Be Kind to Your Hoof-footed Friends: for a cow could be somebody's mother We Jews just love to beat ourselves up. We can't even get depressed without feeling guilty about it. This weekend is Tisha b'Av, the one time of year when Jews get to have a good old-fashioned bitching session. We weep and wail and curse at the miserable treatment of Jewish people throughout history: the destruction of both Temples, the expulsion from Spain, the Nazis.

Historians--at least, those historians who sport peyes and streimels and use the Chumash as a source text--say that all of these Jewish catastrophes happened on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. That's today, for those keeping track. The rub, though, is that Judaism is pretty clear on why these things happened: because Jews screwed up.

The first temple was destroyed because Jews worshipped idols, slept around, and killed people. The second temple was destroyed because Jews were feeling too much hate toward their neighbors. The Holocaust happened because...well, whatever we did wrong there, it must have been pretty bad. I guess it takes a Chief Rabbi of Israel to explain such a thing.

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As Michelle Obama continues her "make-over" tour, jumping from an appearance on The View's coffee klatch to the cover of glossy Us Weekly (story title: "Why Barack Loves Her"), it's clear that we haven't really progressed much in the past two decades. Educated, outspoken, potential first-ladies frighten Americans today as much as they did when "scary feminist" Hillary Rodham Clinton first blazed the path from the corner office to the campaign trail.

Voters are suspicious of influential spouses—period (think Eleanor Roosevelt or Bill Clinton during the primaries). Still, every election is different and this one has the special spice of race. Though Barack Obama is the first black candidate on a major party ticket, he has one advantage that his wife does not—he's the bi-racial son of an African immigrant, while she is the daughter of African-American parents descended from slaves. And research demonstrates that white people tend to favor black immigrants over African Americans whose ancestors have been here for hundreds of years.

Prominent researchers like Nancy Foner, George Fredrickson, and Mary Waters, who study the integration patterns of black immigrants, have observed that white people seem more at ease with black immigrants than they do with other African Americans. Their research notes that black immigrants are usually described as "more polite, less hostile, more solicitous, and easier to get along with." Some of this is likely due to real cultural or socioeconomic differences (for example, Africans who immigrate to the U.S. tend to be highly educated, on average). However, there's no getting around the fact that we live in a country with a profound history of racial turmoil and that prejudice against African Americans persists in contemporary society.

The "preference" for black immigrants over other African Americans is perhaps most pronounced on our nation's prestigious college campuses, where a controversial debate has erupted about the overrepresentation of black students from immigrant backgrounds (as opposed to those whose ancestors have been here for hundreds of years). In the February 2007 issue of the American Journal of Education, researchers at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania published findings from surveys given to 1,051 black freshmen at 28 selective colleges. They found that 27 percent of African-American students were first or second generation immigrants, which is more than double the national average for all blacks ages 18-19. The percentage of immigrants was even more pronounced at the four Ivy League schools included in this study (Princeton, Yale, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania), where 41 percent of students were first or second generation immigrants. These numbers do not include international students who identify as black.

Why are black immigrants so overrepresented on selective campuses? While it's true that black immigrants are more likely to have higher grades and test scores (as I noted, their parents tend to be more educated), the authors of the study also conclude that admissions officers may be subconsciously selecting applicants with the "sociable qualities" that they more readily perceive in immigrants over other African-American students. We can't be certain of the degree to which this bias may play a role in college admissions decisions, but it's also hard to ignore previous research that demonstrates that white people find black immigrants more "likeable."

In researching my book, Fat Envelope Frenzy, I followed five different students navigating the selective college admissions process. One of the students was Ethiopian-American, grappling with the implications of his heritage on affirmative action policies. He often talked about how he couldn't relate to the other African-American students at his Memphis high school, but he also emphasized that he didn't think that race was such a big deal. "When was the last time someone was awarded a Nobel Prize because of their race?" he once asked me, rhetorically.

If only it were that simple. It would be nice if science was objective, but the ugly truth is that scientists have contributed to racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and every other possible prejudice throughout history. Sure, no one is given a Nobel Prize simply because they are white, black or brown. But that didn't stop James Watson, who won the Nobel for his work on DNA, from claiming that black people are "less intelligent" than white people just last year.

Though Barack Obama has suffered his fair share of background-based biased attacks (He's a Muslim! He hates Jews! He'll let Iran nuke Israel!), until the Jeremiah Wright hullabaloo, he was thought of as "not black" or "not black enough." Even with her two Ivy League degrees and Jackie O hair-do, there was never that kind of debate over Michelle's racial identity. The barely restrained racism directed at her in the press is practically old news, from the covert conspiracy theories of "respectable" writers like Christopher Hitchens—who basically blamed Michelle for the Wright controversy because she wrote her 1985 Princeton undergraduate thesis about "Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community"—to the total tackiness of Fox News referring to her as Barack's "baby mama."

With her South Side upbringing and dark complexion, Michelle is "black enough"—unlike her husband—and maybe that's part of the reason that she isn't as popular.

It was from an obsessive Darwin-defender that I learned of the Anti-Defamation League's attack on the theatrical documentary Expelled, for "misappropriat[ing] the Holocaust." This guy is constantly emailing me. He warned that the ADL had just "issued a terse press release today condemning the equation of ‘Darwinism' with Nazism in Expelled. How can you call yourself a religious Jew and still believe in such Fundamentalist Protestant Christian nonsense like Intelligent Design?"

I thanked my email correspondent for a good laugh. The idea that, having defended Expelled's thesis concerning Hitler's intellectual debt to Charles Darwin, I would now feel chastised and repentant because of a statement from the ADL, an organization for which I have not a feather's weight of respect! This was rich stuff.

