last the Kirk Douglas Jews: tough, smart, deeply moral (in Kirk’s iconoclastic way), fiercely (if not unquestioningly) patriotic, equally at home in the cockpit of a fighter plane as in the arms of a pert-nosed blonde or four. This was the Jew as hard-nosed, Hemingway-esque Man of Action of the sort recorded reverently by Norman Mailer and incisively by Saul Bellow, lampooned by Joseph Heller, libidinized—and later, eulogized—by Phillip Roth; men whose response to anti-Semites was moral outrage and/or dignified pummeling, as opposed to imagining themselves cowering across the dinner table.

Then the baby boomers grew up, and suddenly, men whose fathers had been D-Day bombardiers couldn’t figure out how to change the bulbs in the newly installed track lighting. Anti-Semitism was replaced by fretting about anti-Semitism. Anxiety about sex became the new sex (particularly when the ugly specter of AIDS provided the irresistible chance for white heterosexual males to conflate sex and hypochondria, the gift that keeps on giving); the Men of Action became Men of Feelings. (And so many feelings! And are they the right feelings? What does my therapist have to say about my feelings? Just a minute, I need to call him about how my mother is responsible for my feelings. Go ahead, start eating without me.) In the space of two generations, the emblematic symbol of Jewish manhood went from Kirk Douglas to Albert Brooks to that guy from the Apatow movies whose name I can’t remember who was in that one movie where he started dating the lesbian nanny from Sex and the City 2 and all his equally nebbishy and unattractive friends were like, “Dude, she’s so out of your league!” Wait, that’s what it was called: She’s Out of Your League.

I know this is just a New Yorker cartoon, but on behalf of Jewish womanhood, I feel it is incumbent on me to ask: How the hell did this happen? And why?

It’s almost too obvious to mention, but to make sense of the shift in Jewish masculine identity from its prewar to postwar incarnations, we’ve got to look at what happened in the interim. I’ll give you a hint: It’s depressing, it’s German, and it rhymes with “the Schmolocaust.” For the prewar generation of American Jewish men (my grandfather among them), World War II was a transformational event, a chance to unimpeachably cement their American identities by fighting for their country. Their children and grandchildren, however—the future Nebbish Generations—would view the war overwhelmingly through the lens of the Holocaust and its primacy in Jewish education, which in its single-minded focus on Auschwitz as the definitive image of the Jewish wartime experience has virtually drowned any narrative of Jewish heroism in the vast sea of Jewish helplessness. Who wants to hear Grandpa’s stories about Hawaii when you can terrify yourself with eyewitness accounts of Josef Mengele?

It’s precisely this helplessness that I’ve always thought to be the most lasting terror of the Holocaust—and the cause for much of the at times hysterical derangement that surrounds its discussion—on the Jewish psyche. We’re taught to take pride in having stubbornly hung on so long when so many would have destroyed us. How does one make sense of a situation that was virtually impossible to survive?

This existential question is difficult enough for a woman to reckon with. For a man, traditionally entrusted with the physical protection of his family, it is unthinkable. Hence the Nebbish: a person who reclaims, even celebrates, this helplessness and trivializes it beyond the possibility of terror. “How in the hell,” the Nebbish seems to ask, “am I supposed to be part of an international Bolshevist-banking conspiracy to take over the world when I can’t even get my mother off my back about who I’m dating?”

Which brings us to the mother. And the dating.

It’s hardly a secret that Jewish culture has a nasty chauvinistic streak. The Jewish mother and the JAP, two of the greatest figures of fun in secular American-Jewish humor, are also indefensibly misogynistic, often with an ugly double-edge: A Jewish mother joke, for example, ridicules her self-serving martyrdom while not-so-subtly implying that a woman should properly be expected to sacrifice everything for her children, seeking no personal fulfillment outside of them; jokes about the JAP being repelled by sex quietly reinforce the idea that it would be unseemly for her to feel otherwise. When the advent of feminism and the sexual revolution—led, it should be noted, most vociferously by Jewish women—turned this conventional wisdom on its head, the nascent Nebbish Generation fought back with a technique they learned at their long-suffering mothers’ knee: deadly emotional blackmail: “So, you’re coming for my balls? I’ll just cut them off myself and save you the trouble!”

