Sun, Jul 20, 2008

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We Read Jewish Magazines So You Don’t Have To

 

Pandering, but pretty: Warhol's KafkaPandering, but pretty: Warhol's KafkaWhat the Jewish media has been getting up to this week:

  • In a Dear Abby column last month, Abby answered a question from a man who thinks one of his brothers tricked his wife into sex. Rather than get outraged on the part of the wife—because, um, isn’t that rape?—Abby suggests maybe she was in on the deception. Feminist bloggers called this victim-blaming; Dan Savage called bullshit on the question. Given the opportunity to ask Abby about this controversy in their interview with her this week, Jewishsf.com instead wonders: If she had to eat one Jewish food every Saturday for the rest of her life, would she go with chopped liver, gefilte fish or matzo ball soup? [JewishSF.com]
  • Clinton administration policy advisor Jeremy Ben-Ami is launching an “alternative AIPAC”—a liberal pro-Israel group. “About freakin’ time” says Jewschool. [The Jewish Week, Jewschool]
  • Ugh, this is a terrible story: Remember the haredi women in Israel who wear burqas? The leader of the group was just arrested for child abuse and the failure to report incest. [Jewlicious]
  • Heeb discovers it has a Christian twin in Geez Magazine. [Heeb]
  • Andy Warhol’s portraits of Jews at the Jewish Museum: Was he exploiting the Jewish community, or vice versa? [The Forward]
  • In his seminal book about life as a chef, Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain refers to veganism as a “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of vegetarianism. So a bunch of vegans have started a blog called Hezbollah Tofu in which they veganize Bourdain recipes. Is the name offensive? Eric Schulmiller at the Jew and the Carrot thinks it might be. (By the way, best post title ever.) [The Jew and the Carrot]
  • Uplifting story of the week: The IDF gives a residency permit to a gay Palestinian man so that he can live in Tel Aviv with his Israeli boyfriend. [YNet]

 



Izzy Grinspan is Jewcy's ex-managing editor. Her work has been published in Salon, The Believer, and The Village Voice.


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Ashmodai


Alternative to AIPAC?

While I've always believed there's plenty of room for differing opinions on the Israeli-Arab issue within the Jewish community, I wonder whether the presence of three distinct, and dissenting, Israel lobbies on Capitol Hill will do more harm than good.  ("Three," because the Jewish Week article fails to mention the Zionist Organization of America which is to the right of AIPAC and has been active since the 1990s.)  There's a very real possibility that, as J-Street (the new liberal Israel lobby) and ZOA woo the more  left-leaning and right-leaning reps and senators away from AIPAC, Congressional mid-East policy will become more confused, diluted and ineffective.

I could see the need for an alternative if the only major and influential Jewish lobby was either far-left, favouring a binational or Palestinian-only state; or far-right, favouring a Kahanist theocracy which denaturalized and expelled all Israeli Arabs.  But that's not what we have.  Rather, it seems to me that AIPAC, J-Street and ZOA all support a Jewish but democratic and diverse state.  So why are three competing Zionist lobbies necessary?  Isn't it enough to have a broad-based, strong lobby that simply and clearly advocates a continuance of the U.S.-Israel alliance, including military and economic support, as a bulwark against the Ahmenadijads and Assads of this world?  Or to counter the influence of the often pro-Arab oil lobby, and prepare for the likely emergence, within a generation, of one or more mid-East lobbies representing a more numerous, prosperous and assertive American Muslim community?





JessM


Killer Tofu = Funnie

The Anthony Bourdain comment gives new meaning to that Beets song...





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