Just to be clear, however: Expelled doesn't equate Darwinism and Hitler. That basic point was also missed by Professor Sahotra Sarkar, who published a confused attack piece on me here on Jewcy. Sarkar attributed to me the view, "If you believe in the theory of evolution, you are an anti-Semite" -- something that, obviously, I would have to be a fool to write or believe.

Dealing primarily with the academic suppression of Darwin-doubting scientists on campuses around the country, Expelled only spends about 10 minutes on the Hitler-Darwin connection. But it draws upon a solid, mainstream body of scholarship by the chief Hitler biographers and others.

Undeterred, the ADL wailed that "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness."

Much the same view has been propounded elsewhere. Once again here at Jewcy, Jay Michaelson seemed to argue that all science is by definition value-neutral: "Last I checked, Hitler also made use of automobiles. Indeed, he based a lot of ideas on militarism and machines; does that mean technology is morally wrong? Should you turn off your computer right now?"

No, Jay, there are obvious differences between Darwinian theory and auto and computer technology. Most important, the latter make no claims to answering ultimate questions, like how life originated, from which ethical corollaries are naturally drawn.

Auto and computer technology are also proved reliable every day by our experience. But no one has ever reported seeing a species originate in the manner described in Darwin's Origin of Species - not now, not in the fossil record, not ever.

More interesting than these observations is the hypocrisy of the ADL's outburst: "Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan."

It's funny how when the subject of conversation is Darwinism, then Hitler needed no one particular inspiration. But when the conversation shifts from Darwinism to - oh, I don't know - Christianity? Ah, then suddenly the genealogy of Nazism becomes eminently traceable.

One of the ADL's main fundraising technique has long been to scare Jews by demonizing Christianity. The group accordingly isn't shy about tracing the genealogy of the Holocaust back to the New Testament. In an essay on the 40^th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, for example, Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of interfaith affairs wrote:

"The anti-Judaism that begins in the New Testament was transformed through the admixture of political, economic and sociological prejudice into the anti-Semitism of modernity. This reached its ugly and inhuman nadir during World War II with Hitler's Final Solution for the Jewish people."

Blaming the earliest Christian writings for setting off a chain of influences resulting in the Holocaust evokes little outrage in the liberal Jewish community. Visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, for instance, are greeted by a film, Anti-Semitism, purporting to uncover the "religious root of this phenomenon, the pervasive anti-Jewish teachings that evolved from overly literal readings and misreadings of New Testament texts."

Yet when Hitler successfully sold his ideology of hate to the German people in his bestselling tract Mein Kampf, he phrased his argument not in Christian terms but in biological, Darwinian ones.

Ignoring Hitler's evolutionary rhetoric, of course, some commentators brandish a famous quote from the same book -- "by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." They don't realize that Hitler was referring not to the God of the Bible but to Nature and her iron laws, as his preceding sentence clearly indicates.

In a curious irony, the modern paperback edition of Mein Kampf, available in any Barnes & Noble, includes an Introduction by - guess who? None other than the ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman. Did he, I wonder, even read the book?

To be the first African-American president, Barack Obama needs to be seen as a uniter and not a divider on race. Much of the public excitement over Obama is rooted in the hope that a black president will propel the U.S. to a new era of racial harmony and color blindness. The controversy over Obama’s longtime pastor, Reverend Wright, has threatened to dampen that excitement, and therefore derail Obama's candidacy.

Yesterday, Obama sought to alleviate these concerns in his “race speech.” This may be his most important speech since his endorsement of John Kerry for president at the last Democratic national convention. And Obama delivered it with all his eloquence and grand vision. He expressed the need to focus on issues that indeed unite Americans of all races and socio-economic classes. Obama is correct that,

“We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.”

Yes, this can happen, but it should be avoided. Obama is uniquely positioned to help us move past the “distractions,” to move past race as the divisive issue. And yet, as far as I can tell, he has no interest intention of making that happen if it requires anything more than pretty words.

Obama talked about those issues that affect all of us. He talked about the issues affecting the black community. He addressed anti-Zionism. But he avoided explication of those issues that affect only some others: whites. The fact is, Obama tolerated a man who is racist as his spiritual mentor. For a very long time. Until the public made him stop.

If this is causing him problems in the Democratic primary, how much more so will it be a problem in the general election if he is the Democratic candidate? He can’t merely explain himself by expatiating on the history of discontent and suffering that afflicted and still afflicts the American black community. That will simply not suffice. Not now. Obama tried to play one race card to knock out another race card, noting,

“I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

Bullshit. We don’t choose our grandmother. But we do choose our spiritual leaders. Now Obama needs to offer something substantial. He needs to prove that his disagreement with his pastor is not mere sentiment and phrasing, but real policy differences. He needs to prove he truly wants to move America past its racial divisions.

To do that, Obama—at least once he has the Democratic nomination—needs to categorically reject racially based affirmative action programs. He needs to give that to whites if he is to defeat McCain. He needs to prove to whites that he feels for them not only as Americans, but also as white Americans. White Americans who are so overwhelmingly against affirmative action that the social left is resorting to devious machinations to knock referendums on the matter off state ballots rather than submit to the will of the voters . For good reason. Heck, even the famously liberal Jewish community swerves right on affirmative action.

Obama needs to be whites’ champion too—specifically against the discriminatory policies against them. Anything less will fail to dispel the shadow of racism and contempt cast onto his campaign by his pastor. Anything less will prove insufficient to win the trust of enough whites to win the presidency.

Obama and Wright: BFFs?The solutions offered by conservative commentators to Barack Obama’s existential crisis have been conspicuous in their shallowness. Unlike Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Victor Davis Hanson is no fake scholar; Hanson has intellectual heft. Yet he proposed that "all Obama would have to do is apologize, quit the church, and begin talking about the issues."

How about admitting himself to rehab, or, even better, expiating on Oprah? (I read on the Los Angeles Times’ blog that Oprah, wise woman that she is, had long ago quit Trinity United Church of Christ for reasons that evaded Obama, her protégé.)