It was a brilliant move. Nothing deflates a righteous warrior like the sudden lack of a worthy adversary. Rather than engage women as equals, the Nebbish takes himself out the equation entirely. He exaggerates his bewilderment at the world to such an extent as to force the woman back into the role of de facto caretaker, while neatly absolving himself of the less savory elements of traditional masculinity, such as “making a living” or “going to war.” Women, then, are left holding the bag, buying the toilet paper, and finding themselves oddly nostalgic for the days of violent assholes like Norman Mailer, who kept his sexism right out where you could see it, on the end of his knife. The war of the sexes will be won with weapons of passive-aggression. Only the Jews could have been so smart. Besides, we’re the only ones who read New Yorker cartoons.

• In a remarkable report, Robert Worth finds an official Iranian attempt to co-opt the Arab Spring failing in light of the leadership’s continued support for the Assad regime. [NYT]

• At Herzliya, former Congressman and Obama ally Robert Wexler questioned whether Israel should be building on West Bank land such that the amount of land swapped in a final deal is diminished. He is doing the Lord’s work, pun intended. [JPost]

• A French Jewish woman is embroiled in a custody battle with a Saudi prince. Wait, what? [JTA]

• Coffee with Shalom Auslander. [Capital]

• The Anti-Defamation League lambasted a local Italian politician for calling Roberto Benigni a “communist billionaire Jew,” which we back the group on. It added, “He is a man to be celebrated, not insulted.”… Yeah? [Ynet]

“I am what they call a Jew,” says The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz, “which means that I am neurotic and have a habit of falling into tailspins of anxiety.” It’s not just Jewish bloggers? Also, remember how this is the best plotline in television history?

Hadassah has long been a social and political advocate for a woman’s right to choose and a strong supporter in the advancement of women’s health, particularly regarding those issues involving breast health and the treatment of and search for a cure for breast cancer.

As a two-time winner in the battle against breast cancer myself, as a supporter of both Komen and Planned Parenthood, and as an advocate for reproductive freedom, I am disappointed that the controversy surrounding Komen’s decision to discontinue its modest funding of Planned Parenthood has become such a distraction that it could endanger our collective dedication to the important issues surrounding women’s health. There is no time to waste in our commitment to the fundamental issues of women’s health, breast cancer and a woman’s right to choose.

A spokesperson referred me to this as Hadassah’s statement on the matter. Left unsaid: Whom does Natan blame for “the controversy”—Komen, for pulling its funding, or Planned Parenthood, for providing abortions? One would assume the former, given Hadassah’s strong support for a “woman’s right to choose.” Which begs the follow-up: Will Hadassah, as a major ally and funder, request that Komen restore its Planned Parenthood funding, on threat of losing some of Hadassah’s? That would seem like the logical next step.

Earlier: Komen Pulls Planned Parenthood Funding
Hadassah: Start Annual Breast Exams at 40

Nyets

It’s the Pats, folks. Sorry, Giants fans (and respect to the New Jersey Jewish News for recognizing what’s cover-worthy; and respect to Matthew Hiltzik, who makes a persuasive case for the Jewishness of the Pats’ archrival, the New York Jets). But we are swayed by three things.

• As I documented around this time last year, the American Football League was in many ways a fundamentally Jewish institution; the American Football Conference, which the Pats are representing, is the AFL’s descendant; and the Patriots were one of the eight original AFL franchises.

• Bob Kraft’s late wife, Myra, remembered on The Scroll by contributing editor Joan Nathan when she died this summer, has been the team’s guardian angel throughout the season. They have worn the patch with her initials, “MHK,” every game; they have brought a painting of her to Indianapolis.

• Your faithful blogger is a Washington Redskins fan and is not going to endorse the freakin’ Giants to win one more Super Bowl than their NFC East rivals (both have won three), especially since it was all of six weeks ago that he (your faithful blogger) saw Giants fans boo their own team as the Skins crushed them. Grrrrr.

Either way, enjoy Sunday night! The Super Bowl only comes once a year.

Related: The Other League [Tablet Magazine]
Remembering the Patriots’ First Lady [ESPN Boston]
Related: Nyets [Tablet Magazine]
Earlier: Check the Scoreboard
Remembering Myra Kraft

Herzliya Diary

Robert Hegyes, a Sweathead on ‘Kotter,’ Dies at 60 [NYT]

Relatedly, Phil saw his shadow today. So, six more weeks of winter.

From the Times:

Dr. Niles Goldstein … said he finds Jewish resonance in the fact that Mr. Murray’s character is rewarded by being returned to earth to perform more mitzvahs—good deeds—rather than gaining a place in heaven, which is the Christian reward, or achieving nirvana, the Buddhist reward. …

”The movie tells us, as Judaism does, that the work doesn’t end until the world has been perfected,” Rabbi Goldstein said.

