Religion is arbitrary.  The way we practice it is even more arbitrary.  But it's their house, and their rules.  How many times have we seen posters at this website telling us that Reform Judaism is not real Judaism?  If you want to associate yourself with a branch of our religion which is so obsessed with excluding people, you can't expect sympathy when you find yourself excluded.  Of course same-sex partners should be invited.  But the Orthodox say a prayer thanking G-d every day that they weren't born women.  What can you expect?

Are you seriously using that nutjob to make a point?  Even after his nasty screed comparing the Maccabees to Al Qaeda?

Come on, half the time I go cross-eyed trying to read your posts.  This is just lazy. Reductive and lazy.

More ink/pixls spilt on this than Rove pushpolling in SC 2000 that John McCain had a black daughter. 

Enough already!  Beckerman, we already know your knuckles scrape the ground.  Why the editors would let you comment on politics is a mystery.  Go back to the backwards wanking or whatever, and leave the political commentary to the grownups.  Interestingly, your juvenile chauvinism and inability to walk away from an easy joke demonstrates how totally unfair the media is to Hillary Clinton.  You hate her because she's not real.  But when she's real, you hate her because she's a sissy girl.  She's a ballbuster, but she can't even keep her husband in line.

We're Jews.  We can think.  Could we get past these simplistic storylines already?  Are we as bad as the morons in 2000 who elected the guy they wanted to have a beer with?  Cripes, look at who jumps right on your bandwagon?  Seargent Flat Tax, like clockwork.

They hate her because she's a politcal droid, they hate her because she's a crying girl.  Blahblahblah.  Women thought that they didn't have to rally around the female candidate, and they they woke up to the hateful misogyny spewed by Chris Matthews and the rest of the pundits.  We didn't feel sorry for her because she cried.  We're pissed that she gets condescended to because of her gender.  If the pundits are going to judge her through the prism of gender, well, then so are we.

Death and Dying

Enjoyed the article.

No, I will not be watching.  Obviously, the man is entitled to say any stupid thing he likes.  It could be artistically interesting, but, is it good for the Jews?  Yes, I know it's the same old question.  But let's look at the African American experience.  Obviously, you can't blame gangster rap for everything.  That said, allowing the N-word and exaggerated stereotypes of black male violence and sexuality to permeate their popular culture has undoubtedly made racism worse, not better.  It's a lot easier to demonize Tupac Shakur than Grandma Moses. Once you start letting kike enter common parlance, or making movies like "Keeping up with the Steins," well, the genie's out of the bottle.  It doesn't matter that Baron Cohen is lampooning anti-semitism.  He's still allowing people to feel comfortable expressing it out in the open, when they might have felt ashamed enough to keep their mouths shut otherwise.

 BTW, I'm thinking one of his parents is Jewish.  Maybe he only gets to say Ki.

I was born Jewish, my husband converted.  Celebrating Christmas with his family is no threat to our nuclear family.  We're very involved in our congregation, have the extended family over every Shabbat, and our kids know who they are.  The threat is when you allow religion to divide you from your family.  If you want to stay with your boyfriend long term, you can't use your religion as a wedge between him and his parents.  If you know who you are, then you can manage a day with people who find meaning in things which you think are silly.  If you were Bat Mitzvahed, you probably invited kids who weren't Jewish.  And you might consider going to the baptism of a friend's child.  Your Bat Mitzvah was important, and this is important to people who may be grandparents to your children one day.  It's not your thing, but it's only lose-lose if you sit there in sullen judgement over the way they celebrate their holiday.

Maybe you could do what we do on Christmas Eve, which is to invite over a bunch of other Jewish families and eat lasagna and latkes.  L'Chaim.

McCain is never going to be president.  The story is sort of interesting because of Lieberman being so out of step with Democrats.  Don't forget, he's only the Senator from Connecticut because of all the Republicans who voted for him as an independent after he lost the Deomocratic primary.  But, otherwise, McCain's pretty much a non-story.  He doesn't even get the honor of influencing the debate, like Kucinich, because his positions basically align with the rest of the Republicans running for president.  The more interesting story this weekend is from yesterday's NYT on the organization funded by RJ Reynolds, among others, who paid Huckabee to go out and lecture because he wasn't earning enough as lieutenant governor. The man has ethics violations that aren't going to match with his groovy preacher vibe.  There's something that's just picking up, not petering out.

We all know Keyes is a megalomaniac nut.  No need to deconstruct.  Writing about him just distracts from actual political issues and validates his attention-seeking behavior.