No, I give Obama credit. His reaction to the nation-wide reaction to Rev. Wright’s fulminating—everywhere on full display—was anything but shallow. It was, however, profoundly disturbing.

Obama began his “More Perfect Union” oration with perfunctory praise for the American founding, before moving on to the issue that looms largest for him and for Rev. Wright: the sin of slavery.

Accused of decontextualizing the message uttered by Obama’s mentor, rightist critics of the Rev. Wright have been subjected to a coruscating critique—Wright’s vile, vociferous, overwhelming hatred of whites did not, apparently, reflect the man’s mission.

I hereby accuse the man who may become president of reducing the greatest revolution in history—politically and philosophically—to the eternal Mark of Cain all whites must seemingly bear: slavery.

Obama situated his own mission firmly on the civil war and civil rights continuum—in this respect, he would be continuing “the long march of those who came before us.” This is not the universal philosophical route carved by the American Founders, the followers of the Lockean tradition of natural rights. Obama may be more gentrified than the vulgar Rev. Wright. However, by harking back to slavery, he has expressed the very particularism that is so disturbing about his mentor’s mindset.

Crime-related fears: A line no one should cross? Leveled at innocent white Americans, race is like stigmata. Lest modern-day whites fail to welt up and bleed at the mention of slavery, Obama, like other custodians of consensus in our culture, hammered home that he is “married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.” White Americans who’ve come out in droves for Obama deserve better.

So does Obama’s (white) grandma. He tells us he loves her with all his rather intense being. But he considers that she too is marred by racism for “once confessing her fear of black men who passed by her on the street.”

It is a fear rooted in fact, but Obama conflates it with racism. FBI and Justice surveys repeatedly show that, as Patrick J. Buchanan has written, “violent interracial assault, rape and murder [are] to be found not in the white community, but the African-American community. In almost all interracial attacks, whites are the victims, not the victimizers.”

It is, moreover, not racist to consider aggregate group characteristics—provided they are substantiated by hard evidence, not hunches—in how one invests precious scarce resources, to wit, one’s life and property. Science relies on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample. People make prudent decision in their daily lives based on probabilities and generalities.

Obama’s grandmother was no different. Had she failed to treat individual blacks on their merit, he’d be justified in labeling her a racist. More material, if Obama brands his own grandmother a racist for failing to suppress a visceral reaction borne of the reality of crime, one hates to think of how he’d view ordinary Americans who “transgress” in this manner.

In Obama’s America, you had better button up about the “color of crime.”

Cool hunter: Ferraro In this context, Obama’s indirect swipe at Geraldine Ferraro rates a mention. The former vice presidential candidate suggested that the Senator would not be where he is if he were white. Indulgently, Obama has taken this to mean that Ferraro implied his “candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action.” Wrong. Ferraro was pointing to the coolness of being black in America and the considerable leverage that identity affords those who cultivate it. What better proof of that than Obama’s cult like following? Obama’s “More Perfect Union” address perfectly demonstrates that he has embraced this politicized racial identity, because to do so is smart; because in America, black is beautiful.

Obama continued in this fashion to expound on the defining issue that distorts his perspective as it does Rev. Wright’s: the alleged “racial injustice in this country.” “[S]o many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today,” he intoned, “can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”

My family tree was truncated by an event far more fatal than was slavery: the Holocaust. I do not carry this legacy with me. I blame only those who planned and executed the Final Solution, mostly long dead. Members of my family have never ascribed their misfortunes and misdeeds to that contemporary calamity. They’ve owned their failings. Ditto most Jews I know.

Speaking of whom, Obama further minimized Wright’s wickedness by postulating that many of us “have heard remarks from [our] pastors, priests, or rabbis with which [we] strongly disagreed.” I have never attended a synagogue in which the rabbi boiled with racial bile as does Rev. Wright. In fact, my favorite rabbi, my father, Rabbi Ben Isaacson, was an anti-apartheid activist.

Obama did concede that “the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial.” But since he stopped there, allowing only that some of Wright’s vitriol was “wrong, distorted and divisive,” let me dilate on what’s missing from Obama’s formulation: what Americans need to take away from Rev. Wright’s words is not this or the other political message. Some of the pastor’s statements have a core of truth; others are purely phantasmagoric. Wright’s words are not isolated expressions; they constitute a worldview, a belief system—a rank racist belief system.

Americans need to ponder this: How and why did Obama become spiritually enmeshed with an impious pastor who adheres to such a philosophy? Obama’s Speech From Slavery explains it all.

Until today, black America's excitement about Barack Obama reminded me of an old Eddie Murphy skit: everyone was falling for the Obama in the tailpipe. Obama's served as a lovely symbol of racial transcendance, but until today's speech he hadn't said anything white politicians haven't said. And how many black people in jail = one Obama?

Because if Obama's relevancy is tied to disavowing his candidacy as "The Black President," then he sacrifices his relevance to the black community.

But today Obama threw on his du-rag, gold fronts, and dookie gold-rope chain to keep it real and say, "YO! F this 'race doesn't matter' bullish. I'm black and I'm proud, bidges!"

Fact is when anyone says race doesn't matter, a black person somewhere loses a piece of fried chicken. And it hurts a little. The bottom line is: there is a black experience. And a white experience. And an Asian experience. And so on. For a black person, race is a matter of permanent importance the same as if you had a pig's foot growing out of your forehead. It is impossible to ignore.

When people choose to be "politically correct" and act like you don't have an appendage on your forehead, it doesn't feel right. It feels patronizing. Yes, there are harsh truths related to having a pig's foot growing out of your head. Cops might beat you up. Snooty white girls might not sleep with you on principle. Snooty black girls too! And Asians (disclosure: no one sleeps with me). But would the pig's foots on your head make you a lesser person? Well, in terms of having the respect of the populace at large, yes.