But wait. Michael Bronski, a film critic for The Forward who teaches a course in Jewish film history at Dartmouth, said he sees strong elements of not only Jewish but also Christian theology. ”The groundhog is clearly the resurrected Christ, the ever hopeful renewal of life at springtime, at a time of pagan-Christian holidays,” he said, adding: ”And when I say that the groundhog is Jesus, I say that with great respect.”

Groundhog Almighty [NYT]
Earlier: Happy Groundhog Day! (get it??)

Roberts writes,

The author’s obvious personal aversion to Hirsi Ali makes it seem that of the two women she is profiling, Scroggins is keener to explain away the actions of the terrorist rather than the target of terrorism. Hirsi Ali, readers will recall, is a human-rights activist who fights against forced female genital mutilation, decries so-called honor killings, and highlights the way the Quran justifies the mistreatment of women. Siddiqui is a viciously anti-Semitic terrorist serving 86 years in prison for attempted murder.

Heroine Stupor

So, what’s the point of a toothless resolution? “The Arab-Western strategy at the U.N. makes a great deal of sense if Assad’s days are truly numbered, and the decisive pressure to remove him will come from the inside,” argues Marc Lynch in an excellent analysis. (He writes as one who opposes any military action, even a no-fly zone, on the merits.) “An international consensus crystallized in a Security Council resolution would limit the regime’s options and send a clear signal to Syrians that their future does not lie with the status quo,” he adds. “The political transition plan may not unfold as outlined on paper, but the constant references to toleration and inclusion can reassure frightened elites and minorities that they have a place in post-Assad Syria.” And to Assad, it would be a threat of what might come next.

Why wouldn’t Russia relent? Especially given the thousands of Syrian soldiers who have already defected and much chatter from the West (some of it no doubt ginned up precisely to make the regime’s end seem inevitable, but still) that Assad is on his way out? The answer is, Russia probably will. Credit also Secretary Clinton’s strong speech Tuesday and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s admonition that the Security Council form a consensus. Even credit the Turkish president, who said it’s over for onetime ally Assad. Their words will make it so.

And really, credit Israel. They wanted this before just about everyone. When the unrest first started in Syria last spring, everyone assumed Israel would prefer the stability of Assad—that phrase about “the devil we know” was tossed around a lot, including by me. Ambassador Michael Oren answered that way of thinking by June: “Allied with Iran, Mr. Assad has helped supply 55,000 rockets to Hezbollah and 10,000 to Hamas, very likely established a clandestine nuclear arms program and profoundly destabilized the region,” Oren wrote. “The violence he has unleashed on his own people demonstrating for freedoms confirms Israel’s fears that the devil we know in Syria is worse than the devil we don’t.” No doubt Israel has been moved in large part by the near-certainty that an Assad-less Syria would greatly hurt Iran and its ability to project power throughout the region that threatens Israel, chiefly by funding and shipping arms to Hezbollah and Hamas (indeed, Hamas has already ditched Damascus and may be splitting with Tehran). For Israel, pragmatism may have been the better part of virtue. But they were still virtuous before the rest of the world (minus Russia and a few other holdouts) came around: a statement, in its way—you can know someone by his enemies—about what Israel stands for in the region and the international community.

Diplomats at U.N. Haggle With Russia Toward a Compromise on Syria [NYT]
The Security Council Takes on Syria [FP Mideast Channel]
Endgame in Syria [WP PostPartisan]
Israel Prefers The End of the Assad Regime to Its Continuance [WSJ]
As Syria Wobbles Under Pressure, Iran Feels the Weight of An Alliance [NYT]

• International nuclear inspectors, just returned, will visit Iran again in three weeks. If nothing else, it’s a sign that both sides want to be seen as cooperating. [NYT]

• With the last round not yet implemented, the Senate is already working on new financial sanctions against Iran that would target individual leaders, including President Ahmadinejad. [FP The Cable]

• Eight rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel; they hurt no one. They may have been timed to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s visit to the region, including Gaza. [Israel HaYom]

• At the Herzliya Conference, Israeli central banker Stanley Fischer did not go easy on Israel. Among other things, he said the Haredim, many of whom deliberately subsist on generous government subsidies, have to start working. [Haaretz]

• “In the world of mohels … Mr. Sherman has become a kind of bold-faced name.” [NYT City Room]

One understands immediately why Siddiqui might justify the term “Wanted” in the book’s title: She featured on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list in May 2004. Yet the only way in which the word applies to Hirsi Ali is that since a fatwa was pronounced upon her after the murder of her friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the same year, Islamic fundamentalists have wanted to murder her. It is precisely this loose, facile equation of a lawful, constitutional, democratic entity such as the FBI with vicious murderers like van Gogh’s killer Mohammed Bouyeri, who beheaded the filmmaker one November morning in Amsterdam, that makes this book so thoroughly objectionable. Besides a couple of mea culpa sentences that are clearly inserted for pro forma reasons, Scroggins’ entire leitmotif drips with despicable moral equivalism. She even devotes alternate chapters to each woman throughout the book.

