Tablet Magazine » radio

Aaron Klein On The Air

Marc Tracy — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:00:17 +0000

Aaron Klein, a Jerusalem-based reporter whose forthcoming book purports to uncover President Barack Obama’s “Ties to Communists, Socialists, and Other Anti-American Extremists,” is (according to a press release we got) getting his own show on prominent radio station WABC—already the home of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other right-wing pundits.

What’s interesting about this is it represents the broader trend whereby the energetic right-wing—which, let’s recall, has actually not historically been a place overly welcoming to Jews and even Israel—has now made common cause with Jewish concerns and right-wing Zionism. We see it in the Michael Savage phenomenon—the ultra-Jewy right-wing shock jock whom Allison Hoffman wrote perceptively about. More recently, we saw it when Norman Podhoretz and other conservative Jews defended Rush Limbaugh’s remarks about bankers, which had come under the Anti-Defamation League’s fire.

Certainly makes that 37 percent gap between Republican and Democratic support for Israel look a little more meaningful, and, potentially, worrying for the Democrats.

Earlier: The Real Michael Savage Stands Up
Podhoretz Defends Limbaugh From ADL Accusation
Is The GOP The Pro-Israel Party?

No More Shabbat on the Radio

Allison Hoffman — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:00:15 +0000

At 8 p.m. tonight, the New York Times Company will hand ownership of its 75-year-old classical music station, WQXR, to the local public radio station, WNYC. For classical music fans, the switch means tuning to a new frequency—105.9 FM, instead of 96.3—but for Jewish listeners, it means the beginning of the end for the station’s decades-old weekly Friday night broadcast of Shabbat services from Temple Emanu-El, the Reform bastion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. WNYC spokeswoman Jennifer Houlihan said that WQXR will discontinue all of its religious programming—which also includes Sunday-morning church services—as of January 1, 2010, in accordance with the station’s policy on nonsectarian broadcasting. The synagogue, which will continue streaming services on its website, is still hoping to find another broadcast outlet, but administrative vice-president Mark Weisstuch tells Tablet Magazine that, as of now, “we have not met with much success in finding an alternative radio home.”

WQXR Is Moving to 105.9 FM [WQXR]
Previously: Shabbat on the Radio

Talmud Calls for Universal Health Care

Marissa Brostoff — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:17:29 +0000

This week, the head of the Reform movement’s political arm, Rabbi David Saperstein, helped launch an effort by progressive religious leaders to get President Barack Obama’s health care plan passed in Congress; the president’s agreed to join the group in a call-in webcast on August 19. Saperstein and liberal Rev. Jennifer Butler appeared this morning on the public radio show The Takeaway.

“There’s nothing in the Torah about palliative care, or dialysis…. When you start getting down to the details of the bills, how do you turn that into a moral argument as opposed to a political argument?” a host of the show asked Saperstein.

The rabbi gave the standard reply that we can apply the moral norms given in the Torah to contemporary situations; then, more intriguingly, he argued that “by the time of the Talmud 2,000 years ago, [these norms] had developed into health care systems and rules and requirements to provide adequate health care for all people. Any community that wanted to be considered a moral community had to provide health care, had to provide health care providers. These are not new ideas.”

So does that imply that people opposed to Obama’s health care plan are immoral?

“Good moral people can differ on the best way to go about achieving universal health care,” Saperstein said. “That isn’t what this debate has been about, unfortunately. This has been a very disturbing debate in terms of the civility of discourse in America. When people make these extraordinary accusations and allusions about fascism and Nazism and the Holocaust, what they’re doing is trying to take these ideas outside the free marketplace of ideas.”

The Moral of the Story: Religious Leaders on Health Care Reform [The Takeaway]
Previously: An Orthodox-Reform Divide on Health Care?

Shabbat on the Radio

Allison Hoffman — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:50:00 +0000

At 5:30 tonight, the New York classical-music station WQXR will broadcast the regular Shabbat service from Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan, just as it has for decades. But the broadcast’s future is unclear. The cash-strapped New York Times Company, which has owned the station since 1944, agreed earlier this week to sell it earlier this week to the public radio station WNYC Radio and Univision. So far, the new owners have committed to continuing long-running programs from the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic, but the rest of the station’s schedule, including the Shabbat service and other religious programming from local churches, is up for discussion. “Everything will be getting a second look,” said WNYC spokeswoman Jennifer Houlihan.

Times Co. Agrees to Sell WQXR Radio [NYT]