So, ok, luckily being black isn't quite like a pig's foot in your head. But sometimes it's close! And the conversation on race in America often plays like our political system: a chess game not about divining the truth, but about not saying the wrong thing. A war of passive-aggression, where people sidestep and play defense until someone passes out from exhaustion and in so doing crosses the line.

But Obama's speech today was an aggressive move to checkmate:

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

This is not "postracial." Or at least not the kind of "postracial" everyone is trying to sell. Obama is not a "transcendent" candidate, there is no such thing as "transcendence" in government.

As Hillary likes to point out—and this is why, until today's speech, I had supported her—there are problems, and there are solutions. Race is a problem, and someone who deals with race everyday is needed to deal with it.

Obama is the Black candidate, and is now trusting that such a distinction matters to the people of America. In today's speech he didn't try to placate the political mainstream—and that might make all the difference.

For Black people, anyway, there's no more Obama in the tailpipe. This is the moment of truth. We either matter or we don't.

So here's the promised update on the panel discussion on genocide denial that took place Thursday night at UCLA. Commenter Micromike wonders whether anything was accomplished. I frankly don't know.

The discussion was interesting. Professor David Myers drew incisive connections between the experience of the Armenian and Jewish communities; Professor Richard Hovanessian gave a fascinating talk on the rhetorical moves deployed by genocide deniers; I argued that while issues such as those are complex enough to support endless academic study, the moral contours of this situation are very stark—one needn't consult scholars to know that Jewish orgs ought not support a campaign of genocide denial. Then Aram Hamparian placed all this in the context of his work as head of the Armenian National Committee, and also made some very kind and encouraging comments about Jewcy.

Phantom says he hopes the experience was meaningful for me, and yes, absolutely it was. Having a chance to sit next to, and engage with, David Myers, Richard Hovanessian, and Aram Hamparian, was as edifying as it was flattering.

But of course that's entirely irrelevant. There are cheaper and easier ways to edify and flatter ourselves than to hold a genocide denial panel discussion at UCLA. There were people who flew across the country for this discussion (afterward, one person came up to me and said she flew in from Chicago, and another said that he came from Arizona; Mr. Hamparian flew in from DC): presumably, they weren't there just to hear interesting or stirring things. They must have hoped that something significant was actually going to come out of it.

On my end, there's one preeminent criterion by which I'll judge whether the event was a success: did it do anything at all that will make genocide denial a less acceptable political manuever to leaders of Jewish-American orgs such as the AJC (David Harris) and the ADL (Abraham Foxman). Will it cause anything to happen that in turn causes people lower down in these organizations to say to these men, "I understand how simple-minded and Polyanna-ish this sounds, but I really think we need to consider the idea that supporting a genocide denial campaign is really just deeply problematic, political considerations aside."

If that's too much to hope, then I'd be satisfied if supporters came to them and said, "listen, this isn't just some bullshit about 'morality' or 'the memory of the Holocaust'—it's actually serious. People out there are saying all kinds of damnfool things about our supporting Turkey's campaign of 'genocide denial,' and it could turn out to have very negatives consequences for this organization."

If that happens--if one person in either of those organizations can muster up the conviction to say either of those things to Abraham Foxman or David Harris--I'd call the event a success. But maybe I'm more easily satisfied than people who flew across the country hoping to witness some progress in ending denial of their family/community's systematic murder, I don't know.

I've been sent a recording and transcript of a public exchange that took place yesterday between Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee and AramBarry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee: Don't talk to him about "genocide denial," he's a pragmatist Hamparian of the Armenian National Committee. It happened at a Washington, DC lecture on Israeli-Turkish relations.

Hamparian takes Jacobs and the AJC to task for its participation in the world's most successful campaign of genocide denial, i.e. Turkey's campaign to deny the systematic murder of over a million Armenians during World War I. (For those tuning in late, The Armenian Genocide was the prototypical genocide in that it compelled Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the term "genocide," to seek ways to criminalize the mass-slaughter of whole communities. The AJC has abetted its denial by actively supporting Turkish efforts to prevent recognition of the genocide.)

Jacobs responds by suggesting that the AJC can't hope to say whether the genocide took place, because, jeez, World War I was so long ago! Then he swiftly non sequiturs to the very different argument that it's bad to acknowledge past genocides unless it makes good geopolitical sense. And then he adds that that's not just the position of the AJC, but also the position of "the Jewish community."

Well, all I can say is that whoever Barry Jacobs is talking about when he refers to "the Jewish community," their positions are morally bankrupt and a public disgrace to American Jews.

Transcript below.

Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America: Your efforts to score points in Ankara at the expense of the Armenian Genocide issue is a transparent transaction that, I think, squanders the moral capital of the Jewish community, undermines our collective efforts to fight Holocaust denial, and, if the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] experience of the last few months is any indication, is very far outside of the mainstream of your own community, and it's just so painful to come and hear you echo those same themes again. I just had to share that with you.

Barry Jacobs, Director of Strategic Studies of the American Jewish Committee:
It's not about the position of the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish community. It's not about, we are not historians, which is a polite, bullshit way of saying we're not going to take responsibility, we are not going to make a decision on 1915. But the relationship between United States and Turkey, if we want to, I don't know where you are, whether you are right or left, if you're left in the United States and want to get out of Iraq, well, look you at the map, Brits have pulled out of Basra, there are only two ways to get out of Iraq, you have to go south, you have to go north, and if you go north you got to go through Turkey.

So the argument that finally persuaded Congress, and I know this is not – I'm looking for a strong enough word – [unintelligible] but, the message was that the bilateral relationship between the United States and Turkey will suffer greatly if this resolution is passed. The Jewish Community believed that also, and that's been our position. And the world is not made up of choices between good and bad, at least not in the Foreign Service when I was in it, it's made up between choices between bad and worse. So we take practical positions, and the position of all the Jewish organizations, including ADL, was not have a position on the facts of what happened, or not taking a public position on what happened in 1915, we did not think, do not think, that the United States Congress is the place to settle this.