The author’s obvious personal aversion to Hirsi Ali makes it seem that of the two women she is profiling, Scroggins is keener to explain away the actions of the terrorist rather than the target of terrorism. Hirsi Ali, readers will recall, is a human-rights activist who fights against forced female genital mutilation, decries so-called honor killings, and highlights the way the Quran justifies the mistreatment of women. Siddiqui is a viciously anti-Semitic terrorist serving 86 years in prison for attempted murder.

Throughout the book there is the assumption that political conservatives of all stripes are unthinking bigots and that “Westerners who want to keep the Muslim world under Western rule have used Islamic attitudes towards women not so much to help free Muslim women as to justify the West’s continued domination of Muslim men.” What complete unadulterated tripe. Westerners haven’t wanted to keep the Muslim world under Western rule since the Suez Crisis of 1956, and Islamic attitudes toward women genuinely disgust Westerners, male and female, conservative and—theoretically, at least—liberal. Lastly, where are these countries where Muslim men suffer “continued domination” by Westerners? Scroggins doesn’t name a single one. If anything, given many Muslim countries’ draconian laws, it is Jews and Christians who suffer “continued domination” almost throughout the entire Middle East—a phenomenon that the Arab Spring, tragically, shows no sign of alleviating.

Writing of a speech that Hirsi Ali was set to give, Scroggins alleges that “some of the anti-gay Islamic attitudes she planned to criticize weren’t very different from those of some conservative Republicans.” Really? Show me a bill in which conservative Republicans have attempted to change the law so that homosexuals are hanged, as happened to three gay men in Iran this past September. Those innocents were only the most recent victims of that country’s blood lust against homosexuals.

In alleging that Siddiqui and Ali are, as she puts it, “mirror images of each other,” Scroggins, a former award-winning foreign correspondent for the the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ought to be able to produce serious factual evidence to back up her case. Yet her book is replete with tell-tale words and phrases that suggest that she is simply using guesswork to fill the enormous gaps in her knowledge that lie between the sources—often mere websites, magazine articles, and other books as tendentious as her own that she cites in her footnotes. Thus we get scores of weaselly phrases such as “it’s said,” “some of her friends wondered,” “by one account,” “she is said to have been,” “probably,” “must have been,” and “reported to be.” These are not good enough to support a sustained 539-page attack on Hirsi Ali, someone whom many people—including this reviewer—see as one of the bravest and most admirable women alive today.

Several of Scroggins’ attacks are self-contradictory. Hirsi Ali’s husband, the British historian Niall Ferguson, is accused of being “tight-fisted” but also of “reputedly picking up the tab for many thousands of dollars” at a birthday party for her. Hirsi Ali is likewise accused of going into “hiding” in America, but also of being constantly self-promoting and high-profile. The author’s relentless sneering—Hirsi Ali “wails” rather than argues—very quickly palls as a literary technique.

Continue reading: ‘The virgin and the whore’

All my life, I have been both a Jets loyalist and a proud, practicing Jew. I owe my religious commitment to Judaism to my parents and grandparents and their deep-rooted belief in the importance of Jewish education, prayer, and service to the community. But I place blame for my lifelong dedication to the Jets squarely in the laps of my father and grandfather. Apparently, in my family at least, dedication to a seemingly futile team is one of the riches of patrilineal descent.

As I’ve grown up, if anything my emotional investment has outgrown theirs. And yet, the misery has worsened. Indeed, I’ve come to see the Jewish psyche as a perfect fit for the Jets, from the fan base and the tradition of loss to the psychological syndromes and the community infighting. Like the Jews, the Jets have been through exile and endured life as second-class citizens. The team forced the fans to make a choice by scheduling a game against the hated New England Patriots on Rosh Hashanah and another starting an hour before Yom Kippur. And though in my life, they’ve been one game shy of returning to the Promised Land four different times, the Jets have—just like Moses—never managed to cross the frontier into the Promised Land.

On the eve of this year’s Super Bowl, the Jets’ misery is more pronounced as their two fiercest rivals prepare to play on the biggest stage for a combined 12th time since the Jets’ sole appearance. And I am forced to root for the archrival Giants.