And that's all I can tell you. And that's the real world and that's the position of United States Government and of the Government of Israel.

UPDATE:

In a comment below, Pilisopa says "The AJC's and ADL's behavior is a reflection of what their membership will tolerate."

Unfortunately, that's the truth. All this will continue until enough members and donors call up these orgs and say, "Please don't waste your time calling me, or mailing me anything, or requesting my donations or support, until you've made the decision to stop supporting this campaign of genocide denial."

For that to happen, we need more people in the Jewish community to understand very clearly what's going on here. I sincerely hope and believe that the March 6 event at UCLA can help make this happen. But we'll see. -- Joey

Scientology has been in the news nonstop since the Tom Cruise promotional video was scandalously "leaked" two weeks ago. The Cruise news was followed by fellow Scientologist Kirstie Alley’s moment in the spotlight: her legal team threatened to have a photographer fired for making an inane crack about the religion. This past weekend saw international protests against Scientology, and seemingly every day brings a new Tom Cruise spoof video confirming the conventional wisdom: these Scientology culties are batshit nuts.

While some of their members might be crazy, though, the leadership of the church of Scientology is arguably anything but. The “leaked” Cruise video grabbed the attention of an information-addled audience afflicted with a notoriously short attention span. Osama Bin Laden famously mused that, while Westerners talked tough about Islam after 9/11, they also started buying a hell of a lot more Qurans. Likewise, while many people who watched the Cruise video may have found it bizarre or ridiculous, hordes of us also Googled Scientology for the first time. In 2008, this is surely the very definition of successful religious propaganda.

Was this dumb luck on the part of Scientology? Unlikely. What’s far more plausible is that David Miscavige, the leader of the religion, judiciously weighed the costs and benefits before signing off on this fortuitous "leak."

Tom Cruise is not crazy, either. In the video we see see a fiercely intense adult with an unbreakable sense of self and total confidence in the legitimacy of his own views. If we think Tom is a jackass and his religion laughable, he clearly doesn't give a shit. "I think it's a privilege to call yourself a scientologist," he declares at the beginning of the video, leaning forward and looking up at the camera. "You want to start shit?" he might have well asked. "Bring it." He appears less the fame-addled dipshit and more the persecuted heretic calling out the local clerisy.

Two Toms: which is the grandest inquisitor? No, Cruise isn’t crazy; but he may very well be dangerous. The Cruise we saw in the “leaked” videos is an extreme iteration of a particular type of religious fundamentalist: The "Grand Inquisitor,” scourge of all those whose faith is impure. The Grand Inquisitor is the fevered guardian of doctrinal purity who "looks into the eyes" of other men and knows that they are a danger to the cause. We've seen this type in many places and times: Tomás de Torquemada—the prototype of the class, who spent the latter 15th century torturing Spanish Christians to elicit confessions of disbelief; Che Guevara, the left-wing hero who spent romantic months in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains, eagerly shooting peasants in the head for suspected disloyalty; the henchmen of Al Qaeda, so-called “takfiri” Islamists who denounce other Muslims as non-believers, and kill them for it.

Every religion needs its Inquisitors, to be sure. In fact, any person—if they care at all about any religion, movement, or cause—must sometimes play the Inquisitor. For example: imagine that next Shabbat you attend New York's famously progressive B’nai Jeshurun synagogue, where you explain to the rabbi that you've chosen his synagogue because he understands that Judaism is a diverse and malleable tradition, and has always been adapted to the needs of its practitioners and the circumstances of time and place. So far, so good. But what if you further explain that your understanding of Judaism is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster governs the cosmos with great Grace and Majesty, and that on Friday evening we light two candles to symbolize our awareness of each of those two traits. The rabbi of B’nai Jeshurun, the very one who sings the praises of theological diversity and tolerance, must surely draw the line and tell you, well, "that's not Judaism."

So between the rabbi of B’nai Jeshurun and the most zealous evangelical minister there can be no disagreement on this one point: If our religion is to mean anything at all, we must exclude certain practices and ways of thinking. We must all play the Inquisitor—we disagree only on where the lines ought to be drawn, but on the necessity of lines there can be no disagreement.

Tom Cruise, as he convicts himself again and again through squinted eyes and gritted teeth to "Keep Scientology Working," and rails that "if you don't know [true Scientology doctrine], don't say you know," is, in one sense, no different from the current Pope, who once headed up the Congregation of the Faithful—formerly known as the Office of the Holy Inquisition. Both of them, like the rabbi at B’nai Jeshurun, seek to prevent people from polluting their faith with unwanted theologies and doctrines. Indeed, Keeping Scientology Working (a piece of scientology scripture) is one protracted plea by L. Ron Hubbard for Scientologists to stamp out incorrect interpretations of the religion. Scientologists, Hubbard says, should prefer to see someone dead rather than promoting incorrect beliefs about Scientology. Tough words, but no different from other such injunctions found in other scriptures. The anger Cruise demonstrates in this video and others, the pristine certainty and clarity with which he swears he will uphold the commandment to Keep Scientology Working, and most alarmingly, his certainty that he can detect lack of faith simply by looking into one's eyes: This is the mark not of a cult member, but of a personality type that haunts all religions and movements—an unnaturally ardent iteration of the Grand Inquisitor.

So the "leaked" Tom Cruise video may well have been a success for Scientology, but if it is true, as a recent biographer claims, that Tom Cruise is now ranked number two in the hierarchy of this growing religion, then this should give us pause. Most especially, it should give Scientologists pause. Tom Cruise will never again be the kid who danced in his underwear in Risky Business. But given real power to chart the course of a well-funded, well-organized, and rapidly growing religious movement, he may turn out to be something rather more formidable and more destructive, and the people least likely to enjoy the new Tom will be rank-and-file Scientologists themselves.

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Congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont wants to know why the media sucks at teaching us about "the greatest problems facing our country." Clip at bottom (Hat tip Kvetcher).

Bernie says “the function of the media is to educate you to live in a democracy.” Really? If the media ought to serve a single function rather than lots of functions determined by lots of people with different goals, I imagine the state would have to take over, perhaps allowing Secretary of Mass Media Sanders to provide a list of appropriate topics along with guidelines about how the populace might be educated about them.

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UPDATE: Read how the protest went, here.

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Think it's just no good for a Jewish civil rights organization to support a campaign of genocide denial? Then come out with Jewcy tonight in Los Angeles as we join with the Armenian Youth Federation and survivors of the Armenian Genocide to protest the Anti-Defamation League's "2007 Los Angeles Celebration." Press release:

NEWS ADVISORY – December 1, 2007 – NEWS ADVISORY

Los Angeles calls on Abe Foxman to stop undermining the universal humanitarian principles of the ADL

WHAT: Jewcy Media and the Armenian Youth Federation, joined by victims of the Armenian Genocide, will protest outside the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Saturday, December 1^st, when the Anti-Defamation League holds a celebration at the hotel. The protest is being organized in response to efforts by ADL National Director Abe Foxman to use the ADL as a vehicle for genocide denial—starkly violating the universal human rights principles which the ADL claims to revere.

WHO: Ghazaros Kademian, survivor – Armenian Genocide

Joey Kurtzman, Executive Editor – Jewcy

Arek Santikian, Representative – Armenian Youth Federation

WHEN: Saturday, December 1, 2007 @ 6:00 p.m. PT

WHERE: On Wilshire Boulevard in front of the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

Address is 9500 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. GoogleMap.

BACKGROUND ON ABE FOXMAN and the ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: For many years, the ADL, working on behalf of the Turkish government, has refused to acknowledge that the massacres of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 was a genocide. Worse, they have lobbied for Turkey to prevent passage of a resolution by the United States Congress affirming this genocide.

This year, under pressure from the New England community, the ADL issued a highly ambiguous statement regarding the Armenian genocide. It stated that the “consequences” of events in Turkey were “tantamount to genocide.” This duplicitous statement sidestepped the legal definition of genocide by avoiding any language that would imply intent, a critical part of the 1948 UN Genocide treaty.

In the same statement, the ADL reiterated its opposition to the Congressional resolution recognizing the genocide, calling it “a counterproductive diversion.” The ADL then apologized to the Prime Minister of Turkey for having put his government “in a difficult position,” expressing its “sorrow over what we have caused for the leadership and people of Turkey.” No apology has been offered to date to Armenian Genocide survivors and their heirs.

On August 23, echoing Turkey’s call for an “impartial study,” the ADL suggested “further dispassionate scholarly examination” of the genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has labeled such proposals as propaganda, not scholarship. By the ADL’s own standards, casting doubt on the historical truth of genocide constitutes genocide denial. And asking Armenians to sit down with denialist historians on the payroll of the Turkish state is exceptionally offensive. Considering the ADL’s unceasing – and just – efforts to combat Holocaust denial, their actions are remarkably hypocritical.

Perceiving its Armenian Genocide denial and subsequent missteps as simply a public relations dilemma - not a moral issue - the ADL hired the most prominent public relations firm in Boston, Regan Communications, to clean up its image.

For immediate commentary on this news story, please call JEWCY at (323) 600-3243 or the AYF-WR at (818) 507-1933.

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Yesterday, some Jewcy readers observed that Brendan O'Neill, editor of the online magazine Spiked and recent contributor here, began his journalistic career at a magazine named Living Marxism. Living Marxism was the organ of Britain's Revolutionary Communist Party, which held positions with which most Jewcers would not agree. Our would-be comrade commissars proclaim that O'Neill must be exiled from Jewcy.

Michael Kinsley says that the digital age is a propitious time to be a cranky libertarian, but it's also springtime for leftist factionalism. On the web, every clique can sanctify its own luminoso blogrollo, forever excommunicating deviationists for doctrinal unorthodoxies, past affiliations, refusals to pronounce some shibboleth of our corner of the internet.

Not here. Take the stultifying provincialism of left politics, amplify it with the Circle Jerk culture of the blogosphere, and you have something of a Jewcy nightmare: a hothouse of unchallenged ideology and lazy self-congratulation that looks like everything Jewcy was born to combat. Neither the Jewish community nor the left need help making themselves sclerotic, conformist, or irrelevant. The promise of the internet, for us, is its capacity to smash those tendencies, rather than reinforce them.

This isn't just about this specific issue: about Brendan O'Neill, the RCP, Living Marxist, or the Oxford Union debate. It's about what breadth of views can be accommodated in Jewcy, and who gets to contribute. We agree that there are borders to the pale, and some people are beyond those borders. But we're also aware of all the barriers that stand in the way of productive communication between people with well-entrenched and opposing positions: a reluctance or flat-out unwillingness to process evidence contradictory to one’s own point of view, an application of nearly impossible standards of evidence for opposing points but a knee-jerk acceptance of supporting points, a presumption of one's own intellectual bravery and integrity and an assumption that the opposition is weak or foolish or venal or lazy, et cetera. These, too, are things we want to overcome, rather than reinforce.

So defining Jewcy's boundaries will be an ongoing process. We'll discuss them. But we won't define them by pronouncing takfir on anyone who joined an organization with which Jewcy itself would not wish to partner.

Meanwhile, Kvetcher, nee David Kelsey, has taken Jewcy to task for our handling of the Oxford Union kerfuffle.