****

Like many American Jews, my parents grew up in Brooklyn as Dodgers fans. As the Dodgers found a way to lose each year, my father’s disdain for the New York Yankees—who kept finding ways to win seemingly every year—grew to the point where he couldn’t stand anything affiliated with them, including the football team that also played in Yankee Stadium: the New York Giants.

My father finally got his football team in 1960, with the creation of the New York Titans, a team that even carried a Jewish chip on its shoulder: Their name derived precisely from their ambition to be bigger than the Giants. In 1963, the Titans were bought by Jewish entertainment mogul David Abraham “Sonny” Werblin and renamed the Jets—thus ushering in what seemed to possibly be a genuine redemption.

Werblin took a gamble and signed the upstart quarterback Joe Namath to lead the team. In 1969, just three years before I was born, the Jets made it to the Super Bowl, where they faced the heavily favored Baltimore Colts. My father was in law school at the time, but he skipped out on studying for his final in order to watch the game. The Jets pulled an upset of Maccabean proportions, and my father passed his exam.

But the Jets have never been back to the Super Bowl—and I’ve been left to half-wonder if this isn’t because my father made some deal with the devil: Just let the Jets win this one time and just let me pass this test, and I won’t bother you about this ever again.

After a few exoduses from Polo Grounds and Shea Stadium, the Jets moved to the Meadowlands in 1984—where they would be second-class citizens at Giants Stadium, which they shared with that other New York football team. The Meadowlands was not far from my parents’ home in New Jersey and, every week that the Jets played at home, my father took me to the game. We’d sit with the same group of fans, our ritual minyan witnessing the Jets regularly sacrifice wins in creative ways.

The Jets spent years breaking our hearts. They picked awful coaches and drafted disappointing players. Same Old Jets was not only their motto, but the answer to our near-Talmudic inquiry: Why?

For my family, it might as well as been l’dor v’dor. And for many fans, including me, our biggest enemies often weren’t the division rivals or their players, but the Jets themselves and their coaching staff with their conservative, maddening, and predictable play-calling. Despite it all, we dutifully kept the faith, hoping our loyalty would be rewarded. On several occasions, I went to Shabbat services in the morning before walking nine miles from my parents’ house in Teaneck to the Meadowlands to see some critical late-December game (which of course the Jets usually lost).

I rarely missed a game—until I went to college at Cornell, where the Buffalo Bills overshadowed the Jets. Trying to see a Jets game at Cornell was like trying to be an observant Jew in an area with no synagogue; I was on my own. And each week, the futility of my Jets loyalty was laid bare, since my college years coincided with the Bills making the Super Bowl four years in a row. Even one would have been enough. Dayenu.

Like my father, I eventually went to law school. But instead of watching the Jets win the Super Bowl—or even get there—as he did in law school, I was rewarded with therapy. During my third year of law school, the New York Daily News held a contest for long-suffering Jets fans to attend a session of group therapy. The Jets were on their way to a 1-15 season. My friends encouraged me to apply, and no one was surprised when I was chosen. The next thing I knew I was in a circle with 10 jets fans describing their various degrees of torture, leaving me to realize that while I wasn’t alone anymore, I was in company that even misery wouldn’t keep.

Not even therapy cured me. Each year my commitment grew deeper. But I did find a community of those afflicted. During the 2002 playoffs, I joined 70 other observant Jets fans for a Shabbaton of sorts, participating in Friday night and Saturday morning services and catered Sabbath meals. While the Jets beat the Colts 41-0, they lost again the following week. Same old Jets.

In 2010 and then 2011, the Jets returned to the football equivalent of Mount Nebo, 60 minutes away from the Super Bowl. And two years in a row, they met the fate of Moses. But unfortunately this year, unlike many Jewish empires and communities before them, the Jets’ faithful watched as their team was undone by infighting reminiscent of a synagogue board meeting gone bad.

Now I have a son of my own, who is 2 and a half and already knows the J-E-T-S chant. For Hanukkah this past year, I bought him a Jets uniform and helmet. But, like the Jets, he stopped suiting up after December.

Come September, just as we Jews are congregating for the High Holy Days, we Jets fans—of all different persuasions—will congregate at Met Life Stadium, hoping for a sweet new year. This year, 2012, I enter my 40th year of wandering. I still have hope. I’m not even asking the Jets to win a Super Bowl; just to get there. Next year in New Orleans. Dayenu.

• Circumcisions helps prevent the spread of HIV and are now, thanks to an Israeli company, as easily done and minimally painful as ever. [NYT]

• Contributing editor Jeff Goldberg adds a bit more room to the new one he tore for John J. Mearsheimer a few years ago. [Atlantic Goldblog]

• An OECD study pegs Israel the second most-educated country in the world (congratulations Canada, I guess). [Haaretz]

• Submit your embarrassing bat mitzvah photos to Gawker. Bar mitzvah photos are presumably banned to give the ladies a chance to win. [Gawker]

• The lost and new Jews of … Crown Heights! [NYT]

If you read Hebrew, you’ll recognize that this is Haaretz discussing Liel Leibovitz’s Scroll post yesterday.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we discovered Roman Vishniac’s portraits of renowned blues singer and guitarist Josh White, and other legendary entertainers, performing at Café Society, New York’s first integrated nightclub, in Greenwich Village, in 1944. And just in time for the first day of Black History Month.

Café Society owner Barney Josephson, the son of Latvian Jewish immigrants, “wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out in front,” later recalling that “there wasn’t, so far as I knew, a place like it in New York or in the country.” At a time when the famed Kit Kat Club did not allow-African Americans to enter, and even the Cotton Club in Harlem only permitted a few African-American celebrities to quietly occupy discreet seats in the back, Billie Holiday sang in Café Society’s opening show in 1938. In fact, Holiday gave her first public performance of “Strange Fruit” at Café Society, in 1939, with a backdrop of wall murals by some of the Village’s most celebrated (and mostly Jewish) artists.

Four years after Vishniac took these photographs, the legendary café closed its doors, one of many victims of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Thankfully, these pictures remain and are a testament to the pioneering vision of Barney Josephson; the broader, grim reality of segregation; and the inestimable contribution of African-American musicians to American cultural life in the 1940s.

Roman Vishniac’s recently discovered negatives and contact sheets of White and other entertainers at the Café Society are currently being digitized and catalogued by the Roman Vishniac Archive at the International Center of Photography.

Below: Guitarist and blues singer Josh White and unknown performers at Café Society, Greenwich Village, New York, 1944. Rollei Contact Strip. © Mara Vishniac Kohn, courtesy International Center of Photography

Half Human

Though Limbaugh was, in more than one sense, the book’s largest target, I thought I’d reprint some of the best lines about Gingrich. And yes, I asked the senator’s office for comment; and no, they didn’t get back to me. Guess he’s gone all Beltway.

• “I think Newt’s dirty little secret is that he smoked dope and watched The Jetsons.”

• “Newt Gingrich’s claims that he was leading a ‘revolution’ were interpreted not as the rantings of a delusional megalomaniac but as a reasonable blueprint for the nation’s future.”

• Gingrich, we learn, had a fundraiser who was an “enigmatic, Greek-born, Cambridge-educated socialite; conservative commentator” named Arianna Huffington.

• Franken ponders the notorious circumstances of Gingrich’s first divorce:

Maybe it went like this:

Jackie calls Newt at home just before she goes into surgery. “Newt, I’m more certain than ever that I want a divorce.”

“But, honey, you’re about to undergo cancer surgery! You don’t know what you’re saying!”

“Newt, please. When you bring the girls today, I also want you to bring a legal pad with terms for a divorce.”

“For godsakes! You’re having cancer surgery!”

“Would you stop it?! This is what I want. What I don’t want is for you to blame yourself. You’re too good a person for that.”

It could have been like that. And to assume otherwise would be unfair.

Of course, what we do know is that after the divorce, he was late with his alimony payments, and she had to take him to court twice to provide adequate support for her and the girls and that her church took up a collection to help them get by. That we do know.

• “Newt is nothing if not a man of ideas: We should give poor kids laptops. We should put poor kids in orphanages. We should appoint militia-loving Idaho representative Helen Chenoweth to a gun control task force.”

• “I’ve heard pundits say that minorities are comfortable with Jack Kemp because he’s a former NFL quarterback*. As Newt Gingrich once said admiringly, ‘Jack Kemp has probably showered with more blacks than most Republicans have shaken hands with.’” (Franken proceeds to list Politicians Who Have Showered With Blacks, including Rep. J.C. Watts, who, a footnote notes, “Is himself black.”)

*While Kemp achieved the bulk of his fame in the American Football League, he did begin his career in the NFL.

• Franken quotes Gingrich describing the problems with female combat troops: “If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections.” Gingrich also says, “Males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.”

Writes Franken:

Two images come to mind. The first is of the grasslands of Africa. During the Neolithic Period. Rush, Newt, and Bill Bennett, all 825 pounds of them, are trying to run down a giraffe. The giraffe is thinking, “No problem here.”