Jewcy chose a symbol of November 9th Society to represent the debate, even though the November 9th Society is a hardline neo-Nazi party that is quite critical of the British National Party for being mere "conservatives on steroids." That Jewcy chose their logo (replete with swastika, of course) to represent Nick Griffin is as risible as it is shrill.

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Being an online media professional is very much like being a sociologist or a psychiatrist. None of us really have any clue how anything in our field works or how it ought to work, so we spend much of our time making shit up and hoping that it sounds awesome. This is what we call "theory." And for every Lacanian psychoanalyst or critical theorist, there is some digital swami blathering about "increased layers of meaning" or "intertwingled longtails" or some such ginned-up piffle.

The paradigm-smashing theoretical framework of the moment is "Web 3.0." Theorists of Web 3.0 manage to use the language and tone of Viktor Frankl while describing what is, so far as I can tell, a plan to steal shit from other websites while keeping your ass covered legally.

My question: instead of "scraping" from other websites—"scraping" being trade talk for taking their stuff while ensuring they get nothing out of it—why can't we just revert to the old method of "transcluding" their content. Transcluding means that everyone on Jewcy gets to read their stuff, but they still get their pageviews and advertising revenue.

Transcluding seems to have gone of out fashion sometime in internet pre-history (the 90s? Is that possible?), but it seems like a more effective, less labor-intensive, and vastly fairer way to poach proprietary content.

You can't transclude a New York Times page, because they have some sort of fancy technical barrier set up. So in the spirit of ethnic fraternity I'll just sample the content of someone closer to home.

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In his recent Jewcy piece "The Betrayal of Turkish Jews," Khatchig Mouradian paints a dark portrait of Jewish life in Turkey, one in which Turkish Jews hope to escape antisemitic violence by proving their extreme loyalty to Turkey. Ami Eden, the managing editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, asked me the following questions about how Khatchig's piece bears on the ongoing ADL/Armenian Genocide controversy:

Not to sound snarky, but...

Doesn't this go along way toward validating the view of those who say they are worried about the safety of Turkey's Jews?

Do you think the ADL is concerned about Turkish Jews, but being shortsighted, or that the organization is just using the issue as an excuse to protect Turkey?

Put aside the ADL and its motivations... Do you accept the proposition that, at least in the short term, having Jewish groups successfully secure passage of the resolution is more dangerous for the Jews of Turkey than if Jewish groups are seen as opposing the resolution? That certainly seems to be the logic of this article.

I'll assume this exchange is on-the-record unless you say otherwise.

Here's my response.

Ami,

Obviously, our article "The Betrayal of Turkish Jews" departs pretty radically from the "Oh, Turkish Jews are just fine!" rebuttal that we sometimes hear in response to the supposed concerns of Foxman et al. Khatchig shows Turkish Jews to us as a harried minority whose "loyalty" has been extorted from them in exchange for physical safety.

But no, the article doesn't at all validate the concerns of those who claim we must appease Turkish antisemites in order to protect Turkish Jews. Khatchig and the scholars he interviewed see crude antisemitism as a staple of Turkish life and politics, but they deny that eruptions of antisemitic violence are a plausible outcome of the passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution. This is because Turkey's international ambitions (particularly re: the European Union) would be badly compromised by outbreaks of antisemitic violence.

Are these people wrong? Has Khatchig perhaps understated the antisemitism in Turkish life? Is Turkish society so profoundly antisemitic, so beholden to Protocols-style absurdities about Jewish unity and world influence, that Turks would set upon Turkish Jews with implacable rage if the U.S. House of Reps passed a resolution over which even American Jews have limited influence? And is the Turkish government so feckless and unpragmatic that it would allow its most cherished political ambitions to be scuppered as Turks took violent "revenge" on the country's Jews?

This all strikes me as rather far-fetched, as it does Professor Porter. So no, although the leadership of our community has thrown its weight behind the world's most successful campaign of genocide denial, I doubt they've managed even to serve the short-term interests of Turkish Jewry. And you can bet they've considerably complicated the future of that community by demonstrating to Turkey that popular antisemitic hatred is a valuable political asset.

Your second question: "Do you think the ADL is concerned about Turkish Jews, but being shortsighted, or that the organization is just using the issue as an excuse to protect Turkey?"

I certainly accept that some in the Jewish community—perhaps including some of the commissioners of the ADL—are genuinely concerned about the fate of Turkish Jews. I have more difficulty believing they truly think that by gutlessly jumping at the demands of antisemites we can earn a happier outcome for Jews. I'd thought the 20th century had taught us that this was a losing strategy, and I'm mystified as to how any American Jew could conclude that we were too hasty in giving up on this approach, and ought now to give it another whirl.

Still, I suppose that if the leaders of the ADL—which once stood as a symbol of modern Jewish assertiveness and refusal to accept the traditional indignities of Jewish life in Europe—can today be co-opted as compliant Court Jews for Ankara, then it's no more startling to learn that they and others in the Jewish community are prepared to sit cringing at the feet of Middle Eastern leaders who clearly think they know a thing or two about how to keep irksome Jews in line. Turkish antisemites must have been gratified that American Jewish leaders—representatives of the most empowered, integrated Jewish population in the history of the diaspora—could be so easily managed like a gaggle of korkak Yahudiler, responding to threats of antisemitic violence with desperate smiles and obsequious supplications. As the Turkish ambassador to Israel helpfully explained, so far as the Turks are concerned, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. How do you say QED in Turkish?

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Jewcy Folk,

Tonight Jewcy and the Armenian-American community's No Place for Denial campaign co-sponsor a rally outside the national ADL headquarters in Manhattan. For the next few days, the national ADL will be meeting somewhere in the City to consider, among other things, whether to continue supporting Turkey's ongoing campaign to deny recognition to the survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

I wish I could be at the rally rather than out here on the West Coast, but Michael Weiss will be there along with other Jewish speakers to represent Jewcy and all those of us in the Jewish community who believe that genocide denial is not a Jewish value, and that the ADL can never represent the Jewish tradition of social justice so long as it seeks to deny recognition to the survivors of genocide and to the descendants of those who perished.