The second image is of Newt, about fifteen years ago, explaining to his thirteen-year-old daughter that she just got her first “infection.”

• “Then Dennis Hopper walked up. ‘You, sir, are a great man. You are doing great things.’ He wasn’t talking to me. Newt told Hopper how brilliant his performance was in Blue Velvet. How he loved Hopper’s intensity. I started to feel like I was in Blue Velvet.”

• Franken posits six jokes and rates whether they are fair or unfair. Here’s one:

“I’d like a Gingrich-Gramm ticket. That way the president could write the pornography and the vice president could produce it.”

Fair or unfair? “Fair. The first, uncensored version of Gingrich’s novel 1945 made me hot. I gave it a six on the peter-meter. Gramm invested $7,500 in a soft-core porn movie.”

• Remembering seeing Gingrich speak, Franken testifies: “And as I watched him on the stage, my hands were clenched in fists of rage. As Don McLean might say, assuming he hates Newt Gingrich as much as he hated Mick Jagger.”

• Perhaps best of all, Franken finds Newt arguing that his Medicare plan would increase Medicare by using figures not adjusted for inflation. That may not sound like very much to you, but to wonks I can assure you that means a great deal.

Consequence

As Jill Lepore reported recently, Planned Parenthood actually began much the same way Komen did. Though its founder, Margaret Sanger, was not Jewish, its original receptionist was fluent in Yiddish and it opened on the Lower East Side to serve poor Italian and Jewish women. Its first handbills were translated into Italian and Yiddish; its first landlord was named Rabinowitz, and he gave them a discount because he liked what they did. Later, in the 1960s, Planned Parenthood grew thanks to the efforts of Jewish president Alan F. Guttmacher.

But here’s the difference: those who most need Komen are represented by the people who run Komen; those who most need Planned Parenthood—poor women, including the African-Americans whom Guttmacher was reaching out to—are not. Despite depending on the donations of the wealthy (and government funding), Planned Parenthood altruistically goes beyond its natural constituency. Komen, with this decision, appears not to be, and in fact seems increasingly concerned with rich women, who might be able to afford their own care. “Meet Women Whose Lives Have Been Saved By Early Breast Cancer Screenings,” reads Planned Parenthood’s homepage. There may be fewer to meet in the future because of this decision.

AP Exclusive: Amid Abortion Debate, Komen Cancer Charity Halting Grants to Planned Parenthood [AP/WP]
Related: Birthright [The New Yorker]
Earlier: Pink Is Jewish

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Mitt Romney pulled $24 million in straight campaign contributions, which was more than the other three remaining candidates combined. That included contributions in late December from important Jewish Republican donors who, as I reported last week, had stayed on the fence throughout the pre-season. Among Romney’s new supporters are hedge fund manager Paul Isaac, one of the 30 biggest individual donors to the Republican Party; Cheryl Halpern, a former backer of Gov. Rick Perry; and Hudson Institute board member Nina Rosenwald. Romney also got a big boost from Paul Singer, a hedge-fund manager and one of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s biggest cheerleaders, who gave the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future $1 million in December.

But Romney hasn’t managed to convince everyone. George Klein, a longtime party stalwart, gave Romney money in November, and then switched to Gingrich’s side at the height of the former Speaker’s December wave. Earle Mack, a real-estate developer who sits on the Republican Jewish Coalition’s board, gave $10,000 to the pro-Gingrich Super PAC Winning Our Future—though that was of course small beans compared to the reported $10 million contributed in January by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam. In December, Miriam Adelson’s daughters gave Restore Our Future $1 million—nearly half of the $2.1 million total raised through the fourth quarter.

And still some major players remain on the sidelines. Duty Free Americas COO Simon Falic and his family were among Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biggest financial supporters for yesterday’s Likud primary (which Bibi won easily). Yet they have yet to pick a candidate after their early favorite, Perry, dropped out. Ronald Krancer, a GOP heavyweight based in Pennsylvania, has likewise not given any money aside from an early donation to his former senator, Rick Santorum. These are folks who, we feel sure, can expect some phone calls today.

Quarterly Candidate Fundraising, 2011 [OpenSecrets]
Who’s Financing the ‘Super PACs’? [NYT]
Presidential Fundraising in Key 2012 States [USA Today]
Related: Withholding [Tablet Magazine]
Earlier: Key Netanyahu Funders Also Back Rick Perry

The Modern Golum

But why talk about this stuff when we can talk about the Jews?!

Polling pundit extraordinaire Nate Silver noted early on last evening that Jewish turnout was low last night in comparison to the primary four years ago: in 2008, three percent of GOP primary voters identified as Jewish; last night, only one percent did. This, Silver concluded, “might mean that Jewish Republican voters in the state are not terribly enthusiastic about this group of candidates.” The line was pondered. On Twitter, the battle was joined. (Pssst, Gal: don’t engage him! He’s very good!) At Commentary, Jonathan Tobin responded. The explanation? The Rudy phenomenon: “the man who drove that mini-surge in Jewish Republican voters was Rudy Giuliani,” argued Tobin. “Though he flopped in the Florida primary four years ago, the former mayor of New York was a big favorite of the Jewish and pro-Israel community.”

I don’t know if that carries water. We don’t know for sure who won Florida’s Republican Jewish vote, either last night or in 2008—the overall Jewish franchise was unfortunately not large enough for exit pollsters to glean meaningful data from it. (Maybe the best we can do is to look at the extremely Jewish counties of Palm Beach and Broward, where Giuliani got 19 and 17 percent of the vote, besting only slightly his 15 percent statewide figure; he did put up a slightly more impressive 26 percent in Jewish-but-also-idiosyncratic Miami-Dade.) Even granting a Giuliani Bump, Tobin is suggesting that Giuliani was single-handedly able to increase the percentage of the Jewish vote—by a factor of three!—in an electorate roughly the same size as last night’s (about 1.9 million voted in the 2008 primary; it looks like about 1.75 million voted in last night’s). That seems pretty far-fetched to me, especially when you remember that Florida’s is a closed primary, open only to registered Republicans, so Giuliani could not have drawn Democratic and independent Jews in to vote for him (and when you remember, as Shmuel Rosner reminds us, that Sen. Joe Lieberman had endorsed John McCain). It’s roughly as plausible to suggest that Jewish turnout was depressed because Jews were going to go for Romney until they heard a disembodied voice on the phone tell them the former Massachusetts governor hates kosher-keeping Holocaust survivors. It didn’t play no role, it’s not impossible it played a huge role, and nobody can prove it either way. But it’s very unlikely.

The Forward’s Josh Nathan-Kazis tentatively concurred with Silver’s suggestion: “Fewer Jewish voters in the primary,” he wrote, “could correlate to a lack of enthusiasm among Jews for the Republican field.” Unlike the rest of us, Josh was down there reporting on this, so I’m more inclined to listen to him. But I’m still not going to put too much stock into the three-versus-one-percent dynamic. Most likely, it’s a combination of lack of enthusiasm among Jews, statistical noise, and a generally less excited Republican primary electorate (and one where those most excited—in the Tea Party—tend not to be Jewish).

But this does leave an open question regarding Tobin’s argument. He contends that it is possible to acknowledge that the Jewish vote changed while explaining it not by reference to larger trends or specifically Jewish or Israel-related policies or platforms or records, but, rather, to the arbitrary inflation (“mini-surge”) caused by an anomaly (in this case, the unusual presence of a moderate, ethnic, strong-on-Israel former New York City mayor from Brooklyn on the 2008 Republican ticket). I completely agree. In fact, I and many others have long suggested that while it’s certainly possible that in November President Obama will see a drop in Jewish support, that drop needs to be more than a couple points to be significant because the 78 percent of the Jewish vote he captured in 2008—higher than John Kerry’s 74 percent in 2004—was anomalously high due to the decisive nature of Obama’s victory generally as well as Jews’ “hatred” for a certain member of the Republican ticket. Given Tobin’s sensible sympathy to such external whims’ influence on voting figures, I assume that he will take all of this into account when he analyzes the returns in November. I won’t say one percent is small; he shouldn’t say 74 percent is.

Romney Wins Big in Florida Primary, Regaining Momentum [NYT]
Jewish Turnout Low in Florida [NYT FiveThirtyEight]
Low Jewish Turnout in Florida Doesn’t Help Obama in November [Commentary Contentions]
Florida Exit Polls Suggest Fewer Jews Vote GOP [Forward]

• The emergent opposition claims President Assad no longer controls half of Syria. [Haaretz]

• Guess who the Syria issue’s really also about? Iran. [NYT]

• Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Gaza and Hamas, is visiting Tehran. Hamas and Iran have been on the outs recently due to Hamas’ abandonment of the Assad regime. [JTA]

• As predicted, Prime Minister Netanyhau cleaned up in the Likud primaries. [Ynet]

• The Orthodox Jewish Press responds to threats it has received over an op-ed it recently published by someone who identified as Orthodox and homosexual. [Jewish Press/Failed Messiah]