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Is a vegan diet better for the environment than a vegetarian diet? Today, Slate asks that question. Either way, though, giving up meat is apparently good for the Earth: "going vegetarian has the same effect on carbon dioxide emissions as switching from a Chevrolet Suburban to a Toyota Camry."

Personally, I don't really give a crap which one is better for the environment. I'm a vegetarian for bleeding-heart ethical reasons, and the same ethical concerns force me to acknowledge that recent human history would have been safer, kinder, and gentler had the modern environmental movement never existed. It doesn’t take a carnivore to see that environmentalist hysteria takes on a consistent pattern: affluent Westerners decide that some long-enjoyed privilege of modern life is evil, and set about depriving the people of developing countries of that privilege.

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You have got to be kidding me.

The [Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs] has presented UNESCO with a draft resolution for the preservation of the memory of the Holocaust and prevention of its denial.

Oh, stuff it.

The historic proposed decision, concerned with preservation of the memory of the Holocaust and prevention of its denial, is part of a campaign conducted for the past three years by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in conjunction with international communities in general and with the United Nations[.]

Why is the ministry of foreign affairs doing this, and why is the UN indulging this juvenile "politics of gesture"? Relations with Iran are exquisitely sensitive at the moment, and as we know, Iran does not recognize the Holocaust. It is foolish and pointless to antagonize Ahmadinejad and the mullahs over something that happened sixty years ago. However regrettable the events of WWII may have been--and make no mistake, they were regrettable--we need to focus on today, and not waste our energies revisiting old tragedies. </satire>

The MFA has managed to harness 70 countries from all continents to the initiative, including one Arab state. Voting on the decision will take place at the 34th session of the UNESCO General Conference, to be held in Paris from 16 October to 3 November 2007.

So voting starts today. I hope everyone votes yea, but only after insisting on a brief amendment stating the obvious: that it is equally imperative to preserve the memory of other genocides, such as the Armenian Genocide, and to prevent their denial.

Meanwhile, in other news, Armenian-Americans continue to plead with Jewish- American organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, as well as with the foreign ministry of Israel, to stop abetting Turkish efforts to destroy the memory of the Armenian Genocide.

Alik Arzoumanian, a granddaughter of survivors of the genocide, delivered this speech to the Massachusetts Human Rights Association last Friday:

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It’s the fifth anniversary of Trembling Before God, the landmark documentary that showed the world that, while there may be no gays in Iran, there are most assuredly gays and lesbians among Orthodox Jews. How much have attitudes changed among the Orthodox since Trembling Before God came out?

Last week Bangitout.com published 72 Questions On Gay Marriage, by Martin Bodek, an Orthodox Jew who wants to know how supporters of same-sex marriage suppose this institution would fit into the strictures of traditional Jewish law, or halacha. Some of the questions are bawdy or impertinent--and those are the ones that aren't totally incomprehensible to secular heathen (what in the gods' names is an aufruf, and why does it make men want to throw candy?)

Still, this list looks like progress to us. Pre-TBG, would it even have occurred to anyone to write up such a list?

So we asked Steve Greenberg, the world’s first openly gay Orthodox rabbi, to read the 72 questions (or shaylas) and tell us what to make of all this.

Check out a few of Bodek’s questions below, and then click the vid to find out whether Rabbi Greenberg’s partner is called a rebbitzin, and whether 72 Halachic Questions On Gay Marriage is obnoxious, ahead of the curve, or both.

Questions for two men

• Do they both break the glass?
• Which one is not allowed to be on bottom?
  
• A “Moch dachuk” must be pretty painful, no?
  
• Do either of them have to cover their hair?
  
• If they refuse to divorce each other, whose legs get broken?

Questions For Two Women

• Do they both have to cover their hair?
• Which one is not allowed to be on top?
• Are they automatic agunahs if they want to get divorced?
• If their son is from an anonymous donor, what name does he use for an aliyah?
• For the aufruf, do the men throw candies into the ezras nashim?
• Are they allowed to be meyached with other people’s wives?

Questions for Both

• Whose last name do they use?
• Who gets first dibs on the baby naming?
  
• For shidduch dates, who calls, does the pickup and reports first to the shadchen?
  
• Do they have to use a hole in the sheet?

See the rest of the 72 Questions, here.

Below, watch the response of Steve Greenberg, the world's first openly gay Orthodox rabbi.

I learned the hard way that the Anti-Defamation League makes it tougher to defend Israel on a college campus.

It really isn't difficult to take apart a zealous college leftie spouting rubbish learned from some "fact sheet" about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. You can show them that their information is wrong, or selective, or that they are applying their claimed principles inconsistently. Some will listen, some won't. Some will scoff and bluster in the heat of the moment, but mull it over at a later, less theatrical moment. But one thing almost all of them will do is try to strawman you, which too frequently means shouting off about some nonsense spouted by the ADL.

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George Bush in 2000, while running for President:

The Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign that defies comprehension and commands all decent people to remember and acknowledge the facts and lessons of an awful crime in a century of bloody crimes against humanity. If elected President, I would ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people.

Either “all decent people” doesn’t include the American people or American Congress, or George Bush egregiously misled Armenian-Americans about his intentions, or he's just gone John Kerry flip-floppy on genocide. Because as Congress sits on the verge of finally, finally recognizing the historical verity of this "genocidal campaign," Bush has tried to jam a Presidential sabo into the gears by asking Congress to vote down the Armenian Genocide resolution.

And I thought this was supposed to be the President of "moral clarity."

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